#but when i made my complaint about the way she was treating my disability i got a ‘we’ll talk about it tomorrow and im sorry that’s happen’ | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

revcleo · 5 months ago

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I'm pretty sure I was fired in part at my first proper job I got on my own because I said I was uncomfortable being called "love" in a way which felt like I was being treated like a woman. I think the fact that I stood up for myself meant that I was just not a good culture fit, I got dropped basically a week or two later where they said that they didn't think they should have hired me because I they didn't have enough of a product to promote yet which feels like it's something obvious they should have noticed earlier, or maybe trained me to help with something else, even if it was a start up.

Also while I don't expect any cis person I don't know to gender me properly, prior to any physical changes in transition I wouldn't basically have anyone I know gender me properly, with some people I didn't get on with purposefully seem to misgender me no matter how much I literally shouted in our community meeting to get it right, she kept calling me "she".

I still have to correct some cis people who are amenable or friends nowadays, I basically end up saying just call me he/him rather than she/her because it's less invalidating.

Like at work I have my pronouns as they/he because while it's a great company and people are generally happy to use whatever pronouns, cis people still tend to find it easier to use binary pronouns. I still get misgendered sometimes but it tends to be a mirrored pronouns situation which is silly but after hormones bothers me less. I know it's just how a lot of non binary people experience life.

I didn't put my gender down on forms for a while because I was like "maybe calling myself genderqueer will scare people a bit" but now idgaf that's me gender

I have some friends who are nb who have changed their passport markers but the government refuses to add X and I'm not swapping my marker to another one which is also wrong.

I also remember having a mild anxiety attack in hospital having to line up for an x-ray either going through a male door or a female door (which both went to the same place?? Which is stupid but like dysphoria can be stupid in how it presents.

I have honestly stopped going to the shops to buy clothes and I carry a disabled key so I have a place to definitely piss. I am more likely to use the mens than the women's nowadays bc I think it's the place I'll get less harassed, I do still get some weird looks going in (and I'm like more than 5 years on t) but I'm tall and strong so I think that helps in my favour.

Also as a nb who didn't want to be forced into a binary path (in 2011) I had double the normal amount of gic appointments (6 and a panel meeting and seeing their shrink for a couple of months - note there's a big gap between normal appts) before getting anything, one of the clinicians misgendered me, talked about me derisively and then after submitting a formal complaint I still had to see him a second time (where admittedly he did give me a basic level of respect, but it's very stressful having to see someone who treated you badly in the past).

I didn't really suffer much misogyny when younger, and I've always been tall and powerful so I don't think I feel as afraid as shorter and weaker people might be. Like when my ex and I had our boobs grabbed (while wearing binders) at the bus stop, I put the drunk man in an armlock until he let go (though he did punch me in the face and break my glasses, I was uninjured) I didn't feel afraid, just shocked and annoyed. So I might not suffer a lot of paranoia that other people may feel.bc

I feel like non binary identities can still be treated as not really trans or a stepping stone, my ex made me feel like I wasn't a proper tranny like he was, and I was just stealing trans valour or something.

I feel like transphobia directed as non binary people assumes we're all stupid girls acting out, infantilising and making amab nbs invisible. I feel like there's a two prong attack of terfs trying to prevent young adults from being non-binary and then a bunch of trans people using "theyfab" to either refer to abusive people (insinuating that an entire group of non binary people are abusive) or just using it to describe people being trans in a way they don't like.

It jus reminds me of when I felt like I had to not identify as bi because the group I was hanging with (a couple of gay guys) were super dismissive of (as I was at the time) bi women, saying "all the fangirls are bi nowadays" so for ages I didn't identify as bi because I didn't want to be bullied for it by the people I thought were supposed to be my community. (he was later transphobic against nb people so I dropped him, I had other friends by that time anyway)

It has felt in some online spaces that a lot of intra community ire is on non-binary afab people, and I think this has also lead to a bunch of people doing like I did when I rejected my bisexuality, trying to be one of the good ones and directing hate at who they are being told are evil.

I think it's possible to combat shitty behaviour without pinning it down on an identity.

❗️❗️ This is asked entirely in good faith. This post is intended to open dialogue and help with solidarity and understanding. ❗️❗️

I would like to hear specifically from nonbinary people how the system of exorsexism/enbyphobia uniquely targets and affects you. Things that you feel other demographics do not experience. Reblogs and replies are very encouraged! If you would prefer, you could dm or send an ask to be added anonymously by me.

This is in the spirit of wanting to understand. I am listening. I encourage all binary trans people to not speak on this topic and let nonbinary people do the talking here. Reblog the post to spread it, but please say nothing.

Any and all people who identify as nonbinary are encouraged to participate. This is not agab-locked. If you are agender, trans neutral/neutrois, genderfluid, bigender, trigender, multigender, xenogender, genderqueer, third gender, two spirit, or any other gender not wholey contained within the strict binary of "man" or "woman", this post is for you. Even if you have already posted on the trans fem or trans masc versions, if you are nonbinary, you are welcome here.

This is not bait to start a fight. I will block without hesitation anyone who is actively being a shithead on this post. I want to hear and uplift your voices by getting it directly from you.

Click this to access the trans fem and trans women version of this post.

Click this to access the trans masc and trans men version of this post.

Click this to access the intersex version of this post.

#Also never mind how amab nbs are ignored - especially if they don't look feminine

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kirbydots · 2 years ago

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🔥

regarding continuity and looking at cape characters as mythologies

Unpopular opinion asks

Part of what draws me to comic universes is the extensive continuity and just how long these stories have been going on. It amazes me that my grandfather might have read about these same characters as a kid, that generation after generation has grown up with these characters the same way I have! Because I very much did grow up with comics and superheroes— my dad introduced me to X-Men as a kid, and I’ve been watching Batman cartoons and other DC shows since I was a baby. I literally cannot remember a time where I didn’t know and love these characters.

A lot of the times — especially by people who aren’t into comics — I see continuity treated as a bad thing or a hamper on the stories. While it can be, such as when an otherwise good run has to reckon with a godawful writing decision made by the previous writer, or a character has a history of being portrayed very poorly, I find that for me it’s a benefit.

I like characters with a rich history, and I especially love seeing how they’ve changed over the decades! Whether it be a character or a mantle, what draws me to it is the meaning and history behind it. With characters, I love to see how they’ve changed as a person, what they’ve been through, who they’ve known.

Take Batgirl, for example— the mantle means nothing to me in current comics. Not Cass being Batgirl, not Steph, none of it. There’s none of the history the mantle had, none of the meaning that came with it being passed down. The exchange of the suit from Helena to Cass, how it was created to represent the Bat, to give Gotham hope during No Man’s Land is so impactful, especially when you take into account Cass’ loyalty to the bat itself. That suit, created to represent not Batgirl, but the bat itself, being the suit Cass wears! The passing of the torch from one disabled woman to another! It’s incredibly powerful, and reading those books is what made the Batgirls my favorite part of the Batfamily.

Now that both Cass and Steph are Batgirl (except when they aren’t) and that Babs is Batgirl again (except when she… possibly isn’t?) there’s none of that history. It isn’t a mantle passed through generations, it’s “when girl is bat” and I’d argue that the mantle no longer works. Robin certainly doesn’t work when there’s two of them, and Batgirl doesn’t either! These titles mean nothing to the characters, and they mean nothing to me, either.

To use another example that nobody except me and four other people care about, Garth. He’s here in the current continuity, and I, a dedicated fan of him, actively want him to stop appearing! Because the writers cut out everything that made him, well, him! The kingdom he comes from is gone, cutting out the heritage he struggled with. He’s got magic, but the person who mentored him and the role it played in his development and understanding of himself is gone.

The romantic relationship that he defined so much of his life by is gone, cutting out so much character development regarding his acceptance of her death and moving on from it that was the crux of his arc in his solo. Also, said character is now his cousin, permanently removing any possibility that this could be restored.

He doesn’t act like himself whatsoever, and how could he? The new continuity removed everything that defined and shaped his character! His suit change, while a minor detail with most characters, really shows how little they cared for Garth’s character when rebooting him. While there are many in-universe details that make it a bad idea, my main complaint is that his original Tempest suit was a tribute to Neal Pozner’s Aquaman design. Phil Jimenez, the writer of said solo, had been in a relationship with Pozner prior to his passing from AIDS, and dedicated the solo to Pozner. This disregard of prior continuity and history cuts out so much meaning, and I’d argue is rather disrespectful to the creator of the Tempest mantle.

While no comic continuity is perfect, I think disregarding the history of characters is not a solution whatsoever, and by doing so you often gut them of meaning. It’s irritating when fan spaces are full of nothing but disregard for the source material, and it’s unbearable when comic writers totally disregard what came before. I can’t stand most modern Fourth World content, despite it being my favorite part of DC, because of a total disrespect for Kirby’s original saga and what it meant. Darkseid is stripped of context, Orion is erased from his own story, it pisses me off!

You lose so much when you disregard a character’s history, and they end up being a hollow shell of what they used to be. Why should I care about this character and their story when the story itself doesn’t? I’m not saying comics need to be dense and full of citations, but when they stop caring about their own history and refuse to engage with the past of the characters they’re writing, I check out. I love Cassandra Cain because she’s Cassandra Cain, not because she’s some random girl in a bat suit!

In regards to comics as modern mythology, I’d say I’m not well-versed on the discussion enough to have an opinion.

#dot.txt #i am so sorry for how long this is

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dilfdoctordoom · 3 years ago

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On Tom Taylor, the Current Nightwing Run & Ableism

I did mention I was gonna do a post about it, so here we are. There are some things I want to make clear before we begin: the issue exploded on Twitter on the very first day of disabled Pride month; disabled people have been discussing the ableism in Taylor’s Nightwing run since it began; nobody has blamed Taylor for what happened to Barbara in 2011. We are, however, blaming him for the way she is written in his series during 2021.

I am also going to be discussing the ableism in the fandom in this post. The reactions I have seen, from here to Twitter to TikTok, are showing not only a great misunderstanding of the situation, but a purposeful misunderstanding. The very real reasons disabled people are angry right now have been twisted to make us seem ridiculous and overly sensitive and I cannot help but feel that is very intentional.

Another quick addition: disabled people are not a monolith. Barbara Gordon spent over 20 years as a paralyzed wheelchair user. Stating (and I would like to note, never truly showing) that she is a part time cane user now is still erasing her disability. These things are not interchangeable.

So, with that out of the way, let’s begin.

Tom Taylor’s run is ableist. That is a fact of this situation. He made the active choice to include a version of Barbara Gordon that is ableist caricature. Story wise, the role that Barbara plays could have easily been filled by anyone else. There is no real season, within the narrative and outside of it, for Taylor to include this version of Barbara Gordon, who has received a decade of criticism from disabled people. It’s very well known that this iteration is problematic, to put it kindly, and Taylor is aware of that.

He made the active decision to include her, anyway, showing, at the very least, that he is passively, if not actively, ableist. Passive ableism is still ableism and disabled people are allowed to take issue with that.

That alone is reason enough for disabled people to be angry. But that’s not why things exploded on Twitter.

On July 1st, the very first day of disabled pride month, the new design for Barbara was dropped. After months of teasing Barbara’s return to a wheelchair using Oracle (see: Last Days of The DC Universe, Batgirl (2016), etc), they debuted... a new Batgirl costume that the artist has openly said draws inspiration from the Burnside suit.

There’s a lot of issues to unpack here, so let’s start small: the issue with consciously calling back to Burnside. The Burnside era of Batgirl stories was... beyond awful. The villain of the series’ first arc, was an AI based on Barbara’s brain patterns when she was disabled. It was evil because of all the rage and pain Barbara felt. The actual Barbara, on the other hand, was good -- because she was able bodied. Because her PTSD had been tossed aside. It was a horrifically ableist era that drove the idea that Barbara’s life was terrible when she was disabled; that it was some horrible, twisted secret.

Comics have kept that narrative going. Barbara is seen hiding books on chronic pain; she reacts aggressively to the mere idea that she could be in a wheelchair again, acting like it would be weakness. Whereas Barbara had once been Oracle not because of, but in spite of, her disability, who was fantastic representation for the disabled community, she now acts like it is the most shameful thing in her life.

To call back to Burnside is to call back to that ableism and make no critique of it. If anything, it’s to embrace the ideas of that era.

There is also the design itself to consider. Many people have pointed out the inclusion of a back brace, as if that saves it from ableism -- it does not. Any person who has ever worn a back brace can take one look at this design and know that they did not consult a disabled person. Hell, by how impractical that thing is, I doubt they even Googled a picture of a back brace.

It’s a superficial acknowledgement that Barbara is supposed to be disabled. Something that was apparently thrown in to appease the numerous complaints of Barbara being able bodied; something that no one working on it put any effort into.

When it comes to aids, this is not a new thing for Barbara in Infinite Frontier. She’s said to be using a cane occasionally, that we got a better look at in Batman: Urban Legends, and as any cane user can tell you... that is not a cane that could feasibly be used. It’s another pathetic attempt to acknowledge that Barbara is supposed to be disabled, without actually doing anything of importance.

[IMAGE ID: A segmented cane with a tri-pointed handle with a wrist strap. There is a stripe across the sections to connection them, labelled “solar battery charger buttons”. The text reads: “telescoping antenna doubles as cane or weapon if needed”. END ID]

Dropping this design (which we have now established to be problematic) on the very first day of disabled pride month is a sickening move. The very first day, and DC has doubled down on their disability erasure, thrown in superficial things like a back brace to act like it’s fine.

Tom Taylor is definitely involved in this, whether you like it not. No, he is not in anyway responsible for the events of the New 52 and what they did to Barbara Gordon, but that does not absolve him of blame for what is currently being done to her in his run.

When the design dropped, it started trending due to disabled fans reactions. To be clear: we were directly calling out the ableism in this design. This was Tom Taylor’s response:

[IMAGE ID: A tweet from TomTaylorMade that says: “Hey, @Bruna_Redono_F I think our new Batgirl suit is getting some attention.” He then adds a winky face emoji and tags @jesswchen and @drinkpinkkink. Attached are a screenshot showing that Batgirl is trending in the United States and a picture of the design itself. END ID]

This is him, bragging about how the disabled community reacted. Perhaps before this tweet, you could’ve made an argument that he was not ableist, but after he flaunted the fact that disabled people were rightly furious over this, like it was something to be proud of? No. If you are defending him, you are a part of the problem.

Taylor has included ableist writing in his Nightwing run, beyond the inherent ableism that comes with the current iteration of Barbara Gordon (whose inclusion, yet again, is his decision).

[IMAGE ID: A panel from Nightwing #79. Barbara and Dick are standing in his apartment. Barbara is saying: “I have some pretty new technology holding my spine together. I’m happy to do most things -- eat pizza in the park, take down low-level thugs -- but leaping from rooftops seems... unwise.” END ID]

What Barbara says in the panel above has bothered a lot of disabled people. The implication that she couldn’t “eat pizza in the park’ and “take down low-level thugs” without a spinal implant that conveniently erases her disability is... fucked up, to put it mildly. Those are both things that Barbara has done in a wheelchair. The first one is something wheelchair users can do and the implication that it’s not is beyond offensive.

But, let’s leave Barbara behind for a moment. I have previously mentioned that disabled people have been discussing the ableism present in this run long before July -- and that ableism is not only centred on Barbara. Dick is also a player in all this.

Dick Grayson was shot in the head. I don’t believe I need to retread the story, but just in case: Dick was shot in the head by KGBeast, developed amnesia from the event, and went by Ric Grayson for a long enough period in comics. If you have been active within the DC fandom for the past year or so, you know all about this controversial storyline and its fallout.

The Ric Grayson arc concluded itself the issue before Taylor became the writer for the series and ever since his tenure has begun, Taylor has completely ignored the reality of Dick being a disabled man. We understand this is comics, that things do not function the way they do in our world, but still -- it is clear that this gunshot wound to the head has affected Dick massively. We had an entire arc dedicated to how he struggled to find himself in the aftermath.

Taylor is choosing to write Dick as an able-bodied man, despite his canonical injuries and how they would impact his life.

This man is choosing to give empty gestures towards Barbara being a disabled woman (as discussed above, the completely dysfunctional back brace, etc) whilst writing her as able-bodied as possible. He writes both Dick and Barbara as able bodied as humanly possible. That is ableist. He is ableist. This is the same man that said he made a dog disabled ‘in honour of Barbara’. I do not think I need to elaborate on why that is bad.

The least he could’ve done, was get a sensitivity reader. We know that Taylor is not beyond getting people from marginalized communities to consult on his work (see: Suicide Squad), so why, when writing two characters that should be disabled, one that the disabled community have been criticising for a decade, does he not reach out to a single disabled person? A mere Google search could’ve improved the situation massively. In both the new design and the current writing, it is beyond clear that this is not just an able-bodied person writing it -- it’s an ableist person.

He could have listened to the numerous disabled fans that spoke out. Instead, he chose not only to refuse to do that, but to describe justifiable anger as ‘raging’. He treated us like we were crazy for daring to speak out about blatant ableism being parading around of us in our pride month.

Tom Taylor has failed to do the bare minimum and in doing so, he is, at very, very least, guilty of complicity. Again: passive ableism is still ableism.

The argument at hand is not just about Barbara Gordon and the continuing ableism that shines out from her current writing. The argument is about the treatment of disabled characters in his run. It has also become about the way he treats physically disabled people.

We also can’t have this conversation without acknowledging the fandom’s role in it all. I waited a day to write this up, to allow all the reactions to flood in... and I am sickened.

We have everything across the board. Able-bodied people that have actually listened to disabled people, who have supported us (which is deeply appreciated). Able-bodied people who may have had good intentions, but a skewed sense of the situation and perpetuating some of the more insidious lies being spread around (IE. that this is only about the new costume).

There are, obviously, the ableist reactions, though, that we will be discussing here. People deeming the current issues as ‘crazy’, calling disabled people ‘overly sensitive’ and ‘delusional’. Many people have completely glossed over the examples given for why Taylor, specifically, is ableist, and instead have resorted to telling disabled people that we are wrong and should be mad at DC instead.

It’s important to note that Tom Taylor is an adult man. He doesn’t need a fandom to attack disabled people for daring to call him out. He is not the victim in this situation; he has, for quite a few disabled people, been the aggressor.

I have seen claims that Infinite Frontier is a ‘slow burn’, implying that disabled people need to patient... as if we have not waited a decade for less ableist writing. There is a complete refusal from able-bodied fans to actually listen to what disabled people are saying. They would much rather rush to the defence of the (honestly rather mediocre) current Nightwing run.

Disabled fans know that comic book spaces are ableist. We know that both DC and Marvel and many of their writers are ableist. We are still allowed to be pissed as hell about it and acting like the current reaction being had right now is disabled people being ‘overdramatic’ is yet another example of how the able-bodied side of the fandom both refuses to listen to and undermine disabled people when we call out ableism.

We know it when we see it. We always do and we always will and we will always be able to recognize it far faster than an able-bodied person. If this many disabled fans are coming out and talking about an issue, calling it ableism, then it’s time for you shut up and listen.

Stop being a part of the problem and start supporting disabled fans for once.

#barbara gordon #dick grayson #nightwing #batgirl #tom taylor #tw ableism #okay to rb

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ravennm84 · 4 years ago

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The Inspector

I read a short story on AO3 a while back about a teacher or adult sending a letter to the Board of Governors about the teachers of the school and how terrible they were, and decided to write a story about the person who was assigned to look into the accusations. Got some salt and justice coming along. And I must say, this was very therapeutic to write. Warm-Fuzzies and please enjoy!!

Inspector Walters had a bad feeling about the Francois-Dupont College since the moment he’d received the assignment. The Board of Governors had been debating conducting an investigation on the school since one of the classes had been nicknamed “The Akuma Class” by social media and a few news sources. It became a necessity when a complaint had been filed by the Dupain-Cheng family about their daughter’s expulsion.

That complaint had surprised him. Only the Board of Governors had the power to expel a student after an investigation, and they hadn’t expelled the girl. The parents claimed that it was done on the same day as the accusations against the student, and was then retracted the following day. Again, something that only the Board of Governors had the power to do.

Looking over the incident report, the details were slim at best. Mlle. Dupain-Cheng was accused of cheating on a mock exam and the answer sheet was found in her backpack. When looking at the schedule, he saw that the mock exam had been taken the day before and the teacher only noticed that the answer sheet was missing after receiving the exams. A fact which bothered him a bit, but he’d seen a few scatterbrained teachers, as well as students make the mistake of not getting rid of the evidence. However, he also saw from her student records that she was one of the top students and always got high grades, so there was some doubt that she would have cheated.

The next thing was the accusation that she had pushed another student, Mlle. Lila Rossi down the stairs, injuring her right knee. However, there was no mention of an ambulance being called or even a trip to the nurse’s station. It was also suspect that there was no mention of other injuries that someone would have received after falling down stairs; no recorded cuts, bruises, or anything. So either Rossi had the most well placed fall that kept her from major injury, or she was lying.

The last part of the report was that Mlle. Dupain-Cheng had stolen a necklace from Mlle. Rossi and put it in her locker. Again, he was a bit skeptical considering that the same two girls had been involved with a separate incident on the same day. There was a picture of the locker, but Walters quickly noticed that there was no actual lock on the locker, something that he should be seeing since the Board had funded upgrades for lockers months ago. There was also no CCTV record attached to the incident report, meaning that the system was down and not reported, or the principal never checked them and only went by the word Mlle. Rossi.

Looking over the rest of the file, it was even more suspect when he saw that only Mlle. Dupain-Cheng’s parents had been called in. Mlle. Rossi’s contact, her mother, had been listed as “unavailable”. This was yet another thing that didn’t sit well with him. Following his gut, M. Walters set aside the Dupain-Cheng student file to look more closely at the Rossi student file.

Not five minutes in, he knew that things were not right. The disabilities she had listed in the current file were not consistent with the files from her previous schools, and there were no doctors notes to support them as being recently discovered ailments. He attempted to call the number listed on the current file, but it kept going straight to voicemail. Comparing the number to the previous files, he noticed that the number did not match.

Finding himself very unhappy with the incomplete file provided by Principal Damocles, he decided that he would have to go to the school in person the following morning and see for himself what was really going on.

~oOo~

First stop he made was to the principal’s office. M. Walters had not alerted him of the inspection so that the man would not have a chance to change or hide specific documents, he’d seen that happen more than once. What he had not expected was to see a grown man playing with dolls/action figures behind his desk. Damocles quickly straightened up, hiding the dolls in a drawer before scowling at him. “What is the meaning of this? You can’t simply barge into my office without-”

“Actually, M. Damocles, I can,” he interrupted, pulling out his identification. “Inspector Walters, I’m with the Board of Governors, looking into a recent complaint filed against the school.”

“Complaint? What complaint?” He asked, sputtering a bit in surprise.

“The expulsion of Mlle. Marinette Dupain-Cheng,” he glared at the man.

“Oh, that incident has already been handled.”

“Is that so? Then please, explain to me how the incident was handled.” Pulling out a chair, Walters flipped open his notepad and clicked open his pen. Some of his colleagues considered the whole pen and paper thing to be a little old-school at times, but it had its purpose. He waved a hand at Damocles to begin.

“Well, Mlle. Lila Rossi suffers from a rare disease that makes her lie uncontrollably when she is stressed-”

“I’m going to stop you right there, M. Damocles. We will get to the reason why you reinstated Mlle. Dupain-Cheng in a moment. First, I want you to go through everything on the day of the incident.”

“Oh, of-of course,” he was beginning to fidget. “I was sitting in my office when I heard screaming outside of my door. When I came outside, Marinette Dupain-Cheng was standing at the top of the stairs and Mlle. Lila Rossi was at the bottom of the stairs, crying that she had been pushed.” Walters wrote this down and waved a hand for him to continue. “M. Harpele and I brought her upstairs and wrapped the knee that was injured, and then contacted Mlle. Dupain-Cheng’s parents to talk about the incident, seeing as Mlle. Rossi had been badly injured.”

Walters finished writing that down before looking back up at Damocles. “And is that when you called an ambulance to look over Mlle. Rossi’s injury and check to make sure there were no other injuries?”

It was no surprise to him when Damocles mouth did an impersonation of a fish for a moment. “Well, um, no. I did not call an ambulance-”

“Then I can only imagine that you called the school nurse to your office to look her over and deem whether or not a trip to the hospital was necessary?”

Again, he began impersonating a fish. “I-I didn’t think it was- Mlle. Rossi claimed that she was fine and that only her knee was injured.”

“You just told me that you believed Mlle. Rossi was, and I quote ‘badly injured’, and yet she received no medical attention?” Walters hummed in a disbelieving manner as he looked down at his notepad and wrote down his thoughts. “That was quite irresponsible of you. I’ve read your personnel file and nowhere does it list that you have a medical background. Yet, you thought yourself qualified to treat and diagnose a girl that claimed to have been pushed down the stairs and could have underlying injuries, such as a concussion, broken bones, or internal bleeding?”

To his satisfaction, the principal began to sweat, but he was nowhere close to finished yet. “I can imagine that Mme. Rossi was upset when you called her to the school for the meeting with M. and Mme. Dupain-Cheng.” Just as he suspected, Damocles wouldn’t meet his eyes. “You have contacted Mme. Rossi about the incident, have you not?”

“Well, Mme. Rossi is an ambassador and is very busy-”

“Are you meaning to tell me that you failed to alert a parent that their child was injured while in your care?” When the principal looked away again, Walters glared before double clicking his pen and writing down more notes.Taking his time as he wrote to allow the man to sweat and worry about what was being written.

“We will return to your failure at contacting parents and guardians later. Now, tell me what you observed when you reviewed the CCTV footage of the stairs at the time of the incident.” Just as he suspected, the man became flustered and refused to meet his eyes. “Are you telling me that you did not, at any time, look over the footage to corroborate whether Mlle. Rossi was pushed or accidentally fell?”

Hesitating again. “I, um, thought it unnecessary. It was clear that she was pushed-”

“And you know that for fact, how, exactly?” He glared as he kept writing.

“As I said, Mlle. Dupain-Cheng was standing at the top of the stairs while Mlle. Rossi was at the bottom of the stairs, crying that she’d been pushed-”

“You also said, and I quote ‘I was sitting in my office when I heard screaming outside of my door’. Meaning that you did not actually see whether Mlle. Rossi was pushed or simply fell. Am I to understand that you believed one child over another without gathering evidence to prove or disprove the claim?”

Walters watched as the man’s parlor turned a pale green while muttering multiple failed excuses, which only served to anger him further. So far, Damocles had failed to show him, in any way, that he was qualified to run this school and had let an innocent girl suffer for his mistakes. “You are going to pull up that footage right now, and have it prepared for a meeting I will be setting up with Mme. Rossi later today. And not just the stairs, but the footage of the classroom to see exactly who stole the test answer sheet and the lockerroom to see if the accusations of Mlle. Dupain-Cheng stealing Mlle. Rossi’s property is at all valid. And allow me to make something very clear, you are already looking at being brought up on negligence and abuse of power, seeing as you expelled and reinstated a student, something that only the Board of Governors has the power to do. If I find out that the footage is somehow ‘missing’, I will have no choice but to assume that you have purposefully erased it to protect yourself and will have you brought before the Board by tomorrow morning. Am I clear?”

The man gave a shaky nod, as he immediately got on his computer and began pulling up the footage from that day.

Getting on his phone, Walters called the number that Mme. Rossi had listed in the previous files and it went straight through. He easily scheduled a meeting for later that day and hung up.“I will be sitting in on Mme. Bustier’s class for the rest of the day, until Mme. Rossi arrives at 1pm for our appointment. Have all the footage ready by then.” Without another word, Inspector Walters left the office and made his way down to the Akuma Classroom.

~oOo~

Lunch had finally come and Walters was anything but impressed by what he had seen. To her credit, Mme. Bustier had been polite and understanding towards his presence in the classroom and seemed to go about teaching as usual. She was also a very upbeat type of personality, something needed in a city plagued by akumas. But that was the extent of his compliments towards the teacher.

During the first half of the day, he witnessed the woman allow her students to become disorderly multiple times. Three of which stood out to him beyond the normal rowdy teenage energy that is normal for a classroom.

The first was how a boy in the front of the room kept flinching and curling into himself whenever another student, who just happened to be Mlle. Lila Rossi, touched him. She was sharing his desk in the front, sitting inappropriately close, clutching his arm in a possessive manor, and ignored him when he asked her to let him go or give him space. All this was done in full view of Mme. Bustier, and she did nothing.

During the literature lesson, they were studying Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mlle. Rossi interrupted and began telling a story about being a descendant of Vlad the Impaler. A complete falsehood since Vlad’s only child had been killed as an infant. This was a fact that the teacher should have corrected or told the girl to pay attention to the lesson, but she did nothing. Allowing the girl to prattle on for close to 15 minutes before returning to the lesson.

The worst though, was when Mlle. Rossi, made another scene when she began complaining about how her left knee was still hurting from when Marinette pushed her down the stairs. The other students proceeded to glare and speak harsh words about the girl. It was at this time that Mlle. Dupain-Cheng stood from her seat in the back and attempted to defend herself. Mme. Bustier did intervene this time, but she did not reprimanded the other students that were ganging up on the one girl. Instead, she reprimanded Marinette and told her that she was not setting a good example for the class. Then forced her to apologize to Lila for upsetting her. Blatant victim blaming, right in front of him, and the teacher had the nerve to smile at him as if to say that she had handled the situation.

Walters had written everything down, already deciding that he would need to call the Board at the first possible moment to alert them to the incompitent administrative practices of Damocles, as well as the toxic teaching methods of Bustier. It was now little wonder why this class had produced so many akumas. It was a miracle that there were any students left in the class that hadn’t been akumatized. But seeing as one student was clearly being bullied and the other was being sexually harassed, it likely wouldn’t be long.

He was just barely able to fit in the call and look over the CCTV footage before his meeting with Mme. Rossi in M. Damocles office. That had been interesting, to say the least. Before the meeting had even started, Mme. Rossi was voicing her worry about the amount of time that the school had been closed due to akuma attacks…

Once that had been cleared up, M. Damocles got to the matter at hand. Beginning with requesting information and doctors notes at her earliest convenience pertaining to her daughter’s injuries, disabilities, as well as requesting more information about her lying disease. Again, that had been a very interesting conversation that resulted in the woman yelling at Damocles in French and Italian about how incompetant he was and why hadn’t he gotten ahold of her sooner?

But the worst reaction came when Damocles told her about the day of the incident. They showed her the footage found of Lila, and yes it was Lila, stealing the answer sheet off of Mme. Bustier’s desk and then slip it into Marinette’s bag on her way back to her seat. Then the footage of Lila breaking into Marinette’s locker and planting the necklace. And finally, Lila smiling at Marinette before walking down the stairs and sitting on the ground before she started screaming.

By then, another inspector from the Board of Governors had arrived to assist in the situation that he had reported during his earlier phone call and the students had returned from lunch. Walters requested Mme. Bustier to join them and to bring Lila along. When the girl entered the office and saw her furious mother and principal, she paled immediately and started lying.

Even when Walters, Damocles, and her mother tore apart every one of her lies, she kept trying to turn things around and make herself a victim. And to Walters’ horror, Damocles was actually buying her lies! It was at that moment that he decided that the man had no right being a school administrator and would be put on leave, pending the end of his investigation and the Board of Governors decision.

Bustier attempted to side with Lila as well, claiming that the girl suffered from a disease and shouldn’t be punished. Completely ignoring that Mme. Rossi told her that her daughter suffered no such ‘disease’. The other inspector, Marchand, looked on in disgust before pulling out his phone and calling the Board of Governors right there, relaying his support of Walters’ recommendation against Damocles and Bustier.

Walters took charge of the situation, forcing Damocles out of his chair to take his seat. “Mme. Rossi, as an inspector of the Board of Governors, I must ask if you fully understand the situations that your daughter has caused?”

The woman took a deep breath before slowly letting it out, all the while retaining a firm grip on her daughter’s arm after she had attempted to flee the room earlier. “If you would, please go over everything from the top.” The woman requested, her voice a bit hoarse after yelling at the principal, the teacher, and her daughter.

Giving the woman a sympathetic nod, he flipped open the notebook and went over his notes while Marchand kept Damocles and Bustier quiet and standing in a corner. “I have personally observed your daughter disrupting class, bullying a student named Marinette Dupain-Cheng, lying to her peers, leading them to also bully Mlle. Dupain-Cheng, and sexually harassing another student who verbally asked her to stop. We have video evidence of her committing theft, harassing the same student I witnessed her bullying, framing that student for assault, as well as framing that student of theft and cheating. All that, as well as your testimony of her lying to the school administration about different injuries and illnesses, fraud in regards to changing your contact information, and four months of truancy.

“At this point, the school has no choice but to suspend Lila, pending an investigation to be completed by the Board of Governors,” he said, handing her the paperwork to sign, which she did right away. “At the time the investigation is complete, she will have the opportunity to plead her case to the Board. However, I want to make it clear that, from what I have seen, it is very likely that your daughter will be expelled.”

To her credit, Mme. Rossi held her head high as she nodded and handed back their copies of the suspension papers. “I suspected as much. However, I do request that a meeting be scheduled with Mlle. Dupain-Cheng’s parents so that Lila may apologize in person. I also want her to apologize to the class and admit her lies to them so that there won’t be any backlash on that poor girl.”

Lila turned to her mother in a panic. “No, Mom! Please don’t make me-”

“YOUNG LADY, you are going to tell the class everything you lied about, apologize to that girl, and admit that you have been bullying her. Am I clear?” Walters was impressed that the girl simply nodded as she curled into herself before Mme. Rossi looked back to him. “I will not allow Lila to escape her punishment, that includes telling the truth to the people she has wronged.”

He nodded in understanding. “I’ll see about arranging a meeting. However, the suspension will be taking effect immediately, if you wish to have her confess to the class, I suggest doing so right now before school lets out.” Walters then turned to give the teacher a hard look that had her wilting under his gaze. “I’m sure Mme. Bustier would have no problem with that, I will also accompany you. M. Marchand, would you mind keeping an eye on M. Damocles?”

“Of course, I would like to word with him in private, myself.” He said, sending the man his own scathing look.

Mme. Bustier quietly escorted the Rossis and himself back to the classroom. The gym teacher, M. D’Argencourt had been watching over the class while Bustier had been in the meeting. Walters asked him to stay, and that they would only be there for a moment before turning to nod at the other teacher.

“Students, may I have your attention, please?” She waited a few seconds as the students put away what they were doing, likely hearing the tremor in the woman’s voice. “As you know, M. Walters, from the Board of Governors, has been sitting in with us today. It has been brought to my attention that one of our students has not been honest with us and has been causing a fair amount of trouble.”

Looking back at the girl and her mother, Mme. Rossi forced her daughter to step forward while keeping a hand on her shoulder. At first, she didn’t say anything. Then her mother leaned forward to whisper something in her ear, causing her to slump and tears to fall down her cheeks. “I-I lied, about everything. *sniffle* I don’t know any celebrities. I’ve never helped charities or been to Achu. *sniffle* I don’t have tinnitus, arthritis, or anything like that. I’m not Ladybug’s best friend and I’m not related to Vlad the Impaler. And-and…”

“And…” Mme Rossi said in a forceful tone, ignoring the stunned looks they were receiving from the class. Lila tucked her chin to her chest, muttering the rest of her confession under her breath. But her mother wasn’t going to allow that. “Speak up so everyone can hear you, unless you want to be grounded for twice as long with no allowance at all.”

The girl’s hands fisted at her side as she spoke loud enough for everyone in the room to hear. “Marinette never bullied me. I-I bullied her. I told her that I would take her friends from her. I pl-planted the answer sheet in her bag. *sob* I put my necklace in-in her locker. She never pushed me down the stairs either, I faked it to get her expelled.”

“And why did you do all of this to that girl, Lila?” Her mother asked, making it clear that she had to answer.

“Be-because sh-she knew that I was lying *sob hiccup sob* and I wanted her gone.”

“And what do you have to say to Marinette?”

Lila lifted her chin, glaring dangerously at the girl sitting in the back. “Sorry,” she snapped.

Mme. Bustier looked up at the girl, giving her a kind smile. “And do you accept her apology, Marinette?”

That really pissed him off, that woman had no right to put that girl on the spot after Rossi had done everything in her power to ruin that girl’s life. Before she could say anything, Walters stepped in front of Bustier. “Marinette, you are under no obligation to accept her apology, that is completely up to you.” Waiting a moment he saw the absolute relief on the girl’s face before quietly shaking her head and settling back in her chair.

Walters then instructed M. D’Argencourt to continue with the class while he escorted Bustier back to the office while Mme. Rossi took her daughter home.

There was still a lot to do in this school, it was clear to him that the two educators, and he used that term loosely, needed to go. There was paperwork to fill out, more CCTV footage to go over, interviews with the students of Bustier’s class, and calls needed to be made to the Dupain-Chengs and the Agrestes about Lila Rossi and what she’d done to their children. The investigation literally had weeks of work to do, but it had to be done. But Walters knew, by the time they were done cleaning house, the students and school would be better off for it.

~oOo~ Four Weeks Later ~oOo~

Walters was working on the last of the paperwork having to do with the Francois-Dupont College debacle, greatly relieved that it was over.

Lila Rossi had been officially expelled after the investigation for bullying, harassment, theft, sexual harassment, cheating, destruction of property, fraud, and truancy. During her trial before the Board, the Dupain-Cheng family had been present and she had been forced to apologize to them for what she had done to her daughter. From her file, he saw that the Dupain-Chengs, as well as the Agreste family, had placed restraining orders on the girl. The Agreste family were also pressing charges for sexual harassment. Mme. Rossi had mentioned a reformatory school for delinquent children in Italy, stating that she had already enrolled her daughter, despite the outcome of the Board’s decision. He was glad that the woman was taking everything in stride and seemed to be doing the right thing.

The investigation into M. Damocles had uncovered even more skeletons than Walters had expected. Negligence and abuse of power, those were easily confirmed. They also uncovered proof of favoritism, taking bribes to ensure that certain students were not punished for offenses or that they passed their classes, despite failing grades. But the nail in the coffin was when Walters tracked down the money that was supposed to go to upgrading the lockers, Damocles had embezzled it to fund his vigilante superhero activities. He had officially been fired and blacklisted from ever working for the educational system or any branch of the government. The new principal was a vice principal from another school, well versed in bullying situations and had degrees in accounting as well as education. She would be going over all the books to see exactly how much money Damocles had embezzled over the years, so the Board of Governors would be able to sue for the proper amount of restitutions.

The issue of Mme. Bustier turned out to be an interesting matter. While looking into her qualifications, it had been revealed that her teaching license had been suspended before she had been hired by Damocles to teach at the school. Not trusting her file, Walters contacted her previous school and found out that they had fired her for much of the same reasons he had put her on leave. She had enabled bullies, blamed the victims, and pressured her “star pupil” to take on the work of a teaching assistant. When that same student complained and refused to help anymore, Bustier had told his parents that the boy was a troublemaker, refused to follow instruction, and was talking back. The boy had insisted on talking to the principal, who had cleared things up with the student and his parents. Bustier had been fired for her behavior and her license suspended until she completed anti-bullying classes, which she never attended. She simply applied to a new school, where the principal didn’t look too closely at her paperwork, and resumed her toxic teaching methods. Because of this; Bustier had been fired, blacklisted from ever teaching again, as well as arrested for teaching without a license.

The whole of Bustier’s class had been assigned counselling sessions for the foreseeable future until the toxic habits that the teacher had instilled in the class could be rectified. Though Walters was pleased to see that there seemed to be progress, as none of the students had been akumatized since the day he had gone to the school. A new record for time between akumatizations. The substitute that had been hired was stern, well versed in squashing bullying habits, but was sympathetic to the victims. That was what that class needed for the time until the Board could find a suitable, permanent replacement.

All in all, Walters felt that he had done his job with investigating the Dupain-Cheng expulsion, and was happy to hear that the girl was doing much better. Her record had been cleared, her grades were still at the top of the class, and she had given the Board a basket of baked goods on the day of Lila’s trial, which had been like eating little bites of heaven. She had even given him a custom notebook cover, that he was pretty sure she made herself, and a matching pen. It was a very kind gift, and might have thought it was a bribe if anyone else had given it to him, but he could tell that she was just grateful to him for listening to her and making her school life better.

That was the reason he enjoyed his job.

Taglist:

@7-sage-7 @fantasiame @seraphichana

@t1dwarrior-of-earth @ghostmaster83 @izang

@ulmban @plushbookworm @corabeth11

@ramos123 @darkened-flame @caffeinetheory

@iamblinkmarvelarmy @abrx2002 @cheshire5210

@delightfulcookiesrecipespizza @raiderofthelostbooks

@plz-excuse-my-inner-ravenclaw @chocolateherringtacofan

@city-of-all-tunas @aadnrsstar @kitten12113

@interobanginyourmom @pandacatxd @zoiechance

@nerd-nowandforever @jesussavedevenme

@the-smallest-kittenz @will-zeke-thomson @omgpercabethadrinette

@ironspiderstark @goblinwhoships @toodaloo-kangaroo

#bustier salt #lila salt #lila gets exposed #marinette deserves better #ml fic #mlbjustice #ml au #marinette dupain cheng

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familyagrestefanblog · 7 months ago

Note

The seating case is extremely frustrating the way it was handled and especially how Marinette stans act about it.

As a person who's almost always 5 minutes late to school / work, let me say that it is a clear-cut case of too fucking bad. This is why I try to keep it down to 5 minutes because it's a time frame that can still be tolerated (my teachers know my background which helps) and I'm not missing too much yet. Because all that I miss is still on ME (though I'm always on time when it's truly important). I know that and don't expect anything else, even if it sometimes sucks in cases like this.

Sometimes my friends save a seat for me, but other times they don't or it couldn't be done. I adjust to the situation once I'm there because in the end, I know that I'm the one who was late and the world doesn't start and end with me and my presence.

In Marinette’s case, one even has to mention that Alya tried contacting her which is already very considered of her and I'm honestly very bothered by how Marinette stans just disregard that and take it for granted bc "it's a given" cause apparently it's Alya's job as Marinette's best friend to be her baby sitter 24/ 7 in life, regarding pretty much EVERYTHING now.

Alya had every right to sit next to her boyfriend, she doesn't need Marinette's permission first. Especially not when Marinette is not disliked by the rest of the class. Marinette wasn't forced to sit next to Chloé either or left forgotten and alone in a class she has no connections to anyone yet.

Funny, that complaint would actually apply to Lila in the end. Yes, she fucked herself over by saying that her disability isn't there anymore so she can sit in the back with Adrien (who then left), but I would actually make the argument that Bustier made a very questionable teaching decision by leaving the new student to sit alone in the back when her classmates have already long befriended each other which makes it more difficult for a new kid to become part of the class.

Something that was even brought up in "Revelation" in Lila's speech before she runs out of the class room. Ironically, she was right for bringing that up, that was a realistic consequence of Bustier leaving the new student all by herself in the back, especially when there is already tention between her and the very well-liked class representative.

But I'm not seeing anyone complain about that when Marinette stans go on about how awful Mlls Bustier is. Hmmm. I fucking wonder why?

But back on track.

Yes, it's shit that Marinette had to then sit at the back of the class alone, but someone simply HAD to. It's not like the others forbit her from taking the free seat next to them, someone HAS to sit there by default. In the end it was Lila stuck there and no one minds that, but heaven help us when it's Marinette, huh?

Even Adrien sitting there, no one hating Chameleon would have cared about that. It would then have been all about "poor Marinette being forced to sit next to Lila". The constellation literally doesn't matter, people just take issue with Marinette not having been treated as the most important person in the room by default, that's all.

As op said, the seat rearrangements were done because the class teacher was informed that the new student (who was only there for 1 day prior) has a disability and then everyone else took the chance to switch around, too.

Marinette has no special needs (that Bustier and everyone else were officially made aware of). She isn't owed a special treatment and Mlls Bustier was 100% in the right for bringing that point up towards Marinette.

By all means, Marinette already came in too late and then proceeded to make a drama out of having to sit in the back. Mind you, Marinette only had a problem with HERSELF having to sit alone in the back. Not that a seat with both negative factors combined exist at all (in the back + alone).

She didn't ask her friends if they wanna switch or if someone wants to join her to balance out one disadvantage of the seating. She directly asked Mlls Bustier why it has to be HER. That was what she cared about.

And that the disabled new girl doesn't get the special treatment Marinette wants so she immediately claimed that it's a lie with no proof whatsoever.

Marinette was extremely lucky that her ass-pull turned out to be true because even liars can have genuine disabilities. I would even make the argument that much more often than not will it be the case that a massive liar has at least ONE big problem that caused the lying habit to develop this way in the first place (Marinette herself for example, not that anyone were ever allowed to call her out on being a liar even if it would elevate her as a main character greatly in terms of realism whne it comes to mental health and for example ADHD/ADD representation (prior to "Derision" retcons))

But looking at the case from an outsider perspective: Marinette acted incredibly self-centered and inconsiderate because all she cared about was that SHE, her feelings, and preferences are being considered.

But she would have Bustier make anyone else get her bad seat instead without thinking about it twice, as long as it isn't herself and Lila doesn't get to "steal Adrien from Marinette".

So, yeah, why is Marinette OWED the royal treatment and everyone's consideration, if Marinette herself isn't taking anyone else into consideration in any of this?

Why does Alya not get to choose to sit next to her boyfriend? Why are everyone else's seating preferences invalid because Marinette personally doesn't like her deal in it as person who came in last and didn't check her phone? And why does somebody - ANYONE ELSE, Marinette didn't care - need to be force by the teacher to get the shitty seat instead of her?

Why are the others awful people for not automatically feeling obligated to take on the shitty deals themselves so Marinette can always get whatever she wants?

Doesn't seem FAIR, now does it?

Marinette shouldn't have been mad at Lila in Lila's debut episode... I mean she should have been annoyed especially for the lies, but who she Should have been mad at was Alya... Alya who mad a design for Marinette not even moving herself

(1) killer queen | gcmv | gmv | oc backstory | ⚠️;; blood - YouTube

(A Chloe song for your troubles)

I mean Lila's first debut was back in Season 1 with Volpina, not Chameleon but that said.

The whole changing the seats thing? Honestly? Too fucking bad.

Marinette does not deserve special treatment. Would it have been nice to wait for her before everyone shuffles to have her give input? Yeah sure.

But the initial switch was because they were trying to accomodate another student's disability. And everyone went 'hey since we're at it, let's shuffle around' and chose to sit next to people they wanted to.

Marinette, unfortunately, was incredibly late to class and shows up far after all of this has been decided. Would it have been nice if they waited? Yeah. But were they expected to just sit around doing jack all because how dare they make a decision without Marinette present don't you know she is the god of this world and what she says goes she has to be involved in this decision and if she doesn't approve then too fucking bad?

#miraculous ladybug #Ml Chameleon #Ml Chameleon critical #Marinette critical

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sanguine-tenshi · 3 years ago

Text

I just finished Inazuma and I have words

TL;DR: Hate the story, mixed on characters, love the design and tired of being treated like a 4-year-old with a learning disability.

SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT

Let’s start with what I like.

Inazuma is absolutely beautiful. I’ll admit Inazuma hits a lot of aesthetic points for me. All the islands are different enough to feel unique but they still look like they are a part of the same land. There are a lot of secrets to discover through just exploring. Each island has a world quest to help it (make it less hostile towards you) so it very much feels like you are saving Inazuma from itself.

The puzzles are alright.

I like the cubes that rotate, I always put in the effort to figure them out properly.

Hate the ones that don’t rotate, they just aren’t engaging enough for me, so I just hit them at random and hope for the best.

The glowing floor tiles were fun, once you actually realized what they wanted you to do. A little bit too easy if I’m honest.

The electro compass isn’t really much of a puzzle, more of a fetch the nearest electrograna quest.

Those little pillars that require an electro connection are kinda boring to me, again not much of a puzzle, the hardest part is finding both pillars.

I love the new electro seelie, kinda hard to follow the jittery thing in certain parts but they make a nice contrast to the regular seelies.

I’m very much mixed on characters.

Yoimiya is adorable. She is so bright and bubbly. What little game play we had with her was fun and I love her over the top style of fighting. Kinda disappointed she’s another pyro archer but I do admit it fits her character well. It was also wonderful seeing her just settle down and be quiet, just be a part of that moment that obviously meant a lot to her. It’s always nice to see that bubbly, energetic character have that one quiet thing, ya know. Kinda funny it’s fireworks, of all things, for her.

Gorou I like, from what little we’ve seen of him. My man killed a dude with his thighs so I’m down. I do find it kinda ridiculous that a resistance general has his whole damn belly exposed. There is also something about his voice that just does not fit. I cannot for the life of me put my finger on what exactly it is. Could be the tone itself, could be just voice acting. It sort of feels like the VA is trying to sound deeper than he actually does.

Sangonomiya Kokomi, mixed. I like her design, she looks like some sort of mystical priestess. Again something about the voice is jarring. I expected her to sound sort of airy, like she isn’t 100% present, like she’s seeing something we can’t. TBH she reminds me of Luna from HP for some reason.

Yae Miko, I was interested because of her design. She sounds very arrogant and up her own ass, which would have been fine...if she hadn’t given us that god-awful line. “...I have high hopes for you, child. Don’t disappoint me.” Dear lord I wanted to punt her off the mountain. Or fucking what! Also she’s some bigshot priestess of the Sacred Sakura and yet she can’t do her damn job properly. Why couldn’t her arrogant ass come down from her high perch and cleanse the stupid roots? Why did the traveler have to do that shit?

Baal looks dead inside. Booba sword is overrated, get a life. I want a remach! And no cutscene shenanigans this time!

Kujou Sara seems like one of those ‘honor above all else’ characters. Those are either hit or miss with me. You have my attention for now. Also what are those shoes woman?! I’d rather you wear those leg-killing, needle point stilettoes instead of those Wish gag shoes. How in the name of all that is holy can you run in those?!

Thoma, I like him. At first I thought we were gonna get another Childe incident, but Thoma is too much of a innocent puppy to pull anything that horrible. To me he fits a fox a lot better than Childe does. Childe is a dingo and I stand behind that.

Kamisato Ayaka...hate her. At first I was neutral on her. Nothing about her design really spoke to me, but I was willing to wait and see. But then miHoYo started to violently push her friendship at us. We are totally friends now, this is the first time you see my face, but we are so totally friends now. And during her story quest everyone was like “Ah, you are so good Ayaka. You are so nice Ayaka. You are so perfect Ayaka. We all love you so much Ayaka. And oh, how could a mere merchant like myself...” Ew, go away. This is the first time I’m actively not pulling on a character banner. Normally I pull even if I’m not particularly interested in a character, because you never know how good their gameplay is until you take them out in the map. But I think I’ll be skipping this one. No thanks.

And now, the worst part, the story.

We’ve been hearing about the situation in Inazuma for a long time. There has been also a lot of talk about how hard it is to get there. About the wall of thunderclouds that surround the islands. So to have it cut to black and then voila Inazuma, feel just so cheap.

I was expecting something. An animation. A struggle. A quest. A minigame. At least show us the horrible weather! Something! Anything!

Hell if they wanted to be assholes about it they could have made it so that if the player fails at this point the ship is damaged, you return to Liyue and have to wait until tomorrow for the ship to be repaired. No Inazuma for today. That sure as hell would have raised the stakes.

The next complaint I have is with Yurika, the 2 milion mora processing fee girl. Later on Thoma mentions that the agency people see the fees as easy money, so her attitude doesn’t make much sense. After all someone like her would want to extract as much money as she can, but you still want the people to be able to pay that.

So it would make more sense to me if she was overly friendly and asked way too many questions. She’d need to get a much information as she can and after all the previous hostility people would be very open with her. So she’d be able to quickly find out why someone is here, what they are selling and roughly how much money they’d be able to pay. A merchant selling expensive silk would have more many than a regular ore merchant. So she’d be able to extract as much money as she could.

“I know this is a lot of money, especially for something so simple, but there is nothing I can do about it. I’m so very sorry.” And people wouldn’t say anything bad to her because she’s the first friendly face they see in Inazuma.

The stealth mission was just god-awful and I hope we never have to do that nonsense again.

Getting off of Ritou was a bit janky at the end, Chisato should have had a better reason for coming along. But I’m honestly just glad we didn’t get out the usual way...getting stuffed in a crate and smuggled out.

As a side note, I’m getting really tired of characters overexplaining things to me, especially Paimon. Dear lord, not everything has to be said, you can leave me to come to my own conclusions and solutions. Just please, who cares if a few player struggle for a bit, you don’t have to hold my hand through the whole thing.

Ayaka’s three were...ugh. It was basic emotional manipulation. Oh no this guy forgot about the love of his life and he’s been waiting for decades. And oh how sad this guy was so good and he helped these people so much but now he can’t remember. And oh the tragedy this guy forgot his life goal and is now hunted by the demons of the past. Oh the humanity!

And it did not work. Know why? Because I have no emotional investment in any of these people, in this land. What is happening to the vision bearers in Inazuma is tragic, true, but that doesn’t make me want to overthrow the government. I don’t live here. I just got here. I wanna ask a question or two and then move on. None of this concerns me.

I was so happy when the traveler just flat out refused to start a revolution. And then we had to go and meet some people and immediately I knew this was going to be some oh noes the tragedy moments and then we would agree to help them.

It’s so forced.

Wanna know what would have been better?

Just as we are leaving the Kamisato estate Thoma catches up with us. And he tells us he gets it. We are an outsider and this doesn’t concern us. He was hopeful but he expected the denial. We shouldn’t hold it against Ayaka.

He joins us as a guide because he knows of the people we have to meet.

And so as we help these three we also get to know Thoma. We find out he was an outsider too. He got in just before the worst of it started and then he was stuck in Inazuma. He lost someone to the Vision Hunt. They slowly lost their mind after loosing their vision, their ambition too closely tied to their personality to continue without it (what is happening to Domon hits a little too close to home and he has to walk away, this is where we hear the story of the one he lost). And the same would have happened to him if the Kamisatos hadn't taken him in. He owes them his vision, his sanity and his life.

So this rebellion is personal for him.

At the end of the three wishes the atmosphere is somber. We tell him we understand why Ayaka fights, why he fights. We know that this is all wrong, that it should be stopped...but not by us. We came here to get a lead on our brother. And rebellion isn’t an overnight affaire and we can’t loose so much time in Inazuma.

And yeah, he expected as much. He just asks that we let Ayaka down gently. It’d be a shame if someone as idealistic and hopeful as her lost their spark.

And so we are gentle but firm with Ayaka. She looks like she wants to argue with us but Thoma shakes his head at her. So she sighs and tells us that a promise is a promise. We should come to the Komore Teahouse in a few days and she’ll have a plan for us to meet with the Shogun.

Now we can still have a character story quest with Yoimiya and we can still somehow get involved with helping Master Masakatsu, but it’s through Yoimiya instead of Ayaka.

And instead of a character story quest with Ayaka we have one with Thoma. Hell, give him a whole damn hangout event even.

You can probably guess why I’m pushing the friendship with Thoma so much.

Because. He. Gets. Kidnapped. For. The. 100th. Vision. Ceremony.

And that would have been the perfect emotional in to get us involved in the rebellion. After all we just saw what happens to people who have their visions taken away and we are not letting that happen to Thoma, someone we just got close to.

So Baal makes it personal for us as well.

I have a few more minor complaints.

Aoi is stupid for asking for compensation after she tells us everything we needed to know because, ya know, we could have just walked away. We should have.

The whole stupid misunderstanding about the value Kurosawa’s sword holds. Kinda obvious he meant emotional value instead of monetary.

The suspicious amount of visionless NPCs and by that I mean this is the first time we have NPCs with vision. This wouldn’t have been a problem if we’ve seen NPCs with visions in Mond and Liyue.

The whole rebellion camp bit feels incredibly rushed. We just sort of lollygag over there and then there is a fight (against Sara and her stupid shoes).

Don’t make us fight Baal just to force us to lose. It would have been better if we were forced to retreat, because Thoma was injured, because there are too many soldiers for us to handle on our own. Hell, you can have a funny scene where we straight up jump off a cliff with Thoma clinging onto us and screaming bloody murder until he realizes we are slowly gliding away and he’s not about to plummet to his death.

The Sakura cleansing quest should have been voice acted.

The Mirror Maiden and Pyro Agent are totally on a date, I will not be told otherwise.

#genshin impact #inazuma #genshin inazuma #genshin 2.0 #Thoughts #opinion #yoimiya #gorou #sangonomiya kokomi #yae miko #baal #kujou sara #thoma #kamisato ayaka

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katierosefun · 3 years ago

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got through march in some shape or form, so once again . . . another list of media that i’ve somehow consumed to keep myself from going insane. (when i tell you making these lists for the last year or so has been one of my favorite things of the month . . . the urge to quietly categorize everything . . . )

kdrama:

soul mechanic

i’m pretty sure i started this show way back in september or october, but i finally got around to finishing it this month! and you know, while i have some issues with this kdrama, it had its genuinely touching moments. basically, this series is about a young singer with borderline personality disorder, han woo joo (jung so min). she’s bounced around between therapist to therapist when she meets the unconventional psychiatrist lee si joon (shin ha kyun), who has his own hurts he still needs to heal from. together, they learn how to heal and also move on with their lives.

my only complaint tbh is that pretty early in the show, han woo joo and lee si joon fall in love with each other. which isn’t that great, because i’m pretty sure it’s unethical to date your patient, but it gets mildly better as the show goes on (ie. si joon stops being woo joo’s doctor). i think it’s also telling that despite it’s pretty explicit that they’re in love with each other, i kind of forgot about that part of their relationship quickly, esp. after resuming this show. because tbh, this show seems much more concerned with telling the stories of those who are struggling in some way with mental illness or mental health in general. so despite my problems with the show, i enjoyed how this was perhaps the first show i’ve ever watched that actually treated patients suffering with mental illness with humanity. there’s no ridiculing, no condescension. there’s some moments that made me scratch my head because ehhh, i don’t think that’s good medical practice, but for the most part? i was more touched than offended during the course of the show. and more than anything, i really loved how strangely real han woo joo felt. when she’s on a high, she’s on a real high, but when she’s on a low, she’s on a real low--and what i liked about this show was that han woo joo remained lovable. it’s so easy to make characters with bpd seem like villains, but she just always seemed human.

so...would i recommend this show? i’m not entirely sure. it has its dragging moments, but it also has its happier moments. you could probably afford to skip around without losing too much of the plot, just because each episode (esp. the beginning half!) examines different patients of different mental illnesses + disabilities and etc. overall, i’m not sure if i would revisit it, but the soundtrack is nice, and the acting was great.

inspector koo

so this show was on my to watch list for months now, but at long last, i finally got around to watching it, and i’m so glad that i did. basically, this show is about a former inspector named koo kyung yi (lee young ae). after the death of her husband, she kind of spirals: playing computer games, becoming an alcoholic . . . this is a woman who’s walking a knife’s edge, but by god, she’s so much smarter than she lets on. when these murders start happening, her junior and friend na je hui (kwak sun young) convinces her to step back out into the world. and thus begins this game of cat and mouse, and it’s just so satisfying and so lovely because what i adored was that all the characters are a bit of a mess, and they’re all insanely lovable and relatable in some regard.

and the villain/antagonists! gosh, i can’t remember the last time a show had solid antagonists except for perhaps beyond evil--but inspector koo definitely had some insanely interesting antagonists, my favorite of course being song yi kyung (kim hye jun). the way her story just intertwined with koo kyung yi was so . . . much. and so good. i was obsessed with it.

anyways. this show was fantastic. incredibly satisfying, insanely smart, with a fab cast and fab writing and fab music. and it’s only 12 episodes, so it makes for a much easier watch than 16/20-ep kdramas.

sweet home

so, i only started watching this show because i learned that kim shin rok, who played oh ji hwa in beyond evil, has been casted for season 2 of this show. and you know, i liked this show more than i thought i would! based off the webtoon of the same name, sweet home is basically about a bunch of people stuck in an apartment building as humans start turning into monsters. they’re not exactly like zombies per say, in that no one really knows for sure how this change happens, and there seems to be different kinds of monsters (some of them look like spiders, others are weird blood suckers, etc etc).

the story mostly follows cha hyun soo (song kang), who you learn pretty early is one of those people who can turn into a monster, but he’s somehow got it mostly under control. the other survivors include eun hyuk (lee do hyun), a medical student who functions as the leader of the group--as well as his younger sister eun yoo (go min si). my personal favorites also include the down-to-earth bassist yoon ji soo (park gyu young) and the christian swordsman--yes, swordsman--jung jae heon (kim nam hee). the characters are all pretty interesting, and there’s this underlying theme about wanting to live, even if your life is pitiful (and even pitiful without the monsters :().

that said, though i enjoyed the series, massive trigger warnings for themes of suicide, self-harm, alcoholism, etc. and maybe skip watching if you’re not mentally in a good place right now, as it can get incredibly dark.

tv shows:

yellowjackets

. . . if i had a nickel for every time i watched a show about girls stranded in the wilderness and also had lesbians and also warren kole playing a husband/dad figure, i would have two nickels, which isn’t a whole ton, but it’s kinda funny it happened twice, dontcha think?

but anyways. yes, i watched this show. basically, it follows this soccer team called the yellowjackets--they were all headed to go nationals when their plane crashes in the middle of nowhere. we jump back and forth between the girls back then vs how some of them are now (way after the fact, i think all of them are either in their thirties or forties by now). some girls . . . we never see their future selves, so it’s presumed they either died or went missing or who knows what.

phew. this show was insane. it was good! but it was insane, very dark (literally. i recommend not watching this on a small screen like a smartphone, because i could only see the darker scenes on my laptop for some reason). fair warning, there’s quite a bit of gore (especially the first few episodes . . . um, maybe don’t watch this show while eating). i liked it. i can’t say much more on it because i feel like this is one of those shows that are best watched blind, but! you know, it was. a ride.

the invincibles

i started this show way back over the summer with my friend, but i didn’t get to finish it until this month. and holy crap. what a show. what a show.

basically, this show is about teenage mark (steven yuen), who has now developed super powers. this isn’t a surprise, considering his dad (jk simmons) is omniman, earth’s greatest superhero. but as mark gets the hang of being a superhero, a greater threat arises, especially after the murders of the og superheroes, ominman’s team members. this show is off the walls insane and fantastic. each episode left me wanting more and wondering what the hell was going to happen next. the acting is superb, the animation’s fantastic . . . but also please keep in mind that there’s a hellish amount of gore, especially in the last two episodes. like. genuinely a lot of gore. that said though, i enjoyed this show immensely. it’s original, smart, funny, and just genuinely so refreshing. i cannot wait for season two.

the haunting of hill house

unfortunately, i did decide to watch this again. and cried again. and i think this has actually become perhaps my favorite non-korean show of all time because i still can’t quite get over how masterful this series is. i’ve already added this show to one of my rec/watched lists (i think back in january?), but i just have to mention it again because the second time around watching it just made me feel so many more things. i don’t really know what else to say except i think this show was genuinely a show that made me realize just how much horror can be used to tell a story about grief and trauma and, of course, love. the first half of the show always scares the socks off of me, but the second half of the show . . . i think starting episode six and onwards . . . i literally could not get through a single episode without crying a little at least once. what a beautiful story.

persona

tbh, i didn’t really know where to put this--in either the short film or the television section, but i don’t think it’s either? persona is basically a collection of short films by different people, with lee ji eun (better known as the hit singer iu) starring in each one. the films are kind of each a mixed bag for me--i really loved the last one, which is about two people walking in the night. i don’t want to go much more into that for the sake of spoilers, but it was quite touching, and it also felt very personal. (and i’m very glad i watched it in the second half of this month rather than the first, because i don’t think the “me” of the first half of this month wouldn’t have been able to take it, just because it’s very . . . heavy, in some regard. beautiful and oddly healing, but def. very sad.)

the first three films, to be honest, didn’t really stick out to me. the first film, maybe, if only because it was oddly uncomfortable (iu plays a young woman who despises her father’s new wife, who’s played by the iconic bae doona. a tennis match ensues). the second film was interesting, kind of bordering on fantastical (about a boyfriend who’s very upset with iu for some reason), and the third short film was kinda funny (iu plays a high school girl who gets into some chaos with her best friend). overall, i enjoyed watching these short films, and it was a very stress-free experience--and if anything, i was very impressed by just how versatile an actress lee ji eun is! truly, she’s one of those triple threat (quadruple threat, tbh) talents of the 21st century: a phenomenal singer, songwriter, and actress. persona feels like a very good showcase of exactly how she can nail so many different genres.

short films: (because i watched a lot more short films than i usually do . . . probably because march was so crazy and sometimes i wanted to watch something quick, and also getting a letterboxd means that i have so many more film recs including, yes, short films. also, if you’re not following me on letterboxd, i’m just saying . . . you should follow me on letterboxd. if you want!)

naysayer

three scenes, eight minutes, two actors. how the hell is this short film somehow so fantastic when it’s working with literally so little, i have no idea, but it’s amazing and it’s stunning and the losers will say i’m hyping up this short film way too much, but i’m honestly obsessed with it. i won’t even go into the plot because i feel like it’s just one of those short films you need to watch with zero context. i will note that i don’t think anyone else besides a fantastic actor like steven yeun himself would have been able to execute the writing in this film--so he really delivers. i understand now why people are so in love with this man, because he’s phenomenal in every role, even in this brief film. i also need to note the use of the music and the camerawork . . . there’s something so eerie about this short film but it works in the best way, oh my god . . . just watch it. it’s available for streaming on vimeo. a fantastic watch, especially if you want to see the joys of short film.

canvas

this was a nine-minute short film i watched while just eating lunch one day. genuinely pretty, a lovely short film and the animation was so ! ! ! !! ! ! ! basically, this short film is about an old man who lost his wife. it’s a simple story, but a rather sweet one. also, the sound design was fantastic. and the art. especially the art.

bao

okay . . . so after watching turning red, i decided to watch bao, which was directed by the same woman (domee shi). it’s a 7 minute short film (wow, i watched a lot of short films this month, huh), and it was just . . . so nicely animated and also so powerful. i think there’s a moment where people were a bit weirded out by the film, but to me, it actually made a lot of sense in a comedic but also genuinely sort of sad way. something related to parenting something related to love also manifesting in overprotectiveness sometimes, and now i’m very glad that domee shi is in the industry because after watching turning red and now watching bao, i’m just . . . ?? so appreciative of how she seems to make these works that really deeply look at asian parenting in this incredibly nuanced, complex way that i don’t think we get enough of? asian parents--and immigrant parents overall--are notorious for being incredibly disciplined and hard on their children, but i still have very distinct memories of bristling whenever my non-asian friends would criticize my parents’ parenting style, because often times, they just didn’t understand that the way my own family operated was based on such different foundations from a lot of my own friends’ parents.

this is all to say that yeah, parenting is hard, but it’s also so hard to find stories about asian immigrant parents that genuinely give some grace to asian parents--or at least try to understand them, even when the child is ultimately the one in the right. i suppose i write all of this now because i’m at that age where i’m appreciating the way my parents raised me--and now i see that while i would get angry and frustrated with them for not letting me do certain things, i recognize now that it was all coming from a place of love. so the fact that bao (and turning red, for that matter!) really depicted flawed asian immigrant parents but also made them incredibly complex and showed them for what they often really are (loving, scared of their children getting hurt, etc) just moved me to so many tears.

knick knack

. . . i feel like basically every 90s/00s kid remembers this short playing at the start of every single disney/pixar movie on vhs, but because i was kinda bored and looking around for more pixar shorts to watch, i decided to watch this and boy oh boy did it unlock a bunch of memories from when i was, like, 5. i dunno what to say except it was kinda funny, but also very obviously from the early 90s. but that said, i found the animation incredibly funny, and also, the vibes just make me laugh. so i guess it was cool, at least for the nostalgia.

movies:

pirates: the last royal treasure

i love han hyo joo so much, and she is honestly perhaps the best part of this movie. not to say that this movie was bad, per say--i actually laughed quite a bit. i did like how this movie is about pirates! and the music was neat! and the action scenes were cool! but this movie is also about two hours long, which i personally think was about 30-40 minutes longer than it had to be.

there were also just . . . a lot of things going on? like, a lot? which, sometimes, i get that could make for an interesting story, but for me, it was just very whiplash-y and confused about where it wanted to go. (even though the action scenes were cool.) but besides that . . . han hyo joo was cool. that’s. that’s basically all i have to say. it was fun, but i feel like it could have been better. :/

after yang

you know, i’ve been curious about kogonada ever since i watched columbus (2017), and so i was really thrilled to find out that he recently made another movie. after yang is pretty similar in the color palette and art-wise as columbus--lots of greens, lots of really beautiful still shots, lots of poetic language, but all in such a quiet way that makes me think a lot. music is always beautiful, too, and the actors are so very poignant.

basically, this movie kind of follows a family who, after the breakdown of their android (?) “techno-sapien” yang (justin h. min), the father jake (colin farrell) tries to put together the pieces. meanwhile, the rest of the family, like mother and wife kyra (jodie turner-smith) and daughter mika (malea emma tjandrawidjaja) all struggle with this loss. this movie was just so genuinely quiet and lovely and also made me think so much about whether death is truly the end of all things--and how it really might not be, and what makes a life, anyways? and how does one have a significant existence? these were all questions that kind of flew around my mind as i was watching this film. granted, just because after yang, very similarly to columbus, is a relatively slow film, i have a feeling this might not be for everyone--but that’s okay. if you ever need to watch something quiet but sensitive, then is def. something you should consider watching. (and if anything, for what makes a beautiful film. because there were so many shots that made me realize just how much film is an art form.)

turning red

i didn’t even know this movie was actually a thing until everyone was talking about it on release day, and so i decided to give this a watch . . . and i did not regret it one bit. one bit! literally! i think this might be one of my favorite animated movies, if only coming up second to raya and the last dragon (which is still one of my fave animated movies of all time). basically, for those who don’t know, this movie is about perfect chinese-canadian daughter mei lee (rosalie chiang) whose 13 year old life is completely turned upside down when she turns into a red panda. the reason? basically, an ancestor had prayed to the heavens and been granted this gift to turn into a red panda and now, all the women in the family turn into red pandas when they’re in great distress. there is, however, a way to “return” this gift, if you will--and so mei’s waiting a whole month for it to tide over.

for those who are wondering if this movie is basically a metaphor for getting your period--in some ways, yes! but also, in a lot of ways, i think it’s about puberty overall. and also specifically puberty but also dealing with generational problems + the desire to be perfect and then some. it’s such a perfect film with all of these overlapping and interweaving themes, and i genuinely loved every single second of it.

olivia rodrigo: driving home 2 u

i actually didn’t have intentions of watching this documentary/film in one sitting, but i wound up watching the whole thing through anyways. i really do adore olivia rodrigo’s music, and i think she has so many amazing things in store for her. so this piece was just this really fascinating, lovely way of capturing her songwriting process, as well as how she views her own music as a whole. now, i’m always going to be the kind of person who’s very skeptical of who singers/actors really are behind the camera (i feel like as soon as a camera starts rolling, you’ll always act a teensy bit different)--but in any case, i found myself really feeling a sense of just how seriously olivia rodrigo takes her music. we also get a sneak peek at some of her other songs in the works, which was really fun! and also a look at her original lyrics for some of her songs. overall, this piece was fantastic: part documentary, part concert, i really enjoyed watching different facets of the album come to life.

music:

music from before the storm by daughter

it’s been a while since i’ve really listened to daughter’s music, but i’ve been getting back into that band as a result of this playlist. music from before the storm, i think, is probably my favorite daughter album, just because it has so many different sounds from their first album. there’s a lot more emphasis on electric guitar, drums . . . and i feel like the best way to describe this album is like i’m under water or staring off and watching a storm rip everything up from the ground, but in a weirdly fascinating, weirdly lovely way. or like, if you ever got caught in a thunderstorm--you know when it’s raining so much, and the thunder is so loud, and you’re mildly terrified but also, you understand why the poets are so obsessed with storms and rebirth and all of that really interesting stuff? that was kind of how this album felt.

or maybe i just felt that way because i was listening through the whole album while writing some sad beyond evil related stuff, but in any case: i love this album. my favorite tracks are probably i can’t live here anymore and a hole in the earth.

#caroline recs #i think this is the most media i've ever consumed in a month #but also a lot of these things i actually started a long time ago #and i only had an episode or two left of to watch

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prorevenge · 4 years ago

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[Long] How we destroyed our teacher and principal:

Apologies in advance if some details are blurry as this happened almost 14 years ago. Also, this is going to be a long one, so bare with me, I swear the result is worth it, at least it is to me.

The beginning: It all started when I (M25) was 12 years old. My grade 7 teacher (M46 at the time) was infamous for being intimidating and, in my opinion, abusive to his students. He was the disciplinarian of the school. He was in charge of keeping track of detentions and announcing who will be sitting every Friday during assembly.

We suspected at that time that the reason why he never got fired was either because his students were too scared to report him, or because of the fact that the principal was his brother-in-law.

Reasons why I hated him: He was constantly making vaguely racist remarks, complaining about the "New South Africa" and constantly bringing up how his life was better during the Apartheid regime (He's a white guy who was raised on a farm).

I always felt like he had an issue with me as a person because I'm a practising Muslim. He would make the class laugh at how "funny" Muslim women looked with their heads "wrapped up". His jokes about Muslims missing out on eating bacon were endless, in fact, he one day purposely stood in front of my desk eating a cheese and bacon panini.

He used to often rant about how the school is no longer a "pure Christian institution as it once was back in the day". He would say these things and glance at either me, my twin sister, or the black students in the class who practiced their own African religions.

When it was his birthday, my mom encouraged me to buy him a gift. I spent of my pocket money, which was already limited (my parents didn't believe in allowances) to buy him a big slab of chocolate and a long piece of Droëwors (dried sausage). Throughout the day, he would get gifts from students in his class and others.

He would get up from his desk to greet and thank them, and then shake their hand. I remember noticing this because I always found it weird when students shook hands with teachers because of how small our hands were compared to theirs.

However, when I gave him my gift, all he did was look at me for like a second, look away and nod his head slightly. I remember being thankful for not offering my hand out for him to shake because I thought he might have ignored it in front of the entire class. To say I felt like shit is an understatement.

The experience that made me hate him the most happened just before we wrote 2nd or 3rd term exams. I was walking with my friend David (fake name) back from the tuck shop during interval. We took a shortcut between the English and Afrikaans kindergarten classes and saw a group of boys huddled together.

One of them walked towards us and I saw that he had one of those camping multi-tools with the folding knife out, and instantly got a fright. He told us "Give me your stuff before I cut your neck" and then started laughing and walked back to his friends. It was clearly a joke but David looked close to tears and I had a very bad fright because of what he done. I told the guy (Fake name Xander) that he's not allowed to have knives at school and that I'm going to tell my teacher.

We walked straight to our teacher and when we spoke to him, David burst into tears.

We told him what happened and David was sobbing when he said he felt like he was going to die. Our teacher barely looked up from his computer while we were speaking and when he asked for the guy's name. We told him the name and he said he will deal with it and for us to go out for interval again.

I went home and told my mom who I felt didn't fully believe me at the time.

The next day we saw Xander were basically making fun of him for getting into trouble with our teacher and likely getting expelled at worst, or sitting a Saturday detention at best. He laughed back at us and said our teacher just came to his class, asked to speak to him and told him to never bring it to school again. No detention. No suspension. Basically nothing. He still had the knife on him for the rest of the day before.

We were so upset we went back to our teacher and I told him that Xander said that he didn't get into trouble for having the knife. He gave me the ugliest look as if I was bothering him, and coldly said to me that maybe I should fix my late-coming problem before I try to get other people in trouble.

I would come late 4 or 5 times a month because my mom's car's battery terminals were broken so the battery would run flat and she couldn't afford to have it fixed. She had to put the neighbour's battery in her car, start it, and then idle it while she took that battery out and put her own battery back in to charge up. My mom taught me the value of always having a number 10 spanner in your car lol.

I felt betrayed by my teacher. The person who was supposed to make us feel safe while we were away from home.

When I spoke to my friends about it, they told me that Xander was actually the principal's son, meaning he was my teacher's nephew. I decided to take the opportunity to speak to my friends about getting evidence that our teacher is treating students unfairly.

3 of my 4 close friends had camera phones. I sat in the far left corner, my one friend sat in the opposite corner by the door, our other friend sat in the middle, and the last friend was right at the back of the class by the window on the left. One thing about our teacher: he did not give a fuck about where we sat as long as we answered him when he done roll call and didn't bother anyone when we swapped seats.

We came to an agreement that whenever our teacher would sound like we was going to say something vaguely racist or islamophobic, we would all discreetly take videos of him.

Any private conversation we had with him was voice recorded on our phones. We caught him on camera telling a really racist joke about black people, and saying that Hindus must have a lot of problems since they have so many Gods. We caught him saying a lot of bad things, but a lot slipped through our fingers because we weren't fast enough.

It was extremely difficult to keep our friend group motivated to record him and not tell anyone else about it. It was especially difficult because at the time I had a hand-me-down Samsung D900 which was seen as an expensive phone at the time.

My mom prohibited me from taking it to school. She instead bought a cheap R79 ($5) phone for us that could only make calls and send SMS's. This was in case she needed to reach us in an emergency. I got caught several times sneaking my camera phone to school. My biggest mess up at school was when my mom phoned me on my Samsung and I answered it. Big oof but I was a dumbass.

After I think a month we decided that we couldn’t let it go any further.. One of our friends was a black guy named Tatenda (fake name). Tatenda was a problem child. His mom died when he was four and his dad was an alcoholic. He was raised mostly by his uncle who up until today I think was a pimp. He used to act out at school because of undiagnosed ADHD, his dad and uncle didn't believe in learning disabilities and always assumed he was just lazy and badly behaved.

Tatenda especially got onto our teachers nerves because not only was he black, but because he would bring broken calculators from home and take them apart during class. One day our teacher told him to clear his desk and throw away the bits of plastic and calculator shit. He ignored the teacher. The teacher then started screaming at him, and Tatenda done the only logical thing an 12/13 year old would do in such a situation: he mockingly put two pencils into his ears.

Our teacher lost his shit, grabbed Tatenda and threw him against the door. The narrow window pane cracked and Tatenda's head was bleeding. He told us he was fine during interval afterwards and we put money together to buy him a Sprite. I almost cried when my friend who sat way behind me said he got the whole thing on camera. We didn't even trust that the whole class' testimony would get him into trouble. We decided that enough was enough.

The revenge: First we showed the video to Tatenda's uncle, who showed it to his father. Then I showed my mom all the other videos and recordings.

She. Lost. Her. Mind.

One of my friends sent all of it to his older sister who had a Facebook account and she posted it there and tagged the school and as many parents as she knew. It blew up. Parents and people from around the province phoned the school demanding answers as to what is going to happen to our teacher. He was immediately suspended.

There were rumours circulating that he had to go into hiding because Tatenda's uncle and his friends were looking to kill him. I even met Tatenda's dad for the first time in the weeks after the whole thing exploded. He liked to joke that his dad sobered up especially for this lol.

The principal pulled Xander out of the school. We never saw him again. My mom told me an investigation was launched against the school because of the improper handling of bullying complaints. If I remember correctly, 3 English kids in my class alone spoke out against teachers dismissing their complaints of bullying by the Afrikaans kids. We were a mostly white, Afrikaans speaking school with 3 Afrikaans classes but only 1 English class per grade.

They called us"souties" which was short for "soutpiel" which literally tranlates as "salty dick". It's a derogatory term for English speaking, white South Africans. It means your one leg in is South Africa, your other leg is in England, so your dick is hanging in the ocean.

We only saw our teacher once after he was suspended. He looked badly beaten up, and was accompanied by a policeman and two other male teachers so he could gather the rest of his stuff from his class.

But it didn't end there.

Because so many kids needed the evidence that they were being bullied and nothing was done because of it, the CCTV footage was brought up. My friend's mother who was part of the school governing body that time, told us a few years ago that when they reviewed the footage, it became apparent that the principal was having an affair with one of the grade 2 teachers.

He could be seen grabbing her ass at the furthest point away from the camera. They slipped up a few times and kissed in clear view of the camera, but I guess once you're surrounded by the cameras everyday at work, you forget that they're there. It was very apparent that sometimes they thought they couldn't be seen.

My mom's friend's sister (basically my aunt) sells Tupperware and one of her regular customers and close friend's is the principal's ex wife. Not only did she leave him, but they were not married in community of property due to a prenup agreement. The house they lived in was in her name since before marriage, so she effectively made him homeless because none of his family wanted to take him in.

He ran into severe debt from staying in guesthouses and burned many bridges from overstaying his welcome at friends. As for my teacher, his reputation was destination fucked. He served jail time, don't know how long, and eventually left the country because it seemed everyone knew his face from the media attention he received.

The reason why I made this post: I was never going to tell this story on Reddit as I've told it over and over through the years since primary school. But I felt I had to because of what I experienced at the beginning of this year.

My family is part of a non profit organisation that has feeding schemes all over the country. The last Friday feed of February I'm standing security as I usually do since we're few volunteers and there's many homeless people and most are on drugs and can get violent.

I'm walking down the line to make sure there are no fights or anything that could start a riot, and I see a familiar face. My old principal is standing in the line, waiting for a bowl of stew and bread, with absolutely no idea who's standing beside him. Obviously he wouldn't have recognised me, but I never forgot his face. I'm not gonna lie, I cried quite a bit behind my sunglasses. Seeing him brought back the feelings I had when I was 12 years old in 7th grade, trying absolutely every excuse in the book to not have to go to school and be bullied by my teacher.

So yeah, for those of you who are still reading, this is the end of how my friends and I destroyed the lives of my teacher and principal.

If you got this far and are feeling depressed, worthless, or less than your peers, I love you. I appreciate you, and you, are seriously fucking awesome. Bye Bye..

(source) story by (/u/Mobi_Wan_Kenobi786)

#prorevenge #by /u/Mobi_Wan_Kenobi786 #pro revenge #revenge stories #pro revenge stories #pro #revenge #last10

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rael-rider · 3 years ago

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Thoughts on the First Episode of What-If...? I'm going to have to give this a special tag because I'm critical of some things in this 😂

So I'll start with my harshest criticism and that is that Sebastian Stan's voice action was awful which I understand in a way because being a VA is a whole different thing than regular acting but wow was his voice acting bad. There were moments when Bucky had to show surprise or show that he was worried and Stan's lines didn't evoke that and came off as flat or disinterested. Hayley Atwell and Dominic Cooper were better but they had the opposite problem IMO because at points they sounded like they were exaggerating their voices and it made some scenes feel hammy at points.

Josh Keaton and Ross Marquand on the other hand were pretty good. Especially Keaton who really nailed Chris Evan's voice. It wasn't an exact match and at times you can tell it was Keaton but he mimics Evans' voice very well to the point that his voice wasn't distracting. Ditto with Marquand for Weaving's Red Skull, he was good.

The animation lended itself well for action scenes, I know people commented on how Peggy did all this shit Steve didn't do in The First Avenger (which honestly treated Steve as strictly peak human, guy could lift a motorcycle and then later he's jumping off planes without parachutes and pulling helicopters, I mean...) but it's because with animation you can freely do more things and get away with more than you can in live action and without it being crazy expensive. This is why animation > live action for the superhero genre.

My complaint when it comes to the animation was the expressions, they tended to go from being fine to some slight stylized uncanny valley territory at some points and the voice sometimes didn't match some of the character's expressions. It felt pretty off. Also was it just me but did Arnim Zola not look like Toby Jones?

Story wise it was pretty weak, I expected this to be rushed because it's only a 30 minutes an episode at the most (I guess this is why Invincible went for a 42-49 minutes as oppose to the traditional 22-30 animation length per episode) so I wasn't expecting to see a training montage with Peggy or Steve trying to learn how to drive the Hydra Stomper or Howard figuring out how to make an Iron Man armor type of armor. I even accepted someone like Peggy wearing the Union Jack (which I don't think is something she would do) and her randomly calling herself Cap and Howard giving her the vibranium shield that Steve only had because he choose it even though Howard didn't want him to because it was "just a prototype". Yeah I guess that stuff we're suppose to accept because of time constraints (IMO mean Peggy with the serum would be a totally different character than Cap Steve but it's clear this What-If wants her to have the iconic Cap stuff and if so I wish they had kept her mask from the concept art). Buuuut I really did not care to see a mostly rehash of The First Avenger with some key differences but I feel like this episode should have wildly diverged from The First Avenger once Peggy got the serum but it just repeated a lot of the same scenes (Bucky's and the Howling Commandos rescue, Bucky and Steve drinking, the train scene, etc...) but with a few key difference. Heck even that scene that is suppose to happen before the divergence at the beginning of the movie with Red Skull going to Norway somehow happens after Peggy becomes Cap? Oh and without the tesseract Skull's plan just falls back into "lets bring a monster from another dimension" plan that wasn't really well thought out.

I think in part that this episode rehashed a lot of the stuff from TFA it kind of made it predictable in some ways. Like I knew that something was going to happen to Steve during the train scene and when the inter dimensional monster came out and Peggy fought I knew that was going to be her stuck in the ice moment. That she was going to go inside to trap herself with the monster and defeat it there. It's also pretty similar to what Cap did in the 90's Spider-Man cartoon with the exception that he went in fighting the Red Skull instead of a monster.

That said there were some pretty unique moments that I liked. Steve and Peggy's talk about what things changed for Peggy and how she says she used to have to shout and demand to be heard and now as Cap it came easier for her. Steve wondering what's it like being respected and taken seriously. It also reminds the viewer that Steve was disabled before getting the serum and he knew what it was to be in a position were he was judged and discriminated.

Speaking of Steve and Peggy I like their team up tag team fights against Hydra. That's the type of stuff Tony and Steve do in the comcis and it's the type of stuff I expected from them in the MCU (didn't happen) but it was great seeing it in here.

I guess I have more thoughts but it's mostly speculation and questions regarding this episode. Like how SHIELD formed without Peggy (People said Steve should be the founder but I really dislike that idea, Steve worked with SHIELD but he was always critical of the organization) and people speculating that Steve is going to be the Winter Soldier in this universe (do we even need a Winter Soldier in this?).

All in all this was a 5/10? I feel like they could have done more with this concept (you not only have Cap Peggy but you have Iron man Steve and you decide to do TFA again?) but the fact that this is an MCU related project and thet Kevin Feige limited the writers of this show with what they could or couldn't do and the fact that they can't introduce new characters, it really limits possibilities and creativity of what a What-If story should be.

#t: marvel what if #tldr; it was ok I guess?#but they could do better

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coldcaseanomalies · 4 years ago

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Where Is Alissa Turney?!

Alissa Marie Turney was born on April 3, 1984 in Phoenix, Arizona to Barbara and Steven Strahm. When Alissa was 2 1/2 her mother separated from her father and married a man named Michael Turney. Barbara and Michael had a daughter together named Sarah when Alissa was 4.

In 1992 Barbara was diagnosed with cancer and a year later on February 28, 1993 Barbara passed away. Leaving Michael with custody of Alissa and Sarah.

Michael was always very strict with Alissa and laid back with Sarah. Many of Alissa’s friends say the way he treated Alissa was more like a jealous lover than a father. He had video cameras hidden in the vent in the living-room and possibly in other locations of the house, including Alissa’s bedroom. He had a passive recording system on the telephones that would start recording as soon as a call was received or made. He swore up and down that Alissa had a severe learning disability despite Alissa making average grades in all of her classes. Michael would follow Alissa wherever she went and even sit outside her place of work and record her. When asked about why he was going to her place of work he said, “Just to look at her.”

On May 17th, 2001, the last day of Alissa’s junior year of high school, Michael picked her up early between 10:30 and 11am. Before leaving with her stepfather she poked her head into her boyfriend Jon’s shop class and said goodbye and that she’d see him later that day. She ran into a friend in the hallway who asked if Alissa was still going to the graduation party that night to which Alissa said she was. Alissa then got in Michael’s truck and that was the last time any of her friends saw her.

Michael states that he and Alissa went to lunch after picking her up but he could not recall where they went or if they dined in or took their food to go. He states that after they got home he and Alissa got into an argument because she wanted to have more freedoms for the summer and he refused. He says the last time he saw her she was stalking off to her room angrily and he left to run errands and pick up her younger sister, Sarah. Michael left the house between around 12 and 1pm.

Michael picked Sarah up between 5:30 and 6:30, as she got in the truck her father gave her his cell phone and said, “Call your sister, I can’t get ahold of her.” Sarah tried both the home phone and Alissa’s cell phone with no answer. When they arrived home Sarah went straight to Alissa’s room where she found the contents of her sisters backpack dumped on the floor, along with Alissa’s cell phone vibrating on the dresser with a note stating, “Dad + Sarah, when you dropped me off at school today I decided I really am going to California. Sarah you said you didn’t want me around look you got it I’m gone. That’s why I saved my money. Dad I took $300 from you. Alissa.” It did not appear as if Alissa took any of her personal belongings with her which is strange if she really had runaway. Her bank account that held $1,860 remained untouched and her social security number has never been used. Why would she make plans with her friends for that night if she had decided that morning to run away?

Michael did not call the police until almost 11pm on the night she disappeared. Even then, Michael, a retired cop, calmly reported his step-daughter as a runaway. Stating the note that was left, that she had stolen some cash, and headed to California, because she has family out there. He stated that even though he knew where she was, he still needed to report it. No officer was sent to the home to investigate. A week after Alissa disappeared Michael received a call at 5 am that he claims was from Alissa, yet there is no evidence of the recording for this call. The case stayed uninvestigated until 2006 when a man in a Florida prison confessed to murdering Alissa.

The police investigated the mans claims and found them to be false when he could not pass a polygraph and his witnesses to meeting Alissa could not identify her from photos. The case again went cold until 2008 when reports from Alissa’s friends made it to the detectives on the case that she had confided in them that Michael had sexually abused her.

In December of 2008 the detectives obtained warrants to search Michael Turney’s current residence and the residence that Alissa had disappeared from. When delivering the warrants Michael was detained and on his person the police found 2 pistols that were fully loaded, 7 extra loaded magazines, a knife, and a recording device. In searching Michael’s residence the police found 26 pipe bombs, 19 assault rifles, two homemade illegal silencers, and a 90+ page document labeled ‘Diary of A Madman Martyr’, which outlines his plan to blow up the union of electrical workers, his previous employer, in Phoenix, he’s stated that ‘the union’ as he calls it, kidnapped and murdered Alissa because of work environment complaints he made when employeed there to get back at him, and that this was his way of revenge and shedding light on Alissa’s case, also claiming he killed the two assassins that killed Alissa, the men were located and found to have passed before Alissa’s disappearance and not at the hands of Michael. He then planned to kill himself after carrying out his plan. Michael was arrested and tried on the bomb charges and illegal firearms charges. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2010 and was released in 2017.

Michael still refuses to talk to police about Alissa’s case. When asked about the video footage from the day Alissa disappeared he stated, “I watched all 8 hours of footage and there’s nothing of interest.” Yet, in missing persons cases, isn’t any footage from the day they disappeared of interest?

Alissa’s sister Sarah has been fighting for justice for her sister for years. In 2017, Sarah met with her father to ask him questions about Alissa and his response was, “Come to the deathbed Sarah. Then I’ll give you all the answers you want.” Or, if he confesses to police they have to give him lethal injection within 10 days, Sarah was able to capture this in a voice recording on her phone. Sarah took this recording to the Phoenix PD and they told her that since he didn’t confess to them there was nothing they could do. The police told Sarah that she needed the get media attention on the case before they’d present the case to the prosecutors office. Ever since then Sarah has been busy everyday bringing attention to her sisters case. She has a podcast called Voices for Justice where she goes much more in depth into the case with phone transcripts and interviews and much more.

Alissa deserves justice. Her family has been in the dark for 19 years.

What do you think about this case? Should the police be working harder to get answers? Leave your theories in the ask box!

If you have any other cases you’d like to see covered here please submit them!

#Alissa Turney #Justice For Alissa #True Crime #missing person #Voices for Justice #Where is Alissa Turney?

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immaturityofthomasastruc · 4 years ago

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Hello, RWBY anon here. So okay, I've seen these defenses before but it feels like they're always missing the point about Ironwood character. The biggest thing I want to point out is how during all of volume 7, we see Ironwood struggle between retaining his humanity and casting it away as he insists the ends justify the means (in this case, the choking of Mantle resources) only for him to succumb to fear because of how traumatic the Fall of Beacon was. As for the whole "CRWBY demonizing a disabled person," I find that to be such a bizarre critique since that complaint comes off as "Disabled people can't show be shown to be villainous." I don't see how CRWBY "Demonized" Ironwood. Whereas Chloe has always been her awful self, RWBY showed the journey of a flawed man who meant well but let his fear slowly get the better of him with him believing that the only way to defeat a monster is to become one (with him not even being aware that he became a monster). I'll agree with this though. CRWBY revealing Ironwood semblanced caused WAY more harm than good and they should honestly never have given him one, to begin with.

I’m glad that no matter what anyone’s opinion on Ironwood is as a character, we can all agree that his Semblance is just stupid. It’d be like if Batman was a character in RWBY, and his Semblance was solving puzzles or being a good detective--OH WAIT, THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED IN A CROSSOVER COMIC.

RWBY VOLUME 8 SPOILERS BELOW

I want to restate that I like the buildup to Ironwood being a villain, but I felt his plans to achieve his goals as a villain made no sense when you consider how irrational they are, but because he has Schrodinger’s Semblance, we’re just supposed to go with it.

As for the disabled part? I never really paid that much attention to that part of Ironwood until Volume 8. I just saw him as a man with a lot of inner demons, because that was what the show focused on.

But in Volume 8, they really went out of their way to make Ironwood’s prosthetics look evil. The new arm he got looked extremely robotic, and he rolled up his sleeve just to remind the audience that “he’s more machine now than man”. The metal=bad treatment also extends into Penny.

For those who aren’t familiar with RWBY, Penny is a robotic supersoldier who was first introduced towards the end of the first Volume, while Ruby learned of her robot nature early into Volume 2. When she did, she reassured her that even though she was made of nuts and bolts instead of squishy guts, she was still a “real girl”. Then Volume 8 spat on this idea and decided that her being a robot was bad, so they made her a human for no reason, and claimed that this was the best thing to happen to her.

I’m not saying that only Ironwood’s disabilities making him a villain are bad. It just seems that with the way Penny was treated this Volume coupled with Ironwood, the show wants to convince the audience that all disabilities are bad, and rather than learning to live with them, they’re something that has to be overcome. Let’s just say as someone on the autism spectrum, the writing this volume rubbed me the wrong way.

Again, I’m sorry for disagreeing, but this is just how I view things. I just hope you don’t think I’m saying stuff like this to spite you. This is my opinion, and you are entitled to yours as well.

#immaturity of thomas astruc #not miraculous ladybug #rwby #rwde #james ironwood #penny polendina #ruby rose

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cookinguptales · 5 years ago

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You know, I wasn’t going to write about this, but I just got the most insulting message about all this — so screw it, here I go:

I talk a lot about accessibility problems in daily life, but not typically about the unmitigated hell that is air travel. I have been insulted, touched without my permission, accused of faking, asked intrusive medical questions, gotten homophobic lectures from attendants I couldn’t get away from, been instructed to walk multiple times — and two of my personal wheelchairs have been broken.

All that said, the worst service I have received in my life has been from American Airlines. They consistently screw me over. They “forget” to preboard me. They “forget” to bring me a wheelchair. Heck, once I requested a bathroom break and I came out to find my wheelchair assistant gone. I had to sit there in the Cincinnati airport alone, frantically TWEETING AT THE AIRPORT, until a gate attendant took pity on me and took me down to baggage herself.

But if you really want to know how bad flying with them is, let me describe my experience flying with them a week and a half ago for a work trip. (In other words, I was not allowed to choose my airline.)

I arrived at the Philadelphia airport. I asked for assistance several times and was told to sit down in a waiting area and someone would be by shortly. I sat there for 45 minutes, at which point the person who told me that came by and it became immediately apparent that they’d forgotten about me. 20 minutes later, I finally got my wheelchair. In the end, I almost missed my plane.

The attendant, when he came, did not introduce himself or really talk to me at all. When we got to security, he refused to touch my belongings (attendants need to put our belongings on the conveyor because, y’know, we can’t get up there) and demanded I get up and do it myself, something I’ve literally never encountered before. In the end, he wheeled me over to the belt and made me strain to put my things on it because he was acting like my belongings were diseased.

When he rolled me up to the scanners, he did not ask me about my ability to walk, just demanded I get up. I requested a non-metal cane (because my own had been put on the belt) and he got very huffy about it, but another TSA agent heard me and gave it to me. After I finally got through the scanner, he did not bring the wheelchair over to me so I could sit in it, and I was forced to walk across the room to him. Yeah, it hurt.

I was handed off to like… six different attendants throughout the course of my trip to the terminal. At one point, I was forced to walk to get onto a shuttle bus. The wheelchair was not loaded on with me. When we arrived, there was no wheelchair waiting. I was told to wait on the bus — but then the driver started pulling away with me trapped on the bus. The driver was behind glass so I had to literally bang on the windows of the bus so someone would notice and stop the bus. Instead of bringing the wheelchair to me, I was expected to climb off the bus, walk inside, and get a new one. Wow, accessibility.

I finally had to demand a bathroom break because no one asked me if I needed to eat/drink/pee and I’d had to hold it for two hours at this point. I was told to walk to the bathroom. After I refused, more huffing, but someone got a wheelchair to walk me over.

FINALLY, TIME TO BOARD! Psych, I got outside, was told it was a tarmac boarding (something that had not been told to me ahead of time) and that if I’d wanted assistance, I should have preordered an aisle chair, something that’s typically only necessary to request if you’ll need a wheelchair onboard. I have never had to request one and, again, didn’t know it was a tarmac boarding, so I didn’t request it. I was repeatedly asked if I could walk “at all” and if I was sure I couldn’t just walk up. At this point, I was so frustrated that I literally started to cry. In public. They finally took me up.

Note: this was the ramp I’d been expected to walk up. As I was hobbling through the section too thin for the wheelchair, the woman grabbed my cane to “guide” me. I almost fell down.

When I got to Cincinnati, my tweets had apparently been heard. The manager of Prospect, the company AA uses for wheelchair assistance, was waiting for me. He was very nice! He gave me his card! The attendant told me to ask for him by name! I was not happy, but somewhat pacified.

I get to CVG three days later to go home. There is no wheelchair desk at check-in. I see another woman in a wheelchair, so I ask where she got it. Her daughter “found it”, and the woman had already missed her flight because she hadn’t been able to find assistance in time. I talked to two other women who just started walking despite the pain they were in.

I finally figure out where to request a wheelchair. A dedicated desk? No. A passing employee? No. I was supposed to stand in the check-in line. I got upset, so someone at another airline suggested I just cut the line. That was what I had to do, and I felt like a dick.

This line, in fact:

Waited, waited. Finally got a wheelchair. It was not the man I’d been told to request. Whatever. He was nicer than the man at PHL, but I still had to go through a genital pat-down at TSA. (As in, “please spread your legs wider for me”.) Yeah, that happens almost every time when you’re disabled. Fun times. Once I showed signs of being upset and they made me do it twice, without any kind of support to hold me up. Note: I am a sexual abuse survivor.

Finally get to the gate and the attendant leaves. I am in full view of the agent desk. It starts getting close to boarding and no attendant in sight, despite me specifically telling them I’d need help boarding. I got another passenger to go up to them and ask them for help. I was told an attendant would be coming soon. It came time to board, and I was left across the room. I literally started shouting across the room for help. The gate agent looked me in the eye and told me that she wasn’t ignoring me, that I’d be preboarded. SPOILERS: I wasn’t preboarded.

This meant that when I finally got down to the entrance of the plane, I had two options. I could go wait in the line that forms in the aisle while people are putting their baggage up. This is very painful for me, so instead I waited at the door for the people in front of me to sit down. A large line formed behind me because they still kept calling groups to board and again, I felt like a dick. I got to cry in public again.

Boarding in CVG, I didn’t have to do a tarmac boarding, but I still had to disembark that way in PHL. This time, the flight attendants called ahead to make sure I’d have an aisle chair. Those are super fun, by the way, you’re strapped in like Hannibal Lecter and wheeled backwards. :’)

I demanded a bathroom break once we got off. Note: I say “demanded” because no one ever freaking asked because god forbid they treat you like a human. You’re usually expected to just sit there at the gate for a while until a new attendant can take you to baggage, but I’ve taken to asking if they can leave me over by the bathroom instead because I’ve almost wet myself. (I often cannot get to the toilet on the plane.) So anyway, I was taken to a companion restroom. The door didn’t close all the way. Yeah, it was completely broken. This wasn’t a stall. It was a COMPANION RESTROOM WITH A DOOR. If the door doesn’t close, the entire terminal can see in. Instead of taking me to another stall, the attendant just “stood guard” outside the door. So that was super-fun and not nerve-wracking at all.

The attendant then proceeded to get lost in the airport and didn’t believe me when I told her the right way to go. It’s not like I’ve ever flown out of my own home city before or anything, wow.

Now, this was worse than usual. I often have problems with all airlines (Delta was the one that kept smashing up wheelchairs, shoutout) but American is just By Far the worst. I usually fly Southwest because I’ve had far fewer problems with them at PHL (and I don’t have to pay extra for a seat that’s accessible for my needs) but sometimes AA is the only airline that’ll take you where you need to go.

I make this post for two reasons. Number one, I have to fly American again in about a week (again, I did not choose this) and I’m almost sick with worry. I was so stressed out and pained after the last trip that I came home, took very strong painkillers, and collapsed for like a day.

The other reason is that AA finally got back to me about my complaints from last week. They accused me of not asking for assistance ahead of time (I did; I even talked face-to-face with a manager to order accommodations) and snottily told me that I could have asked the gate agent for assistance. So number one, they only answered one of the MANY issues I had. Number two, they implied it was all my fault — despite me doing everything I was supposed to do. Number three, despite the many broken accessible areas, despite the poor treatment by employees, they still hold firm to this “you need to order things ahead of time or you’re screwed” line.

So I ask you. What if you don’t know those policies? What if you’re a child or a first-time flyer? What if you have a short-term injury and aren’t used to this? What if, like that woman in the wheelchair who missed her flight, you’re elderly and ESL and deeply confused?

The pain I am put through, the embarrassment and dehumanization and physical strain, is awful when I fly. To be blamed for it is worse. But the worst knowledge of all is that I am privileged. I am white. I am young enough to know how to complain on social media. I know my rights. I know to leave several hours in case I am mistreated. Like that old woman, like the women I saw walking to their gates, there are so many people who are not in that position. They will be victimized.

A manager approached me at CVG to apologize as I landed. No one will apologize to those women. They will be victimized. It’s not right how disabled people are treated at airports, and frankly, it’s not legal. But they know that our voices are not listened to and so they know that they can get away with it. Do you know how AA found me from my angry tweets? All they had to do was look at the DM history. I’ve sent them so many complaints over the years. They haven’t changed. They don’t care.

And as much as my body hurts after experiences like that, my heart hurts more. I’m so tired of people not caring.

I know this is a long post, but they messed so many things up that it had to be long to list them all. Please feel free to share this post -- or even better, let American Airlines know what you think about it. God knows they didn’t listen to me.

#this is a long post but they did a lot of things wrong!!!#ableism #disability #air travel #american airlines #long post #please this one is really important to me

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