#anonymous Sloth

[cripplecharacters]

Sorry to bother you,

Your blog is wonderful! Since it's one of the most dialogue/explanation oriented, i wondered if i may please come to you with a more general doubt. i'm sincerely confused... Why is "curing" disability bad per se?

So far, the arguments (on Tumblr) seem to be,

i. Consent.

ii. Generalisation. ("Everyone will want this same thing".)

iii. The undercurrent ideology holding disability as a flaw to be "cured" (including the use of the term "cure").

On which we all agree, they're implicitly bad no matter if it's disability or a haircut. Very well.

But.

What of magical healing per se is inherently bad? Because being given a choice implies that for every given person agreeing, there are going to be others who won't. So we should still write our fantastical society around them, that's not in any way in question.

But these, the possibility of magical treatment and the non-necessity of the same, are not mutually exclusive. You don't have to "take one before the other", they can very well coexist.

Last question (i promise), is seeking treatment for oneself bad?

Like, if there came up a quest to get the glittering flower blooming once a millennia guarded by the Evil Dragon of Evil and capable of magically taking away OCD and PTSD, sign me up! Or if there's a spell to resuscitate my thyroid or an alchemical pill that solves ADHD's executive dysfunction. i mean, that's kind of what my medications should do if they weren't so costly and inaccessible, and that would be a one-time thing too.

Autism's doing alright, i'd keep everything, thanks.

Disclaimer, i'm obviously not advocating for eugenetics (as this term has been often used and misused in these discussions, better to precise).

All these conditions in one way or another define me and effect my life in a pervasive, quotidian way, or/and on a more existential scale. Not always in bad ways -my life is not a tragedy, and this i wish to make clear. i'm not saying that a "magic cure" should come before a change in society to accommodate disability. What i'm advocating for is their coexistence, as a choice -not evil per se, but nocive if inserted in a context of ableism, negation of individual consent, and, indeed, choice.

Or at least that was what i was arguing for until a few months ago. Now however, seeing as the collective opinion is one of strong rejection for these ideas, i believe there must be some important fallacies in my reasoning, and i wish, before everything else, to correct them. To understand.

Sorry for the monologue, but, may you help me?

Thank you for your time and for your kindness,

Anonymous Sloth.

Thank you for your ask! The reason curing disability is bad in media is because the disabilities cured often cannot be cured in real life. People with incurable disabilities already have so little representation, taking away the characters they see themselves in with an impossible cure is incredibly disheartening. I live with multiple incurable physical conditions, and I’ve accepted that I’ll live with them for the rest of my life. Day to day I already deal with people saying how much better my life would be if I didn’t have these conditions I had no choice in getting, I don’t want to see that in my stories! If someone has my conditions I don’t want the author to get rid of them with magic, I want to see that character going on cool adventures and being badass! Sure a magical cure might be nice, but that’s never going to happen. I’m going to be living in this body for the rest of my life, and I want to see stories where people like me get to live their lives with their conditions!

Disabled people should be allowed to see themselves in sci-fi and fantasy stories! People who can’t be cured, who can only have their symptoms managed, who have to be on medication/assistive devices the rest of their lives and who don’t want to be cured should be allowed to see themselves in media without the constant reminder that most able bodied people think their lives would be so much better is they would simply stop being disabled.

Additionally, even conditions that do have cures or ways to manage them aren’t realistically portrayed. There are never any symptoms, side effects or rehabilitation, it’s always portrayed as a magical cure that completely gets rid of the disability. This rarely happens in real life, and I don’t think it’s wrong for someone who shares a condition with a character to want to see that condition accurately portrayed.

It’s perfectly fine for a disabled person in media to want to seek treatment, plenty of disabled people in the real world also have to fight to get treatment (though the fighting is usually against insurance and doctors, not dragons and wizards). But like I said above, it should be at least somewhat realistic. The world is already over saturated with stories of people getting magical cures that make everything better forever, but what about cures with long lasting or permanent side effect? What about healing that requires extensive physical therapy? Or someone who needs to take potions for the rest of their lives to manage their condition? These realities should also be portrayed. Sure maybe some people want to see an escapist fantasy where their conditions could get cured, but not everyone wants that and it’s almost entirely done by abled authors who fathom why anyone would want to see a disabled person who isn’t trying to ‘overcome’ their disability.

We’ve also reblogged this post & answered this ask that deal with similar topics if you want to check them out.

I hope this helps! Have a nice day,

Mod Rot

-

Everything Mod Rot said.

Basically, it's like giving us representation and then taking it away. Readers with that disability are going to read that book and relate to that character. Having a character like you in a work can be so important. But then the character is magically cured of an incurable condition, and now they're completely abled. Good for them. But the reader is still disabled. The reader will still always be disabled.

Disabled representation is already so rare. It's not really nice to take away what little we have.

- Mod Aaron

Echoing what everyone else has said, I want to add an extra thing:

If there was a wealth of disabled characters in media, represented with respect and nuance and care and all that, some stories involving disability being cured wouldn’t feel out of place, because there would already be so much to see that it would be an interesting departure and not posed as the only option for a happy ending.

And if you’re writing something about curing a disability that you have because that’s your experience and it’s what you want, that would make sense as well.

But since so many representations of disability in media have the underlying message that the only way to truly be happy or worthy or whatever with a disability is to have it cured, to have the least amount of signs of disabilities ever, then adding more of the same to that can be not just frustrating but harmful.

An “overcoming” of disability, a “making invisible” of a visible disability, or a cure for a disability are not the only stories worth telling about disabled people—because they are also not the only lives worth living for disabled people.

— mod sparrow

[popfizzles]

Every so often, Lust finds her way into Wrath's lab uninvited.

She's more intrusive than Wrath likes. Their patience varies from day to day, especially depending on what their daily tasks are, but...

Wrath would always appreciate some help... removing her.

[badlydrawnbeastcookies]

what did the beasts even do in the tree to pass the time? cry? sing? sleep? evil things?

"Oh! Oh! Oh! I can answer this one!"

"Inside the tree was BORING and AWFUL."

"Some of us passed the time by thinking too little. Others by thinking too much."

"Eternal Sugar Cookie simply slept. And Burning Spice Cookie, with no outlet to cause destruction, thought of what they would have done that would have changed the situation."

"And me? Well, after going through the five stages of grief (with extra time spent in anger) I decided to use the time to write all the plays I would do once I got out."

[jewishrizahawkeye]

1. ivy

2. i forgot that you existed

3. dear reader

for the fma ask! i couldn’t decide on one song so chose three

i may have taken months to answer this, but i finally figured out what each song is!!!!!!!

1. ivy - van hohenheim (@roberrtphilip i will get you to listen to evermore because it’s so hohenheim coded if it’s the last thing i do!)

2. dear reader - roy mustang (the least surprising result from me let’s be honest. also this ties into my taylor swift as fma albums series asdfghjkl)

3. i forgot that you existed - sloth. only cause father ditches him up north and we only hear him mentioned once prior to that and we literally don’t see him again until the promised day after that

send me taylor swift songs and i’ll tell you which fma character it reminds me of

[sds-mod]

Would a kindness sloth fusion just be a laid back gamer?

Definitely. Does a lot of charity streams and is very calm and polite in multiplayer games to bring in a soothing energy to lower stress and raise the mood/spirits.

[iamthekaijuking]

apparently there used to be aquatic sloths, mountain sloths, and burrowing sloths too, as well as african-elephant-sized ones

i'm kinda underwhelmed at the sloths we have today

That semiaquatic sloth was preyed upon by macroraptorial sperm whales.

While the giant burrowing sloths could dig through solid rock and made tunnels you could stand in, many of which are still around today.

Apparently some also had osteoderms. Which technically isn’t that weird since they’re in the same group as armadillos (Xenarthra), but it still feels so weird for a mammal to have osteoderms.

But modern sloths, particularly three toed, also have incredibly weird adaptations themselves, such as:

Having curled muscles in their limbs that give them more strength (pennation)

Being very impact resistant

Sloth body temperature is usually the same as their surroundings, but if it gets too hot they actually depress their metabolism like a hibernating animal, but unlike them they don’t actually shut down organs and can do it very quickly for short periods of time

Having a four chambered stomach

Three toed sloths have 9 neck vertebrae, which is unusual because mammals can’t have more than 7 neck vertebrae because it fucks with their respiration, so three toed sloths are the only exception

It can take 50 days for a sloth to fully digest a single leaf

Three toed sloths sometimes eat as little as 17 grams of food a day, which is around 3 leaves

Sloth fur is a micro ecosystem that they cultivate thanks to weirdly craggy hair cuticles, with a species of algae and moth that only lives in their hair

Modern sloths may not look like much on the outside, but on the inside they’re positively freaky

[number1greedlingfan]

FOR THE BLORBO BINGO: sloth from 2003, and gluttony (can i suggest 2? is that okay?)

It is absolutely ok!! There are no rules here at number1greedlingfan (our society is crumbling). I've included explanations for my choices under the cut

Sloth

Gluttony

This is my opinion but Sloth in 03 just... didn't hit right? I know what kind of character the writers wanted her to be (and for some viewers, she was that!) but it felt like she wasn't around enough for that to come together or feel meaningful (hence, the "Too little screentime" choice). Sloth was really cool conceptually but I think the emotional deeper aspects of her character were just too little too late and overshadowed by other plot developments.

Gluttony I have no issue with. Conceptually he is cool as fuck (being a failed gate) and he serves his purpose in the narrative. Imo though I felt nothing for him until he was an active threat or until he died, which I think was kind of the point of his character. What Pride did was fucked up enough to make me pity him for a minute, but I didn't get the same "It's not fair" urge that I got with other character deaths in the show. So yeah, as a blorbo I think Gluttony would ultimately be kind of boring to think about.

[avernusfuries]

anonymous asked: Gives Karlach a pangolin. "Here, take the armored paladin sloth"

For a long moment, Karlach had thought what she had been holding might've been a cat, or some peculiar sort of hedgehog from how it had rolled itself into a ball. Then, she thought of those little bugs that held the title of the roly poly, a bunch of whom she had once attempted to train so she could create her own teeny-tiny circus when she had been little. It would not be until it unfolded and the cutest little face had peeked out at her that she'd gasped.

"Oh, my GODS!"

And just as quickly, he curled himself up again, much to the tiefling's complete and utter devastation. "Oh, no, sorry little guy- shhh, here, come out and say hello again - ps ps ps!"

[katzkinder]

This is hella late lol 😅 but if you're still taking doodle requests you should totally draw that sloth guy lol 😆😅

This guy ➡️➡️➡️😈😈😈 lolololol 😆😆😆

Or not do what you want lololol 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

finally felt well enough to bang this out sorry it took so long!

[hazbincalifornia]

And here are the NSFW/kinky ones!

[meyhew]

Ngl you being an april taurus makes SO much sense, like you highkey remind me of my april taurus friend (which is why ive followed you for years) and like it all makes sense now 😅

sometimes the stars do get some things right 🤭

[burningfeathersx]

Is your OC self-destructive? In what ways?

Woof, in a lot of ways. Unsurprisingly.

He isn't always looking to self-destruct these days, but when he does it gets bad. He's got a lot of dumb ways to hurt himself.

He's not above throwing himself at Stanley (Satan) to get himself fucked up bad across the spectrums of emotional, physical, and mental. He shouldn't do this, considering.

He still hits heroin pretty hard from time to time. More frequently drowns himself in alcohol.

When he's barred off from those things, he can get to plain old self-harm. Known to crack his own bones or cut as covertly as he can manage. It's harder to do now because of how Vox worked their mutual-deal.

On his healthier days he just seeks out pain stimuli through his partners if they are willing. Rook is soft with him aside from some small things like teeth or piercing tugs, but sometimes that enough. When it's worse, he's been able to go to Vox who gives him a more healthy treatment similar to Stan's. Heh, or he picks a fight with Devang. Depends on where he's at mentally and emotionally.

Much of his pain seeking is about self-punishing. Understandably, he has a bit of a complex about what he deserves as a person. He talks a lot of big game while convinced, quietly, that he deserves what's happened to him.

OH, uh, he absolutely does push people away like a giant mal-adjusted nerd. Just less than he used to. He has to be feeling pretty high key stressed to start shoving people aggressively.

[popfizzles]

Say whatever you like about Sloth, but she's very good at getting others to sit, slow down and relax.

And Wrath will occasionally take the time to do so. Not often, but occasionally.

A very "beauty and her beast" sort of situation...

[badlydrawnbeastcookies]

What exactly are you, Eternal Sugar? Are you related to the Devine or whatever is its counterpart? Or?

Those wings are throwing me off with two sets of two different kinds...

"Not divine, not devilish, only a beast!"

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[repetiita]

Kihoon do you prefer rough or gentle play in bed? Do you prefer to be the one playing or the one being played with?

"Woah..." People sure were brazen in what they asked. "Who taught y' t' ask a pretty young lady like me tha' kinda thing? Bu' since y' asked, I prefer both. I like bein' played wit' real nice like. I guess I'm kinda adventerous? I tried a group thing wit' three people at once, wasn't as fun as I thought it'd be." Though he did enjoy the thrill of danger, something about choking awoke a visceral fear deep down that had him thrashing, sobbing and screaming as much as his damaged throat would allow,

Something he wasn't ready to work out in therapy any time soon.