Author: lebelinoria

actualpirateking:

They’re calling it H-day. The H might stand for ‘hockey’ or ‘hell,’ you don’t really remember. You only remember the day you turned on your local sports network to hear that every player in the NHL has been transformed based on the names of their teams. The ramifications of this range from merely nominal to, frankly, off the walls ridiculous.

Montreal and Vancouver, out of all the NHL cities, have seen the least effects. Their team names mean ‘Canadians, except in French’ and ‘Canadians, except in slang,’ respectively, so aside from a few sudden citizenship acquisitions, their players have experienced no changes. Likewise, the Islanders are essentially the same. Some extent of memory alteration is speculated, but that’s all Deadspin anyway, so who really knows?

The other New York team, on the other hand, has developed a strange predilection for reckless behaviour in the name of ‘adventure.’ They’ve also taken to rolling twenty sided dice before taking action, which tends to really slow down a hockey game.

Los Angeles and Las Vegas have come to an unlikely alliance. The LA team had devolved into power struggles and succession crises, so Vegas offered proxy fighters to joust on each LA player’s behalf. However, with many Kings and only one Knight, the teams have been forced to wait until the expansion draft to actually settle the disputes. Until then, the main concern is keeping the Kings away from the armoury that has sprung up in Buffalo, as most hockey fans agree that beheadings would be taking hockey fights too far.

When the Detroit players sprouted wings — literal red wings — many expected the same from Philadelphia. However, the Flyers have become a different type of flyer, and their management is currently scrambling to find all their players, floating around the city on the wind (Toronto, too, is having similar issues; they simply didn’t have enough rakes in the equipment room when the whole debacle began). Of particular importance is one flyer advertising grilled cheese sandwiches, which must never, under any circumstances, be allowed to find its way to Pittsburgh. It might cross the path of a passing flightless bird, who could mistake it for food, or worse, recognize it as who it actually is.

Speaking of Pittsburgh, they, along with Anaheim, are reaping the benefits of being one of the few animal-named teams whose mascot is relatively docile and non-threatening. Arizona, Florida, Boston, San Jose, and Nashville have all had to call in experts in the zoology business to deal with the sudden influx of apex predators.

Speaking of predators, Chicago is gone. Just gone. They had the misfortune to have a home stretch lined up where they played Carolina, Colorado, and Tampa in succession, and now they’re gone. Instead, the city has been replaced by a replica of Washington DC that inexplicably speaks Russian instead of English, but is otherwise indistinguishable. Twenty other versions of Washington have cropped up over the country, most of which are Russian-speaking.

The St. Louis music scene and the Columbus fashion industry have each had a sudden boom, revitalized by new trends. They don’t have much to do with each other, but the two cities agree: blue sure is a cool colour.

The province of Alberta, on other hand, is not in such agreement. For their own safety, Edmonton and Calgary are attempting to keep as separate as possible for the time being. What is left of their players cannot be allowed to interact, lest they ignite the entire country.

New Jersey is also having some problems. Then again, when are they not?

The Minnesota practice rink is no longer fit for use; it has become, essentially, a very cold forest. It now attracts hockey fans and tourists, many of whom claim to be able to hear the voices of the players among the trees. Others merely say it seems like a nice way to get back to nature.

But when it comes to getting back to nature, Dallas has us all beat. They have returned to a state of matter pre-dating our own planet and ascended into the night sky. Attempts are being made to bring them back to Earth, as it is not possible to play hockey games against them if they are in outer space — only Winnipeg might have even a chance. Unfortunately, the mission to bring the Stars back has hit a snag lately; Jamie Benn just won’t go down.

jumpingjacktrash:

queeranarchism:

I’m disappointed in a lot of the conversations about neuro-normativity in inter-personal interactions, mostly because of how absolutist they tend to be and how useless that is in most real life interactions.  

A lot of conversations ignore that you can’t be sure you’re not talking to another non-neurotypical person but more to the point they also overlook the fact that ‘neurotypical’ people (which I sometimes think is more a society wide enforced ideal than an a human reality anyway) can be emotionally hurt, triggered, sensory-overloaded, extremely exhausted or emotionally fragile in some other way. Neurotypical people have meltdowns and panic and moments when they are so so fragile. 

So when someone doesn’t respond well to your non-neurotypical behavior, maybe they’re a huge ableist asshole, or maybe their needs are incompatible with yours in that space, maybe your bouncing leg is pushing their sensory overload over the edge or your directness is something they are too emotionally vulnerable to deal with, or your uninterrupted talking is speeding up their panic attack, etc. Maybe their melt-down is as unavoidable as yours. 

Like, maybe it’s just me, but a lot of my bad experiences seem to come from incompatible neuro-needs, like when my partner really needs to hear that one song to calm down and I really need to not hear it to calm down, when I really need clean uncluttered spaces to relax and a friend really needs company in their own home, which is a cluttered space. Our needs clash, and the language or neuro-normativity in the ‘you are ableist, I am not’ absolutes doesn’t cover our situations well. We can’t use the language of privilege vs. oppression to handle these moments. We need tools about neuro-diversity that work from a place of mutual understanding and assume that we are both vulnerable and we are both doing the best we can.   

my theory about stimming and other autistic behaviors is that nt’s (i’m using this here to mean ‘has no neurological disability’ not ‘has no mental illness’) do the same things when stressed to the same extreme, it’s just that sensory processing disorder and other elements of autism mean i’m pushed to that point a lot sooner, and by a lot of things nt’s aren’t bothered by.

but you take an nt into the megamall on black friday, and after a few hours of shopping they’re going to have the same planked stare that i get from hanging out with six friends having fun. they’re going to be stimming, too. look for it. they’ll be fiddling with the zipper on their coat, running it up and down, or twisting their hair around their fingers, or some other ‘nervous habit’ that you’d call stimming if an autie was doing it. they may go semi-nonverbal – although, not realizing it, they might yell at people or say stupid shit instead of accepting that talking is not working right now.

a lot of what we talk about as autistic behaviors are really universal human stress behaviors.

it’s just that you see me doing them a lot more often because nt’s don’t experience a flickering fluorescent light like a moth fluttering against your eyeball, and can put up with hours and hours of it while i have to shield my eyes from it by hunching over, and thus look like i’m too stupid to understand sitting.

tl;dr: everybody stop gatekeeping useful terms like stimming and spoons. stop now. that’s over. you’re done.