#like people should be considering disabled people more in the language they use

[colorisbyshe]

I'm trying to say this nicely... but we know AI is environmentally harmful, we know its use of slave labor in its maintenance, we know it's being used by corporations to avoid paying for labor AND to undercut the labor they can't avoid employing... so we know it's bad on pretty much... every conceivable level

We also know it's biggest advocates and the people running most AI companies... are in fact literal, actual fascists. Some of which have actual body counts. Like have literally caused the suffering and deaths of other human beings

So... what exactly is the point of posts mocking the "less good" reasons to criticize generative AI use? Even when you're ideologically correct that the argument they're employing is flawed and that there are better, more tangible criticisms of generative AI (see... the fascism... slave labor... environmental harm), what is the actual point? What is accomplished besides generative AI use being defended and expanded for another day?

"It's fascist to criticize generative AI use as soulless." Okay well, sure, I guess, let's go with that. ACTUAL fascists with the power to do the fascism are using this AI and are financially benefiting from generative ai use. And are using things like deepfakes to create propaganda that will ultimately hurt more people... so... no fascist is getting into power by criticizing generative AI but plenty are using generative AI to amass power.

Thusly... you were morally correct in your observation. And yet what did you accomplish? Who did you aid?

I see so many fucking posts that are like... okay, so you're smug right now. What is your smugness doing to help other people? To prevent harm?

"Haha it's stupid to be offended for Miyazaki's sake because he has bad politics too." Correct. And yet the Ghibli art image generation trend forced OpenAI to limit image generation because it's using so much energy and creating so much heat it was melting GPUs.

I'm not sad for the GPUs sake or for Ghibli's sake... I'm thinking critically, for like, five seconds, about what that means for water usage and the environment.

If the "bad" arguments shame people into not using a harmful technology... I'm sorry at a certain point, maybe I just sit down and let them continue to make the bad arguments. Because the harm of "UWU MIYAZAKI" is... people continue to watch Ghibli films (which is what y'all are doing too, like, EVERY post I have EVER seen criticize him here always has the addendum "I still love his some of films tho" lol) and the harm of generative ai use is pollution which will mostly affect the most marginalized and vulnerable people. Like... we already know climate change hurts vulnerable people the most and yet...

I'm just kinda tired of rhetoric/ideology over tangible results, I guess.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

ppl will be explaining how a difference is a difference & not a Deviation from a Superior state, & people who are the ones considered Default Normal (superior) will be like "okay....to be polite....i Might say i consider Some aspects of Some people's existence mere 'difference' & not being less than me...." as like hey i'm a Benevolent god. i still actually get to consider you worse & don't have to "humor" anything that challenges my superiority. if you only want everything to fit into the norm then it will all come back to upholding the norm. thinking of people's analysis of their own realities as equally legimate as being like Obscure, Irrelevant, Superficial & then using that reasoning to justify dismissing them. same as worrying that the [Different Lessers (Others(tm))] as Everywhere = a manifestation of the awareness that, yeah, respecting them as equals Does threaten your norm which is smothering everything everywhere. ppl who need to lock in the idea of Borders around personhood like um Yes they're all delineated separate Identities outside any hierarchy & so i think it's relevant to for some reason push back against "ohh so now Everyone's queer" like why not. why couldn't they be. what if they were. what if queerness was everywhere b/c it's ideological not a cordoned off Alternative Identity that is accommodated by focusing on Love(tm) as the new border around whose existence we might begrudgingly accept at arm's length (i.e. being otherwise "normal"! just imagine swapping out the binary gender (or, deep breath, presumed Private Parts) of one partner in an exclusive romantic lifelong nuclear family marriage, & that is Gay / Trans Rights. still gross but maybe we can do it, as long as they don't talk about it or shove it in our faces or even exist for more than one encounter w/us in our lives b/c what are the odds). evergreen laughing at someone suggesting ableist logic might be embedded in language of past & present b/c it's just So little to ask for that it's irrelevant but it's also So much to ask for that of course i'm not gonna do anything more than pass it along like "this is why i don't take ableism seriously" like yeah it's the disabled randos like it's the individual cringe teens(tm) ruining [the cishets would take Gender seriously otherwise!!!] & that's why you won't think about it or do anything about it & continue being comfortable with the norm & resent that actually their Difference is Less & disability is something worse that ppl "excuse" & all these ways that people are & all these things that they do are funny & weird & inexplicable & etc & one can't possibly be cruising along perpetuating a hierarchy with a sense that you're reasonable, well meaning, kind, etc etc & thus Justified, systemic oppression definitely wants to maximize how uncomfortable & arduous it feels to everyone rather than push to make it more streamlined & rewarding to embrace, or at least accept, whatever superiority over others you're afforded

[cripplecharacters]

Disabilities that You Should Consider Representing in Your Writing More… part 1

[large text: Disabilities that You Should Consider Representing in Your Writing More… part 1]

While all disabilities are underrepresented in basically all sorts of media, it’s hard to not notice the trend in what disabilities make up the majority of representation. It’s especially visible when having a blog like this, where we can see what disabilities writers even consider including in their writing, and which ones never come up.

One in four people are disabled. With eight billion people alive it means there’s a lot of disabled people, and a lot of reasons why they are disabled in the first place - but this diversity is rarely represented, even on this blog, and anyone who has been following for a while has probably noticed that fact.

To be blunt: there are disabilities other than “amputee” and “invisibly disabled mobility aid user”. Does that mean that it’s wrong to write either of those? No, and we don’t want to imply that it is. Does it mean that either of these have a lot of good representation? Absolutely not, half of all the amputee characters out there are written by people who don't seem to be even aware they're writing a disabled character. Does it mean that when you are deciding on what to give your character, you should think beyond (or along! people can be, and often are, multiply disabled!) just those two? Absolutely. Disability is a spectrum with thousands of things in it.

This is, simply, a list of common disabilities. This is just a few of them, as this is part one of presumably many (or, at least three as of right now). By “common” we rather arbitrarily decided on “~1% or more” - so at least 1 in 100 people has the disabilities below, which is a lot. Featuring!: links that you should click, sources of the % that are mostly just medical reports and might be hard to read, and quick, very non-exhaustive explanations to give you a basic idea of what these are. 

Intellectual disability (about 1.5%) Intellectual disability is a condition we have written about at length before. It’s a developmental disability that affects things such as conceptualization, language, problem-solving, or social and self-care skills. ID can exist on its own or be a part of another condition, like Down Syndrome, Congenital Iodine Deficiency, or Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders. This post covers a lot of basic information that you might need. We have an intellectual disability tag that you can look through!

Cancer survivors (5.4% in the US, about 0.55% worldwide) A cancer survivor is a pretty self-explanatory term. There is a lot of types of cancer and some of them are very common while others are very rare, which makes this a very diverse category. Cancers also have different survival rates. While not every survivor will have disabling symptoms, they definitely happen. Most of the long-term side effects are related to chemotherapy, radiation, and other medication, especially if they happened in children. They can include all sorts of organ damage, osteoporosis, cognitive problems, sensory disabilities, infertility, and increased rate of other cancers. Other effects include removal of the affected area, such as an eye, a spleen, breasts, or the thyroid gland, each of which will have different outcomes. Cancer, and cancer treatments, can also result in PTSD.

Diabetes (about 8.5%, ~95% of that are type 2) Diabetes is a group of endocrine conditions that cause hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) for various reasons depending on the type. The vast majority of people have type 2 diabetes, which can cause fatigue, poor healing, or feeling thirsty or hungry. A diabetic person will use insulin when needed to help manage their blood sugar levels. There are many complications related to diabetes, from neuropathy, to retinopathy, and chronic kidney disease, and there's a lot of disabilities that coexist with diabetes in general! You might want to check out the #how to write type 1 diabetes tag by @type1diabetesinfandom!

Disabling vision loss (about 7.5%) Blindness and low vision are a spectrum, ranging from total blindness (around 10% of legally blind people) to mild visual impairment. Blindness can be caused by countless things, but cataracts, refractive errors, and glaucoma are the most common. While cataracts cause the person to have a clouded pupil (not the whole eye!) blind eyes usually look average, with strabismus or nystagmus being exceptions to that fairly often (but not always). Trauma isn't a common cause of blindness, and accidents are overrepresented in fiction. A blind person can use a white cane, a guide dog or horse, or both. Assistive solutions are important here, such as Braille, screenreaders, or magnifying glasses. We have a blindness tag that you can look through, and you might want to check out @blindbeta and @mimzy-writing-online.

Psoriasis (about 2-4%) Psoriasis is a chronic skin condition with multiple subtypes; it can cause intense itching, pain, and general discomfort, and often carries social stigma. It’s an autoimmune and non-contagious disability that affects the skin cells, resulting in raised patches of flaky skin covered with scales. It often (30%) leads to a related condition, psoriatic arthritis, which causes joint pain, tenderness, and fatigue, among other things.

Stroke survivors (0.5-1%) A stroke survivor is a person who has survived any kind of stroke (ischemic, hemorrhagic, etc.). While the specific symptoms often depend on the exact location on where the stroke happened, signs such as hemiplegia, slurred speech, vision problems, and cognitive changes are common in most survivors to some degree. When someone has a stroke as a baby, or before they are born, it can result in cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and other disabilities. We have a brain injury tag that you can look through!

Noonan Syndrome (about 0.1-1% - mild is 1%, severe 0.1%) Noonan Syndrome is a disability that is almost never mentioned in any context, but certainly not around the topic of writing disabled characters. It’s a congenital condition that can cause cardiomyopathy, chronic joint pain, hypermobility, short stature, facial differences such as ptosis, autism, and various lymphatic problems among other things. Some people with Noonan Syndrome might use mobility aids to help with their joint pain.

Hyperthyroidism (about 1.2%) Hyperthyroidism is a condition of the endocrine system caused by hormone overproduction that affects metabolism. It often results in irritability, weight loss, heat intolerance, tremors, mood swings, or insomnia. Undertreated hyperthyroidism has a rare, but extremely dangerous side effect associated with it called a thyroid storm, which can be fatal if untreated.

Hypothyroidism (>5%) Hypothyroidism is an endocrine condition just as hyperthyroidism is, and it causes somewhat opposite symptoms. Due to not producing enough thyroid hormones, it often causes fatigue, depression, hair loss, weight gain, and a frequent feeling of being cold. It’s often comorbid with other autoimmune disabilities, e.g. vitiligo, chronic autoimmune gastritis, and rheumatoid arthritis. Extreme hypothyroidism can also be potentially fatal because of a condition known as Myxedema coma (or “crisis”), which is also rare.

Deafblindness (about 0.2-2%) Being DeafBlind is often considered to be an extremely rare disability, but that’s not really the case. DeafBlindness on its own isn’t a diagnosis - it can be caused by a wide range of things, with CHARGE syndrome (congenital), Usher syndrome (born deaf, becomes blind later in life), congenital rubella, and age-related deafness and blindness being some of the most common reasons. DeafBlindness is a wide spectrum, the vast majority of DeafBlind people aren’t fully blind and deaf, and they can use various ways of communication. Some of these could be sign language (tactile or not), protactile, the deafblind manual, oral speech (aided by hearing aids or not), the Lorm alphabet, and more. You can learn more about assistive devices here! Despite what various media like to tell you, being DeafBlind isn’t a death sentence, and the DeafBlind community and culture are alive and thriving - especially since the start of the protactile movement. We have a DeafBlindness tag that you can look through!

It’s probably worth mentioning that we have received little to no asks in general for almost all the disabilities above, and it’s certainly not due to what mods answer for. Our best guess is that writers don’t realize how many options they have and just end up going for the same things over and over.

Only representing “cool” disabilities that are “not too much while having a particular look/aura/drama associated” isn’t what you should aim for. Disabled people just exist, and all of us deserve to be represented, including those whose disabilities aren’t your typical “cool design” or “character inspo”, and literally all of us deserve to have good, informed representation. Sometimes we are just regular people, with disabilities that are “boring” or “too much”, and don’t make for useful plot points.

mod Sasza (with huge thank you to mod Sparrow, Rot, and Virus for their contributions with research)

[bahngarang]

chapter 7.0 ☆ the lock and key theory

ss: 7

wc: 1,692

cw: swearing, food mentions, jokes about disability (from a disabled writer)

a/n: seeing my work while I'm innocently scrolling through the skz x reader tag is WILD y'all

yn's office hours were... interesting. during their first year as a part-time professor, it had initially been pretty boring. no one really came to their office. the students preferred to go to their more serious professor, as it were – and dr jang was definitely more serious and more experienced. she had more of a reputation. which was fine, yn was perfectly happy to lesson plan and do the more computer heavy side of their research in that time. they enjoyed working alone. no distractions.

the second year? not so quiet.

it had started small. justin being the main instigator. he was always one of the more outgoing ones. he came in once or twice a week, bothering them with questions about the material. things he probably could have figured out on his own, but it was kind of nice. 

now, yn had justin, and oftentimes a few of his friends, hanging out with them during office hours. doing homework, asking about assignments and essays and sometimes just yapping. and, strangely... yn liked it. sure, sometimes they had to use urban dictionary to decipher the young people language, and deal with the occasional millennial/old person joke, but it was pretty fun.

today was one of the more yappy days, clearly. justin did have his laptop out, precariously placed on his legs, but he was completely ignoring it except to make sure it didn't drop to the floor. instead, he was rambling on about how painstaking sewing beaded fabric was, and stitching and so on. don't get them wrong, yn was absolutely listening, but they were also having something close to a religious experience with today's cheesecake that dr jang had brought up from the cafeteria for them.

"–and i've already managed to break two needles on that stupid stuff, even though I spent ages unpicking the beads by hand, like, at this point, is it even worth it?"

"mmh," yn hummed sympathetically, taking another bite of cheesecake, chewing slowly. shifting on their desk chair, they crossed their right leg over their left to get more comfortable. "well, considering how much you've been talking about this for the last couple of months, I don't think you should give up now just because you're frustrated over some fabric."

justin huffed. "yeah, but it's annoying, and-" he stopped, and yn looked up at him from their lesson plan after a few moments of silence.

"what?"

"nothing, it's just..." he squinted at their knee. "has that tattoo on your knee changed? did you get a cover-up or something?"

"it's not a tattoo, it's my soul mark," yn said, before looking down at their knee in confusion. they were less averse to showing it now that it was pretty much unreadable. or... it was.

"what the fuck..." yn muttered to themselves. it wasn't completely as it was before all the knee surgeries, but it was definitely... closer than it used to be. and even through their sheer tights, they could read a few initials – b.c., s.c., and y.j.. well. shit.

"do soul marks... usually change?" justin murmured.

yn's area of expertise was not soul marks in any capacity, but it couldn't be a coincidence that the only three of their soulmates that they'd seen – and touched – were the ones who's initials they could read now. one? sure. two? weird, but okay. but three? yeah, something was definitely going on. yn hadn't heard of soul marks changing after interactions with soulmates, but then again, they also didn't know anyone else who'd had their marks fucked up, especially to the extent of their one. "uhm... not that I know of..."

"that's... weird."

"... yup."

"does it feel any different?"

"i would have noticed earlier if it did," yn replied.

"do you know why it's doing that?" justin asked curiously, leaning further over yn's desk to look closer at it.

"i... have an idea," yn said to their chagrin.

"cryptic."

"you're my student, you don't need to know about my love life," yn said. "i'm sure you have much more pressing matters to worry about. like... studying..."

"boo. that's boring," justin said, heaving a sigh and draping himself over the back of his chair.

"i feel i should remind you that you have a test next week," yn said flatly. "and while studying may be boring, it does help your results." yn left out that they had not been the most avid studier during their university years. do as i say and not as i do, right? justin didn't have to know.

not that he listened, continuing his impassioned rant about beaded fabric and other things, while yn silently had a mini crisis over the new development in the soulmate department.

"hi," yn mumbled, frowning down at the pan in front of them. they were... attempting to cook dinner, their phone set up against the back wall of their kitchen counter. but it was one of those days when they had to drag a chair into the room so they didn't have to stand up, so it wasn't a particularly nutritious meal. still better than not eating, though.

"hey." the audio from minji's end was... crackly. the connection in the gym she went to was shitty, to say the least. and she'd chosen to accept the video call while on the treadmill, which was a choice, for sure.

chika giggled quietly, and the half-drunk margherita that she held told yn she was at least a little tipsy. her location was unclear, but it was clear she'd found some room away from the main party where she wouldn't be disturbed for a while. "guess who I'm with," she hummed out in a sing-song voice, before turning the camera to bring her companion into frame.

yn, at this point, wasn't surprised at who it was. it was, in their mind, only logical – chika was at a versace event, so was hyunjin, and fate seemed to have it out for them recently, so why wouldn't it be him?

"we're hiding," chika whispered. "it's very loud. and there are too many people. i am quite overstimulated."

"hello," hyunjin said shyly, giving a small wave to the camera.

yn, for all the repressing of their feelings, still couldn't deny how cute he was. it was just one of those things. they suspected it had a little to do with the fact that he was their soulmate... but it was also just one of those things.

"so, what was the stuff in the group chat about your soul mark changing?" chika asked, a shit-eating grin spreading across her face, as if one of my soulmates wasn't unfortunately right beside her.

"shut the fuck- oh, my god, get your furry ass off my counter!" yn complained, getting up off their chair to grab bingus, who was making his daily escapade into the kitchen cabinets. honestly, they wouldn't really have a problem if it was the ones at ground level, but trying to haul the cat's fluffy body out of the top shelf of the higher cupboards every day was just... it took far too much effort. they sighed, walking back into frame, holding bingus like the little baby he was, slumping back down into their chair, breathing a little heavy. "he's such a pest."

"just grabbing your cat has you breathing like that? damn..." minji said with a slight laugh, the background noises of her running slowing down as she lowered the speed of the treadmill.

"yeah, well, health is wealth and I am dirt poor, if you catch my drift," yn said, scratching bingus behind the ears and kissing his little forehead.

hyunjin gasped from the other side of the camera, his eyes going wide. "you have a cat?"

yn chuckled, picking up their phone to hold the camera closer to their kitty. "he's called bingus. i woke up to him sitting on my face this morning."

hyunjin muttered something that the microphone didn't manage to pick up, but evidently chika found it absolutely hilarious in her drunken state. "he's so cute..."

bingus meowed gently at the camera, blinking his wide eyes innocently like he wasn't just trying to use yn's ramen stash as a cat bed, instead of literally any other surface in their apartment. he was a strange one. although, maybe that was just cats in general.

"that he may be, but he also made five escape attempts in the past hour and was sulking until about ten minutes ago because I wouldn't let him risk his life in seoul traffic," yn replied in exasperation.

minji sighed sarcastically, rolling her eyes. "you clearly don't love him then."

"yes, i hate my cat and want him to live an unfulfilling life. he reminds me of that often. maybe i shouldn't have trained him to come with me on my bike. i've given you a taste for danger, hm?" yn smiled down at bingus, kissing his cheek.

"you have a bike?" hyunjin asked.

"yeah," yn confirmed. it was pink, and had hello kitty detailing – what more could you want?

"they're objectively less safe, you know that, right?" minji said. it was a conversation they'd had many times, but it always ended the same.

"i never said it made sense," yn protested. "but, unfortunately, i don't have the luxury of being able to walk everywhere, i'm scared of cars, and me and public transport don't mix well because it's usually too busy to sit down, so... this is my solution."

"i think we should go back," chika said, finishing the conversation abruptly. "i think donatella has some attachment issues," she whispered, not that it was any quieter.

yn chuckled. "alright. see you in a few days."

minji's pout was practically radiating through the screen as she said her goodbyes, to no surprise. it wasn't just donatella versace who had attachment issues.

and so, yn was left alone with their thoughts again while they ate their noodles – and simultaneously tried to stop bingus eating them as well. hyunjin was... nice to talk with. not that they expected otherwise, but... a part of them wished he wasn't. it would have made it easier to reconcile staying away for so long.

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[genderisareligion]

The elusive "TERF" is actually just a mirror

All its devotees know is projection. When I started this blog in late 2020 I more frequently used the tag #DARVO in action to start keeping track of the blatant lies TRAs spew that are really just a tell about their crowd (DARVO = Deny Attack Reverse Victim Offend, a strategy used often by DV abusers) and I just have to start making this cumulative post because:

They're now saying John Money was a radical feminist. Lmfao 💀 The male cracker extraordinaire (we don't even think males can be feminists let alone human most of the time) most responsible for the word gender's mistranslation as something that describes human behavior rather than the behavior of languages (most of which aren't even English), the idiot torturer who's a major reason the intersex community has to guard itself so fiercely against "normative" surgeries, who once claimed that anyone skeptical of his "girl = pink, boy = blue, I must fix anyone else" theories actually just believed that "masculinity and femininity are baked into the genes and women should get back to the kitchen" (sound familiar? What are "TERFs" always being accused of?) Like bro that's you

"TERFs are fascists who need everyone to fit into the male or the female box" actually gender abolition would mean no more boxes besides the purely categorical chromosomal ones we can't help from birth, and actually trying to force everyone to fall somewhere on a scale of femininity and masculinity and positing intersex conditions as the "middle" creates an unnecessary dichotomy amongst particularly females, where a woman born with PCOS is considered "less female" than one without regardless of how she "identifies," and the more "masculine" you are (whatever that even means) the more your body requires meds and surgery.

"TERFs align with fascists" but y'all are the ones with the Big Pharma billions paving your way so lol sorry not sorry but as a Negro it's giving the way they used to experiment on us for profit, refine their methods for research and leave us for dead or permanently disabled. And y'all think it's empowering? You think they actually care that you're personally fulfilled? You think they won't pull another Henrietta Lacks? You think all these detrans people are just flukes? They'll take your thousands of dollars until you're in debt and pump you full of more dubious "treatment" as long as it means they get to keep quietly going home to their white picket fences where all their loved ones are fine pretending they're heroes rather than profiting off others' pain. What is fascism if not allowing the medical establishment to "correct undesirables"?

"TERFs are Nazis" but the "first ever transgender surgery" on "trans woman" Lillie Ebe was performed by literal fucking Nazi Erwin Gohrbrandt who believed "mentally ill people were considered 'feeble-minded' (this was an actual, formal term) and homosexuals were considered to also be 'feeble-minded' and have inferior genes." Fun fact, Lillie was also a fucking Nazi.

"TERFs are all white supremacists" but everyone I just mentioned up there is a fucking white supremacist and not even Google agrees with you there, searches for the word TERF are done almost entirely in Western nations like the US and UK, whereas searches for radfem are balanced worldwide and in fact an African country is #1 on one of those lists, and you can't argue that those searches are by TERFs themselves because "try Googling TERF right now and seeing how many if any positive references show up"

I have more after 4 years lol but lemme cook

[nanistar]

i don't want to cause discourse tm so don't feel as if you need to respond! but while bonesight is a contentious character i wish people were more mindful about the language they're using when talking about her. bonesight is fictional but her mental condition is not - psychosis and similar conditions are already such stigmatised disorders, they're real things people like myself struggle with. it's not very comforting to put it lightly reading the replies, on DA especially, and seeing the way people talk about her to the point i've had to stop keeping up with this comic for my own well being.

i'm not saying you have to love her or you're a bigot! bonesight has done a lot of terrible things that are worthy of being criticised regardless of them being influenced by her poor mental health. nor do i speak for everyone as yknow we're not a monolith. what i am saying is that please be mindful with your wording because we can see how you're talking about people like us. to act as if none of this matters as it's just fictional is ignorant at best as your comments don't exist in a vacuum. maybe think about the implications of calling bonesight a "crazy pyshco bitch" and such for a moment. i do not like how much i've seen that being thrown around unchecked.

i do want to end this as saying you have done a wonderful job in portraying her and none of this is aimed at you personally! in fact she's honestly my go to when talking about portrayals of such conditions in media because of how respectfully and nuanced you've written her. it's deeply appreciated and i want to thank you for that. it's just a shame some of your audience can't be more respectful.

yeah i have noticed that the way she is received and talked about varies wildly between the websites that i host the comic on, with deviantArt of course being the worst. i can only assume it’s because that website’s demographic (surrounding warriors comics anyway) is still like 13-16 year olds who don’t really know how to behave and don’t understand how ableist they’re being and it just kinda compounds when there’s a lot of them. i get a lot of comments about people not understanding why MoonClan cats would still follow her after she’s done some bad things and i also get a lot of people telling chalknose that he’s “not allowed” to mourn lumplog which idk kinda says a lot about them.

i tend not to say anything because i only check dA once a week, if that, and i don’t like being on there but i probably should be more active about corralling people, and i’m sorry. i have told people to watch their language when it gets to “psycho bitch” territory but it doesn’t really change much. sigh. i’ve considered disabling comments on deviantart but at this point the chapter only has a few more pages. i might go back and do it retroactively. i’m also considering just not uploading to dA anymore because the site itself is ass and i hate it. i love and appreciate my readers of course but yeah, the comments can get a little much.

people on tumblr and comicfury are much more thoughtful and nuanced with their comments and ppl on tapas hardly comment at all, if you still want to keep up on one of those sites rather than dA, but no hard feelings if you don’t, i totally get it.

[drdemonprince]

so I totally get that grad school is horrible and expensive and exploitative— but my question is what is the alternative? I have an undergrad degree in anthropology (focusing on language and disability, mostly in the US, in part to flip the script of exploitation and extractivism in anthropology) and have spent some of years outside of academia, which has also not been a great time for me. It also seems like in order to do anything anthropology related you need a PhD; I have also been in the process of applying for PhD programs. If we view grad school + academia as a job, which is all it fundamentally is (given you have funding; my plan is not to go anywhere that will not fund me), what makes this so specially horrible? Isn’t it a gift and a huge privilege to be able to, even if it’s not much money, spend time learning about things and teaching others? And what would you suggest people who are thinking about grad school do instead?

So, the thing is, very few people work in anthropology jobs.

There are very very very few anthropology jobs in the world.

The vast vast majority of people with anthropology degrees do not work in anthropology, including most of the people with Master's in the subject and many of the PhDs. Just like the majority of people with psychology degrees do not work in psychology, the majority of history-degree-havers don't work in history, and on and on.

This is part of what makes academia such a predatory and hierarchical scheme: academic departments require hundreds of new undergraduates to major in their subjects and take their classes each year, in order for them to generate enough revenue to hire instructors, fund research, and continue to operate. A very limited number of teaching staff and researchers are actually needed relative to the number of people who are taking these classes and getting these degrees -- and the number of tenured positions has been on a sharp decline since the 1980s and gets worse literally every year, so the odds of getting a career in one's chosen field of study only worsen over time as more people graduate.

Getting an advanced degree in anthropology is far from a guarantee that you will get a job working in anthropology. The job placement statistics for that field are pretty brutal. Some are worse (say, art history, or english), but it's still pretty bad. You'll likely have to apply to hundreds of jobs and be willing to move anywhere in the world that will have you if you want to ensure you get a job in that field after graduation from your PhD program.

Now, to your point, the only way to have a hope of getting to do the anthropological work you are interested in is by getting that PhD, for the most part. And if you are applying to funded PhD programs, you will get paid (very shittily) and incur no debt (a major plus) along the way.

I generally recommend that someone only consider going to graduate school if they are able to be fully funded in that way. My social psychology PhD was fully funded and that is what has made it possible for me to have the life I have today.

BUT

I was also terribly exploited and overworked along the way, causing me lasting trauma and physical illness and I would not ever do it again.

I'm one of the luckiest people i know, academically speaking -- I have no debt, an advanced degree, and a job in my field of study within academia. And I STILL wouldn't do that shit again. It was horrible for my mental health, social life, physical health, political awareness, and self-concept at every level. I succeeded in doing what academic study trains you to do -- become a professor -- only to realize along the way that I didn't actually want it anymore, it wasn't what i thought it was, and that it wasn't good for me.

And once you have that PhD in a highly specialized field, you generally have very few other career options should you decide that academia is not for you.

Looking at your own life and priorities, you might decide that the only way to get a *chance* of working in anthropology is by pursuing a PhD, and you love the field and long for that chance so strongly that it's worth throwing the dice (and getting some free schooling while you do so).

That's fine! That might be the rightest option for you.

I just want to make sure that you and everyone else knows exactly what a gamble they are taking when they make that decision -- and even more importantly, I wish that all undergraduates who pick majors like psychology, art history, anthropology, sociology, french, etc knew they were being used as a revenue source and studying a field they in all statistical likelihood will never get the chance to ever work in.

It's a pyramid scheme.

[telperinquaar]

Hi, you recently reblogged a post about how Nanowrimo is not disallowing or disavowing AI because doing so is classist and ablist and in your tags suggested that you consider this "yikes."

Honestly, it kind of hurt my feelings as a person with a disability who occasionally uses AI as a disability aid. Let me explain.

I use AI frequently for word recall. I have ADHD- a lot of people do. Many people with ADHD, including myself, struggle with word recall. It can be extremely bad, but how bad it is day to day is variable, and not all people with ADHD struggle with this to the same degree. When my word recall is really bad, NLP's (Natural Language Processors) are practically tailor-made to find that exact word I need. As an example, I used AI to remind me just now about the term "Natural Language Processor," which, along with the term "machine learning," is frankly just a better description than AI for these tools. But I will continue using the term AI for convenience.

The fact that people do not imagine this sort of use in conjunction with AI IS a form of ablism. They immediately assume all use is infringing. If they actually talked to people with disabilities (who do use AI), they would discover these other uses, and perhaps the conversation could be elevated to a more constructive state instead of trying to make everyone who uses a tool feel "yikes" for using it. Many of us are extremely conscientious and well informed of the issues involved.

Consider that if someone has said something is ablist (or classist or any other -ist,) they just might have a point and that you should try to discover what that point is before assuming that it's fake. Don't take everything at face value, but don't dismiss it out of hand either. Listen to people who have differing opinions and try to get the nuances of the conversation.

When people think about AI being used in conjunction with writing and visual art, they only consider the egregious uses - which makes sense, as that is how AI is advertised; as a magic technology that solves ALL problems. But those egregious uses are not the only use of these tools. AI does not have to be a magic wand that replaces the creative process of an artist. I have given one example of such a use above, but I could list many more.

If your "yikes" is in regard to the ecological impact - I hope that the overzealous implementation of AI into everything takes the ecological facts into account and that is ammealorated, but please do not throw people with disabilities under the bus while trying to make buses less polluting.

//The only use of AI in this post was to help me remember the word Natural Language Processor - I know my tone is pretty formal and sometimes comes across as AI, but it's not.

Jeezly fucking crow, dude. It was a single-word comment. I hope you sent this to literally everyone else who commented in a similar manner.

I use AI frequently for word recall. I have ADHD- a lot of people do. Many people with ADHD, including myself, struggle with word recall. It can be extremely bad, but how bad it is day to day is variable, and not all people with ADHD struggle with this to the same degree. When my word recall is really bad, NLP's (Natural Language Processors) are practically tailor-made to find that exact word I need. As an example, I used AI to remind me just now about the term "Natural Language Processor," which, along with the term "machine learning," is frankly just a better description than AI for these tools. But I will continue using the term AI for convenience.

I also have ADHD. I also struggle with word recall. You know what I do? I google things. I use dictionary and thesaurus websites. I use OneLook, which suggests associated words, similar words, and similar concepts.

Not everyone who uses AI is stealing from artists, no, but it's well known that AI does scan people's art--almost always without their consent--to generate pieces. It's also been seen around places like AO3, scraping fics from unlocked accounts.

Personally, I dislike the implication that disabled (or poor--that's what "classist" means here) people are incapable of writing without an AI generating something for them. I've written 100k+ words on AO3, and all of them are mine. I've talked to friends, I've written parallel fics, I've rewritten my own stories, but those words are mine. I wrote them. A disabled person. To imply that I need AI to do that pisses me off.

And believe it or not, my primary dislike of AI isn't ableist or classsist or whatever. (I'm not even against all forms of AI! I understand that in some fields, analyitical AI is quite helpful--I've read that it's great at finding breast cancer, for example.) My primary beef with AI, especially generative AI like ChatGPT is the fact that:

It will just lie to you. It will just make up things. There are people who have used it in court cases (it didn't work), and there are people using it to write books--everything from cookbooks to mushroom identification guides. (Guess what amateurs need expert help with when they're starting out? You know, so they don't die?) It's also happened with animal care guides. AI doesn't need to be used in a generative context at all.

There is also a massive environmental impact that I rarely, if ever, see talked about.

[bodyncoherence]

it seems to me that there are currently 4 main concept stories being told in parallel in psychiatry, and that a lot of the controversies within psychiatry (among psychiatrists and among the psychiatrised or potentially psychiatrised) are about contesting the boundaries of each. of course the claim is that everything is equally 'bio-psycho-social' but we know that is not really so. these 4 in my view being these:

1) 'biological illness' explanations for 'classic psychiatric illnesses' like schizophrenia, schizoaffective, bipolar disorder, as well as some kinds of severe, psychotic, 'innate', 'unipolar depressions. the idea here is that it is no one's fault, that perfectly well-adjusted people who had no adverse experiences whatsoever and have made no mistakes of living at all can develop these, though environment and certain choices can make it more likely, but environment then always is just the trigger, never the actual cause, the actual cause being genetics that just happened to be. lots of psychiatrists feel a special interest in these and a special claim to these. often, it is bemoaned that psychiatry has come to involve itself into myriad 'life problems' of the 'worried well' and should refocus itself on the actually sick, them being this group.

the necessity to fight an illness that will get worse the longer it remains 'untreated' (=unmedicated) is named to justify coerced medication and psychiatric violence, the idea being that the longer an episode (esp. first episode) remains unmedicated, the worse the 'outcome'. the treatment of these 'illnesses' is medication foremost, as well as other biological treatments like electroconvulsions and psychosurgery, as well as 'containment' of the person until these treatments show effect. anything else, no matter the good talk had on their importance, is fundamentally secondary. i.e. it would be good if every psychotic had psychotherapy and myriad other forms of help as well, but if the resources aren't there, well then. but it would be considered a litigable medical mistake to not give medication, forcefully if need be.

this type of coercion is actually not specific to psychiatry, in emergency or intensive medicine, people who are 'agitated' because of delirium, or are incapable of consenting because of unconsciousness, get full treatment, except if they gave prior healthcare directives (very common in my country) to the contrary. i.e. someone plucking at their i.v. lines and struggling against their bed while septic and delirious will get sedated or maybe even restrained or maybe even put into narcosis until i.e. their antibiotics took effect. psychiatry maps on to this, claims the same logic.

2) 'neurodevelopmental' / 'neurodivergence' explanations for autism, adhd, dyslexia, and sometimes other concepts i.e. 'psychopaths', increasingly ocd. the idea here is that some people's brains are 'wired differently' causing fundamentally different ways of experiencing the world. these disorders should therefore have been present since childhood (since birth in fact), which also explains why adult diagnosis necessitates 'childhood proofs'. the dopamine system is often cited here. also executive functions and their biological variants. here, too, it is 'nobody's fault', specifically not the parents. the disablement that results from these differences is often explained at least partially through societal explanations. ("back when hardly anyone read and wrote this disorder didn't exist" "if children and people didn't have to sit still and work at a desk for long stretches of times this wouldn't be such a problem" etc). evolutionary psych is also beloved here, as in the idea that being 'wired differently' thus confers both advantages and disadvantages for the individual as well as for our species. lip service is often paid here to neurodiversity advocacy, or that language is used, specifically for autism and adhd.

frequently i witness an attempt to have it both ways in term of pathologisation: these are real disorders, it is insisted, that in case of adhd at least, can be helped efficiently, thus 'stigma must be reduced'. but also, a lot of psychiatrists bemoan that 'everybody nowadays wants to have adhd or autism', bemoan the influx of people searching to professionally validate their self-diagnosis. the assumption here is that people labelled so or trying to claim these labels are not really sick, that back in the old days in fact nobody would have made such a fuss and neither should those afflicted. often the assumptions is that people who actually have problems of personality, or 'psychological problems' are seeking 'neurodivergence' as excuse, or because they fail to reflect on their actual problems. some psychiatrists will see adhd and autism everywhere and some will see it hardly anywhere.

in the meanwhile, the 'neurodevelopmentally born-wired different' group also includes intellectually disabled people and the kind of autists who are deemed mentally incapable of inhabiting a fully human social role and so are controlled, coerced, institutionalised, etc. unlike the 'psychiatric illness' group these are considered 'disabled' foremost, not to be cured and treated, but managed, (preferably by a non-psychiatry profession). of course, there's overlaps to the first group, i.e. 'neurodevelopmental' paradigm for schizophrenia and the management of schizophrenics that are 'chronic' and 'severe'.

3) 'trauma'. some disorders are defined through trauma, obviously PTSD, and some are historically strongly linked to trauma theory and research, i.e. DID or 'structural dissociation'. some psychiatric concepts frequently discussed in the context of trauma include borderline personality disorder and personality disorders generally, depression, 'addiction', but also actually psychosis and psychotic disorders.

the situation here, it seems to me, is that trauma hypotheses are always highly contested (see: the insistence that DID specifically is iatrogenic, a discourse that isn't had to this extent about other psychiatric diagnoses; the widespread upset over trauma being 'a fad'; the view that ptsd specifically is socially and historically constructed as more mainstream than extending this to all psychiatric categories; the way there's so much literature on trauma theories of psychosis but they have hardly any impact on how psychotics are treated in psychiatry currently) but they do have their fans.

these trauma-affine psychiatrists are more likely to see themselves as activists for the traumatised. they might protest certain psychiatric practices, insist that psychiatry should be more 'trauma informed'. they might question medication use. they will cast a wider net and understand many, but never all, psychiatrised troubles under the concept trauma. these psychiatrists for instance might be willing to understand psychosis and schizophrenia as structural dissociation or trauma based (though whether they actually work with people so psychiatrised that are actually 'difficult' is another question), and they will probably talk of the impact of trauma on depression, addiction, eating disorders, maybe also the disorganisation that gets labeled adhd, and so on.

but there's still trauma and non-trauma, and a lot of the literature then is about how to define the boundaries of trauma. there's DID and there's pseudo-DID. there's complex ptsd and there's 'merely' borderline pd which might or might not be trauma-based but is also kind of innate. lots of trauma fans are willing to imagine pathologised villains who hurt their traumatised patients (the narcissist, the psychopath, etc). psychosis can be trauma-based but certainly not always (?). lots of trauma fans also assume there's a kind of being mentally ill that puts someone beyond the scope of trauma therapy. there's also, as with autism & adhd & co, much bemoaning of the inflationary use of 'trauma' and a struggle with the cultural allure of trauma. the allure of course being that it's a professional and thus powerful validation that you have been harmed and wronged, a validation of injustice suffered.

as in psychiatry generally, there is much interest in biological validation. the idea is that trauma memories are neurobiologically 'different' from other memories. that trauma causes provable neurological disruption. cue beautiful fmri pictures of amygdalae and hipoccampi and bessel can der kolk's everything.

because trauma explanations are alluring but limited (not everything is trauma, not everyone is truly traumatised, or if we 'all' face trauma only some face severe trauma that affected them in ways that matter, some people are survivors-victims and others are not, it matters if you actually experienced certain things or didn't, trauma therapy for you but not you) the psychiatrised onlookers often develop a complicated, sometimes jealous, relationship to this concept, both those that have been granted or are able to personally access a 'trauma-explanation' and those that are being excluded from it.

4) 'psychology' / 'neurosis' / 'problems of living'. the idea here is that the mentally ill person is a primarily 'normal' person who developed a problem, because they struggled psychologically with the demands put on them, or with life.

often the idea is that a disorder starts with a few bad habits or bad decisions but then develops a dynamic of its own, eventually causing illness and disability. 'addiction', for instance. but also eating disorders that might start with mere 'dieting' and 'problematic beliefs' and then develop a dynamic of their own. anxiety and panic disorders that get 'reinforced' by 'avoidance'. personality disorders are also understood like this, though the problem is considered particularly insidious: not just some aspects of how you live, but fundamentally how you are as person. 'depression' here is seen as a human and natural reaction to certain circumstances that then gets entertained by social retreat, avoidance, unhelpful thoughts, etc. there's usually both psychodynamic and some behavioralist explanations for the underlying psychology, increasingly these ideas get somewhat combined anyhow. there's an interest for systemic and societal explanations. 'attachment' is also big here. in consequence, psychotherapy is seen as fundamentally important to treating these disorders. medication 'can help' and should be offered since it's 'readily available' while psychotherapy often isn't, but it's a fact that is bemoaned.

while acknowledging the overlaps, there's a desire to separate this group from the trauma group, in that adversity is not = trauma, or in that relatively 'normal' problems can cause much psychological disturbance as well, if a person fails to handle them well. trauma theorists specifically often on the one hand insist to not overlook trauma, on the other hand 'defend' trauma from 'inflationary use', and push back against the merely psychological problems/neurosis/problems of living group trying to 'overidentify' with trauma. the issue then is not 'trauma' but, say, entitlement, pride, avoidance, unrealistic expectations, failures to deal with normal life events, etc. sympathy is to be found for the factors that influence your troubles (societal expectations here, parental expectations there, inborn personality traits, etc) but you're no one's victim but your own.

all this not to imply that biological explanations are less beloved here; they are: evolutionary psych is big here as well, as well as physiological/biological explanations for what keeps happening, or what locks people in their 'bad habits'. (sympathic/parasympathic activation, dopamine again, etc). all schools of psychology are increasingly interested in connecting and validating their ideas with biological findings. ('neuropsychotherapy' 'the neuroscience of psychoanalysis', etc). there is also much interest for 'genetic vulnerabilities'. maybe some people are genetically more likely to become alcoholics. maybe some people are genetically more vulnerable to become anorexics, in fact, maybe only a specific type of person can become anorexic, and maybe anorexics once were important for species survival (evo psych again), but maybe also not.

but unlike 'neurodivergence' and unlike 'actual severe mental illness' the idea is that we are all vulnerable to this. not all of us are autistic, yes it's a spectrum bu either you have a brain like this or you don't. not all of us are bipolar, this is a serious serious mental illness. but anyone can get depressed, or anxious, or develop a drug habit of eating disorder, or grow to have a disordered personality.

therefore, while people labelled so can become extremely extremely disabled (i.e. a 'hypochondric' or an 'agoraphobic' that are near fully incapacitated by their troubles, i.e. anorexics or addicts dying) there are quite a lot of psychiatrists that will maintain these are troubles that are not 'genuinely' psychiatric; troubles that could be better solved by religion, or morality, or a psychologist maybe.

in terms of actual material effects on life, this is an extremely heterogenous group (as are all these groups btw), that includes lots of well-behaved, productive workers that are distressed as well as lots of extremely disabled, disruptive, troublesome people, therefore the divide made between the 'serious mentally ill' and the 'problems of living' can be confusing.

but even towards the most troublesome and disruptive, that is, the ones that have cops called on them, that are hospitalised in a flurry of violence, that must be managed and contained (i.e. some addicts, some anorexics, some borderlines, etc) the assumption remains that their problems are mainly 'problems of living' and resentment towards this group specifically that isn't 'genuinely sick' but mostly 'misbehaving' is common among psychiatrists.

i think all of us are at least vaguely aware of these differing stories and interact with them, or are briefly offered them, potentially all of them, at different times, by different psychiatrists, or by fellow psychiatrised and 'self-help'', and quite a lot of struggle can be found in grappling with these and the question of how to fit oneself and one's experiences into all this.

[laurasimonsdaughter]

Do you have any recommendations and ideas about writing around healing magic and disability?  How magical healthcare would affect disability, and more importantly allowing disability to still exist in a realm where supernatural healing exist? 

This is one of my biggest grips with healing magic across most fantasy media, that’s it’s often used in a lackluster, simplistic, and often accidentally ableist fashion. Completely invalidating disability by having it cure every ailment imaginable with just the wave of a wand. 

It's a complex concept to translate into fantasy! And a rather sensitive topic at that. As someone who suffers from chronic pain, the idea that it could be fixed with magic is sometimes a really nice fantasy. But a story with a character that lives with chronic pain the way I have to live with it, will probably resonate more strongly with me.

As to my personal opinion on writing about magical healing (and how it effects illness and disability), I think you have to weigh several factors as a writer:

What kind of world is this? In some fantasy settings death and illness are simply not relevant, so pain and disability might not feature either. But any world more resembling our own most likely would have to reckon with it. And if that world has healing magic:

Is it medical magic, based on research and knowledge? If so, it is highly unlikely that every single ailment and condition is perfectly understood and can be counteracted with magic.

Is it intentional magic, based on "restoring to health"? If so, who defines "health"? The caster of the magic, the recipient of the healing? I was born with overly flexible ligaments. They cause me pain, but I'm sure my body considers the way that they are the way that they should be. Even if I was given infinite magical energy to heal myself, my body probably wouldn't know how, while it would know how to use that energy to fix up a wound it was already working on.

Can the healing magic be used/accessed by anyone at any time? Even if there is a fantastic free magical health care system in place, unless every individual can do flawless healing magic, even on themselves, the answer is probably "no". And if so, that probably has consequences for how well something can be healed.

Personally, if you're writing in a world with loads of magical solutions, the best question to ask - after you have figured out what kind of healing magic you want - is: "what would my character want?"

Someone who has always worn glasses (like me), might feel very strange getting rid of them.

Someone who was born deaf, could have no desire whatsoever to becoming hearing.

Someone who was born with three fingers on one hand, could have no desire to change that.

And if we're getting grim: someone who lost an arm while defeating the chimera who killed their friend, might have strong emotional convictions as to why they wouldn't want that arm magically restored to them, even if it was possible.

There are plenty of reasons, either from a worldbuilding or a characterisation standpoint, for a fantasy world to include disability. And if it is not just a magical, but also a supernatural world, the concept of "disability" will likely be very different. When humans live among other species, who have entirely different bodies and abilities, it makes very little sense that the overall society's opinion on what is "normal" and "expected" from a body, wouldn't change.

But none of that means that you cannot give disabled characters cool magical solutions!

Wheelchairs could glide, hover, or fly instead of rolling.

Glasses could be enchanted to also give the wearer a different eye colour, just for fun.

Wrist braces could shift around the wearer's arm/hand depending on where they need the most support (and would never ever chafe or pinch).

Language barrier's between people who do not speak/hear the same (sign) language, could be solved with magic monocles, enchanted ear pieces, or a service creature that is able to translate perching on the person's shoulder.

Prosthetic limbs could be engraved with runes or inlaid with magical materials that make them extra effective for channeling magic or performing certain spells.

To me, those kinds of things would make a world far more fun and fantastical than a hand-waving "magic "fixes" everything."

[averysherwood]

Huntl0w isn't good and that's why

A general compilation of all the problems that do not allow me to treat Huntl0w at least neutrally:

1. Distortion of characters. Do you remember Hunter from the beginning of season 2? And that's it, he is no longer with you. Now he is not a soldier who has been training all his life, he is a cute awkward blushing boy who can't do anything without his boss girlfriend. And do you remember Willow, a kind soul who uses her powers only against enemies? Forget, she'll drive a new acquaintance into the ground and won't let him go. They are trying to forcibly fit them into the girlboss x malewife dynamic, and for this they have to change their characters.

2. Lack of chemistry. The same problem as Lumity: all romantic interactions are embarrassments and red cheeks. But if the girls had a Grom dance and more time together, then Huntl0w has nothing.

3. Willow's attitude. She treats him the same way she treats all her other friends right up to the moment when he saved her with the help of the power of the Flapjack. I'm sure the writers didn't do it on purpose, but it turned out that way - Willow fell in love with Hunter only after he stopped being magically disabled. Or in gratitude for the rescue. One is no better than the other.

4. Hunter's awkwardness. The guy has known her for the fourth year, three of which they are clearly together, but still confused as the first time. He's obviously uncomfortable with her. But who is he comfortable with? With Luz and Gus! It is with Luz that he shares secrets, she understands him like no one else. With Gus, Hunter found the best common language, common interests, and in general they are on the same wavelength. Willow and Hunter don't have either. They were able to prescribe normal interaction with everyone except the love interest, and it's so fucked up.

5. The uselessness for the plot. They don't bring anything, even the very parallel with Caleb and Evelyn is ignored. It feels like they got together just to "pair every character" (except for Gus, of course, Gus is our black best friend, he doesn't deserve our attention).

6. Willow is Hunter's authority figure. There is nothing wrong with the fact that a girl can be a leader in a relationship. But when a guy just starts separating from his uncle, whom he considered an authority all his life, and immediately falls in love with a girl who commands him... This is a very bad parallel. Hunter just changed his boss. TOH is not so deep to develop this topic, and it don’t have enough time, so this is definitely a minus for them.

7. Lack of development. Yes, the series was cut. And now you say that this justifies everything. And I will say that it only makes it worse. Already knowing that the series would be shortened, Dana and co pushed a new love line, which "developed" behind the scenes, did nothing for the plot, but spoiled the characters' characters (as if Amity alone was not enough for us).

8. Hunter is the second Caleb. Yes, Hunter's arc has come to the same place where it began. This applies to a lesser extent to Huntlow, it is rather a sin of the plot itself, but in total with the rest of the problems it becomes no less infuriating.

In conclusion, I can say that this ship is definitely not problematic, it's just bad. No one is forbidden to love them, but they should understend why people may not like Huntl0w.

Maybe I'll write the same thing with Lumity, but I'm not sure.

[five-thousand-loaves-of-bread]

uh hi. got some few followers because that LSN post. some points of housekeeping:

this blog rare contained little space where actually safe when wider autism & disability community very hostile to people like me. n whenever people follow me because of posts not about severe disability / level 2&3 HrSN nonverbal autism, some new people don’t know what going on & sometimes do stuff that make this space feel unsafe. you’re more than welcome to stay as long as you follow housekeeping & have general respect

1. not written by me but read this

& do search in blog for intellectual disability too

2. use stuff like autism levels & nonverbal & impairment & deficit language & severe autism & severe disability & visible autism here to describe self & have friends who also use them. while not use for self, also have friend who been called low functioning & also call themself that. you not have to like all that for yourself but don’t police what we call self don’t tell me “um actually this is ableist… but of course you call yourself whatever!” uh. we know. basically if you uncomfortable to even see these language my blog not for you.

eventually will have actual post about this instead of respond to someone rude who blocked me after this n so blocked back… but for now this will do (probably used to have one but too tired find right now)

3. 99% time post about above topic. n blog center people with those experiences & decenter LSN level 1 mild whatever language use. reflect on your experience n who you are n your privileges n your advantages bc we all have some yea even me

4. because do experience stuff post about they not just words… no empathy, can’t mask, have very bad theory of mind, often don’t understand other people exist not to mention have different thoughts feelings knowledge experience than me. am bitter a lot, mad a lot, angry a lot. think in extremes, n immediate write what think, immediate post what write. can be angry aggressive without realize n even if do realize, can’t really do anything about it. basically have level 2/3 autism have big communication struggle have big cognitive struggle & act like it

5. don’t tell me you relate to what am saying unless am know you. keep have problem of people think they experience same thing am talking about but actually turn out very different whole other world n am wish can be like them. sorry to people am not familiar with who genuinely understand n relate but please understand need this

6. am just one random nonverbal person with level 2/3 autism & higher support needs & severe disability online. human. so make mistakes. n have bad takes like anyone. don’t treat me as write universal truth never wrong

7. oh something important. no “going nonverbal” “nonverbal episode” “sometimes nonverbal” etc

should update all this on pinned

tone sound annoyed pissed off because kind of am… but not because of this so not at any of you all not personal

[cripplecharacters]

Hello!

I’m autistic and have been writing a story where one of the characters is also autistic and completely nonverbal. The story takes place in a magical setting where everyone has latent magic, and it is considered a part of life.

My question relates to how my character communicates. In the story, he uses illusions to communicate through images and colors to show how he’s feeling. Sometimes his magic grow big with strong emotions creating very realistic illusions that affect the world around him. But that is related to how magic is connected to emotions in this world, and is shown to happen to other characters with their magic.

My problem is if this would be considered a magical ‘cure’ for his disability.

In this setting, Magic is as integral as technology is in the real world. (As in it’s a part of life and integrated into laws and such.)

In the story he has problems communicating with people he doesn’t know, since they don’t understand the meaning of a certain color or image. I plan on making it work like AAC cards, but want to make sure the magic itself isn’t erasure.

Is there anything I should avoid or steer clear of in regards to this character? Or ways I can add more context to the disability community in the story?

Hello,

Actually, that's a good idea. It's realistic. In a non-magic world, this character would rely on nonverbal communication and small verbalizations, which work exactly how you intend to make this magic work- the people who know the character can speak his language, understand what certain things mean, use their experience with him to read what he's projecting and respond accordingly. But when people don't know what certain things mean, they can't understand what he's trying to convey or might only be able to understand a tiny piece, not the clearer picture people who know him can get. It's accurate, you're just using magical abstracts instead of body language.

Erasure would be if his magical illusions were an audio of what he means (which can sometimes be accurate via echolalia or mimicking someone, but it's complicated and not going to work nearly as well as people think it would,) or a projection of text that spells out what he's trying to get across. What you're doing isn't that. This is remarkably close to how this works in real life.

Mod Aaron

[pluralasking]

Answers to: Post #108 (System Rules)

[pt: Answers to: Post #108 (System Rules)]

Since these were not posted yet, sorry about that. I hope you enjoy, and that to some, this might be helpful. This is a very long post.

Note that some of these include potentially triggering subjects. Some of these topics include: alcohol, smoking / nikotin, drugs, intrusive thoughts (about inappropriate relationships / feelings), and slurs.

Please read carefully.

- 🌱 Avery

"If you choose to eat it, you must front during the gastrointestinal consequences."

"No birds in the house."

"Check the archive to see how much caffeine we've had today before consuming more caffeine."

"Don't get us arrested without unanimous consent of all frequent fronters."

"Decisions that affect our general wellbeing in major ways should be discussed as a group."

"No matter what skin color, mental disability or any other factor that gives you rights to a slur you should not say that slur if the body isn't allowed to say that."

"No using profanity or crude language outside of headspace but, avoid saying many curses in front of headmates under 14."

"Respect alters boundaries."

"If you are at front and a new alter shows up, please tell them what is going on and help them set up a profile on Plural kit & Simply Plural."

"Anyone our announcers and or gatekeepers have marked off limits , we aren’t allowed to talk to OR we have to be cautious around."

"As a system we have a very high justice system. Not In the way we have trials but in the way we have councilmen for every layer of the system. The rule is to always respect the rules of the overseer in that layer. Not in a dictator or whatever way , just like make sure to keep the place clean and shit."

"If you have a job in headspace you should always make sure it’s something that doesn’t require money (we don’t have such a thing in headspace). If you have a job related to that we just have trades or give stuff away for free."

"If you encounter anyone that’s not the main partner in our partner system , just be safe n ignore em unless they say hi"

"Always go to a higher up if you want a prnscc made or a card or an anything like that."

"Anarchy: no hierarchies, no one is "in charge", no one "owns" the body or life, collaborative, consenting, compassionate."

"Take care of the little."

"Respect our collective friends."

"Avoid damaging the body (e.g. no smoking)"

"Respect each other's beliefs, privacy, and wishes/boundaries. Don't try to disprove everyone you disagree with. Don't go trying to recall other people's memories, or try to watch when they want privacy."

"Maintaining the body + the singletsona are of utmost importance. Follow the pre-set routine as best as possible when involved in front."

"Don't be a dick. Especially do not be a dick to the short list of system friends; they are the trusted few and these relationships are to be preserved. Before engaging in public spaces make sure you know or can otherwise internally access the local etiquette. Do not damage or remove meatspace belongings. Respect closed doors within headspace."

"The external world does not have the same understanding that the internal one does- some things must be hidden for the continued peace and/or online safety of the system. (eg, Fakename1, bi lesbian, should not get involved with identity discourse. Fakename2, a fictive who was considered a grown adult in her source world but is a minor in this one, cannot interact with nsfw spaces/content and express her sexuality without claiming the body's age instead of her own.)"

"We made it a rule to not get apps or make purchases online without consulting others. This is in part to help make sure impulse purchases are less likely, as well as to help give some protection against viruses and such."

"We use Lighthouse, which allows each member to keep their own private journal. We made an agreement that we wouldn't look at anyone else's journal without their express permission, which we don't ask for unless we have to. This is primarily so we don't have to deal with individual passwords, but we've also carried this over onto other sites, such as chatrooms on Simply Plural, which are chats that are meant for us to have private conversations, and no one is allowed to look in a chatroom they aren't a part of unless invited in another channel."

"We decided that we would keep any and all in-system romantic relationships private. We've seen a lot of people being weird about them, and we didn't want to deal with that. We made this rule when two of our members decided to start dating. We've considered extending this rule to *any* in-sys relationship, as we've seen others being weird about even siblings who are siblings in-source, but at the moment it's just romantic relationships we keep private."

"Our main rule is no self-harm that could permanently damage the body, and no putting the body in situations you know are dangerous."

"As an adult system, we do allow our system members to drink, but the rules remind them that the body's tolerance is low. As drugs including weed are illegal where we live, it is against the system rules to have them, or smoke nicotine."

"Follow server rules is another one, which includes a subclause about persecutors not being an asshole to people we like to try to push them away."

"In our system we allow tattoos, piercings, and hair dye, but we ask that system members think about what would look nice on the body rather than just what they want. We kinda view the body as a dress up doll."

"Be kind and considerate to other members and to people outside the system unless necessary / it's to avoid harm to another or ourselves - this includes asking everyone involved with something that happened for permission for sharing details about said thing, especially ones that are more personal to them, not joking about, say, someone's source if they don't want it even mentioned, etc."

"if there are walk-ins asking to join the system (because our system works like that,) we need to make sure everyone consents to them being around, ESPECIALLY people who oppose them / the orgs they're a part of insource (ex: our hsr boothill fictive when considering IPC members, etc.) we can't exactly just disengage if we're uncomfortable, as our ability to hold our mental tongues / walk away from insys conversation is unreliable at best and just useless at worst, so we're extra careful with who we consider part of the system."

"no claiming to be Literally Part of X Culture when we're bodily not. members can, like, unclaim our bodily race / culture if they feel like it - most of us don't resonate with the body's ethnic experience, even if we do live it - but claiming to be say, black when we're actually 100% not black will never be on the table. this also means no joking about other people being X race, no making comments, etc."

"no purposely using slurs / derogatory terms towards other members or other people irl. if we know something is a slur and someone uses it as an insult knowing it's a slur, that's breaking this rule."

"no yelling or screaming / argue quietly and don't be mean about it, even if someone's being stupid. this one actually started as a way to tiptoe around trauma triggers (waves in trauma holder host) but then we realized that this has 100% helped our own conflict resolution skills and made it an actual thing."

"if someone brings up something they want to do and the brain pushes back, it's off the table 100% until further notice. we have autistic PDA so it's not like it's just a preference; we literally can't branch out that much."

"if two people are hanging out alone in front and are not partners, they must call another person to be a "buffer" the moment someone catches intrusive feelings for another, especially if they're siblings and/or if one is an adult and the other is a minor. i know!! this sounds extremely problematic! so some context: sometimes, our OCD will force members to get crushes on other members, especially if the one of them is being hyperfixated on, and it's always with people that cannot date without one or both going to jail. **it's not something we want**; it shows up and goes away at random and everyone involved hates it the entire time, but we have to deal with it anyway so that's why we have this rule. attempts to just. walk away from co-con for the time being and wait it out just don't work because they'll just teleport back, so we call up a buffer (90% of the time one of the people involveds' actual partner, because of course the brain chooses people in existing relationships too) to distract the brain with jangly headmate-shaped keychain."

"No one is allowed to touch alcohol or drugs."

"Do not intentionally do anything to harm self or others."

"Cursing is banned(with exceptions for words we are more comfortable with)."

"Any breaking of the rules will result in a temporary ban from fronting or certain areas of the inner world depending on where the rule breaking took place."

"All other major decisions must be put to a vote"

"Take the meds everyday"

"Respect the headmates' relationships"

"Respect the body"

"Reach out to our partner systems if needed or in danger"

[theoceanoasis]

Rodimus who often uses sign to communicate to his little brother bee who is mute and his own Carrier ( Optimus is Bee’s carrier ) Perceptor who is partially deaf.

He signs so often he forgets to talk and thats why Soundwave didn’t know Rodimus could talk

With the war going on their numbers had gotten worryingly low to the point Megatron and Optimus decided to end the war. If they didn't stop their species would go extinct.

With the peace treaty signed people were being encouraged to sign up for the matchmaker. It was a lot like human dating sights. Where you'd match people and if you were interested in them you'd start talking to them.

He'd just started the sign in process wanting to do his part. When he heard a group of Autobots and Decepticons near him talking loudly about the matchmaker.

They'd already signed up for it and were now swiping on different people. One of them had come across Rodimus and immediately showed the others making disparaging comments about him.

Since most injuries and sicknesses could be healed. People looked down on those who couldn't be healed. They were oftentimes seen as damaged and some people think they should die because they were considered useless.

It wasn't true at all and Rodimus was far from useless. But that didn't stop them from making noises of disgust.

"Imagine having to constantly sign for him."

"I know. It would be so annoying having to constantly deal with him all because he can't speak. It's so pathetic."

"I don't know why they're allowing him to sign up. Cyberton doesn't need anymore broken bots. Those with disabilities shouldn't be allowed to have sparklings."

His engine reved and he glared at the people who were talking about Rodimus. They all jumped out of their seats and quickly ran away in fear.

He vowed to punish them later as he finished signing in. Part of him had been hoping Rodimus would sign up for the matchmaker.

If he was going to mate with anyone he wanted it to be Rodimus. His resilience and bravery had always attracted his attention ever since they first met. When Rodimus had been forced to destroy his home. It had been tragic but Rodimus had inspired him to work harder in the hopes that no one had to suffer what he did.

Even though Rodimus had lost everything that day he never gave up and continued fighting for what he believed in.

He'd learn Cybertronian sign language just for Rodimus wanting to have conversations with him. Throughout the war he'd watched him in secret sometimes stopping Decepticons from offlining him.

Even though they were on different sides he respected Rodimus a lot and after he saved one of his cassetticons, he'd found himself falling in love with him.

Even though he knew sign language he never had the chance to speak with him. Sometimes because he was too nervous or other times because something else came up.

After scrolling through the matchmaker for a little while he found Rodimus account and sent him a message.

It wasn't long before he got a response and the two began talking all the time. Even though they knew who it was. Talking behind a screen felt so much easier and he was learning so much. Rodimus was so much more than he could have imagined and he found himself looking forward to seeing him in person.

They ended up meeting up at Maccadams and he was about to sign hello when Rodimus spoke. He stared at him in surprise and wondered if something was wrong with his audials when Rodimus spoke again.

"Are you okay?"

He nodded trying not to stare at him in shock.

"I didn't know you could speak "

Rodimus blushed when he realized what he was talking about.

"Oh... I'm so used to signing sometimes I forget to speak."

"You have a wonderful voice."

"Thanks."

Rodimus then gave him a confused look.

"If you thought I couldn't speak. Why did you agree to this date?"

This time it was his turn to look embarrassed as he sheepishly admitted to learning sign language so he could speak to him.

Rodimus looked at him in shock and looked about ready to cry. Panicking he tried to reassure him not sure what he was supposed to say.

"That is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. I can't believe you learned sign language because you thought I couldn't speak."

He shrugged feeling embarrassed.

"Well you're pretty special and I wanted to get to know you."

Rodimus beamed and the two of them went inside where they continued their date which was a big success. The two of them continued going on dates for a while until they were ready to make it official and it wasn't long before the two of them were bonded with a sparkling on the way.

[tangibletechnomancy]

Neural Nets, Walled Gardens, and Positive Vibes Only

the crystal spire at the center of the techno-utopian walled garden

Anyone who knows or even just follows me knows that as much as I love neural nets, I'm far from being a fan of AI as a corporate fad. Despite this, I am willing to use big-name fad-chasing tools...sometimes, particularly on a free basis. My reasons for this are twofold:

Many people don't realize this, but these tools are more expensive for the companies to operate than they earn from increased interest in the technology. Using many of these free tools can, in fact, be the opposite of "support" at this time. Corporate AI is dying, use it to kill it faster!

You can't give a full, educated critique of something's flaws and failings without engaging with it yourself, and I fully intend to rip Dall-E 3, or more accurately the companies behind it, a whole new asshole - so I want it to be a fair, nuanced, and most importantly personally informed new asshole.

Now, much has already been said about the biases inherent to current AI models. This isn't a problem exclusive to closed-source corporate models; any model is only as good as its dataset, and it turns out that people across the whole wide internet are...pretty biased. Most major models right now, trained primarily on the English-language internet, present a very western point of view - treating young conventionally attractive white people as a default at best, and presenting blatantly misinformative stereotypes at worst. While awareness of the issue can turn it into a valuable tool to study those biases and how they intertwine, the marketing and hype around AI combined with the popular idea that computers can't possibly be biased tends to make it so they're likely to perpetuate them instead.

This problem only gets magnified when introduced to my mortal enemy-

If I never see this FUCKING dog again it will be too soon-

Content filters.

Theoretically, content filters exist to prevent some of the worst-faith uses of AI - deepfakes, true plagiarism and forgery, sexual exploitation, and more. In practice, many of them block anything that can be remotely construed as potentially sexual, violent, or even negative in any way. Frequently banned subjects include artistic nudity or even partial nudity, fight scenes, anything even remotely adjacent to horror, and still more.

The problems with this expand fractally.

While the belief that AI is capable of supplanting all other art forms, let alone should do so, is...far less widespread among its users than the more reactionary subset of its critics seem to believe (and in fact arguably less common among AI users than non-users in the first place; see again: you cannot give a full, educated critique of something's failings without engaging with it yourself), it's not nonexistent - and the business majors who have rarely if ever engaged with other forms of art, who make up a good percentage of the executives of these companies, often do fall on that side, or at least claim to in order to make more sales (but let's keep the lid on that can of worms for now).

When this ties to existing online censorship issues, such as a billionaire manchild taking over Twitter to "help humanity" (read: boost US far-right voices and promote and/or redefine hate speech), or arcane algorithms on TikTok determining what to boost and deboost leading to proliferation of neologisms to soften and obfuscate "sensitive" subjects (of which "unalive" is frequently considered emblematic), including such horrible, traumatizing things as...the existence of fat people, disabled people, and queer people (where the censorship is claimed to be for their benefit, no less!), the potential impact is apparent: while the end goal is impossible, in part because AI is not, in fact, capable of supplanting all other forms of art, what we're seeing is yet another part of a continuing, ever more aggressive push for sanitizing what kinds of ideas people can express at all, with the law looking to only make it worse rather than better through bills such as KOSA (which you can sign a petition against here).

And just like the other forms of censorship before and alongside it, AI content filtering targets the most vulnerable in society far more readily than it targets those looking to harm them. The filters have no idea what makes something an expression of a marginalized identity vs. what makes it a derogatory statement against that group, or an attempt at creating superficially safe-for-work fetish art - so, they frequently err on the side of removing anything uncertain. Boys in skirts and dresses are frequently blocked, presumably because they're taken for fetish art. Results of prompts about sadness or loneliness are frequently blocked, presumably because they may promote self harm, somehow. In my (admittedly limited) experiment, attempts at generating dark-skinned characters were blocked more frequently than attempts at generating light-skinned ones, presumably because the filter decided that it was racist to [checks notes] ...acknowledge that a character has a different skin tone than the default white characters it wanted to give me. Facial and limb differences are often either erased from results, or blocked presumably on suspicion of "violent content".

But note that I say "presumably" - the error message doesn't say on what grounds the detected images are "unsafe". Users are left only to speculate on what grounds we're being warned.

But what makes censorship of AI generated work even more alarming, in the context of the executive belief that it can render all other art forms obsolete, is that other forms of censorship only target where a person can say such earth-shaking, controversial things as "I am disabled and I like existing" or "I am happy being queer" or "mental health is important" or "I survived a violent crime" - you can be prevented from posting it on TikTok, but not from saying it to a friend next to you, let alone your therapist. AI content filtering, on the other hand, aims to prevent you from expressing it at all.

This becomes particularly alarming when you recall one of the most valuable use cases for AI generation: enabling disabled people to express themselves more clearly, or in new forms. Most people can find other workarounds in the form of more conventional, manual modes of expression, sure, but no amount of desperation can reverse hand paralysis that prevents a person from holding a pen, nor a traumatic brain injury or mental disability that blocks them from speaking or writing in a way that's easy to understand. And who is one of the most frequently censored groups? Disabled people.

So, my question to Bing and OpenAI is this: in what FUCKING universe is banning me from expressing my very existence "protecting" me?

Bad dog! Stop breaking my shit and get the FUCK out of my way!

Generated as a gift for a friend who was even more frustrated with that FUCKING dog than I was

All images - except the FUCKING dog - generated with Dall-E 3 via Bing Image Creator, under the Code of Ethics of Are We Art Yet?