#hate people referring to anything other than SEE as AAC

[wheelie-sick]

this but with the exception that ASL is a preferred language not a preferred AAC.

I love Deaf autistics

I love Deaf autistics who don't know their speaking ability because they were raised signing and without oral speech

I love Deaf autistics who do know they are nonspeaking because their lack of speech extended to signed language

I love Deaf autistics who are forced to use AAC in English because signed language is inaccessible to them

I love d/Deaf autistics who feel alienated from the hearing autistic community

I love Deaf autistics whose autistic traits make their signing hard to understand

I love Deaf autistics

[butterflyinthewell]

Some stuff about wheelchair!Vegeta with headcanons everywhere:

Vegeta was chronically ill before his injury due to medical abuse by Freeza. He was meant to be stronger than Goku, but will always be a half-step behind because of this, but even he doesn’t know that.

The illness stunted his growth and damaged all his organs. He recovered with lasting damage to his heart and kidneys. Saiyajin bodies compensate for damaged organs until they no longer function, so his liver and spleens(yes two) do some of the work his kidneys used to.

He gets drunk on less alcohol than other Saiyajins because of this.

In human terms he’s in chronic heart and kidney failure. He has to be very careful taking any meds that are toxic to the heart, liver and kidneys.

A human in his condition would be dead in a week. He’s been this way for decades.

His medical rap sheet is many pages long, and he paid huge amounts of money to have his medical records sealed so Freeza wouldn’t use them against him in the future. Medicines dangerous to him due to his organ damage were listed as allergies.

The Androids caused his spinal cord injury and the violent beating left him with PTSD. He already had sub-clinical PTSD symptoms before and this incident is what made it manifest fully.

He lost his ‘little’ spleen because of them. (Which is fine, it’s like a human appendix. He needs the big one, though.)

The damage to his body made his kidneys fail temporarily, so he was put on dialysis until they spontaneously started working again.

For a short time he was a quadriplegic on a ventilator because the surgery to repair his shattered 10th thoracic vertebra caused massive swelling in his spinal cord and brain. Nobody knew if he would survive the night after surgery, and the true extent of how the spinal cord injury affected him couldn’t be assessed until the swelling went down.

Saiyajin central nervous systems swell up when their brain or spinal cord gets punctured or exposed. It’s a vestigial trait from billions of years ago when their evolutionary ancestors’ bodies became toxic to any predator trying to eat them. This “immune edema” normally isn’t survivable, so Vegeta is the first and only Saiyajin to experience it and live.

He was in a coma from May until August. Nobody knew what condition he would be in if he woke up at all. But he did, and spent a long time in a minimally conscious state before becoming alert enough to communicate.

For awhile, he couldn’t use his vocal cords even if he had a Passy-Muir valve attached, so he communicated via AAC through a tablet and a mouth switch.

The brain edema caused neurons to sheer apart. While Saiyajin brains are capable of more neuroplasticity than human brains are, he still sustained a traumatic brain injury. He was diagnosed with epilepsy (he has tonic clonic seizures) caused by scar tissue all over his brain, and it’s inoperable because of the immune edema response. He takes meds to control his seizures and only has breakthroughs when something drastically lowers his seizure threshold.

Vegeta understands epilepsy because Raditz was born with it. Raditz’s was a lot worse and no medication controlled it. (Raditz had focal aware, atonic and tonic clonic seizures. His could be triggered by strobes, but Vegeta’s aren’t.)

Raditz was shameless about his seizures. They were just a thing that happened. Vegeta, in contrast, finds it humiliating if anyone other than Bulma or Trunks sees him have one, doubly so if he wets or soils himself during it.

Raditz tended to get confused, hyperactive and giddy the day after a seizure. Vegeta is bone-tired, struggles with brain fog and has trouble with his short term memory the day after a seizure. It takes him two days to fully recover.

Once all the brain issues settled down, it became clear that Vegeta is a t10 paraplegic, but he still gets autonomic dysreflexia because Saiyajins are more easily prone to it than humans. His experience of it is also worse than humans because he goes right to high blood pressure and a pounding headache. This drops his seizure threshold and it’s a mess. The only thing to control it is stopping the pain signal that’s happening below his lesion and keeping his head above his heart until his BP goes down.

Saiyajins have redundant nerves throughout their spine, so Vegeta can feel his toes, the soles of his feet, his tail scar and some spots on his butt. He can flex his butt muscles, but can’t wiggle his toes. He has no sensation from his belly button to the tops of his feet.

He can hobble along wearing knee-ankle-foot orthotics and using forearm crutches (four point gait) because those muscles in his butt give just enough movement to initiate a leg swing while gravity does the rest. He walks therapeutically to keep his legs from completely atrophying, but prefers his chair to get around.

He’s more prone to G-LOC in the gravity room due to orthostatic hypotension. Bulma programmed the computer to check his blood pressure periodically and tell him to power up if it drops too low since powering up raises blood pressure.

He tends to have seizures if he passes out from G-LOC. His brain is very sensitive to lack of oxygen since his injury.

He can exercise and train in up to 700Gs, but can’t fight in anything above 95 because his blood pressure and unhealthy heart can’t cope. He can die of anoxia if he’s turned upside down, abruptly flipped right side up again and held there while all the blood goes to his legs.

Vegeta doesn’t measure his disability by human standards. He measures it by Saiyajin standards. To able-bodied humans he doesn’t seem all that affected by what happened, but from his perspective he’s extremely affected.

The PTSD can make him violent and quick to anger. He has flashbacks and nightmares. If he gets triggered hard enough, he dissociates to the point of memory blackout. Sometimes he has bouts of depression.

Manual wheelchairs made for humans can’t survive him. He goes to push the wheels and they fly off, or it flies apart if he powers up, or it collapses in the gravity room, so Bulma made him some Saiyajin-proof chairs.

His current wheelchair LOOKS like an ultralight rigid open frame manual wheelchair, but it actually weighs about fifty pounds and is made of similar material to his old armor and attack ball. Unlike us in the real world, he’s got a button to push that’ll poof his chair into a capsule if he’s getting in a car or something. Btw, his chair has a white frame (hanger at 90 degrees and tapered to fit his legs), a hard backing, dark blue upholstery, a silver open tube footrest, black wheels, black push rims, white spoke covers, gold casters and gold bolts.

A regular human probably wouldn’t be able to use the wheelchair at all due to its weight.

His chair can survive up to 700 Gs in the gravity room, can survive him powering up and can take direct ki blasts without falling apart. This is because the frame is solid, not hollow tubes, and the wheels are also solid so they can’t pop or go flat.

His wheels have micro-treads, but he’s got “off road” wheels with huge treads he can switch to if he’s going somewhere outdoors or muddy.

He’s gentle about moving his chair around inside the Capsule Corporation compound, but give him a straightaway with no obstacles and he can shoot himself forward at 50mph on one full-strength push.

One of his fighting moves is to knock someone down, pop a wheelie and slam his casters down on them. Sometimes he keeps going by running them completely over. This could kill an ordinary human.

He can cheat stairs by flying, but finds that annoying and will use a ramp if it’s available.

He can still fight how he used to, just no kicks or leg movement.

All the pills he has to take (extended release Tegretol for his epilepsy, Valium for when a panic attack won’t stop) require a special coating so he metabolizes it with the full benefit instead of getting all the medication in his system at once for an hour. Injected meds work on him the same as a human, though.

Morphine is the go-to pain med when he’s having AD because he metabolizes it the fastest (he sprays it on his gums) but it zonks him out so it’s literally ever only used in dire emergencies where the cause of pain can’t be found or fixed by external means. Using morphine requires he gets blood work after to check on his liver.

Trunks is the only one in the story who grew up with Vegeta in the wheelchair and seeing him being tended to by Bulma whenever his health issues came up, so all his dad’s medical stuff is normal to him. He’s a sweet helper of a kid too and will sometimes ask if he can push Vegeta somewhere.

Actually, Vegeta kinda hates being fussed over, but he feels loved when family does the fussing. If it’s anybody else, though? He gets irritable and embarrassed.

He HATES it if people touch, lean on or move his chair without permission. Gohan makes the mistake of moving the chair exactly one time and learns a really hard lesson to never do it again.

Bulma can sit in the wheelchair without asking when Vegeta isn’t in it, and sometimes she does if she’s sitting at his bedside after he had a medical issue or seizure.

VEGETA’S DISABILITY WILL NOT BE CURED, EVER, NOT EVEN WITH THE DRAGON BALLS.

Vegeta sees his wheelchair as a reminder that he survived something that killed all the other Z-fighters. It’s a source of pride, not shame!

Sometimes he refers to his wheelchair as his throne.

Wheelchair!Vegeta is sexy af.

[iicelland]

Somebody To Love

you bet your ass i’d make a queen reference in the title 

@tylersegsy91 asked:  “Hi. I followed you :) could I have an imagine with Tyler Seguin? Something like your his best friend and you surprise him at one of his games then end up admitting your feelings toward him”

i’m gonna apologize now if this is terrible. i haven’t published anything for a long time oops.

You’d like to think of yourself as a daredevil. You’ve jumped out of planes, off of cliffs, held poisonous snakes, the works.

But the idea of confessing to your best friend? You would rather hold that diamondback. 

You and Tyler met back when he had just joined the Stars and you had been best friends ever since. Over those years, you could feel yourself slowly falling for him more and more.

Tonight, Dallas was playing home against Chicago and tonight was the night you wanted to finally come clean. 

According to Tyler, you were still supposed to be visiting your parents at this point, but you decided to come home a little early to surprise him at the game. 

Standing before your mirror, you put on the last touches of your makeup before you were satisfied with how it looked. You hummed to yourself before you headed into your living room where your bag and jacket lay waiting for you. 

With a quick glance at the clock, seeing that it was four o’clock, you decided now would be a good time to leave.

A few minutes later and you find yourself at the AAC. The parking lot had already been bursting at the seams when you first arrived and the game didn’t start for another 45 minutes.

Luckily, you knew some people on the inside.

You parked in the employee parking lot and headed straight inside.

It was chilly inside, even as you made your way down to the locker room.

It felt a bit odd to you that they let you walk into a locker room. You knew all of the guys on the team, and they all knew you, or knew of you, but it still felt a bit out of place.

You slowly creep through the door of the locker room. The first one you saw, of course, was Jamie.

“Y/N! I thought you were still supposed to be out of town!” Jamie exclaims. You were quick to shush him.

“Why don’t you announce it to the whole stadium?” You snipped playfully.

You stepped a bit further into the locker room and you saw Tyler with his back to you. A smile curls on your lips and you cross the room to Tyler. Quickly, you yank up the sleeves of your jacket and move your hands to cover his eyes.

“What the-“ You hear him mumble in confusion. He reaches up with his gloved hands and pulls your hands away from his eyes. Holding your hands in his larger ones, he turned around. 

“Hi.” You grinned. Tyler immediately scooped you up into his arms and twirled you around. You let out a squeal as you clung onto his jersey. He did eventually put you back down.

“You’re back early, I thought you were still with your parents?” He asked. 

Once you found your balance again, you beamed up at him. 

“I came home early. I wanted to surprise you.” You explained to him. 

“You’re too good for me.” He said before he pulled you in for a tight hug and you wasted no time wrapping your arms back around him. Glancing over his shoulder, you caught sight of the clock. There was less than half an hour before the boys had to be out on the ice. Now was your chance.

Tyler pulled away from the hug as he walked over to his locker where he had grabbed out his white jersey before tossing it to you.

“Wear that for me.” He said with a grin on his face. 

“Gladly,” You replied before you began to pull the jersey on over your sweatshirt. It was intentionally big for Tyler to make room for his pads, but on you, it was a dress. “Also, I, uh, have something to tell you.” You spoke sheepishly. Your anxiousness suddenly washed over you like a beach in a tsunami. 

He turned back towards you. “What’s up?” He asked.

You bit down on your bottom lip as you stuffed your hands into your back pockets. “Well,” You started. How would you go about saying this? You feared for the health of your friendship. Making it awkward or completely ruining it would destroy you. “I’m kinda, sorta in love with you.” You bit your tongue. Tyler went to open his mouth to speak, but just as he was about to say something, they were beckoned to the ice.

“Sorry, Y/N, I gotta go,” He muttered before walking off, grabbing his helmet and stick on the way out of the locker room. Soon enough, you were left behind.

Somehow, you didn’t think this was going to turn out well. A weight had settled in the bottom of your stomach as you made your way back to the main floor. 

Your body had been put on autopilot as you made your way to your seat while your mind was racing with other things.

God, what if he didn’t feel the same way? What if he was seeing someone and you didn’t know? Would he hate you for telling him? Were you coming on too strong for him? You tried to shake your negative thoughts from your mind as you finally arrived at your seat. 

You tried to get your mind off of it, focusing on the echoing music in the stadium. You sighed as you leaned back into your seat and watched the start of the game.

The game was long, after having gone twenty minutes into overtime, and the amount of screaming and cheering you did made you tired, but all worth it. Dallas came out on top, winning 5 to 1. The game also almost distracted you enough about what you had told Tyler. 

Almost being the keyword. 

Once you had gotten back out of your seat, you began to head down to the locker room once again. You hadn’t made up your mind on whether you were going to talk to Tyler or if you were going simply to return his jersey.

You waited a few minutes outside of the locker room as the guys were showering and getting back into their clothes, leaning up against the wall. 

While you were scrolling along on your phone, Tyler had walked out of the locker room, but you had been too busy to notice. 

“Hey,” He called out. You looked up to see who had called to you, but before you could respond, you felt something crash upon your lips. It took you a few dizzying moments to register that he was kissing you. Tyler. Kissing you. You turned your phone off with one hand while the other rested on the nape of his neck. You practically melted in Tyler’s arms as he kissed you. A few moments pass before you both break away.

“I’m so glad you said something, Y/N. I wouldn’t have been able to scrounge up the courage.” He muttered, letting his forehead rest against your own. “I love you too.” He breathed out. You felt yourself release a breath you were unaware of holding as a smile curled up onto your lips. “By the way, you look really cute in my jersey. I was just too afraid to say it before.” He said, earning a laugh from the both of you.

[thotsune]

The great aac timeline

This is a rough timeline of some of the keys events that took place in regards to aces-ain’t-cishets, also known as aac. This isn’t done for a specific reason in particular, mostly just a way to regroup things that have happened and inform people who don’t know about him. If you feel like anything is missing, feel free to tell me!

For those who are not yet aware, aces-ain’t-cishets (who we will refer to as aac from this point onwards) was an active ace discourse blogger from around 2016 to 2018 (it’s possible that he’d been there longer; he was there before I made my blog near the end of 2017). Not much was known about him other than he was a 31 years old man, and pan ace. 

For a few months, aac only existed as the kind of blogger you’d see around once in a while in your notes, got annoyed at, and that was about it. Though he’d said a few lesbophobic and transphobic things in the past, he was never actively “witch hunted” until around June of 2018. 

The straw that broke the camel’s back is when aac made an incest “joke” about a minor to try to prove a point. The original post can still be found here. Things went downhill really fast after that. Receipts surfaced, and aac continued to dig his own grave. Here’s a post that explains some of the things that happened around the same time aac made the incest remark.

People starting calling him out after that, and it wasn’t long until, both sides of the discourse had enough.

It’s also around that time that aac started to get into my notes. A lot. My blog was still asexythot at the time, and my bio specifically said “inclusionists who are 18+ do not interact” (keep in mind that aac is 31). Here’s a few examples. aac has also proven multiples times during this whole ordeal that he practically hates minors, especially those who disagree with him.

Tuesday the 16th of July is when everything went down. We were all getting very tired, and aac probably was, too. Notably, this is a also the day where I made this post. Not even an hour later, he was gone. Exclusionists and inclusionists soon rejoiced, me especially, after almost weeks of harassment and anons from aac. Wether it was from mass reports or the guy simply had enough, we don’t know. This is probably the last anon he ever sent before disappearing for the first time (he hated me that much). After a bunch of memes and celebration, we thought it was over. 

Or was it?

Around august of 2018, a blog known as punkturtle345 surfaced, and based on interactions and typing habits, it was quickly speculated that this was aac’s new blog. Soon, most of us accepted punkturtle as aac’s new blog, though to this day, it’s impossible to know if it was in fact him or just a very elaborate troll. 

Once again, “war” was on, as none of us wanted to see him rise again to hurt people. This time though, the new aac had a plan: confuse us. Say hello to aces-actually-aint-cishet! Once again, it’s hard to determine if punkturtle or the new aaac were made by the same person (and if that person was actually the original aac). At the time, the most commonly accepted theory was that both punkturtle and aces-actually-aint-cishet were the same person. 

Not too long after, punkturtle345 deactivated, and as of today, september 22 2018, we haven’t heard much from aces-actually-aint-cishet.

Wether aac ever came back to haunt us in the first place, that’s a mystery we might never get the answer to. Let’s just hope that this is the end of it.

[hairspray-heart]

[CN: ableism, references to caregiver mistreatment, child death, residential fire, animal death]

This is a really good thought process. A lot of autistic folks, myself included, have to or have had to duke it out with our own internalised ableism. For instance, as a child, one of my friends was an autistic boy. He was semi-verbal (in both English and Spanish, but frequently went non-verbal in both, used sounds or gestures, or gave partial or scripted responses in mixed language) and his purpose in being in school, by all accounts, was not to educate him, but to socialise him. He was frequently manhandled by aides when he had meltdowns. Me and another friend of ours, a neurotypical boy, were much more able to get through to him and help calm him, because we listened. When that friend unexpectedly passed due to a vehicular accident, I cried; my friend asked, sometimes dozens of times each day, when he would be back. What dead meant. Why he wasn’t at school with us anymore. Loss was foreign and confusing, a routine change that was unexpected and required answers.

I understood him, but I never believed I was autistic, because I was in advanced classes at school. Because I did extracurricular activities. Because I was involved in the community. Because I was often called articulate by adults who wished I’d stop correcting them. Because my mother taught me sign language before I was two, and I unknowingly used it as an AAC when I didn’t feel like talking. Because I worked hard to fit in. Because my mother, who will never admit that she is also autistic, prepared me to be different in a world that may not always be kind to me, and gave me pride and coping mechanisms and a different way of viewing my idiosyncrasies. Because she taught me to manage hyperfocus (as I also am ADHD) and absorption in a special interest by setting time limits and giving warnings, so I could disengage without disorienting. Because I was allowed to have different hobbies, to hyperfocus, to obsess, to infodump. I was praised for my intelligence, and how well-rounded my interests were.

I didn’t see my autism. I was EXTRAORDINARY.

Realising that I am neurodivergent came hard. At 25, I lost everything - including my pets - and was injured in an apartment fire. I fucking lost it. Now, I know my experience to be autistic burnout. But it was terrifying, with no basis. I devolved. I went non-verbal frequently, I disengaged from everything and everyone, I lashed out, I had meltdowns that I didn’t even have as a child (because my life had been routinised at that point, and I had space and time to keep my spoons up). I didn’t realise that pain and grief was taxing all of the energy I typically used to Appear Neurotypical. My function declined. I’m still cleaning up the wreckage left behind by my awareness of life and responsibilities deteriorating entirely. And I still operate at a lower level, carefully allocating energy to be able to go to work, care for my home, maintain my relationship, go to the grocery, and not cry during most of these things. Some days are better than others. A cold can be catastrophic; I don’t have the energy to cope with anything “extra” because three years later, I’m still dealing with grief and survivors guilt and rage and a million other feelings that come from substantial loss.

(I know this is a long post, but we’re getting to the point, I promise!)

I denied my autism because of internalised ableism, the idea that autism is only “low functioning” (fuck functioning labels) or severely inhibited people who need a lot of care and support to live. Other autistic folks hate themselves, or try to fix themselves, because they feel broken or like a burden, because of ableism inflicted upon them. This is a terrible reality, and I hope that every person in this position is given the chance, in their lives, to dismantle these prejudices and accept themselves as good, worthy, and deserving of love and care and acceptance.

I love being autistic. I love my passion and dedication to my interests. I love my attention to fine detail and my meticulousness. I love my creativity. I love a lot of my stims. I love the satisfaction of routine and familiarity. I love stability and how conducive it is to financial and professional success. I love my relationship with my wife, who is also autistic, who loves to sing-song scripts that feel nice, who watches my favourite film with me every night and never gets sick of it, who appreciates the value of smushing our cheeks together or picking me up and spinning me because it feels nice, who gets it when I’m in sensory overload and doesn’t get insulted by that, who helps me regain my coping mechanisms.

But sometimes, I don’t love parts of my autism. I don’t like meltdowns from sensory overload at work or in the grocery. I don’t like that a particular sound or texture can set my teeth on edge so that I can’t focus at all. I don’t like when there is a communication barrier between myself and a neurotypical coworker, especially when we need to coexist or work cooperatively. I don’t like feeling terror and dread at going on a business trip to a conference for a week, because everything will be unfamiliar and I don’t trust my coworker’s driving but I can’t drive with two loud, boisterous, extroverted neurotypicals crowding my car space, and I just want to be at home with my wife and my cats and familiarity. I don’t like that certain food allergies can work against me and make it feel like I’m rapidly unhinging, and I can’t feel okay again for days on end.

I work hard to prevent these issues, or mitigate damage, or cope with the fallout. That isn’t because I am ableist, but because I don’t believe that autism must cause suffering, and I want to ease the suffering that it does sometimes cause. In the same way, I run interference between my ADHD brain and my need to actually maintain order and routine in my life. I manage executive dysfunction as best as I can, because it can be damaging. That’s not ableism, it’s surviving toward thriving. I take my medications, and ensure that I am paying attention to what is working and what isn’t, so that adjustments can be made. We all use adaptive mechanisms. My foot had to be rebuilt after I jumped from a fifth story window, and while it is stronger in some senses, from having been broken and healed, it also hurts me some days, if it rains or snows or gets too cold, and sometimes I need my cane. In the same way, my brain has great strengths, even after burnout, but sometimes it harms me, and I need to use my supports to prevent damage.

So for anyone else out there who is neurodivergent and gets frustrated with the “downsides” that go along with all of the great things about being you, you’re not alone. We’re all just trying to balance it out and get by.

fin.

ETA: keto won’t “””cure””” your autism because you literally can’t cure a personality type or set of traits, but finding a diet (and eliminating allergens, if you have allergies!) can definitely go a LONG way toward helping you feel better and less bleh. i didn’t realise that it’s not typical to only clear your system 1-2 times a week and when i fixed my diet and started taking a medicine to help, i found out that feeling full/bloated makes you REALLY crabby and if you don’t even notice your body a lot of times, and it’s just “normal” to you, you have NO idea why. so there’s that.

how do u guys feel about "treaments" for autism? my mom is into keto aka high fat and low carbs, and there's stuff about keto being a "treatment" for autism. we're watching a documentary that talks about it, and the parents say "woe is me my child is autistic and i hate it" and then after some studies (that seem lacking in statistical/scientific basis) they go "wow my child is less autistic!" it bothers me even tho im verbal and "mildly" autistic. 1/2

but im not sure if this is like X-Men where some mutants have super cool powers and others have curses and the mutants with curses want a cure. but for me personally finding out that im autistic was a huge cool thing its a part of me and makes me who i am. and it seems a little mean to try to take that away from someone just bc their parents aren’t prepared to properly care for an autistic child. but i know that everyone has different experiences/opinions so i wanted to ask u guys. thank u!! 2/2

YEAH no you’re right the whole “here’s a new way to make your child Less Autistic (aka less of a burden)” studies with very little scientific basis + small sample size are often extremely ableist and cater towards parents who want a “normal child” 

there are ways to manage certain symptoms common in autistic people but these studies aim to convince parents that doing x thing will make their child more “normal” and that’s where it veers into ableist territory

i wouldn’t say the xmen metaphor is entirely correct bc many autistic people who want a “cure” + hate themselves for being autistic have internalized ableism that they need to work through to realize that being autistic doesn’t make them lesser

my thoughts on this are super jumbled rn but yeah i hope this makes sense?? ya