In possibly my most impressive Twitter scuffle yet, I (someone who speaks welsh & is of welsh decent) was accused of being racist because when I had a stroke, I experienced bilingual aphasia & could temporarily only speak Welsh & this means that I am āorientalizingā the Celts, like āmagical nativesā
The evidence for this was that when someone commented āWelsh sounds like fairy talk to meā (which to be fair, is because of Tolkien basing all his stuff on it), I did not immediately recoil and instead joked āah, that must be why I reverted to it, being half fae myselfā
This was then screenshotted and everyone decided that
1) I was brain damaged for thinking I was a fairy
2) I was speaking gibberish and just assumed it was Welsh
And this is somehowā¦ fetishizing the Welsh? And also anti-indigenous? Somehow?
Nevermind the half fae thing is partly a joke about autism and partly a joke about the family legend (ON MY WELSH SIDE) about how our ancestor fucked a tree nymph and thatās why we are the way we are
Anyway, turns out they were all anti-theists who find ALL MAGIC EXTREMELY OFFENSIVE AND SOMETHING ONLY BRAIN DAMAGED RACIST PEOOLE DO
basically just recreating white supremacy and using anti-colonizing language to do it
Anyway if I am going to be cancelled for being racist it might as well be for being racist against white people with whom I actually share genes why not
(ALTHOUGH I DO FEEL THE NEED TO CLARIFY THAT MOST OF THE PEOPLE YELLING AT ME WERE ENGLISH BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY WERE)
And to clarify more because the Internet has made me paranoid, I do not consider myself half autistic, I am fully autistic!
BUT
I thought I was undiagnosed, so I told my mom & she was like oh no, you were diagnosed at 5 but we decided never to tell you
So, like, half diagnosed?
Very fae lol
Oh and to clarify more, the reason I use she/fae pronouns is a nod to my autism!
Fairies do a lot of autistic things. They canāt lie. Their faces donāt match their feelings. They are very literal. Etc!
I thought most people on the internet knew this by now but apparently not anti-theists!
When I think through who has been the most terrible to me as Iāve been learning Welsh (Iām ānot Welsh enough,ā Iām an āuppity American,ā etc), itās invariably the English! Including when I lived in Wales
Itās likeā¦ they are pretending to āprotectā the Welsh but the end result is still oppression?
Yeah been like that for 1000 years +, protecting kinda means do what England says.
Read through the thread a few times and still WTF was the other person on aboutā¦
There were a couple of threads (some with thousands of likes š« ) but I only commented on the one because my coworker found it and I had to be like OK NO because online scuffles are one thing, but they have to be shut down if they cross into IRL territory!
As soon as I started reading the thread, I was like, these were English folks, for sure. Every Welsh person I've ever met has been stoked that I'm learning it, if sometimes a little confused as to why. Haha. Dysgwyr Cymraeg awtistig solidarity ā¤ļø
Oof!! The weirdest of battles!!
Also is ābrain-damagedā supposed to be an insult? Like yes, thanks, Iām literally recovering from a neurological injury š
(Had never heard the autism/fae thing, will be incorporating it into my vernacular, thank you for that)
I appreciate it! It is definitely very startling how awful people are willing to be to someone with a neurological injury lol. Like yes! My brain was damaged! I am still a human with value! And intelligence and creativity even! And even if I had none of those, kindness would still matter? Alas ā¤ļøā¤ļø
From time to time I hear tales from the dark bowels of formerly-Twitter. This is fairly appalling, and I'm sorry it happened to you.
Please let us all know if there's anything we can do to help you escape it once and for all.
I think it has mostly passed! Most of my followers did not see too much of it thankfully. Which is impressiveāsome of the retweets of screenshots were in the 1000ās. But a strategy of not amplifying & having a couple ppl commenting to set them straight helped. Only one coworker found it so far lol
Fae could work for yāall too tbh. Fae cursed mortals are known to lose track of time. To paint until their fingers are bone. To become so engrossed in the dance, the flesh falls from their feet.
Big ADHD vibes
Whelp, Iām sold. Given that Iām drinking my coffee and physically unable to stop my feet from keeping time to the music playing.
Now to decide which Fea, there are so many to choose from
Our splendid queer chorus has at least one she/fae, and I am happy to learn more people use these pronouns! [One of these days I will remember to invite you to a performance; I think youāre in our region]
Which pronouns?
Whatever the fuck we like!
š
Not so much Fae as shapeshifters.
It's every couple of days something new after all (sometimes every couple of hours). And quite often not what is expected.
I reflexively make an 8D emoticon face at the start of most "let's take a group pic" situations because my mom's got an old blue journal tucked away that says my first sentence was "leave me alone"
