#I feel like so many people focus on disabled characters who can do everything that we forget disabled people who can't

[imbecominggayer]

What Makes A Disabled Character "Good"?

A disabled character shouldn't be judged as a failure when they need caretakers and other reliances for the important stuff in life no matter their age

A disabled character shouldn't be mocked as weak or spoiled when they refuse to break their boundaries or be happy

A disabled character shouldn't be shamed when their medical problems impede on their sex capabilities or hygiene or anything else like that

A disabled character shouldn't be celebrated only when they do break the impossible odds since most characters never break the odds

A disabled character shouldn't be dehumanized when they act cheerful

A disabled character shouldn't be treated like a child when they aren't a child

A disabled character shouldn't be forced into leading an "idealic" life that wasn't built for individuals like them

A disabled character needs to be accepted by the author when they fail to thrive, to die, to succeed.

A disabled character needs to be created by an author who understands that life is complicated and that the things they think as "necessary" to leading a fulfilling life may not be in the cards for certain characters

A disabled character needs to be understood by the author as a disabled character who can't do everything an able-bodied character can do.

And when a disabled character is not fully independent, self-sufficient, and thriving, an author should know that even in these circumstances, fulfillment and joy can be found. Disabled people do it all the time.

Many people aren't breaking odds, being fearless activists, and thriving. They struggle. They break sometimes. They succeed sometimes. But in this life, they can find the ability to be content.

[markrosewater]

I want to speak out against the whole push towards DEI. I feel that ever since you made the push to make identity the forefront of a character it has hurt the stories you tell. Captain Sisay's race was never the focus of her character and she was a complete badass! And I fear if you did it over again Gerrard would be trans, black and disabled just because. It also cheapens the stories of world devastation when characters worry more about their gender than Bolas destroying everything.

The reason I started this blog is so we can have frank conversations about things, so please let’s talk about this.

Imagine if every time you turned on the TV or watched a movie, no one looked like you. For some of us, that’s never happened. We see ourselves constantly, so it’s hard to truly understand what not seeing yourself represented in media is like.

I do have a personal window to this experience. While I am white and male, there’s an area where I am the minority - my religion. Jews are just under two and a half percent of the US population. I have had many experiences where I’ve been in situations where everything is geared towards a group I do not belong to, and zero consideration is given that not everyone at that event is part of the majority.

You just feel invisible and like an outsider. It’s not a great feeling. And I just experience it a tiny portion of time, only things that are geared specifically towards something religious. Most minorities have this feeling all the time, whenever they’re outside their personal community.

Now imagine, after years of not seeing yourself ever, you finally see someone that looks like you, but nothing about the character rings remotely true. They don’t sound like you, they don’t act like you, the facts about their day-to-day life are just wrong. It’s clear whoever wrote the character didn’t truly understand the lived experience of the character, so the character feels fake.

You bring up Sisay. Michael Ryan and I didn’t technically create Sisay (she played a small role in the Mirage story), but we did do a lot to flesh out her character as the creators of the Weatherlight Saga. We turned her from a minor character into a major one.

And while I’m proud, in general, of our work on the Weatherlight Saga, I don’t think we did justice to Sisay as a character. Neither Michael nor I have any knowledge of what it’s like to be a black woman. Nor did we ever talk to someone who did.

And if you’re someone like us that has no knowledge of that experience, you probably didn’t notice. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing.

Imagine if we made a movie about your life, and we just made everything up. We invented people you never knew, we gave you a job you never had, and we had you say things you’d never say. The movie might even be a good movie, but your response would be, but that’s not my life - that’s not me.

Now imagine we put the movie out, and people that never met you assumed that was what you were like. When people met you for the first time, they assumed things, because, you know, they’d seen the movie.

That’s what misrepresenting people does. It not only makes them feel not seen, it falsely represents them, spreading lies, often stereotypes, making people believe things about them that aren’t true.

Our move towards diversity is just us trying to better reflect the world and the people in it. We’re trying to do to everyone else what a certain portion of people get every day without ever having to think about it.

But why are we “making it the forefront of their character”? We’re not. We’re making it a part of their character. But in a world where you’re not used to ever seeing it, it feels louder than it is. Things that are a natural part of the world that you’re used to feel like the background of the story because you understand the context to it.

If a man kisses his wife before going off to a battle, that’s not a big deal. It’s just a thing a husband might do to his wife when he leaves. It’s not the forefront of his character. It’s just part of his life. But you’ve seen it hundreds of times, so it feels normal.

When someone does something that isn’t your lived experience it pulls focus. It seems like a big deal, but only because it’s new to you. It’s just as mundane a thing to that character as the man kissing his wife is to him.

Even the turn “pushing” implies that it’s unnaturally here, that we’re forcing something that naturally shouldn’t be. But why? That thing exists naturally in the real world, and it doesn’t make the real world any less. Maybe you’re less aware of it, but is making you aware of how others live their life “pushing” something on you?

How you live your life is represented constantly, everywhere. Why isn’t over-representing your experience at the expense of everyone else’s “pushing” it? Why is media only being the experience of those in power the “proper way”?

Having more depth and variety doesn’t lessen stories. It makes them deeper, more rich, more nuanced. In short, it makes them better stories. In my former life, I was a professional writer. I took a lot of writing classes. One of the truism of writing is “speaking truth leads to better stories”.

There’s another famous quote: “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” You’re used to being over-represented, so being a little less over-represented feels like something has been taken from you. But really it hasn’t. Having a better sense of the rest of the world comes with a lot of benefits.

I’ll use food as an example. Let’s say all you were ever exposed to was the food of your heritage. Yeah, that food is really good, but sometimes isn’t it nice to eat foods of other nationalities? Isn’t your life better that you have a choice? Isn’t your exposure and access to the food of other nationalities a positive in your life?

Exposure to variety is a positive. It allows you to learn about things you didn’t know, experience things things you’ve never experienced, and get a better sense of understanding of your friends and neighbors.

Our actions are not to harm anyone, and if you think that’s what we’re doing, please take a minute to actually absorb what I’m saying. You’ve spent your whole life metaphorically eating one type of food, and we’re just trying to show you how much you’ve missed out on.

And while this might not impact you directly, we’re making a whole bunch of people felt seen. We’re bringing joy. Think of it this way. We make a lot of cards. Not every card is for you. But if it makes someone else happy, if they get to include it in a deck, and it makes Magic better for them, how is it harming you that we include it? You have so many cards that you can play.

To this poster or people that share their viewpoint, the narrative that a gain for someone else is an attack on you is just not true. As I just pointed out above, you play a game all about personal choice, about players getting to choose how they play and enjoy the game. Why should life be any different than Magic?

Thanks for reading.

[baphometsss]

We need to talk about spirit hand!Inquisitor

I've been trying to put this into words for a while but it's really tricky to explain. I'm gonna try anyway bc I feel like it's an important discussion to have

First though, a disclaimer: I'm not physically disabled. Everything I'm about to say is based on me trying to relate through my own experiences of mental illness, the experiences of a disabled family member who uses a prosthetic leg, and research into how to write disabled characters properly in my own personal projects (thanks to cripplecharacters blog for helping me understand it better!) So, you know, you can take it or leave it--and please feel free to add your own experiences! This isn't a call out post or anything, I'm just trying to put my thoughts into words and start a conversation in good faith

The problem with fanworks where the inquisitor's wooden prosthetic is replaced by a magic/spirit hand is that it falls into a really tiresome trope where the character has the limb replaced with a magical prosthetic that essentially nixes the disability entirely. It's called the Cool Robot Arm or Perfect Prosthetic trope and it plays into disability erasure in a big way. This is pretty frustrating when you know having a limb amputated is a big deal that comes with a lot of pain and long-term effects, even if the amputation procedure itself was free of complications. Prosthetics are also basically a whole thing of their own, but suffice to say they also come with their risks and problems as well.

The thing with representation is that it needs to reflect real life experiences if its going to approach anything good or meaningful. Video games like Dragon Age often attempt to do this, but they also often miss the mark. I know a lot of disabled (and able-bodied) people want to see better representation of disability in media, but when that fails, we have the opportunity to do better in our fanworks. It feels like a lot DAI/DATV fanworks jump into the magical prosthetic trope far too easily and without very much thought for how it negatively impacts that representation. The Inquisitor becomes disabled through losing their left hand, and that would be a complicated journey for them. This is not a part of their character that can be written away without losing a huge part of their story--regardless of how we role-play them.

For me personally, I try to balance it out by being realistic about both the prosthetic, the spirit hand, and the remaining limb. For example, prosthetics rub and cause blisters and other skin conditions. They can be bulky and heavy and cause musculoskeletal problems. Residual limb pain is thing and can be chronic and debilitating. Learning to use a prosthetic usually requires physical therapy, and some people just prefer not to use prosthetics at all, or only some of the time or for specific tasks. Much of the discourse around prosthetics is focused on making them indistinguishable from a natural limb, when practicality and comfort should really be the focus and not this ableist idea that differently limbed people should want a prosthetic that looks identical to the one that was lost. There are so many potential stories that can be written about this experience, yet we almost never see any of them. My mage Inquisitor has a spirit hand, but she doesn't use it much because it's difficult to maintain both that and use offensive magic in battle, and she doesn't have the mental energy to use it 100% of the time. It's also not that easy to use, even when she does have the energy. She only really uses it occasionally anyway (usually to make random shapes with it to amuse other people) and prefers her prosthetic.

To put it another way--consider how deaf/HoH people who get cochlear implants often continue to use sign language afterwards anyway, even if the procedure was successful. This is because a. it's their first language, which means verbal language is a new language to them and b. gaining hearing after a long period without it can be extremely difficult to adjust to. It can be overwhelming and even painful. The point is that just because aids and treatments exist, it doesn't mean that they're a one size fits all and each individual person will have their own journey in figuring it out. That's one of the things we should be writing about, rather than just nixing it away with a magic limb because it's the easier route and it doesn't require us to consider writing outside of our own experiences. And don't get me wrong, I get that it's scary. You don't wanna upset people with your writing or make them feel even more alienated. But you have to start somewhere and be willing to listen to criticism if you're going to get better.

Furthermore: ableism for sure exists in Thedas. Can you imagine how that would affect the Inquisitor? How they'd adjust from being revered as the Herald of Andraste with a divine mark on their hand to being almost killed by it? How their political enemies would use their disability against them? How they would be affected emotionally by having to deal with that ableism potentially for the first time? Would they find community among other veterans who have become disabled through conflict? Or would they isolate themselves and carry the burden alone? Would they experience mental health issues because of it? These are all examples of how ableism affects real people. Of course, none of this is negated by the spirit hand, but it's something I've seen very little attention given in fanworks.

For me personally, I also try to think of this through my own experiences of mental illness. I have chronic depression/Dysthymia, which is not exactly the same as clinical depression. It follows similar patterns to other mood disorders like Bipolar Disorder in that it's cyclical; my baseline is being moderately depressed, and then every 2 or 3 months I will go into 'double depression' which is where I experience an intensification of symptoms that mimic going into an initial depressed state, while aggravating the symptoms I already have. It's hard to explain it, but suffice to say, it requires me to take medication to control it. I don't like it, but it's the way my brain is wired up and I've been told by multiple professionals that I will always have to take medication for it (antidepressants and antipsychotics, although I don't take the antipsychotics atm). This medication causes a variety of annoying side effects that I have to accept as a trade off so I don't regress too far.

This is just one of the mental health conditions I have to contend with, but it's one that probably effects my life the most. I know it's not comparable to amputation or other physical disabilities and I'm not trying to say it is. But I use it to understand writing for disabled characters by, in conjunction with my research, empathising, by thinking of how much it would bother me if someone wrote about my life and did everything they could to ignore this very prominent part of who I am. I would have to ask why they were so keen to ignore it. Dysthymia doesn't define me, it's not something I'm 'proud' of per se, but it does affect a big part of my life; I've struggled with it every day since I was 10 or 11--so of course it's shaped who I am. I use it to imagine how frustrating it would be if someone tried to cover up or negate this part of me and then dressed it up with something like... idk. Magical anti-depression goggles or something, or worse still decided to make my story all about the goggles. It would make me feel like I wasn't a person with experiences worth writing about, that I would be fine if it weren't for this illness I undeniably have and can't help having. That my illness is akin to a personality flaw--an ableist assumption that Dysthymia sufferers in particular have to deal with, because it's a depression that does not go away and people think it's just our personality rather than an illness.

I personally found these posts x x x really helpful in figuring out how to write my inquisitor. Tbh cripplecharacters is invaluable anyway, especially their 'magic aids' tag for writing Inky. I really strongly recommend that you read them before writing about your inquisitor's prosthetic and their perspective on losing their arm. Listening to actual disabled people when writing disabled characters is the most important part of the process and it'll only make your work better. You really have nothing to lose by doing it.

Like I said, I'm not trying to call anyone out. I have most likely missed the mark just in writing this post, because it's not my personal experience. I do think the spirit hand is a cool concept. It's just not a quick fix and writing about it needs to be done more consciously than I think most people do.

[cripplecharacters]

Hi! Sorry if this is a stupid question but I was wondering about representing disabilities/things in general that you don't have.

I always see people say that they want characters to be represented properly, and to show their disabilities and lives in an accurate way, but I also see people talk about how you shouldn't write about the struggles a POC/minority/person with a disability/etc. faces because you don't experience that and you're speaking over them or only using their story for "trauma porn" or whatever.

Maybe it's just because I'm autistic but I'm really not understanding how those two things coexist. How do I show how someone lives, especially with a disability that might be painful, without writing about the things they face?

Obviously it would be super weird if the character's entire personality was just "My life is awful because I'm so different, I can't do the things everyone else can, my life sucks."

But what about normal things that they struggle with? Like "Yeah I only have one arm, it's a pain in the ass to do dishes but it's not the end of the world." or "I have albinism so my depth perception is shit but whatever" or "It's fucking annoying when people stare at/judge me because I look different, but if they don't like it that's their problem, not mine lol."

Is the problem whether or not a characters ENTIRE story revolves around their disability? Using my own as an example:

A story, specifically, about how Funky Bungus, as an autistic person, lives in the world and what struggles he has due to his disability, VS a story where Funky Bungus is trying to stop two kingdoms from going to war and there's a short scene where he feels bad about not being able to make eye contract with people, before going back to the Kingdom War Drama.

I just want to use my stories as a way to educate people about disabilities and make people go "Hey, that character is like me!" or to make people think about their actions, like having a character complain about people staring at their scar/missing arm/etc. so maybe people will read it and go "Wow, I guess it IS rude when I don't mind my own business, from now on I won't stare at people."

Sorry if this got long and incomprehensible 😬

I guess the question is "How do I write about the struggles someone with a disability faces without coming across like I'm writing trauma porn or speaking over people" but I just have the Overexplain Everything So I'm Not Misunderstood Disorder™ lmao

I believe you have it right; the problem with many stories about disabilities written by non disabled authors often lies in when the story relies entirely on the disability.

It’s absolutely fine to write about the struggles a character faces — for an example with one of my disabilities, say a non-disabled author wrote about how a character kinda hates their chronic pain and wishes they didn’t have it. But otherwise there’s other stuff going on in the character’s life, like friends and family and hobbies, not just self-pity, and there’s other things going on in the plot, like maybe a mystery to solve or an Item to find or an adventure to go on or something.

That would be perfectly fine, and I’d love to read it actually, and really writing is kind of a balance of using what we know already and mixing it with things we haven’t experienced but have researched and/or thought about.

That’s how you show an authentic character with disabilities — they have struggles, things they can’t do or can’t do as well as others, but that’s not all there is to them. There’s things they enjoy doing, things they’re good at, people they spend time with and things they do.

Good intentions combined with research and knowledge (and good plots!) will make for good stories that feel authentic.

Hope this helps!

Mod Sparrow

Hey!

I think that there can be good stories that have disability/ableism as its primary focus, but they should be #OwnVoices (as in, made by people who experience said thing). That's largely because it often gets very specific and thus easy to misrepresent even if you have good intentions. Sometimes it can end up like "being disabled is so sad and everything is inaccessible, how tragic" and end up pitying the character - rather than actually sympathizing with them - just because that nuance is missing.

To use the same example as you did, "character complains about people staring at their scar sometimes" would be a completely normal way to include ableism as a part of life that does happen, while "character gets bullied for 300 pages for having a facial difference" would be in the torture porn category (when written by someone who doesn't have that experience).

I think that what Sparrow described is the best if you're not describing your own experiences. Including ableism as a thing that happens from time to time or as a tertiary focus is totally fine. That's how it is in real life - sometimes things do suck, but there's still a whole lot of other things that we do.

I think your desire to educate people is admirable, and it should be very much doable with the solutions you presented. Good luck writing,

mod Sasza

[nabi-unveiled]

Why I Didn't Write On Tumblr Earlier

I got asked in a DM "where u been?". There was more to the message, but the general idea was they were curious as they had recently seen a lot of posts by me.

Which is fair - I post a lot (that's not likely to change). And while this community is not new to me at all, I am new to it.

For many years, I was a ghost on Tumblr. I loved reading everyone's takes. My head is always full of commentary, and I loved reading all of the conflicting opinions. I loved the discourse. I loved the humor.

We won't dive into how it feels like a celebrity liked my post when some of you like or reblog something I wrote.

However, with only a few exceptions in life (like introducing myself to my husband - he was and is super attractive to me), I'm pretty slow to engage. I'm not joking when I say I overthink everything. It makes me very good at what I do, but it also makes me that person who rewrites a text or email ten times and still may not send it.

There's a lot of reasons I'm slow to engage. I live in a family and community where I'm largely told that everything I think and like is morally wrong. Stupid swamp. It's probably why characters and themes in BLs resonate so strongly with me. Teerak's family was the closest to my family dynamic I've ever seen depicted...if most of ep 12 never happens. My dad is a Southern Baptist preacher after all. I love my husband, but he's Teerak's mom in this scenario. He loves me, but he struggles to understand my religious deconstruction and beliefs. We're both purity culture survivors, but he struggles with the swamp.

When someone notices my Seonghwa/SKZ keychains or whatever is my phone background (it changes a lot), reactions range from disbelief ("huh. why?") to condescension ("you're so silly", "aren't you too old for that stuff?") to judgment ("Most mothers use pictures of their children since that's their focus."). I hear a lot of jokes. I see a lot of rolled eyes. That's only in reaction to K-pop, anime, or het shows with subtitles. I typically don't feel safe bringing up BLs or kink at all.

I'm not ashamed. I like what I like, and I believe what I believe. But it wears on you, and you stop engaging. I don't need that kind of negative energy in my life. If that's a type of cowardice - oh well.

Engaging takes energy. I'm not shy AT ALL, but I am introverted and private. It takes me a very long time to get comfortable with people. Once I do though, prepare for a goofball with no sense of embarrassment. I will not just spill tea. I will dump it over your head.

However, because I'm confident in my skills and not shy, many people don't realize I'm introverted. I can get on stage and speak to hundreds of people without batting an eye. I know how to play the social game. After all, I was raised in a family of extroverted Southern hosts. But small talk? It's torture. I crave depth in conversations. I will always retreat to my cave to recharge afterwards. It'll take a while before I emerge again.

On top of that - it's hard for me to follow conversations in large groups or noisy environments. I have a moderate hearing impairment that makes speech difficult to discern - especially if I can't see your mouth. I have had it since I was a young child; however, I was taught to cope and hide. I was taught that "disabled" is a label you don't want to have. I was in my 30s before I started openly admitting hearing was a struggle to people that were not super close to me.

There's only so many times you get told "it's nothing" before you stop asking people to repeat. Plus, it annoys people which is something I've been told since birth that you should avoid. My audiologist was shocked when she tested my hearing that I had managed without hearing aids for so long. But you learn to either control the conversation (it's easier to guess what people are saying) or mask (stay silent/pretend you hear). I'm very good at both.

It's much better now that I have a hearing aid. I should have two, but they're expensive. That said - it takes a lot to unlearn behaviors.

But once I choose to engage, I'm all in.

In short, engaging is a risk. I'm working on being more open. I'm working on drawing boundaries with my family and community. I've been taking steps to break out of that glass room, but I'm still slow to pull the trigger. Yeah...it's no wonder why When It Rains hits hard.

But once the door is open? It's open. My children think I'm an insane clown of a person, because I'm very comfortable with them. My brother would tell you I never shut up. If I choose to do something, I do it with everything in me. I'm slow to take risks. I calculate the potential cost. The cost is often high. But I'm not afraid of risks. I've taken the One Chip Challenge.

After all, taking action is a good thing.

So I'm here now in corporeal form. I'm no longer a ghost.

Words cannot express how much I have absolutely LOVED being an active part of this community in the past month. It's been delightful. In particular, I've learned that this type of engagement does not cost me energy. It gives me energy.

I'm also incredibly glad I chose to engage before When It Rains. I rolled a nat 20 on that saving throw.

[androdragynous]

tell me something about your art. fucking love the recent sharp angles.

thank you for giving me an excuse to ramble I love you. kiss

this is going to be a long post but I think it's important so I'm leaving it as a normal post and not a read more

I wrote more words and changed my mind because I got distracted a bunch of times by talking to myself. Enjoy

my own works in general have always been like. The Way By Which I Interact With The World which I think is a pretty common artist experience. my fan art tended to focus on my own characters in those settings rather than on the existing characters because of that, to my younger self's chagrin at times (the desire to Appeal To Fandom was much stronger in my younger years, which I think is also pretty typical). so there was always that lens of, like, these characters aren't me, but they could have been, in some way, or at least when viewed at certain angles. first guy is dealing with the same shit, second guy is doing some gender stuff baby me won't unpack for another five years, you get the idea.

and then the whole disability thing ramped up a few notches and everything went to shit, which is to say, for a really long time there I couldn't so much as look at art without pain, let alone long enough to create it. I did not have the tools to accomodate that disability or the finances to get them, and so for a really long time I was basically cut off from... what honestly felt like my ability to connect with people.

this sucked very badly in many ways. it's still not back to where it was before things got worse, but I'm happy with where it's been recently. I don't know how much of that is connected to getting a blood transfusion and the affiliated correction to my quantity of blood. I don't know how much of it is just pure desperation to reconnect with a world that I feel estranged from. We will come back to this point because I have a different tangent first:

I really don't like vent art. I don't like making it, I don't like posting it, and I don't like seeing it. I understand why people make it - I understand why I do - but there's a very harsh rawness to it that feels inappropriate as a viewer. It's voyeuristic; it's a look into something incredibly deeply personal hurt and an equally deep and genuine desire to have that hurt seen, validified, comforted.

I do not think vent art is bad to create or share, to be clear. The fact it makes me uncomfortable does not illegitimize it. Could honestly strengthen its reason for existing, to be quite honest.

The line blurs with disability, though, and this is where we come back to the original tangent, because to talk about disability that cannot be cured will innately be seen as venting. It's basically inevitable, in my experience. You're supposed to want to get better. You're supposed to hate existing like this. So if you mention it, to people who haven't either been in the same boat or who haven't taken the time to work through their own baggage about it, it's innately a vent. It's innately a hurt that you're burdening them with, a hurt that you want recognized and helped. My family members have been particularly bad about this viewpoint, but so have friends and medical professionals. So have strangers. I find it akin to arguments against gay public displays of affection; two men holding hands is sexual, using a mobility aid is pitiable. You get me? There's that innate sense that you, as the person watching a disabled person be disabled, should be feeling something about it, and if it's not inspiration porn, obviously you're meant to be sad. If it wasn't clear, this is the description of a train of thought that I believe is entirely incorrect.

Anyways. So disability art ends up grouped as vent art if you talk about it sucking at all, even if the suck is about the barriers presented by society and not the disability itself. I can, of course, only speak for my own experience, which is what this post is about, so my situation is very much barriers-focused.

People really, really aren't good at dealing with the discomfort part, what I detailed as the emotions I feel around vent art. People don't know what to do when you don't want help, or their help doesn't help (for whatever reason), or basically in any situation where you can't actually fix things, which is a lot of Being Disabled. It's hard to sit with that discomfort, especially when it's about a person's vulnerability. People want to help others, generally, in my experience, and it's difficult to not be able to when it's someone you care about.

Which all ties back into the voyeurism; to be visibly disabled is to be a spectacle. This has also been pretty inevitable, in my experience. Being in a wheelchair draws attention. Using a cane draws attention. Wearing an eye patch draws attention. So on and so forth. Sometimes this is great - people will offer their chairs to me sometimes if I'm using my cane, for example, which I appreciate - and sometimes it is less great.

This ties in, for me, with the part people REALLY don't like talking about, which is sex and sexuality. How do you date when you can't go out to many places? How do you get to know someone when you live with others and can't invite them over? How do you look sexy when you feel and kind of look like a corpse? These are all questions I'd love to know the answers to, because I'm shit out of luck on figuring it out so far, and that's not even touching on the actual sex, because I don't want to get this post filtered if I can help it. There's a balance, right, of being visible on purpose by flirting, dressing up, going out, making an impact, that is both directly overlapping with and directly opposed to the inevitable visibility of visible disability. They juxtapose magnificently, in a kind of sun and moon during an eclipse sort of way, you get me? You have to lean into it. You have to make yourself comfortable in that visibility because it's inevitable, and you are going to inevitably be viewed as a spectacle because you've leaned into it, and you're never going to be viewed as sexual because nobody will ever distinguish that there are two kinds of visibility being done, here.

And THAT I think is where my art is at right now, trying to convey that overlap. I do not think I have been subtle about it - it's loud colors, sharp lines, layers of vandalism over the original draft, a kind of intentional obscuration that implies many others were drawn to leave their mark there. You know? But because of What It Is, I do think it causes discomfort in the overlap. It's supposed to. It's inevitable that it would. I think being disabled is overtly sexual in the way being gay is overtly sexual in the way being trans is overtly sexual, in that none of them are but none of them aren't, either, in the right contexts or the wrong ones. People are going to see you exist and come to their own conclusions about how wrong you must feel in existing, and they will be made uncomfortable by that perception, and they will want to fix you. You have to accept that or you have to be uncomfortable right back. There's not really a third option that keeps you alive. This is all connected to the art, because the art is also inherently sexual, for approximately the same reasons.

So the tldr is "op is it weird if I think this is hot" is both the intended response and yes, it is weird, and you have to sit with the fact that both of those are true and you have to be normal about it for the rest of your life forever, and also you should take that knowledge and get weirder about it. It's a complex system. I also may have described none of it. Good luck.

[authoralexharvey]

INTERVIEW WITH A WRITEBLR — @sleepyowlwrites

Who You Are:

M.J || She/her

I'm a relentlessly optimistic affectionate creative who will impart love to the world through whatever means possible, and this includes my writing. And it shows, because all my kids are either full of love or in desperate need of it.

What You Write:

What genres do you write in? What age ranges do you write for?

Action, Adventure, Contemporary, Fanfic, Fantasy, Poetry. Young and New Adult.

What genre would you write in for the rest of your life, if you could? What about that genre appeals to you?

Fantasy, it's always been fantasy. Even my contemporary pieces have trace elements of fantasy in them. I like having rules in my worlds, but ones that I made up instead of science or society.

What genre/s will you not write unless you HAVE to? What about that genre turns you off?

Romance. I sometimes think about trying it, but I quickly turn away. There's nothing about romance that is fulfilling in a way that I couldn't find elsewhere. It's just not enough for me. I want everything else, everything in the wider love spectrum, all the kinds I personally treasure in my own life.

Who is your target audience? Do you think anyone outside of that would get anything out of your works?

Anybody, but especially people who have emotions that refuse to be processed. I'm hoping to help them process those emotions through the lens of character. If a reader isn't ready for striking combinations of whimsy and weight, or unexpected feelings, then they might not jive with my stories.

What kind of themes do you tend to focus on? What kinds of tropes? What about them appeals to you?

Mental illness, friendship, hurt/comfort, the mortifying ordeal of being known, purpose, trauma, personal choices, siblings, raw depths of emotions, and shenanigans. One of these is not like the other. I like to put relatable qualities in fantastical realms and make it intimate. I want you to indulge, and I want you to think.

What themes or tropes can you not stand? What about them turn you off?

Romanticized abuse or toxic relationships, romanticized mental illness or disabilities, fake redemption arcs, poorly realized characters or cheap twists, and sex. I'm entirely uninterested in sex. There are too many things I dislike to think of them now that I've been asked, but they're just preference. Don't backtrack on character growth for the sake of drama, please.

What are you currently working on? How long have you been working on it?

That's a trick question. I work on multiple projects at once because that's what my brain prefers. My longest wip is 10 months old and my oldest is almost 7 years.

Why do you write? What keeps you writing?

I've always talked my thoughts aloud to make them make sense - my adhd doesn't think in sentences, so it can get very jumbled in my brain - and stories are an additional way of explaining the world or people to myself, or explaining myself to other people, or of explaining nothing but exploring the unnamed. I write because I feel these things anyway. Might as well share them.

How long have you been writing? What do you think first drew you to it?

Since I was 9, so 20 years ago. The same reason as above, and also my mom said I was talented. I was decidedly untalented in various other areas, so I jumped on that talent and went for it. I do still think I'm talented but I'm a good writer because I kept at it. I have the skills now to back up the talent. It’s very gratifying.

Where do you get your inspiration from? Is that how you got your inspiration for your current project? If not, where did the inspiration come from?

Anywhere, and I really mean it. I can't tell you how many times I've been sitting at a stoplight, or cleaning, or watch Chicago Med with my mom bemoaning the horrible writing and poof! Idea. It just comes to me. Little bit gift, little bit curse, really.

What work of yours are you most proud of? Why?

Hard to say. Everything. The ones that barely exist and the ones that don't make sense anymore. The poetry from 2010 that is simply terrible. The ones from 2020 that are full of grief. The stories that change form but won't leave me alone. The ones I just invented. I'm proud of of it for impacting me, the audience I write for first.

Have you published anything? Do you want to?

No. Yes? It's not the only end goal like when I was 14. It's an idea I like to entertain. I'm currently happy just to be writing along with work.

What part of the publishing process most appeals to you? What part least appeals to you?

I'd like to self-publish first, and that means learning and doing new things, which I hate. I'm 29 and I still hate it. The upside would be more control, the downside would be more control.

What part of the writing process most appeals to you? What part is least appealing?

Least appealing is finishing. Most appealing is starting and middling. I'm also afraid of worldbuilding because it tends to squash my writing drive for some reason? I'm working on it.

Do you have a writing process? Do you have an ideal setup? Do you write in pure chaos? Talk about your process a bit.

It's pure chaos. I rubber duck until sentences settle like dew in the morning, and then I sometimes collect it to make tea, and sometimes I just watch it evaporate. Both activities are important. I write until I find a plot, and if I cannot find one, I will let the tea sit and grow mold. Sometimes I have to throw it out. Sometimes I recycle, plant flowers, and grow new stories. It's chaos. I love it.

Your Thoughts on Writeblr:

How long have you been a writeblr? What inspired you to join the community?

2018 - I converted from a kpop blog - I wanted to get back into writing original fiction again, and I wanted my writeblr to be my main. So. I did that.

Shout out some of your favorite writeblrs. How did you find them and what made you want to follow them?

How. Am I supposed to pick. Some? I found everybody from following a few people and seeing who they followed. I usually follow on a whim, and then make friends after. @zmwrites, @akindofmagictoo, @blind-the-winds, @oh-no-another-idea, @ink-fireplace-coffee, @avrablake, @chayscribbles, @mel-writes-with-her-dragons, @artbyeloquent, @writing-is-a-martial-art, @ashen-crest, I have at least 80 more people I could mention

What is your favorite part about writeblr?

Making friends and adopting each other's blorbos! And reading some truly excellent stories, obviously.

What do you think writeblr could improve on? How do you think we can go about doing so?

Initiate interaction. If you want asks, send some, if you want tags, tag people, if you want readers, read stuff. There's no guarantee of reciprocity - I'm often too tired to respond enthusiastically even when I'm happy to see a post - but the more we engage, the more we are engaging. Wow, I'm a writer.

How do you contribute to the writeblr community? Do you think you could be doing more?

I try to send asks whenever I see people asking, I post prompts lists and invent tags. I start conversations and make friends that way. I could be doing more, but it’s a balance between doing more and not breaking my boundaries. I talk to people all day at work and expend social energy. As an introvert, I have to not overreach or I get anxiety and burnout. Life's a balancing act, and writeblr is no exception.

What kinds of posts do you most like to interact with?

Tag games? It liberally depends on the day. I struggle the most with reblogging others' writing. But I'm getting better!

What kind of posts do you most like to make?

Writing memes or relatability, or new tag games.

Finally, anywhere else online we may be able to find you?

Not anywhere that I use frequently.

[clangen-dadm]

I got permission to post asks about potential treatments for Warriors disabilities & disorders for those who want to write about them, this one's about autism (referred to as starwalker in-game, but I'll be using the name autism)

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMERS:

- Do not use the herb-related FICTIONAL treatments IRL AT ALL!! I am not a medical professional or vet. If you believe someone needs help, get them real help!

- I obviously cannot speak for everyone with any disorder, so take everything with a healthy pinch of salt because not everyone will agree with me. If you're one of those people, I am absolutely open to civil conversation and constructive criticism ^^

What is autism?:

Autism, aka Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is characterized by many symptoms including (but not limited to): difficulties with communication and socialization, repetitive behaviors, sensory sensitivities, and difficulties with executive functioning.

Important things to note from this description:

- Autism being referred to as a spectrum means no one person experiences anything the same, so symptoms vary a LOT. Imagine a circle--every autistic person falls somewhere on that circle. Just as symptoms vary, some may not need very much support in their day-to-day life, while others might need lots of regular accommodations. This does not mean anyone is "more" or "less" autistic than anyone else.

- Neurodevelopmental means all autistic people are BORN autistic and will ALWAYS be autistic. Nobody's entirely certain where autism originates from, as it's actually a relatively new diagnosis, but we do know that it is not something that can be prevented or cured.

- Executive functioning is tied to a lot of things--emotional control, flexible thinking, impulse control, self-monitoring, working memory, organization, task initiation, and planning and prioritizing.

I'll admit, I'm writing this late at night and a majority of what I've been planning on saying is already covered here: https://allwritealright.com/how-to-write-an-autistic-character/#Make_Your_Autistic_Character_an_Individual (Excellent post, definitely check it out!), so I don't feel a need to say too much more, but there are s few more things I wanted to discuss.

How would Warriors treat autism?:

Honestly, I don't have any herbal remedies for this (and frankly I don't think they'd be very useful or appropriate anyways), but there are plenty of ways to accommodate for autistic kitties in your Clans!

When a cat is having a meltdown:

1) Stay calm! They don't need more stress right now.

2) Remove any potential triggers.

3) Distract them (encourage them to use calming strategies and offer something else for them to focus on)

4) Give them time and space to recover.

To treat sensory sensitivities in a cat, first identify triggers. If they're triggered by loud noises, try to keep them in a quiet area. They could wear little mossy/feathery earmuffs to help when things are noisy! If they're triggered by touch, make sure everyone knows to ask before touching them (which should be pretty basic manners anyhow). If they're triggered by smell or taste, keep those specific smell/taste triggers away from them. You get the point :)

To help a cat who is resistant to change through a change, try reinforcing everything else being similar except for one thing so that they can ease into a new routine instead of being shoved into it.

For nonverbal characters, communication cards, while limited, are one option left unmentioned in the blog I linked that can be quite helpful, as well! Simple things like common emotions and phrases are a good idea for these cards :)

Ough I really wanted to write more but I can't think of anything else that wasn't covered in that blog post unfortunately :( but if anyone has any questions I'll be lurking around the blog now and then, and I'm sure the actual mods of this blog can help too!!

this is really cool!! thank you :)

To piggyback off this, personally one thing I’d like to see more of in autism rep is characters with negative stims or tics! When overwhelmed, I have really bad negative stims (hitting myself, biting myself, etc), which can make things even worse, but a good therapist and support group can help your character through! In real life this may translate to hitting a plushie or biting an orange peel, but I’d love to see creative ways warriors could come up with instead- maybe they could bite into a preserved pelt or extra prey! In the game we have some stim toys they can get from two legs, but I’m sure warriors could also come up with some creative ideas!

I also appreciate it when other characters help autistic characters work through their sentences without teasing them. I have a moderately annoying stutter and struggle to find my words, especially when my emotions are running high. The best people in my life will patiently wait for me to get it out instead of pressuring me or making fun of it. I’d love to see a community of cats around the autistic character!

I’m sure Song has more ideas as well, unfortunately I’m the only West Coast mod XD ! I’ll ask them in the morning

[sixerstanley]

For me, Stan rebuilding the portal just shows that if he has the right motivation he can learn pretty complicated stuff, but that’s it. Stan’s smart in so many other important ways that isn’t what’s scene as traditional. He’s street smart, people smart, emotionally smart. He’s a world class conman who faked his death, faked is identity, and ran a successful scammy tourist trap. Do you know how smart conmen have to be? To have to read people and situations in the blink of an eye, to understand people’s motives, that takes an incredible about intelligence that you don’t get from traditional learning. And he did all that while building a portal. It’s important to Stan’s character that he’s not the Uber intelligent Twin, his existence is defined as being the Stupid Twin to Ford’s Genius Twin (I also like the idea of an undiagnosed learning disability but that’s just me personal preference tbh)

no no i totally agree! also yeah i headcanon him as having undiagnosed adhd and possibly some other learning disablities, but to me that just makes everything with the portal even more emotionally moving. like. imagine trying to focus and learn something that you have NO experience in whatsoever, and everytime you try to learn more its just NOT WORKING but you have to try. you have to try to get your brother back.

like it just makes it that much more powerful imo

and yeah like thats my point! there's so many ways to be smart, it doesn't always have to be traditional academic stuff. i guess i feel like sometimes people ignore the intelligence and talents stan DOES have in canon, and that's not to say you cant add to canonical stuff, but it becomes a bit discouraging to me at a certain point, as someone who has adhd and has definitely cried from homework assignments before and feels not so smart academically sometimes

you do not have to be booksmart to be intelligent. there's so many different ways to be smart!

[nellasbookplanet]

Book recs: great, unique and creative worldbuilding in sci-fi

A note: most of the books on this list are ones I cherish very highly (some are on my all time favorites list!). A few had a lower overall rating for me personally but still stellar worldbuilding and are of what I'd consider good objective quality even if I subjectively didn’t super enjoy them.

For details on the books, continue under the readmore!

Other book rec posts:

Really cool fantasy worldbuilding

Mermaid books

Dark sapphic romances

Vampire books

Feed (Newsflesh series) by Mira Grant

Zombies and news bloggers and presidential elections, oh my! A look at the world post-post zombie apocalypse, when society has gotten back to its feet but the zombie virus is still very much active. Humanity as a whole has been forced to adapt to the ever-present threat. Largely political, character and worldbuilding focused. There is some zombie action, but it’s far from the central focus.

Shades of Grey (Shades of Grey series) by Jasper Fforde

Walking the very thin line of giving you just enough information to follow the plot and grasp the overall idea of the world, but not enough to create info dumps or hand you answers not yet earned, Shades of Grey presents a world in black and white, where your perception of color determines your place in society. Is it fantasy? Scifi? Post apocalypse? Who knows! I sure don’t! Occasionally it hands you a tidbit of information that seems like a remnant of our world and you feel like you're onto something, but then some pages later said tidbit is turned on its head and you're back to square one. It’s delightful.

This Alien Shore (Alien Shores series) by C.S. Friedman

Space opera in which humanity found a way to faster than light travel and began establishing colonies all over the galaxy, only to belatedly realize the method of FTL caused irreversible mutations and disabilities and leaving their nascent colonies to die. Much later, many of the colonies have survived and thrived, and one has found a new way of FTL travel, allowing an interconnected space society to grow. However, Earth is on the hunt for their method and is prepared to do anything to steal it. Aside from cool worldbuilding, This Alien Shore also features some interesting commentary on disability and accommodation. And there are extra-dimensional space dragons!

Ninefox Gambit (Machineries of Empire trilogy) by Yoon Ha Lee

Military space opera where belief and culture shape the laws of reality, causing all kinds of atrocities as empires do everything in their power to force as many people as possible to conform to their way of life to strengthen their technology and weapons. It’s also very queer, with gay, lesbian and trans major characters, albeit little to no romance.

Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch series) by Ann Leckie

Another space opera, in which sentient spaceships can walk the ground in stolen human bodies, so called ancillaries. One of these ancillaries, the sole survivor after the complete destruction of her ship and crew, is one the hunt for revenge. This series also does very cool things with gender!

The Quantum Thief (Jean le Flambeur series) by Hannu Rajaniemi

Place this one in the category of 'accept that you're gonna be confused as hell and just let the world wash over you'. The singularity has come and gone and humans can now easily upload, download and copy themselves into new bodies, not all of them human and not always willingly. Consciousnesses and time has become something close to currency. Follows a murder mystery on Mars.

Stray (Touchstone trilogy) by Andrea K. Höst

Young Adult. Cassandra accidentally walks through a wormhole and ends up on another planet, where she tries to survive in the abandoned ruins of a long since gone civilization. When rescue finally arrives, she soon finds her troubles are far from over as she gets embroiled in a war between her rescuers and monstrous creatures from dreamlike other dimensions. Mixes scifi elements such as space travel, vr and nanomachinery with fantasy tropes such as psychic powers, monsters, and interdimensional portals.

The Peacekeeper (The Good Lands series) by B.L. Blanchard

Alternate history in which Europe never colonized the Americas. Follow Ojibwe detective Chibenashi as he travels from his small home village to a city of living skyscrapers to solve a murder. While I found the mystery somewhat lacking, the worldbuilding and look at a contemporary North America never touched by European colonization is absolutely aces.

The Prey of Gods by Nicky Drayden

South African-set scifi featuring gods ancient and new, robots, dik-diks, and a gay teen with mind control abilities. An ancient goddess seeks to return to her true power no matter how many humans she has to sacrifice to get there. A little bit all over the place but very creative and fresh.

Leech by Hiron Ennes

I mean, this is probably scifi? Like Shades of Grey it hands you only just enough information to get by, and whether its historical fantasy, an alternate timeline, or futuristic post apocalypse is hard to determine. A sentient hive mind have taken over the entire medical profession to ensure the health of their host species. One of their doctors is sent off to an isolated location where they’re cut off from the rest of the hive mind, only to realize they’re faced with a rivaling parasitic entity.

Children of Time (Children of Time series) by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Millenia and generation spanning scifi. After the collapse of an empire, a planet once part of a project to uplift other species to sentience is left to develop on its own, resulting not in the intelligent monkeys once intended but in sentient giant spiders. Millenia later, what remains of humanity arrives looking for a new home.

Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre

A classic following a healer as she travels a post apocalyptic Earth with an alien dreamsnake to help people. When her snake dies, she must go on a journey to find a new one. The worldbuilding feels fairly vague, but not in an annoying way but in one that makes the world feel vast and mysterious and lived in. Just like in the real world you won’t get all the answers, but you do get the feeling of the world as a whole being much larger than the character and her quest.

The Outside (The Outside trilogy) by Ada Hoffman

AKA the book the put me in an existenial crisis. Souls are real, and they are used to feed AI gods in this lovecraftian inspired scifi where reality is warped and artifical gods stand against real, unfathomable ones. Autistic scientist Yasira is accused of heresy and, to save her eternal soul, is recruited by post-human cybernetic 'angels' to help hunt down her own former mentor, who is threatening to tear reality itself apart.

The Three-Body Problem (The Three-Body Problem series) Cixin Liu

While I felt the characters could’ve been better developed, this is undeniably a well-written novel featuring an alien race and culture developed on a planet vastly different from ours. Firmly in the realm of hard scifi, this is a realistic, fascinating and slightly terrifying look at how first contact may look.

Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente

Eurovision in space! If you lose, humanity is doomed! Good luck! The sentient species of the galaxy have chosen to face each other not in war but in a musical contest, and now humanity is invited to partake. The problem? If we lose, our species as a whole will be exterminated. While I found this book as a whole slightly gimmicky, it’s a fun and flashy experience with some wild and creative alien species.

Escaping Exodus (Escaping Exodus series) by Nicky Drayden

Seske is the heir to the leader of a clan living inside a gigantic, spacefaring beast, of which they frequently need to catch a new one to reside in as their presence slowly kills the beast from the inside. While I found the ending rushed with regards to plot and character, the worldbuilding is very fresh and the overall plot of survival and class struggle an interesting one.

The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley

More fucked up biological spaceships, this time all women edition! It’s weird, it's gross, there’s So Much Viscera, it has biotech but in the most horrific way imaginable. Had I to categorize it I would call it grimdark military sf. It’s an experience but not necessarily a pleasant one. Features a mass of slowly dying world-ships, and the conflicts arising between them as they struggle to survive. It’s also sapphic but not what I'd call romantic.

Isle of Broken Years by Jane Fletcher

Young spanish noblewoman Catalina thinks she’s done for when the ship she’s traveling on is attacked by pirates and she’s captured. Things gets worse when the entire crew is stranded on an inhospitable island where time works strangely, dangerous monsters terrorize the woods and something alien stops them from leaving. Strong Lost vibes. Lesbian romance. Admittedly quite indulgent but very fun and creative.

Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang

Slow and long and literary, Vagabonds presents a world a hundred years post a war of independence between Earth and Mars, after which two vastly different societies have grown. A close look at the impossibility of a utopia and how different circumstances allow for different cultures to grow, and how the two aren’t always compatible while neither is necessarily better or worse than the other.

Mortal Engines (Mortal Engines quartet) by Philip Reeve

Young Adult. On a barely survivable Earth humanity has taken to living on great wandering cities, hunting each other across the plains for resources. Tom lives in London, but when he intervenes to stop a murder, he falls off the city alongside a strange and hostile girl on the hunt for revenge. Aside from excellent worldbuilding this also features one of my most favorit female characters ever in Hester Shaw. If you’ve seen the movie, forget about it and read the book instead.

Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota series) by Ada Palmer

Centuries in the future, humanity has deliberatly engineered society to be as utopian as possible, politically, socially, sexually, religiously. Written in an enlightenment style and featuring questions of human nature and whether it’s possible to change it, and what price we're prepared to pay for peace, this book is simultaneously very heavy and very funny, and written in a very unique style. While still human, the society presented often feels starkly alien.

A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan duology) by Arkady Martine

Mahit, ambassador of a small station nation, arrives at the heart of the Teixcalaanli Empire, ready to battle for the continued independence of her people. In her head she carries part of the personality of her predecessor, there to guide her. A look at imperialism and the conflicting feelings of hate, fear and even admiration one can have towards empire. Also features a sapphic romance!

Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb series) by Tamsyn Muir

I mean, you're on tumblr, you probably already know about this one. Trust me when I say it's exactly as good as people claim. There are indeed lesbian necromancers is space (quite a lot of them, actually), but also incredible worldbuilding that keeps growing with every new installment, interesting political commentary, morally complex characters with fucked up dynamics, and well-thought out plot that keeps you guessing until the last.

Railhead (Railhead trilogy) by Philip Reeve

Young Adult. Listen, Philip Reeve is so good at absolutely wild worldbuilding, I nearly included a third series of his on this list (hey go look up Larklight okay!). In a future where humanity travel between the stars using not spaceships but a portal-connected system of sentient trains, a young thief and street urchin is hired to steal something off of the Emperor's train.

Bonus AKA I haven't read these yet but they seem really cool

The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon

More AI gods!

A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe by Alex White

Magic in space!

The Genesis of Misery by Neon Yang

Angels in space!

[secret0codename]

CREEPYPASTA - Headcanons

~ Hello hello everyone! I hope you are well. This is Mannuh, I felt like writing... Why not?

~ Spooky hedcanons, I'll do the ones I know the most about and I'll update later!

-Nina -L.J -Jeff -Masky

-Toby -E.J -Jane -Hoodie

-Liu -Sally -BEN -Kate

~ I really hope everything is OK! Since I'm new to Tumblr, I don't really know how the question box and stuff like that works, so we'll be without it for a while! :) Well, I'll leave you with 1 headcanon of each character ^^

JEFF THE KILLER

~ He has a bad habit of facial hygiene, his injuries, especially the cut in his mouth, are infected, he no longer feels the pain he used to, so repeating it is not a problem! But he never cleans, after all he does not feel the need to. The more "nice" the more afraid his victim is, which will make him proud as always

NINA THE KILLER

~ Nina is a 100% independent person. She has learned to develop her skills and doesn't have as much contact with Jeff anymore. Over time, she has given up the obsession with him and developed self-love. She still likes it when people try to focus more on themselves! It's worth noting that Nina has very good aim and is constantly training to surpass Jeff.

SALLY

~ She looks like a child, but she isn't! She may act like one, talk like one, but it doesn't change the fact that she would be around 60 years old currently. She is very polite and kind, she doesn't trust men but makes exceptions for Toby, LJ, Liu, Masky etc. Women she tends to be liberal, talkative when she wants! Even so, she is a spirit she can do whatever she wants with her body, her victims are very afraid of her in a certain way, even though she almost doesn't kill them, only if necessary! (She would probably have a very feminist side, but she doesn't act like one, she just thinks)

"TICCI" TOBY / TOBY ROGERS

~ Toby, he's a very reserved guy with certain people but he's very lively with those he meets, but that doesn't remove the fact that he can be serious, brutal or even sadistic! He has his interests, goals and objectives and always tries to fulfill them without being interrupted. He doesn't like Slender/Operator, not like before he realized that one time or another he will die and clearly his boss won't do anything just look a replacement. Apart from that, he can act anywhere from a 28-year-old man to a 19-year-old muleke who has just entered puberty, this man can have problems but he is extremely polite (with whoever he wants), respectful, and reserved and can have moments that he reveals something of his rarest trait

EYELESS JACK

~ EJ, a cannibalistic man who is extremely serious and well-behaved. A demon that walks on 2 or 4 legs depends on its state, it is not a guy of many words but it maintains relationships with other Creepys or Proxies. He is someone with experience about the human body, so he knows everything! He doesn't just eat kidneys, but his preference in food is clearly human or animal organs on certain occasions, in my opinion EJ always has something saved in case of need, he probably knows when to attack his victims, maybe you don't have 1 kidney and you don't know .. He is stealthy when he is in an angrier form he becomes more animalistic, bizarre and terrifying and scares anyone, but when he is calm and in his own person he becomes like a normal person! but it's not

BEN DROWNED

~ This guy is a professional hacker, if you want something that involves the Internet he can do it effortlessly, this includes, Hacking people, Stalking, Searching, He can change very advanced settings, disabling websites and things like that! I wouldn't want to pick a fight with him! He is not afraid of water, he just has certain traumas, but now (perhaps) overcome, he can range from playful to extremely violent, making his victim die through a screen! He is a spirit, don't expect something physically but expect discord in your life, leaked data, bizarre messages, photos, etc.

☠People, I'm going to do the sequel soon, because I don't want to write much, you know? Maybe I can think about writing history and things like that in the future, even though I don't have the best writing skills in the world! I can try, what do you think? :^

[bagelsunshinecoffee]

I have so many Shannon thoughts. She’s only physically in the show for a short time and I wish it was longer. I would have loved for the show to actually play out the Eddie/Shannon divorce and for us to get to see where Shannon’s journey takes her. I can’t help feeling like maybe the show didn’t know what to do with her character so they just killed her off. And I know a lot of people think Shannon is one dimensional but I don’t really agree.

We see Shannon break down and admit her deepest, most vulnerable fears. We see her stand up for herself. We see her make a difficult decision to step away from her marriage to do what is best for herself and her son. Through her we really understand for the first time that she and Eddie were just kids when they got pregnant and married. They are at the crossroads of deciding, as adults, if the path they started on is one they want to continue or if they have grown past it.

Shannon has grown past it. She loves Eddie but knows that at this point the foundation of their relationship is as much nostalgia and wishful thinking as anything. She is determined to prioritize Chris (and ughhh this is why I’m so mad she died because I want to see her stepping into her role as a mother again and learning and making mistakes and getting to have that relationship). Eddie…Eddie is lost, and he’s still lost in that same way by the end of season 7, chasing Shannon and what she represents long after she’s gone. I think there are a lot of reasons (besides the fact that Eddie is actually gay and Shannon represents the life he was supposed to live but will never be able to while being true to himself) including the fact that he struggles profoundly to deal with pain, probably due to being raised to be strong and having that reinforced in the military and then repressing years of trauma. You can’t grow without dealing with pain.

In a lot of ways their dynamic reminds me of Buck and Abby and I’ve seen people react to the two couples in similar ways: demonizing the women to some degree to focus on the hurt they caused the men. And they did hurt Buck and Eddie, and yes let’s deal with that as part of their characters. But both of these are examples of women who decided they needed space from their all-consuming caretaker roles in order to be ready to have real and healthy relationships and both get lambasted for it.

With Shannon there’s the extra layer that she left Chris. She hurt her child, that’s undeniable. I also think it’s true that there are times a person can not be a good parent. Shannon was raising a child she was not prepared for alone, with minimal contact with her husband, for years. She was also raising a disabled child with greater care needs, expensive treatments, and having to make life altering decisions for her child (surgery, etc) all by herself. When she expresses her fear that she harmed Christopher by causing his CP, there’s ableism there, the assumption that CP is a bad thing. There’s also the reality of a young woman who has seen her child experience pain, surgery, difficulties that other children do not and who has felt the full weight of an ableist society descend on her and her child. The world loves to blame mothers for everything about their children, that’s not made up in her head. She’s absolutely coming at it from the perspective of an able-bodied person who didn’t have to grapple with ableism at all until Chris was born and still has a lot to unlearn, but that doesnt make her evil. When Eddie came back into Chris’s life there were many struggles that were already over, that Shannon dealt with all by herself.

What does our society hate more than a woman who refuses to be a caretaker? And what does fandom love more than a woman who can be demonized so the man who steps up as caretaker or lives without her care can be idolized?

Shannon was right at the cusp of something. She was going to have a chance to be a mother on her own terms, to repair the harm she did, to find herself. And it would have been good for Eddie too, I think, to be forced to let go of the idealized image of Shannon in his head which her death only crystallized forever. And then she died because ???? Reasons. I guess.

[cripplecharacters]

Hi! I’m writing a story about a lady with Down Syndrome. I was wondering if you knew where I can find any resources about Down Syndrome made by people who actually have it, or any organisations that would be good to follow. Any resources made by people with intellectual disability would be really helpful as well.

I read your post about this and it was really helpful so thank you, I’m going to use it as a starting point for my research.

If you’d like some context about the story she’s literally a lady in the 1920s who’s trying to get control of her family’s estate from her brother. Shes underestimated for her disabilities and for being a women but I’m trying to not focus so much on the discrimination and work more on giving her an interesting mystery to solve with the detective she hired. I’d like it to be a bit lighthearted. Anyway, as she’s a main character I really wanted to make sure I wrote her well. Thanks!

Hey!

There aren't many resources out there unfortunately, but there is a page on the UK Down Syndrome's Association's website where members with DS share their opinions on representation in TV and film. You can read it here. For info on intellectual disability in general the best I can do is link some of my previous posts on it - there's close to nothing that's actually made by us unfortunately, everything that I was able to find is always made by someone who knows a person with ID at best. To be clear, not all of it is bad - I thought this interview (TW for abuse that happens in the movie's plot) about a movie starring actors with DS was pretty good - but it's still a sign that we aren't getting enough #OwnVoices representation. It's slowly changing though.

To learn more about DS I would probably recommend NDSS, it's one of the very few orgs that have people with Down Syndrome as board and team members (should be the bare minimum, but it unfortunately isn't). There's also information on things like preferred language and myths that often show up around Down Syndrome.

I'm not great with history, but in the 1920s she would be a subject to a lot more than just discrimination. Eugenics and institutionalization would definitely be present. Not sure what route you'll take there, but basically all the words around that time that she would be described with are currently considered slurs or pejoratives. The racist term for a person with Down Syndrome was officially used into the 60s, and the ableist one is still used legally in 2024. But if you want to skip past that, I think that's more than fine. You don't always have to aim for 100% historical accuracy, just be aware of the real history.

A detective story sounds very exciting. If you decide to publish it on Tumblr or other online site feel free to send me an ask with a link, I'd love to read it.

Thank you for the ask,

mod Sasza

I’m just popping in as a history fan for a couple bits of history notes — but again, like Sasza said, you don’t have to be 100% historically accurate if you don’t want to and if you don’t feel it’s necessary.

So, especially in the first half of the 1900s, a large part of disabled children, including children with Down Syndrome, were institutionalized very early in their life. Around this time the push that immorality caused disability was strong, and people were often convinced by doctors and professionals that the children’s needs would always be too much for them. Eugenicism was sort of reaching a peak around this time, as well—I would say it was at its most intense in the period of 1900-1940s.

Not all parents institutionalized their children, though. There was pressure to do so, but that doesn’t mean everyone fell victim to it. There wasn’t really any official support for parents who did this, and there weren’t official organizations for Down Syndrome. From my research, the current large DS organizations seem to have popped up in the 60s.

The term ‘Down Syndrome’ wasn’t in popular use until the 70s, and it wasn’t known that it’s caused by an extra chromosome until 1959.

Life expectancy in 1900-1920 for people born with Down Syndrome was 9 years old. Some of this could absolutely have been due to conditions in institutions, but likely even more relevant is that about 50% of people with DS are born with heart defects (also known as congenital heart disease) that can be fatal if not treated with surgery. Heart surgery wasn’t really feasible until the late 30s and early 40s. Another risk factor is a higher risk for infection, which isn’t easy to manage in a world that doesn’t yet have antibiotics.

I actually wanted to find pictures of adults with Down Syndrome pre-1940ish, though, to see real tangible evidence of adults being part of a community. First I found just one picture of a baby in 1925 on this Minnesota government website. But then I found a collection someone made of photos of both children and young adults, but they are not specifically dated. The first baby picture is from the 30s according to the poster!

Judging by the clothes I see people wearing in these photos, photo #4 (man with Down Syndrome in a suit next to a woman) seems to be from the 20s and photo #13 (young woman with Down Syndrome and very long hair) seems to be from about the 1910s. #18 (large family with a lot of sons, including one boy with Down Syndrome) could be from the 30s. Those three are the oldest people with DS in the photos, and they seem like young adults. A lot of these pictures show a community and aren’t just isolated kids, which I find nice.

It’s hard to find specific historical record of people with Down Syndrome from that period of time, but I wanted to show photos of real people in their communities to show, hey look! They were there, too!

Either way, I love detective stories and historical fiction and I’m glad you’re writing a story and that you care about your character’s portrayal but I totally know the feeling of that tricky balance between historical accuracy and modern acknowledgement that we should have been doing better.

— Mod Sparrow

[bluedalahorse]

Complicated queer media feelings beneath the cut…

Is anyone else feeling… I dunno… complicated about the part where we have Heartstopper, Red White and Royal Blue, and likely more YRS3 promo happening all in the same month?

I find a kind of enjoyment in each of these, so on one hand, I’m happy about it! (YR is my dearest fandom love right now about which I have many deep feelings, Heartstopper brings me joy and is what I’d watch with my middle school kids if I had kids, and RWRB is more on the “fun popcorn media” side of things for me but also has a lot of government humor that I laugh at as a person living in DC who gets subjected to motorcades etc.)

And I also think it’s awesome that queer rep has come a long way since when I was in high school, and there was only kinda Will and Grace and Willow on Buffy and you barely heard about some kids watching Queer as Folk if they were lucky enough to have HBO and parents who weren’t weird about it.

And and at the same time I know I’m going to be looking at my dash like, huh, that is a lot of mlm romance kissing between photogenic cis men.

Which. Again. Is progress? But also I’m a not-skinny aroace homosocial queer who is very interested in the stories of women and nonbinary people as well, and stories about friendship as well as relationships that reject traditional definitions. I want sweet romantic moments in my stories and decent makeout scenes but I also want stories about how queerness can challenge capitalism and hegemony and how we can create new families of choice and so on.

And for some of the texts I’m talking about, the canon definitely delivers? Things feel balanced? YR explores the class system with so much skill, and makes me ask powerful questions about justice and identity and such. It also has incredible female characters, including Sara as B Plot Protagonist driving a significant part of the story. (I wish I could find more fanfic from female characters’ POVs. I wish there were just as many “can’t wait until they get their happy endgame” posts about the Sara-Felice friendship as there were about the Wilmon romance, and I adore the Wilmon romance. I just love everything else about the show alongside it, and sometimes I find myself desperately craving discussion about the other aspects of the show while not knowing how to find ways of engaging about it.)

Heartstopper—I love how a multiqueer friends group is so centered in the story. Nick and Charlie are the main characters but Charlie’s friendship with Tao matters as much in the first season as his romance with Nick. I love how the show chose to have Elle carry a significant subplot in season 1 (although they could do better with that) and I am hopeful that we’ll get an ace discovery story for Isaac in season 2 and I’m looking forward to seeing more Imogen and we get a new disabled character and we’ll also get Tara and Darcy being Tara and Darcy! I don’t really follow people for Heartstopper necessarily, because it’s not really something I analyze or write fic for, but, you know, there’s a lot of it that goes around and I have generally positive feelings about it. I’m curious about what parts of the show and what characters people will choose to focus on.

RWRB… well, it’s been a long time since I’ve read the book, but I’m sort of holding off on comments until I see what’s different between the book and the movie.

Long story short I think I’m going to feel great about these various mlm pairings individually, because they’re all distinct personalities with stories and such, but I’m going to be feeling kind of weird and overwhelmed about the attention and gif visibility and squeeing that mlm romances between photogenic cis men get in aggregate.

But also also. Maybe that’s on me for not being into something like Yellowjackets fandom or not spending more time browsing the tag for XO Kitty. So the problem could also be me. I mean who knowsss?????

[thousandyearphantombunker]

What the hell did people want Steven to do? Kill the diamonds? Yeah sure bro that's a great idea hey um what happens after he kills the pseudo religious being of godlike power? The issues on home world are systemic and run deep killing the diamonds would be horrible idea- yes they are dictators but you can't fix the issues fascism causes by just killing the leader and in some cases you make everything worse, i might not buy whites redemption (she went from genuinely terrifying matriarch and cruel to a blushy 'i must atone mess?) but steven was not a selfish idiot who forgives other people's abusers on their behalf, if another war started earth would be screwed, the solution to the problem wasn't as simple as kill the bad guy- to everyone who complains that diamonds will just start killing again- steven is taking active effort to make sure that never happens! I get why people are angry the diamonds get away with abusing pink, being dictators and still have power in home world- it feels like a major injustice but the bigger picture flat out shows that steven isn't being selfish for maintaining his moral purity (and even if he was I would defend him, the same way i do with aang and batman). While I have my complaints about the ending (mainly how white diamond was written) and hate how pink went from morally grey/questionable to evil hate sink, the fact that the secondary crystal gems, and lars and the off colors were basically irrelevant in the finale, but I will fight anyone who says the only way to solve complicated issues in the world is to 'kill the bad guys!' and that when fighting against racism or abusers or fascists etc the only correct way to deal with the problem is kill the people who are racist or abusive or fascist- some of you people are so focused on 'justice' or 'fairness' that you neglect everything's else like if I applied your logic to the real world we could just forget things like protecting basic rights or fixing systemic elements of social injustice etc, I genuinely hate the diamonds (especially white) and the og shows finale as a whole but steven is not an abuse apologist- he's a diplomat who uses violence as a last resort, there is a ton of other issues with su but God can we look at the ending with nuance? It sucked ass with the pacing and the fusion designs were pretty bad but it wasn't endorsing abuse apologism- Steven was focused on the bigger picture while I have my issues with him as a character sometimes I can say he was being noble here and was not a whiny piss baby, pussyfooting around something he 'needed' to do. The show was never about good killing evil and our 'moral duty' to do so, it was a show with anti war messages with a few botched aesops and wonky art, there's actual shit to complain about with steven universe but Everytime I hear all the comments about how toh made up for steven universe's sins or about how batman and aang are selfish etc it drives me insane,like I could point out so many unfortunate implications in su that are actually bad but y'all focus on the least problematic shit in the show and accuse of Rebecca Sugar a bisexual jew married to a black man of being a nazi apologist! You claim toh made up for the sins of Steven universe and laugh at the 'jab' the show made at Steven universe but there's a few things that don't hold up Dana is friends with Sugar (it is definitely not a jab) and the shows while they have similarities should not be compared, they are fundamentally different shows, like the stuff they do have in common (developing several characters that end up having no real effect on the finale or plot, badly written main antagonists etc) still don't justify the comparison yes they are filled to the brim with lgbt characters and are fantasy shows but one is magical girl/boy space opera about self love the other is a dark fantasy comedy that is about inclusion and coping with disabilities/trauma and while they have overlap they are not the same.

[neathyfashioncoalition]

Overview/Potential Questions

What is the goal of this event?

The goal here is to give everyone a reason to draw their Fallen London Characters in fun outfits, and then collect them all together at into a little compilation.

In order to give everyone free reign with how long they wanna work and to work around their own schedules, you can work on and submit a piece anytime!

Who can participate? 

Everyone who wants to should! The only requirement is that you have a character (or multiple) who you want to dress up!

How do I participate?

To submit you can simply post it and tag this blog and I will reblog it here, or otherwise you can use tumblrs submit feature!

The goal is to collect everything together at a certain point, in create our own sort of fashion magazine.

How many times can I submit a piece?

As much as you want! The skies the limit- or well. The roof is. 

What content is accepted?

Not intending to be too picky here! So long as it fits around the theme of Fallen London characters in outfits, it will be accepted.

Whilst the aim here is to fit along the lines of a fashion catalogue or a paper doll format, there’s no pressure to fit any format exactly. This is just for fun!

Do we have to be entirely historically accurate?

There’s no such thing as complete historical accuracy, just taking educated looks back into what the past was most like. 

All that is to say: don’t sweat it. Whilst we do have an overall goal of fitting with the fashion of the time, and being inspired by historical items, I don’t want people worrying over being 100% historically accurate. Treachery of clocks and the devils and all that. Feel free to have fun with it. 

And don’t feel like you have to stick specifically to English fashion either. There are plenty of other fashions of the time period. If you and/or your character have a different background, please feel free to take inspiration for those historical clothes too! People in the neath come from many different backgrounds. 

Do I have to draw an OC (original character)?

Whilst this event is intended to focus on people’s own original fallen london characters, if you truly dont have one you want to dress up, canon npcs are accepted as well! 

Is there any content that is not allowed?

Everything created must be of your own work. Referencing and inspiration is 100% fine as always, but don’t like, upload someone else’s drawings directly. No computer generated/’”a.i” content will be accepted. 

Eyestrain. Please take caution towards anything falling too heavily into the ‘eyestrain’ category. Whilst Victorian fashion was often super brightly coloured and that is accepted, pay mind to avoid anything with psychedelic color pallets, loud patterns, etc. This rule is here to make the event inclusive of those with disabilities triggered by eyestrain content. 

While it likely won't come up often, it would be preferred if gore and body horror were not submitted to the blog 👍

If you’re uncertain if something will be accepted, feel free to just ask! I don’t bite, promise.