#jigsaw against ableism

[gothinstrawberryland]

If I was in a Saw trap, I would ask for some disability accommodations like extra time and written instructions.

If he doesn't grant them, he's ableist and not giving me a fair chance, and therefore must be held accountable for his own crimes of being ableist.

[3knecrotic]

Are we totally going to ignore the fact the entire point of his antagonism is not only intense voyeurism, which by societal standards Bad, but also his stealing of choice? The generally acceptable answer towards the human nature is no one is good or bad, morality is a spectrum and complex and not just black and white. This BaW thinking is what Kramer effectively runs off of, alongside his jigsaw values tm.

His nobility is cut when his insistence to change people "for the better" stems from a lack of control and is carried out against wills.

John Kramer could've gotten into infrastructure to help make more buildings for social work? Could've gotten Into social work (the kinds of people he can coach ranged from Lawrence to Amanda to Hoffman to more, all very different types of people), made inventions for accessibility, spread awareness about mental help so people change for the better Of their Own Volition yadda yadda yadda.

But no.

He is forcing people into near lethal scenarios whether they want to or not just so they can change. He is intentionally inducing a traumatic experience so the experience leaves you "better". It's very.. You're not teaching a child to behave when you beat it, you're teaching the child to be afraid of a behavior, if not multiple behaviors. Two different things fundamentally. Granted these behaviors are "bad", this bad label does not stop them from being. Yknow.

Human.

If John fully cared about a participant, the Option would be there. And a good mentor could coax the person Into Choosing said choice, not unlike trying to get a small child to eat something good for them that doesn't taste so great.

But no.

John Kramer had to be Genuinely Canonically ableist. Granted it's because a drug addict killed his unborn baby, but like. Bro. Just because a Single Addict hurt someone for the fix (which is sad in and of itself bc to a certain extent we know Cecil regrets the decision in both his actions of doubletaking over what he had done and also just the nature of drug addiction. I'm sure he would've been a much softer character if he wasn't. Put behind a fucking stand of Knives over his face. But yk.), doesn't mean Every Single Addict has No Concious or No will power to change At All intrinsically. But consistently we see this man treat drug addiction like its a "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" situation Exclusively, which is Actually how you get people to recover uhhh Slower??? Because you're FORCING them??? And forced activity won't provide long term emotional, behavioral, or mental benefit. Just long term strain for the person that isn't fully beneficial.

John cares about society as a whole, without caring about the individual. But how can you care about a society when society is just. The Grouping of those individuals you can't seem to care about? It's backwards and unethical for a plethora of reasons.

And the easiest examples of this are, intriguingly, Amanda and Cecilia. Tell me this. If Amanda was reborn from her iconic bear trap, does she go on to thrive? Or does she get retested again and again, alongside trauma, until she ends up Failing a test and dying for it? Or Cecilia. We see her left alone to die in that room, but let's be real. She had managed to scam SEVERAL CANCER PATIENTS, over the span of YEARS with a very methodical group she could just as easily replace. With the kind of heat Cecilia could pack in terms of skillset to even Do such a thing, do you REALLY HONESTLY thing she changed? Or do you think she'd Escape the emptying poison room and start from square one? She survived The Fucking Jigsaw. All Kramer did was exacerbate her ego and give her an escape room she can force herself out of anyways with enough effort.

Tbh I think his ableism was his nerf so people didn't romanticize him but the internet stops no one ig :x

Oh also Aba awooga

saw I trap: hey girlie! this guy is dead. but he has a key in his tummy!! could you get it out to save yourself??

saw traps II and up: preform brain surgery on yourself then eat your own arm then watch your wife be brutally murdered then melt all your skin off with this acid then kill 7 innocent bystanders. you have 45 seconds. now you'll think twice about taking antidepressants.

[an-aura-about-you]

you know, though I won't hesitate to say the series has its flaws, the Saw movies are really good at creating atmosphere, the way they handle body horror, and writing twist endings that actually make sense upon multiple viewings.

(I mean, yeah, on the last one they get pretty silly, but my point is the stories follow their own internal logic. if you can suspend your disbelief enough to watch the movie in the first place, then the movie will make more sense upon your second viewing onward.)

[lacependragonwrites]

descent snippets; #2

From Chapter 2

I finished chapter 2 today! So I thought I'd share some of my favourite lines from it. Here we go. As always, reblogs, comments, and feedback are super welcome.

Content warnings for explicit ableism

a:

“Here we go, got the connection finally,” said the guy in the passenger’s seat. “Damn tablet.” Nat jolted. What? “All right, who wants to hear about Nat Carter, mute murderer?” Nat flinched. “Come on, Lorenz, let’s at least give the kid the benefit of the doubt,” said the woman across from Nat. The man driving said nothing. “Maybe they don’t talk because they can’t lie.” …What? “Good point,” said Lorenz, chuckling. “Fucking hell. You know they’re registered as an Epsilon?” The woman snorted. “No fucking Epsilon could do all that. When’s the last test?” “Looks like… holy shit, 2026.” “Thirteen years ago?” The woman scoffed. “You’re supposed to get retested at eighteen.” “Yeah. No shit. Three years past that.” Nat pressed their hands tighter to their ears, trying to block out the noise. Without their static, it was pointless. They couldn’t cover anything without it.

b:

“You think they know?” asked the woman. “Know what?” asked the driver. “That they did it. You think they’re smart enough?” asked the woman. Nat clenched their hands in their lap and pretended not to be awake. “File says they’ve got autism,” said Lorenz. “Probably a toss up, then,” said the woman. Nat ground their teeth and did nothing. They couldn’t fight back. They had no way to win. And how did you win a fight if you couldn’t throw a punch or speak a word? How did you argue when your opponents refused to listen to your language? Their static built, hot and angry. The smell of dried blood burned in Nat’s nostrils. But it was so hard to stay angry. Especially when the only person Nat could yell at was themself. And they were already doing that.

c:

Nat pressed as far away from the open doors as they could, wrapping their cuffed hands around their raised legs. Nat pressed their face into their knees and whimpered again. They squeezed their eyes shut. No. No. Docks and ferries and open fucking water and sunrise. Not the sunrise. They couldn’t. The flood of orange and pink and blue, the way it tinged and shifted in slowly lightening shades— Light in the kitchen window, streaming through lavender curtains. Ayla had picked out those curtains. She’d loved the butterflies embroidered into the corners, the flowers that looped and leaped across the edges, little border guardians. Shades of pale yellow and orange and pink scattered across the kitchen table, empty except one item. The table was never empty. Discarded plates, untouched mail, craft projects, school work, half-finished jigsaw puzzles, and maps of local terrain to plan rock climbing excursions always covered the table. But the puzzle was put away, the box on the kitchen counter. The maps were tucked into the magazine rack in the living room. The dishes were washed and put away. The mail sorted and dealt with, opened, maybe. Ayla’s craft projects gone — Nat had found them later, in her bedroom. Set up like she’d left them there. She hadn’t. The details had been wrong. All the details were wrong. They were real but they were wrong. And on the kitchen table, alone, despite the table having never been empty a day since they’d moved in, was a postcard. Wish you were here!, it read, with a picture of the Veda skyline. On the other side, in neat handwriting, two lines that changed everything. Come to the mines. We’re waiting for you.

d:

But Sage was a metahuman. Sage could teleport. A sort of freedom Nat had only ever dreamed about. And Veda was full of metahumans. Nat’s people. The crash of waves breaking against the rocks and docks beyond thundered against Nat’s eardrums and heart, anchoring them to the cold, wet present.

e:

Nat nodded again. To feel powers under control, to know what a meta who knew what they were doing looked like in action… the excitement of it pressed against one side of their exhaustion, trying to break in. But the panic, the grief, ballooned the exhaustion until nothing could possibly pop it.

[hogmilked]

i mean this 100% unironically and i know it’s not that deep but also it kinda is. people saying “i would die in the saw trap because jigsaw wouldn’t put captions on the videos/transcriptions of the audio tapes” have missed a large part of the point of at least the first three movies. i’m not gonna sit here and say that john kramer is the peak of disability rep, but the entire motivation of his character is the failings of the healthcare system and america in general to support the disabled. i know that sounds like an unnecessarily deep reading of a movie franchise about death traps but genuinely this is a man whose entire thing is that he’s swearing (albeit misdirected) vengeance against people who have taken advantage of or taken for granted the failings of the american healthcare system. jigsaw’s traps are meant to be at least somewhat escapable because, in his own incredibly fucked up way, he wants people to leave them having learned something. again i know this is a dumb hill to die on but i also genuinely think that the traps made by a disabled character would be accessible at the very least. also HE WOULDNT PUT DISABLED PEOPLE IN THE TRAPS THAT GOES AGAINST HIS ENTIRE FUCKING POINT. if you’re gonna make an argument about ableism in saw you can talk about how at his core the main villain is that way because of his disability but also it isnt, he’s just someone who has been driven to violence after repeat failings on behalf of the healthcare and justice systems so like???? idk i know this isn’t anywhere near a big deal but like i have an issue with people undermining the criticisms of healthcare in a story about what lack of support can push people to do

[sweetandsavageautistic]

Okay, I’m gonna be a bit harsh here

and not just cuz I haven’t been cast in a role in my college’s theatre program yet; which I haven’t, but that’s beside my point. 

(TW: Autism Speaks, murder-suicide, swearing)

April is coming up. And you know what that means; Light It Up Blue. More like Light Autistics on Fire. That’s basically what Autism Speaks is trying to do. Okay, not exactly light us on fire, but they fucking hate us autistics. 

“That’s just your opinion---”

I’m gonna stop you there. No. It’s. Not. They are the scum of autism organizations and a large majority of autistics feel the same way. Why? Here’s fucking why:

-Only 4% of the funds they receive go to actually helping autistics and families of autistics. 22% is spent on fundraising and a large majority is going towards “research” or paying themselves. They said they've stopped finding a cure, but that doesn’t mean they’ve stopped trying to detect it in fetuses so they can be aborted. 

-The video “I Am Autism” is cancerous to the autism community. In that video, Autism Speaks portrays autism as something that will “ruin your marriage” and “ruin your life.” 

-In another video they produced, one mother of an autistic daughter says she has contemplated a murder-suicide of her autistic daughter. Said daughter was in the room as she fucking said this. 

-They fund “therapies” that use food/sleep deprivation and electroshock therapy to make us autistics act normal. 

-Not a single person on their board is autistic. Not. a. single. one. 

-They used to; his name is John Elder Robison, but he left because either his input was consistently ignored, people were saying ableist language, or both. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was both. 

-Their symbol is a blue puzzle piece. You know what that fucking says about us? Let me ask you; what do you do with a jigsaw puzzle? You put it together. Why? Because it’s broken in pieces. Autism is not a jigsaw puzzle. It’s not something that needs to be fixed. 

-They’ve blocked autistic people on Twitter for trying to speak out against them. 

-They’ve partnered with a neo-Nazi group; Soldiers of Odin. If a neo-Nazi group supports you, you know you’ve done fucked up. 

I used to support them. Hell, my dad and I did fundraising for them. I was caught up in their bullshit. I couldn’t see their ableism until some point in high school.

Now I fucking hate them. There’s pretty much nothing good about them, and I’m an idealist, so that’s saying a lot. 

Now here’s the bitter truth about how this is handled in my family; my sister’s indifferent and my dad kinda just goes along with my mom who, even though I’ve tried to tell her how bad it is, supports them. If she “lights it up blue,” I’m gonna block her on Facebook because I don’t deserve to feel like shit and neither do other autistics. 

Another bitter truth; my dad was surprised when he found out I didn’t want a cure for autism. I mean, sure there are autistics who may want one and that’s their opinion, hopefully not due to ableist bullshit, but I want to accept my autism, not rid myself of it. 

Please do not Light It Up Blue. Please wear red or rainbow instead.