#but because of his cognitive disabilities it’s hard for me to figure out

[wazzappp]

(You're Here!) 2. 3. 4. Thinking about how they figure out they’re both infected (I have a part two planned but I. Forgot what dialogue I wanted as I was sketching it so I have this whole comic laid out with no idea what I was thinking they would say in it lmao.)

Incorporating @rokhal s fic where Chris gives them bikes was a MUST cause I love it I love it so much. I figure they got the bikes and just a little bit later Robbie figures out he’s still infected. This would be happening about. Idk maybe 2 weeks after Robbie finds out? I want him semi coping with it but also NOT PREPARED IN THE SLIGHTEST to learn that gabe is still infected.

[rosen-dovecote]

@autisticslp asked (on the old blog):

So a lot of cooking advice that people tend to give that seems very basic honestly comes from decades of experience; there's a post that floats around Tumblr sometimes, actually, that talks about how a lot of "cooking from intuition" isn't actually intuition at all. It's deeply ingrained memorization about the "laws of cooking" that we've learned over time, that feel like second nature to us to the point where we no longer have to think about it or physically reference recipes or tutorials anymore.

In essence: We're good at "taking what we have on hand and making a meal of it" because we have a lot of practice! We've built up a skill! A skill you're lacking in. And that's not a bad thing! But it also means that you shouldn't be too hard on yourself because you don't know or can't seem to grasp this stuff that seems so "second nature" or "easy" to a lot of the cooks you know. You're still really new at this! And with various disabilities and mental illnesses, cognitive issues, etc? Of course you're going to struggle harder at it than "most" seem to, to you!

As a secondary aside to that, you mentioned growing up on a farm. But farming and gardening, and the various forms of food preservation that frequently comes alongside small family subsistence farms, is a very different skill set! Knowing what's seasonal in your garden doesn't necessarily inherently translate into cooking it, and building a full meal up from scratch unless you also had someone who had that skill as well to teach you that.

I know my Husband's mom sure as hell didn't. He grew up on a farm like that, and she could can all day ... But Lord. She couldn't cook to save her life. She attempted to impart neither of these skills to my Husband, either ... I grew up on one, as well. But where my mom couldn't can or garden to save her life, she was a damned good cook and imparted those skills to me. Now I'm passing them on to my Husband decades later, because his mother failed to.

What you're ultimately missing is a fundamental set of basic skills, and a knowledge set built up over time and practice. And the good news is, those are really simple skills to learn. The bad news is, it does take a while to learn them and to build up that pool of knowledge. Most of it's experimentation, though, and not a lot of it's super difficult.

For basic knowledge of cooking science and spices, I'd recommend The Science of Cooking and The Science of Spice- both by Dr. Stuart Farrimond. I own both and love them dearly. They'll debunk some common myths, and give you a basic understanding of certain food sciences that are honestly really helpful.

When you feel like you're ready to actually sit down and experiment with spices, I love The Encyclopedia of Spices and Herbs: An Essential Guide to the Flavors of the World by Padma Lakshmi. It has information on various spices, tells you their cultural contexts, mentions what they're usually used on in those contexts (vegetables, which meats, etc), and even gives you some common cultural spice blends (though doesn't provide measurements). It's a thick boy, but it's a really fun one to work through if you have no introduction to spices or idea how to use them.

Past that, something you need to build yourself is a well stocked pantry with staple basics. I can't tell you what those are for you. That's something you have to figure out for yourself based on what you cook, how often, etc. But my minimum has always been at least 2 months worth of food in my pantry at any given time, across a broad enough spectrum that I can pick just about anything out of a recipe and only really need to shop for the fresh or immediate-need ingredients each week.

Staple Grains like Rice, Lentils, Cous Cous, and Quinoa.

Pasta Noodles of various types- like Elbow, Rigatoni, Bowtie, Penne, Fettuccini, and Spaghetti

Potatoes in the form of Mashed Potatoes and Scalloped Potatoes both, as well as a "fresh" bag each of Russet, Yellow, and Red Potatoes

Onions. I keep a mesh bag each of Red and Yellow (or White; whichever's cheapest at the time I'm shopping) on hand at all times.

Boxes of Stock (Chicken, Beef, Vegetable, and Protein Broth when I can find it)

Canned items that I use a lot of, like Diced Tomatoes, Tomato Sauce, Tomato Paste, every kind of Bean (Cannellini, Great Northern, Dark Red, Light red, Black, Pinto, etc), and Chickpeas; plus canned fish (Tuna and Salmon, Sardines, etc)

Condensed Creams Of (Chicken and Mushroom are the two we use most often)

Spices. Of every kind. You literally do not want to see my spice box. It's insane. Yes I'm proud of it. But it would make the average person cry with confusion and fear.

Frozen Veggies in the freezer (Green Beans, Brussel Sprouts, Broccoli, Carrots, Squashes, etc; personally I prefer the frozen to the canned)

I'm sure there's stuff I'm forgetting. But ultimately when you have a full pantry and only have to buy your fresh or immediate-need ingredients? It not only massively saves your grocery bill each week, but it also makes it so much easier to "make things with what you have on hand". Because a large part of the trick is, honestly, having things on hand to make stuff with in the first place. And that's really the big secret that goes unspoken in a lot of circles. But it really shouldn't be an unspoken secret, because it holds so many people back.

Another secret is just knowing basic cooking methods. What is chopping vs dicing? How do you pan fry? What's a dry fry vs a wet fry? What about baking? Broiling? Boiling? What happens if you stew an ingredient instead? How big does it have to be for each of these methods? How does it perform with rice as opposed to cous cous? How is it raw- if it can be eaten raw? Other than that, just knowing recipes is really going to be the big key.

Unfortunately I don't have a recommend for learning any of these ones, since I learned all this the hard way. I do see some cook books that could be useful (like Veg-table: Recipes, Techniques, and Plant Science for Big-Flavored Vegetable-Focused Meals by Nik Sharma; or Vegetables: The Ultimate Cookbook Featuring 300+ Delicious Plant-Based Recipes by Laura Sorkin). I can't personally recommend them, however, because I've never read or used them. But there's a lot of information out there on youtube that can be very helpful, especially for methodology since it's a visual medium- which is, I think, the best way to learn some of these skills in particular.

Personally, I did the recipe thing by looking at cuisines from regions where those foods or ingredients were really popular. So take your Eggplant for example. Eggplants feature a lot in Mediterranean, Levantine, and Middle Eastern cuisines. So when you want to learn how to use Eggplant and build up your knowledge about it? Looking at the people in those regions who use this ingredient a lot already is going to be really helpful to you. They know what they're doing with it!

When you've made those dishes a few times, you're going to get an understanding not only of how to prepare Eggplant for various methods of cooking, and how to cook it for those methods. But you're also going to get an understanding of what flavors pair well with it. And after a while of doing that, you're naturally going to start thinking "what if I do x instead?" and start experimenting on your own. Play with them. Get to know the ingredient on the most foundational level. And yeah, throw some herbs on it if you're comfortable! See what meshes with what flavors. What do you like? And yeah, some of those are going to be flops. But by the time you start thinking "what if" your skills are usually further progressed than you'd think to give yourself credit for. Just ask my Husband, ha!

As for the stuff regarding disability, mental illness, and cognitive function, I gotchu, babe! One of the most distressing things for me when I became disabled, started suffering really bad from cognitive decline, and started dealing with memory loss, was looking at the potential of never being able to cook for myself again. And that scared the piss out of me, because cooking is my joy. And so my Husband and I sat down and prioritized cooking and making it disability friendly for me. Here's some of the stuff we did.

First step: Get your butt a stool that's a comfortable height for your counter height. Once acquired, sit as much as you can in the kitchen. It conserves energy and lets you use more of it to focus your head.

Second: Get yourself all those fun little gadgets you think look interesting or helpful. Personally I have a fruit slicer (that works on more than just apples), a slap chopper microplane thingy, and a few others. Mostly I got these because occasionally my body loses my hands and has no idea where they went and it's safer for me. But I can't tell you how nice they are even when my body knows where my hands are, ha; they speed up prep, keep your fingers safe (usually), and leave more room for the brain to do its thing.

Third: Make as many lists as you can! I have a list on the inside of all my pantry doors of the staples that are in that section. When something needs refilling it allows me to put a mark there so I know to put it on the grocery list. But it also provides a quick reference when my brain's tired; it's so much easier for me to read a list than try and decipher box labels with various colors, font sizes, etc. Make lists wherever you need them and always keep them accessible.

Fourth: The recipe box. Yes. A good, old fashioned, classic recipe box. I have mine filled with tried and true recipes that I know for a fact my Husband and I love, that I know we have at least 90% of the ingredients on hand for at any given moment. So if all else fails and I can't think of anything? I can just go pull something out of the box and have him jot down to the store for anything we don't have.

Fifth: Keep easy meals on stock, because some days you really can't cook. Your brain won't let you, and that's ok! That's fine! But you still gotta eat, right? So we keep stuff like bagged Blackened Chicken Alfredo, Dirty Rice, Mongolian Beef, Jambalaya, Broccoli Beef, Red Beans & Rice, etc, on hand in the outdoor fridge. If at any point I just can't do it? We grab some of those instead.

And the good news is, you can spruce up a quick meal! Making Dirty Rice? Throw in some bread and butter, and a side of boiled Green Beans from the garden. Blackened Chicken Alfredo? Throw some Bell Pepper on in there; you can bulk this stuff up easily with your produce, and it takes even less effort most of the time.

As for the Covid sense of taste / smell? Keep trucking. It does get better; I suffered bad from Post-Covid Parosmia for nearly 2 years after I caught Covid the first time- bad enough to the point I couldn't bathe myself because of the smell of our water being nauseating to me; couldn't eat anything with Corn, or Wheat, or Onion, or Garlic in it for a year, either. the second I tried, my body auto rejected it. Bananas tastes like Iris flowers smelt ... I feel your pain so hard.

But it does get better. Your system is just rewiring itself completely from scratch right now. And Lord, it's so unpleasant. But the more you give it to taste, and smell, the better it does and the faster it rewires itself. Don't force yourself to eat things that are nauseating or unpleasant. But do branch out. Experiment. Even if it tastes left of how you remember it, keep going! I can't promise you'll get everything back (Lord knows there's still some things that aren't quite right for me, even 4 years later now). But it gets better!

I hope any of this helps- even if it's not as helpful if you'd like it to be. Hang in there, love.

[navree]

I like your take on Daenaera but I still don't have much thoughts on the aegon and jaehaera thing. To me if she lived I just think Aegon will keep a marriage only in name with her. He respect her as Queen but won't have much emotional connection with her. Cuz based on canon: it's very doubtful that she can actually have the concept of consent when she was cognitively 4 when she was 8. Neither did she show much ability to bond with people after the dance (aegon did tho). That's even a hard thing for me to ship compared to Aegon and Daenaera's 7 year old gap

Yeah, that's also been what trips me up on Jaehaera sometimes, which is that the way she's coded is meant to hint to a pretty severe developmental delay that does signify a bigger developmental disability. I'm pretty sure that was just there on Martin's part to make sure people didn't get attached to Jaehaera or her relationships with people like Aegon before killing her off (since I think he was doing a bit of backfilling, since Daenaera and Aegon III as the couple who produced children and reigned together was set in stone before he got into the minutia of the Dance and created the twins and then had to figure out a way to end the Dance concretely), especially considering how sloppily it's handled compared to disabilities like Tyrion's dwarfism and Bran's paralysis in the main series, though that may be because those are physical disabilities rather than mental. And Jaehaera being half her age mentally is something to note, four is incredibly differently, cognitively and developmentally, from eight, especially when Aegon was already older than her by three years, and would have impeded their connection in the short amount of time they had.

But I do also want to note that, because F&B is vague by design and Jaehaera died young and pretty early in Aegon's reign, we don't actually know if her issues were going to be permanent and severe. Jaehaera went through a lot in the Dance, beyond all the deaths of her family members and living through two armed invasions of KL, which is always gonna be scary for a kid, we really can't overstate how traumatic Blood and Cheese would have been for her. She's, like, six, and men break into her home to commit various acts of violence against her grandmother, her mother, her siblings, and her. It's not just that Jaehaera saw her own twin, someone she's never lived her life without, be beheaded by intruders, which would be incredibly traumatic in and of itself, or saw her mother and grandmother both in a state of emotional collapse that would be very distressing for a child, Blood and Cheese also threaten her specifically. At six years old, grown men tell Jaehaera that they are going to rape her unless her mom picks which of her brother's is going to die. In a time and place where she has no space or tools to process all the incredible traumas of that night, or having to later deal with Helaena's breakdown and not even being able to have the comfort of her mother, and likely very little comfort from her father who is first actively participating in a wara nd then later has a long convalescence following Rook's Rest, of course Jaehaera was going to regress. Aenys went back to acting like an infant after the trauma of just learning about his mother's death at age three, it's entirely reasonable Jaehaera went through something similar. The brain is a funny thing, and how trauma affects it is also a funny thing.

I do thing that Jaehaera was neurodivergent, while the severity of her mental condition seems to have only been noted during/after the Dance, even as a kid she's noted as not having expressed emotions the way you typically see from children, and I think that's generally seen as an early indicator of autism by the medical community today. So I'd feel comfortable headcanoning Jaehaera as autistic, likely more severe on the spectrum than Helaena is coded as being in the show, and I know that a lot of people do headcanon her that same way. So in my view, I'd attribute Jaehaera's mental state as a trauma response to the horrors she had to go through at such an early age, and if she had lived longer than the age of ten, it's entirely possible she would have improved and healed.

And with respect to the Aegon/Jaehaera/Daenaera throuple AU that's at the heart of this for me, I'd follow it on those lines, and that's part of what I talked about when discussing how Jaehaera and Daenaera would forge a connection first. Jaehaera's mental issues come not just from her neurodivergency but from her trauma and her inability to deal with that, so having her socialize with someone who, while she too has known grief and strife, has not been through anywhere near the same crucible as Jaehaera, is helpful developmentally. Bonding with Daenaera, and especially Daenaera because of her known traits of being sweet and bright and easy to get along with, would go a long way to helping Jaehaera in a world where mental health counseling and therapy and psychiatry aren't a thing. And that in turn can help lead her to bond with Aegon, who clearly wanted to connect with people but also had a boat load of issues, and as they grow older it turns into something more romantic, along with the romantic feelings springing up with Aegon and Daenaera and Jaehaera and Daenaera too. I'd have Jaehaera certainly be autistic, as mentioned, likely blunt and unaware of social cues and perhaps with a tendency to put her foot in her mouth or fail to follow social norms as a result, since she's described as "sweet and simple" in the text. That's kinda one of the things at the heart of this AU, that the Dance left a lot of young children lonely and lacking in connection that they desperately need, and how those children might grow and develop and blossom if they find that connection, in spite of the sins and rivalries of their parents (the Greens v Blacks, obviously, but also the mistreatment of the Velaryons on both sides and those loyalty switches).

But I'm also glad you like my Daenaera take anon! She's pookie to me, sometimes characters just speak to you without you even knowing why, and she's definitely like that for me, and I'm glad people enjoy the vibes I'm trying to bring.

[illnessfaker]

this is why i hate discussions around accessibility (in terms of cognitive ability and reading comprehension) when it comes to reading theory because so many people seem to be under the impression that the only issue with "jargon" (though this person is correct in the quoted text not containing a lot of jargon, imo the issue in terms of cognitive accessibility is how the sentence structure is done in such a way that lacks clarity and conciseness. i would say it's done that way on purpose to appeal to a reader's emotions in order to aid making a convincing argument - which isn't a bad thing, but the way that it's written definitely doesn't make it especially easy for everyone to understand!) is not googling words. because googling or otherwise looking up the definition of a word = understanding what it means and its functions within a text. i have a higher than average vocabulary and reading/writing ability and that's not even true for me, less so for people with more significant impairments in cognition and reading comprehension. if someone asked me to explain what the hell "ontological" means i would ask them if i could chew glass instead.

( cw: child rape, colonialism. )

this is a paragraph populated with commas and semicolons with one (1) period happening at the end. it's really not rocket science to figure out why this might be confusing or impossible to digest in its raw form for people with cognitive and reading comprehension impairments. it's even hard for me to follow. this doesn't mean that the writing is bad or that it's ableist but so many leftists (not the op of this post, mind you) just do not seem to care about what disabled people are talking about in terms of leftist theory having an accessibility issue in terms of understanding what it's even saying. this doesn't mean that theory needs to be written differently or that theorists like césaire need to adjust their writing style to make it more simplistic and easier to digest for wider audiences - he is clearly evoking the horrors of colonialism here and the way he has structured his prose follows that feeling - but that leftists who can understand this stuff w/o much issue can't just say "more people need to read theory" or imply people who struggle with understanding theoretical texts just aren't trying hard enough and leave it at that lol.

[compassionatereminders]

Hi Kat! I hope you have a great trip to japan! (I just got home from vacation, but I got a bad cold and even though it was a good vacation it was also hard being sick/still being sick. So I hope you won’t get sick while in japan!)

I wanted to ask you about your disability if it’s okay? I have seen you write how you need assistance to take public transportation and making phone calls and stuff, but you don’t say how you need help. If it’s because you want to keep it private, then I understand. But I have a hard time imagining different ways one could need help with things like these without thinking very black and white (no help or full on needing all the help) and if you would give some examples maybe I can understand better and learn?

I need help because I am cognitively disabled. To use the example of traveling and navigating public spaces, my issue is that I am too cognitively impaired to understand and navigate public transport systems, drive, read a map, follow directions and remember routes. So I need someone with me to show me the way and tell me what to do or I'll be unable to figure it out.

[the-void-and-the-mirror]

Dear reader,

I need to scream somewhere, as I try to regain my footing. My head has been very loud about things lately. And try as I might to keep improving and find a way to get through it, I'm feeling very, very low lately. I'm not in danger of harming myself, and I have no desire to. But holy cow, I am T I R E D. Lately, I've been feeling like a massive failure. I keep making mistakes, and it feels like it's been back-to-back for some time. And this has put me in a Hell of a pit where I'm almost always feeling sad. I'm always overwhelmed.

I'm always, always seeking distractions.

And I have a magical ability to both face my problems head-on and run away from them simultaneously. I'm doing my best, I truly am. And it makes my perceived failures that much more painful. I've been mentally screaming for help for some time, without any idea what kind of help I need. And I realised today that when I start feeling like my world is crumbling, I've always faced it on my own. Terrified that my internal hells were always too much for anyone else to handle and to lose those I care about by extension if I let them in. I did the bravest thing I could this morning and trusted my boyfriend with it. And he's so supportive. He didn't look at me weird, he said he loved and supported me, and promises me I'm not a failure, even with all of my slip-ups. God, I love him so much. I'm glad I reached out to him. But holy cow, I had to write it, because I can't seem to make myself speak when I'm having problems.

But I got it out.

I got it out that I needed his help. Shortly after I had written it out for him, I had come to my own conclusion that perhaps I was some kind of overwhelmed. Which simultaneously gave me some kind of ease and yet made me feel silly that my brain was being this dramatic over being overwhelmed.

He reached that conclusion too, on his own, so it confirmed that was probably what it was. Apparently, it's called Cognitive Fatigue. And boy, oh boy, does Generalised Anxiety Disorder really like to contribute to it. But yea, I've basically pushed myself through stress past the points of hallucinations, dissociations, derealisations, to the point that I'm just constantly internally screaming and wanting someplace to just hide.

And I've been trying so hard to figure out what I'm supposed to do, who I'm supposed to be. I keep wanting to be a better person, to help people, and find my place in this world with a job that will make me truly happy. And I sat down with myself after getting this recreational activity coach job. Ready to decide how I'm going to progress with this school thing, to decide to become a school counsellor, and....

I couldn't do it. It didn't feel right...

Everything I've fought so hard to get a handle on, and I decide it's not the path for me. And I hate it. I hate that I can't find a road to devote myself to so I can continue to grow and help others. And it just crashes down on me. I'm so terrified that there's so much wrong with me that I can't get a job. Or, at least, not one that I like. I can work as a cashier, but so many jobs just let me go because of my sensory processing disorder that makes me wear large clothes. Or so many places have diffusers that I'm allergic to and cause me so much pain. Or the only places that want me for my credentials are places that torture others.

I'm very against ABA, for example. Or charter schools, because I'm transmasc and I will not support your actions against my community, much less your disrespect.

And none of my disabilities make me disabled enough to claim disability. Because I can still work jobs that make me miserable. So it makes me terrified. What can I do in my situation, y'know?

And maybe it's just so traumatising right now because I'm at some kind of crossroads in my life. If being a school counselor no longer feels like the right path, what will?

Back before my traumas, I very much wanted to be a hero, to save everyone on this world. It was a dream since childhood. How would I accomplish that? At first, it was to be a rocket scientist and create the rocket ship that would take us to another earth. But as I got older, that changed. I wanted to change the world. I wanted to make a real difference, somehow, some way. And after my traumas, there's been a massive disconnect there. I've tried to reconnect with that dream, with that feeling of caring for others in such a strong way. But I can't reconnect with others like I used to. I'm so heavily jaded.

And while I can connect one-on-one with people like I do with life coaching, it can still be extremely difficult. My willingness to get in the hole with someone that is suffering to show them that they aren't alone is very much lacking. I have a muscle memory of empathy, but I don't feel it like I used to. And I'd been essentially comfortable that way, settling with other paths of similarity, deciding that my way to make a difference is to do something like counselling. Because it's technically saving the world, right? It's saving others' worlds.

But I know it doesn't connect the same.

And I feel like, I need to reconnect with that, somehow. Like it was such a core piece of my being, that without it... maybe I can't be happy. But I don't want to gain it back just to get hurt so badly again. Truly trusting in the best in others only for them to be abusive people that take advantage of that trust and use it against me. But it's a piece I keep looking at, and trying to cope with the it's probably gone forever and I'll make it work that way problem. Because I know trauma can effectively change you. I know it can be impossible to go back to who you were before.

I thought I was being silly longing for a piece I might never get back... I thought it would come back on its own, if it truly was mine, if I just continued to heal. But I truly think... it's what's impacting my life the most, if nothing else feels right. But just how in the hell is someone supposed to save the world? It never sounds practical. And any practical twist I've ever thrown at it never feels right. I haven't found a way to make that difference.

I'm just one person.

And even though every change started with "just one person", I can't think of a single thing I could contribute that would be different than what others have done before me. And I just don't know what to do. It's a silly little kid's dream, to save the world like some comic book hero. I dunno. I think about it a lot. Despite all my efforts to keep it practical, applicable to real life, and not just some weird fantasy. And then a friend told me, as I vented all of this, "What you can do to save worlds, individual ones even if not the big one? This. What you are doing now. But on a different scale. What you do to save the world, to help others... it does not have to be tied to your career/job.

"Right now so many people are struggling. The same way you are right now. And one of the things they need most to start finding some hope... is to know they aren't alone. They aren't broken in ways no one can help. Write. Write this. Write about what you are going through.

"You talked about counsellor not quite being right. But this can help the same way, for so many people you may never meet. Write blogs, or books, or however, but get it out there. How you feel. What helps when it helps, when it stops helping. Let others who can't reach out for help know they aren't alone. "I hate the "Smile, you never know who is falling in love with your smile" nonsense. But I do love a variant on it... Speak when you can. Share your journey when you can. Because you never know when someone is saved by your words." And so, I made a blog. And so my journey begins here. I offer this page to you, dear reader, in the hope that my experiences help you in some way, to feel like you are not alone, and to feel like you can have hope in it. I'm here. Please stay as long as you like.

[foureyes802]

actually briefly mentioned this in a discord call but if it were necessary and i had time to do some actual research on it i could probably put together like, a coherent essay on cartoon planet and brak. because on a literal, dictionary-definition level, brak is disabled. but on the writers' side, their intention was not to create a disabled character; they were trying to justify the drastic difference in his personality between the original 60's show and the 90's reboot, and what they settled on was that he had been exposed to an extreme level of cosmic radiation such that he (in their words) "fell asleep and woke up stupid". you're certainly not supposed to think about this very hard, and even after establishing this fact i can't imagine it was out of conscious disdain for disabled people–or even the character himself–that brak had the role he did in the franchise. (if they were intentionally making him disabled, surely they would have handled him worse.) still, i keep coming back to it, and i'm wondering whether my own bias as somebody who's just started to really love these shows is causing me to write it off as less bad than it is. in essence, the unique way brak is handled as an explicitly disabled character who was never consciously thought of as such in the writers' room leads to a really bizarre, and at least to me, very unique relationship with ableist stereotypes. however, i'd have to do more digging on the ways mid-90's media treated textually disabled vs. disabled-coded characters in order to more confidently figure out brak's place on that spectrum: respectful vs offensive, subversive vs stereotypical, funny vs in poor taste. that would influence how i feel about him in 2022; if he's indeed supposed to be a deliberate caricature of cognitive disability, that's pretty cut-and-dry bad. but if not, there's suddenly a surprising amount of room for nuance. and this of course hearkens to much broader questions about comedy; is it possible to write a "stupid" character without being implicitly ableist? and could it be OK for these characters to exist regardless? is it always "that deep", or can we allow (up to a certain point) more wiggle-room in comedy for tropes and traits that wouldn't fly in more serious genres? obviously i don't have easy answers for these, nor do i expect them from anybody reading this, but i do think there's merit to considering stuff like this even when casually consuming media, or when consuming older things that don't necessarily align with modern sensibilities. and lord knows i've been doing both!

[ganymedesclock]

These are questions I've had for some while and it's hard to find someone who'll answer with grace. This mostly relates to disabilities (mental or physical) in fiction.

1) What makes a portrayal of a disability that's harming the character in question ableist?

2) Is there a way to write a disabled villain in a way that isn't ableist?

In the circles I've been in, the common conceptions are you can't use a character's disability as a plot point or showcase it being a hindrance in some manner. heaven forbid you make your villain disabled in some capacity, that's a freaking death sentence to a creative's image. I understand historically villains were the only characters given disabilities, but (and this is my personal experience) I've not seen as many disabled villains nowadays, heck, I see more disabled heroes in media nowadays.

Sorry if this comes off as abrasive, I'd really like to be informed for future media consumption and my own creative endeavors.

Okay so the first thing I'm going to say is that while it IS a good idea to talk to disabled people and get their feedback, disabled people are not a monolith and they aren't going to all have the same take on how this goes.

My personal take is biased in favor that I'm a neurodivergent person (ADHD and autism) who has no real experience with physical disabilities, so I won't speak for physically disabled people- heck, I won't even speak for every neurotype. Like I say, people aren't a monolith.

For myself and my own writing of disabled characters, here's a couple of concepts I stick by:

Research is your friend

Think about broad conventions of ableism

Be mindful of cast composition

1. Research is your friend

Yeah this is the thing everybody says, so here's the main bases I try to cover:

What's the story on this character's disability?

Less in terms of 'tragic angst' and more, what kind of condition this is- because a congenital amputee (that is to say, someone who was born without a limb) will have a different relationship to said limb absence than someone who lost their limb years ago to someone who lost their limb yesterday. How did people in their life respond to it, and how did they respond to it? These responses are not "natural" and will not be the same to every person with every worldview. This can also be a great environment to do worldbuilding in! Think about the movie (and the tv series) How To Train Your Dragon. The vikings in that setting don't have access to modern medicine, and they're, well, literally fighting dragons and other vikings. The instance of disability is high, and the medical terminology to talk about said disabilities is fairly lackluster- but in a context where you need every man you possibly can to avoid the winter, the mindset is going to be not necessarily very correct, but egalitarian. You live in a village of twenty people and know a guy who took a nasty blow to the head and hasn't quite been the same ever since? "Traumatic Brain Injury" is probably not going to be on your lips, but you're also probably going to just make whatever peace you need to and figure out how to accommodate Old Byron for his occasional inability to find the right word, stammers and trembles. In this example, there are several relevant pieces of information- what the character's disability is (aphasia), how they got it (brain injury), and the culture and climate around it (every man has to work, and we can't make more men or throw them away very easily, so, how can we make sure this person can work even if we don't know what's wrong with them)

And that dovetails into:

What's the real history, and modern understandings, of this?

This is where "knowing the story" helps a lot. To keep positing our hypothetical viking with a brain injury, I can look into brain injuries, what affects their extent and prognosis, and maybe even beliefs about this from the time period and setting I'm thinking of (because people have had brains, and brain injuries, the entire time!) Sure, if the setting is fantastical, I have wiggle room, but looking at inspirations might give me a guide post.

Having a name for your disorder also lets you look for posts made by specific people who live with the condition talking about their lives. This is super, super important for conditions stereotyped as really scary, like schizophrenia or narcissistic personality disorder. Even if you already know "schizophrenic people are real and normal" it's still a good thing to wake yourself up and connect with others.

2. Think about broad conventions of ableism

It CAN seem very daunting or intimidating to stay ahead of every single possible condition that could affect someone's body and mind and the specific stereotypes to avoid- there's a lot under the vast umbrella of human experience and we're learning more all the time! A good hallmark is, ableism has a few broad tendencies, and when you see those tendencies rear their head, in your own thinking or in accounts you read by others, it's good to put your skeptical glasses on and look closer. Here's a few that I tend to watch out for:

Failing the “heartwarming dog” test

This was a piece of sage wisdom that passed my eyeballs, became accepted as sage wisdom, and my brain magnificently failed to recall where I saw it. Basically, if you could replace your disabled character with a lovable pet who might need a procedure to save them, and it wouldn’t change the plot, that’s something to look into.

Disability activists speak often about infantilization, and this is a big thing of what they mean- a lot of casual ableism considers disabled people as basically belonging to, or being a burden onto, the able-bodied and neurotypical. This doesn’t necessarily even need to have an able neurotypical in the picture- a personal experience I had that was extremely hurtful was at a point in high school, I decided to do some research on autism for a school project. As an autistic teenager looking up resources online, I was very upset to realize that every single resource I accessed at the time presumed it was talking to a neurotypical parent about their helpless autistic child. I was looking for resources to myself, yet made to feel like I was the subject in a conversation.

Likewise, many wheelchair users have relayed the experience of, when they, in their chair, are in an environment accompanied by someone else who isn’t using a chair, strangers would speak to the standing person exclusively, avoiding addressing the chair user. 

It’s important to always remind yourself that at no point do disabled people stop being people. Yes, even people who have facial deformities; yes, even people who need help using the bathroom; yes, even people who drool; yes, even people whose conditions impact their ability to communicate, yes, even people with cognitive disabilities. They are people, they deserve dignity, and they are not “a child trapped in a 27-year-old body”- a disabled adult is still an adult. All of the “trying to learn the right rules” in the world won’t save you if you keep an underlying fear of non-normative bodies and minds.

This also has a modest overlap between disability and sexuality in particular. I am an autistic grayromantic ace. Absolutely none of my choices or inclinations about sex are because I’m too naive or innocent or childlike to comprehend the notion- disabled people have as diverse a relationship with sexuality as any other. That underlying fear- as mentioned before- can prevent many people from imagining that, say, a wheelchair user might enjoy sex and have experience with it. Make sure all of your disabled characters have full internal worlds.

Poor sickly little Tiffany and the Red Right Hand

A big part of fictional ableism is that it separates the disabled into two categories. Anybody who’s used TVTropes would recognize the latter term I used here. But to keep it brief:

Poor, sickly little Tiffany is cute. Vulnerable. How her disability affects her life is that it constantly creates a pall of suffering that she lives beneath. After all, having a non-normative mind or body must be an endless cavalcade of suffering and tragedy, right? People who are disabled clearly spend their every waking moment affected by, and upset, that they aren’t normal!

The answer is... No, actually. Cut the sad violin; even people who have chronic pain who are literally experiencing pain a lot more than the rest of us are still fully capable of living complex lives and being happy. If nothing else, it would be literally boring to feel nothing but awful, and people with major depression or other problems still, also, have complicated experiences. And yes, some of it’s not great. You don’t have to present every disability as disingenuously a joy to have. But make a point that they own these things. It is a very different feeling to have a concerned father looking through the window at his angel-faced daughter rocking sadly in her wheelchair while she stares longingly out the window, compared to a character waking up at midnight because they have to go do something and frustratedly hauling their body out of their bed into their chair to get going.

Poor Sickly Little Tiffany (PSLT, if you will) virtually always are young, and they virtually always are bound to the problems listed under ‘failing the heartwarming dog’ test. Yes, disabled kids exist, but the point I’m making here is that in the duality of the most widely accepted disabled characters, PSLT embodies the nadir of the Victim, who is so pure, so saintly, so gracious, that it can only be a cruel quirk of fate that she’s suffering. After all, it’s not as if disabled people have the same dignity that any neurotypical and able-bodied person has, where they can be an asshole and still expect other people to not seriously attack their quality of life- it’s a “service” for the neurotypical and able-bodied to “humor” them.

(this is a bad way to think. Either human lives matter or they don’t. There is no “wretched half-experience” here- if you wouldn’t bodily grab and yank around a person standing on their own feet, you have no business grabbing another person’s wheelchair)

On the opposite end- and relevant to your question- is the Red Right Hand. The Red Right Hand does not have PSLT’s innocence or “purity”- is the opposite extreme. The Red Right Hand is virtually always visually deformed, and framed as threatening for their visual deformity. To pick on a movie I like a fair amount, think about how in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the title character is described- “Strong. Fast. Had a metal arm.” That’s a subtle example, but, think about how that metal arm is menacing. Sure, it’s a high tech weapon in a superhero genre- but who has the metal arm? The Winter Soldier, who is, while a tormented figure that ultimately becomes more heroic- scary. Aggressive. Out for blood.

The man who walks at midnight with a Red Right Hand is a signal to us that his character is foul because of the twisting of his body. A good person, we are led to believe, would not be so- or a good person would be ashamed of their deformity and work to hide it. The Red Right Hand is not merely “an evil disabled person”- they are a disabled person whose disability is depicted as symptomatic of their evil, twisted nature, and when you pair this trope with PSLT, it sends a message: “stay in your place, disabled people. Be sad, be consumable, and let us push you around and decide what to do with you. If you get uppity, if you have ideas, if you stand up to us, then the thing that made you a helpless little victim will suddenly make you a horrible monster, and justify us handling you with inhumanity.”

As someone who is a BIG fan of eldritch horror and many forms of unsettling “wrongness” it is extremely important to watch out for the Red Right Hand. Be careful how you talk about Villainous Disability- there is no connection between disability and morality. People will be good, bad, or simply just people entirely separate from their status of ability or disability. It’s just as ableist to depict every disabled person as an innocent good soul as it is to exclusively deal in grim and ghastly monsters.

Don’t justify disabilities and don’t destroy them.

Superpowers are cool. Characters can and IMO should have superpowers, as long as you’re writing a genre when they’re there.

BUT.

It’s important to remember that there is no justification for disabilities, because they don’t need one. Disability is simply a feature characters have. You do not need to go “they’re blind, BUT they can see the future”

This is admittedly shaky, and people can argue either way; the Blind Seer is a very pronounced mythological figure and an interesting philosophical point about what truly matters in the world. There’s a reason it exists as a conceit. But if every blind character is blind in a way that completely negates that disability or makes it meaningless- this sucks. People have been blind since the dawn of time. And people will always accommodate their disabilities in different ways. Even if the technology exists to fix some forms of blindness, there are people who will have “fixable” blindness and refuse to treat it. There will be individuals born blind who have no meaningful desire to modify this. And there are some people whose condition will be inoperable even if it “shouldn’t” be.

You don’t need to make your disabled characters excessively cool, or give them a means by which the audience can totally forget they’re disabled. Again, this is a place where strong worldbuilding is your buddy- a handwave of “x technology fixed all disabilities”, in my opinion, will never come off good. If, instead, however, you throw out a careless detail that the cool girl the main character is chatting up in a cyberpunk bar has an obvious spinal modification, and feature other characters with prosthetics and without- I will like your work a lot, actually. Even if you’re handing out a fictional “cure”- show the seams. Make it have drawbacks and pros and cons. A great example of this is in the series Full Metal Alchemist- the main character has two prosthetic limbs, and not only do these limbs come with problems, some mundane (he has phantom limb pains, and has to deal with outgrowing his prostheses or damaging them in combat) some more fantastical (these artificial limbs are connected to his nerves to function fluidly- which means that they get surgically installed with no anesthesia and hurt like fuck plugging in- and they require master engineering to stay in shape). We explicitly see a scene of the experts responsible for said limbs talking to a man who uses an ordinary prosthetic leg, despite the advantages of an automail limb, because these drawbacks are daunting to him and he is happier with a simple prosthetic leg.

Even in mundane accommodations you didn’t make up- no two wheelchair users use their chair the exact same way, and there’s a huge diversity of chairs. Someone might be legally blind but still navigate confidently on their own; they might use a guide dog, or they might use a cane. They might even change their needs from situation to situation!

Disability accommodations are part of life

This ties in heavily to the previous point, but seriously! Don’t just look up one model of cane and superimpose it with no modifications onto your character- think about what their lifestyle is, and what kind of person they are!

Also medication is not the devil. Yes, medical abuse is real and tragic and the medication is not magic fairy dust that solves all problems either. But also, it’s straight ableism to act like anybody needing pills for any reason is a scary edgy plot twist. 

(and addiction is a disease. Please be careful, and moreover be compassionate, if you’re writing a character who’s an addict)

3. Be mindful of cast composition

This, to me, is a big tip about disability writing and it’s also super easy to implement!

Just make sure your cast has a lot of meaningful disabled characters in it!

Have you done all the work you can to try and dodge the Red Right Hand but you’re still worried your disabled villain is a bad look? They sure won’t look like a commentary on disability if three other people in the cast are disabled and don’t have the same outlook or role! Worried that you’re PSLT-ing your main character’s disabled child? Maybe the disability is hereditary and they got it from the main character!

The more disabled characters you have, the more it will challenge you to think about what their individual relationship is with the world and the less you’ll rely on hackneyed tropes. At least, ideally.

-

Ultimately, there’s no perfect silver bullet of diversity writing that will prevent a work from EVER being ableist, but I hope this helped, at least!

[simonalkenmayer]

Hi Simon(e).

I wanted to write in because I haven’t before and since you’re ending things I guess it’s time to say something (I did surveys too) I really like your blog and the whole experiment really. I follow all your socials and it’s nice to see you pop up in my feeds. I wanted to say a couple things really.

I feel like people who dislike you (I’m talking mostly about haters who spend time on it) really just don’t get it? For sure they don’t. I’ve read their stuff and it just seems all over the place and mostly designed to just call you some loaded term they know is going to make people dislike you? It doesn’t makes any sense to me as in how they’re thinking when they say what they’re saying.

I always read everything you write as being dryer than a desert and pretty sarcastic, and that seems to match up to my understanding once I’ve read the whole thing. Idk it just seems like they’re working at not reading anything the right way and misinterpreting you, but then like expecting you to read their minds because they don’t say what they think to you. Then when you cross the invisible line they draw it’s like they jump on you and say “see! I told you he was mean”

I don’t think you’re mean. I don’t know if I think you’re really what you say but I know that’s the point. I don’t mind it either. It’s fun and you really do stand by that healthy safe and learning thing. I always feel like you’re trying to make a place for me to be healthy and safe and learn something cool. Mostly about history and bees but yeah.

I’m sending this in an ask because I can’t help but think that maybe they have some kind of cognitive issue and they’re just not hearing you right? Maybe idk. It seems like a bunch of your readers have all kinds of ND and cognitive stuff and they do ok. I’m autistic. I do ok. I don’t understand their problem with you and why they spend so much of their time trying to convince the world you’re like the Antichrist or something.

In my head you’re the funny dude from tumblr who is the only reason I come here and to me that’s enough, but maybe some people wanted you to be more than that? Or maybe they thought that’s what you were trying for and you failed in their mind? Idk I’m having a lot of trouble getting it at all. Like even some of the recent stuff. This whole thing with that hate blogger. I get why you posted that picture, it was a hypocrisy call out. He could have ignored it since you didn’t put anything with it, but he didn’t and that’s kind of on him? Him going so far as to say he’s not a part of the culture? When I read what you wrote about indigenous people it really seems like you get the idea of closed practices and cultural appropriation so knowing you feel that way, it makes complete sense why you’d tell him he can’t claim to be indigenous if he isn’t part of the culture and gets benefits from being white. It makes sense to me. Even if I disagreed with you I’d still come to you first and say that maybe I think of it differentlly. I’d want a conversation about it because you always seem like you’re willing to listen. I just feel like they want to be angry with you and I can’t figure out why so I say to myself that it has to be because they wanted something and you’re not delivering on it?

I think when they really lost me was when they started being nice to like the stalker person and all the people who were bullying you for talking about how some narcissists are abusive. Duh? Literally their way of dealing with people a lot of times comes across in really hurtful ways so yeah? My mom was a narcissist diagnosed and she was abusive. She didn’t care about my disability. She did all the things you talked about. She basically controlled everything by putting us down and idk just being vindictive. For me is really nice to hear someone say aloud that narcissists can be hard on people and that the only way they can change is to admit there’s a problem? They don’t stop otherwise. Even when my mom was diagnosed she didn’t stop until my brother tried to unalive himself and told his therapist about how she treated us. She’s trying now because we threatened not to talk to her, but I know it’s hard for her to do things in a different way, but she’s trying. She basically had to learn to say to herself that the thoughts she was having about herself and everything weren’t accurate and then trick herself into being ok. It’s taken her a lot of work to be able to say that how she treated us was wrong and that she will do better because like you said she automatically feels like that’s blame being thrown at her and if she admits she was wrong she’s weak or something. Like that’s the whole idea. They can’t be gentle to people if they can’t say there is a problem, and since they can’t admit being wrong ever like their actual condition makes it impossible for them to get better or be kinder. That’s just me though and my life.

I like all the stuff you say about how people work in groups and how their behavior changes and how the group falls apart makes a lot of sense. Is there a book or something I can read that will talk about it more?

Thanks for being kind and for listening to people. Sorry if this ask is long and bothers you but you always say we aren’t bothering you so I hope it’s ok.

-Hailey

I’ll speak on this briefly and only once for the purposes of loose ends

It’s obvious to me they have a number of reasons to dislike me. And yes, many of them are internal to them and incongruous with the rest of the world. Yes, they look for any and all reason to find fault. Yes, they purposefully misread and spend hours and thousands of words doing so. Yes, they clearly want something from me I don’t provide. Yes, they clearly believe I had some grandiose idea about how this was meant to operate and keep trying to cut off bits of me to make it fit that preconception. Yes, they clearly think I intend to be here to create a following of some kind for a variety of purposes that don’t match anything I’ve said or done. Yes they refuse to hear me or anyone else who tries to explain to them what I actually am and actually am doing here. No, I do not believe there to be any cognitive issue, though they exhibit narcissistic behaviors. Yes, their behavior concerns me, not just because of what they’re doing to themselves but also what they’re creating on the platform. The truth is that there are many people like that and this platform relies on them, and so won’t police them. Drama boosts revenue. That’s why I am no longer going to speak on them or their issues. They will get no more space, no mentions, no addresses. Not one thing from me, because I do not care about them at all, and they are finished using my platform to gain likes and boost tumblr revenue or their own agenda of blanket self-gratifying abusive behavior.

As for how I’ve affected you or spoken for you, I’m glad to have been of service. Yes I am very dry and sarcastic. Very. And your habit of reading me as such is appropriate. Where it fails is when I’m being sincere, which is often obvious because I tend to alter how I speak a bit. I hope that’s clear. Seems to be.

As for the book I’d recommend on Group Dynamics, one of the best texts I’ve found as a sort of introduction to the subject is “Group Dynamics” by Forsyth. It’s a text book. Very approachable.

[echo-bleu]

hello! I saw one of your previous asks and I was wondering if I could ask you for some writing help too! I have an autistic character that i love, but I'm not sure how to convey that this character is autistic in a way that feel aunthentic and organic instead of stereotyped, specially since she's a girl and I haven't seen many (accurate) representations of autistic girls in the media. I've seen videos about autistic people and they've been very helpful on what not to do, but + I would still love

to get some of the 'do's' what i have so far is that she has a Fixation on the sea, she has a hard time reading sarcasm and/or emotions in others, and she has an overall seemingly 'detached' personality (even if I wouldn't call her that, since she cares about the people she loves, she's just bad at putting it into words). I jsut want to make sure i'm on the right path! thank you so much for listening and I hope this is not a bother!

Hi Anon! I’m not bothered at all and I’m happy to answer this kind of ask. As always, I can only speak for myself, but I’ll try to give you a few pointers. (The previous ask mentioned is this one.)

First, it’s lovely to hear about an autistic girl! I’m not sure if you’re speaking about an adult or a child/teenager, but either way, it can be interesting to read about how autism can look a bit different in women. The gender distinction that has often been made is something I don’t agree with because I feel that it’s an unnecessary shortcut, but a number of autistic people, in majority women and people socially perceived as female, learn to “adapt” more to neurotypical standards by masking their autistic traits a lot, and might not be detected as autistic until adulthood. Masking takes a lot of energy, which can translate as feeling “socially exhausted” all the time and lead to burnout. This article list traits that can be found that are less common and obvious. It is far from perfect imo, but it can give you new ideas!

You didn’t really say if your character is a main or a side character (which changes the amount of detail you’ll want to go into) but so far to me you seem to be on the right track! Having a hard time reading people is something a lot of us struggle with. It might not just be sarcasm, btw, understanding metaphors and jokes can also be hard. That doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have a sense of humor: it’s entirely possible to be able to use sarcasm and struggle with noticing it when it comes from other people, and a lot of autistic people have a very developed and specific sense of humor that can be seen as odd.

The “detached” personality is something you may have to handle with care because lack of empathy is a harmful stereotype. Maybe look up the difference between cognitive and affective empathy. Some of us do struggle with empathy, many of us struggle with expressing it in a way that’s comprehensible to neurotypicals, but it doesn’t mean that we lack it. It’s fine for your character to struggle with it, but be careful that she doesn’t end up seeming cold/robotic if she’s not the POV character.

Now for some “do’s”: I’m only going to talk about autistic traits here and assume that you’ve fleshed her out with an actual personality outside of her autism, just like you would any other character.

- I agree that it has to come up organically, but it would be a lot better in terms of representation to make her explicitly autistic, ie use the word autistic. It doesn’t have to be at the beginning of the story. If you’re in a fantasy setting or for some other reason you can’t use the actual word, then describing something like neurodiversity would be a good way to make it explicit. In fanfic, I personally think that tagging “autistic [character]” is enough if the fic is short(ish) and the word isn’t used in the story but the character’s autism is fairly clear, but in an original story, you don’t really have that possibility.

- Something I like to do when coming up with original autistic characters is to choose a few specific stims from them, that regularly come back in my descriptions. It falls under the same umbrella as choosing mannerisms, it gives characters their own specific flavor. You can choose a happy stim, a nervous stim and a bored stim, for example. Autistics stim a lot and in a lot of ways, but I think most of us have a few stims that come back often. It can be things like chewing on a toy/finger, flapping in a specific way, rocking on their heels, twirling hair, fidgeting with a toy or jewelry.

- Sensory differences. It’s also something that you can choose for your character: maybe she likes to listen to music very loudly, and often speak a little too loudly, or on the contrary she’s hyperacusic. She might wear sunglasses outside, or need lights on all the time. She might need subtitles to understand a movie, or be super distracted by sparkly things. She might not make eye contact, or make it too much, or seem to make it by looking somewhere close to the person’s eyes. She might find touch painful or difficult, or seek it constantly, or both (can depend on the moment, how tired she is, or if she trusts the person).

- Like I’ve said before, meltdowns/shutdowns are a delicate thing to portray if you’re not autistic yourself, but overloading can and does happen without going all the way to either of them. It’s actually fairly frequent, and happens when there is too much sensory (or emotional) stimuli at the same time or a too long day or something. From the inside, it can look like struggling to think, feeling like your skin is crawling, feeling like everything is too much, and struggling to initiate actions/figure out the steps to do something. From the outside, it can look like the person is rejecting touch, needs to isolate themself, is irritated, might struggle to speak/be very quiet. As long as the character isn’t mocked for their behavior, I think it’s something you can portray without too much risk.

- A specific interest about the sea is a nice idea! The sea is a very large subject, though, so she’ll probably have a predilection for some things. Is it water currents? Fish species? Underwater plants? Beaches? There’s a lot of options to choose from here.

- Maybe think about co-occuring conditions, because most of us have at least one. Some are very hard to distinguish from autism itself, like dyspraxia or ADHD, because they’re linked or similar to autistic traits. A lot of us are also disabled in some other way:  for example there’s a clear (though unexplained) link between autism and hyperflexibility, which can lead to joint pain, gut issues and chronic illnesses like EDS. Many of us have mental illnesses, growing up autistic in this world is honestly traumatizing and it’s hard to find autistics without some kind of C-PTSD or anxiety (on that subject, this post points out that the current diagnostic criteria can probably only diagnose traumatized autistic people anyway).

- A pretty good portrayal of an autistic girl (and to my knowledge the only one where the actor is also autistic) is Matilda in Everything’s Gonna be Okay. I didn’t actually watch until the end and I’ve been told the last episode isn’t great, but the start was pretty good. She’s a teenager, and at one point gets a girlfriend who is also autistic and has a service dog. In Elementary, while Sherlock is only autistic-coded, there is at one point (season 4 I believe) a recurring character named Fiona who I thought was a pretty good portrayal as well. She’s an adult, and she’s stereotypical in some ways but it’s better than most portrayals I’ve seen or read.

I would advise you to have a look through the blog @cripplecharacters. They answer asks about disabled characters, and I know they have answered a number of questions about autism and have at least one autistic mod. Their answers are usually very interesting!

[fragileizywriting]

they have to enroll the kids in school.

adrien refuses private tutors. no way. not only are they outdated, but he knows that none of them will treat their children correctly. he knows this with experience. sweet little emma will take the brunt of the disdain, and he can't let that happen to any of his children.

marinette comes up with the idea of a private school, then, definitely not one for humans because they age slower-- the three of them agree. a private school that caters to kissing their asses sounds like a perfect idea. they don't want to disappoint the royal family, after all.

they arrive. the walls are tall. there are beautiful roman columns that hold up the ceiling while walking in the front entrance of the school. marinette wonders, immediately, how it's possible to dust the columns-- only for hugo to voice the same thing. he's a momma's boy. and the only one of the three that can hear desires-- yet, anyway. louis is too young, apparently.

the charm on her necklace shields her from unwanted demons reading her desires. it's protective, just in case. adrien knows better than to let marinette wander around unprotected.

the woman who is guiding the tour asks if the "nanny" would like to see the employee routes. they all pause and stare at the woman guiding them.

she points to marinette.

"we are the best school in the kingdom," the woman nods politely. "please don't worry yourselves with your nanny. i can handle four cute little children while i take you on tour. please escort yourself to the luncheon."

jules is trying so hard not to laugh. she won't be going to school, but the idea of going to a new place does entertain her. even if she can't see it very well. adrien bristles-- luka's eyes widen-- the children all look confused.

marinette smiles. "of course." she looks down to emma, who's notorious for crying when this happens. "be good for your daddy's, okay? i'll be right back. you know what to do, right?"

she gives a wink. they understand. she's going to go looking for any succubi being mistreated. it's a common thing, unfortunately, to take advantage of a species that cares so much about young ones. succubi are nothing if not communal-- some demons may have figured that out.

"i'll go with her," jules sighs. "i'm not interested in a nanny-less school anyway."

"it's employees only, dear," the woman laughs, and jules blisters when a giant long skirt appears in front of her to stop her from going forward. she frowns at the tour guide, batting at her foot with Rosalind who she's hiding as a small cane. "my my, your majesty! such cute children you two have!"

"they're a handful," adrien mutters. he'll give the school the decency to sticking until the end of the tour to say he won't be letting his children come to this school.

"not to worry. we have all the accommodations for any disabilities. we pride ourselves in being inclusive. whether it be blindness, slow growth for their age, cognitive behavior, and-- yes-- we pride ourselves in being inclusive to succubi, too."

interesting. succubi being considered a disability. that's new. he shares a look with luka, who very much is thinking the same thing-- adrien's face is far too flat to hide the disapproval on his face.

alya is going to have a field day ripping this school to shreds in court.

the woman doesn't seem to notice the quietness, too busy watching emma and hugo run around the columns in a weird game of tag. even with all the ruffles in her dress, she's still able to keep up-- the bottom edge of her skirts are dirty and caked, and they love it. emma is always so happy running around. "is she... is the little princess yours, your majesty?"

"why wouldn't she be?"

"forgive me. that was impolite. she looks very much like your nanny-- i do not mean to imply infidelity... do you think it would be best to have her in this school?"

luka stops jules from arguing almost immediately.

"if she wants to go to this school, then she will," luka narrows his eyes, looking back up as he wrangles jules in his arms. to the woman, it is nothing more than father and daughter. jules is biting his finger. he's going to bleed. he's tempted to bite back just because he can. "what are you implying, then?"

"this school is very much fast paced, you know-- i would hate for her to fall behind. are they that dependent on your nanny? or just the youngest girl?"

"very much," luka answers, trying to get jules's attention and gesture for her to slip away from the conversation the moment she can to go follow behind marinette. he all but bowls juleka out of his arms. "everyone here is dependent on her."

adrien goes for the distraction. "what is your policy on succubi, anyway?"

[uomo-accattivante]

Fantastic (but long) article about Theater of War’s recent productions, including Oedipus the King and Antigone in Ferguson, featuring Oscar Isaac. The following are excerpts. The full article is viewable via the source link below:

Excerpt:

“Children of Thebes, why are you here?” Oscar Isaac asked. His face filled the monitor on my dining table. (It was my partner’s turn to use the desk.) We were a couple of months into lockdown, just past seven in the evening, and a few straggling cheers for essential workers came in through the window. Isaac was looking smoldery with a quarantine beard, a gold chain, an Airpod, and a black T-shirt. His display name was set to “Oedipus.”

Isaac was one of several famous actors performing Sophocles’ “Oedipus the King” from their homes, in the first virtual performance by Theater of War Productions: a group that got its start in 2008, staging Sophocles’ “Ajax” and “Philoctetes” for U.S. military audiences and, beginning in 2009, on military installations around the world, including in Kuwait, Qatar, and Guantánamo Bay, with a focus on combat trauma. After each dramatic reading, a panel made up of people in active service, veterans, military spouses, and/or psychiatrists would describe how the play resonated with their experiences of war, before opening up the discussion to the audience. Since its founding, Theater of War Productions has addressed different kinds of trauma. It has produced Euripides’ “The Bacchae” in rural communities affected by the opioid crisis, “The Madness of Heracles” in neighborhoods afflicted by gun violence and gang wars, and Aeschylus’ “Prometheus Bound” in prisons. “Antigone in Ferguson,” which focusses on crises between communities and law enforcement, was motivated by an analogy between Oedipus’ son’s unburied body and that of Michael Brown, left on the street for roughly four hours after Brown was killed by police; it was originally performed at Michael Brown’s high school.

Now, with trauma roving the globe more contagiously than ever, Theater of War Productions had traded its site-specific approach for Zoom. The app was configured in a way I hadn’t seen before. There were no buttons to change between gallery and speaker view, which alternated seemingly by themselves. You were in a “meeting,” but one you were powerless to control, proceeding by itself, with the inexorability of fate. There was no way to view the other audience members, and not even the group’s founder and director, Bryan Doerries, knew how numerous they were. Later, Zoom told him that it had been fifteen thousand. This is roughly the seating capacity of the theatre of Dionysus, where “Oedipus the King” is believed to have premièred, around 429 B.C. Those viewers, like us, were in the middle of a pandemic: in their case, the Plague of Athens.

The original audience would have known Oedipus’ story from Greek mythology: how an oracle had predicted that Laius, the king of Thebes, would be killed by his own son, who would then sleep with his mother; how the queen, Jocasta, gave birth to a boy, and Laius pierced and bound the child’s ankles, and ordered a shepherd to leave him on a mountainside. The shepherd took pity on the maimed baby, Oedipus (“swollen foot”), and gave him to a Corinthian servant, who handed him off to the king and queen of Corinth, who raised him as their son. Years later, Oedipus killed Laius at a crossroads, without knowing who he was. Then he saved Thebes from a Sphinx, became the king of Thebes, had four children with Jocasta, and lived happily for many years.

That’s where Sophocles picks up the story. Everyone would have known where things were headed—the truth would come out, and Oedipus would blind himself—but not how they would get there. How Sophocles got there was by drawing on contemporary events, on something that was in everyone’s mind, though it doesn’t appear in the original myth: a plague.

In the opening scene, Thebes is in the grip of a terrible epidemic. Oedipus’ subjects come to the palace, imploring him to save the city, describing the scene of pestilence and panic, the screaming and the corpses in the street. Something about the way Isaac voiced Oedipus’ response—“Children. I am sorry. I know”—made me feel a kind of longing. It was a degree of compassion conspicuous by its absence in the current Administration. I never think of myself as someone who wants or needs “leadership,” yet I found myself thinking, We would be better off with Oedipus. “I would be a weak leader if I did not follow the gods’ orders,” Isaac continued, subverting the masculine norm of never asking for advice. He had already sent for the best information out there, from the Delphic Oracle.

Soon, Oedipus’ brother-in-law, Creon—John Turturro, in a book-lined study—was doing his best to soft-pedal some weird news from Delphi. Apparently, the oracle said that the plague wouldn’t end until the people of Thebes expelled Laius’ killer: a person who was somehow still in the city, even though Laius had died many years earlier on an out-of-town trip. Oedipus called in the blind prophet, Tiresias, played by Jeffrey Wright, whose eyes were invisible behind a circular glare in his eyeglasses.

Reading “Oedipus” in the past, I had always been exasperated by Tiresias, by his cryptic lamentations—“I will never reveal the riddles within me, or the evil in you”—and the way he seemed incapable of transmitting useful information. Spoken by a Black actor in America in 2020, the line made a sickening kind of sense. How do you tell the voice of power that the problem is in him, really baked in there, going back generations? “Feel free to spew all of your vitriol and rage in my direction,” Tiresias said, like someone who knew he was in for a tweetstorm.

Oedipus accused Tiresias of treachery, calling out his disability. He cast suspicion on foreigners, and touted his own “wealth, power, unsurpassed skill.” He decried fake news: “It’s all a scam—you know nothing about interpreting birds.” He elaborated a deep-state scenario: Creon had “hatched a secret plan to expel me from office,” eliciting slanderous prophecies from supposedly disinterested agencies. It was, in short, a coup, designed to subvert the democratic will of the people of Thebes.

Frances McDormand appeared next, in the role of Jocasta. Wearing no visible makeup, speaking from what looked like a cabin somewhere with wood-panelled walls, she resembled the ghost of some frontierswoman. I realized, when I saw her, that I had never tried to picture Jocasta: not her appearance, or her attitude. What was her deal? How had she felt about Laius maiming their baby? How had she felt about being offered as a bride to whomever defeated the Sphinx? What did she think of Oedipus when she met him? Did it never seem weird to her that he was her son’s age, and had horrible scars on his ankles? How did they get along, those two?

When you’re reading the play, you don’t have to answer such questions. You can entertain multiple possibilities without settling on one. But actors have to make decisions and stick to them. One decision that had been made in this case: Oedipus really liked her. “Since I have more respect for you, my dear, than anyone else in the world,” Isaac said, with such warmth in “my dear.” I was reminded of the fact that Euripides wrote a version of “Oedipus”—lost to posterity, like the majority of Greek tragedies—that some scholars suggest foregrounds the loving relationshipbetween Oedipus and Jocasta.

Jocasta’s immediate task was to defuse the potentially murderous argument between her husband and her brother. She took one of the few rhetorical angles available to a woman: why, such grown men ought to be ashamed of themselves, carrying on so when there was a plague going on. And yet, listening to the lines that McDormand chose to emphasize, it was clear that, in the guise of adult rationality and spreading peace, what she was actually doing was silencing and trivializing. “Come inside,” she said, “and we’ll settle this thing in private. And both of you quit making something out of nothing.” It was the voice of denial, and, through the play, you could hear it spread from character to character.

By this point in the performance, I found myself spinning into a kind of cognitive overdrive, toggling between the text and the performance, between the historical context, the current context, and the “universal” themes. No matter how many times you see it pulled off, the magic trick is always a surprise: how a text that is hundreds or thousands of years old turns out to be about the thing that’s happening to you, however modern and unprecedented you thought it was.

Excerpt:

The riddle of the Sphinx plays out in the plot of “Oedipus,” particularly in a scene near the end where the truth finally comes out. Two key figures from Oedipus’ infancy are brought in for questioning: the Theban shepherd, who was supposed to kill baby Oedipus but didn’t; and the Corinthian messenger to whom he handed off the maimed child. The Theban shepherd is walking proof that the Sphinx’s riddle is hard, because that man can’t recognize anyone: not the Corinthian, whom he last saw as a young man, and certainly not Oedipus, a baby with whom he’d had a passing acquaintance decades earlier. “It all took place so long ago,” he grumbles. “Why on earth would you ask me?”

“Because,” the Corinthian (David Strathairn) explained genially on Zoom, “this man whom you are now looking at was once that child.”

This, for me, was the scene with the catharsis in it. At a certain point, the shepherd (Frankie Faison) clearly understood everything, but would not or could not admit it. Oedipus, now determined to learn the truth at all costs, resorted to enhanced interrogation. “Bend back his arms until they snap,” Isaac said icily; in another window, Faison screamed in highly realistic agony. Faison was a personification of psychological resistance: the mechanism a mind develops to protect itself from an unbearable truth. Those invisible guardsmen had to nearly kill him before he would admit who had given him the baby: “It was Laius’s child, or so people said. Your wife could tell you more.”

Tears glinted in Isaac’s eyes as he delivered the next line, which I suddenly understood to be the most devastating in the whole play: “Did . . . she . . . give it to you?” How had I never fully realized, never felt, how painful it would have been for Oedipus to realize that his parents hadn’t loved him?

Excerpt:

If we borrow the terms of Greek drama, 2020 might be viewed as the year of anagnorisis: tragic recognition. On August 9th, the sixth anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown, I watched the Theater of War Productions put on a Zoom production of “Antigone in Ferguson”: an adaptation of Sophocles’ “Oedipus” narrative sequel, with the chorus represented by a demographically and ideologically diverse gospel choir. Oscar Isaac was back, this time as Creon, Oedipus’ successor as king. He started out as a bullying inquisitor (“I will have your extremities removed one by one until you reveal the criminal’s name”), ordering Antigone (Tracie Thoms) to be buried alive, insulting everyone who criticized him, and accusing Tiresias of corruption. But then Tiresias, with the help of the chorus, persuaded Creon to reconsider. In a sustained gospel number, the Thebans, armed with picks and shovels, led by their king, rushed to free Antigone.

“Antigone” being a tragedy, they got there too late, resulting in multiple deaths, and in Isaac’s once again totally losing his shit. It was almost the same performance he gave in “Oedipus,” and yet, where Oedipus begins the play written into a corner, between walls that keep closing in, Creon seems to have just a little more room to maneuver. His misfortune—like that of Antigone and her brother—feels less irreversible. I first saw “Antigone in Ferguson” live, last year, and, in the discussion afterward, the subject of fate—inevitably—came up. I remember how Doerries gently led the audience to view “Antigone” as an illustration of how easily everything might happen differently, and how people’s minds can change. I remember the energy that spread through the room that night, in talk about prison reform and the urgency of collective change.

###

Again, the full article is accessible via the source link below:

[butterflyinthewell]

More Goji headcanon stuff because I feel like it.

Heisei era, obviously.

Temper tantrums. 

Godzilla has them. 

It’s kind of a product of his cognitive disability. Emotional restraint isn’t his strong suit at all. He tends to throw tantrums when he can’t figure something out or something is preventing him from accomplishing a goal. It’s less out of anger and more a loss of emotional control when he gets “stuck” mentally.

His tantrums aren’t meltdowns because they aren’t due to sensory things, and they tend to stop once the issue he’s upset about is fixed or somebody shows they understand what he’s trying to communicate to them.

They happen less because Shezilla can talk him through it. Sometimes it’s as simple as “I stepped on a rock that hurt!” and sometimes it’s as complex as “I had a dream about falling, and it was so real that I woke up scared. What if I step in a hole I can’t see?”

Godzilla’s temper tantrums are destructive to cities. It’s easy to provoke them, and humans often do so by accident. He walks onshore yelling that he’s upset and they shoot at him because they don’t speak Old Tongue. Boom, there he goes trashing everything he sees.

Sometimes the only thing Shezilla can do is let the worst of it blow over and then talk to him. She intervenes if she thinks he’s walking into danger by getting in his path. She maintains a mostly calm demeanor. She doesn’t take Godzilla’s tantrum behavior personally. He never, ever, EVER says anything mean to her while he’s losing his cool. He shouts how he feels instead. “I’m upset! I’m sad! I’m tired! I miss home!” or sometimes, “I don’t know how I feel right now and it’s making me upset!”

Shezilla has her moments of anguish, too, but compared to Godzilla she seems so much calmer and quieter. She has led him out of cities by the hand while he roars and stomps and thrashes his tail. There’s never a moment where she looks at him like he’s a child or less than her equal. She never tells him that his tantrums are ridiculous or an overreaction. She understands that he gets stuck sometimes, and a change of scenery helps him get unstuck.

Sometimes she has to smack him upside the head to get him to look at her and listen. It’s not intended to hurt or punish him, and it’s never done hard enough to cause pain. It disrupts the loop he’s stuck in long enough to be reasoned with. She doesn’t do that unless he’s too far into tantrum mode to get himself back out. She’ll do it and tell him, “Hey! You’re stuck. I know, love! Let’s go somewhere quiet and handle it. Come on, walk with me.”

The JSDF kinda figured this out. They stop shooting once Godzilla starts following Shezilla. She’ll lead him around buildings instead of through them, but houses and cars are going to get trampled. 

Filia's temper tantrums are different. She’s a baby, so she doesn’t have the experience to control her temper too well and she hates not getting her way. She throws herself on the ground, rolls around dramatically and keens at pitches known to break glass. 

Godzilla and Shezilla don’t get mad at Filia for her tantrums, but they don’t reinforce them either. Shezilla will tell her she’s going to give her time to calm down and sort of turn away without leaving her wholly alone. Then, when Filia is calmer, Shezilla bends down and gives her kisses and explains why she isn’t letting her do that thing she wants to do right this minute. “You can’t go swimming because it’s night time and that’s when you’re supposed to sleep. You can go swimming in the morning, okay?”

Godzilla is kinda funny about Filia’s temper tantrums. He gets on the ground next to her and says the kaiju equivalent of “Oh, I know, you reaaaaally want to swim right now, but you have to go to sleep instead! It’s awful! I hated it when my parents made me do it too! But guess what? It’s more fun to swim in the morning when the water is all sparkly!” Then he picks her up while she’s still screaming her head off and pretty much hugs the rage out of her.

If Godzilla and Shezilla are together while Filia is in full on rage mode, they sometimes look at each other, drop to the ground in unison and start yelling too. It’s so dang funny that Filia forgets about being mad and cracks up laughing instead.

They both understand that she’s young and tantrums happen, so they don’t punish her for them unless she bites or scratches them. Then it’s less about the tantrum and more about “hey, don’t bite and scratch people! Let’s talk about this.”

And when Filia sees Godzilla have one of his own tantrums, she remembers how kind and loving he is to her when she has hers, so she’s real sweet towards him during his. She’ll repeat his “Oh, I know, it’s so hard when this happens!” line to him and then she runs to get Shezilla for help because that’s what both her parents taught her to do.

When Shezilla gets mad, she’ll walk away and kick rocks for awhile, or take a long, deep swim as fast as she can until the anger goes away. Sometimes she hunts for sharks or whales because hunting is a productive way to vent her anger. She comes back and talks about what upset her when she’s calm.

Basically, nobody in the Godzilla family minimizes anybody’s feelings.

[murdocsagaypirate]

The Fall of 2D

A Character Essay

So.. this ended up being a nice long read.. but.. I think some of y’all might enjoy it. I just kind of got carried away. But I’m done~ Back to fanfiction~  I’ve done more thorough analyses of most of these songs that I touch on here in the past. If you go to my blog and type in the songs name in search you’ll find it ... unless I haven’t done it yet... and in that case go ahead and request it if you like.

Remember when you were a little kid and you would look at the clouds in the sky as the sunlight bounced off them? And something that simple would make you feel a part of everything, and all alone at the same time. And the feeling’s not something you can ever put into words, so you spend your whole life chasing it. Making music, taking pictures, painting, whatever. In the hope that other people will understand that sense or… feeling. As creative entities, we look for signs of life outside ourselves for a connection to alleviate the sense of solitude. That’s why we all do what we do. Whether we know it ourselves or not.

Phase 1: Someone Else’s Dream

2D never dreamed he’d be famous, or even successful, in any capacity. No one ever treated him like he possibly could be because he was disabled. He had chronic pain and hindered cognitive ability from childhood that shaped how others perceived him. His bright blue hair growing out of his damaged head made it so that everyone knew he was different- he was stupid. And that perception shaped him. It shaped him into someone with no big dreams, someone that tolerated being bullied, someone with poor self-efficacy and no sense of independence or developed sense of identity. He liked films and he liked music and it didn’t go much deeper than that. Not because he was stupid and shallow, as he’s clearly always been a very deep and creative thinker, but because no one ever gave him the options and opportunity to pursue something bigger. He says in the phase 5 football interview, “My mum and dad taught me not to aim too high.” No one ever believed in him.... 

Until Murdoc came along. 2D’s blue hair is directly associated to the event that handicapped him but to Murdoc it represented anything but a handicap- it gave 2D the unique looks that would make him a priceless asset in Murdoc’s pursuit of his personal dreams. For the first time in his life, Murdoc made 2D believe he was capable and valuable because he was talented and attractive. 2D didn’t need to be worshiped like Murdoc, he just needed to be worth something, and Murdoc gave him a way to do that. That’s what 2D means when he says that Murdoc “saved his life”, that’s a big reason WHY he idolized him in addition to the fact that 2D appreciates that Murdoc is genuinely talented and driven. 

I can’t impress this enough: 2D was only 19 years old. Old enough to know you’re expected to be an adult, to make something of yourself, but for many still not old enough to be one - especially for someone that grew up disabled, whose independence wasn’t fostered ... Make no mistake: 2D was vulnerable and Murdoc, who was 31, took advantage of him. This is a 2D analysis so I’m not going to go into why Murdoc did this, but at the end of the day, Murdoc was a fucking shitty shitty person and there no good excuse. 

Already by the time the first album came out, 2D had already figured out he’d been taken advantage of. That’s what New Genius (Brother) is about. It’s about Murdoc and the promises he made him about the path to success he was going to take him on, about the river they were going to ford together and how 2D felt betrayed. 

Besides what we learn in RoTO, there are some songs that you can’t totally parse out what lyrics on Gorillaz debut album belong to 2D and which belong to Murdoc besides simply what makes sense. It’s interesting though you can easily argue that there are shared sentiments in songs like Slow Country about working hard to succeed and being lonely. In RoTO a lyric for this song is included, “City life, leave my soul in deep water.” which mirror’s “The river ain’t deep.” in New Genius (Brother). Sound Check (Gravity) is a song he sang straight from his heart on a rooftop in Jamaica with Noodle, that repeats themes of feeling pressured and betrayed and the theme of a confusing and broken love which will reoccur, over and over. At that time (in Jamaica, no less) that love is actively breaking, not broken yet, but he doesn't know what to do. Latin Simone characterizes his depression and the realization that he’s just not happy on this path he’s started on, but there’s no escaping it now. Then you have a song like 12D3, that very directly characterizes him as a simple person that takes simple pleasure in music. There are various songs and lines on Self-titled that characterize drug dependency both for 2D and for Murdoc. Phase One, overall, sets us up with a picture of a 2D who is still enthusiastic about his future as a musician for no other reason than his passion for music, yet disillusionment is quickly setting in, both toward the lifestyle of fame and his idol and best friend. 

Phase 2: Feel Good?

This is where 2D starts talking about his never-ending quest to “find himself”. 2D never got to gain independence. He went straight from dependency on his parents to dependency on Murdoc, living at his mansion studio and literally letting him tie his shoes. His parents never fostered an ability to self-care or a sense of ambition, so Murdoc gifted him his ambition and without Murdoc, 2D doesn’t have his own sense of identity. 

So, of course, leaving Murdoc after phase 1, he went back to his parents, to work for his dad. He returned to his hometown, to a bunch of people that treated him like a worthless idiot. But now he’s famous. So now he’s surrounded by people that want to validate him... Which he fucking eats up, because it fills the hole left by his upbringing... Not to mention all the very fucking irresponsible sex. There is much that goes unstated about this phase of 2D’s life, it seems he chooses to paint it as wholly positive, yet we know the lasting consequences of it (child support for for several kids for the next 18 years) as well as the fact that he ultimately chose to leave it behind and return to Gorillaz and back into the same lifestyle that he hated and is only getting worse as Gorilaz’s popularity hits it major peak in 2005:

The Feel Good Inc music video give shit tons of insight into the characters and the lyrics. Notably, the way that 2D is placed at the center, on a throne, and how utterly miserable he is on that throne. It’s not JUST the debauchery he struggles with, but the position of stardom and idol worship he’s been thrust into. 

“Take it all in on your stride” run’s parallel to Latin Simone’s “Give up, if you want to survive.” He’s resigned to this path, never exhibited any desire to fight it really, because he’s never known another path. Without Gorillaz, he’s aimless. “Turn forever, hand in hand... It is ticking, falling down. Love forever, love has freely turned forever you and me. Windmill, windmill for the land. Is everybody in?” The windmill represents freedom, Noodle’s freedom contrasted with 2D’s imprisonment specifically, yet here he sings about it “falling”, foreshadowing El Manana. He talks about the utter destruction of hope happening to all of them. “Is everybody in?” 

Remember the theme of a “breaking love” I’d say would be returning over and over? 2D is trapped in the tower with Murdoc who watches him like some kind of predator throughout the video. Russel is there too, which characterizes him as lacking the freedom that Noodle has but coping through staying focused on drumming, making music. This person that 2D is turning with forever, falling, hand in hand is mainly Murdoc. 

While much of this album was written by Noodle, 2D has specifically talked about writing chorus of Feel Good Inc. And there are other songs on the album I’ll touch on that, although lore never specifically states, I can only assume are written by 2D by how well they fit into his character arc at this point in his life and make no sense in characterizing Noodle.  

O Green World continues with the themes of Feel Good Inc with the line “Hope, sex and drugs will rust into myself holy. It feels holy,” further characterizing the disturbing dichotomy of pleasurable addiction as a destructive force. Placing “hope” on the list of things that 2D clings to for comfort that destroy him is heartbreaking and we’ll watch how this “hope” becomes more and more painful to hold onto throughout the years. The larger focus of O Green World is the narrative about a failing relationship: the current state of his relationship with Murdoc. A desperation and confusion over a crumbling relationship is also explored in Every Planet We Reach is Dead. Lines like “For all the sacred selfless days, only left with heartache. I want to see you again. I love you... But what are we going to do?” paints the same picture 2D will eventually paint for us again in The Now Now. He will look back on this era of their relationship where he clung to hope that they’d be close, happy and healthy again. And yet... we know how that turned out...

Phase 3: Alone Together

I only really joined the band to make music, and now, I'm being held captive by a bastard bass player in an underwater submarine, being attacked by sodding pirates who are trying to take over this rotten piece of broken plastic in the ocean that Gorillaz call 'home'. All this, just to make a video. It's making me want to die!

So... this is a major phase for 2D, but of course, that fact is often overshadowed but what a big deal it was Murdoc. We have hours of podcast and a whole album to witness Murdoc’s deterioration and precious little to witness 2D’s, though there is certainly enough to analyze especially later in the phase. 

2D doesn’t seek attention like Murdoc does. He’s motivated by validation, sure, but not in the practically narcissistic way Murdoc is. 2D isn’t the one that is constantly engaging with fans, soaking up our attention and admiration. He wants to connect to people through music, not as a celebrity, just as a musician. He’s private, and that loss of privacy that comes with fame is probably yet another factor that caused him to hate it.

2D struggles with emotional isolation like Murdoc but in a completely different way. It’s not that he fears and avoids connection and vulnerability like Murdoc, in that quote I started this with he shows that he finds it to be something important and profound. It something he simply finds difficult for many reasons. One, his disability that clearly effects his communication skills. Then the inherent isolation that comes with stardom. And finally, an inability to connect with himself first and foremost, his undeveloped sense of personal identity comes back into play, that theme of struggling to “find himself”.

Little Pink Plastic Bag characterizes the isolating feeling of drifting through life without purpose. 2D has lost control of his life, knowing he was going to school before this phase might indicate he was beginning to find purpose but once again (and in a much more literal sense) he’s forced away from his own dreams to serve Murdoc’s. “What you want in life? Someone here'll gonna get past by” hearkens back to so many themes present in the first album. In New Genius (Brother) he sings, “People passing through me.” 2D still feels overlooked, underappreciated, so many years later. 

2D talks about Revolving Doors: “As I was walking through the doors of the hotel - the revolving doors - and the dislocation of being away, you know, out of sorts, away from home. and the image of this door permanently revolving, the endless repetition and the pointless rhythm of it all I guess struck like, a melancholic image within me. It paints a similar aimless image to pointlessness of plastic bag floating on the highway. Revolving Doors also pretty explicitly references drug use, specifically about buying drugs and getting shorted by the dealer. It’s not news, just notable that substance abuse is still very much present. Another major theme is 2D lamenting how much fame has changed him and his fear of what more is to come which come up again in Amarillo.

Amarillo is such a fucking beautiful song. “I got lost on the highway. But don't ask me where I've been. Or what I've done.” The trials of the last few years have changed 2D, he recognizes this and fills him with regret. And again, he expresses that utter lonely we’re familiar with by now. 

Finally, we have DoYaThing giving us incite at the very tail end of this phase of the state of 2D’s relationship with Murdoc, which has quite obviously suffered but enough time is past that they are ready to start healing again. The line “If you're thinking that I don't know what you're thinking, baby. You do more thinking and I'll go out and make it alright“ expresses a concept 2D explored a few times on Demon Days, “I know you now, I know you know me too.” in O Green World characterizes there relationship as legitimately intimate, they understand each other. This sort of relationship is suggested in interviews too, mostly Murdoc relying on 2D to help handle a crisis, while it doesn’t seem that Murdoc is emotionally equipped to return the favor, yet another way Murdoc contributes to 2D’s chronic loneliness. Despite how much 2D is struggling with at the end of phase 3 he still expends energy worrying about Murdoc. After their live recording of Detroit, 2D responds to Murdoc thanking him, presumably just for the fun of the moment, “I was just glad to help, really.”

DoYaThing expresses this dynamic of expending energy and getting little in return with frustration. Before, 2D was confused and hurt, now he’s angry and impatient. “Every time we try, we get nowhere“... “I've got no patience. Oh, it's all a part of the process. Nothing's new, it's true, cool, I admit. Shit, I guess you're right“ 2D is holding on but growing bitter... 

Phase 4: Gone Gone Gone

It’s obvious in this phase that his drug abuse is at an all-time high. The entire phase, songs, pictures, interviews, portrayed the band as going all out partying, which, of course, involved drugs. Recreational is one thing, but we know it’s more than recreational for 2D. Sleeping Power was the big 2D song of this phase. All the way back to Tomorrow Comes Today’s music video we see 2D’s drug abuse almost being portrayed as a fun aesthetic as brightly colored pain pills fly at the screen and now with Sleeping Power 2D is having a hell of a good time singing about a day he spent “gone”, completely strung out. He starts the video with the old “This is your brain on drugs” ad, which is practically become a joke in modern culture. and it’s an interesting contrast with the extremely emotional way Murdoc writes about his alcoholism in Plastic Beach, or the dark and completely unflattering way it’s portrayed in White Light.

There’s no denying 2D is depressed, but when it comes to his coping methods it seems he copes even further by making it a part of his identity. It’s not difficult to understand why he’d be so inclined to see his addiction as a positive thing, not only does it help his mood but it manages crippling chronic pain. No matter what though, addiction and substance abuse are never sustainable for mental health and 2D has struggled with this issue or a long.. long.. time. 

As for his relationship with Murdoc at this point, it remains in pieces. We see the bitterness 2D feels toward him throughout phase 4. We lose 2D’s voice on Humanz but find so much incite exploring his phase 4 room. Murdoc’s face is plastered on his wall vindictively covered in darts. And yet we find his poems promising, “Yes I am still with you.” and “I will stay. The storm abates. The levy holds.” He’s angry but still refuses to give up. Whether you want to interpret it romantically or not, he clearly still loves Murdoc and we see this even more in The Now Now... 

Phase 5: Reflection

On Plastic Beach, if 2D is trapped on an island of isolation then it’s only because Murdoc is the ship that stranded him there. In Magic City, if 2D is on the moon - shining brightly for everyone to see - it’s because Murdoc was the rocket ship that crash landed him on it. The Now Now is chalk full of callbacks and beautifully shows where 2D has come from and where he is now, especially in his relationship to Murdoc. “You put me up here in the penthouse.” Murdoc is the force that made him successful, the reason he’s famous. "I filled the canyons with my ego” The canyon, the hole in himself. We get a call back all the way to New Genius (Brother) as he changes the effect on the vocal’s to sound like some distance voice from the past of someone promising 2D ease of passage only to betray him by leading him to danger, “Let me take you this far. This crossing isn't much to me. There's lightning in the storm clouds. And I'll send you there to stay” and of course, that voice is Murdoc’s. 

Like he’s been for years, he’s trapped in this lifestyle. Looking all the way back to 5/4. He talks about the same debauchery and spoils of fame he feels trapped back in Feel Good Inc and calls them “magic”. It’s ironic but at the same time addresses the fact that he was promised they would be magic, promised they would feel good, only to feel betrayed when they weren’t. “Magic on me. Really got me down... Magic’s funny. Magic get me through.” The same magic that depressing him, he relies on to get through: drugs, sex, the validation of fame, you name it. It’s a common tale we see for celebrities time and time again. Trapped in this “Magic City”, he wants to make it “home”. He talks about making his journey home in Kansas as well... where exactly does 2D consider “home”? I wonder if even he knows. Our sense of home is so tied to our sense of security and identity, something 2D has always struggled with. On his quest “home”, by the end of the album the thing that he truly returns to.. is Murdoc. In Souk Eye he decides to come back for him... after all this... he’s still willing to give him yet another chance. Throughout the years he’s had one anchor and one anchor alone: Murdoc. So in the absence of this anchor, his sense-of-self changes dramatically as he tries to emulate the man that was once his idol. Of course, we see this play out in the lore... But... at this point (9/28/18) anything I say about 2D actions in this phase beyond the early characterization through the album is just speculation... So, back to the album...

There are few places where 2D talks about how much he’s sacrificed for Murdoc’s sake, how he’s stood by and suffered for him, even made music for him when he really just didn’t want to anymore. Idaho references this and the level of idolization he once felt for Murdoc so long ago, “Playing it all for gods Yesterday/Faraway” and the role of Murdoc in pressuring him, ““Ride on," said the king of cool. you've got nothing to lose“ and how his hope faded through the years, “Silver linings getting lost”. Fireflies again frames Murdoc’s role in driving him, “You were in the kind of game that put the force in me“ and overall speaks to his desperation to hold onto hope throughout the last 20 years. 

The lore supports these songs are about Murdoc in far more obvious ways then has ever been done. Between the Souk Eye visualizer and 2D’s journal, the depths for which he feels for him becomes undeniable. The deterioration we’ve witnessed has caused him so much pain and yet his love remains. “If loving you’s a felony now, then I’m a renegade.” 

2D’s story serves as a tragic retelling of the path that so many real-life famous musicians have taken. Being in the limelight is rarely something normal people are able to cope with, and clearly, 2D is no exception. It changed him, caused him to make decisions he hated. He never would have chosen this lifestyle without Murdoc pressuring him, and returns over and over even when he has the choice to stay away because it’s one of the few solid things he can grasp as part of his identity. Meanwhile, he’s bound to an individual that’s even more unhealthy then he is, enabling his isolation, denying him support, taking advantage of him from day one, manipulating his poor sense of self-worth. All of it crushed his once child-like spirit... only time will tell where he goes from here. Maybe one day he’ll finally see the end of his abuse, heal with the man he’s forgiven too many times, and find security in his own self-worth... 

Now if all that made you too sad here’s a video of 2D being absolutely adorably happy because he has the opportunity to connect with fans through sharing his passion for music. 

[themiddlelayer]

Just when you think it’s getting better...

Maybe it’s all of the cosmic activity... all of the retrogrades and all that. Maybe it’s the space between therapy sessions. Maybe it’s the drop in energy from My Mr. because of him getting assigned real work for the first time in awhile. Whatever it is, it sucks! 

I officially moved back into the master bedroom over the weekend. I’d been sleeping in there for about a week and I knew it was time when I got up to go to the bathroom and went into the master and not the hall bathroom. It’s the little things. We re-rearranged the room with the new furniture so my vanity and mirror would fit. He reorganized the closet so I’ve got my side back and I cleaned almost everything out of the guest room just in time for Smalls to come crash in the middle of the night. 

I started school last week, finally working on my Bachelor’s degree in psychology. I’m taking Applied History and BIO: Anatomy/Physiology... I’m liking history and hating BIO. Hopefully I’ll get a good routine down so I don’t end up chained to my desk for such long stretches. 

The thing with Tampa is kind of a thing, and kinda not since I’m not officially “dating” again, but we had sushi last week and ended up sitting and talking for over 3 hours. Aside from totally being my type physically- big, broad chested, bald with a beard... he’s ridiculously smart. There was a goodbye kiss, but just a kiss: not kisses, not kissing... but I’d be lying if I said that was all I wanted. The next morning he messaged me asking if I’d put a spell on him because he never opens up so quickly. 

Saturday morning I woke up in full-blown PTSD mode after having nightmares. It used to be that my nightmares were all about ExH and the kinds of things he did during our marriage. This time the nightmare was about My Mr. In the dream, Pixie came to me upset because he’d stopped seeing her when I moved back into the bedroom. In my dream, he had been seeing her behind my back, even after we starting having sleepovers. Physically, I was absolutely triggered to the hilt. I could feel all of the pain and anger of the things from my dream and couldn’t talk myself through it. Cognitively, I knew it wasn’t real, but my body was reacting as though it had actually happened. 

It was how My Mr. handled things that showed me that I made the right choice in coming all the way back home. He held me and let me cry, offered a spanking (which is not his thing, but is something that helps me a lot) and ended up giving me a massage before taking me to breakfast. When we got home, he worked on hanging the mirror from the dresser on the wall and hung up the sex swing that had been in a box for over a year. I’ve got to tell you... you haven’t lived until you’ve gotten into full “Superman” pose and laughed in a sex swing! 

I spent almost all of Sunday at my desk doing schoolwork and did a sensory deprivation tank thing yesterday. Tampa had mentioned that the “floats” do wonders for his PTSD and I found a Groupon for the same place he goes. I’d been looking forward to it for weeks and have put off coloring my hair and getting a tattoo so I could go enjoy it. It wasn’t worth the hype...

The place is in the mall and I had trouble finding it on the mall directory. Tampa gave me a store for a landmark but I parked and walked in on the wrong side of that store. The interactive map was not helpful so after walking in circles, I called them and found it. My anxiety was through the roof by that point. 

The room was nice enough, but I was told I would have 5 minutes to get undressed and shower before my time in the pod would start. At the end of it, I had 5 minutes to shower, wash my hair and get dressed again. There were no clocks and my sense of time sucks, so I felt rushed and stressed. Inside the pod, I couldn’t relax. Even taking a full, deep breath was nearly impossible and... fun fact! breast implants can fall much further back than I realized, which hurt. A lot. By the time I found a way to hold them and still relax a little, the music started up again indicating my pod time was almost up. I, of course, shot right out and hit the shower. The light and sound of the pumps were overwhelming, which took me right back up to the verge of a panic attack. I managed to get myself together, get a Jamba juice and get to my car before melting down. I cried most of the way home. 

I tried so hard to shut down the voice in my head chastising me for not being able to relax and calling me a failure because I can’t even succeed in the act of doing and thinking nothing for a few minutes without medication. I know that if someone else drove me and I had an edible before going in that I might be able to reap some benefit, but I’m not going back until my next round of hair color fades. 

Last night was another rough one- I tossed and turned and had night sweats (those are back again) and had another nightmare- this one about My Mr. and Queen Bee. Fortunately the details had escaped me and I’d come down a bit before being woke up by a phone call. My mammogram results warranted additional screening, but I have to figure out how to be sure my insurance will cover it. 

I’m on edge and really want to just go back to bed. It’s too hot to go for a walk but I may attempt another TRE session here in a bit. I’ve got to get started on this week’s schoolwork and Smalls is supposed to be coming up to meet me for lunch in a few hours. I hate this. 

I’m afraid that I’m pushing myself too hard and at the same time, feel like I’m being lazy about things. I haven’t gotten a reply from the insurance company about my disability claim, but was approved under FMLA until August by work. That means I get to keep my vision and dental insurance at the same rate I’d been paying. That meant that I got to order a pair of bifocals last week because despite my distance vision barely changing, I need reading glasses now. I’ve already got 2 new pairs that I ordered online- one awesome pair of red glasses for distance and another more subdued reddish/purplish pair for reading. I guess getting older means new accessories! I’ll look at it that way. 

Schoolwork is going to have to wait again. I’ve got an appointment tomorrow but the rest of my week is open so I know I’ve got the time. Right now, I don’t have it in me to do more than check my school e-mail and clear some notifications. Smalls is prone to last-minute cancellations, so if she does then I’ll try again later after I’ve done some cleaning. Physical movement is the only way out of this feeling right now. The other things that balance me out are unavailable right now, but maybe I’ll try to get out for a small tattoo after my appointment tomorrow. That always helps! 

Self-awareness sucks. But here I go... 

[peacefrogg]

Being a therapist is lonely and difficult.

Let me just say, I love my job. I work with delinquent youth at the most secure facility within my state. That's the most descript I can get in terms of describing the facility. My office is on the mental health unit where I'm assigned, so I'm in the thick of it, sometimes having to get involved in restraining these youth when they're acting violently. Compared to the other facilities in the state, we look like a prison (barbed wire fences, individual cells with a metal bed frame, desk, and toilet, must be buzzed through each door by a person in the security booth). However, we are a treatment facility and in my state, juveniles are not considered to be "inmates" and employees are not considered "correctional officers." We are staff. They are residents. This is a human services field.

Side note, I know some believe that adults should never put their hands on kids. I agree. Its hard to explain this job to anybody who has never been in it firsthand. I'm dealing with extremely violent youth. Yes, oftentimes (most times) many are acting out of emotion or trauma, and it is so hard to watch when you know they're not intending to harm others or when they're trying to stay safe themselves. Intervening in a physical manner is sometimes necessary to ensure and maintain safety when these youth are actively violent. There are some staff who go overboard or use restraints in, to put it gently, an entirely unacceptable manner. I've seen it firsthand, but I've also seen how higher up within the system they are embracing a no tolerance attitude whereas in the past a blind eye was turned. However, there is a time and a place where having to physically manage these youth in a safe way is unfortunately necessary, and in my specific position I have the advantage of teaching these kids ways to prevent themselves from becoming harmful as well as standing up for them if staff become out of line. Unlike others, I know these kids are just that, kids.

Back to my original point, this is a lonely and difficult job as a therapist. I end up playing multiple roles because of the nature of the job and where my office is located. To give some idea of what the specific youth I work with are like, they are (generally) between the ages of 16-21 (can be as young as 13, though that's rare), they have varying diagnoses. Most common being ADHD, Depression, Anxiety, PTSD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Bipolar, and Intellectual Disabilities. Though we do often see other diagnoses such as Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective Disorder, Intermittent Explosive Disorder, and Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Many of them are violent. Many of them have problematic sexual behaviors (anywhere from exposing themselves to others to rape). Most of them have a history of trauma and abuse.

Although this sounds like a lot to deal with, they're still just kids who are struggling, and due to the nature of their histories and cognitive abilities, it's sometimes like working with younger children. They are needy, which is understandable due to their histories. Some of them have been completely abandoned by their parents and are completely alone.

Because of my caring nature and being around them frequently outside of therapy sessions, I'm considered the "mom" of the unit, which feels weird because I'm only 29 and nowhere near old enough to be a parent to these kids. I think that line gets blurred from therapist to "mom" because I also have to be an authority figure and hold them to their daily expectations and behavioral standards when I'm outside of sessions. I have to get involved in deciding consequences for major offenses committed while they are in the facility such as assaults and sexually acting out behaviors (law states there is no consent in placement/facilities). But I also am the person they want to see the most due to the nature of my position. I'm naturally good at what I do (the one time I feel confident enough to toot my own horn) and I'm as supportive, caring, and genuine as possible, which makes them form emotional bonds/attachments toward me. So I think because I have to be an authority figure on top of being their therapist, it gives off that motherly vibe. Which in any other setting I would say is problematic because it blurs the lines of my role, but its impossible to avoid in this environment, so I have to find creative ways to navigate this.

I do truly care about these kids which is hard to work through, especially because I have minimal supervision. When I say minimal, I mean my supervisor saw me in person three times last year. So I don't have any help in navigating how to properly maintain my boundaries.

On top of this, staff do not understand my role at all. There is only one other therapist in the facility. She used to be the only one for several years, and then two more were hired but left within a year (two years ago, which is when I was promoted). Most therapists do not want to work in this environment once they see what its like and how their offices are directly on the unit and how they have to get involved in restraints (blurring the line even further). I began as a line staff for a year before I was promoted (when the two other therapists left), and I was a line staff for three years at another facility, so I knew what I was getting into. But because there is such a high turnover for therapists and because we only had one for several years, staff have never seen what my position is supposed to look like, only what they've assumed. So I get a lot of scrutiny from staff. They criticize because they have no idea how difficult this position truly is. They believe its just therapy sessions. They don't understand that I also have to be an authority to residents, work on staff development, be a liaison with various probation officers, placing counties, judges, CYS workers, write court reports, testify in court, administer assessments, write psychological and psychosexual reports, etc. I have to train staff on various mental health topics, which is rough because I'm young for the position, so I'm often looked at as if I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Its hard for me to rely on the other therapist. On one hand, shes been in our facility for 10 years, so she knows the position inside and out. It's a very political position at times, and she is a big help for that. However, she doesn't connect with the kids. She's very invalidating and unsupportive of the emotions of her residents, and she's one of those people who are always right. So the kids don't enjoy her as much, and in return, she handles that by criticizing everything I do. Her way is the right way, even though many approaches can bring about the same result. But if it's not her approach, it's wrong. She's very traditional in the sense that she's very pro-medication and mainly talk therapy. I'm more holistic (I'm called the hippy therapist, and it's not inaccurate) and creative with my interventions, because I know the kids understand it more and it reduces their anxiety, helping them feel more safe to talk about their problems. Keep in mind these kids didn't ask to go to therapy or be here, so you have to get them to buy into it on top of finding a way to get them to trust after feeling like they can trust nobody (remember, trauma and abuse histories). So although I'm effective in what I do and I'm proud of it, I'm constantly facing scrutiny from those who don't understand and judgment from the other therapist, who is also 16 years older than me.

I feel like I have these super high standards I have to meet just to be taken seriously, and since nobody else understands my position, I don't have anybody to vent to who gets me. Even my own therapist doesn't truly understand. It's a very lonely feeling. With my own mental health issues on top of it all (anxiety, depression, abandonment issues, PTSD, life-long emotional neglect), its like I have no escape. I'm constantly anxious that I'm doing horribly. I just began working through my own trauma in therapy, so sometimes I end up feeling triggered by or identifying with my residents. Which again is hard to navigate on my own without supervision. My own therapist just abandoned me (I'll save that for a later post). My friends are line staff, so their job is safety and security. I have to train my own friends on mental health approaches, and they see it as more of casual conversation and suggestions instead of training and necessity. It feels like my own friends don't take me seriously.

I co-run the unit with a supervisor of two counselors (essentially case managers who also do individual sessions to address behaviors) and two lower-level supervisors of line staff. He is my equal, but he focuses on behavioral issues and structure of the unit, where I'm in charge of mental health. He has power and control issues, so he tries to take over completely and he tries to supervise me. As if that's not enough, his wife is the other therapist so he's constantly trying to push her agenda on my unit (she works on the unit that specializes in sexual behaviors, and she and I "share" the general population unit essentially for the city thug type kids involved with drugs, guns, robbery/theft, and violence). He's super critical, which sucks because all I want is his approval and to hear that I'm doing a good job. I know I'm effective.

I know my kids enjoy me and I want to cry just thinking of how much they are growing and progressing. It makes me super proud of them because all I do is validate and support, and teach them the tools and resources they need to be successful. But they're doing it on their own and it's so heartwarming. Where that makes it all worth it in the end, its still a difficult and lonely journey.

I wish it didn't feel so lonely.