#because we need to normalized disabled people looking disabled

[cherry-pop-elf]

All Hail Biblically Accurate Bill 🙌

Your doodle is so cute!!! You drew him so well!!!! I love this concept so much!!! And I’m beyond honored I helped inspire this oodle 🥺

Oh he looks so cooool!!!!

You draw so well!!! I utterly adore it! Keep it up! It’s so cool! It’s such a nice and cozy feel. Really captures that Weasley energy

Ugh the frecklessss!!!!

I do love Bill’s movie Aperance because I mean Domhnalll Gleeson is just so gorgeous, truly one of his best looks. But here is my HC of what he looks like sense it fits the narrative better. I always viewed him this way in my head, as many do, but @cherry-pop-elf HCs made me solidify my ideas more. I did take some inspo from the movie design and I do still picture him as Domhnall Gleeson Even though I’m not to sure that was translated well in the drawing. This is just a doodle anyway. He does have wolf teeth though it’s hard to see, and you can’t see it because it’s not side profile, but the entire right side of his face is shredded. That’s why his ear is damaged on that side.

But see, he can still have gnarly scars and exposed teeth and be hot

@huxkisser

@lavendergarnet

@the-clockwork-fiend

[uncanny-tranny]

You know... it's okay to trust your body. If you are separated from your body to such an extent you feel you cannot trust it, I truly from the bottom of my heart empathize and feel grief for you, but you can trust your body.

It's okay to listen to your body and to heed what it is telling you. I wish you (and your body) well wherever you go. You deserve the peace of mind to feel able to do what you want.

[orcboxer]

Sure there's zombies killing and eating people on the street but those people are not dying from the virus they're dying from comorbidities. For instance, that guy we saw getting eaten on the way into work today clearly died from blood loss, not infection, plus he already had a heart condition. People with preexisting conditions are just going to have to take care of themselves. Say it with me, "They're all already dead to me." See, that feels a lot better now doesn't it?

Good because you still have to go to work. No we're not paying you extra. Yes we're doubling grocery prices. No you don't qualify for disability. Or healthcare. Or a home.

Look, if you get bitten, you can stay home for one day, I guess 😒, but then you need to come in early. We're really short staffed at the moment, despite our company's profits being higher than ever. In fact we may be laying some of you off next month. You don't mind working off the clock right?

Also you look silly with that protective gear. We're gonna harass you for it, not like institutionally but just socially. Who cares if a zombie attacks you? Who cares if we invite them into the building? You don't need to defend yourself, you're just overreacting. If you get bitten just tell everyone the festering bite mark is from a different animal, that's what we all do.

And hey, don't worry so much. It's endemic, which means we don't have to keep track of how many people are dying from it anymore. Just look at those numbers! It's only killed 2,000 people in America this week! That's basically nobody! We're back to normal!

If everything starts tasting like rotting meat for the rest of your life, it's probably something else. If you experience brain fog or you forget things constantly or you're tired all the time after even minor physical activity, it's just because you're lazy. Yes every other virus you ever get will also be increasingly worse but that's just a coincidence. Those viruses just happen to be exponentially worse now.

Plus, those few weeks during the lockdown were terrible for my mental health. I just can't keep living like that, so we have to go back to normal life, which now involves people biting each other and twitching uncontrollably and rotting visibly.

You can't expect the world to wait for you. "Already dead to me," remember?

[drdemonprince]

I have almost no energy to move or to think. My eyes hurt. My head hurts. I’m constantly on the verge of puking. The room is spinning. Normally bouncing off the walls with the desire to exercise, try new things, and socialize, all I want to do is sit silently in the dark. I am incapacitated, in an inescapable way, by the demands of full-time work. I had forgotten for a while that I am so profoundly disabled, because I have been able to build a life around my natural rhythms and my inarguable sensitivities. But for just one week, I’ve been thrust back into approximating something of a “normal” working life, and I can’t handle it. Not even remotely. If I were to live by this schedule all of the time, if necessity forced me to work an actual full-time job with real, in-person, full-time hours, I would have zero energy for meal preparation, physical fitness, social outings, on-the-ground activism, or any of the random adventures that make life so worthwhile. In my schedule I’d scarcely find the time for doctor’s visits, tooth cleanings, trips to the DMV, birthday parties, conferences, runs to the post office, or any of the other small journeys that make it possible for supposedly “independent” adult life to run. My health, my relationships, my community, and my grounding in reality would dramatically collapse.

Working full-time is a sickness. And not just for especially sensitive people like me. The friends I know with full-time jobs are tired nearly all the time, and have had to give up on so many of their passions and fulfilling pursuits. Over the years some full-time workers I know have become a bit dull-eyed and distant, no passion in their voice, a ghost of their younger selves. They assume it is because they are growing “old,” but I’m older than many of them, and many people older than me are similarly able to bounce off the walls. We have energy if we get enough sleep, if we eat robustly and eagerly, and if life is filled with shared wanderings that we can look forward to. We need repetition, and comfort, and rest, but also ample space to dream, and the power to bring some of those dreams into reality. So many people under capitalism lack all of those things. Their jobs are a chronic illness they must cradle, manage, and make endless sacrifices for every single day. There is so much they can’t do. They don’t go on dates with their spouses because they’re falling asleep at 8pm. They’re behind on doctor’s appointments and haven’t visited their siblings for years. They’re too weak and weary to travel, to volunteer, to meet anybody new. All they have it in them to do at the end of the day is collapse in front of something familiar on the TV. And it is so normal that nobody even considers it a sickness.

The full essay is free to read or have narrated to you at drdevonprice.substack.com.

[eva-does-its-best]

Going from "I'm not one of those trans people who do x or y" to "I am so one of those and I should have not judged them and I am glad that I got rid of the normative judgemental attitude I used to have".

Going from "I'm just a lesbian so liking trans men is wrong i don't want to deny their manhood" to "My sexuality is weird and that is fine, I like who I like despite the theoretical implications of it and I am not denying anyone's identity because I like them for who they are and respect them no matter what".

Going from "I'm just a regular binary she/her woman" to "I'm a girl and a woman but my dissociation and life experiences also make me feel impersonal so I can use it/its and I'm not weird for it, i wouldn't even be weird if I had no justification either, I can even use doll pronouns because I like them and they make me feel warm and happy and that is what matters".

Going from "Ok so these are all the labels with their very clear definitions and meanings and everything else is internet quirky stuff" to "I literally would not know how to explain what you are and I won't force you to explain it if you don't want, I don't need to understand it to accept you, you are valid and loved. If you instead want to explain it to me I'll do my best to learn and defend it whenever I can".

Going from "I am so sad, frustrated, angry and in pain because I will never be or look cis" to "I actually don't like the cis normative look, I don't want to cispass, I like trans beauty but specifically I like me beauty, the one where I am still myself but a more me version of myself. The world constantly told me what I should aspire to be and look like and like and I was brainwashed for so long but now I've broken free and am free to fully love myself and everyone else in this world who ever thought they were weird or ugly because my eyes find so much beauty in everything and everyone!"

Going from "Ew furries" to "I don't want to make fun of people who deviate from the norm because that is exactly what happens to me and we should all be together or else we are treating ourselves as exceptions and exceptions are easily revoked, I will learn to love everyone against a brain poisoned with conservativism and "normality". I like rats I should make a rat fursona or smth it would be so cute it'd so represent me :3".

Going from "I am useless, lazy, falling behind, a disappointment" to "I am physically and mentally disabled, there have never been accomodations for me in any aspect of my life and the intersectionalities of gender, sexuality, economical situation, etc. have made my life extremely difficult, I forgive myself for both failing and for blaming myself, I will seek help and advocate for myself to the best of my abilities and I will respect my limits in this world that was not made for people like me".

Learning is hard, changing is scary, but it's mostly just your brain being a conservative for the sake of commodity, safety and self-preservation, sometimes you need to fight your brain in a war of attrition but when you finally win you'll be so much happier.

I am so much happier now, my world is bigger and brighter and I see everyone and everything with a new, beautiful light. I look back on how I was and how I thought and how the world works and it all looks so much worse and grey, I am not going back there, this new mind is my home now.

And the best part is that I know I will keep learning more and changing more and the world and this life will keep getting better and better🥰.

[talkingattumble]

Hi guys! Here’s some advice from a cane user on how to spot a fake cane user/disability faker!

YOU CANT

You can not spot a “fake disabled” cane user. You can not know if someone’s “really disabled”, much less by just looking at them. Here are some common misconceptions.

“Cane users always need their canes. If they walk without it or put it away when it’s inconvenient, they’re faking”: WRONG! Many cane users are what we call “ambulatory” cane users. This means they don’t always need their canes to walk. I’m an ambulatory cane user, and I experience really horrible leg pain on the daily. However, I don’t always use my cane, and when I don’t need to walk or stand a lot in a certain place I don’t use it. And when I do use it, I may lift it off the ground or carry it in places that are sandy, gravelly, or otherwise hinder my cane.

“Cane users walk abnormally without their canes, someone who walks normally without their cane is faking”: WRONG! Many ambulatory cane users can walk in a way that seems “normal”. This doesn’t mean they’re not in pain, or not “really disabled”. This just means that their condition doesn’t cause a noticeable difference in walking, and likely manifests in a different way.

“Cane users always need their cane, someone who doesn’t use their cane at home is faking”: WRONG! Cane users may not use their canes at home, because at home they may be able to do things like sit down wherever and whenever, regain more spoons, and use other mobility aids. Additionally, some ambulatory cane users only need or use their canes when they are doing something physically taxing, like going on a hike or standing in a long line.

“My cane user friend told me this person looks like they’re faking, so it must be true”: WRONG! Being a cane user doesn’t immediately make you an expert on all different conditions and experiences. Your friend does not know the random cane user walking down the street, they are going off looks and stereotypes. Disabled people are not immune to being ableist.

“They enjoy their cane too much/they’re too happy/they decorate their cane, so they can’t actually be in enough pain to need a cane” WRONG! We’re people like everyone else, and we experience positive emotions too, even if we go through a lot of pain. To me, customizing my cane is like getting a tattoo or putting streaks in my hair, it’s a way of self expression. And we deserve to be able to talk openly about our full experience, which include the parts we’re neutral or happy about.

“They’re one of those cringey teenagers who name themselves arson and like dsmp, so they’re probably faking” WRONG! Do I even have to explain why saying someone isn’t disabled because of their name and interests is messed up and also stupid? Or did you already know that and just wanted to make fun of a disabled teenager?

“They’re too young to be using a cane, so they must be faking” WRONG! there are lots of disabilities or injuries that can cause young people to need a mobility aid. For example, I use a cane for my fibromyalgia.

“They only use it in private places, and never in places where people recognize them, so they must be faking” WRONG! In a world where anyone can just randomly take out their phone, take a picture of a cane user, and post them online to be made fun of, it can be stressful to use a cane in public areas. Also, they may not want people to ask questions, or they may feel embarrassed about it.

“I saw them switch hands, so they must be faking” WRONG! There are different reasons a cane used might do this, but I’m going to use my experience as an example. My fibromyalgia is not consistent. Sometimes one leg hurts more then the other. But as I said, fibromyalgia is inconsistent, and sometimes my other leg will start to hurt more or need more support, which is when I switch hands. And when both my legs hurt equally, I may switch my hand if it’s getting too sore.

“They told me they feel like they’re faking when they use their cane, doesn’t that mean they don’t really need it?” WRONG! Imposter syndrome is strong in a lot of disabled people, especially when for a lot of our lives we were told by doctors that we were fine and just being dramatic. Anxiety is also comorbid with a lot of physically disabilities, which only strengthens this. To add to this, something that I’ve felt and seen other disabled people talk about it, when their disability aid lessens the pain, they start thinking “well I’m not in that much pain so I don’t really need it” even though the reason they’re not in that much pain is because of the aid. I know it seems dumb, but imposter syndrome can be that strong and affects disabled people a lot.

“They don’t have a diagnosis, so they must be faking” WRONG! First of all, diagnoses are expensive. On their own they’re often already expensive, but counting the tons of tests you have to take to confirm the diagnosis? Absolutely ludicrous. Some may also choose not to get a diagnosis, so that they don’t have to deal with the prejudice and setbacks of being diagnosed. Also, some people use a cane for injuries, and for stress or fatigue related pains.

These are only a few of the things I commonly hear from fakeclaimers, and I wanted to just put out a reminder that fakeclaiming hurts the disabled community much, much more than it does ableists. Next time you see someone with a cane switch hands, or someone with a wheelchair stand up, or someone with crutches put them down, before you immediately call them out to a friend, take a picture, or write a post: does your fakeclaim rely on stereotypes? Are your reasons things that apply to ambulatory aid users?

If so, just stop. Be mindful. Please.

[myalgicencephalomyelitiscfstom]

Key themes from this conversation:

Grief is at the center of the chronic illness experience for many people but often goes unnamed. As people lose parts of their life–capabilities, spontaneity, aspects of identity, there is inevitably a grieving process associated with those losses. Calling it “grief” helps provide narrative and understanding, and helps us feel like it’s a normal process.

Illness, and particularly energy-limiting illnesses, changes your relationship with time, since what you do today impacts your life next week, and you don’t have full control over what your capabilities will be on any given day. This reality often draws people towards cyclical or seasonal ways of living, where we recognize that, while we have some control over our energy patterns, ultimately the external and internal weather of the day are out of our control.

Groups of chronically ill and disabled people operating together can give us a model for a unique type of emergent organizing. When one person needs to rest, or can’t take on a task because the lights are too bright or any other reason, other people naturally step in with full understanding and without questioning the limitation. What would work look like in this emergent model?

[villainessbian]

Concept: most aliens can get anxious, can get scared, can get fight-or-flight. What most aliens do not get, however, is stress. Stress is a weird thing even by human standards. It can build up over time or be something tied to a very limited situation. It can be caused by a lot of things, and it comes in a lot of different ways. But it's a core human reaction, when a situation is wrong, it causes stress until it is righted. And it even affects different people differently!

Cue Human Cassandra, on a ship with her friend and co-worker Human Pauline. The ship is crewed with a mix of species. It's a cargo ship - load up in a space port, unload in another, get news and supplies during their stops, and live as an ever-shifting family as some of the two dozen crew members, give or take, get replaced. Some leave come payday, and new ones come looking for the thrill of low-level adventure, experiencing warp drives across the safer roads of the known universe.

But getting the supplies you need, or want, in stops is never so easy. Humans are new to the galactic community, and their needs misunderstood. Most broad-edibility food is bland for them, but that's okay. A big enough bag of their condiments can last them years. But ADHD meds... now that's less easy to get, the further from Earth you are. And a contract too big for their captain to pass on came up, much farther than the two humans expected.

Cassandra's mood deteriorated, her work priorities out of order, her sleep schedule in disarray. Little by little, she grew restless, shifting moods and gears unpredictably. A few weeks in and she was a mess, barely able to keep up with the minimum her job doing maintenance and running safety diagnostics for the route charting team required of her. While Pauline could help with the mechanical aspects of keeping the ship running, picking up the "slack", the safety had to be double-checked by the charting and pilot teams. When the curves of asteroid probability reached beyond a certain level, several hundred simulations had to be run, time-consuming processes had to be used, to avoid any collision at speeds beyond speed c. Some truly exotic things happened to ships that experienced those, but none of them contained the words "surviving crew." A safe route avoided any probability of collision over .1% and when going faster than light, any choice of course required thinking in 3 dimensions plus relative time to navigate dangerous probability fields in one piece, finding time-specific corridors and accounting for a dozen variables at once.

After she had a breakdown over a path she would normally have been able to find in under a minute, Pauline spoke to a concerned pilot team member:

"You have to understand her, this is a stressful situation and she's doing her best..."

"What do you mean by 'stressful'?" Gabalt asked. The furry little creature stood on two arched legs, and barely reached up to Pauline's shoulder, opening three wide eyes with curiosity and concern in equal parts.

"Things are... getting difficult for her, and keep getting more difficult because she does not have medication to help her brain be efficient. It makes her tired, and inefficient, and as it goes on, she's less and less able to cope with the situation. The longer this goes on, the worse it gets, and that is stress. Getting more tired because it takes more energy to deal with the situation, and less efficient because she's more tired, and things get harder because she's less efficient, on and on until something can solve the problem and the stress goes away."

"That sounds... hard. Do all humans have to deal with this?"

"Well, everyone has sources of stress, but she's got a disability. Without her meds, she gets stressed all the time. Not a lot all at once, but it always adds up."

"Oh no! So she'll be stuck like that until we get closer to Earth?"

"Most likely, yes."

But the most momentous thing to happen this day was not her breakdown. Not an hour later, alarms blared up. The simulation holograms all displayed blinking red masses - the less-travelled "safe route" was not as well protected! An asteroid range had been detected cutting through the border field, and it was in their way!

Pauline froze up, not knowing what to do. Gabalt was too surprised to act fast. All the courses from the ship's library of regular manoeuvres suggested a crash chance of over 60%, and mere seconds to act before entering the field!

Before anyone could react, Cassandra came in running from her corner to the front of the bridge, slamming the warp drive shutdown button. Most holograms stuttered and collapsed, the exit from FTL essentially dividing one or several of their dimensions by zero.

Looking quickly at the few remaining ones and gazing at the screens showing the current outside situation like a large window would have - plus a few critical extra points of data - she adjusted the angles manually while everyone still shuddered from the gravitational and temporal whiplash of suddenly coming back into normal time. Unblinkingly, she spotted the asteroids on the route while the ship was still going, if not at relativistic speeds, still fast enough for a single pebble they met to vaporise the Whipple shields, the outer hull, the inner hull, the crew members, and the hull again coming out if they but grazed it. Confirming the angles visually, she played with the reaction wheels, the thrusters, the gravity drives, to divert the ship's course just enough to miss a collision while not risking any grave injury on board. There was no time to react - if anything showed up straight ahead on the "unaugmented" outside view screens, it was too late to not get splatted. After half the crew had had the time to get thrown to the side or on the ground due to the rough handling, she'd managed to avoid any crash.

Gabalt was reeling. While it was surely not impossible, these was the kind of moves experienced veterans would never wish to attempt, and the margins for error were ridiculously low! She'd saved the ship and everyone on it, whereas she'd been unable to do a simple safety run so soon before?

Pauline was white as a sheet, but this was nothing compared to Cassandra, shaking violently and breathing unevenly.

"Pauline? What is she doing?"

"That's... probably the adrenaline."

"What's it for?"

"It's from stress. When it comes it overcharges the body. It's like the traditional, 'fight or flight' instinct from survival in prey-predator paradigms, it lets you move fast but paralyses thought... it feels pretty bad after a lot of it is released though. Now she's crashing down, must be harrowing."

"How did she do that? And you said her thoughts were paralysed for precision manoeuvres?"

Cassandra's voice came, nearly a mutter: "I just... had to. do it."

Gabalt needed to understand what happened.

"What do you mean you had to? Someone had to do it, but why you?"

"It- it was very stressful, I saw you freeze, and so."

"But... but HOW did you do all that? That was extremely complicated, few pilots -whose main craft is directly piloting- would want to even try doing that when given a choice!?"

"I had to. do it, so I did. I couldn't. couldn't make a mistake."

"This makes absolutely no sense."

Pauline interrupted. "She just works like that. Lots of stress and when people freeze up, humans with her condition... sometimes, surprisingly, function better in the moment than others can."

"Ah. So it's a human thing. of course, it's a human thing. NOTHING MAKES ANY SENSE WITH YOUR ACCURSED SPECIES" the diminutive pilot pouted.

And so one more story of the humans doing the impossible spread around. Humans of a subtype, more easily harmed, sometimes unstable and needing help for the simplest things... accomplishing odd, unthinkable, borderline heroic feats under duress none could be expected to withstand - but only then. Cursed, blessed? No story-teller seemed too certain. But the "magical" species never stopped surprising all others. And a new proverb developed: "it's not over until the human says it is".

[bullywugprincess]

As an autistic person, I think some autistic people (and neurotypicals attempting to be good allies) are sometimes doing more harm than good with how insistent we are that autistic people are as capable of achievements as anyone else.

I’m feeling quite tired right now and writing this first go without thinking too much about how I’m wording it, so please bear with me while I explain how I mean that. Basically I just saw a post of a father saying his son is autistic and has struggled to get a job because of it, but he was a really polite, sweet young man, and because of his personality one employer overlooked his struggles and gave him his first job. The post was him showing pride in his sons hood personality and spirit, and half the comments were autistic people saying it was patronising and “of course he can get a job, autistic people can do normal things and achieve things like everyone else.”

And look. I get it. We’re tired of being treated like children. We’re tired of being the subject of “inspo porn”. We’re tired of people acting like we can’t do things just because we’re autistic. But I think a lot of autistic people who are more well adapted and low-needs (again please excuse my terming, I know we don’t use low functioning/high functioning labels anymore but I don’t know what the alternative is) get offended by people acknowledging that some autistic people DO struggle, whether it’s with making friends or academically or with getting and keeping a job. Statistically speaking 3 in 10 autistic adults are in full time employment, compared to 8 in 10 non-disabled adults. And yeah that statistics probably off because of how many people go through life undiagnosed, but the point still stands. Because of learning difficulties, problems with socialisation or being unable to cope in a work environment due to sensory and other issues, many autistic people are unable to work. I don’t know the situation of the son from the post, but it is clearly something he’s struggled with, and the dad is not being patronising by acknowledging that struggle and praising him for overcoming it. By responding to a post like that by saying “of course autistic people can get jobs”, you are doing what ableists do. You are implying that people who can’t work because of their autism are actually just not trying. You are making autistic people who feel really proud of themselves for getting a job despite the difficulties they face seem stupid for it. And, if you’re not careful, you become someone’s excuse to claim autistic people don’t deserve accommodation or disability allowance/benefits because “they don’t need it, autistic people are perfectly capable of getting jobs.”

Another thing to consider: think about that person who said “you’re autistic? But you don’t behave like my 7 year old nephew? That’s not what autism is.” By saying autistic people can do something because YOU can do it is setting a rigid view of What Autism Is. Which like. We’ve all established is bad.

Again I’d like to apologise for how badly worded and ramble-y this is but autism is a disability, and it effects everyone with it differently. Let’s not diminish other people’s struggles

[rickktish]

I’ve got a couple of hot takes and there’s nuance to them but I don’t have a whole lot of brain power so I might leave it as-is and elaborate only if asked:

-The kind of people who engage in fandom and specifically those who write fanfiction tend to belong to the same categories of people/sets of identities which are likely to fall victim to the “white people have no culture” lie and therefore like to spice up their writing by diversifying the cast in ways they view as meaningful or reflective of those characters’ personal arcs/histories, which unfortunately means leaning on a lot of stereotypes and accidentally perpetuating, consciously or unconsciously, those stereotypes. (Is anyone else bothered by the prevalence of latino Jason “drug crime lord” Todd headcanons? I don’t speak up about it often but it frequently feels legitimately uncomfy to me. Also while it’s fun to mess around with various flavors of Asian Tim “the smart Robin” Drake, there are some very uncomfortable discussions which ought to be had about why he gets headcanoned as east Asian specifically— usually Korean from what I’ve seen but also frequently Chinese and Japanese— when the fanon interpretation of his character can basically be boiled down to “good with computers, terrible/abusive/neglectful bio parents with unreasonably high standards/expectations, child genius.” Like maybe critically examine your tropes before applying them wholesale is what i’m saying)

-readheads are an unrecognized minority and have historically been and are still in some places presently subjected to the same kinds of stereotyping, discrimination, and fetishization that recognized racial minorities face. The only difference is that discrimination against poc has frequently been legally mandated throughout western history whereas that against redheads has been largely (though not exclusively) cultural. Think for a minute about how many redheaded characters have been replaced by black actors in live action adaptations in recent years and understand that redheads have been on-screen shorthand for “acceptable token diversity” for longer than probably any of us care to think about and they are losing that status as black characters begin to take that place in widespread visual media. Race swapping the Gordons specifically, while pulled off extremely well by a beautifully talented actor in The Batman 2022, is actively participating in the erasure of redheaded characters, especially ones whose roles are more complex than “femme fatale” or “the spitfire,” (or both), from screen

I'm not necessarily against race-swapping hcs and whatnot, but I do think the Bat-Family fandom has a tendency to ignore the actual POC members of the Bat-Family in favor for their hcs, lmfao.

Like I've seen Asian Tim and Babs hcs and I'm like... you do know Cass and Damian are literally right there, you don't have to do that. 😭

[alexthebordercollie]

I plan to draw and post some more Shifter Twins art and Hand of God soon but wanted to knock out some Bill stuff I've had on my mind for a while. This was fun to draw. Thinking through how these 2d beings would interact with objects and the like.

Moreover, my headcannon that Bill was disabled. Because of the placement of his eye Bill could see the stars but couldn't see the world around him. He can kind of see other euclids in his peripheral vision but only barely. You see him in the drawings look in the direction of people's voices and he can vaguely make out colors out of the corner of his eye.

I also gave him a feeding tube. Assuming the others also eat with their eyes like Bill does (The eye retracted into their body and the orifice becomes a mouth.) Bill can't eat normally because his mouth is in the middle of his body so he had to have a small feeding tube surgically constructed as a baby. After ascending to the third dimension he simply sealed up that old feeding tube so you'd never know now that he used to depend on it. He uses his cane to help him navigate and his mother is especially smothering of her disabled son.

I also added the silvery static in his eye to imply some kind of inflammation or damage. A side effect of the medication they have him on. Medication that's gradually taking away the vision he very much does have but is a confusing inconvenience to those around him.

Some other neat details about his world. Euclids limbs squish and stretch and move like noodles. They can move in any direction as there's no actual gravity the way we think of it. They turn their heads by rotating their whole body and the connection of the limbs to the body can shift and change as needed. So if they rotate they can rotate the limbs with or shift them to different sides of their body to maintain their general positon.

[3liza]

everyone arguing with material analysis/assertion about how art is a "luxury" has rarely if ever spent rent or food money on art, if they even pay rent or buy their own food, and if they did that would be considered extremely dysfunctional, and thats what i/we mean. artists are not providing a necessary service.

our plane crashes in the Andes and you are not particularly excited about my "can draw that Playboy centerfold of Marge Simpson from memory" like that is not an essential survival skill. lots of extremely skilled workers work in luxury artisan and craft jobs, it's not an insult to say even a very famous and very talented and influential artist is not producing a commodity necessary for the furtherance of human life. none of us are doing that, no matter how we stretch and strain the definitions of "essential" or even things like "morale" or "group identity". i will burn my copy of Finnegan's Wake to stay warm and thats what it comes down to.

i get foamy crazy snarling and biting about the idolization and obfuscation of what artists actually do because it is a labor issue! the public conception of artists as people possessed of a divine talent they dont consciously work to develop like any other skill, and the public idea that we are simply pleased and privileged to make art all day and "not work", something people say to my face every time i get asked "what i do", is largely responsible for the absolute dogshit reality of how subsistence and working class artists have to survive. we usually dont have health insurance unless we're so poor we qualify for medicaid AND live in a state that will enroll us. most of us are too disabled or crazy to go to a real job every day. most of us have tried, over and over, to enter the normal workforce, and have failed, and been forced to develop alternate skills that allow us to make rent in the ten hours per month we're actually functional. many of the artists i know work from bed because standing up is dicey. this has been turned into a charming eccentricity of famous artists and writers instead of people wondering why a person would need to stay in bed all day and take the enormous bother of bringing their stupid pens and paper and writing board or typewriter or whatever to their bed instead of just getting up and getting dressed and going to work. ive done this, i spilled ink in my sheets. its a huge hassle.

and artists play along with this mystique because people dont want to buy paintings from sadlords! they want to buy paintings and books and marge simpson nudes from cool guys who get a lot of chicks and wear rockstar outfits and party a lot, because of the transitive properties! of course!!! this is basic marketing!!!!! and if the artist doesnt play along they turn into Sad Story Artist where they're doing emergency commissions and posting about how sick they are all the time. this is not cool or fun or sexy. it's a sand trap and its very hard to recover from. im struggling with this right now!

famous and successful artists and writers are constantly ending up 60-90 years old with cancer and multiple sclerosis and dementia, being the subject of some sort of public, last-ditch, humiliating GoFundMe because painting paperback covers fr 60 years means you dont get a pension, you often dont even have kids who can take care of you, you dont have life insurance, you dont have health insurance. 'died penniless and alone' is one of the stereotypical artist endings for a reason, that is not fiction. this happened to more artists than i can list on two hands. look up what happened to Peter S. beagle, the guy who wrote The Last Unicorn. you write a book like that you should be set for life, right? NO. thats not how it works

i'm not saying 'all artists are disabled and working class or poor' because that isnt true, observably. nepo babies and trust fund artists exist, obviously. but they take an outsized portion of the spotlight when the public thinks of the concept of "artist". they are not actually the norm. the average artist is probably making under 40k and living in extremely precarious circumstances and has had periods of homelessness, illness, extreme debt and/or bankruptcy.

this is true even for the 'successful' artists. having one or two or ten good projects and being a household name does not save you from just not having the safety net provided by a normal career path. i was very close with a major, famous 2000s network television creator and team that you have heard of. they won awards, they changed culture entirely, they were a big deal. one of them was turned down for a half dozen projects by the same network that made millions or bilions on their franchise over several years (each pitch is completely unpaid btw, imagine carefully preparing a PowerPoint for morons for months at a time for no reimbursement and thent he morons ask you if you can put a teenage witch looking for her lost cat in the alps in it and you're like, haha, well, it's a 4 part hard sci fi miniseries set on Europa and takes place entirely inside a pressurized lander settlement, i mean Ridley Scot said he was interested already and he pitched a bottle episode about a carbon monoxide poisoning, soooooo....and the executives look at each other and they're like "it's jst not really what we're looking for right now, thanks for coming in" and you go to coffee bean and tea leaf and kill yourself and thats sort of what its like. i made that example up it didn't actually happen i'm using an illustrative example), worked on a canceled film, and just. gradually ran out of money. thats what happens. that guy ended up slowly selling off all his belongings, getting roommates in a one bedroom apartment, and then eventually having to just live on a friend's couch for years. famous guy. you probably know his name. another major member of that same team ended up in GoFundMe/commission hell for years (might still be there) because they had to take care of their two dying, dementia patient parents by themselves. these are people who go to GenCon and sign autographs for four hours at a time. THE PUBLIC IS NOT AWARE OF THIS SHIT and i'm sick of it. im sick of going to a gallery opening night ("vernissage") and drinking bad wine and having a guy with an email job that pays six figures and benefits tell me being able to push "undo" on the computer is cheating. that's a real example, that has actually happened to me. more than once.

artists currently have zero labor protections whatsoever. all of us are undercutting each other in an unregulated market and relying on welfare and private insurance and not having families or buying houses. zero security until we get so old all our illnesses and dysfunction finally ground us permanently and then we get turned into a charity case by fans (humiliating) or just fade away into ghosts and die

whats my punchline? idk i dont have one. it's possible and likely that any given artist you meet is permanently in precarity and will be until they die, even the famous ones. the culture of selling art demands that artists do not admit to this in public unless shit gets really really bad. i guess my point is you should know this, as a person who looks at or listens to or reads things that people have made for your amusement, not for your survival

[goldpilot22]

My dad is very nearsighted and is legally blind without his glasses but can see just fine with them - he is the type of person who has to use touch to feel around for his glasses if he loses them. (He also has something going on where his pupils are always slightly too dilated? Which means he has to wear sunglasses while driving in the day, and dislikes driving at night because of the glare from lights, but really enjoys astronomy since he can see the stars very well.) Meanwhile I'm slightly nearsighted, worse in one eye than the other, but it's mild enough that I spent my entire time at college without wearing glasses and only started wearing them again last year when I realized the lack of depth perception was affecting my art. (I'd thought my good eye was slightly farsighted, but it was actually slightly nearsighted, and that mixup meant that my glasses gave me headaches so I didn't like wearing them.)

My mom is hard of hearing because her birth father would hit her on the ears when she was a kid (Grandma divorced that man for her kids' safety, and he's not in the picture no more.) and she sometimes has to ask people to repeat things. I'm technically not HoH afaik, but I have tinnitus and auditory hypersensitivity (the sound of a door shutting just normally is enough to hurt a little, for example) so I wear headphones constantly to muffle all sounds and make things bearable. Because of the headphones and my other auditory processing struggles, it's functionally like I'm hard of hearing, as I often have to ask people to repeat things they said, and especially in loud situations I can't just remove the headphones to hear better.

My grandpa (who I live with and help care for) is hard of hearing and wears hearing aids. Sometimes we have a "conflicting access needs" moment when his hearing aids feedback and produce sounds that are painful to me even through my headphones, but the feedbacking bothers him too so he finds a way to get it to stop pretty soon. We frequently have to ask each other to repeat things or get closer and then repeat things, which can be a bit annoying but we're used to it.

also sometimes we have funny moments such as when I asked "You don't have your hearing aids in, do you?" and he said "I can't hear you! I don't have my hearing aids in!"

For any creatives out there who may need it, this is a fairly important thing to note. Bc shockingly I still see genuine mainstream media still be really sloppy about this topic:

In people who are classified as blind or deaf, there's actually very few cases where it's this, all engulfing complete sensory deprivation. What I mean by this is, that someone can be considered blind if they for example lack peripheral vision so severely that they have to actively focus something on the very center of their field to really make out what it is. Or the other way around. Or that their vision is really blurry. Or their eyes can't focus on the same thing, or dozens of other ways people Can't See Well. Same for deafness: someone's hearing can just be so poor that they can't function the same way that non HOH people can. It can mean that one ear is deaf and the other is normal, it can be just hearing if something is really loud or only being able to hear when there's no background noise. The list goes on.

The way blindness and deafness manifests is extremely diverse but I only ever see media do the "Literally complete darkness" for blind characters and "Wouldn't hear a fucking car coming at them until they see the headlights" type of shit for deaf characters. It's so boring and idiotic. Like duh sensory disabled people can rely on other senses or methods to navigate the world but it also doesn't automatically mean blind people have amazing hearing or whatever else played out archetypes writers like to give disabled characters to make them ~more capable~. Like please don't have the range be either "Pathetically helpless" or "Superhero with one sense missing but that makes them More Special".

Deaf people feel soundwaves and vibrations just like hearing people do, blind people can detect the difference between light and dark, and also feel vibrations and air passage to know when someone or something is there. Now I'm not blind nor HOH but even I know that in most cases it's not that black and white. Blind and deaf characters can be perceptive without being supernaturally talented in other ways ffs. Just realise that it's A Spectrum.

[avelera]

To add onto your point about Viktor pushing people away I think this is shown a lot through his interactions with Sky. When they first meet as kids she clearly takes interest and wants to talk but he looks down to gesture to his boat when she is called away. He believes that it is his destiny to be lonely. Shortly after when meeting Singed, Singed asks “why aren’t you playing with the other kids,” and Viktor steps out from behind a rock to show him his leg. Singed’s response is a double edged sword because he says that “loneliness is often a byproduct of a gifted mind,” on one hand he is calling Viktor intelligent and implying that his disability isn’t what makes him lonely, however Singed still essentially reinforces the idea that Viktor is inherently going to be lonely because of his mind.

Later (in life, technically it’s earlier in the show) she flirts with him and he surprisingly refers to her by her last name only despite knowing each other for so long. This act pushes her away, especially at a time when he probably did need to ask for help as he had just coughed up blood earlier in the episode and passes out not long after she leaves. While I do not think he harbors any romantic feelings for Sky both the way she shows interest with him as a kid and as an adult proves Singed wrong. She doesn’t find his intelligence isolating, she admires him for it and wants to get closer but Viktor has put up a wall because he’s already internalized that loneliness is a byproduct of his existence.

She also does not even hesitate to try pull him off the hexcore when she has no idea what it is.

Viktor is often shown with themes of loneliness but it is contrasted with the fact that he is constantly around people that would move heaven and earth for him if he asked. This really shows that the internalized loneliness that makes him push people away and refuse to be selfish is also tragic because he and Singed are wrong. He does face a more difficult time being a disabled zaunite in Piltover for sure, but pushing out those who wish to be close is a fate he curated himself since he believes it’s how it has to be.

I think you said it very well!

One thing I love about having the full Arcane story with S2 is that we can really dig deep and analyze who these characters are now.

I'd argue Viktor came across as pretty... flaw-free in S1. He's still complex, but most of the problems he faces seem to come from issues outside his control, like his disability and his terminal illness.

I think S2 brought into focus what Viktor's flaws are, including his intellectual tunnel vision and, as you noted, his tendency to think himself lonely when he is the one constantly pushing people away, perhaps as a result of that awful line Singed fed him when he was a kid. (Silco and Singed are both great examples of damaged adults trying to help the children in their life, teaching them the lessons they learned, but in so doing scarring those children with their own issues and pain because their situations actually aren't parallels.)

So much of what Viktor does in S2 revolves around loneliness. Normally, I think such loneliness plots would be about someone finding love for the first time, or learning to love themselves despite it. But the strength and quality of Viktor's loneliness story, what I think brings it closer to a more realistic story, is that it takes two to tango. He's projecting rejection onto others like Jayce that isn't there. He's thinking he needs to isolate himself and even as a child to play alone, even though Sky was right there taking an interest. He was just too obsessed with his work (admittedly, work that would save him from a terminal illness so like, I feel him on this) to see that he was letting the life he had pass him by, or that there were people trying to help him, who were actively helping him if he just looked around.

He does it in 2.02 to Jayce too, by the way. Regardless of Hexcore influence, he chooses "the Mission" of securing a legacy over the friend who is right here beside him, offering help, who has come back to Viktor after Viktor chastised him for leaving his side. Jayce listened and he's back now, but Viktor is now so consumed by guilt of the other person he ignored that he's missing the loved one he's ignoring right now.

Viktor then builds this commune of people that sure as hell looks like a wall he's building against loneliness. He speaks with their voices, they are of one mind, they share their emotions, and yet Viktor still self-isolates there, spending his time with the hallucination of Sky, set apart from the other cultists in his giant bubble on the hill, making them look up to him like angels singing praises to God. And that too is lonely. It's not true connection. And by making everyone into One, it's still loneliness, it's still his old patterns. Combining everyone into one person with one will so they can never leave you (no one is ever shown leaving the commune, btw, all foot traffic flows inward) still ends up with him alone in the homogenous soup of everyone he turned into him.

Wizard Viktor is another example of this behavior, the ultimate conclusion of it, why he needs Jayce to get through to him. Only Jayce can show Viktor that his loneliness is in his own head, it's a product of his own behavior, he is pushing people away and ignoring them and then being upset when they're not there, and then when they come back he pushes them away again in favor of "the mission" in favor of "legacy", and even if it's in favor of finding a cure for himself, he pushes away people who are trying to help him with that. And he doesn't let Jayce in on the fact he's dying which is another example of not letting people who love him help him with his most important mission of saving his own life.

This is getting way too long lol but ok:

TL;DR One of Viktor's flaws is self-imposed loneliness that still makes him lash out at others and ultimately leads to some of his most heinous crimes like the assimilation of the cultists and attempt to make everyone into One Being, which is still the same behavior of self isolation, and that's why only Jayce can get through to him that he was loved the whole time and he's only lonely because he keeps ignoring his loved ones and pushing them away.

[zebulontheplanet]

most of the autism stuff i encounter (as a low-support autistic person) revolves pretty much exclusively around ppl with low-support needs, who can easily pass for non-autistic, who don't get diagnosed until well into adulthood bc they look "normal," which maps pretty well onto my own experience (except i was diagnosed very young) but it only represents a fraction of the autistic community. so your blog was a really nice find.

a few questions:

when your aac device runs out of battery, what are your alternatives? are you able to write stuff down instead?

what's the purpose of plaintext? who does it accommodate?

i know when it comes to individuals, you're supposed to ask them whether they prefer to be called nonspeaking or nonverbal, but which do i use as an umbrella term? how do i refer to them as a group? (maybe this is a pointless question bc you're only one person but i'm still curious)

sorry if i misspoke or said anything offensive, like i said i've been inundated with mostly low-support perspectives and today was basically my first time finding anything else

Hello anon! Glad to see you here. I’ll try my best to answer your questions.

If my AAC battery runs out, then I can use my phone. I have my apps on my phone as well for backup. But let’s say my phone and AAC are out of battery, I’d use my partners/caregivers phone, which they have a AAC app downloaded on and the notes app, which I could use to communicate. But let’s say my AAC is dead, my phones dead, and I’m not with my caregiver or my caregivers phone is dead. I’d be shit out on luck. Unless we had a pen and paper with us, I wouldn’t be able to communicate at all besides grunts, pointing, and leading. So yeah, those are very important. It’s very important to have things charged at all times.

Plaintext is important for those with cognitive and intellectual disability. Why? Because some of us can’t understand complicated text. I am one of those people. Some of it I can understand? But a lot of it I can’t. Plaintext is very important and is an accessibility tool. This just doesn’t stop at cognitive and intellectually disabled folk. Many people benefit from plaintext.

This is a hard one, and one I cannot not fully answer because each person will say something different. If someone was to use an umbrella term around me personally, I’d prefer them to use nonverbal. But some people prefer that people use nonspeaking. Again, it all depends and it’s a hard question. Just go with the flow and see what those around you prefer.

Anyways, I hope this helps! If you have any further questions then let me know. Have a lovely day anon!

[writingwithfolklore]

Monsters and Creatures

              I love a good monster—who doesn’t? Monsters can be easy antagonists in survival, horror, fantasy (or really any genre) to pose a threat to characters and incite conflict to keep the plot plotting. So how do we create a believable monster? The key is in consideration of the creature’s biology.

Before we get into it, I have an important point:

1. Yes, make them monstrous—but don’t vilify human features

One trend I really hate right now is analog horror using “fake humans” as dangerous, horrible monsters. While I love a doppelganger, what this genre has unfortunately really leaned into is using physical deformations and other natural human features to distinguish between the “good, safe” people and the “bad, dangerous” people.

I’m sure you can see why that’s not okay. Good, loveable, safe, kind and real people have physical deformities, and by only portraying them as evil or monsters in media, these tropes perpetuate harmful thinking towards disability and deformities. Media has never really made progress in being rid of this stereotype, and unfortunately it seems we’re going in the complete opposite direction we should be.

Don’t vilify normal human features. Please.

Okay onto the actual creation:

2. What, how, and how often do they eat?

Likely the first thing you’ll consider when creating a monster, and usually what determines if they’re a threat to humans or relatively harmless.

Is your creature a carnivore, omnivore, or herbivore?

How much do they have to eat? Don’t be fooled by bigger=more, hummingbirds have to eat up to 3x their body weight in food per day because they burn calories, and lions can use one hunt to sustain them for several days.

How do they consume food? Do they have sharp teeth, or tear apart with their claws first? If they’re an omnivore, they need flat, strong molars for breaking down plants as well as sharp front teeth for meat. Do they consume via mouth, tube, or other appendage?

Determine their usual diet when there are no human characters around to hunt.

How do they hunt? Do they have the ability to "clever girl" their prey? What do they use to their advantage in their environment?

2. Where do they live?

Were they grown in a lab? If so, where were the scientists intending to put them, or what were they built for?

Are they supposed to blend in with their surroundings or others of their species? (Think many types of fish, or zebras) Or are they made to stand out (such as brightly coloured fish that are poisonous)

A creature who lives in a green, lush forest that gets heavy rain often is going to look a lot different than one who lives in the desert. Consider how they’d be built to survive their environment and climate.

3. What are their social instincts?

Do they have pack instincts? Or are they solo?

If they do have pack instincts, will they bond with humans? Or other creatures of different species?

What do they do with their young or family?

How do they find a mate to reproduce?

What do they do if they come across another of their species? Or an animal of another species?

4. What do they use to defend themselves?

Are they poisonous to their predators? Do they have a hard shell or quick reflexes?

Consider what might pose a threat to them in their environment, and what they’ve developed to defend themselves against that threat.

If they are the apex predator, consider what they have that makes them so effective in their environment.

5. What are their vulnerabilities?

Or another way to put it--how can they be killed?

Do they bleed? Is chocolate or another food poisonous to them?

Do you need a specific weapon or technique to harm them?

Anything I missed?