#or tag them as “body horror” or “gore” or think disabled people need to trigger warning their Fucking Bodies

[medicasino]

where's that post that's like "if you fawn over fictional characters with scars but treat irl people with visible disabilities and/or facial differences like shit or think theyre creepy you suck" because i want to reblog that a MILLION times.

[schizoidcurly]

Best way to approach the topic of the Captain’s disability? Also what’s ur opinion on the “post-game” art of the captain?

hi!! thank you for this question.. please keep in mind while i am (higher support needs, unable to be independent) disabled myself and i frequent disabled spaces, i am NOT a burn survivor nor do i speak for people who are! i would love to hear input from anyone who is, and corrections! but here are my thoughts on these things :]

abled people can reblog and such but please do not add anything. please kindly correct me if i am wrong on anything here and i'll add it.

the best ways to approach the topic of the captain's disability

one thing i see many people with facial differences like burns and such say is to not refer to burns as a "facial disfigurement", if you must refer to it, i've seen it said that "facial difference" is much preferred opposed to disfigurement. while this opinion is just that, an opinion, tread lightly here and use what you think it appropriate, but alwaysalwaysalways stay away from referring to curly's body as "deformed". i recommend checking out face equality international and the pheonix society for burn survivors.

on that note, pleasepleaseplease do not use curly's appearance post-crash as shock value or refer to it as "body horror". if it's newly burnt curly, i believe tagging him as gore or injury would be accurate as he hasn't been administered any real medical aid aside from painkillers and still very much is injured, but not body horror, and do not use gore or injury trigger tags for a rehabilitated curly; he is no longer injured in that case. this is a person. not an eldritch horror, not a monster, a disabled person. listen to disabled people about this, especially burn survivors.

don't say that curly's disability is his "karma", punishment, consequence, etc, or use the common "theory" that he is a metaphor for anya's unborn child. curly is not a child. disability is not a punishment. curly is a vulnerable, disabled, adult man. treat him as such. ableism & disability is as much of a theme in mouthwashing as rape culture & abuse is. curly does not stop being a flawed human adult man because he is disabled.

and, please do not debate whether it would have been best to kill curly, or say one of jimmy's crimes was "keeping curly alive" in his burnt state. while curly's injuries are absolutely to some extent exaggerated, and injuries like that would be much different in real life, curly as he is presented in the media is alive, conscious, and aware. he is not actively dying, based on the fact he can be kept alive (albeit with significant pain) without much effort in an area without any actual medical aid besides what anya can do for him. these discussions easily segue into eugenics, especially if you are an abled person.

generally, just approach his disability with the fact in mind that he is still living, conscious, thinking, and a person. do not allow yourself to dehumanize him or infantilize him on the basis of his disability, or act as if curly is "dead". curly is still alive, he was not lost in the crash, he is just disabled now. in game he has proven that he is still very much aware, very much alive. do not ignore this.

ALSO. a fandom thing, but PLEASE. PLEASE. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. DO NOT USE HIS DISABILITY/CONDITION FOR ""WHUMP"". PLEASE. PLEASE. PLEASE. and please also just as much do not use them as a gag or joke or for the punchline of one.

my opinion on "post-game captain curly"/rehabilitated captain curly

i see absolutely no harm in it! real people are burnt and then treated and rehabilitated. so long as it's not a way to attempt to erase his disability, i see nothing wrong with it. a disability is not a death penalty, even extreme burns! burn survivors are still people who can live happy lives after their burns.

however, do your research when writing/drawing about rehabilitated curly! look into how to draw and write burn scars, facial differences, how healed burns may affect people later on, the treatments done for people with extreme burns like curly's, etc. especially look into info written by burn survivors (but please don't go around asking random burn survivors these things)! when drawing, reference real people, look up pictures and look at them! do lots of research, ask lots of (respectful) questions when it's appropriate.

some things to avoid: the mask trope, there isn't a real reason to cover up his burn scars, and especially not just to use it as a shocking moment later. avoid needlessly mentioning a recovered curly's disabilities and burns, or using it as a point of pity/sympathy.

some things i recommend you look at: face equality international's 'international media standard on disfigurement', cripplecharacter's tips on writing/drawing a character with facial differences/disfigurement, niki averton's tips for writing about burn survivors, saszor's guide to drawing burns, an interview with zaid who is a burn survivor by SBSK

[sobriquett]

Dear Yuletide Author 2023,

Dear Yuletide Author,

What a wonderful time of year! Thank you for thinking about writing for me, I hope this letter is useful to you. Up here, you’ll find a bunch of stuff about general loves, likes and DNWs, both generally and for certain mini-challenges. Further down, there’s fandom-specific information and a handful of prompts for each fandom.

I am Sobriquett in pretty much all fandom spaces I use (here, AO3, Dreamwidth, Discord, etc.), so at least that should be easy to remember!

Please use as much or as little of this letter as you like. As a writer, I like to have all the information and so I want to make sure my writer has everything they might need, but the intention is absolutely not to overwhelm you with minutiae or to restrict you to these prompts. If you only get 5% in but the Lightbulb of Inspiration is flashing in your mind, then go for it! I hope you have a blast.

Treats are enabled and very welcome, including drabbles – I have high hopes of writing a few of my own. I am also open to IF or poetry.

You can also poke me if you’re looking for a beta reader in this fandom or any other fandom I’ve requested before. I will sign up in relevant places as I see them, or use the ask box or email sobriquett at outlook dot com.

If you still want more information, please look through previous letters using the tags at the bottom of this post. (I've requested everything except Boston Legal before.)

I don’t have any major triggers – I’d just avoid or Alt+F4 any of my DNWs, I wouldn’t be harmed by them –  so you’re probably safe with most darker ideas, even if I haven’t explicitly opted in. However, because I do love darkfic but we’re generally a thoughtful community, by all means ask through the mods if you have an idea but it’s on the edge of the commonly acceptable and you’re not certain. Also, anything canon-typical/canonical/canon-appropriate will almost certainly get a thumbs up, except my DNWs.

Also, please don’t feel obliged to be unrelentingly positive about any or all of these characters. I am happy to read you poke at their hypocrisies, selfishness, resentments, poor decisions or unkind thoughts as appropriate. Characters don’t have to be perfect, even our favourites; people certainly aren’t.

(I spend a lot of time in disability advocacy spaces and, as the person I'm usually caring for will say, "disabled people can be arseholes too". It turns out I really want to read nuanced, imperfect disabled/neurodivergent characters being arseholes with agency who are occasionally called out by the people who know and love them; who knew? Three of my requested fandoms contain canonically disabled/neurodivergent/otherwise physically or mentally impaired characters, and I am 100% on board if you want to headcanon something for the women of The Godfather too.)

DNWs for All Fandoms and Challenges

Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics | Anyone being called “Daddy” in a sexual context | Bestiality | Body Horror | Gore | Medical Experimentation | Mpreg | Mutilation | Non-Canonical Amputation | Sadism | Scat | Torture | Vore

(Note: Nobu has canonically lost an arm and Rochester has lost a hand and I would love fic to explore or consider that – it’s more that I don’t want characters losing limbs “on-page”, so to speak.)

General Likes and Loves

5+1 Times | Alternate Endings | Angst | Backstory | Banter/Bickering | Bittersweet | Canon Compliant | Canon Divergence | Character Death | Character Death Aftermath | Character Study | Class Differences | Coming of Age | Competence | Complicated Sibling Relationships | Cultural Differences | Dark Fic | Debt & Financial Pressures | Despair | Disabled Characters | Domesticity | Different Worldviews | Enemies to Friends/Lovers | Epistolary | Examining Societal Issues | First Meetings | First Time | Fix-It | Fluff | Found Family | Friends/Lovers to Enemies | Grief/Mourning | Grumpy Character/Sunshine Character | Historical Details | Humour | Hurt/Comfort | Last Time | Laws of Magic | Living Up/Down to Expectations | Long-Distance Friendship | Marriage of Convenience | Miscommunication | Missing Moment | Obeying Canonical Boundaries (Social/Cultural/Moral) | Outsider POV | Parent/Child Relationships | Pining | Platonic Intimacy | Politics & Intrigue | Poor Life Choices | Post-Canon | Pre-Canon | Pregnancy & Babies | Presumed Dead | Protectiveness | Redemption | Religious Elements | Reunions | Romance | Sad Endings | Secret Relationships | Uneven Power Dynamics | Unexpected/Unlikely Friendship | Unreliable Narrators | Whump | Worldbuilding

Crueltide Likes

Apocalypse | Betrayal | Character Death | Character Death Aftermath | Claustrophobia | Conspiracy | Debt & Financial Pressures | Degradation | Disease | Dubious Consent | Dystopia | Fire | Forced Marriage | Gaslighting | Hauntings | Humiliation | Hypothermia | Infertility | Miscarriage/Pregnancy Loss | Murder | Paranoia | Poisoning | Prison | PTSD | Shame | Suicide | Terminal Illness | Unhappy Endings

Yuleporn Likes

Biting/Marking | Bondage | Canon Compliant/Historically Appropriate (esp. period fandoms) | Desperate Sex | Dirty Talk | Dubcon | Edging/Orgasm Delay | Fingering | First Times | Fisting | Foreplay | Hair Pulling/Touching/Playing | Last Times | Loss of virginity (either/both/all partners) | Oral (any/all combinations/intensities/setups) | Porn with Feelings | Power Imbalance (Physical or Social/Financial/Other) | Restraint/Held Down | Rough Sex | Semi-Public Sex | Sensual Details | Vanilla Sex

Honestly, I am up for near anything that feels like it fits into the canon context, would be in-character(-ish) and isn’t on my DNW list. Bonus points for anything I haven’t thought of that is really contextually appropriate!

-----

Fandoms in alphabetical order to avoid the impression of favouritism!

1. Boston Legal

Requested characters: Any Tag set characters: Alan Shore | Denny Crane | Jerry Espenson | Katie Lloyd

I watched this series for the first time this year and I really enjoyed it. There are certainly elements that haven’t aged well, and some things that are unfortunately still far too relevant, but I was so delighted by it overall. This is a first-time request this year, so this section is a little thinner and my thoughts a little more disorganised than for other fandoms!

I am interested in any or all four of these characters, and in any combination of & relationship between them, or perhaps Jerry/Katie, and but let's talk a little more about Alan~/~Denny:

Alan and Denny’s relationship was remarkable. I am 100% here for that queerplatonic dynamic – the sleepovers, the platonic intimacy, the complete joy of their friendship and their reliance but not dependence upon one another (although of course that dynamic may shift as Denny’s illness progresses). They have so many differences and yet such consistent and open love for one another. And then they get married, and it makes sense. Oh, my heart.

I would love to see more of this relationship, either during canon or post-canon. (I haven't seen The Practice, so references there will go over my head, but pre-canon is cool too!) They’re both so aggressively, offensively heterosexual that I think it would be a tough sell for me to believe in a sexual relationship here, but an incredibly intimate friendship with occasional romantic overtones where they are unambiguously the most important person in each other’s lives? Yes please. We should all be so lucky. Dysfunction also welcome.

I’m not sure Jerry’s character is 100% okay by today’s standards, but I related to so many of his quirks and tics and I rooted for him right from his first appearance. I felt a physical pang when Alan was deliberately cruel to Jerry to knock him off-balance when they were on opposing sides and I’m glad it wasn’t immediately dismissed. Equally, I was delighted when Katie stood up to Jerry when he was “using” his issues to avoid his problems or to play the victim when things were within his abilities to address.

Katie is also interesting to me. What is a young British woman doing in an American law firm? What effect does her Britishness have on her life and career in Boston? Does she have any darker shades to her personality?

I am a little short of prompts here and will try to add more if I think of them. Hopefully the likes/loves above will provide some inspiration if the below doesn't, or you already have an idea of your own! I just want a little bit more of these characters; that would be lovely.

Prompts:

How did Katie find herself in Boston, or at an American law school before that?

Post-canon:

How do these characters and their relationships develop?

Does Alan get to open his legal clinic? Do Jerry and Katie work for him?

How does Denny get on? Does he continue to work, maintain his streak?

Do Alan or Denny have any other intimate relationships outside their marriage? Is the other jealous?

How does Jerry get on after the changes at Crane, Poole & Schmidt? Does he find a new firm? Does he land on his feet? Does he keep working with Katie? Does their relationship work, despite their differences?

2. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë

Requested characters: Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre is an unreliable narrator.

This is one of my favourite novels ever, but I read a new story each time I read (or rewatch – Ruth Wilson 2006 version, yes) it. I had a different experience of it as a child, teenager, young adult, and so on – and with time, I’ve come to see Rochester as more of a villain, and then also as a victim of circumstances and a product of his environment, and to increasingly believe that Jane Eyre lies to us. She’s also every bit as prejudiced and superior as those she criticises, but/because she’s also a product of her world. But I still love her, and love that she says she got a happy ending. But that doesn’t mean it has to stay happy, or even that she was telling the truth.

This is a fandom where I particularly enjoy a darker edge, and a playful approach to the text on the author’s part. The novel is a first person autobiography. Have fun with that! Jane Eyre is an unreliable narrator. The novel is her autobiography and I don’t believe that the story she told is necessarily the story that “happened”. What did she conceal? What did she tweak? What did she exaggerate or minimise? Is she trying to tell a moral story, and if so for whom? Does her faith endure and guide her quite as steadfastly, perfectly and purely as she says? I adore fics that play with this idea.

Although my only requested character is Jane herself, I am also happy with Outsider POV stories that are very much about Jane.

Prompts:

Post-canon happiness?

Post-canon unhappiness?

Canon divergence at any point.

A missing moment from the engagement - an evening spent together, a walk, a trip out. Tension, anticipation, uneasiness, a sense that all’s not quite right that can’t be entirely set aside. Rochester trying to claim more affection than Jane is yet willing to give, with either a playful or darker edge.

A missing moment between the interrupted wedding and Jane fleeing Thornfield? What if they do have a night of madness before Jane flees Thornfield, where just for a moment she gives in? Or is coerced? (Dubcon over complete non-con please? Also: gloriously awful or happy consequences welcome.)

How does Rochester discover Jane’s missing? How does Adele find out? Mrs Fairfax? How do they all react? What is that day like? (Jane’s absence would almost be the character in this case. She doesn’t have to appear, she’s still the focus.)

Jane, Mrs Fairfax and Adele are all dependents. Thornfield Hall might be where they live but it’s not their home, and there’s an inherent precariousness to their position that might be worth exploring – or what it’s worth when they finally do have a home that’s theirs, and they feel it.

Does Jane ever meet her Reed cousins again after Mrs Reed’s death? What would they think of her changed circumstances? Does Jane become – or put on the airs of – a great lady, and put them in their place? Or does she forgive, warmly, and try to cultivate relationships because she remembers what it was like to be alone, as her cousins may have become?

Do Jane and Mrs Fairfax meet again in the future? At Thornfield, they were the closest thing to peers as they were both ladies but dependents, but there was a huge gulf between them in terms of age, experience and outlook. How does their relationship change?

If Jane and Rochester have children, what does that do to Adele’s place in the family? Is she beloved sister or unwanted burden? (I can’t see Jane considering her a burden but I could perhaps see Jane being torn in too many directions and having no time left for Adele, leaving her bereft.)

What if Adele’s mother returned to collect her, or for some other (nefarious) purpose?

Rochester dies in the fire. What happens then?

Jane goes with St. John as a missionary and it doesn’t start/go/end well.

What if the first wedding isn’t interrupted? Rochester’s a bigamist and Jane a fallen woman when it comes out. (I have started writing this but not finished it.)

Jane tries to put Adele back together, after she’s traumatised by the sudden loss of her home, the dismissal of her nurse Sophie, the loss of Jane, the wrath/rage of Rochester, her cruel treatment at school, etc.

Does Jane come to see Rochester as a villain? Does she find herself corrupted, tarnished or lessened in his eyes in some way when he comes to marry/possess her and the sharper, darker side of his character turns on her once she’s off her pedestal?

Does Jane resent being Rochester’s carer, his eyes and hands?

Jane is not in the habit of receiving gifts, and still isn’t used to it. But she has grown to enjoy giving them to those she loves and cares for.

News articles of the aborted wedding, Thornfield fire and subsequent events?

Does Adele correspond with Jane or Rochester from her school? Either miserably from the school Rochester sends her to, or more happily from Jane’s choice? How does Adele find school, either the one Rochester sends her to, or the one Jane moves her to? How does this compare to Jane’

Is Rochester more of a villain? How?

How does their wedding night go? How do Rochester’s blindness and injury affect this side of their relationship?

An in-character moment of passion, with badinage and fairy talk.

There are no fics about Jane Eyre and her former teacher, Maria Temple. Do they keep in touch through Jane’s adult life, or get in touch or meet again in the future? What does the former Miss Temple (I can’t at this moment remember her married name but it is given in the novel) think of how Jane’s life turns out, her choice of husband, his story? Does she offer Jane counsel? What if Jane goes to her instead of to the Rivers when she flees Thornfield? Would the story go differently?

Jane dies on the moors.

Does Jane resent being Rochester’s carer, his eyes and hands?

Is Rochester “really” as injured as Jane writes in her autobiography? Did she provide some sort of divine/literary punishment for his sins? Or what really happened instead, did he get a comeuppance?

3. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

Requested characters: Nitta Sayuri, Nobu Toshikazu

Nobu/Sayuri is my rarest rare pair, although I have been lucky enough to receive fic before.

I enormously prefer the novel to the movie, mostly because there’s so much more Nobu. He’s my favourite character, for the gap between how he’s perceived and how he is. He inspires such loyalty and friendship in those who know and value him – Mameha, the Chairman, Sayuri - and yet more shallow characters (Hatsumomo) can’t stand him based only on his looks (and grumpiness). In many ways, the Chairman is the more ghost-like character in the novel, floating in the background as Sayuri develops a deep and genuine friendship with Nobu despite their differences. Her entire fantasy of the Chairman is based on a five-minute encounter and a hanky and then she essentially doesn’t speak to him for a decade, and I wish she’d made a different choice. Nobu would have been an active choice, rather than continuing down the path she set as a child without consideration for how she’s changed as she’s grown up and seen more of the world. I understand Sayuri’s heartbreak knowing that having Nobu as her danna would preclude any possibility of such a relationship with the Chairman, but it would open up a world of other possibilities, and to kindness from a different source, as well as a more even relationship. Neither Nobu nor Sayuri know much kindness in their lives, and I really enjoy their repartee. It’s one of the few times Sayuri seems to have fun.

Nobu is missing an arm and disfigured by burning; there’s no need to romanticise or sanitise these parts of his character, but I am curious about their effects on any long-term or physical relationship with Sayuri (either practically or just in his head).

Prompts:

What if Sayuri chose Nobu instead, and accepted him as her danna before the war?

What if she accepted him after the war?

Sayuri appreciating Nobu, with optional romantic edge

How does Nobu feel when he realises what Sayuri’s done? What does he know, what is he told, does he try to find out more? Is his respect once lost gone forever?

Sayuri could be the Chairman’s but he could never be hers – he already had a wife – but Nobu would have been hers. Would she want this? What would Sayuri want, given the opportunity?

Nobu and Sayuri being affectionate to one another, even gruffly and distractedly.

How would an evening with Sayuri, Nobu and the Chairman unfold? With or without Mameha to guide Sayuri’s choices to their advantage?

Exploring the differences between the pair – in power (financial, sexual, influence), personal freedom, status, ability to make their own decisions, the rules they play by.

What do they have in common? They are both survivors, at the top of but on the outside of their respective worlds. (Teahouses, factories, okiyas, battlefields.)

Sayuri and Nobu have an en. How else does this manifest?          

Do Nobu and Sayuri ever meet again, in the future? Are things frosty, all bridges burned?

What if Pumpkin does bring Nobu instead of the Chairman?

4. The Godfather - Mario Puzo

Requested characters: Any Tag set characters: Apollonia Vitelli Corleone | Carmela Corleone | Kay Adams Corleone | Lucy Mancini

I reread this over the summer. (Well, more specifically, Audible finished one book and rolled straight into playing this one and I went with it.) As always, I want more of the women. The author (probably the author, but definitely the authorial voice) is wildly misogynistic, where all women are essentially defined in terms of their fuckability and/or relationships with men (specific and general), and very few women are ever really the POV character. Kay is occasionally, and possibly Lucy, but that’s it. But they are all defined by their (sexual) relationships with the Corleone men – wives, lovers, mothers. I want more of the women as women. That can include the men, but no woman is defined entirely by her relationship with a man.

Apollonia says one word in the novel: “Grazie.” Who is she? Give her some flesh, a spark, to be more than just a pretty shell. What does she want? What moves and motivates her? How would she have fit in with the New York family if she’d lived?

Mama Corleone is much the same, she turns up for a moment here and there to (magnificently) berate one of her sons or to feed somebody, but she also feels like a thread of steel in the lives of those around her, holding them up, but it’s unspoken. I love her Catholicism and how it both sustains her and supports her family, and how she converts Kay, and they go together to pray for the souls of their husbands. The ending of the novel is divine.

Kay is an outsider to the world for more than just having girl parts, and I’m curious how that changes her experience, and particularly how she relates to her mother-in-law (and sister-in-law) through cultural and generational differences.

Lucy’s character arc is literally defined by her vagina and she willingly and semi-knowingly lets herself continue to be used by the family through the hotels, but there is more to her than that. Like what? How does she balance what she wants to know, what she guesses, what she thinks, what she absolutely and definitely knows? Is Sonny a lingering ghost through her life?

I don’t really know what I want, just more of the women.

Prompts:

Apollonia and the American dream: what does she actually want? Is Michael a way to get it? (Children, comfort, fortune, adventure, love, other?)

Does Apollonia love Michael? Does it matter? Was her courtship/marriage a pleasant or a horrible experience? What did she think her future would look like?

What does Kay want? What does she think their future will look like?

The same questions for Kay as Apollonia, possibly different answers. Compare the women, be thoughtful or go dark.

I’m always intrigued by Kay’s Catholicism, especially in the book. The movie’s ending happens too, but then Kay goes to church with Mama Corleone and prays for Michael’s soul.

Michael’s grief at losing both women in his life, in very different ways. (Does he acknowledge them as women and individuals, or only as wives/lovers?)

A missing happy moment for any of these characters or either couple.

A contrast between weddings – Connie’s, Apollonia’s, Kay’s, others.

What if Apollonia had lived, and met Kay?

What if Apollonia lives?

I feel like Kay makes a “better” American wife for Michael, in the world he wants to move in. Would the path have unfolded differently with a different woman at his side?

Does the ghost of Apollonia haunt Michael at later points in his life?

How does Carmela respond to the milestones in her husband’s life? The shooting of Don Fanucci, having Clemenza and Tessio in her home, the Don’s first shooting, the rise in their fortunes, that magnificent carpet?

What if Apollonia had lived, and they’d returned to New York, and she’d lived in the compound? What place would she find in that family, in that life, in that country? What would Mama Corleone have thought of her new daughter-in-law? Would this have impacted Michael, how would he show it? Could Apollonia be happy? Or a very mixed bag?

[hmm-dont-know-really]

This blog is 18+, minors please block & dni

Rules:

No minors, no exceptions.

This is a nsfw blog and I'm bad at tagging, if you need your dash to be totally sfw or have triggers that need to be tagged absolutely every time, just don't follow. Interacting is still fine.

I block people based on their behavior, not their identifiers.

Asks and dms are open. Dms slightly preferred because I usually have clairifying questions. Its fine to just message me, I don't care if we've been interacting or not.

Info:

It's complicaited but I'm a cis bi woman for statistical purposes.

I'm almost 30, not looking for anything more than being friends if you're a lot younger than me.

I've got quite a bit of experience with kink & femdom (F/m), and I'm always happy to answer educational questions about those things, but I'm really here to talk to other queer people, not cis men.

I don't hate men tho, and this is not a "men dni" blog, if that bothers you feel free to block me.

Related to that, to me the point of femdom is systematic gender fuckery and destruction of the binary - in the context of my cis "het" relationships at least, might be down for selectively reinforcing the binary in gender affirming ways. If the kink we're doing doesn't ritually eviscerate at least one oppressive social structure, I don't want it.

If you want me to be talking about you when I talk about boys, then yes I'm talking about you; "boy" is a vibe to me, its not about gender or parts.

I'm autistic and I don't understand what a lot of wlw words mean, not enough to really use them. Anyone who wants to help me understand is welcome to my dms and a reward of their choice, everyone else can shut up and think about the pervasive ableism in the queer community before judging.

Generally when it comes to sex I'm into sub guys, sad wet pathetic little men, pretty boys (all boys are pretty), masc nonbinary and genderfucky people, and sometimes women if there's a power dynamic (usually a slightly toxic one), if they could defeat me, or if we're performing intricate rituals. Also I fall for other autistic girls hard and easily in a QPR way.

Look, I am a dom/top type person, but I am also shy as fuck, and I don't like persuing people when its not super clear they're into it. If you want me to give you horny attention, you gotta give some kind of consent. Posts addressed to the void or doms in general don't count.

I don't think I'm all that edgy in the grand scheme of things, but I've been around long enough to know that the distinction between "gentle" and "hard" kinks is purity culture crap. If you're still on that shit you're not gonna have a good time here.

A few things I can promise won't be here: excessive gore, (what I consider to be) body horror, needles, death, race play, disability fetishism, scat and vomit, and most "family" stuff (I allow the occasional title if its not the main focus of the post).

Things that probably will be here: femdom, queer and "straight" seeming stuff mixed together, fat positivity, hornyposting, some serious/political stuff, discussions about kink, horny fanfic, pretty kink toys and gear, autism posting, memes, etc.

[sea-salted-wolverine]

Trigger warnings are all well and good and they serve their purpose. However I'm about to take some of them away and put them up on a high shelf Because if you overuse them on every little thing that upsets you, they lose their function.

A brief overview

Do not tag disabled people as body horror

Do not tag flashing lights as epilepsy

Do not tag every instance of raw meat as Gore

Adding TW, CW, trigger, content warning, in front of everything makes the tags less useful.

Stop adding slashes and substitutions. Stop purposefully misspelling things.

Content warnings and trigger warnings are not a moral judgment. no one is going to think you are more pure and a better person because you cast judgment on the unpure content. They are a tool offered to others to protect themselves. Slapping them on everything decreases their utility and takes the resource away from those who may need it.

Now, go back though that list and append "you utter shithead/ fucking moron/ and for fucks sake" to every entry, because I'm out of patience.

@ the fucker who complained about "animal gore" on a recipe for fish tacos

[rjalker]

How to use tags to let people filter things

There are two ways of letting people filter stuff on Tumblr as of October 31st 2022.

In your account settings, you have the option to filter tags (the most common filter), and filter stuff in the body of the post itself (like URLs)

Here's an example of what that looks like when you're making an new post.

[ID: A screenshot of a tumblr post in the post editor. The post itself reads, "This is the body of the post for this example". The tags read, "add tags, These are the tags of the post for this example, Trigger warnings or other tags for filtering should go here, Examples:, eye strain, flashing, blood, ect.". End ID.]

If you're posting art that has super bright neon colors, and you want people to be able to avoid seeing it, you should add "eyestrain" (or eye-strain or eye strain, or all three for safety) as a tag, rather than just saying "eye strain warning" in the post itself.

Putting "eye strain warning" in the post itself can work if the image in question is under a read-more, so people will only see if it they click the read more, but that's really the only time saying putting the warning in the post itself will help.

Tags on tumblr not only let people find posts (if you tag your post as feminism, people looking for posts about feminism will be able to find it), but also lets them filter it. (if you tag your post as misogyny, and someone doesn't want to see any discussion of misogyny, they can filter that tag and avoid your post)

If you think your post should have warnings of any kind, like blood, gore, injury, eye-strain, flashing lights, colored text, or anything like that, you should use those tags so that people who want to avoid those things can filter it.

Some commonly filtered tags are:

long post (for posts that are long enough that you have to scroll for more than a second)

flashing (used for videos or gifs with flashing or flickering lights.)

blood

gore

body horror (for monsters or other fictional unnatural things, not disabled people or real people's injuries)

injury

violence

bigotry of any kind

certain kinds of animals like snakes or spiders or bees

NSFW (not safe for work, pretty much anything sexual or otherwise not something you'd want your boss seeing over your shoulder.)

Nudity (usually used for art where, like greek statues for example, the subject is naked, but not in a sexual way)

And some people might ask you to tag other specific things, and the same rules will apply.

It is important that when you are tagging for something so people can filter it, you ONLY put the word that needs to be filtered

EX:

I want to filter posts that have flashing videos or gifs.

If a post is tagged "TW flashing" or "TW: flashing" or "///flashing", I will not be able to filter it, because the stuff in front is messing up the filter. Neither will the tag "flashing lights".

If you want people to be able to avoid your posts when necessary, make sure you're tagging things so the filter works. a simple "blood" will suffice, while "trigger warning// blood" does nothing to help anyone.

It is VERY important that if your post contains flashing lights or colors, you tag it "flashing", NOT "epilepsy" or "epilepsy warning". That will make the post of flashing lights show up in the tag used by people who have epilepsy to talk about epilepsy.

The only time you should use the tag "epilepsy warning" is if your post contains zero flashing lights or colors, and you are using it to warn people about something that does, like a movie, video game, ect.

like this post, where I warn people about the flashing lights in a horror movie, with the timestamps for when it's happening so they can avoid it:

[ID: A screenshot of a post that reads, "The fourth Purge movie (The First Purge) has some slowly flashing lights from: 1:20:39 through 1:25:43. It goes from pretty dark to very bright every two seconds or so." The post is tagged, "Epilepsy warning", "The Purge", "The Purge: The First Purge", and, "Rjalker watches The Purge". End ID.]

(it should also be noted that these things below the images are known as image descriptions, and they're an accessibility feature for people who can't see or see very well the way subtitles are for people who can't hear or hear very well. Anyone can (and should!) make them, all you do is describe the image so people who can't see it can still interact fully with the post. They don't have to be indented, but it does help people, and it's very important that they not be put in tiny font, italics, or colored text, or below a read-more, since that makes them inaccessible.)

If I missed anything, feel free to add it on!

[star-anise]

Hey Tumblr, I’m gonna spill a little knowledge on triggers and blacklists. TW: Many of my examples mention actual triggers, like sexual assault, self-injury, intimate partner violence, gore, common animal phobias, and a few fandoms.

A “trigger” is a stimulus that involuntarily causes you to have an unpleasant and aversive psychological reaction. In plain English: When you see/hear/smell/touch/read it, your brain makes you feel NOT GOOD. The specifics can be really diverse and complicated! I know people keep trying to say “well MY kind of trigger is the only REAL kind of trigger” but I’ll pull out my Master’s degree in psychology if I have to on this one: there is no one true form of trigger or trigger reaction. Our brains like to freak out over all KINDS of shit, and they do it in all KINDS of ways. 

Trigger warnings are how we talk about difficult things. The first place I ever saw them used was the Bodies Under Siege mailing list, which started in 1997 as a forum for people who self-injured; because they found that talking about their self-injury could cause other vulnerable members of their community to self-injure, they began warning each other of the content of their posts, so each member could decide to read a certain post, or avoid it for their own mental health. The practice soon spread to feminist blogs that discussed sexual assault, then elsewhere.

Some triggers are rather predictable because most human brains come pre-equipped with a set of hardwired triggers for disgust or distress, like corpses, blood, other humans being in pain, and the taste and smell of rotting food. Others are often highly unpredictable and random, because literally anything can become associated with trauma.

A trigger is not a moral judgment. Just because something causes you distress, it isn’t necessarily bad, and won’t necessarily harm anyone else. That’s a separate conversation. So whether something is a trigger for you is 100% about how it makes you feel, not about whether anyone else should have anything to do with it.

It is entirely reasonable to ask other people to let you know if something meets the description of one of your triggers. “Hey, could you tag everything with spiders in it please?” “Hi, does your story have any gore onscreen?” “Hello, which of these books has sexual assault in it?” Not everyone is able to fulfill this request, the same way not everyone can promise their kitchen is gluten-free or that their sweater has never made contact with a cat, but it’s reasonable for you to ask.

It is not reasonable for you to ask that other people have nothing to do with your triggers because they trigger you. Whether something is fundamentally evil is a separate conversation. If they routinely make you deal with stuff that triggers you, yeah sure, you’re totally entitled to conclude they’re treating you badly and cut contact with them. But on the other hand, when you’re not there, it’s their right to eat a food that triggers you/watch horror movies you can’t deal with/date a guy who bears a physical resemblance to your abuser/reblog pictures of the animal you’re phobic about/whatever else that triggers you but that they’re into.

If you’ve been asked to help warn people about what will trigger them--say, for example, that you’ve been asked to tag all your Tumblr posts about politics--then you can answer one of two ways pretty fairly. One way is to agree, and find ways of tagging that work for you and them and anyone else involved--maybe tagging “New York tw” or “Sherlock mention” so they don’t show up in the main #New York or #Sherlock tags, or finding a reasonable compromise for things you don’t know how to properly nail down, like tagging “creepy crawlies” for things that aren’t necessarily insects or spiders, but are... some form of creepy crawly? And trigger them? (What even ARE lobsters anyway? Wait, don’t tell me, they still freak me out.)

The other way is to say, “I’m sorry, I don’t think I can accommodate you.” Maybe you aren’t good enough at telling when something meets their criteria; maybe it’s too hard for you to remember all the things you need to tag; maybe your own anxiety or scrupulosity are triggered by the expectation that you remember to keep someone else safe. People might get upset at you, but I’ll defend the right of individual people living their own lives to do this. The bigger, richer, and better-staffed someone or something gets, the more I expect out of them, the same way I expect more of other disability accommodations like captioned videos or image descriptions; but small blogs, like individual homes, are often only as accessible as limited means and human resources make them.

The advantage to posting your list of triggers publicly is that if someone wants to make their blog accessible to you, it’s easy for them to know how; the disadvantage is that it hands someone who wants to ruin your day a Top 10 list of how. It’s up to you to weigh the risks and benefits. Maybe your trigger list is an “ask to know” thing, instead of something preserved on Internet archives for all eternity.

There. Now you know how triggers work. Go forth, curate your blocklists, ask people to tag, and have much better Internet experiences accordingly.

[aspec-stories-blog]

Submission guidelines (post)

**Note that our guidelines may change as we get a better feel for who follows our blog and what they want to write about**

Contents:

Before you click “Submit”

What can people submit?

Topics that we will NOT post to the blog

How do I submit something?

How can I have my submission posted anonymously?

A couple more notes on submissions: our weekly prompts, submitting your own writing prompts, submitting visual works, and community intros

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Before you click “Submit”

Since it doesn’t show up when you submit something on mobile, here is what’s written on our “Submit something!” page:

“Please check out our “Submission guidelines” page before submitting something to us! Then, before you click “Submit,” please do the following: 1. Make sure to include any of the following content warnings that are relevant: body-hatred, eating disorder implication (anything beyond a mention), and gore. Write them in the first line (under the title, before the body of your submission) so that our mods are aware of the warnings before they start reading. 2. SAVE A COPY OF YOUR WORK!!! Tumblr has a nasty habit of eating submissions, and we don’t want it to accidentally delete the only copy of your writing before we can post it! Submitted content that is posted to our blog will be directly credited to the URL you submit from, unless otherwise specified. Thank you! We look forward to reading your work!”

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What can people submit?

One of our main goals here is to help inspire and share writing about and for aspec people, so we ask that authors stick to that demographic as much as possible. And since there’s not a ton of writing out there about aspec people and experiences, there’s so much for all of us to explore! Poems and song lyrics! Short stories and multi-part series! Character ideas and story concepts! Fanfiction and original ideas! Comics! Movie scripts! Whatever you want to create!! Want to write about an aromantic adventurer in a fantasy world? A budding queerplatonic relationship between college students? A demisexual scientist inventing time travel? Do it!!! We’re SO excited to read your works, and we’re sure there will be plenty of others here who are, too! Don’t want to write an entire story? That’s cool, too! You can submit writing prompts; book, fic, song, show, or movie recommendations; writing tips; aspec positivity and support—as long as it’s relevant to the blog and follows our policies, it’s fair game!

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Topics that we will NOT post to the blog

Content warning: there are mentions of many triggering topics in this section.

We definitely want to allow y’all lots of freedom for exploration in your submissions, but also—first and foremost—we want Aspec Stories to be a safe and supportive place for aspec people of all ages, identities, and experiences. To help promote that positive environment, we (the mods) have decided to make all of the following topics off-limits in submissions and on the blog in general:

Animal cruelty

Child abuse

Discrimination or hate towards any members of the LGBTQIA+ community

Explicit* childbirth

Explicit* corrective rape (or explicit rape of any kind)

Explicit* disordered eating

Explicit* experience of conversion therapy

Explicit* gun violence

Explicit* self-harm

Explicit* sexual activity (specifically NSFW content, e.g. no porn, smut, or lemons)

Explicit* sexual assault

Explicit* suicide

Explicit* use of hard drugs and/or illicit substances (with the exception of marijuana and alcohol, though we may choose not to allow them if we feel that your representation of their use is inappropriate for this blog. We will contact you directly if that is the case.)

Explicit* verbal or physical abuse

Extreme body horror (i.e. we define body horror as “altering a character’s body in grotesque or seemingly painful ways.” This does NOT include disabled bodies, burn victims, amputees, or people with scars. It is meant for situations that are out of the ordinary.  Please use your discretion—we’ll contact you directly if we feel that you have included body horror that is too disturbing to publish on this blog.)

Hardcore gore (i.e. gore may be included in submissions, but please use your discretion—we’ll contact you directly if we feel that you have included too much or that it is too disturbing to publish on this blog.)

Inappropriate treatment of minors in general (i.e. please use your discretion when writing about characters who are minors, including characters who are canonically minors who you have aged-up for the sake of your story. We’ll contact you directly if we think that your treatment of underage characters is problematic in any way.)

Incest

Hateful slurs

Pedophilia

Racial slurs, specifically

Unaddressed discrimination of any kind (i.e. while discrimination may be included as part of a character’s experience, it should not go unaddressed within the story. We will contact you directly if we feel that any discrimination represented in your submission is poorly addressed or otherwise inappropriate for this blog.)

Unnecessary violence (i.e. violence that seems unnecessarily cruel or seems as though it serves no purpose to the story being told)

We doubt that most of these topics are things y’all would want to write about, anyways, but we want to share this list to let you know that we’re watching out for you! If you think that anything else should be added to this list of off-limits topics, please message us or send us an ask!

If your submission includes any of the above topics, we will NOT post it to the blog.��We’ll contact you at the URL that you submitted from to let you know that we’ve decided not to publish your work. Depending on the situation, if you are willing to edit out the off-limits content we may consider reviewing your submission again for posting.

If you feel that a submission that we have already posted on the blog violates our policy of off-limits topics, please send us a direct message and we’ll address it as soon as we possibly can.

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*To clarify on the starred topics: When we say “explicit” we mean “writing (or art) that shows said topic happening within the submission.” Topics such as abuse, self-harm, etc. may exist within your writing, but only indirectly or in mention. For example: we will not allow an explicitly shown or described (NSFW) sex scene, but if characters are talking about their relationships with sex without getting into NSFW detail that’s totally fine (we’ll just tag it as a content warning). Please contact us if you have any questions about this!

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How do I submit something?

If you have something you’d like to have posted on Aspec Stories, read through this list to find out how to best share it with us:

Is it a poem, short story, longer written work, visual art, character blurb, or something of that nature? Send it to us via our “Submit something!” page, please!

Is it a writing prompt, writing tip, some form of media recommendation, message of positivity, or something similar? Also send these to us via the “Submit something!” page!

Do you have a question or comment for us about the blog or one of our posts? Send it to us via the “Ask something!” page, or send us a direct message! We’ll be happy to hear from you!

Want to introduce yourself to the blog’s community? Visit the “A couple more notes on submissions” section of this page!

When in doubt, send it to us as a submission via our “Submit something!” page! Most of the things we post will be user-submitted, and sending us content via our “Submit something!” page is the best way for us to give you credit for your work.

Other than that, please make sure you’re following our policies for topics that we do and do not allow on the blog. Then just follow the final requests that we’ve included on the “Submit something!” page, and click the submit button! We’re excited to see what you send us!

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How can I have my submission posted anonymously?

Step one: please don’t submit writing to us via anonymous asks!! Please!! That could get very confusing for us mods, especially if your work is long and you send it to us as multiple anonymous asks. We might actually cry if that happens. Especially if tumblr eats part of your work. Or you send us 20 asks and we’re not sure what order they’re meant to go in. Please… please don’t make us cry.

Instead, just include this note in one of the first lines of your submission (under the title but before the body of your work): “post as anon”. Easy! When we see that note, we’ll copy and paste the contents of your submission into a brand new post, then tag it as “author: anon”. We (the mods) will still see the URL you submit from in our inbox, but when we post your submission to the blog it will be completely anonymous. And please don’t feel weird about us knowing your URL! We won’t share it with anyone and we won’t contact you unless we need to (like if your submission includes an off-limits topic). And honestly, we probably won’t remember it after 5 minutes. No worries—we promise!

If you’d like us to post your submission anonymously but use a pseudonym instead of “anon”, write the note like this: “post as anon, author: [pseudonym]” (for example: “post as anon, author: Doodleoo McGee”). We’ll do all the same things to post it anonymously, but just use the “author: [pseudonym]” tag in place of our default “author: anon” tag (which will make it easier for you to find later).

**Note that if you use a pseudonym that another person has already claimed, we’ll contact you to ask for a new one. If we don’t hear back from you in a few days, we’ll just add some numbers to the end of your original pseudonym and call it good.

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A couple more notes on submissions

There are a few things about specific types of submissions that we want to clarify!

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Our weekly prompts

Each week (on Aspec Saturday), we’ll post a new prompt that’s meant to help people come up with ideas for submissions. Your submissions don’t HAVE to be related to these prompts—they’re just for extra inspiration! But, to help keep things organized, we’ll be tagging all submissions that we think are in response to the weekly prompts with an extra tag: “weekly prompt # (Month Year)”. All other submissions (unrelated to the weekly writing prompts) will be tagged as “general submission”. Please visit the “Our tags” page for more info about our tagging system!

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Submitting your own writing prompts

You are more than welcome to submit writing prompts for us to share! Usually we’ll just post these as regular submissions with the tag “general submission”. If anyone submits something in response to your prompt, it will also be tagged as a “general submission” (otherwise it would get really tricky to keep track of everything).

If we think that your prompt would be a cool one to use as one of our weekly writing prompts, we’ll contact you and ask if we can save your prompt for an upcoming week. If you’d rather we just post it as a regular submission we will, but if you’re ok with us using the prompt, we’ll post it on one of our Aspec Saturdays! All credit for the writing prompt will go to you as you’ve specified!

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Submitting visual works

This blog will mostly be for sharing writing, but if you’re inspired to create some aspec art, please send it our way! Keep in mind that all the submission and community guidelines apply to visual art submissions just as they do to written ones.

Since we’re working to make this an accessible blog, all the images we post will include written image descriptions. We’re prepared to write these descriptions ourselves, but we would be very appreciative if you took the time to describe your own art! If you’ve never described an image before, it’s easy to get the hang of and very very helpful for people who are blind or visually impaired. And especially if you regularly post artwork online, this would be a good skill to learn!

Here are some resources to help you get started with writing image descriptions, from another accessible tumblr blog: [link]

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Community intros

We’re hoping to gather a community of aspec writers, readers, and artists together with this blog. If you’d like to introduce yourself to the other members of the community—at any time—just send us an ask with a little bit about yourself that you’d like us to share!

If it’s NOT an anon ask, we’ll tag it with “author: [your URL]” and “community intro!”

If it IS an anon ask, we’ll tag it with “author: anon” and “community intro!”

We look forward to meeting you!!

[ahundredhundredheartbeats]

i definitely appreciate that there is no consistent tagging system on tumblr, and it's incredibly frustrating to not know how to tag when you have the best intentions to protect people from/give a warning for triggering content.

but the system i use, that i detailed in my above comments, is (i strongly believe) the most effective and helpful way of tagging to help people with disabilities, phobias, and triggers to avoid the content they don't want to see AND still see the content they do want to see.

i will give you my explanation (as a person who uses cw and tw in the tags that i block) as to why not using the tw or cw is very unhelpful to me

example from my needs: i do not want to see images or graphic descriptions of gore, blood, or body horror

but i do not have any issue with reading a post that uses the word blood: blood type, giving blood, blood relations, etc. in fact, blocking the word "blood" alone would have made it impossible to participate in dracula daily fandom, even though the only thing that bothers me is images of blood. and that would have sucked hardcore for me because i LOVED participating in dracula daily!

tagging the word on its own is not useful to me - it's just way too broad. if i block blood, there's a ton of not-at-all graphic or triggering content that i'm going to miss out on.

so i do maintain that using [things] tw or [things] cw is the most helpful format for tagging potentially-upsetting content, because it specifies tags apart from the body of the post.

another example: i need posts that actually contain flashing gifs tagged; i definitely do not need a text post that is talking about flashing gifs tagged, and in fact if it's talking about flashing gifs, it's probably a post i want to see and don't want blocked. in the system you suggest, i just block "flashy gif" or "flashing gif," i will not see either type of post even though one of them is completely harmless to me and is in fact content i want to see. but if the post is tagged "flashing gif tw," then i can see that that post contains an actual flashing gif

but outside of my personal needs, i think it's also very important to pay attention to how the people in your orbit are using tags and to also listen to people who send asks with specific needs.

PSA to New Tumblr Users

DON'T CENSOR YOUR TAGS. DON'T.

Write out 'Suicide' Write out 'Rape' Write out 'Abuse' & 'Assault' & 'Gore'

If you don't use the real words in your tags? People won't be able to filter those out and stay SAFE.

You need to tag properly to keep everyone safe.

Don't water down warnings just because social media has trained you to water them down.

[garden-of-succulents]

4, 13, 14 & 26

(asks for fanfic writers)

Gonna do this out of order because one of them needs a readmore tag.

4. name three authors that were influential to your work and tell why

Ohhhhh boy.  Ohhhhh my god. What a tough question. Okay.

1. Guy Gavriel Kay - I read The Fionavar Tapestry when I was maybe 14 and it shook the foundations of my world, devoured everything else he has available, and even though as an adult I see a lot of his limitations he shaped me so much–huge amounts of my entire praxis of moving through the world as someone with chronic, persistent, unremitting depression came from him. There was a time when I thought I wanted to write exactly like him. My sense of scope, of story, of what to hold onto and what to let go, of what language can do.

2. @dsudis - Slash fandom generally has done a lot to help with my internalized shame about sexuality, about taking what we do seriously, but I think Dira’s the person who’s inspired me most in the past few years. Because sometimes the things we feel drawn to are weird and problematic and there’s no way to make them less weird or less problematic without taking away our reasons for wanting them–so she’s an inspiration and a role model for me when it comes to navigating that fearlessly and ethically.

3. Monica Hughes - whom basically nobody knows, but I do, because she was Edmontonian and I went to elementary school in Edmonton, so her books were pushed on us a lot. She was my introduction to science fiction–while other women I know came to the genre through the misogynistic greats, my hand was held by a comforting friend who knew the land I came from and spread women through the stars for me to follow. (Sadly, she died before I ever got to meet her.)

14. easiest character to write

Andy Scarlatti, queen of my heart. It’s not that she’s me–it’s that she gets to be angry, and that feels so fucking good to write.

26. story you’re most proud of

Still possibly “Les hivers de mon enfance”? It’s the most like I think my writing should be (it’s the Guy Gavriel Kay-est OMGCP thing I’ve written). If not that, then “leave your lovers like campsites”, because it’s complicated and long and has a plot and is complete, and it those things are so hard for me to write.

13. hardest character to write

Justin Oluransi. Cut for discussion of suicide, emesis, gore/injury, trauma, feces.

(*looks at trigger list* It’s not actually that heavy of a response, I swear)

Okay so for a year during my Masters I worked in a university counselling department. (It was great–I def recommend anyone with mental illnesses to see what their counselling departments and disability offices can offer them–although ask how they handle student suicidality before you disclose if that’s something you deal with–sorry, I’m getting sidetracked)

So a lot of people would come in looking really stressed and overclocked and fragile and say, “I’m having trouble with coping. I’m in six classes and I’m on the track team and I’m president of the student business association and I’m doing great but, you know, I’m puking from stress all the time, my hair is falling out, and I haven’t slept in three days. So what I need are some tools on how to better manage my workload.”

So the thing about therapists is you’re having a real human experience–we can’t just be replaced by clever robots because the experience of being seen and subjectively experienced by another human being is really valuable. But the downside is, everyone has areas of relative strength and weakness. Some therapists are better with some issues than others.

And the thing about me is that I’ve been mentally ill, disabled, and traumatized since I was a child. There are days when walking six blocks causes me a level of pain other humans don’t get unless they have broken bones or third-degree burns. The first time my mother told me she wanted to divorce my dad I decided to repress my emotions about it for 12 hours, and my fully adult body responded by making me literally explosively shit my pants the moment the child I was caretaking left the car in the loading zone at their school. My clinical area of speciality is complex trauma, also known as “being so fucked up for so long you don’t know what normal looks like and your issues literally won’t let you function”

My area of specialization is not “basically healthy people who want coaching to achieve top performance.” I have classmates who wanted to do that and had no affinity for complex trauma. They’re different specializations.

So I would smile politely at those people and say, “Have you considered dropping part of your workload to decrease the pressure on you?” and they would say “No!” in a horrified voice and we would stare at each other in mutual incomprehension, and I would try to talk to them about sleep hygiene and grounding meditation and cognitive distortions, but in the back of my mind I was like why would you do that to yourself just for social status and achievement and to please your parents? because whatever shreds of ambition or competitiveness or achievement orientation I possess have been ground very thoroughly under humiliating years of having to accept my very strict and unforgiving limitations.

I wasn’t a good therapist for them; I don’t think I’m suited for academic environments; students like that rarely came back to me for a second session.

And I see Justin Oluransi in them a lot. Frat bro, hockey star, 4.0 GPA, coral reef, about to break, so fucking strong and ablebodied and so fucking fragile. So when I write him my instinctive response is to swaddle him–wrap him up in cotton wool, let him relax and feel less pressured, remove the burdens on him. Let him get Bs or stop playing hockey or party less often. 

Where I trip up is that he probably wouldn’t want that–he’s one of those people who probably does physical exercise because it feels good, achieves academically because it pleases and interests him, socializes because he wants to be around his fellow humans. If you gave him my ideal retreat of a quiet, cozy, solitary vacation, he’d probably go stir-crazy. 

So like… a lot of me is tempted to read this “consulting” storyline from the tweets as Ransom seeing the light, realizing that he has to gracefully bow to his limitations and not put himself through the pain and horror of med school or further academia, but… when I write him, I also want to remind myself that he wants very fundamentally different things from me; we have chosen what are essentially polar opposites in some major life values. And instead of just smugly converting him to mine, I have to temporarily slip myself into his mindset.