#fake representation

[laf-outloud]

If any of them really cared about representation, they'd also realize that both Walker and Independence had queer characters, different ages, and POC in front and behind the cameras.

Also we know that the plans were to make Liam have a critical story line with government corruption in season five, and that he has had major impact every season. A real, reciprocated romance.

But somehow we aren't supposed to be disappointed about losing that and it's a "tantrum" when we want what we want.

Even though it's representation, it's not wrapped up in the "right" sort of slacktivism, I guess /s/

The only representation that matters for hellers is the kind that gives them Dean/Cas. They don't ever go on about other representative or diverse characters unless they can use them to prop up Destiel. Just look at what they did with Carlos in The Winchesters... spent the whole time comparing it to Destiel. And that doesn't even get into the diversity angle. They claim that Jared's words are nothing compared to everything that's going on in the world, but at least he's saying something about one injustice (on others' behalf). I have yet to see hellers really care about a cause on their own.

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

[First Image description: a close-up photo of a Lego™ figure in a plastic molded Lego wheelchair. end description]

[Second image description: a photo of a Lego™ model coffee shop (?) with the wheelchair-using figure on its back, awkwardly jammed against the coffee shop table. description ends]

I thought the whole point of Lego™ was that you could configure the buildings however you want... Or is that no longer a thing with the modern sets?

(I remember Wheelchair Barbie™ had the same problem)

...Oh, look. I get to use the trademark emoji unironically.

peak half assed inclusivity that speaks to reality

good on Lego for making a physically disabled Lego dude

absolutely incredible accidental commentary by making him not fit in any of the buildings

[cy-cyborg]

The Untrustworthy Fake: Disability Tropes

[ID: A screenshot of Willy Wonka from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as he limps towards a crowd using a cane. In the picture, he has a brown top hat in his hand, and he's wearing a suit with a purple jacket, multicoloured bow tie and cream coloured pants. Beside him is text that reads: "Disability Tropes, The untrustworthy Fake" /End ID]

Tell me if this sounds familiar: A new character is introduced into a story with some kind of disability - usually visible but not always. Maybe they're a seemingly harmless person in a wheelchair, maybe they're a one-legged beggar on the street, or maybe they're an elderly person with a cane and a slow, heavy limp. But at some point, it's revealed it's all a ruse! The old man with a cane "falls" forward and does a flawless summersault before energetically springing back up to his feet, the wheelchair user gets to their feet as soon as they think the other character's backs are turned, the one legged beggar's crutch is knocked out of his hand, only to have his other leg pop out of his loose-fitting tunic to catch him.

All of these are real examples. Maya and The Three introduces one of it's main protagonists, Ricco, by having him pretend to be missing a leg in order to con people (something that works on the protagonist, at least at first), Buffy The Vampire Slayer had the character Spike, pretend to be in a wheelchair, until the other characters leave and he gets up, revealing it's all a ruse and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory introduces Wonka by having him slowly limp out into the courtyard of the factory, only for his cane to get stuck, causing him to "fall" and jump back up, revealing that he's actually perfectly fine. Virtually every single major crime show in the past few decades has used this trope too, from CSI to The Mentalist, Castle, Law and Order and Monk all having at least one episode featuring it in some way. Even the kids media I grew up with isn't free from it; The Suite Life of Zack & Cody sees Zach faking being dyslexic after meeting someone who actually has the condition in the episode Smarter and Smarter and the SpongeBob SquarePants episode Krabs vs Plankton has Plankton fake needing a wheelchair (among other injuries) after falling in the Krusty Krab as a ploy to sue Mr Krabs and trick the court into giving him the Kraby Patty Formula.

No matter the genre or target audience though, one thing is consistent: this trope is used as a way to show someone is dishonest and not to be trusted. When the trope is used later in the story, it's often meant to be a big reveal, to shock the audience and make them mad that they've been duped, to show the characters and us what this person (usually a villain) is willing to stoop to. Revealing the ruse early on though is very often used to establish how sleazy or even how dangerous a character is and to tell the audience that they shouldn't trust them from the get go. Gene Wilde (The actor who first played Willy Wonka) even said in several interviews that this was his intent for Wonka's character. He even went so far as to tell the director of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that he wouldn't do the film without that scene because of how strongly he felt this trope was needed to lay the foundations for Wonka's questionable intentions and motivations. His exact words are: "...but I wouldn't have done the film if they didn't let me come out walking as a cripple and then getting my cane stuck into a cobble stone, doing a forward somersault and then bouncing up... the director said, well what do you want to do that for? and I said because from that point on, no one will know whether I'm telling the truth or lying."

There's... a lot of problems with this trope, but that quote encapsulates one of the biggest ones. whether intentionally or not, this trope ends up framing a lot of actual disabled people as deceitful, dishonest liars. Now I can already hear you all typing, What?! Cy that's ridiculous! No one is saying real disabled people are untrustworthy or lying about their disabilities, just people who are faking!

but the thing is, the things often used in this trope as "evidence" of someone faking a disability are things real disabled people do. A person standing up from their wheelchair or having scuff-marks on their shoes, like in the episode Miss Red  from The Mentalist isn't a sign they're faking, a lot of wheelchair users can stand and even walk! They're called ambulatory wheelchair users, and they might use a wheelchair because they can't walk far, they might not feel safe walking on all terrains, they might have unstable joints that makes standing for too long risky, they might have a heart condition like POTS that has a bigger impact when they stand up or any number of other reasons. Also even non-ambulatory wheelchair users will still have scuff marks from things like transferring and bumping into things (rather hilariously, even TV Tropes calls this episode out as being "BS" in it's listing for this trope, which it refers to as Obfuscating Disability). A blind beggar flinching or getting scared when you pull a gun on them isn't a sign they're faking their blindness like it is in Red Dead Redemption 2. Plenty of blind people can still see a little bit, it might only be a general sense of light and darkness, it might be exceptionally blurry or just the fuzzy outlines of shapes, or they might only be able to see something directly in front of them, all of which might still be enough to cue the person into what's happening in a situation like that. Even if it's not, the sound of you pulling your gun out or other people nearby freaking out and making noise probably would tip them off. A person needing a cane or similar mobility aid sometimes, but being able to go without briefly or do even "big movements" like Wonka's rolling somersault, doesn't mean they don't need it at all. Just like with wheelchairs, there's a lot of disabilities that require canes and similar aids some days, and not others. Some disabilities even allow people those big, often straining movements on occasion, or allow them to move without the aid for short periods of time, but not for long. Some people's disability's might even require a mobility aid like a cane as a backup, just in case something goes wrong, but that still means you need to carry it around with you, and unless it can fold down, it's easier to just use it.

Disability is a spectrum, and a lot of disabilities vary in severity and what is required of the people who have them day to day. This trope, however, helps to perpetuate the idea that someone who does any of these things (and many others) is faking, which can actively make the lives of disabled people harder and can even put them in very real danger, physically, mentally and even financially.

Just ask any ambulatory wheelchair user about how many times they've been yelled at for using accommodations they need, like disabled toilets or parking spaces. How many times they've been accused of faking and even filmed without their consent because they stood up in public, even if it was to do something like get their wheelchair unstuck or as simple as them standing to briefly reach something on a high shelf. I've caught multiple people filming me before, so have my friends and family, and it's honestly scary not knowing where those images have ended up. This doesn't just impact the person either, a friend of mine was filmed while standing up to get his daughter (who was about 4 at the time) out of the car. He was lucky to have stumbled across the video a few days later on facebook and contacted the group admins where it was posted to get it taken down, but had he not stumbled across it by chance, pictures with his home address and his car's number plate, his child's face and his face all visible would have just been floating around, all because a woman saw him stand briefly to pick up his daughter.

Many people don't stop at just saying a nasty comment or taking a photo though, a lot of people, when they suspect people are faking, will get violent. I have many friends who have been pushed, slapped in the face, spat on or had their mobility devices kicked out from under them. I've even been in a few situations myself where, had I not had people with me, I think the situation would have turned violent.

There's even been cases where those photos and videos I've mentioned before have been used against real disabled people and they've been reported to their country's welfare system as committing disability fraud. While cases like this are usually resolved *relatively* quickly, in many parts of the world, their payment will be halted while the investigation is in process, meaning they may be without any income at all because of someone else's ignorance. If you're already struggling to make ends meet (which, if you're only living off one of those payments, you probably will be), a few weeks without pay can mean the difference between having a home and being on the streets.

Not to mention that when there's so many stories about people faking a disability in the media, especially when the character is doing it to get some kind of "advantage", such as getting accommodations or some kind of disability benefit, it perpetuates the idea that people are rorting the systems put in place to help disabled people. If this idea becomes prevalent enough, the people in charge start making it harder for the people who need them to access those systems, which more often than not results in disabled people not even being able to access the very systems that are supposed to be helping them. A very, very common example of this is in education where accommodations for things like learning disabilities require you to jump through a ridiculous number of hoops, especially at higher levels, only to have some teachers and professors refuse to adhere to the adaptations anyway because they're convinced the student (and usually disabled students as a whole) is faking.

Yes, the "untrustworthy faker" is a fictional trope, and yes, it does occasionally happen in real life, but not as often as media (including things like news outlets) would have you believe. However, when the media we consume is priming people to look for signs that a disabled person is faking, it has a real impact on real disabled people's lives. "Fake-claiming" is a massive problem for people in pretty much all parts of the disabled community, and it ranges from being just annoying (e.g. such as people spamming and fake-claiming blind people online with "if you were really blind, how do you see the screen" comments) to the more serious cases I mentioned above. It's for this reason a lot of folks in the disabled community ask that people leave this trope out of their works.

[mezsygfs]

I WANT A FIC WITH A GOOD REPRESENTATION OF JAMES AND REMUS' FRIENDSHIP. I feel they would 100% have a "you came?" "you called." type of friendship and I rarely see it. Where are my fluffy prongs and moony moments!?!?! when reading wolfstar fics, remus would let the girls shit on james LIKE NOOOOO James became animagus for him and remus would defend that man till he was in his grave because of it. AND JAMES WOULD DO THE SAME. needless to say I yearn for their friendship idc.

[iguessitsjustme]

I'm just sayin. Rose knew exactly what the fuck she was doing when she guilted Jack into joining that dinner. She fucking knew what she was doing

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

While searching Tumblr for an old post about Ableism, I found another about Faux-Positive Disability Representation

It was a dream diary post that I wrote down so I wouldn't forget it. ... And then, I promptly forgot it.

So I'm quoting the relevant bits to restart the conversation, and maybe it'll stick, this time:

The next scene I remember is everyone, including me, seated inside, at a banquet table, being served a multi-course dinner, and having conversations on various topics.   The conversation turned to disability representation in popular media (particularly TV and movies) and how some supposedly "positive" representation is actually detrimental, because it erases the actual discrimination that disabled people face, and makes systematic ableism seem like no big deal. And the example we used in conversation was the TV Cop procedural Ironside, with wheelchair-using IRL Raymond Burr as the title character. [...] And the reason it's detrimental was because although Ironside was a capable character who continued to be treated with respect and still able to do his job, even after becoming paralyzed and using a wheelchair, was that every set for every scene in the show was purposely built around his chair [...]. Every doorway, every hallway -- even in apartment buildings where suspects lived on the poor side of town -- was wide enough for him to get around independently. [...] And at this point in the dream conversation, I cited my mother (or maybe my mother was there and added this bit herself), as giving this kind of representation the name "Castle Representation" -- probably because the setting for this dream was in a castle-turned-tourist-attraction that was nowhere near as accessible as it promised to be at first (And the lucid part of my mind said: "ooh! it has a name, now! That's Clever! Remember that!)*

[chronicsymptomsyndrome]

You don’t have meltdowns you can’t be autistic

*has a meltdown*

You’re grown ew stop throwing a tantrum like a baby

[myownworlds]

Telling them you're asexual

(Part 2)

Warnings: Mention of sex, cursing

Includes: Alex, Elliott

Request

AN: this is for people who are asexual! You are seen by this user! My fiance is asexual, so this was close to my heart. Love y'all and happy pride! (Only marked 18+ because it mentions sex please respect the tag) The other bachelor's will be posted for this request just Tumblr only lets me do 10 photos at a time. If you have any suggestions on how to add more than 10 let me know!

Alex

Elliott

Dividers: @saradika-graphics

[childrenrecord]

ayaki is ayano, and i feel like this a point that's forgotten a lot, by the the audience and ayaki herself. a huge part of ayano's character, to me, is she is inherently human. she's flawed and struggles with her emotions and loves so much it hurts herself and others. her whole life she has struggled with this fact, the fact she is only human. to her, being a hero means to transcend humanity, to become something she is not, so disgustingly human. and by the end of mr2, she does that. she accomplishes her goal. she directly defies the notion that she cannot do something, and ends up doing something, by the only way she thinks she can: starting over and erasing herself. every route a little bit more of "ayano" will chip away until eventually she isnt anything more then the memory and pain she was reborn to carry. she basically turns into a faux medusa. medusa are usually associated with tragedy and suffering, medusas like azami and marry. the idea that azami/marry's snakes can give human life but also take it is an indication to me that the line between the two is very blurred. another way of saying that is in kagepro, the line between "monsters" and "humans" is very blurred. relating this back to my original point, ayaki can never fully be the snake of retaining eyes. the irony is that her existence is proof of that, she appears as ayano to shintaro in every single route. so my point is that to me that as much as ayaki is a separate person from ayano, she is still just ayano in the end. even if she wants to believe she lost everything that made her ayano, she cant. as violent and cold and bitter as she gets, she's still ayano. and that's the most painful part of her existence. she chose to get rid of herself, but is forced to stay as herself through it all. she watches her siblings die over and over again as ayano, she watches shintaro kill himself 1000 times over again over ayano, as ayano. she watches her family and friends reunite and live happily again as ayano. despite choosing to get rid of herself, she's still forced to "stay alive". much like azami chose to go into the kagerou daze by herself, but is forced to watch the events in front of her unfold. kind of went off the rails with this one but much to think about i guess.

[perpetualexistence]

Because the Alenoaheather Fake Dating AU never truly leaves my brain, I've got a small addition.

After Alejandro and Sierra have done their puppet therapy bonding session, Alejandro has to throw away the remains of the Cody puppet that he used to show Sierra how toxic her relationship with him is.

He's at the trash can. The puppet has served its purpose. It's time to put the pathetic, miserable thing in the trash. Really, it's a mercy.

...He fakes throwing the Cody puppet away. In secret, he fixes the puppet and hides it away somewhere Sierra hopefully won't find it.

He knows he can't really hide it from the cameras. So in the confessional he just says that he would hate to throw away his hard work, even if it was important for the lesson.

(Just have a short ramble about writing under the read more if you're interested)

[On a meta/writing standpoint, I just really like Alejandro using puppets as a way of processing his emotions. It allows him the safety to explore the more vulnerable parts of himself while still maintaining a distance by pretending it's just the puppet/for the performance.

Mind you, I love puppets being used as symbolic of Alejandro's manipulative tendencies. It's tried and true for a reason. I just think it'd be neat to use puppets/dolls as a positive mechanism of change for once.]

[saltciphblr]

At face value (not financially supporting it or its creator) I was enjoying hazbin hotel until I realized that once again, all fat characters are jokes. Any character that's meant to be likeable is skinny or curvy.

How can you make a cartoon intended for adults and high praise it's diversity and then not have any characters with larger bodies that aren't the butt of a joke. Diversity doesn't end at sexuality.

Maybe this is more of a vent than a critique but I'm just so tired of never ever seeing myself represented in a likeable way, or represented at all.

[royalarchivist]

Chat: Luzu is Quackity's ex.

Foolish: Ok, well Quackity seems to have a lot of exes, um, so I dunno if it's really - if it's really means all that much.

Yeah I guess... I guess uh, yeah I'm not too much different.

[goldensunset]

pov a huge twewy/ntwewy nerd visits shibuya part 2

ramen town baby!!! yeah i was not about to climb that whole hill even though it really wasn’t that steep. dogenzaka beloved

you only visit this place once in the main game but there are so so many things i could say about it. man the neku-josh-sho week 2 dynamic was the wildest and funniest thing in the world

spain hill (from above) (idk uhh what’s iconic about here?) (i didn’t trip on any haunted step that much i know)

the vibes of this place… not accessible until so late in the game (in both games) but so good both times. like the story beats that happened here were always excellent. i always loved being at shibuya stream in ntwewy it was beyond surreal stepping out of the station and just actually being here irl

le susukichi boss fight (and some more cool puzzles)

shibuya hikarie! not much to say here but the food you find here in ntwewy looked so good man i need to actually eat more while here

there are a few more actually oops! part 3 momentarily

[chaos-of-the-abyss]

enkidu hates her so much i can't hfjdskfh... every chance they get

[torchickentacos]

you ever scroll past some sort of discourse that you didn't even know existed, and you have to take a second and realize that, while none of us are superior to others, some of us ARE much better at choosing which dumbass hills to die on? because I think sometimes you deserve to go 'huh. at least I'm not getting involved in all that'.

[franticvampirereads]

Icebreaker is one of the best books I think I’ve ever read. I know I say that a lot, but this really is one of the best. If you want a book that will have you on your knees and sobbing over hockey of all things, this is the book that will do it. I think I cried over this book three separate times? It’s just that good and I just want to scream about it into the void!

I loved everything about this book. From Mickey’s depression and coming out as bisexual to his family, to Mickey making real friends for the first time and having a crush that gets reciprocated. All of it was just so well done. And the fact that I absolutely adored all of the side characters just as much as I loved Mickey? I think that says a lot about the thought and care that went into crafting this story. I could read about Mickey and Jaysen and the rest of the Royals team endlessly. Anyway, this is one of my favorite books of the year. Icebreaker is getting a solid five stars, and if I could give it more I definitely would!