ATTENTION

the allergy i am seeing grow up around small talk in any form is troubling to me. do you know how to make friends with people in your physical environment? it typically starts with small talk. do you want to live in community? small talk. do you want to have the type of relationship with your neighbors where you can run over and borrow a battery for your smoke detector when it starts beeping at 10pm? small talk!! do you want leeway from your coworkers when you fuck up something small? you gotta be able to build a relationship and that's small talk, baybeee.

"but i don't need friends and i don't care about community!" okay, lone ranger, what about the people in your community who need you? "but i have social anxiety!" me too, bud! we simply must soldier on. making up lists of questions to ask people helps. and people are predisposed to be generous, i've found. even if you make some kind of mistake, what is this but the natural give and take of human interaction? nobody is perfect.

you were not put on this earth to live by yourself and then die. you need people and people need you. treat those around you with curiosity and generousness of spirit and you will gain so much goodwill in return.

Having A Week and I would just like to wish all the people out there who strongly identify with all the problems experienced by the ADHD/Autism community but don't exhibit enough symptoms/haven't gotten diagnosed so they don't know what to do about it a very pleasant evening

I guess this is my first (finished) SW piece on Clip Studio Paint \(O_O)/

the “pleasure to have in class” to overly active tumblr user pipeline

Man threatens to say a slur then saves infant from being smothered

MICHAEL J. FOX as MARTY MCFLY in BACK TO THE FUTURE (1985)

sleepy toothless

hey. dont cry. 1 million puppies on earth ok?

This. This, this, this a thousand times over.

How can you support this show

Creating content does not imply unequivocal support. But I'll bite. Despite its many sins, particularly with regard to representation (which is not unique among Lucasfilm stories - please read that linked post if you haven't before), I would ask, after viewing the show:

💀 Could you have more compassion for a veteran struggling to transition, recalling the whiplash of a tremendously capable Sergeant suddenly barely being able to feed his family while they live out of their car?

✋🏾 Could you more readily accept that trauma recovery is a fractious, nonlinear path, and "grumpiness" might actually herald the affected regaining sense of self by re-asserting their commitment to justice?

⚡ Could you have more patience with people whose brains work a little differently, appreciating that a blunt and unemotional communication style might not belie callousness, but represent their genuine effort to connect?

💣 Could you create more space to recognize that a scarred and physically intimidating person might also have the greatest capacity for gentleness, kindness, and emotional intelligence?

⌖ Could you offer more grace to people who are difficult to reach, because perhaps a facade of cool, unaffected competence punctuated by a quick temper is a natural reaction to achievement-based acceptance culture and the fear that if we lose control even for a moment, the consequences will be our fault?

None of this changes anything. It doesn't redeem the show's inherent issues; in fact, the good qualities only stoke my frustration because a viewer has to claw through some pretty devastating failures to see them. But that trade-off is not an anomaly in television, media, or frankly in the world. The meaningful themes that make The Bad Batch more than pretty pixels still persist. I'll leave it there.