#and this show is just reinforcing the ableism

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

it’s funny that i’ve seen people in the fandom be like “kids aren’t dumb, they know how to differentiate fiction from reality” like,, ADULTS are dumb enough to believe the wrong morals sent by this show, what makes you think kids aren’t susceptible to it?

[blindbeta]

I've noticed that you are interested in stories with multiple blind characters and often propose adding more blind characters to a story as a solution. I really struggle with this because it's not as simple as that -- stories don't have infinite narrative space. The idea that every story has a large cast is influenced by the prevalence of long serialized media in fandom: webcomics, TV shows, etc. But many writers (myself included) write a lot of novellas and short stories which often only have a few characters -- maybe even only 1 or 2! Even novels don't usually have huge expansive casts -- maybe 5 main characters with some additional side characters.

Considering this, I don't understand how it's realistic for every story (or even, say, 50% of stories) to have multiple blind characters (without it feeling forced). This is compounded by the fact that most blogs that talk about other forms of representation say the same! So if I write a 2-character short story and the protagonist is a blind Latino man, does the second character also have to be a blind Latino man? It just doesn't make sense! This is just a general problem I've noticed in discussions around representation -- there's an assumption that every cast will have 10+ characters and narrative space to develop those characters, even though that's not realistic for most narrative forms.

Do you have any thoughts on this?

Writing Multiple Blind Characters in Short Stories

Hi Anon! Surprise. I write short stories as well. I have experience with this. I have never felt like my blind characters were forced or unrealistic, even with having several of them in the same story. I’ll try to explain what might help you.

First, the idea that multiple blind characters is forced or unrealistic comes from ableism. Think about why you feel there is a limit on disabled characters. If you can create stories, I would hope you are creative enough to consider the possibility that multiple blind characters could exist in the same place and time. Challenging this barrier opens up more possibilities, allowing you to explore different types of blindness, different reactions to it, different upbringings, and multiple ways of living, adapting, and navigating being blind.

Second, blind characters need access to their own community. This is where they learn how to be blind. This where they get support. This is where they might find understanding and belonging. You can find more information about community here in an excellent reblog. Also, here.

As you mentioned, I often suggest adding more blind characters when writers insist upon using stereotyped portrayals. Having multiple characters with different experiences helps to make your story more realistic and nuanced, contrary to what people might implicitly believe. Having more than one blind character is something I highly recommend because it helps with not having all your representation rest on the shoulders of one character.

For example, if you are worried a main character who has cloudy eyes might reinforce the idea that all blind people have cloudy eyes, having another blind character with a different experience may help. If one of your blind characters is naive and innocent, you might have another blind character who is brash, displays a lack of trust in others, and has a lot of shocking stories. Maybe they’re in a rock band together. They met while playing blind football (aka soccer) on a middle school team. They bonded over their pet cats and sour patch kids.

Or something.

Another important thing to remember when writing is that you have control over the story. Too many writers come to me feeling stuck because they feel they cannot change their story while also wanting to incorporate my suggestions. This makes it challenging to address implicit bias or stereotypes, much less guide writers in going in different directions.

Additionally, I feel uncomfortable with the complaints about other blogs in this ask. I feel like this isn’t really about me, nor is it something I can comment on. I will say that it sounds as if a bunch of blogs dedicated to helping people write marginalized characters are mentioning some of the same things. They are probably doing so for a reason.

However, while it helps, writing multiple blind characters won’t improve every story, which I explained in my review of the book Blind. I was not impressed with this book. I did not feel that the four blind characters were very good, nor did having them help with offsetting the portrayal of blindness as a miserable experience.

Conversely, one of my favorite blind characters is Toph Beifong from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Despite being the only blind character in the show, the writers did a good job with her. Would I have liked her to meet more of her community as she travels with the Gang? Absolutely. Even though I like her, she still never had access to her community after being isolated by her parents for so long.

So, no, you don’t need to have multiple blind characters if the suggestion bothers you this much. I even provided good examples of what to do, what not to do, and times where my typical advice was not as helpful for the resulting story.

However, please consider where these feelings stem from. Consider the origins of the idea that having multiple blind characters is unrealistic. Using the example you provided in your question, I wonder, would you say the same if both your characters were white and abled? Is there any way you can challenge the fear of seeming unrealistic? What about being considered unrealistic bothers you so much?

You don’t necessarily need to have characters in the story for them to exist. Even background characters can help. I will try to give some ideas for this:

Does your blind character have family they can talk about or remember? Are any of their family members blind?

Do they have any friends? Just because the friends aren’t in the story doesn’t mean they don’t exist at all.

Does the blind character have any formative memories or flashbacks?

Does the character who isn’t blind know any blind folks?

Your characters should have lives outside of the story. They should have memories and experiences that made them who they are. This is where you can have other blind characters. Perhaps this is how your blind character can have a community.

However, I would still like to see more blind characters interacting with each other. This is what I want as a blind person. If you don’t want to go that direction, that’s fine.

I hope this helps.

[insteading]

So, I'm newish to fandom, right? Though I'm not new to being obsessed about particular shows, my last rounds of obsession came when the blogosphere was still a thing, and that's where my blathering about it in the tags energy went.

I get that "Positive feedback only on art and fic" is a way of extending support to artists and writers who make things for free! (I also have ascertained that we don't have the same norms for meta / nonfiction, which I find fascinating AF. Is it that meta's commitments are more explicitly intellectual, and that we therefore expect and accept a level of critique we wouldn't where fic and art are concerned?)

The caveat I've been seeing "Except where racism is concerned-- we call out racism ..."

We don't. Not universally, not consistently. And I'm going to bet calling out racism when that calling out actually happens is a comparatively new fandom norm, and there are some people who dismiss it as a form of moralism. My point here is:

Fandom norms aren't eternal, and (this is my blogosphere training talking)

Re: "ship and let ship," you like what you like, but what you like is culturally influenced. Subtracting the wrinkles from someone you're drawing comes from somewhere (and it's not always "I'm drawing an AU in which these guys met in high school"). Drawing someone as skinnier than they are comes from somewhere. (I'm thin. The number of times IRL someone has attempted to force-team me into bonding over snarking on someone for their fatness is substantial and not cute.)

The norm of "If you don't like it, use the back button" means if I nope out of your fic in chapter 7 because I just read a sentence in which Stede's eyes are blue, and that has been a pretty reliable proxy for racism, you will never know why I stopped engaging. You won't know that I stopped reading because your Ed can't read-- a detail that you think is canonical but that has been disproven multiple times in the show. You might think life intervened. No. I have three hours of commuting and a ridiculous amount of reading time. If I didn't finish a fic there is a reason why. Maybe you're happier not knowing it. Meanwhile I'm thinking: if we were actually friends, I would be working up the courage to talk to you about it, because Blogosphere Years Ago I promised that I would not let pointing out racism, fatphobia, ableism be the sole responsibility of POC, fat people, and people with disabilities.

I get that it's stressful to be called out. Hell, it's stressful to say "I have a problem with this" too! But I've also seen people do absolute master classes in responding to a gentle callout without defensiveness, and with changed behavior, and it made me better at in-person conflict to witness. One of my blogosphere lessons is: Preferring harmony over growth isn't neutral. It's culturally white, and it has costs (mostly to the people who don't share the cultural positioning of the majority).

So yeah: part of what makes me sad about the back button norm is that I think it reinforces a producer / consumer relationship between writers and readers. If I can't tell you when I've got a problem with something, and you can't tell me when you've got a problem with something, that's a hard limit on the extent to which we can know each other. (Also: because I write meta rather than fic, it is absolutely within tumblr norms for you to tell me my take is bad, even if it's not within fandom norms for me to say "I love this fic except for X.") And as someone who made enduring IRL friendships from my blogosphere days, I find that a bit saddening.

[queerstudiesnatural]

one thing that i don't think we talk about enough is the connection between fatphobia/skinnyphobia and ableism. like how many times have you heard someone say "i'm just concerned about their health", "they're so skinny they look sickly", "their weight will cause health problems" etc, said in a derogatory tone. and yeah sometimes weight is linked to health problems. that is true. but how is that a bad thing? when people scoff at overweight or underweight people and justify it with "they must be so unhealthy", it not only reinforces beauty standards as they pertain to size, but it also implies that health is morally good, and anyone who "looks unhealthy" (and of course not everyone who is overweight or underweight is unhealthy, that's just a connection people make because beauty standards are so fucked up) is morally reprehensible. i know i'm not the first person to say it, far from it, but i do think health should be discussed more when we're talking about body image and the pressure put on people, and especially women, to look a certain way. it's not just about size, it's about not showing any signs that you may struggle with your health in any way. whether it's hormonal imbalances, mental health, or anything else. the pressure put on people, and again, women especially, to look a certain way, is (and this just an example) one of the reasons why it still takes some people years to get diagnosed with pcos. you get told that if you're gaining weight, then you should go to the gym and diet to lose it. you get asked how many burgers you've had in the past month. because if your weight is "abnormal" then it must be because of something bad you did. if you're unhealthy it must be your fault. god forbid every body be naturally different and react to things differently. so anyway idk how to end this but like, body shaming and health shaming often go hand in hand and, i think, should be treated as a joint issue.

[ingravinoveritas]

(**Warning: Spoilers for the OFMD 2 season finale follow. Read at your own risk.)

I've just watched the finale of season 2 of Our Flag Means Death, and it has stirred a lot of thoughts and feelings in me (as it has many of us, unquestionably). I had initially planned to include some of these thoughts in my review of GO 2 (which I still have not written), but the death of Izzy Hands (Con O'Neill) has brought back some of the feelings I had a few months ago, so I'd like to talk about the theme of ableism in GO 2 and OFMD.

Since the first season, Izzy Hands has seemingly been a polarizing figure, but there has been a clear emotional resonance on the part of fans toward him, and especially now in season 2. To have his arc and "redemption" come in such an ignominious fashion certainly feels like a slap in the face to those fans. I would characterize myself as "Izzy neutral" (that is, I did not hate him, but I didn't necessarily feel a deep connection to him, either), but what troubles me is how Izzy was ultimately treated as a disabled character.

Earlier in episode 8, the Revenge crew is jailed, and Prince Ricky pulls Izzy out of the cell to have a drink, and during this exchange Izzy says this line, which we had previously heard in one of the trailers:

It was Izzy who the writers/creative team specifically chose to have say this line, and because of that, I find it very difficult to swallow the idea that he was the one character who was later killed. That in the end, the character who speaks about belonging is the one who doesn't get to belong. As if he was there to further Ed's storyline, to be an object lesson for him, and was then disposable after that.

Further compounding the issue was the crew using Izzy's prosthetic leg as a grave marker (presumably under the assumption that he no longer needed it). But for many disabled people, prostheses and wheelchairs and other accommodations are what help us thrive in the world and are part of who we are, so to me, taking that away from him inadvertently diminished how complex and multifaceted Izzy had become as a character and seemingly reduced him to little more than a mascot.

As a person on the autism spectrum who works in the field of disability, Izzy's line about belonging resonated with me extremely deeply. For many of us who are neurodivergent or disabled, this is the stuff of our everyday lives--being told through childhood, adolescence, and even adulthood that we are nothing, and that our lives do not have value. I spent so many years searching for that sense of belonging, to know that I had a place in the world, and it was not something anyone could give to me, but something I had to fight for. To make that space, because no one else would.

As I've said before, while I have watched both shows, I am far more into and emotionally connected to GO than OFMD. This leads me to GO season 2, and the parallels to this that I saw there. In GO 2, we have the character of Saraqael (Liz Carr), who is an angel that uses a wheelchair (as does the actor who plays them). It's shown in one of the episodes that Saraqael's power is to miracle wheelchair ramps everywhere they go, and in nearly all of the reviews and articles I've read about the second season, this trait is met with widespread praise.

But to me it mirrored precisely what we see in real life--that is, that the burden of accessibility is often placed on disabled people ourselves. I would have loved to have seen one of the able-bodied angels have not only the power, but the desire to create those ramps. It was disheartening to me to think that even in a seemingly ideal place like Heaven (although we know it certainly isn't), it is the disabled character who has to create a place for themselves.

The character choices around Saraqael and Izzy are something I would describe as benevolent ableism, in that while no harm was likely intended, it still reinforces long-ingrained prejudices and ideas about disability. There is so much intersectionality between queerness and disability as well, and so it is disappointing to see an opportunity to have that idea of "belonging" encompass every character only encompass certain characters instead.

I truly think this will only change if and when we have disabled people behind the camera as well as in front of it. And I hope that day comes sooner rather than later so that all of the fans who see themselves in Izzy or Saraqael are not left feeling the way they do now...

[liskantope]

I of course agree about disliking this thing where people go "X political opponent of mine is weird and awkward, haha", including when it comes from Democrats. In addition to it simply being ableist and hurtful to people who have struggled with social skills - I'm certainly no fan of J. D. Vance, and I imagine you aren't either. But I think there are lots of very intelligent, thoughtful people who would make great policy decisions but aren't especially socially charismatic. (1/2)

(2/2) I really don't think it's a good idea for liberals to reinforce a norm that such people should be disqualified from office.

(This is regarding this post from 10 days ago -- I've been really busy with the new academic semester and so am struggling to find time and the right mindspace to respond to stuff on Tumblr.)

You're right that I'm no fan of Vance: his book that made him famous might have some merits for all I know (I haven't read it), but at least since then he seems to be a completely phony chameleon, and, worst of all, he's chosen to run on a ticket with Trump, which is pretty automatically disqualifying for my respect. That, and all his vitriol towards childless people and cat ladies and so on is much worse than any of the specific examples of ableist undertones I see from the other side.

I'll also say that all the ridicule of Walz's son for standing up and tearfully shouting "That's my dad!" a bit non-neurotypically after Walz's words of love for his children (ugh! God forbid! actual exemplary family values are just dumb and cringey, at least if they come from Democrats!) made me far angrier than any kind of ableism that would come from David Pakman. The only reason I didn't go on a rant about it here is that I already got it out of my system on Facebook. And there's plenty of other garbage coming from the Trump/Vance side about Harris laughing a little strangely (supposedly? her laugh seems pretty normal to me) which makes her intolerable and so forth.

Still, two wrongs don't make a right.

And anyway, I agree that social skills shouldn't be considered such a huge factor in what makes for a qualified politician -- it does need to be somewhat of a factor, but I wish we didn't live in a world where most public support for politicians is based on vibes and most vibes come from superficial mannerisms. It wasn't true 150 years ago and is an unfortunate product of our modern technological world.

Also, if Pakman and his ilk want to point out that Vance was very awkward in the donut shop by typical politician standards and this doesn't bode too well for him because that's how politics works, I wouldn't really have a problem with that. (That's essentially the treatment they gave deSantis.) It's the "ha ha ha, nyah nyah nyah" -flavored mockery, which comes across as being independent of the context of politicians being held to extremely high standards of charisma, that gets to me.

I also might as well mention (though this is less in response to your ask) that this came somewhat in the wake of an earlier Pakman clip that I mentioned in the other post that I was even more annoyed by, didn't bother to post about it at the time, but I just recovered it. Seriously, Pakman, in an uncharacteristically halting way, says the following in anticipation of showing Vance issuing a few kind of evasive and sub-par answers at an event and being a little awkward by politician standards but still less awkward than most ordinary people in their everyday lives:

The only -- uh -- how can I even say this?... The only people I know personally who are this uncharismatic-seeming... Man, it's just so hard to say this without sounding so offensive. There's, like, some explanation, um, that sometimes is... medical in nature... uh, it just sounds so horrible to say... I-I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's... it's a personality that he seems to have that is really an edge case. It's a fringe personality of some way to be this unappealing as a person, some traits of which sometimes connect to medical explanations -- I don't believe they do with JD Vance -- I think he's just really a horrible person, is what I'm trying to say. I hope I'm being kinda like sensitive and not offending anybody.

He can worry as much as he wants about coming across ableist, but, well, what he says is still what he says.

[sokkastyles]

Do you think Toph was jealous (that might be a strong word) of Katara natural femininity And how easy being girly was for katara? It’s just that when they argue they do project some of their own insecurities onto each so it got me wondering. Maybe katara was jealous of toph toughness idk?? Thought?

Oh, absolutely. I don't think that's interpretation so much as textual fact.

I see a lot of discussions of this that take one side or the other, but I think Toph and Katara's relationship is a great portrayal of how gender expectations harm girls in multiple ways, and also can turn them against each other, and people who only take Katara's side or Toph's are missing the point.

Toph is jealous of Katara's natural femininity, and that has to do with why she disdains it, but not because she's a misogynist or she hates girls or whatever, but because those are expectations her parents tried to force on her. A lot of what it is popular on the internet to label as "not like other girls" behavior, in a way that implies that being NLOG is a bad thing, are girls who are rebelling against forced gender expectations. Toph is both an abuse victim and a disabled girl whose disability was used in conjunction both to force her to fit a certain gender standard and keep her dependant on parents who were emotionally abusive, and to reinforce how the nature of her disability meant that she would never fit certain gendered standards. I've written about this before, how Toph can't be totally comfortable with makeup because even when she enjoys getting made up and looking pretty, other people can look at her and know that she didn't do it herself, like the girls in the episode who make fun of her for it. Toph enjoys looking pretty but she also has no control over what she looks like and can't even see it for herself, so that also clashes with her trauma over needing to be independent and distance herself from what her parents wanted her to be, a girl who sits still and looks pretty and is there for other people to look at. Makeup as empowerment is all well and good, but it doesn't work that way for people who have certain disabilities, and there is a lot of ableism in makeup culture. Eyeliner that's perfectly on point isn't always possible for women who have vision problems or neurodivergence, and women who wear makeup are supposed to look perfect but make it look effortless at the same time, and that is naturally going to exclude a lot of people, especially disabled people. The show illustrates that beautifully without condemning one way to be a girl or the other.

At the same time, Katara is jealous of Toph for the way she gets to be "one of the boys," and gets respect from Sokka and Aang in ways that she doesn't. See her anxiety over everyone thinking she is no fun and acts like a mom. Katara is a nurturing person and that's one of her stengths, but she also is a kid who wants to have fun, too. And just because being the "mom friend" is natural for her doesn't mean it isn't hard on her. Just because Katara seems to fit gender expectations a little easier than Toph doesn't mean she doesn't feel the weight of those expectations, and even women who fit gender expectations also get derided for them, because patriarchy both tells women they need to be a certain way and then hates them for it. See Sokka making fun of Katara for sewing but absolutely expecting her to mend his pants. I think Katara also thinks that Toph should be on her side, as a fellow girl. Katara is so starved for female companionship and resents it when it appears that Toph is siding against her, because she's feeling the weight of those expectations. And Toph doesn't always understand that, and thinks Katara's attempts to bond with her are trying to force gender expectations on her in the way her parents did.

[convenient-plot-device]

An essay I wrote for school on Strange New Worlds' problems with ableism, complete with bibliography:

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has numerous problems, from its retooling of the Gorn into knockoff xenomorphs to its erasure of Spock’s Jewish roots to its overreliance on nostalgia, but its most glaring flaw is its painful undercurrent of ableism. The conflation of disability with death, the ignorance and tacit pardoning of eugenics, and the disposal of multiple disabled characters come together to weave a harmful and ignorant pattern in the show’s writing.

Christopher Pike’s character in Strange New Worlds is defined by disability. The dilemma he wrestles with in almost every episode is the looming specter of his future disability, which was revealed to him via time crystal in season two of Star Trek: Discovery. In the twelfth episode of season two, “Through The Valley of Shadows”, Pike must harvest a time crystal in order to send the life’s story of a dead alien to the future to protect it from an evil artificial intelligence intent on destroying all life in the galaxy. When Pike touches the crystal, he sees visions of his future, in which he is caught in a deadly radioactive explosion and left with severe burns and full body paralysis, able to move and communicate only through a specialized wheelchair. “The sequence ends with a final linked pair of nightmarish shots, a centred close-up of the older Pike’s face beginning to melt as he screams matched with the younger Pike’s own horrified scream as he falls backward into the present moment,” (Muredda, Angelo). As Muredda says later in the same article, this portrayal imagines disability as “a terminal point, something to scream about in terror, and the embodied sign of no liveable future at all.” The depiction of disability as a horrifying fate, and of the disabled body as an object of disgust and/or fear has a long history in the genres of horror and science fiction; previous and current Star Trek series are not immune to this. The Borg Queen, who appeared most recently in Picard, is missing most of her lower body and uses a robotic replacement to walk— her prosthetic spine is used as an object of horror and disgust when she first appears in First Contact (1996).

While Strange New Worlds had the opportunity to break this pattern and defy ableist stereotypes with Pike, they chose instead to follow the path Discovery had laid for them. Despite the fact that it is made very clear that Pike will be disabled, not killed, by the explosion he will be caught in in the future, every character within the narrative speaks of Pike’s fate as if he is going to die. Pike says, less than twenty minutes into the pilot: “I know how and when my life will end.” This writing decision mirrors the real-life belief that disabled peoples’ lives are akin to “a fate worse than death” or “not worth living,” a sentiment which has led to real deaths: “. . . [early in the pandemic] this belief — that we’re just surviving, not living, and thus have limited quality of life — lead to forced DNRs being put in the files of disabled people in the UK and lead directly to the death of a disabled man, Michael Hickson,” (Lloyd, Kelas). Hickson was denied treatment for pneumonia in Austin, Texas due to his doctor’s perception that he “didn’t have much of a quality of life.” He was put in hospice against his family’s wishes and died at the age of 46. (Shapiro, Joseph). For Strange New Worlds to equate Pike’s disability to the end of his life is irresponsible and reinforces the cultural biases that led to the death of Hickson and continue to impact the quality of treatment disabled people receive the world over.

Christopher Pike’s initial appearance in the original series episode “The Menagerie” was actually very progressive for the time; despite the limited communication of the blinking-light system in his wheelchair and his ending being living out the last of his life in a virtual reality where he could walk again, he was still a disabled person on television in a position of power.

When Pike first appeared, the Ugly Laws were still in place in much of the United States. Someone visibly disfigured/disabled was not to be seen in public spaces, at the risk of fines or jail . . . Captain Pike’s appearance in The Original Series was revolutionary. Here was not just a visibly disabled person, but they were someone Spock respected and cared about enough to risk his career for. [Disabled people] didn’t have a great existence, but they had one, and Pike was still valued as a person. (Lloyd, Kelas).

It would have been quite easy for the writers to modernize Pike’s portrayal to further disability representation in the way Pike first did: @hard-times-paramore has written an alternate ending (a mixed media series titled “The Captain’s Chair”) for Strange New Worlds in which Pike goes on to captain a new starship after becoming disabled, assisted by an interpreter, a caretaker, and futuristic medical technology. This alternate ending carries the message that disabled people are still people, who can and should be allowed a place in science fiction, as opposed to the current message sent by SNW, which is that significant disability is akin to a death sentence, even in a fantastical future.

However, there is more to Strange New Worlds’ portrayal of disability than just Captain Pike. The show is also very preoccupied with genetic augmentation and the Federation’s attitude toward it. While this is far from unique among Star Trek media, unlike other Trek properties which have covered this topic (Doctor Bashir, I Presume?, Chrysalis, Space Seed, Affliction/Divergence, etc) Strange New Worlds does not acknowledge the real-life equivalent to science fiction genetic augmentation: eugenics. SNW portrays genetic augmentation as a neutral practice targeted unjustly by the Federation because of outdated prejudices, with no examination of what genetic augmentation is a stand-in for. While the original series (in “Space Seed”) first introduced the Federation’s ban on genetic augmentation as a justified protective measure against the breeding of warlike “superior ambition” among men of “superior ability,” Strange New Worlds portrays genetic augmentation as an unjustly discriminated-against trait whose origin and consequences mean little to nothing.

Strange New Worlds’ main conduit for their genetic augmentation plotlines is Una Chin-Riley, the first officer of the Enterprise. She is a member of an alien species called Illyrians, who genetically modify themselves to suit the environments of planets they colonize. She herself was genetically modified as a baby, and is thus legally barred from joining Starfleet— however, she lied on her application to Starfleet Academy to get in. The plots revolving around her concern her arrest for violating Federation law and the subsequent trial, which is used as an extended metaphor for discrimination against, and the fight for civil rights for, marginalized groups. “Ad Astra Per Aspera,” the episode covering Una’s trial, is intentionally vague with its metaphor, to the point that just about any marginalized group could be represented by it. This episode is, on its face, fine. It argues against discrimination through allegory quite adeptly, discussing the concept of “passing” as part of a non-oppressed group and broaching the topic of systemic oppression. However, it has one glaring flaw in its base: the stand-in it chose for real-life oppression. Genetic modification, unlike other fantastical attributes that can be used to metaphorize oppression, has a bloody real-life history involving the deaths and sterilizations of millions of people. Strange New Worlds, however, appears ignorant of this fact: not once does the topic of eugenics come up in any of their episodes about genetic augmentation. Not once does the topic of disability come up, either. This is either an unwillingness to engage with the realities of what those who seek to change humanity’s genes have done and continue to do, a grave oversight, or mere ignorance. Whichever one it is, this omission of eugenics from the narrative of genetic augmentation is one that cannot be ignored. Its omission reads as a tacit endorsement of genetic augmentation at times, such as when Una and La’An say, in “Ghosts of Illyria”:

LA’AN: All my life I've hated augments. Hated what people thought of me because I was related to them. Understanding why they were outlawed in the Federation. The damage they did. They almost destroyed Earth.

UNA: [. . .] My people were never motivated by domination. Illyrians seek collaboration with nature. By bioengineering our bodies, we adapt to naturally-existing habitats. Instead of terraforming planets, we modify ourselves. And there's nothing wrong with that.

By ignoring the part eugenics plays in Star Trek’s portrayal of augmentation, and instead portraying the issue as a matter of prejudice based off of the fictional event of the Eugenics Wars— when augmented “supermen” became dictators and killed millions in conquest and war— Strange New Worlds completely fails to examine the real-life implications of their metaphor.

What makes this episode’s flaws worse is that another Star Trek series already portrayed the potential expulsion of a genetically augmented person from Starfleet, handling it with better understanding of the eugenic undertones of genetic augmentation, and it did so in 1997. In the season five episode of Deep Space Nine, “Doctor Bashir, I Presume?”, it is revealed that Julian Bashir, chief medical officer of Deep Space Nine, was illegally genetically modified by his parents as a small child and is in danger of being thrown out of Starfleet because of this revelation. Throughout the course of the episode, the audience learns that Bashir’s parents chose to modify him because he was intellectually disabled as a child. His mother believed that his life would be better if he were “normal,” while his father wanted a successful son and believed that intellectual disability was inimical to that end. The episode expresses, through Julian’s anger at his parents, that modifying a person to rid them of perceived “undesirable traits” is wrong, but that it is also wrong to unilaterally bar people from Starfleet based on a decision that was made for them by eugenicist parents. This message is far more clear than “Ad Astra Per Aspera”’s, especially on the subject of disability and eugenics. Strange New Worlds’ complete neutrality on and/or tacit approval of genetic augmentation/eugenics, in contrast to Deep Space Nine’s nuanced examination of the topic, is glaring.

The specific problem with Strange New Worlds’ neutrality on genetic modification is that for a species to be changed on a genetic level for any reason, traits must be eliminated. In a science fiction setting, this can be accomplished by simply changing the genetic structure of a consenting adult with a futuristic medical tool, rather than through violence as in our reality, but this, too, presents ethical problems. What is considered a problem to be cured? Who makes that decision? What happens to those who don’t want something modified out of them? What happens to any children they may have? Who gets to have control over technology with the power to eliminate or introduce genetic traits at will? What place do disabled people have in a society built off of achieving peak physical performance in a given environment? Strange New Worlds attempts to answer none of these questions. It acknowledges none of them. And this silence leaves disabled people out of the conversation completely by not even considering them. Today, in Denmark and Iceland, almost 100% of fetuses with Down Syndrome are aborted; the law in Iceland even specifically states that abortion is permitted after 16 weeks only if the fetus has a “deformity,” which Down Syndrome is specified to count as. (Quinones, Julian; Lajka, Arijeta). An entire anti-vaccine movement was begun in Britain because parents were so afraid of having a child with autism and chronic digestive disease, a child like me, that they risked their children dying of measles. This is what real-life genetic engineering looks like, and Strange New Worlds has failed to acknowledge that. I, at least, consider that a failure of writing, empathy, and allyship.

Strange New Worlds’ portrayal of disability is not relegated to Pike’s fate and Una’s augmentation, however. The show has several other characters who either are disabled or become disabled at one point. Rukiya, Dr. M’Benga’s daughter, is treated less as a character and more as an object for the emotional development of her father, a position many young disabled girls occupy in fiction. “[This story] centers Dr. M’Benga, and his pain, and his struggle, and doesn’t grapple with what Rukiya’s going through.” (Lloyd, Kelas). Rukiya has an untreatable terminal cancer, and is kept in a state of suspension in the transporter buffer by her father while he searches for a cure. Her story ends when the Enterprise enters a sentient telepathic nebula with the power to warp reality, and it offers to keep Rukiya within itself so that her disease will not progress and she will be able to grow up. M’Benga decides that this is the best option, and so relinquishes Rukiya to the nebula. She is never seen again. “She is disabled, and then she’s removed . . . The disabled person was put into [a] box and left behind, like so many disabled people have been put away in care homes and institutions and left behind.” (Lloyd, Kelas). Jax agreed, saying: “It just felt like she was poofed away for convenience. Like, ‘There! The problem is gone! The terminal illness or the girl? Both! Don’t worry about it!’”

The only other disabled main character on SNW is Hemmer, who is a member of a blind species called the Aenar. “While the Aenar cannot see, they believe that their telepathy gives them a ‘superior’ awareness of their surroundings compared to sighted people (Vrvilo, 2022). Because of this, the Aenar are highly criticized by the disability community as falling into the ‘magically disabled’ trope.” (Harris, Heather Rose). Bruce Horak, the actor who plays Hemmer, is blind himself, which is a genuinely good decision in terms of representation and support for the disabled community. However, Hemmer dies in the penultimate episode of season one. This decision was not received well by disabled fans: “It just kind of felt like a kick in the teeth. I finally found some good disability representation played by a disabled actor [who] isn’t a one off character, and they die in the first season.” (Jax). Both Hemmer and Rukiya are left behind by the narrative of Strange New Worlds, and with them, so too are disabled perspectives. The crew of the Enterprise is now entirely able-bodied, and the only remaining character whose story directly concerns disability is Pike, who repeatedly asserts that his life will end once he becomes disabled. This state of affairs is the embodiment of being spoken for, and being spoken over.

There is a saying in the disabled community: “Nothing about us without us.” This saying means that abled people should not attempt to help, treat, or speak about disabled people without involving disabled people in their efforts. Disabled people are often denied autonomy over their bodies, medical care, relationships, and lives; to deny them a part in operations meant to help them is to further deny them dignity and respect. This is what Strange New Worlds is doing by writing disabled stories with no disabled writers in the room— while they did well by casting Bruce Horak to play Hemmer, it is not enough to have disabled people in front of the camera. They must also play a part in writing, directing, planning, and all other work behind the scenes if Strange New Worlds wishes to tell their stories. In order for Strange New Worlds to rectify their pattern of ableism, they must listen to disabled voices.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

[tomahawthorne]

Gotta love the energy around rw//by fans. "What do you mean?! Valid criticism is totally allowed!" and then another comes and drops ad hominems like fucking atom bombs at the most mild fucking opinions. The irony of seeing a username and IMMEDIATELY jumping to conclusions about that person's opinions and calling them media illiterate... that's the cherry on top. Actually, scratch that. The real irony is going "Ironwood's arc was one of the best in the series!" as if that contradicts the ableism, and then talking about media literacy. Ignoring the fact that the quality of his arc is subjective (I liked most of it and still think they absolutely fumbled several parts, and I'm talking before he went all Saturday morning cartoon villain), in-universe reasoning or internal consistency doesn't automatically make something not fucking bigoted. Half the time I don't think the writers even think through the implications of their work—I doubt they intended to make Qrow sound ableist for calling him the Tin Man as an insult—but unintentional bigotry is still fucking bigotry and it doesn't matter that it's playing into the lore or allusions or whatever. (As an aside, maybe it's a hot take that I find the use of Tin Man as an insult at least a little ableist, but I feel justified in that belief considering the rest of the show's awfulness about disability.)

The whipped cream under the cherry is ignoring all the black voices that spoke about the Faunus/Adam's arc to make the most obtuse reading of both, and as a black man who's gotten shouted down whenever I bring up the many ways the writers and their biases ruined it, I'm fucking tired. Because too many of these piss-poor attempts at """"exploring"""" the "harm racist attitudes do" boil down to surface level white comfort bullshit, and rw//by is a prime example. The heroes are more preoccupied fighting the villainized minorities struggling for their rights than they are with the actual structure of racism. The so-called cautionary tale of "don't be racist or terrorism will happen!" is fucking insidious because 1) it implies that you should only care about racism when it could bite you in the ass personally, 2) the primary focus of the arc is almost always the terrorism and not the structure of racism that fucking drove them to it, and 3), my biggest issue, it pushes the blame onto the minority, for having the audacity to protest too loudly, for being hurt and reflecting the fact that you were hurt.

The harm of the so-called cautionary tale is two-fold, because while it's telling majority viewers the oh-so thought-provoking message of "don't do a racism," it's quietly reinforcing to its minority viewers that the only "good" way to protest for your rights is by playing nice, not threatening the structure, carrying yourself like a damn saint just so your abuser might treat you with a shred of humanity. I could write a damn essay on this, and how much this show and its fandom plays into white fragility, but that would require going back and rewatching for research and this show as it is doesn't deserve that level of effort. To put it simply, the Faunus arc (and yes, its handling of Adam) are both pretty damn racist because in its middle school furry fanfic-tier retelling of the Civil Rights movement, it perpetuates ideas that harm real fucking people (friendly reminder many of the sentiments the fndm shares about the White Fang "taking it too far" parrot white moderate/outright racist opinions about BLM and the Civil Rights movement :D) while convincing its viewers that "no, you totally don't need to examine racism as an institution and the ways you contribute to it. Look! Ex-heiress and totally-reformed racist Weiss threw a guy in the dumpster because the actual civil rights activist was suddenly incapable of defending herself".

This shit isn't a uniquely rw//by problem, but the difference is that I don't get 16-year-olds calling me some kind of slur or -phobe when I criticize the writing/fan opinions of the Flag Smashers or Killmonger. Imagine having a more insufferable fandom than the MCU.

[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.

[thechaoticrow]

reminders for the grishaverse fandom in general (minor TW for brief SA mentions)

- kaz brekker is disabled, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to call him a cr*pple [i]. don’t use slurs you can’t reclaim

- wylan is canonically dyslexic. “wylan can’t read” jokes aren’t funny

- leading on from this, “jordie floaty” jokes also aren’t funny. that’s just joking about trauma

- alina was a child, the darkling is an old, old man. he did not truly ‘love’ her, he groomed her

- nina does have a personality outside of being plus-size. she isn’t just the waffles girl, and the show constantly making her the only one to be strongly associated with food and food jokes is kinda fatphobic tbh

- if you’re cis and only headcanon wylan as transmasc bc you think he’s an ‘uwu van sunshine baby’, you’re probs just transphobic

- calling inej an ‘investment’ over and over again and reinforcing that joke is just a bit of a slap in the face to trafficking survivors

- people can enjoy the books and the show as separate things, but people are also allowed to be dissatisfied with one or the other and consume media critically. in terms of inclusivity and intersectionality, critical consumption is actively encouraged

- if you’re unhappy with casting then hate the casting directors and producers, not the cast themselves

- the media itself may be fictional, but there are real-life issues at play. ableism, representation of plus-size bodies, SA, etc. fiction does affect reality as it is often the lens through which we view and engage with certain types of oppression

[narcissisticpdcultureis]

general ask, not an npd culture is...

how do you feel about when the word 'narcissist' is thrown around as an insult (much in the way psychopath or sociopath are) in songs ('youre just a narcissist who's totally fake' - checkmate by conan gray for example). obviously it's bad but do you think it spreads that kind of negative viewpoint when it's just a throwaway or is it more of a symptom that shows the way people view people with npd?

sorry this ask is so long!

heyo! i don't like when narcissist is used as an insult in general to be honest, even as a throwaway. it's a very casual form of ableism, not only does it reinforce the idea that being a narcissist is something inherently bad (which it's not because there is no moral weight to simply Having A Mental Disorder), but it's also just a misuse of the term itself.

[i-am-autistic]

I feel like I kinda hate how some people respond to you pointing out Jonathan's neglect from Joyce as sexism/ableism/classism. Like....it does nothing for those topics either. I grew up with a mentally ill poor single mother and it fucked me up. Is everything in the show Joyce's fault wrt Jonathan??? Probably not! but he's still fucked up and she's still a part of that. I seen people say stupid shit like "Oh he's just poor and has to deal with it" and it's like yeah that's fucked up.....sometimes being poor makes you have fucked up experiences....it's not classist to point out hey there is something wrong here.

It's also not sexist to point out Joyce neglected Jonathan or ableist to point to the "shutting down" scene as a point. Like yes......if you neglect your child that's awful regardless.

I feel like all these points are just used as gatchas and actually reinforce sexism,ableism and classism. Sorry this is a rant about one specific thing I keep see pop up.

[psychoticallytrans]

Your argument that TERFs see men as all bad therefore it's a bad ideology doesn't make sense. You could apply this to any oppressor dynamic to say talking about oppression is therefore bad because it marks one group as doing harm.

There's a difference between "This group as a whole is doing harm to another group." and "Everyone in this group is irreparably evil due to their nature." Radical feminism very frequently lands on the latter side. That's a problem.

An example from another perspective. As a disabled person, I don't think abled people are inherently unable to make accommodations for and believe disabled people when they speak up. This means that it's reasonable to hold them accountable when they do not do so. I also don't think that every individual abled person is responsible for all the ableist crap a lot of them spew, or for structural ableism. I recognize that abled people are capable of not being ableist and that they are only responsible for their own behavior. I hold the abled people I care for to a high standard of treating me and my disabled loved ones with respect, and encourage them to advocate for our rights with what influence they have.

Taking the radical feminist attitude towards men and applying it to abled people would leave me with something like this: "Abled people are inherently unable to understand the disabled experience, and are inherently tainted by the hatred of disabled people. They will never be able to remove enough ableism from themselves to interact safely, let alone productively, with disabled people. Disabled people should never form close relationships with abled people, because they will inevitably hurt the disabled people around them. There is no such thing as an abled person honestly working for disability justice. All that say they are are just there to prey on naive disabled people."

That's an incredibly tempting perspective for someone who has been traumatized by ableism. Abled people are ableist, and the ones that are less ableist will almost always be the same ones that respect it if a disabled person tells them to fuck off. So a disabled person who cuts themselves off from as many abled people as they can would be more likely to interact more heavily with particularly ableist abled people, reinforcing the ideas that led them to cut off abled people in general.

Being a tempting reaction to bigotry, however, does not make it right, or fair, or reasonable. It's not fair or reasonable to judge all abled people by their worst actors, and it's not helpful for disability justice. Abled people have always been a part of disability justice, just as much as they have always been a part of structural ableism. Treating the former and the latter the same is unhelpful nonsense. Disabled people have always contributed to structural ableism, often by stepping on other disabled people to get ahead and show that they are different. Disabled people have also always fought for our own rights and dignity. Treating the former and the latter the same is unhelpful nonsense.

Replace all the instances of "abled people" with "men" and "disabled people" with women, and switch other words to fit the new subject as needed. None of the above becomes less true. The fourth paragraph remains just as untrue as it is now.

Radical feminism is an ideology of fear and isolationism. It lashes out at perceived threats while being unable to undermine the structures of power and influence that keep hurting women. It is so, so tempting to traumatized girls and women because it tells those girls and women that all of their fears are true about every single man, and all they have to do to stay safe is stick with other women. It's a terrible way to live. It inclines radical feminists to attack attempts to argue that men and women aren't so different, that people can "cross" from one to the other and that men and women can genuinely understand and love each other. Because if men are not so different than women, if women can be men and men can be women, if it is still true that men are the danger- then women can be dangerous too, and, suddenly, nowhere is safe.

[aureliacetinn]

gerodi la forge differently designed

(image desiption

Gerodi la forge without vizor eyes unfocused going in slightly different direction, wearing his yellow uniform standing stoic but proud, the spectrum the vizor lets him see from (or should only read thread as to why I think that) it refracting of his face as the effects  surrounded him a lil like he being beamed up to a ship.)

Embrace the spectrum of blind/V.I eyes artists!, embrace the nuance of disabilities people!

Gerodi la forge is a complicated representation for the blind/chronic pain  community though probably more positive than most but still falling under the technology ruining the nuance of disability.

So I wanted to draw him and show a more accurate(imo) portrayal of his eyes without the visor to 1 cuz white clear eyes trope annoys me

2 to not want to hide blind person eyes as media often tends to do (minus sunglasses needed for blind actor due to sensitivities)

3 cuz they cause pain and so he should have them off more often.

to note a lot of what im going to say is written way better an documented better by janet jay a lot of my sources are from here amazing piece on gerodi you should read: https://www.janetjay.com/what-star-trek-got-wrong-about-geordis-disabilities/ also if you in blind community are fine with his eyes portrayed as more cataract, that’s valid too.

So gerodi la forge for me as a avid star trek fan was important, hey I can exist if he can he not been erased!  Buuuuuuuut,

 it did urk me that 1 he was kinda a lil nerdy creep trope that never got a gf which levar burton himself has called out as racism from the shows writers (sources at bottom of thread) id also argue ableism also and many able bodied people treat disabled people as sexless.

 but also that he never got to be disabled really, he suffered from chronic pain form the vizor but kept choosing to not take pain pills or treatment, which you know that’s some inner ableism right there I did to myself as a teen, and I kinda think gerodi reinforced it a lil in me,

“look where he is, he deals with the pain he never shows it”

Not a great message really, gerodi never is allowed to show the struggle they choose that the vizor existing was enough, and yes we got that amasing ep where he didn’t want to be fixed, but that would then be countered by never showing the struggle. Women at warp did a great ep where on disability karrisa mehr calling gerodi a disabled version of a “manic pixie dream girl” feels very apt.

Never allowed to complain just be quirky gerodi.

And on to the vizor

The vizor is complicated , it apparently let him  see much of the EM spectrum", ranging from simple heat and infrared through radio waves” now I personally am all for mobility aids that have cool attachments but it’s a delicate balance of unique features and fixing and or making them more powerful than able bodied colleague-cuz thats fixing, and I feel gerodi with how show wrote it and portrayed him it was a magic fix more than an aid, why I chose to only show the thermal spectrum in image, instead of how it apparently can see everything more than human eyes can anyway which yeh defeat aid purpose.

image of vizor silver sem ring over eye with gold lines across not fullyblcokign vision 0

and it gave him chronic pain, they choose this as a balancer, okay…but then never portrayed it just did to show how gerodi overcame his disabilities and gets on with it like a good soldier. So yeh im mixed on it. They made great use in ep when it was hacked by cardassians this is the cool thing you can do with mobility aids (unless you just destroy them, fuck you then) and that was interesting for the time, but um then in he insolence of office the ebook gerodi forced to have his vizor REMOVED so he can stay in star fleet as its now a security risk- NOT OKAy you could have just had a redesign or a arc of gerodi having to fight for it if you must but no , brain surgery remove this part of you!!

(gif desicription men seeing tea they drink is funky to show how gross what they did to gerodi waas)

so yeh my ending take is gerodi is complicated overall that’s still a positive over most disabled rep in sci-fi but many mistakes were made and some part of gerodi was harmful and picard sure as hell didn’t address that. They show his eyes now but its still the white cloudy trope and knowing its for awful reasons kidna ruins that. So I hope my art here just shows his potential and blind eyes diversity, but opens up discussions in not fixing and overcoming can be toxic and that

pain is part of a disability its part of the rep and it sucks

this is very important to remember when depicting disability that there’s nuance guys.

Thank you

Levar burton on gerodi: https://boundingintocomics.com/2021/12/15/star-trek-the-next-generation-star-levar-burton-says-geordi-laforge-never-finding-love-was-racist-those-white-men-who-wrote-the-show-had-an-unconscious-bias-that-was-on-display-to-me-and-to/

[oathofkaslana]

I saww someone ranting about it earlier today; and since you’re the #1 collie fan I know, how do you feel about her treatment from the comics to her appearances in game??💜

GOD. DEAR GOD. ok this will take a moment. be patient w me

short answer: 2 me. in game collei is a poorly done adaptation of webtoon collei (which. i feel the need to note. was not perfect at all i just think her story was done better there). in game collei is wasted potential and mischaracterizes her for the sake of profit over artistic direction which honestly. leads to a bit of ableism and misogyny.

long answer: DEAR GOD. COLLEI. ok. the comics are in no way perfect. they're incredibly racist (particularly with barnabas's design), and they're not at all the perfect portrayal ever of a kid with cptsd. but with webtoon collei we got this story of a little kid who was so angry at everyone because she'd been hurt time and time again to the point where she genuinely believed that other people would always hurt her and she was just inherently a bad person. she believed her chronic illness was a sign of the archons hating her. she believed that the archons didn't care about her. she believed that she was inherently worth less than other people, ESPECIALLY those with visions. so we start off w that lil kid who's so rightfully angry and had to fend for herself using powers she was forced to have (the archon residue that actively feeds and stokes her negativity)! she literally kills people without remorse the first three pages we see her!!!!!! and it only turns around when amber (a vision user!!) is unrelentingly kind to her and keeps reinforcing this idea that collei is a human that is deserving of good and is capable of good. amber makes collei believe that she isn't doomed for some awful destructive fate. amber is the first person that shows collei that she believes her life matters. amber is the first person collei has met that unrelentingly believes in her humanity and goodness and makes an active effort to reinforce it. that kindness! and the want to believe she can do that! (the want to believe in amber) is ultimately the thing that spurs collei to action!!!!! her arc os essentially about kindness, finding humanity in yourself, and finding and believing in agency for yourself. and obv cyno plays a big part here and its the start of her rebirth symbolism ofc. etc etc etc.

then the game. i do think the game got some things correct! like i do generally like the change in character and i think that's expected for someone like collei who idolizes amber so much to the point of wanting to be her. i also really enjoy her character stories and a lot fo ehr voice lines. and i really really like how she's still obviously dealing with her cptsd. i like that it didn't go away! she still has triggers! she mentions anxiety! our first introduction to her was her having a nightmare!!

lsBUT the game also does a lot wrong imo. i think the game has a tendency to reduce collei a lot. while i do think the initial direction w her sweet nice girl facade was intended to show her admiration towards amber and lack of real identity/faith in identity for herself, i think it's been too. vague. and led to this becoming her Actual personality instead of a facade she's attempting to become. like while i don't think its inherently insidious i do think it's kinda suspect that they allow characters like scara (who's very similar to collei) to keep the asshole parts of their identity with their healing arcs but never let collei express that part of herself when it was such a huge part of her original character. (her cynicism being fostered by her environment and a protective thing for her and made her a nice character foil to amber). also the magicuring. i fucking hate how they handled eleazar in the game. like even if it weren't incredibly ableist for them to be treat chronic illness as a narrative device that's always meant to be cured, it was actively corrosive to collei's character bc so much of her arc is realizing her own worth and healing mentally even while her eleazar was getting worse. it means so so much for collei to be at a better state and actually have some sense of compassion for herself when she's experiencing flare ups from her chronic illness that everyone told her was the reason why she was worthless in the first place! and taking that away from her! taking that away from disabled players in general! sucked a lot!!!! i also think the game just does not want to acknowledge what collei's arc actually was and how much anger and exploitation it involved. especially in the 3.5(?) windblume event where she was compared to sucrose because of anxiety when their anxieties are so different (both being incredibly valid ofc but sucrose's social anxiety and fear of abandonment can not aptly be compared to collei's anxiety thats a byproduct of her cptsd from yk. experiencing discrimination and almost dying multiple times and human experimentation etc etc..) it often feels like they're rebranding her entire character to be more focused on this particular anxious nice girl image for the sake of consumerability (its how the fandom sees her and its easy for her to fit into tropes like that), this easy to sell found family w her tighnari and cyno (like i love their unit but dear god. i hate the way they've been written sometimes bc it feels like she's an accessory to those two who are also being flanderized), misogyny (again. collei is so much more similar to scara than she is sucrose and the difference between how they’re treated makes me so sad). AND because she's a four star she's so often side-lined! it's really disappointing to see how little of a role she played in sumeru when. honestly i think adding her to a larger part of sumeru could've benefited the story esp bc she's literally the first sumeru character we've seen and has been teased in the game since 1.0.

basically. collei is colleinations collective oc now :3