#it’s not the disability it’s his behavior

[nightcolorz]

I think part of why communities autistic representation with Abed is so good isn’t just how it portrays the symptoms and experience accurately, but also how it conveys plot lines and story arcs about the different types of people and interpersonal conflict an autistic person would face. Community definitely isn’t the first show to have ableism as a conflict, but in my experience of watching stuff it’s the first show I’ve seen that has such a nuanced approach to so many different types of ableism and different realistic reactions and solutions (all while being a sitcom with a cast of morally corrupt characters and absurd fantastical scenarios).

Frankie Dart for example, who is introduced in season 6, is kind of that level headed business woman archetype, conveys that she has a lot of experience with disabled ppl in her personal life, and (as is later confirmed) a lot of affection for them bcus she has a sister with a high support needs disability. This draws her to Abed, being that he’s autistic, and the two begin and understanding and friendship. Frankie is very kind and unusually understanding and compassionate towards Abed and his needs, and communicates with him in a way that is refreshingly easy for him to understand. And at the same time, patterns of infantilizing and condescending behavior begin to occur in their dynamic, until eventually Frankie outright says that abed “doesn’t know any better”, conveying to him that she thinks he’s too disabled to be aware of what he wants and believes, or to make his own decisions without someone who knows what’s best for him to guide him. And the great thing is everyone who witnesses her say this is disgusted 😭🫶 she is berated bcus everyone who knows abed knows that he is a grown ass man who doesn’t need to be hand held or condescended to.

But what’s so interesting about this conflict with Frankie is that she does earnestly mean well, she’s not a one sided abliest villain, she’s a person who could really exist. What is conveyed is that Frankie infantilizes abed bcus she has an expectation of autism that does not apply to every autistic person. She assumes that bcus her sister has high support needs and needs help making decisions, that abed is the same way, bcus she thinks all autistic ppl r like her sister and acts accordingly. And then she learns that this is wrong, and abed is fully capable of functioning without her help. It’s great! There’s no moral speech about how autistic ppl aren’t babies or anything like that. Frankie means well, fucks up, and is forgiven when she changes her behavior.

I just love it bcus ableism and other forms of bigotry aren’t often portrayed with so much nuance. Ableism isn’t usually this big thing, most people r on some degree abliest, and a lot of the time people who have a lot of experience with disabled ppl and mean well (especially ppl with disabled family or siblings) end up having the most abliest biases, it just feels so real.

[letsatomicbanana]

List (that i did for fun) of TV tropes that fits Ink as a character (only some have an explanation to them)

- ''Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny! - They are unable to maintain focus on anything for more than a few minutes before getting distracted by a shiny object, hence the trope title.''

(https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AttentionDeficitOohShiny)

- "Forgetful Jones - A character whose defining characteristic is being ridiculously forgetful"

(https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ForgetfulJones)

- "No Listening Skills - This character never listens"

(https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoListeningSkills)

- "Disability Immunity - A characters' disabilty makes them immune to some sort of attack, trap or ploy that would otherwise be effective"

Explanation: Ink can't have his soul controled/destroyed in fights due to a lack of it. (he also canonically can't get hypnotized and certainly sees that as an advantage)

(https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DisabilityImmunity)

- "Your Days Are Numbered - A character is doomed to die in a near future"

Explanation: The adherence to his vials makes them dependent on the fandom's productivity for survival, which will certainly have it's prodution ceased in a near reality.

(https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YourDaysAreNumbered)

- "Fictional Disability - Characters who have some sort of disability that doesn't exist in the real world"

Explanation: ''Lack of Soul/Soullessness'' is a categorie of a disorder that do not exist or is cataloged in any type of current diagnostic manual. Even though it reflects several existing disorders/disabilities.

(https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FictionalDisability)

- "No Social Skills - A character is mostly ignorant of and often confused by common social conventions and behaviors.".

Explanation: "With him hardly having a proper social understanding [...]"

(https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoSocialSkills)

- "Brutal Honesty - Sometimes this can separate a polite person from an impolite person, since a brutally honest character may say exactly what's on their mind"

Explanation: "[...] he's blunt in his teasing and mocking..."

(https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BrutalHonesty)

- "Fish out of Water - A character is placed in a situation completely unfamiliar to them"

Explanation: Ink was completly isolated from social connection for most of his early developmental period. Seemingly not even being aware of the concepts of 'rain and snow' after he left his doodlesphere, which showed a severe lack of understanding of the world's functions and rules.

(https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FishOutOfWater)

- "Driven to Suicide - For whatever the reason, a character may be driven to take their own life"

- Explanation: Ink ripped his soul, that's about it.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DrivenToSuicide

[renthony]

Intro & Pinned Post

(Updated September 24, 2024)

Hi, I'm Ren Basel! I'm in my 30s and my pronouns are they/them. I'm a queer, disabled artist and union organizer, and I talk a lot about the entertainment industry, labor rights, media studies, and queer history.

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[butterflyinthewell]

Just a rant about my dad that I wrote last night.

This is life when you’re trapped as a caregiver for your abuser.

Parkinson’s disease isn’t his fault, but his behavior sure is and the only consolation I have is he actually gets to feel the effects of this fuckup. I just hate, hate, HATE that everyone has to suffer with him.

Two days away from his hip surgery and my dad fucking falls down again. We don’t know if he injured his knee or just bruised it really bad.

He is notorious for taking all the efforts you made for him and reducing them to nothing in a single moment.

I hate this, I hate it, I hate being a caregiver. I hate it. I had the worst meltdown of my life. I beat myself all over, everything hurts, I dissociated so hard I have blanks in my memory. Dad thought I threw a temper tantrum. The fuck?! Tantrums are a choice, that was not a choice.

ALL OF THIS HAPPENED because he couldn’t keep his ass in bed in 2020. I completely blame him for the chaos that followed because it was avoidable.

I never wanted this, I never asked to be born. This is not a life. It’s a fucking prison and I cannot escape it.

My life is nothing but trauma with a few moments of relief that never last long enough.

I screamed at God tonight because there is no lesson to all of this, it’s just misery. I feel like I’m failing a test because I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to learn from this. To suffer? I’ve done enough, let me fucking go away somewhere else. I want out of this house.

I don’t think I’ll live to 60. The stress is killing me.

This is what I get for finally hoping that things will get any better. Every FUCKING TIME I hope, it’s crushed.

So I will never hope again. Fuck it, fuck everything.

[harrylovesspaezle]

I need to talk about Ed making Izzy disabled

If you are going to be mad at disabled fans who are upset that the only physically disabled character on the show got killed off, because "he was a dick! he threatened and hurt ed so he had it coming!" then you need to absolutely block me. There is nothing, nothing that Izzy could have done that made him deserve getting mutilated resulting in him having a physical disability for life. It's "Izzy made him do it" when Ed's behavior is bad, but when Izzy is a bad person he apparently deserves everything that happens to him. Imagine your boss making you disabled because you pushed back on his behavior and made him angry. I'm not here to excuse Izzy's actions, the guy did bad shit. But even IF Izzy was a systematic abuser(which he is not), Ed used his authority in a terrible way, and as a disabled person i absolutely hated seeing it.

Characters die, and that's okay. I personally would have loved it if i got to see him thrive after overcoming all that, but i did not get to. So please just let me be a bit upset that my disabled character died after finally recovering and learning to live with one leg.

[bonebabbles]

(Jagged Peak displays confidence next to a road)

Listen. Im one of Gray Wing's biggest haters. I'm doing my part in bringing Gray Wing Hate into vogue.

But i cant stand the way this arc hates him for the wrong reasons. He was NEVER hard on his brother. His problem (if any) was being coddling, but even then, I've spoken about how the limits Gray Wing recommended were completely reasonable for the disability Jagged Peak has

(Like when he said, "no you cannot help us rescue people from a wildfire")

The only time Gray Wing was even mean to him was when Jagged Peak let a child run off into the woods alone, chasing after her "REAL" dad Tom the Wifebeater, which put the kitten on her fucking deathbed. It was the SECOND time that children had been put in danger as a result of Jagged Peak's negligence.

That ONE time that Gray Wing was "unkind" was completely deserved. Yet, they keep bringing this up as if Gray Wing had been nasty to Jagged Peak at any point. Like their shitty brother who WAS, Clear Sky.

Gray Wing's flaw as a character has been his constant enabling, obliviousness to the feelings of others, and spinelessnees-- but the narrative never sees this as a problem, so it just makes up shit that didn't happen.

[llycaons]

if you're writing a romance and the change the character has to go through is so dramatic that they're literally insufferable prior to their development then at a certain point it's like. why bother. darcy from pride and prejudice had to undergo major personality changes, but from his first introduction he was a observant and clever, and he conversed intelligently with elizabeth. he did have obvious flaws but they just made me more interested in how he'd change, it didn't make me want to give the book up in disgust. characters can be at odds, have different goals and perspectives, argue and fight, and even be enemies, but they should both be tolerable presences to read

[tibli]

ngl i think caliborn is actually like. a refreshing take on a character with a learning disability

he is EXPLICITLY stated, multiple times, to think/learn differently than others. that one is really important and i don't see it very often outside of like. hamfisted cartoons or smth.

he is a huge fucking asshole, but it isn't caused by said learning disability. he's an asshole because he's an asshole- nothing more, nothing less

he basically becomes god

[stellerssong]

ok sorry the OTHER thing about lucienne is like. as previously stated she is dream's handpicked emissary from the waking world to the dreaming she's the diplomat in chief she's the translator she's the bridge. because the dreaming is, in a very real way, dream's own psyche, this is tantamount to giving lucienne a tremendous degree of access to his interiority and by transitive property also tantamount to entering into a deeply emotionally intimate relationship with her (unimportant for the purposes of this post whether that relationship is platonic or romantic).

now, in general, looking at the pattern of dream's close emotional relationships—dream doesn't share himself with people as a rule (beyond the access that all things that live have to the dreaming; but i'm talking about his self here, the one he doesn't like to acknowledge he even has), but when he does share with people, it's with people who have some shadow on the soul, so to speak. just looking at attested relationships in show canon, his deepest emotional connection seems to be with death, who embodies the duality of light and dark even better than he does himself. calliope is the muse of epic poetry—heroism and tragedy—and also bears the sort of divine pride that led her to cut dream off for hundreds or thousands of years when he wronged her. the less said about that other guy, the better, but he's no sunshine-rainbows-unicorns type—he's a soldier of fortune, a bandit and a killer, a man who profits from the sale of human life. even best bird matthew, in comix canon, had a sordid past that will maybe be partially retconned for the show but has still been gestured at.

dream likes the complicated ones. he's drawn to them. they speak to something in him that he won't acknowledge in himself (he has to be Whole, fully integrated, without reservation, because he is the king and he is the dreaming and if the dreaming ain't whole then the universe is in trouble—but he feels that ache nonetheless).

all that is to say: when people try to portray lucienne as dream's Designated Well-Adjusted Neurotypical Friend, i begin to harm and maim.

[atopvisenyashill]

the sociopath thing does irk me i will admit and some of that is i just feel it’s an inappropriate word to be using in the year 2024 (it's not a nice word i don't give a shit about its literary or metaphorical merits, of which it has none anyway!!) but i also think it’s functionally useless because sometimes people mean “this person has a scary disorder” and sometimes they mean “this person is ontologically evil” and sometimes they mean “this person is ontologically evil and i’m sad about it, how tragic” and it’s like. what are we talking about here. you can’t just be like joffrey/criston/ramsay/tywin/saera/cersei/whOever is a sociopath and expect anyone to think that’s a satisfying answer for why they act the way they act. “gregor clegane is a sociopath” but WHY. “no i mean he really does have like sociopathic disorder” that’s not a diagnosis and the range of things he could have that would make him display “sociopathic behavior” is SO VARIED. just say what you MEAN.

[natjennie]

does anyone out here have a dad that isnt an asshole all the fucking time. like is it even possible.

[another-chaotic-bisexual-vampire]

jack is just wandering exhausted from one horror to the next and asking what's going on only to have either van helsing or renfield hit him with

[randomtheidiot]

My school had a really weird version of the zero tolerance policy where it was all zero tolerance until a kid in the behavioral special needs class did the bullying, at which point there would be a million fucking excuses as to why that kid shouldn’t receive any sort of punishment and why I (neurodivergent but not in those classes) was a terrible fucking demon child for getting the shit beaten out of me.

[nekropsii]

kinda surprised I haven't seen anyone else ask this yet, but does sov mituna still have brain damage? I wouldn't expect you to completely veto it obviously but seeing as he is a reincarnation I'm guessing it's a bit different?

Yes, our Mituna still has Brain Damage. It's still specifically a TBI to the Frontal Lobe, and it was still gained through a Great Act of Heroism. The main difference between Homestuck's Mituna and Sovereignstuck's Mituna in that respect is that we write him and his disability with significantly more care and sensitivity. This is because we actually like him, and we do not hate disabled people, lol.

[horce-divorce]

if you want to be a good ally to ANY oppressed group- and really if you want to be a good friend tbqfh- you HAVE to allow other people the dignity of their own truth. you have to believe them, you have to defer to them about their own experiences.

you have GOT to stop thinking that you know better than others based on nothing more than conjecture and observation, when other people have lived experience that you do not.

you have GOT. TO STOP. MAKING. ASSUMPTIONS.

you have GOT to be comfortable NOT BEING AN AUTHORITY ABOUT EVERYTHING. you have GOT to be comfortable BEING WRONG sometimes or you will never get to learn new things!!!!

being supportive is about more than just saying 'I want better for you.' you have to DO better for them.

and if you aren't comfortable with that, then i'm sorry, but you aren't comfortable being an ally, and you probably aren't a very good friend to boot. friends need you to validate their experiences and to commiserate with. if all you're going to do is doubt and invalidate and rewrite their narrative then WHO are you friends with.

similarly. if you cannot defer to Palestinians, to Black people, to immigrants, to trans people, to the disabled, or to anyone else about our fears and experiences... then WHO are you trying to be an ally to? because it isn't the people in front of you. and like, how, exactly, are you being an ally, because telling me I need to take personal responsibility for my oppression is not fucking helpful.

[sevenangrybees]

Sometimes things bother me