#this could apply to many things i think but i wrote it with physical disability in mind

[trick-of-the-troubles]

this world that has promised so much has delivered so little

because the people who made this world did not make it with us in mind

and the people who had the power to change the flawed system have instead chosen again and again to do what's easy rather than what's right

and it's hard living in a world that didn't think of you in the first place

and you deserve better than to be an afterthought

and i love you

and i'm sorry

[overlordbravery]

Summary: Jeremiah get’s himself in trouble as per usual and gets saved by his childhood best friend. They have an argument about a lot of things.

Word Count: 5,074

Note: Because I’m thinking of my new blorbo I wrote a thing for him. I will undoubtedly draw Amy and Veteran soon. In the mean time here’s what Jeremiah looks like [ X ]

Jeremiah wondered if he should spend his free time practicing escaping a trunk.

Which would be a bizarre thing to a normal person, but Jeremiah found himself shoved in one more than he would like to admit. It felt almost normal at this point, and really that was such a frustrating thing to realize as he tugged at his bindings with a frustrated groan.

Maybe he would enlist the help of his friend Amy, he was sure sometimes she would love to tie him up shove him in some dark dank trunk, and then go fuck off while he worked diligently on escaping. But because he hadn’t done that, he found he was really struggling, trying to figure out how he was bound so he could at least feel around for the trunk release. But he was blindfolded, and his arms were tied very tightly to his torso. Veteran didn’t take chances with him, not that he could blame the man… don’t get him wrong he definitely was blaming Veteran, but he understood at the same time.

He didn’t want him to get away.

Unfortunately, or fortunately for Jeremiah, he got away often. A lot of the time thanks to Amy, she was always looking out for him. Well, she was too busy recently, working with a League of Superheroes trying to make the world a better place. She always was that way, even when they were kids, the second her powers came she was constantly working on helping people. Jeremiah was the only one who really knew she just wanted to take all her rage out on some thugs.

That she hoped one day to just get killed and not have to deal with it all anymore.

Jeremiah always helped her, eager to put his own powers to the test. If you could even call them “powers”, sure, he had a marker on his driver’s license that marked him as a mutant. As unconstitutional as that sounded, it started “in a good place” but that was what most Fascists say when they change a system to specifically call out someone they considered “other”. They really did think it was a good idea, marking criminals that were blessed or cursed with superpowers, tagging them in a way so cops knew and that they could get the “special” treatment. That was how it started, and then people started to get flagged in the system. Orphans usually so parents could know what they were getting into when they adopted a kid.

Then it started to be flagged in schools.

And before you knew it, most mutants were tagged as preteens. It never seemed right to him, even if it took forever for people to discover his powers. Super Genius was the supposed term, but it was just like any other neurodivergence in the world and harder to pin down. Had the usual problems most smart kids had. Struggled paying attention in class due to boredom and lack of challenge, troublemaker because of it. Only had good grades on tests because he didn’t bother to apply himself on anything else. It was the IQ test that had him on some radars.

And then there was the whole engineering and inventing thing at a young age, things he shouldn’t know and was never taught in school. But the engineering books he stole from the library were more interesting than anything the school was teaching. A few more tests later and he was marked as a super genius, which everyone in his adult life wanted his brain because of it. Not physically of course, that would render him useless, but he was forced into many situations where he built and disabled some intense killing machines for people.

Amy kept telling him he should join the League. That he would have the protection he needed there, that he would be less likely to be kidnapped and forced into things if he was constantly surrounded by other heroes. But Jeremiah prided himself on being a lone wolf type… at least that’s what he would tell Amy. He didn’t like the idea of working with a team, he didn’t like the idea of working under someone with a superiority complex.

But they both knew the truth. He wondered when Amy would call him out on it, that it wasn’t that he didn’t want to work with a team. But rather he didn’t want other people's morals forced upon him, he didn’t want to lose the thrill and adrenaline rush of his underground works which would be put to a stop. He would always say it wasn’t anything bad, even if his inventions could be responsible for some thug or hooligan killing people. He didn’t design it for the purpose necessarily, he only made them because he could.

He took in a deep breath when he realized the car had stopped moving, and before he could question what was happening the trunk door opened and he was very roughly pulled out of the trunk and thrown to the floor. He complained about the treatment through his gag, groaning when he was forced to sit on his knees and eventually the blindfold was removed, leaving him face to face with Veteran. The man was pretty, an absolute asshole, but pretty at the least. His eyes were always drawn to the scar over his brow as he stared down at him with such a bored and indifferent expression.

“Jerry.” He hated that nickname, of all the ways to shorten his name, Jerry and Jeremy were his least favorite. Amy was kind enough to call him Jer or Miah… which he found he rather liked the latter. “You never showed up.” He tugged against his bindings from the statement, giving an annoyed groan hoping the man would remove the gag. And eventually he did, though he seemed like he was debating if he wanted to let him talk or not.

Bastard…

“Look, Veteran… what kind of name is that anyway. I’ve always wanted to ask, like did you name yourself that or did the press do it? Were you a vet? You don’t look like a–hey!” He turned his head to avoid the gag being put back on, only causing himself to fall. “They’re valid questions!” He pouted from his spot on the floor, staring up at the man who just grabbed him by one of the ropes and pulled him up.

“Don’t explain why ya never showed up.” His little southern accent was kind of cute. If Jeremiah looked past the whole kidnapping thing.

“Well, I told Amanda we would meet on the twelfth-”

“It’s the twenty-first.” Veteran didn’t miss a beat and honestly that had Jeremiah confused as he furrowed his brows.

“It’s the tenth.” He countered, getting an actual laugh from the man who crouched in front of him. Elbows resting on his knee pads as he got comfy in his little squat.

“Jer.” Oh good he used the nickname he liked. “It’s the twenty-first. How the hell did ya go and lose eleven days?” Actual curiosity, Jeremiah made a long “uhhh” noise trying to think back on his past eleven days that honestly only felt like two. A blur of work, passing out at his desk—

“Shit.” Coke, and one of his favorite pastimes, her name was Sunny, or rather the name he knew her by was Sunny. Showed up on the ninth with some good Coke and whiskey. “Uh… degeneracy apparently.” He laughed awkwardly, getting a heavy sigh from Veteran.

“Amanda isn’t happy. Which means she’s been a pain in my ass an’ I ain’t happy.” He watched as he stood up and walked over towards some other guys in the room. “I need to teach you a lesson. Know you need fingers to work.” He watched him pull up some bush trimmers and casually clamp them shut and open again. “Ain’t need your toes though.” A shrug of the shoulders.

“Whoa! Whoa! I do need those actually! They can pick up the tools I drop—” he grunted when some of the guys standing by grabbed him and started to drag him over to Veteran. “Veteran please, I promise it was an accident—” the sound of the door being launched off its hinges had them all turning. A masked and gunned up thug lay on the ground with the door groaning in pain as gunshots happened on the other side of the room. “Oh, thank god.” Jeremiah wasn’t religious for many reasons, but just this once he would praise the lord.

Amy, Archangel, his best friend, walked through the door, blood dripping down her arm from a wound long since healed. She walked through dragging an unconscious man behind her, but she let him go as she looked at the rest of them. Her hair pulled back into a long single braid; her expression could only be described as tired as she gave them her full attention. Wearing a pair of combat boots that went halfway up her calf. Pants tucked into them, and a white tank top tucked into those. She always looked so casual even when she spent her time fighting crime.

“Amy.” Veteran greeted with a nod of the head. The other men looked between the two powerhouses in the room. Because as far as Jeremiah was concerned Amy and Veteran were the only scary ones here.

“Veteran.” She grunted the reply with as much care as an apathetic teenager. She was already getting into a fighting stance, palms open and ready to redirect. Veteran sighed while dropping the trimmers, well more like tossing them which landed right in front of him. Jeremiah carefully moved to try and grab them so he could cut himself free as Veteran began heading over to Amy. And honestly their fights were always insane, he started to inchworm away from the chaos when Amy took her first swing.

Amy was strong, Jeremiah had seen her pick up a car with her index finger at fourteen.

Veteran on the other hand? He had Density Control.

Her hitting him made him slide back as he had his arms crossed in front of him, he could tell from Amy’s expression and from the way her hand was she broke it on his arms. He was quick to grab her before she could turn, and he threw her over his shoulder and slammed her into the floor. Only instead of it making an impact she floated through the ground, and he went through with her leaving no trace of either of them.

Part of his density control also allowed him and whatever he touched intangibility. Which was annoying as fuck if Jeremiah could be frank.

“Where are you goin, brainiac?” He managed to cut the rope as he was grabbed and pulled back to place by a goon that was waiting for orders.

“As far as I’m concerned this is over, isn’t it? Like Amy’s here now, they’re gonna fight till Veteran is too tired to withstand Amy’s strength and then she’s gonna kick your asses and take me home. Figure we can skip over the latter and you guys could just let me go.”

“Veteran could win.” Another thug pipped up getting a laugh from Jeremiah.

“Unstoppable force meets immovable object. Yes, it's very impressive. However, Amy can heal faster than he can take her down. I’ve seen her get shot in the head once, you know?” They were fifteen, it was very traumatic for him but he didn’t like to talk about it.

“Comrade Senka.” Oh, a fanboy, how great. That woman was terrifying he was glad she decided to fuck off to some other country for a while. Hopefully she will never come back, but Jeremiah was always worried. It was hard not to be, he swore if he stared at a crowd too long, he would see her, staring and smiling, homed in on him like the predator she was. “She did more than just shoot her in the head.”

Yes.

Jeremiah could remember vividly Amy falling from the gunshot to the head as Fox tried to intervene. To get him away from her, only for Amy to join in back from the dead, he could remember the way they fought in unison against her while he was dragged around under her arm… could remember the way Amy screamed when Senka clawed her across the face with the massive weapon that was more or less long knives her fingers could turn into. He could remember vividly as she ripped out Amy’s eye and cut off half of her face.

He could remember the weeks it took to heal and for her eye to grow back from her regenerative powers being exhausted from reviving her.

“You always get your ass in trouble, don’t you, Jerry?” A knowing comment, there was unfortunately some photojournalist in the area that had immaculate shots of the fight.

Of their trauma.

Posted to the news like it wasn’t a traumatic experience for teenagers to go through and be reminded of.

“Y-yeah. Guess so.” He forced a smile and laugh as he managed to loosen the ropes. And then he got up and started to run, sliding to a stop as Veteran came back up from the ground like a demon and let go of Amy as she got halfway through the floor.

“Fuck!” She yelled and coughed, blood spattering on the floor under her as she worked on trying to get herself out of the floor.

“Where you goin’?” Veteran was not unharmed. He had telltale signs of bruising and a shattered cheekbone from the look of it. Guess he was getting tired, Jeremiah stumbled back tripping over his own feet as he stared up at him.

“Home actually.”

“Can you blame him; this is a bit obsessive.” Amy grunted before punching her fist through the floor.

“It is, isn't it! Like damn, sorry I missed our date.” Amy looked at him from that as she punched the floor again, cracking it more around her.

“Stop.” Veteran gave her a warning, Amy stared up at him with that unimpressed look and then slammed both her fists on the floor. It crumbled under them, all of them, freeing Amy from her prison and dropping them a floor below into the basement of Amanda’s little warehouse. And it hurt, going from sitting on the ground to falling with rubble an entire story below. He landed smack dab on his back feeling the way it winded him. He coughed as he rolled over on his side.

“Miah! You okay?” He watched as a large piece of floor was lifted off him. He slowly sat up and nodded his head glancing up. He quickly pointed out not being able to get the words out. But Amy was quick to whip around and smack the rubble right into Veteran taking him to the floor. There was a long pause to make sure he wasn’t getting back up before she offered a hand to help him up. “Let's get home.”

“Yeah… Thank you.” He knew it would turn into a lecture. It usually did, but he was thankful she would still look out for him. He picked his pace in following her when he saw Veteran shift with a groan. Not wanting to get taken anywhere again he made sure to stay right by Amy. “You’re really the best, Ames.” He grinned hoping if he complimented her—

“I can’t keep doing this.” Her voice was stern, he rubbed the back of his neck unable to look at her as she unlocked her car and opened the door for him. He grumbled a “thank you” while climbing in. Glad to be in the front of a car rather than a trunk of one. It was a nice break as he glanced up at her mind already spinning with lies he could throw at her so she wouldn’t remain pissed at him.

“Look, it’s not that bad—” She slammed the door in his face as she walked around to get into the driver’s seat. The silence and action felt like it was taking forever, he could feel his heart in his throat with an overwhelming flow of emotions. He wanted to apologize for being a burden to her. It wasn’t like he meant to constantly be in trouble and like he constantly needed her to save him. It wasn’t a good feeling, even if he did pay her back by making her some gadgets here and there or things that would be good for her silly league.

“Join the league.” She had such a way with words as she assaulted him with them the second she got into the vehicle. Those feelings of guild began to dwindle, replaced by a sudden surge of annoyance because they had been over this time and time again.

“You know why I don’t want to do that, Amy.” Pleading almost as he looked at her. Because he still didn’t want to fight, he didn’t want this to end on a sour note like it had been last time she had to save him from some goons who wanted to use him to make them some destructive machine. Which he almost foolishly made due to them telling him he probably couldn’t. She finally looked at him as she started the car, her brow furrowed, and she had a frown on her face as she grabbed the wheel and took off like a bat out of hell. Letting silence once more fall between them. It was painful, they used to be able to talk for hours about nothing.

Now they had nothing to talk about.

“I don’t want to arrest you, Miah.” His nostrils flared from that; it was a threat. She’s bailed him out a couple times. The last time she let him rot for a day before she showed. She had been there once when he got arrested and just pulled her hood up and walked away. “But I will.”

“You’re not going to have to arrest-”

“I’ve done it before!” And she has, he’s been grappled to the floor by her. He’s been forced into handcuff when they got in a fight after she found out something he did what was wrong. He couldn’t even remember it was, he broke in somewhere and stole some stuff maybe? “Jesus, Miah, you’re working with Veteran!” Veteran, he needed to look more into him, he hardly knew anything about him, and since he didn’t wear a mask he was sure the man’s real identity was just out there. Which meant he must not have any ties, his eyes glanced over to Amy, who also didn’t bother with a mask as she also didn’t have any ties.

Only him… but if people were going to know about the Tinkerer or the Toyman they already did.

“In my defense I was just supposed to meet Amanda like ten days ago.” She growled at that. “Veteran was going to cut off my toes for not meeting Amanda.” He corrected, causing the woman to motion wildly around them.

“And these are the people you would rather work with!” Not really, but they gave fun projects to work on. They gave him something to do where he didn’t feel like a useless burden but instead a hot commodity. He felt appreciated, even if he did… end up thrown in trunks and hit a lot. “Do you hear yourself when you talk?” She rubbed her forehead with a heavy sigh before leaning her head back. That guilt was starting to creep in again, he hated to worry her. “I’m done.” He arched a brow that had a fresh cut, might turn into a scar later he never was sure, he just watched her waiting to process what she had just said to him.

“Excuse me?” To make sure he heard her correctly.

“I’m not saving you anymore.” He looked at her with a surprised expression. Scoffing a little in shock while shaking his head. Trying to find humor in this like she was joking with him.

“You don’t mean that.” She’s said it before, when he got in trouble with some gang that wanted him to unlock specialty weapons made by some big arsenal company, Caym Corp.

“I do!” She was shaking as she said that, and he could hear the emotion in her voice. “I can’t keep doing this! I’m not going to enable you anymore.” The hurt.

“Enable? Like I’m a fucking addict?” Anger fueled him now, that guilt and feeling of burden shattering in an offended defensive rage.

“I keep hoping you’ll realize it’s dangerous and come with me!” Like it was so damn easy to just sign his life away to a League that would hinder him and his creativity. Like he hadn’t already been through that many times before, like she didn’t know everything he sacrificed for her.

“I’m not built for—”

“You would be so fucking great as a Hero!” No one would know about him. But that wasn’t supposed to bother him, was it? He never wanted the spotlight, did he? He could remember the way his parents looked at him when he was in the paper, he could remember the way they found out what he was and what he could do and how his dad tried to force him into things he didn’t want. How his mother used him like everyone else in his life to make her life easier… it was better when no one knew him.

“You’re talking out your ass! I would not be a great hero!” He only ever fucked everything up. That’s what he was good at.

“You did so much for me and the town we grew up in when we had to deal with Senka.” There’s that damn name again, he would never escape her, he would never get rid of the memories of her. “What changed!?” She looked to him before looking back at the road, the drive already felt long as he crossed his arms over his chest and stared out the window.

What changed? What a loaded question. He still had nightmares about her, he still worried she would show up again. Nothing helped to get rid of the memories of being taken by her other than the drugs and the drinking and the distractions… working with people who could hopefully replace the memories. Or maybe it was the familiarity he was searching for. Because when he was in her grasp, when he was doing what she told him to do, he unlocked so much knowledge and potential in a field he didn’t even know he would enjoy so much.

And he was constantly, constantly chasing that damn high.

“I don’t know.” It was a lame answer that had Amy silently fuming. “I’m not doing the hero thing. I’m not risking my life for a world that’s only ever othered me.”

“So, you’d rather help destroy it?”

“They’re already doing that to themselves! I’m just sitting in my home, minding my damn business.”

“You’re making death machines for gangsters!”

“Someone was way before me!”

“But yours are incredible!” Devastating. Machines made to decimate the competition… that’s why she arrested him he remembered now. But it looked so cool, when Lockjaw shot that gun off and it and it tore through all those people… all those people… how did he get out of that one again? Had to make some more for the secret agency that deals with mutants in some deal. He still had to do whatever they wanted if they happened to barge in. One of the reasons he didn’t bother to move because he didn’t want to have to deal with all the people he had to inform on his decision.

“Horrible, you mean?” He asked with a mock laugh, cause Amy didn’t approve.

“You’re so fucking Talented, and brilliant. And you waste it.”

“I don’t waste it though, I mean, look at everything I’ve been able to do! You should see this new thing I built it’s great--” He trailed off because he could feel it, he knew exactly what she was thinking, they had been friends long enough.

“You can ask for help, you know.” She tried, tried to bring the conversation down, to turn down the heat of it as she must have remembered everything they went through. He couldn’t imagine the trauma she faced, Senka had killed her twice and he couldn’t do anything to stop it. “I’m here for you,” And she couldn’t do anything to stop her from taking him. “I'm always here.”

“You just said you weren’t going to save me anymore.” He grinned like it was a joke and she just glanced at him sadly as she continued the drive. He wondered if it felt just as long for her as it did for him.

“Please, just… try it out. If you don’t like it, you can leave. There’s nothing you can’t do if you put your mind to it.” She was right about that; he ran a hand through his hair before giving a sigh. And he could feel that impulsive urge to talk about what he refused to talk about. To talk about everything, he brushed off and buried deep, deep, down in his mind. Or tried to but no matter what it always floated to the surface.

“Do you ever think about her?” He blurted it out, getting a surprised noise from Amy.

“… Her who?” He guessed not, he ran his hands over a hidden scar on his side as he looked out the window she seemed to have noticed and her expression changed to one of guilt. “Senka?” She finally asked after a while getting a small grunt in response. “She’s in a maximum-security prison… she tried to come back. I told Ophanim about her and we took her down before she could be a problem again.” He glanced over to her in shock.

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“Ophanim sounded like a great person to help me with it. Jeremiah, I know you don’t like the guy, but he is efficient in his job.” Didn’t like him was an understatement… the news liked to paint them as the dynamic duo, Archangel (Even though Amy hated the title and would prefer her name) and Ophanim, the angels of Specter City. Ophanim was charismatic and great with… well everyone. Many people loved and adored Ophanim, he was a figure head for the league. And maybe Jeremiah missed when he and Amy were a duo, when they didn’t have all the press and attention as she did now.

“Oh, I see how it is, you get your new superhero buddies, and you don’t need me anymore.” There it was, that deep dark thought he never vocalized. Because it was stupid to think about, wasn’t it? Why would she need him, he made death machines, and she was a hero.

“Jeremiah.” Her voice was strained. “Do not do that, we are best friends.”

“Are we? Cause I don’t know! I’m pretty sure I would have told you if Senka showed up, or maybe you didn’t want me to know because you were worried, I would want to join her or something.”

“Stop it!” She looked hurt by that. “I was trying to protect you! She did horrible things to you, I-”

“Stop trying to protect me! I’m a grown ass man!”

“You sure don’t act like it!” It was getting heated again, he took in a deep breath and slowly let it out.

“Okay! Fine!” He threw his hands up, closing his eyes to blurt out his next question. “Do you ever worry she’s gonna get out?” They pulled to a stop in front of his house, and she parked as she turned to face him. He flinched from the hand on his arm, a touch offered for comfort, she did it often, but he always pulled away. He never let her except when they reunited when Amy finally managed to take Senka down. They hugged and cried for what felt like hours, but he never let it happen again. She slowly pulled her hand back, staring at the empty space between them that felt like it was growing. Because they didn’t have anything in common anymore, did they?

“Of course I do, Jer… she… she is a horrible person.”

“She is a broken person.” He said it so quickly he couldn’t stop himself. She stared at him for a moment, and he ran his hands through her hair. “Sorry.”

“I know you learned so much about her, but she wasn’t a good person. Broken, sure, but there’s other ways to go about life than trying to take over the world and commit mass genocide.”

“Was she in the wrong though? I go back and forth on it.” There was a concerned expression on her face from that.

“Jer.”

“I’m just saying I understand her is all.”

“And she can get her court mandated therapy in prison and if she gets out, which I doubt she will, she can hopefully be a better person.” He sighed from that, he doubted anyone could help- “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to save you.” He could feel the heat in his eyes from a sudden rush of tears, a feeling of anger swelled in his chest and his head as he moved his hand to the car door. A voice in the back of his mind ridiculing him for feeling like crying in the first place.

“Don’t.” He cut her off, getting a saddened look for her. “It’s fine, sorry I said anything. See you later.” He opened the door and turned to look back at her. “If you don’t want to like… save me anymore.” Would they still see one another. “Will I still see you later?”

“I would prefer us to hang out as friends and not just have me as your personal savior yeah.” He gave her a thumbs up and headed back to his town house. Looking at the new for sale signs both neighbors had up. Probably spooked from Veteran and his goons showing up to kidnap him. That was fair he supposed, he casually pushed his broken door open and closed it behind him, heading downstairs to build a new door that hopefully would be harder to break.

[brilliantdisguises]

Hello again. I decided to write another post on Sabine with additional points as well as taking into consideration people’s replies. My original post is here. Since this is a bit of a long one here is an outline of this post and I'll put the rest of it under a readmore:

Personal response to previous post

Sabine

Update on her scar

SSO is diversifying all their characters

Various "what ifs"

Sexualisation of Sabine by fandom

Dark riders

Redesigns of Katja and Jessica (Jay)

Released image of the new Dark Riders

First, I’d like to address why I’m bringing this up. I’ve had it proposed to me that, as a white person, it’s not my place to talk about this as I’m talking over people of colour. As said in my last point this isn’t my intention at all. I’ve spoken with people of colour about the points in these posts. (Thank you to them for taking time to do so) However none of the points in my posts are new ideas by me and have been brought up by people of colour as being harmful stereotypes. I think it should also be noted that I wasn’t copying another post I’d seen by a POC about Sabine and ignored theirs, I wrote the post because I had not seen anyone speak about it. I do also think that putting the burden on people of colour for calling out racism/harmful stereotyping and such is completely unfair and unjust. White people have a responsibility to tackle this. This is not the same as speaking over people of colour, but amplifying their points and their right to exist without discrimination. I don’t feel like I should have to put this disclaimer but I’d also like to make it clear that not every POC/masculine woman/disabled person will agree with my statements. This is just my opinion that I’ve done my best to fact check with various academic sources and speaking with people affected by these issues.

Her scar

A correction on my last post, the reason behind her scar was discussed in the Star Stable book “The Legend Awakens” (thank you @mudpuddlenll ) Her scar is from falling headfirst off a bridge. However the passage raises more points by saying Sabine isn’t even human which is why she survived the fall. I’ll go into detail later about why saying Sabine and the other Dark riders aren’t human could potentially be harmful. But for now to focus on her scar, if Sabine isn’t human and therefore has the physical capability to survive such a fall – how come her face can scar? Is it just to help signal that she’s a villain? I’m aware Star Stable has weak logic behind a lot of things so I’m not particularly interested in trying to justify her scar being there – the point still stands that is it there.

An additional point brought up in the discussion of my first post is that Anne’s scar, the other character in the game with a facial scar, is a lot more feminine as well as being unrealistic.

Oh but SSO’s diversifying ALL their characters! Sabine isn’t a problem!

If this was the case and also the be-all and end-all of my argument: where are all the “good” brown butch women in SSO? Why aren’t they redesigning “good” female characters to be muscular? Why don’t they have non-violent butch women? Diversity in characters is a good thing, but you still need to make sure those characters aren’t negative stereotypes.

“What if she’s just tan!”

Then Star Stable is trying to make it seem like they’re increasing diversity by redesigning characters as ethnically ambiguous/darkening their skintones and not putting actual meaningful representations of people of colour into their video game. I don’t think I need to explain why this is a bad thing. Additionally if this is the case, then many of my points about female characters of colour still apply to Jay’s redesign which I further discuss below.

“But she’s going to become a good character/have a redemption arc!”

I do not care for hypotheticals. Even if she does redeem herself, the point still stands that SSO has a villain that looks and acts like her and no “good” characters that look like her. The game portrays her as a villain.

The continual sexualisation of Sabine by fandom

It is in bad taste to brush off the issues people have with the Sabine redesign by saying things along the lines of “but she’s hot though”. Even more than that, it adds to the over sexualisation of women of colour in media. I am not saying SSO is sexualising Sabine, let me make that clear. I am merely commenting on the reactions of many players of the game which I have seen online. There is an abundance of people thirsting over Sabine. I am not saying this itself is an issue. I’m a lesbian, women are great. But I think that is important to be careful of the ways we talk about female characters of colour, especially compared to how the same people talk about white female characters. If all you can take away from a character design, especially when pointed out potential issues in it, is that the character is sexually attractive – are you simply treating that character as a sexual object? And how does that reflect your treatment of real people with these characteristics? An additional sub point to this is comments similar to “Sabine can step on me”, “I wish Sabine would crush me” which is also prevalent in fandoms when aimed at women of colour and butch women. This enforces the idea that WOC and/or GNC women are inherently violent, are incapable of non-violent romantic actions, and also serves to masculinise them further.

Dark riders

I’ve been told that since Sabine is only one of the villains/Dark Riders so therefore my points don’t stand since there’s a diverse range of villains. So I shall discuss all of them.

While it’s true Sabine is the only redesigned Dark Rider released in game, SSE has released the new designs of 3 other Dark Riders on their development blog here. They are:

Katja, who has appeared in SSO and earlier games before. She has always been a white woman.

Jay, who has appeared in SSO and earlier games before. However this was under the name of Jessica and appearing as a white woman.

Chiyo, a new character to Star Stable. She appears to be a young East Asian character. This post by @yasminewestbank goes over some of the issues people have with her character, which I agree with.

While I have less to say about Katja, I find it interesting that the only white woman of the group is portrayed (as a general rule) as the most polite/self-controlled /”well-behaved”.

Jay’s redesign shares many of the same points as I have with Sabine. She is now darker skinned, has an androgynous name, and dresses more masculine. Again, I am not saying these are bad things or that a villain can’t have these traits.

SSE also released this group image of them on the same development blog post.

It makes me uncomfortable for several reasons. It reinforces the idea that Sabine is violent and brutal – literally holding Chiyo up by the neck – even towards the characters that are meant to be her allies. It shows that she is much larger and physically intimidating than the others, which as I stated before isn’t really a great thing having the most masculine woman being the most violent.

It additionally reinforces the stereotypes outlined in @yasminewestbanks post about Chiyo’s character as an East Asian woman. She appears much more childlike and infantilised than the other characters in being much smaller and picked up in that way by another character. My points about Chiyo are less concrete as we know little about her character – she may in fact be a child (which is then a point to be said about having the game’s main East Asian character be a young “cutesy” girl), but something just seems “off” about it all to me.

Of course I agree it is a good thing that Star Stable is creating more diverse characters. But I think there is a need to be careful when redesigning characters that were originally three white women into two more masculine women of colour and a white woman, and then adding an additional woman of colour that you do not fall into using negative stereotypes for them. Especially when you add in the fact that they are the major villains to the game – the antithesis of the player character(s) – and are not even human. As mentioned before in this post and my previous, it is common rhetoric from bigots that certain minorities are “lesser” than them, often to the point of them not being deemed human.  Therefore it should be taken into consideration when designing villains that look human but aren’t, who are also minorities.

To summarise, I am not accusing Star Stable of doing or even intending everything I said in my posts. I simply wished to highlight issues I found with some of their character redesigns, and then, with how fandom tended to brush off things like this or ignore them. This post is long enough as it is so I shall post my sources in an additional post, but if anyone’s wanting specific reading/resources on a point feel free to ask. Thank you.

[himawaribees]

I just got around to reading the third chapter today which was incredible btw, and I saw ur end note! I had childhood selective mutism, so I guess I could give some insight. ik you wrote you're doing research on it, so I'm gonna skip the basic definitions/facts.

Hi anon! Sorry it took me a few days to reply to this, I’ve been really busy. 

Thank you for reading my fic! I’m glad you liked it <3 

And, even more so - thank you for your incredibly informative messages about Selective Mutism. You didn’t have to go out of your way to explain it in such depth and with such relevance to me, so I am truly thankful that you took the time to do that. 

Some of what you said had already come up in my research, but lots of it was news to me - and really useful for a college au! It’s given me some great starting points for further research too, which I will definitely do when I get around to writing more of Inumaki (which will be in Part 6 of the series). I hadn’t considered accommodations as part of his university experience, so you’ve given me things to work on in my fic planning

Tbh, top secret don’t tell anyone (she says on a public post) but I want to eventually write an inuokko spin off for this series, so getting to grips with Inumaki’s character from the get go will be essential. 

Anyway, sorry for the mammoth reply - once again thank you so much for taking the time to inform me so concisely, precisely and excellently on Selective Mutism! I’ll go do my further reading now haha 

I’ve copied your messages under the cut here, to keep them all in one place and in case anyone else wants to read about Selective Mutism. 

xx

From anon:

In general, most people with selective mutism have social anxiety disorder. Selective Mutism is sort of an extension of S.A.D. People with S.A.D experience daily, intense and often irrational anxiety including physical symptoms about social situations due to possible scrutiny, judgement, rejection, judgement etc. People with S.A.D endure these situations with intense anxiety or overwhelm or avoid them.

Since S.M can interfere a lot with daily life and school, meds are often taken in addition to therapy. SSRI's (lexapro, zoloft, prozac, paxil, etc.) are taken daily. They alleviate many symptoms of SM and anxiety, and make it easier to cope and function. Even w/ medication and therapy, people with SM will still have triggers that cause bouts of muteness and distress. When this happens, the person don't be able to talk, but we use different strategies to communicate or calm down.

You mentioned that Inumaki does sometimes communicate with sign language, which I think is pretty good, especially if he's on the more severe side of the SM spectrum. When I struggled with selective mutism, I had disability accommodations through my school (this can apply to universities as well).

Accommodations can include ability to take breaks, preferential assigned seating (next to friends or people you're comfortable with), extended time on assignments and tests, ability to opt out of presentations and more. He might also have a friend that is able to support him or talk him down when he gets anxious or distressed.

[autistic--cryptid]

ok i said i was gonna do it, so here you go: g5 predictions!

I feel like this is set in the future, partially bc there’s electronics we don’t see in g4, and also bc of all of the g4 merchandise sunny has. sunny is probably a fan of the mane 6 and would try to emulate what they taught, especially with the conflict of the movie being the same conflict from hearthswarming eve, and one of the conflicts in the ending of the end. In the screenshot of sunny and izzy in the hall with the guards, sunny is reading a book with a ton of bookmarks at the top. My guess is this is either a journal she wrote, a book on the mane 6, or the friendship journal. The mane 6 canonically made and sold copies of their journal, so it makes sense that she would have one when you consider the rest of the mane 6 merchandise she has. My guess is sunny would use this the same way twilight used her book in the hooffields and mccolts, searching the book for a solution she could apply to the current situation. She could do the same with a book on the mane 6, and if she wrote the journal it would likely include the mane 6′s lessons or something similar. Judging by the pegasus guards and the wing-like emblem in the background, they’re probably in the pegasus kingdom. That would explain why we haven’t seen pipp yet. I think pipp has an important role in the pegasus kingdom, otherwise we might’ve seen her when they were introducing other characters. I hope we get an explanation as to how things got so bad, when we last saw twilight’s equestria, everyone was getting along and there were more than just ponies thriving in canterlot and ponyville. Who took the throne after twilight and messed it up? What happened to the elements after the mane 6? Judging by the fact that the new leads will have more diversity and inclusivity and the show itself will have a theme of activism, I wanna assume that we don’t see or use the elements again. FIM used them as a physical manifestation of the magic of friendship. Judging by the slogan on the blanket “Every(pony) can make a difference”, I wanna assume that we don’t see a lot of the elements or other forms of magic in the lessons we learn, and that the lessons are gonna be more focused on their relationships and celebrating their differences. The green pegasus guard in the one screenshot has visible wings that match their body, but pipp’s are white while she’s pink. Maybe they have to do with her status in the kingdom (cause judging by the crown and the fact that she isn’t present in the trailer yet i think she might be a princess), or they’re something on her wings like the rainbow wing covers twilight got in rainbow road trip. Maybe prosthetics? We’ve seen disabled pegasi before with scootaloo, so it’s totally possible that our main pegasus would have the same disability, and then use prosthetics or even a mobility aid to help her fly.

I wanna guess that Sunny is gonna be similar to twilight, maybe with a little bit of pinkie pie too. She seems cheerful and energetic, but still studious and smart. Izzy is probably closer to pinkie pie, judging by the little bit we saw of her where she’s laughing and playing around. I wanna guess Pipp is also like pinkie, maybe a little bit like rainbow dash, where she’s fun, playful, and determined. I don’t know what to expect with the boy yet other than he kind of reminds me of shining armor for no other reason than the sash and the pins. The symbol on the back wall in the pegasus kingdom was a horseshoe shape made of wings, and the one pin on his sash is a horseshoe shape with a star in the middle. Maybe that represents the earth pony guard, or the earth pony kingdom in general, and maybe that’s something he wants to take part in.

I hope we see more than just ponies this gen, g4 introduced so many new creatures and then we only got to spend a couple seasons with most of them. I hope they bring bat ponies back, and kirin, seaponies, griffons, hippogriffs, dragons, changelings, and the creatures from klugetown. I really wanna know if we still have alicorns, or maybe the kingdoms are divided because there are no alicorns to lead anymore (considering Celestia and Luna took power right around the time of hearthswarming eve). If so, do we see alicorns by the end? Will one of our main characters earn their wings and/or horn? I don’t think they’re gonna remake Twilight’s arc like that, but it would be really nice to have an earth pony become an alicorn which we could potentially get with Sunny. Who rules equestria once the divided kingdoms reunite? I really hope we either see a new alicorn, or another set of leaders like how Twilight and her friends ruled together (except this time it would be cool if they all lived in the castle and ruled together rather than just assisted the one as a council). It would also be cool to see a non-pony creature lead equestria. What happened with Twilight and Celestia’s schools? And are the pegasi living on the ground, that way Sunny and Izzy could access it, or did they manage to get up? And if they do live on the ground, what happened to cloudsdale?

I’m super excited to see what g5 does with its magic system, to see what’s changed and developed since g4. I really hope we get more building on earth ponies, g4 didn’t really build too much on earth pony magic and most of what earth ponies had was something other ponies also had. I really wanna see what special abilities earth ponies have, and how those abilities help them interact with their world. I also wanna see how this generation handles cutiemarks. On the blanket it looks like their cutiemarks are up a little higher on their backs than they have been in previous gens, and Sunny only seems to have one cutiemark. It’s possible that we just don’t see it with the angle her leg is tilted at with the way cutiemarks are higher on the body in this gen, but there’s also a chance they’re only on one side. Having cutiemarks on one side would be weird though because they didn’t used to be like that, so if this is in the future of g4, what happened? And if they are on both sides, is the boy a blankflank (honestly I would love that). I’m super excited to see what this gen does with all this

[modernidolater]

TW: Violence, dark humor, all that jazz. Go no further, angry shit, yadda.

So, yanno...i'm just gonna yell into the void about something.

When i was very young, I read a lot of encyclopedias. Most of my knowledge of the world was attributable to the Encyclopedia Britannica, which my mother kept because well, a home should have a nice, impressive looking set of books. Along with a bunch of other old books that just...really weren't the best choice for a regressive anti-technology apocalyptic fundamentalist cult, but then, as we used to joke, my mother doesn't have to make sense, she just has to make decisions.

So, I eventually started plumbing the depths to try and figure out "what the hell is wrong with my family."

While i didn't get an answer about my family in general, I did note that i seemed to be oddly suited to the definition of "psychopath," minus the whole "being a problem for society at large" thing. Asocial, low empathy, lack of guilt, inability to plan cohesively, difficulty conceptualizing consequences, near total lack of emotions except curiosity and rage, both of which are carefully stifled, aggressive tendencies...frankly, I look at my younger siblings and i can definitely assure anyone that asks that had I not been raised quite far away from society, or if I'd stayed in the cult, I would most definitely have been a problem for society.

But psychopaths are *monsters,* you see. They're so, so bad, you see. Everyone assured me, at great length, that I couldn't be that, no, no sirree. I was too nice. Too kind. I didn't punch people nearly often enough (largely because I don't like being punched outside of sex, and I like to be in charge of where I'm being punched, and even that mostly cause I'm kinda badly out together physically, but that's aside the point.)

I wasn't *hate-able.* My empathy was too high.

On that last note, I have spoken elsewhere and i believe here regarding my empathy. My empathy is specifically a learned skill picked up by reading Edgar Allen Poe's Auguste Dupin stories. Dupin explains his near preternatural ability to get inside people's heads by his learned skill of micro-mimicking body and facial language and then analyzing what he feels when he copies someone else. Works absolute wonders, particularly as up to that point (i was 8-9), I was using the classical technique of provoking and hurting people around me to experimentally figure out how other people worked. Admittedly, it's somewhat like recording a speech and listening to it at the lwvel of a whisper in a crowded room, but then mimicry is far less likely to get you punched, and see previous for my feelings on getting punched.

But now i had, for all intent, a system to demonstrate empathy. Thanks to my mother's abuse, I had a complete paranoid delusion aping guilt. I could check plans past others, and once I got my hands on Google at 14, I had the capacity to directly look up what the general, societal consequences of most actions were and model behaviors that achieved my ends. I further had 18 years of direct training in mind control and manipulation, thanks to my cult.

You may notice that what you just read sounds like the origin story of a serial killer. Ape people around them to avoid detection, paranoia making them scrupulous enough to not get caught, and careful study of laws to find the lines, plus a hyper manipulative persona.

Roll with me here. This continues forward.

So, i'm out and about, 2, 5, 6 years free of my cult. I have married a self avowed psychopath who actually HAS been diagnosed with antisocial disorder thanks to a teenage habit of theft and punching people. He is fairly sure I am not one, since I perform guilt and empathy fantastically, by rote at this point. I literally have days that my face hurts from faking emotions for too long, i am slowly developing agoraphobia because there are far too many people to mimic in a retail job, and my guilt subroutine is just a voice chanting in my head, "they're coming to get you, don't fuck up" 24/7 to the point that i am developing hallucinations, but yeah. It's definitely not psychopathy. At this point, that's just ASPD, and i'm just too darn social. Never that. I'm no monster, you see. I'm "nice."

About this point, I have learned to use mind control techniques to help people, carefully applying them with direct permission to help people open up and discuss problems. My near preternatural ability to get into people's heads, my ability to find information, and my absolute lack of fucks about morals (thus making me wildly nonjudgemental), makes me the go-to confidant for many of my friends. This neatly surrounds me with people that can smooth my life out, but you can't tell people you're friends with them cause the world is made of grey paste and you're deathly bored 24/7 and being allowed to pick through people's minds and help them optimize is the closest you get to not wanting to shoot yourself or others. Or that you carefully maintain contact with people so you can check and make sure you're not doing anything jail worthy. Or that a large group to mimic lets you blend in easier, and finding one that also is transgressive, but socially permissable (thanks, kink) blows off some steam.

Of course, people that don't know me find me deeply off-putting, as I am at this point rapidly learning to turn off the mimicry when not immediately interacting with people. This results in me appearing utterly emotionless, but as soon as people talk to me, bing, back on. I had also joined the kink subculture, giving my hedonistic and transgressive sides an outlet.

I'd also gone to the trouble of getting a multifaceted degree. Ostensibly, my degree is "multimedia journalism." If you aren't aware, this means I have a degree in research, interpersonal communication, public speaking, written communication, mass communication, some psychology, critical thinking, media creation and analysis. In short, I have the literal perfect degree for figuring out, communicating with, and functionally understanding people, as well as a vastly enhanced ability to locate obscure information.

Fast forward again. Three mental breakdowns, four years of therapy, poking at my gender, figuring out a lot of mental health problems, and a rotating series of diagnoses, life is...slowly improving. I've left a toxic marriage (toxic on both sides), moved to a completely new place, started over. I have sort of resigned myself to focusing on my (admittedly annoyingly complex and wide ranging) physical disabilities.

And it comes up, in talking to my partner, that his adoptive mother displayed (she's dead) quite a few signs of ASPD. And he asks curiously if there's any connection between ADHD, autism, and ASPD, mainly cause the "personality disorder" part. PD's can, with long or early exposure, sometimes be passed on, you see.

Guess what's being studied, right now? Not a connection between ASPD and ADHD. A connection between psychopathy and ADHD. Wait, but I thought psychopathy wasn't a thing, says I? I thought there was only ASPD, now?

Ah, but for you see, the DSM is a load of horseshit. And i have heard that from multiple communities with different relations to it, and from multiple therapists, psychiatrists, professors...as a general rule, when the people who use it, the people it's used on, and the people who teach it all agree that a document is manure, I get a touch distrustful. I get more so when current studies use umbrella terms disavowed by a document known for being reductivist and that has been noted as having a great number of entries that were manipulated deliberately to make them as narrow and unusable as possible.

So anyway.

Turns out that while no, ADHD and Autism don't make you a psychopath, there's a distinct overlap. Empathy issues are a possiblity in all three, though both ADHD and autism can create *hyper*empathy. Inability to navigate social constructs is another point of overlap.

But really, it's the serotonin deficiency that hurls it across the line for me. And the genetic factors. Can psychopathy result from environment? Yeah, seems so. But there does seem to be a genetic and neurochemical component. Which is...curious for a disorder presented as purely a traumatic abreaction that creates dangerous amorals.

I then looked it up. And wouldn't you know, psychopathy is only pathologized as ASPD/APD, and DPD? The former is the sort of psychopathy that is characterized by violent amd criminal antisocial behavior, and the other an inability to understand and perform social mores at all. But this is the DSM, so these are of course diagnosed by problems caused for others as a first line.

Violation of societal norms, lack of emotions other than rage, aggression...it's almost like the same people that named a serotonin and function deficiency Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder to enshrine the disorder only by those aspects that make neurotypical people uncomfortable rather than seeking to help the neurodivergent person, the same people that invented torturous behavioral correction therapies to "fix" the neurodivergent person? Those strike me as people that might possibly have looked a serotonin deficiency that causes rage, limited emotions, impulsivity, difficulty conceptualizing consequence, and potentially a hell of a lot of other fun side shit and decided to call that "Doesn't get along with others well" disorder.

What really kicks it in the teeth for me, however, is that psychopathy used to mean more than "a social pariah." You see, Theodore Millon, the guy that wrote the book on personality disorders, noted between 5 and 10 subtypes. Do you know what they are?

Nomadic

(including schizoid and avoidant features)

Drifters; roamers, vagrants; adventurer, itinerant vagabonds, tramps, wanderers; they typically adapt easily in difficult situations, shrewd and impulsive. Mood centers in doom and invincibility

Malevolent

(including sadistic and paranoid features)

Belligerent, mordant, rancorous, vicious, sadistic, malignant, brutal, resentful; anticipates betrayal and punishment; desires revenge; truculent, callous, fearless; guiltless; many dangerous criminals, including serial killers.

Covetous

(including negativistic features) Rapacious, begrudging, discontentedly yearning; hostile and domineering; envious, avaricious; pleasures more in taking than in having.

Risk-taking

(including histrionic features) Dauntless, venturesome, intrepid, bold, audacious, daring; reckless, foolhardy, heedless; unfazed by hazard; pursues perilous ventures.

Reputation-defending 

(including narcissistic features) Needs to be thought of as infallible, unbreakable, indomitable, formidable, inviolable; intransigent when status is questioned; overreactive to slights.

(It should be noted: the features listed above are simply what each presentation is most likely to display if disordered. A reputation-defender may not display narcissm, a risk taker may not be histrionic. A malevolent [what a terribly judgy name...] could be negativistic, or avoidant, or histrionic. And so on.)

Now, ya may be going, "wait, hold up, narcissism is on there! We still have that! Schizoid is on there, we have that! Sadism, paranoia, we got all those things!"

Flash quiz: do you know what a personality disorder is? It's a series of learned behaviors that require moderation and unlearning.

Why yes, they did spin multiple neurotypes off into diagnoses that require behavioral therapy to "fix." Why on earth would you think they wouldn't? They're still trying to use reparative therapy on auties. Hell, near as I can figure, histrionic got spun into Borderline Personality disorder. You know what the therapy for that is? DBT, aka, "it IS your fault and you SHOULD feel bad."

Beyond knowing there used to be different flavors, did you know that there is about a millionty scare articles about how psychopaths are everywhere? Guess why.

What do you get when someone has an absolute need to see what's on the other side of the hill and no real fucks to give about how you get there? You get scientists, explorers, people utterly driven to find out. Think about how many of our science and exploration heros are noted as deeply weird and off-kilter. We have whole stereotypes about this. There are books and articles devoted to the transgressive personas and behaviors of famous scientists and explorers.

What do you get when someone is belligerent, paranoid, truculent, violent, fearless? Snipers. Literally. The army has openly stated they like psychopaths quite a lot. Someone that can look at a map of human lives and commit calculus with the phrase "acceptable losses" makes a damn fine general, wouldn't you say? Hunters, too. Make a good king? Or bounty hunter. Or, if we're going to be honest, a martial artist. Hell, think of all the ways our society accepts violence in real terms and symbolically. Management. Video gamer. Espionage. Actuary. Pest control. There are THOUSANDS of of societal uses for people like this.

Covetous? Well, banks are openly quite loving towards psychopaths. CEOs are indicated here. Businessmen. Fandoms with collection as a function have any number of anecdotes of individuals who have an intense drive to get more. "Focused on the chase, rather than the victory, to the exclusion of all else" is considered a positive, laudable personality trait. To put it in other terms, "can't stop, won't stop, never done." Sports players, yes? Football, rugby, hockey...

Risk takers are the real standouts, in terms of societal love. Doctors. Firemen. EMT's. Skydivers. Extreme sports players. Equipment testers. The list goes on. Society loves risk taking psychopaths. Hell, look at the diagnostic criterion up there: it's mostly traits with high positive connotations.

Reputation defending? Politics. Law. Advertising. Acting. Writing. Religion. Leadership of any kind.

I'm not talking out my ass here. All those fields have been noted as friendly towards, attractive to, and having a high representation of people who fit the behavioral model of psychopath.

But only if they're useful. Like literally every other non-normative neurotype.

Society loves ADHD and autistic people when they're displaying savant abilities or when they can mask well enough to use their sensory and cognitive differences to societal ends.

And if they're a problem for people around them, that's treated. The underlying difficulties? The societal structures that punish and harm them? The pain of adapting their entire neurobiome to do all the work of interfacing with different neurotypes while being driven to harness anything useful and discard the rest of their brain? No, we don't treat that. That's just the price of doing business. "Pull yourself up and don't be a problem."

And here's the problem, in plain terms: psychopaths who learn to cope, to mask, to adapt like I did are never diagnosed. I have spent most of my life fairly concerned about the fact that I seem not to have emotions or compunction, that i am always consciously working to figure out and connect to people around me on the most basic level, that I am constantly working to keep an active model of social norms going at all times. And I don't mean "shake hands, eye contact." I mean I have the same mental conversation regarding "don't shoot that person" and "use a turn signal." All prosocial behaviors, all social behaviors period, are a struggle to understand.

The funny thing is, it also makes antisocial behaviors difficult. Shooting someone seems remarkably inconvenient in many cases. Regardless of whether I care about getting caught or not, shooting somone will interrupt my day.

Not shooting them also seems remarkably inconvenient in many cases. Yes, it'd be a pain in the ass to shoot them, but then again, if I do it correctly, I only have to do it once.

But again, "correctly" is a wildly unfixed variable, and the whole question won't come up if I always ensure I fail the "do i currently have a firearm" step. And I don't. Ever.

That's how my brain works. Y'all go on about moral and ethical and legal reasons. That's an exhausting conscious mental conversation to have every other day, so my shortcut is:

"Should I shoot them? Oh, right, I don't have a gun. Guess not. Should I get one? No, cause I might shoot someone, and that'd be a pain in the ass. Welp, no shooting people."

And so it goes. I don't understand any social norms. Good or bad. I have all the problematic issues still, mind you. Environmental factors. I mimic and I was raised in an apocalypse cult in Oklahoma. I spend a lot of brain space sorting between prosocial behaviors and the violent antisocial behaviors I was taught were prosocial.

Because, you see, I can't really understand the prosocial behaviors, but I can see they work. And antisocial behaviors don't, really. Have i impulsively pocketed something? Couple times. Even got away with. Can't steal a house, though. And theft gets boring, for me.

Ok, except piracy. I may quite enjoy piracy.

Cooperation with a larger whole can and does yield benefits. Forcing myself to sit through mind numbing gratification delays does seem to yield results that are beneficial, though I really try to keep that one to a minimum. I refuse to be bored if I can help it. Making nice talky sounds gets me shit faster than making angry talky sounds.

Possibly this is a result if being raised manipulative. No idea. Kinda don't care.

Point is, I'm one of the psychopaths that, while not immediately useful, is also not actively a problem. So no-one will listen when i talk about everything being gray and cold and exhaustingly complicated because people make no sense and almost all my emotions are dialed so far down it's a joke i lack the ability to laugh about.

No one has believed me that the one emotion I have in spades is rage and that i have to literally consciously work out from first principles why violence is a bad option as my sole method of controlling that, my ONLY EMOTION OF ANY STRENGTH, which I cannot allow myself to feel for any length of time because I start losing sight of that consequence model and I worry i'll make a mistake I can't unmake. Or that it took me two decades to learn not to smash things I need when someone looks at me funny. Or just smash them.

Or that i have to keep my hands in my pockets and chant "don't steal" in my head some days. That I wear tight clothing with shallow pockets to make stealing harder so that, like guns, I simply can't do it easily and therefore short circuit my behaviors.

People are more than happy to hurl me at any problem that requires a lack of emotion, but if I dare to be less than appropriately emotional on a date? At a wedding? Funeral? If I make an error and don't diagnose it myself and perform contrition appropriately, regardless of if I knew there was a social or personal rule there? Well, I'm fired/broken up with/punished/evicted.

But I am not actively a problem for society. So none of those things are worth diagnosing. Or helping in any way.

And those that are useful? Are often fed utter horseshit and encouraged to break society. Bankers creating recessions. Generals commanding useless wars. Cops. Doctors that uphold a broken system. Politicians that pursue a broken society.

I know, I can see, that ASPD people catch a shit ton of shit cause they get blamed for "useful" psychopaths mistakes, and none of the benefits when said same psychopaths are lionized. Looking back at what it was, and what it is now, pathologically speaking, it makes perfect fucking sense for the asshats that designed a diagnosis to only include the people they don't like as the "sick" ones, and label the "good" ones as "heroes." Makes a nice distinction there between people we want to demonize and people we want to lionize for having the exact same chemical imbalance, and neatly creates a fall group when any of the "heroes" trip up. Silence those who can't cope, elevate those that can, treat neither effectively, and if an elevated one stops coping, we can just "realize" they were "sick" all along, and oh, yeah, those sick people are so bad, you guys, nothing like those heroes at allllllll.

I am...so tired of this society bullshit.

So anyway, I'm a psychopath. Paranoid, some schizoid. So whatever grains of salt you feel like taking, grab 'em, I guess. I'd mostly like for people like me to stop being weaponized, lionized, or punished for having a different neurotype. I'd like to be able to talk to a doctor about that and for there to be some options beyond "stop that," "get locked up," "have you considered the army" (yes, a doctor actually asked me that as a teenager) or "you seem fine, tho."

And if you resonate with this, well...I'm 32, never been arrested, mostly managed to avoid terrible shit, and I've got a life, couple partners, and I'm surviving, so like. You can do this. Lotta people wanna tell you you can't have this or that cause "you're not bad, tho." They're stupid. Y'ain't evil, just different. Don't let them get to you.

And (this is a joke) if you decide to shoot someone, do it once, correctly. Saves time.

[newstfionline]

Saturday, April 24, 2021

Burned out by the pandemic, 3 in 10 health-care workers consider leaving the profession (Washington Post) It’s been months since Justin Meschler, 48, practiced medicine. And he wonders if he ever will again. He quit his job as an anesthesiologist during the pandemic last spring when fear began seeping into every part of his life. And what began as a few months off has now turned into something much longer. “I feel guilty for leaving. I think about the others who stayed on. I think about the patients I could have helped. I feel like I abandoned them,” Meschler said. “But mostly, I feel relieved.” A year into the pandemic, many others are joining Meschler at the door—an exodus fueled by burnout, trauma and disillusionment. According to a Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll, roughly 3 in 10 health-care workers have weighed leaving their profession. More than half are burned out. And about 6 in 10 say stress from the pandemic has harmed their mental health. Many traced their disillusionment to how the pandemic exposed and magnified the broken parts of America’s health-care system. “You look at staffing, preparedness, what the priorities were for many hospitals during the crisis, and it’s clear the industry is driven by profits rather than well-being of patients or health workers,” Meschler said from his home in Louisville, Colo. “It makes you question the whole system.”

House Democrats pass D.C. statehood, launching bill into uncharted territory (Washington Post) For the second time in history, the House passed legislation Thursday to make the District of Columbia the nation’s 51st state, bolstering momentum for a once-illusory goal that has become a pivotal tenet of the Democratic Party’s voting rights platform. The bill now heads to the Senate. But the political odds remain formidable. Republicans, who hold 50 seats, have branded the bill as a Democratic power grab because it would create two Senate seats for the deep-blue city. Not even all Senate Democrats have backed the bill as the clock ticks toward the 2022 midterm election. Voting rights groups have described a city of second-class citizens, a plurality of whom are Black, living in the nation’s capital without any say in the nation’s laws.

Bringing Up Baby, And Charging Them For It (NPR) Foster care is a public service that federal law and all 50 state laws require the government to pay for. Foster care agencies are funded through a web of federal and state grants and subsidies, which, again, taxpayers are supposed to pay for. 10% of children in the US foster care system are entitled to Social Security (SS) benefits, either because their parents have died or because they have a physical or mental disability that would leave them in poverty without financial help. This money—typically more than $700 per month—is considered the children’s property under federal law. Congress never intended that the SS benefits owed these children would be a funding stream for their foster care services. The Marshall Project teamed up with NPR to expose how foster care agencies in at least 36 states and Washington, DC have been appropriating money owed to children in foster care to pay for the very services the government is supposed to provide with taxpayer dollars. Agencies do it by combing through their case files to find kids entitled to these benefits, then applying to SS to become each child’s financial representative, a process permitted by federal regulations. Once approved, the agencies take the money, almost always without notifying the children, their loved ones, or their lawyers. Child Trends research shows that state foster care agencies collected more than $165 million from foster children in 2018 alone. And SS data indicates the number is likely much higher.

Biden to recognize Armenian genocide (Foreign Policy) According to multiple reports, U.S. President Joe Biden is to break a long-standing taboo this Saturday by officially recognizing the massacre of 1 million ethnic Armenian by the Ottoman Empire as a genocide. Biden had commemorated the Armenian genocide as a presidential candidate last year, but Saturday’s proclamation would make him the first sitting president to do so. The announcement is certain to anger NATO ally Turkey, which disputes the historical record and the use of the term.

Mexican mobile data law (Foreign Policy) On Tuesday, a judge blocked part of a new Mexican law that requires cellphone users to submit biometric data, such as fingerprints and eye scans. The measure had drawn pushback from privacy and consumer safety advocates. The judge wrote there was no causal relationship between such data gathering and better investigations of crimes—one official justification for the new law. It will now face further examination in the courts.

Human excrement ‘increasingly serious problem’ as Britain opens up but many bathrooms don’t (Washington Post) With Britain slowly easing its way out of its third nationwide lockdown, people across the country are enjoying a return to a sense of normalcy. Shops and gyms have reopened and parks are once again heaving with groups of up to six people—for many, it’s a welcome step forward and a joy to be back socializing outdoors. But what happens when nature calls? The issue of where to relieve oneself in a world where so many facilities have been shut in recent months has long been a concern in Britain. Many public bathrooms, in particular, were closed during the various lockdowns and remain unavailable. Across the country, police patrols have been stepped up in a bid to deter people from urinating in bushes, on beaches and on private allotments. The problem isn’t just in parks, with towns and cities complaining that people spending time outdoors had no choice but to defecate in the street—much to the horror of local residents who said the odor was so bad on certain streets they were unable to open their windows and had to clean up after others with bleach and water. The lack of facilities has also meant people were unable to wash their hands—an instruction the government has repeatedly used in its messaging to curb the spread of infections over the past year.

Many in Western Europe and U.S. Want Economic Changes as Pandemic Continues (Pew Research Center) The coronavirus outbreak has caused, among other things, a debate around how to best rebuild national economies ravaged by the pandemic. Across the United States, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, significant shares believe their economic system needs either major changes or a complete overhaul, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in the late fall of 2020. Few in the four countries say their economy does not need any changes. The desire for change is strongest in France, where seven-in-ten believe the economic system in their country needs either major changes or to be completely reformed. Half share this view in the U.S., UK and Germany, while around four-in-ten in these three nations say minor changes are warranted. Few would opt for no adjustments to the economic system, ranging from 3% in France to 12% in the U.S. Of the five policies tested, the idea of government-sponsored job and skills training for workers garners the highest shares. Sizable shares in these countries also believe it is very important for their government to implement policies targeted at helping those struggling financially, building more public housing, and increasing government benefits to the poor, all three of which are of high import for around four-in-ten or more in each country.

Russia orders troops back to base after buildup near Ukraine (Reuters) Russia announced on Thursday it was ordering troops back to base from the area near the border with Ukraine, apparently calling an end to a buildup of tens of thousands of soldiers that had alarmed the West. A confirmed pullout of the troops brought in on top of the permanent contingent will likely be welcomed by Western countries that had been expressing alarm at the prospect of further Russian intervention in eastern Ukraine. Russian-backed separatists have been fighting the Ukrainian government in the region since 2014. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said he had ordered troops involved in exercises to return to their bases by May 1, as they had completed what he called an “inspection” in the border area.

US troops in Afghanistan begin packing gear in pullout prep (AP) The U.S. military has begun shipping equipment and winding down contracts with local service providers ahead of the May 1 start of the final phase of its military pullout from Afghanistan, a U.S. Defense Department official said Thursday. The pullout under U.S. President Joe Biden marks the end of America’s longest war after a 20-year military engagement. Currently, some 2,500 U.S. soldiers and about 7,000 allied forces are still in Afghanistan. In February last year, the U.S. military began closing its smaller bases. In mid-April, the Biden administration announced that the final phase of the withdrawal would begin May 1 and be completed before Sept. 11. Since then, the military has been shipping equipment and winding down local contracts for services such as trash pickup and maintenance work, the U.S. official told The Associated Press. The Taliban, meanwhile, were non-committal when asked by the AP whether the insurgents would attack departing U.S. and NATO troops. “It’s too early for these issues, nothing can be said about the future,” said Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem.

Indian coronavirus cases surge as health system staggers (Reuters) India reported the world’s highest daily tally of coronavirus infections for a second day on Friday, surpassing 330,000 new cases, as it struggles with a health system overwhelmed by patients and plagued by accidents. Deaths in the past 24 hours also jumped to a record 2,263, the health ministry said, while officials across northern and western India, including the capital, New Delhi, warned most hospitals were full and running out of oxygen. The surge in cases came as a fire in a hospital in a suburb of Mumbai treating COVID-19 patients killed 13 people, the latest accident to hit a facility crowded with virus sufferers.

Violence in Jerusalem (Foreign Policy) Dozens were injured in Jerusalem on Thursday night as anti-Arab protests led by far-right Jewish activists turned violent. The Palestinian Red Crescent reported 105 people injured in the clashes as Haaretz reported more than 30 were arrests. The violence follows a week of assaults on Arab Israelis and Palestinians by Jewish Israeli residents. Tensions rose between the communities last week after videos of Palestinians assaulting Jews were posted on TikTok.

Crew Of ‘Ever Given’ Could Be Stuck On The Big Boat For Years (Jalopnik) The news cycle may have moved on from the Ever Given, but the Ever Given still hasn’t moved on from its holding spot in the Great Bitter Lake in the middle of the Suez Canal after almost a month. The crew still stuck on the ship is very concerned about this, as there seems to be no sign that an agreement will be reached between Egypt and the Ever Given’s owners any time soon. Until there is an agreement in place, the crew is stuck there, and they could be for years. Apparently, it isn’t unusual for crew members to get trapped on ships caught in the middle of international shipping disputes. The Guardian details the fate of one sailor who has been the lone guardian of a ship for the last two years in the Gulf of Suez only 50 miles south of where the Ever Given has been held since it was freed back in March. He’s only allowed off the ship for two hour intervals to get food and water. The crew is stuck in the middle of a legal battle between the Suez Canal Authority, which is basically a stand-in for the Egyptian government, the owners of the Ever Given, Japanese company Shoei Kisen Kaisha Ltd and the operators of the ship, a German company called Bernhard Schulte. The SCA is demanding $916 million in damages due to the blockage while Shoei Kisen disputes those charges. Until the company pays up, the government of Egypt is holding on to the ship. The 26 crew members are reportedly in good spirits, but apprehensive according to representatives from the National Union of Seafarers of India, the trade union representing the Ever Given’s crew.

[finngswan]

I have too many projects and not enough time - may as well add a blog.

I don't know if a blog by me would be interesting. Or if anyone would read it. But I feel like I need a connection, no matter how much my Scorpio ass might be afraid of being vulnerable.

I recently bought a bluetooth keyboard so I can start writing with it. It helps, since my phone has a blue light filter. The keyboard has a few issues, like holdiing shift and space makes it check what the language is and it doesn't work with all apps (doesn't work on FB messenger, but it does on my personal). But it gets the job done where it counts.

I'm isolated out here in the countryside. We live on a dangerous, busy and loud highway. I can't drive due to my failing eyesight and my narcissist mom takes advantage of that to keep me further isolated. I'm afraid to contact any old friends because I barely talk or see them as it is.

I've applied for disability and am waiting to hear back about my appeals. Recent political developments make me hopeful, but, ya know, I've already been told once that I'm not disabled enough to qualify. For my appeal, I wrote EVERYTHING down, even the stuff I'm too embarrassed to talk about to anyone. It was a page and a half of mental and physical issues, including my situation with my narcissist mom who has kept me from therapy. She's been threatening to stop picking up my meds, too.

I recently opened up to a family member in the North West and we're making plans to get me there if I can raise the money. I have a GoFundMe I kinda keep tucked away. I'm too embarrassed to post it or promote it.

The only thing keeping me sane are my projects and my cat. Hell, my cat keeps me waking up in the morning and holds me to a schedule, haha. She's a sweetie.

I know all of this is a cinder block of information to start my Tumblr with - I know. But this is my journey and I want to share it. Do you think you could go on this journey with me?

[transrightsjimin]

wrote a whole rant abt the mess of privatized mail in my country but ill save it for after ive gone to the store

long story short, please be nicer to mail and parcel deliverers!!

even if they fucking throw your package on the roof or bury it in their garden or leave a note for picking up a parcel despite you being home when they came by, just please think and realize that this shit happens bc a lot of deliverers work for minimum wage (or less when they are disabled and/or immigrant workers), who consistently need to work faster, keep getting introduced to new standardized systems tht are introduced bc of budget cuts nd mechanization of mail sorting and based on american street planning tht doesnt apply well here, get pressured into taking on extra routes, often struggle w mental health issues nd a lot have either two jobs or live on welfare. nd both mail and parcel deliverers need to have delivered everything in time before reaching the retailer, despite so many factors like different closing times for shops so ppl then rush and write these notes in advance just to make it in time, getting fragile packages that are NOT fit for trucks in which you cant secure boxes well or can put safely in a bike bag (e.g. an old colleague of mine had a broken alcohol bottle(??) in her mail bag nd wine drenched all the mail), residents abruptly starting a whole rant to you, demanding to deliver mail or packages you don't have w you or thinking you're a different kind if deliverer, people thinking you know every resident personally by name despite working in a different place w 1000-1500 different addresses per day, all on your own crappy bike (when mail, which i deliver) or truck that has a card minoritoring your every move (with parcels, like w my dad). nd then we get blamed for shit like, not having a parcel or important letter that the machines fucked up on as we don't have it, or we rish stuff and make mistakes and workers deal w mental illness nd physical health issues and do weird stuff at the job and are portrayed as some kind if evil profession for it. like i shit you not, i had to hear these rants abt postal workers even from others at a workers' union protest despite them knowing i am a mail worker.

please just remember that mail and parcel personnel does not do this vital but underpaid job w a high time pressure and is physical straining, to pull mean tricks on customers or some shit. deliverers make mistakes bc the mail sorting is mechanized but not optimized, and there is this huge working load. i think my frustration w the disrespect to mail workers finally snapped recently, when someone (as usual) pulled the mail out my hands through the other side of the door mailbox (which always scares me a bit like wtf r u doing!) within 0.5 seconds and yanking on it so hard tht my hand slammed against the sharp mailbox corners nd cut my hand open. like it might be such a small thing and i know some residents even consider this helping nd dont do it out of rush, but im TIRED. please dont blame us when so much of the mail processing isnt even fucking done by humans nd we can in fact, not pay perfect attention to every address or name on every letter or box when we have to deliver to thousands on a day. my dad delivers parcels for a different main company and there isn't even any order in the boxes that are put in his truck, by even more overworked and underpaid eastern european immigrant workers, nd he needs to find and sort through them all nd deliver for 50 hours a week w the most bizarre tasks like dragging 80 kilo packages up several flights and deliver over 500 packages in one day. ive had a colleague who had a schedule of 20 hours if mail delivery per week bit was in reality scheduled for around 43 hours, which only counts the routes she walked and not all the work or time in between where she had to travel to further away routes or carry and sort bags at the mail collection garage thing. she was so overworked that she had to keep writing notes in advance, just so she could drop off packages in time at the retailer. she worked such long hours that she couldnt make it to meetings of a postal workers' union, which also unfortunately is a union tht doesnt actually do much for workers nd rather lures in members w discounts for products nd membership but for the rest fully cooperates w the company.

like urgh i know i still went on a rant today but please be more fucking considerate and patient and dont let your leftist beliefs stop once you are on the receiving end of the service of a mail worker. like if we get retail customers are shitty to shop employees, we should get this too.

[scriptlgbt]

My story is about pirates. The MC is a trans guy and the captain is a lesbian who is some sort of big sister/mother figure to him. It's quite violent. I was wondering if it could be problematic? I know it's problematic to show trans woman being overly violent in fiction but what about cis lesbians and straight trans guys? Also, do you know about real any queer pirates i could read about? And what did pirates think about homosexuality/transness?) How was it being queer in the pirate world?

A conversation that I had, that is relevant:

ME: [PARTNER], do you know anything about queer pirates?

PARTNER: I know that there were many, and they’d sometimes be like -

ME: Sea husbands kind of thing?

PARTNER: Yeah, and one would inherit from the other’s booty, and when it was divided up, they’d share their share of the booty.

ME: [mischievous grinning face]

PARTNER: [nodding] And they might share each other’s booty.

Disclaimer: This whole thing is going to largely focus on what is known as the Golden Age Of Piracy. I’m also not a historian, I just hardcore, love pirates with my heart and soul. This is going to be a long post.

So, this is super generalized, but pirates, and even sea-faring folks in general (see: - or sea, hahahahaha - the LGBT+ history of Brighton in the UK), have tended to have a much higher rate of LGBT+ folks and minoritized people in general, throughout history. As far as most research I’ve done goes. Being in a travelling situation and having the anonymity of being able to move around with chosen family generally has great appeal to folks whose existences are filled with oppression and a sense of not belongingness. This has also applied for racialized people, women in general, impoverished folks in general, a lot of different people who wanted to reclaim a place in the world that ostracized them.

Another fun fact, the use of the term “Friend of Dorothy” as a euphemism for gay folks was investigated by the US Navy. They misunderstood it as meaning that there actually was a woman named Dorothy who could be routed down and coerced into outing her “friends” to the military. Cruise ships and others have also used this phrase to covertly advertise that there were meetings for these folks. (Source: Wikipedia | “Friend of Dorothy”) 

But to get to the pirates, specifically.

Most pirate ships largely had their own code that everyone on their ship had to agree to. Some had things like, “you’ll be marooned with one knife, and no food if you are caught not reporting loot to be divvied up by the crew fairly” and things like that. But generally, whoever ran the ship, the Captain, would get to pick the rules. And with the partial-democracy that comes with the idea of mutiny, and the more notable reliance on the labour of it all, in general, things were able to be slightly more consensus-based than the on-land governments.

There are numerous women who became pirates to take ownership of their lives in ways that weren’t permitted on-land. Anne Bonny and Mary Read are historical figures that might be worth looking into. The two of them shared lovers, sailed together, had intense care for one and other and with their dressing up in masculine-coded attire and the like, there’s a lot to go off of in assuming they may have been romantically involved with each other. If not, at least they had some iteration of what a lot of contemporary folks might find comparable to a QPR.

The concept of “sea husbands” was also called matelotage (or bunkmate) depending on your crew. It was kind of the buddy system, but gayer. With little need to consistently explain it to outsiders, folks at sea were freer to explore the different ways a relationship with another person can be, without so much worrying about how it looks to others at a passing glance. And as pirates, there’s less concern that you’ll get shit from the law for gay stuff Of All Things. 

Buccaneer Alexander Exquemelin wrote: ‘It is the general and solemn custom amongst them all to seek out… a comrade or companion, whom we may call partner… with whom they join the whole stock of what they possess.’  (Source)

It was just normal. They also had a version of health insurance where someone was compensated if they ended up disabled from battle. The compensation of death of your partner also works into this.

As for transness, these kinds of things have had fickle definitions and historically, it’s hard to be able to pinpoint specific people as fitting cleanly into contemporary cultural definitions of transness, because frankly, the past had different culture to now. When it comes to writing canonically trans characters in contexts where the language might have been different, it’s important to focus on making sure that a trans reader can identify the personal connection with that character’s experiences and feelings, just as much as it is to use language to name folks as trans. 

Representation can go deeper than surface terminology and the like, and in cases where the terminology doesn’t necessarily match, it has to. Language like, “I never really felt like a [assigned gender] - I see myself more like [desciption of actual gender identity or name for it].” - is as good as just saying the character is trans in my opinion.

Depending on where the character is from, they also may have just outright had a word in their language for their identity. 

Gender presentation was significantly freer with pirates than it was for folks on land. Things like earrings, frilled sleeves, varied hair length and similar, were not uncommon, although the gendered coding associated with these aspects of appearance had different implications than they do now. Gold earrings on seafarers were there to fund a proper burial if someone’s body washed ashore. Gendered clothing was also coded in more binary ways on land. Folks who wanted to be coded as men could do so by wearing pants and folks who wanted to be coded as women could do so with skirts and dresses. (Tangential but fun fact yet again: dressing in those big poofy skirts usually included massive pockets. They were generally not physically attached to the skirts, but if you wore it all properly you would easily be able to reach into them.) 

Pirates and other seafarers also had clothing referred to as ‘slops’ for cleaning (if they were of the rank that cleaned anyway) which were pretty wide-legged pants that could almost pass for a skirt. 

Material that pirates used for clothing was largely what they stole, but it was cut and sewn into the same shapes a lot of other seafarers wore. At the time, it was largely illegal (under English rules anyway) for people who weren’t the bourgeoisie to wear anything made with nice fabric. Rich people saw this as deceitful, and these laws enabled richer people to not mingle on an equal level with those of a lower socioeconomic status.

As pirates, if you’re already shunning the law, may as well wear full calico suits. (Like Calico Jack Rackham.)

There’s more info on pirate and privateer clothing here. (The link is to a free book in HTML format, complete with illustrations and talk of materials, and how the clothes worn at sea varied from clothes they wore when they came into shore and towns.)

I could write a book on this and still not have covered enough. But the gist is that pirates were a big counterculture of outsiders living their lives. LGBT+ people and racialized people got thrown into the mix (and jumped right in) and experienced much more liberated lives than they might otherwise. That isn’t to say they were flawlessly inclusive - there still definitely were a lot of things people thought of in congruence with colonial beliefs. There was racism and homophobia - but it looked a lot different, and was a lot lighter than you’d think. And there were some ships which banned women, but mainly I think that was because they typically didn’t have the background to hold their ground on the ships, and were considered more of a plus one to certain crew members (who brought them - the rules were specifically about bringing them onto the ship rather than them being there of their own accord) than part of the crew. Sometimes women were part of the crew.

Notably, Anne Bonny and Mary Read were in a polyamorous triad with Calico Jack Rackham. (I think a cis + het historian might argue about this but that would seem like denial to me tbh. There is much, MUCH more evidence pointing in this direction than against it, and it would be extraordinarily hard to argue otherwise.) I would definitely do some research on them!

I also recommend this book (link is the free text on WikiSource), A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates. It is perhaps the most famous contemporary record of the lives of a number of pirates from the time, including Anne Bonny and Mary Read.

As for the sensitivity aspect of this ask, I’d say that what you are describing is completely fine. As long as the violence isn’t used to dehumanize or completely demonize, I would even say that I don’t have any warnings for you about it, or precautions to advise on.

Thank you for this opportunity to infodump about LGBT+ pirates. I hope this is not overwhelming, but I’m also happy to parse out segments of this better upon request. (Our ask will be open eventually, I promise.)

- mod nat

[tomfooleryprime]

I love Sarek. But he’s really not that great.

Sarek and Amanda are my favorite couple, not just in Star Trek, but ever. I’ve written more than half a million words of fanfiction about them. I’ve watched episodes featuring them so many times I secretly worry Netflix will put me on blast.

But I am not a Sarek apologist.

I’m pretty sure what draws most people to this couple is the age-old romantic notion that opposites may attract but the power of love can overcome anything. Cue cheesy instrumental music and a torrid kiss in the rain at a train station. I imagine a lot of women see themselves in Amanda, a seemingly regular woman with a regular life. Then they see a successful guy like Sarek, a dude who’s physically fit, well-educated, powerful, and absurdly intelligent, and it’s only natural that a recipe for hotness is born.

Because I’ve devoted literally years to dreaming up various ways this couple might have shacked up and vomiting the results all over AO3, I’ve also been forced to examine the personalities of both characters in great detail, and the only consistent conclusion I come to is fanon (myself included) gets it wrong most of the time.

Their marriage can’t have always been smooth sailing. If you’re not willing to believe me, then believe Amanda. 

Oh sure, there are tons of one-shots where they have little spats, but they almost always end with both of them making heart eyes at each other and jumping into bed. I get that Star Trek originated in the 1960s, but that doesn’t mean Sarek and Amanda had one of those “golly gee” wholesome relationships that could put Ward and June Cleaver to shame. 

Whichever version of Sarek you personally subscribe to, be it Mark Lenard, Ben Cross, or James Frain, it’s entirely possible to find the actors attractive but still think the character of Sarek could use some improvement. It’s also possible to love a character and admire their good qualities while being disappointed in their shortcomings. Maybe it makes me a shitty fangirl. Maybe it makes me realistic.

Literally decades of fanfiction and fan art have polished over Sarek’s unprettier bits, often portraying him as a hopeless romantic, a tender lover, a devoted father, and a man fiercely dedicated to his wife. I’m not going to argue each of those is patently false—hell, as a fanfiction writer, I’ve bought into some of those tropes myself—but I think some are truer than others. Let’s examine the canon.  

When we first meet him in “Journey to Babel,” he’s callous and aloof. He’s Vulcan, I get it, more on that later. But seriously, the guy has a habit of summoning his wife and acts like he doesn’t even know his own damn son. No one should be standing up to enthusiastically applaud and hand the man a husband or father-of-the-year trophy. Even Amanda seems pretty resigned to the arrangement.

I already know what the pushback to this assertion will be. He’s Vulcan! You can’t judge a Vulcan by human standards! Well, his wife is human and one of his sons is half-human, so I would argue that it should at least be an option, but I wrote a whole other essay on Star Trek’s moral relativism problem. 

Long story short, Star Trek glosses over a lot of moral and ethical dilemmas by using the argument, “Who are we to judge a culture we’re not part of?” I can’t answer that, but I will say someone once gave me a great piece of advice that I think applies to this idea of moral relativism: no person’s belief is inherently worthy of respect, but every person is. Maybe to understand Sarek as a person, we should look first at Sarek as a Vulcan.

Obviously Sarek subscribes to Vulcan philosophy, and while Vulcan philosophy seems pure as hell with its pacifism and its belief in embracing Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations (IDIC), I’m going to assert the Vulcan adherence to that philosophy seems to be a little lunch counter in nature. Yes, they take two scoops of resting bitch face and they’ll pass on the extra helping of tolerance. Sarek hails from a culture that is ostensibly exclusionary, sexist, and xenophobic in its practices.

When we encounter Vulcans in Enterprise, they’re people who mock humans for being too volatile, go to war with their Andorian neighbors, and aggressively purge the Syrranites for wanting to get back to the true meaning of Surak. But you might say, but that was before the Federation! They got better when they put T’Pau in charge.

Really? When we meet them next in the chronological timeline in Discovery, they’re telling Sarek they’ll only admit one of his weird social science pet projects (or as Sarek calls them, his kids) to the Vulcan Expeditionary Group.

In the Discovery episode “Light and Shadows,” Amanda reveals that Spock had a learning disability as a young child, which clearly embarrassed Sarek. Sadder still? Amanda explains there didn’t seem to be any educators on Vulcan willing to help a half-Vulcan child with a human learning disability. 

In the alternate timeline, when Spock applies to the Vulcan Science Academy, the admissions folks give him a pat on the back for achieving so much, despite his great disadvantage of having a human mom. Replace the word “human” with any religious, racial, or ethnic group, and see how you still feel about that sentence. 

Yes, Vulcans have racists and nationalists just like the rest of us and it doesn’t seem like they’re a rare breed either. Sarek is clearly attempting to be a better Vulcan, so kudos to him. However, not being an overt racist is not synonymous with sainthood. 

It’s pretty obvious throughout canon that while Sarek loves his wife, he’s uncomfortable with humanity, and he’s doubly perplexed with the humanity she imparted in their son. She even directly accuses him of never truly respecting humanity, to which he replies:

Which, let’s be honest, sounds like the rough equivalent of the “I can’t be racist because I have a black friend” defense. So many things in canon point to Sarek being utterly baffled by humans, not cutely intrigued by them as so often seen in fanon. The only time Spock and Sarek seem chummy with each other is when they’re mocking Amanda’s human emotionalism in “Journey to Babel.” Whether or not he meant to (and he definitely meant to), Sarek raised a son who saw his human half as a thing to be overcome.

Discovery has also hammered a lot of nails into the affectionate father coffin. Up until the final episode in season 1, he never called Michael his daughter and instead referred to her as his ward. It’s nice that he finally got over that technical distinction, but it doesn’t exactly conjure up the image of him tucking her into bed and giving her a kiss on the forehead.

He seems to accept her humanity because, well, she is human, but his own son’s humanity isn’t ok? Not like it matters, because his plan was to mold Michael into a Vulcan-like human anyway, which is pretty weird when you think about it. At one point, Michael tells Sarek she knows he must have considered the effect a Vulcan education and lifestyle might have on a human child, but she wants to know what he wanted Spock to learn from the experience of having a human sibling. His reply?

Which is... nice? He doesn’t say the only reason he took Michael in was for her to be his son’s empathy tutor, but he does essentially admit he was worried Spock was becoming too much of a momma’s boy. So the theory that Sarek was just scooping up orphans all over the galaxy like some kind of Vulcan Angelina Jolie doesn’t seem accurate. It gives the distinct impression that even Sarek thought of his hodge-podge brood as an experiment, at least to a degree.

Now, some may argue that Sarek never told Spock that he had to follow Surak’s teachings, which is true-ish. But that’s like telling a kid, “You don’t have to believe in Jesus” and then sending them to a Christian school in the heart of the Bible belt. What decision did he imagine his son would choose when he decided to raise him on Vulcan and stand by when other kids beat him up for not being Vulcan enough?

Seriously, Spock was almost guaranteed to turn out one of two ways: either he would just try harder to out-Vulcan everyone, which he did, or he would give logic the middle finger, which, well, is the option Sybok chose to run with. 

Despite fanfiction and fanart imagining him as this really hands-on parent who changes diapers and decorates baked goods (yes, I wrote a story like this and I’m calling myself out), he admits he’s the kind of dad who works late in the evenings, not the kind that reads stories at bedtime. 

It’s also no secret that as a parent, Sarek holds grudges. In “Journey to Babel,” Amanda confesses that Sarek and Spock haven’t spoken as father and son for eighteen years. In “Brother,” Michael asks Sarek when the last time he spoke to Spock was and he concedes it’s been years. In “Light and Shadows,” he’s clearly [Vulcan] pissed that Amanda is harboring a fugitive, who also just so happens to be his own son.

Is Sarek just that logical that he believes in justice even at a high personal price, or is he embarrassed that his own estranged son has been accused of murder and appears to be in the clutches of a mental breakdown? As far as I can tell, it might just be a little bit of both. 

Then there’s the idea that Sarek is a caring and devoted husband. Is there actually any evidence for this in canon, other than he was married to Amanda and had a family with her? Lots of people are married and have kids and don’t have a relationship that would rival that annoying couple on This is Us. 

Their relationship doesn’t seem like an equal partnership based on compromise, but rather one where Sarek does what he damn well pleases and Amanda follows along as a dutiful wife. 

Amanda gave up a lot of things to be with him: her home, her culture, and potentially even her own son’s well-being. The woman went to extremes for love not even witnessed on the Bachelor, and why?

In some contexts, that sounds like the powerful kind of love and devotion that epic-poems would be based on. In other contexts, it sounds almost like a pathological self-martyrdom. Did Sarek ever fully appreciate her sacrifices? It’s hard to say, but if he did, I doubt he ever voiced his appreciation. 

In his later years, when Sarek is losing his mind due to an age-related degenerative disease and he mind melds with Captain Picard, he tearfully muses (as Picard), “Amanda. I wanted to give you so much more. I wanted to show you such tenderness. But that is not our way. Spock? Amanda? Did you know?”

He's strongly implying he never told Amanda he loved her out loud. I’m sure he did love her, but it hardly bodes well for the idea that he’s a flowers and handmade cards kind of guy. And as for the notion that behind closed doors, he and Amanda had a super intimate relationship that would make even characters in Harlequin romance novels swoon, please, point me to an episode that makes you think that. I will watch it every day for the rest of my life. 

In summary, between his first chronological appearance in Discovery to his death in The Next Generation, Sarek had a lot of improving to do as a person and we see evidence that he most certainly did. He came to accept Michael as his daughter. He started speaking to Spock again after wrecking his childhood and turning him over to Section 31. Even though it clearly exasperated the hell out of him, he occasionally gave into his wife’s emotional needs. 

But that’s still a pretty far cry away from galaxy’s best father, husband, or lover. I think that’s what draws me to this couple so much. Sarek and Amanda didn’t live happily ever after: they did the best they could and made it work, just like the rest of us non-fictional losers. 

What little we have of canon depicts them as a couple who likely got married before they really knew each other, probably should have spent their first few years of marriage in counseling, eventually figured one another out enough to raise three kids who could all probably benefit from some therapy, and loved each other no matter what, even if it wasn’t out loud.

[scripttorture]

I'm writing a human character in sci-fi setting who has been betrayed by his friend and is then kidnapped and phycologically tortured by the friend to the point after he escapes he has severe PTSD. I'm struggling to write it though as I'm not sure what kind of mental torture he could be put through without going over the top. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks

I’m going to start off with a possibly obvious point: kidnapping is traumatic. If the main thing you want from this sub-plot is to give a character PTSD you don’t need to go any further then that. Not everyone who is kidnapped will develop PTSD but it’s a realistic outcome.

 So…. Phycology is the study of algae, I’m assuming that’s not what’s meant here. But if it is then please correct me and I will happily spend some time reading up on algae to help you out. (That is not sarcasm, teach me about algae.) :)

 I am guessing that this is a misspelling of ‘psychologically’ and this is someone new to the blog who hasn’t heard The Talk about ‘psychological torture’ yet.

 So going forward: Anon it’s OK to make mistakes. I’m here because I understand how hard it is to find good quality information on torture. And because I understand how much misinformation is popularised in both fictional and allegedly-factual media.

 I strongly advise that you don’t use the phrase ‘psychological torture’ in your writing.

 Torture isn’t psychological. There’s nothing clever or psychological about hitting someone’s feet with a stick.

 And the phrase ‘psychological torture’ has been used for years by torture apologists. They use it as a way to dismiss survivors and belittle their experience. They do that by declaring that some types of torture are ‘just’ psychological; using this term to suggest particular tortures don’t cause physical harm and that survivors are faking their responses.

 This is bullshit. Don’t buy into it. Don’t support it.

 Torture is physical abuse and physical harm. The lasting psychological symptoms and effects are due to underlying changes in the structure of the brain which happen in response to extreme pain and stress.

 O’Mara, the neuroscientist who wrote about torture, likened it to brain damage. He also went so far as to argue that it’s deliberately inflicted organ failure. And you know what, I’m not a neuroscientist, so I’m not gonna argue with that assessment.

 I don’t know what you’re picturing when you say ‘psychological torture’. You haven’t given me a time frame for how long this character is held or information on the kind of culture this fictional world has. Which makes it hard for me to suggest specific things.

 What I can do is give you an idea of what torture looks like now and what sort of effects you’d expect in survivors. You can then consider whether torture is right for your story.

 Most torture nowadays is ‘clean’. Now different researchers use different terms for this (I use Rejali’s term) but what it essentially means is: a form of physical abuse that is extremely unlikely to leave obvious physical marks on the victim’s body.

 Lest you get the idea that is represents ‘advancement’ most of the clean torture techniques currently used are hundreds of years old. Some of them are thousands of years old.

 There’s been quite a bit of debate in the field about why clean torture is currently so common and why so many organisations have abandoned scarring torture. You can read more about that over here. Or if you feel you have a wealth of time on your hands you can try tackling all 800 pages of Rejali’s Torture and Democracy (highly recommended, also very large).

 The theory Rejali puts forward is that the shift is about evidence. Obvious physical injuries make it easier to build up cases against torturers.

 And a lack of obvious physical injuries can be used to discredit survivors.

 These are the sort of torture techniques that get labelled ‘psychological’ as a way to dismiss them: the ones that are being used around the world today.

 If you’re wondering what sort of thing I’m talking about things like sleep deprivation, beatings (yes this can be done without leaving obvious marks), near-drowning, forcing someone to exercise until they collapse, Tasers.

 I have a post here on typical torture practices in different countries in the modern era.

 While the physical effects of clean tortures are hard to definitively prove we’re still taking about incredibly dangerous things.

 Tasers, used according to the instructions, leave no mark on the skin. They can also cause heart attacks, seizures (in vulnerable individuals) and often cause death by falling injuries. Forced exercise, beatings and stress positions all cause kidney failure. In the case of stress positions that’s after the swelling in extremities that gets to the point of popping the skin open in massive ulcers.

 Sleep deprivation causes a whole slew of interestingly awful physical and psychological effects before (according to studies in mice) leading to death from multiple organ failure as the microbes in the gut take over the entire body.

 What I’m trying to say here is that if you’re looking for something dignified, without the vomit and pus and shit, then torture probably doesn’t fit the bill.

 And clean tortures can still cause physically disabling injuries.

 Drowning and choking tortures (such as water boarding) can cause brain damage. Incorrectly applied restraints can lead to a limb needing to be amputated.

 On top of all this are the long term psychological effects which I have a post on here. Memory problems are discussed in more detail here.

 PTSD is a possible symptom but it’s not guaranteed. The truth is that while we know the possible symptoms different individual survivors develop different symptoms and we don’t know why.

 If you’ve thought about it and you want to use PTSD because it adds something to your story then by all means do so. But don’t feel that it is your only option.

 Survivors do recover. They are not ‘broken’ and unable to live or enjoy life. They’re mentally ill and often disabled and recovery is a process of learning to live with their conditions.

 Wrapping this up: think about what you’re writing.

 I am not saying that you shouldn’t write torture. I am not saying that you should. I’m asking that you, and every other writer who comes here, consider what you’re committing to.

 If you don’t want a character to be dealing with multiple complex mental health problems for the rest of every story you use them in, it’s probably not a good fit.

 If you want something that doesn’t have even a chance of causing lasting physical damage, torture is probably not a good fit.

 Picture where the story is going. If you think the narrative could be the same without torture then you’re probably not capturing the scale of the impact torture has.

 I have a post on common inaccurate tropes here. I have a post on researching torture here. I have a list of sources over here. I also have a lot of asks tagged as sci fi.

 Consider why you want to write torture in this story. What is it adding to your narrative? What is it doing?

 If the main thing you want is this character to have PTSD afterwards that is possible with kidnapping alone. Physical attacks make PTSD more likely but they’re not necessary for its development.

 Kidnap and imprisonment is betrayal enough. It is reason enough for all the big, powerful emotions you want to put into this relationship. Ask yourself if torture really does add any more to that.

 I hope that helps. :)

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

[dynamic-instability]

In one of my classes we have to write weekly personal narratives about an experience with illness. This week, mine turned into this. It’s probably too personal, and too... immediate?? to turn in to a professor without cutting out a lot of stuff, but not too personal to post online I guess lol

_____________________________

It’s November again.

In 2009 the lights were too bright. Mid-October one morning I woke up to my dad turning on my lights and it was like having to look into the sun while posing for a photo—my eyes wouldn’t stay open, if I forced them to, they couldn’t stay pointed in one direction, they spasmed and hurt. When the light was dimmed, I still saw double. That morning, I showered in the dark, and I remember being scared. They gave me eyedrops that paralyzed my accommodative muscles. In November my pupils were giant discs and I wore reading glasses over sunglasses to look at the computer, and when it was all said and done, the lights were still too bright, and I still saw double.

In 2011 I was tired. There’s fatigue and then there’s fatigue, I learned that Fall. In May of that year I had pulled two all-nighters in a week, and that was the only other time I’d felt this kind of tired, a sensation in about the 30th hour of the second time where it’s like my brain itched. I once saw someone else online describe it as “nausea, but in your head and eyes instead of in your throat and stomach” and that’s the closest anyone else has come to describing it. By November this was happening more and more often. I remember laying down in the corner of the room during a break of Citywide choir and thinking what the hell is wrong with me? I got a cold the next week, and I thought that maybe that was all it was. It wasn’t.

In 2013 I went to the ER for the fifth time in three months of college, and when I wanted to leave before waiting another couple of hours to eventually see a doctor who would tell me once again that they couldn’t do anything to help me, the woman from student life who was there to drive me back to campus made me call my parents on speaker phone and get their permission to leave before she would turn on the car. I had missed more chemistry labs than I could afford to miss without failing, passed out in a voice lesson, was asked by the director to drop out of choir because watching me was distraction when I looked like I was in pain, and if I passed out it would have ruined the concert for everyone. I remember leaving calculus in the mornings mid-class to go to the bathroom and lay on the floor and cry. I remember not being able to lift my hand off the mattress of my dorm room bed. I withdrew from half of my classes on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, and took the Spring semester off.

In 2014 I had made a promise to myself that I would come back to college full time for that Fall semester just to see if I could do it, and then if I couldn’t I would drop out for good. There was one week where I thought that might be happening. Mid-November. The girls in my dorm had made a fort in the lounge out of sheets and blankets and colorful scarves and I remember laying on the couch through the green-filtered light and feeling the world spin and thinking oh god I still can’t do this. The door opened with a rush of cold air and my friends came in with food for me, since I’d been too sick to go to dinner. They sat with me and helped me with chemistry, offered to type up a paper if I dictated it, told jokes and made me laugh. I took an incomplete in one class, but I passed everything else, just barely scraped through, and came back in January.

In 2015 I just wanted to sleep. I passed out in an elevator and heard familiar voices, concerned voices, as I came to, and I stayed there laying motionless for another minute longer, because as long as I wasn’t awake I didn’t have to keep pushing. I wrote whole pages of completely unreadable ochem notes because my hand wasn’t working any better than my brain, and woke up on the floor and was wheeled out on a stretcher crying. It was dark all the time. My cane slipped on wet leaves and I felt my wrist crunch and there it was, one too many missed organic chemistry labs. I couldn’t stand for an entire choir rehearsal because breathing to sing made me lightheaded. I slept for 16 hours a day. The week before Thanksgiving, I called my mother to tell her I had decided to take another hardship withdrawal, and she sighed. I had applied to transfer schools during my much more optimistic Spring semester and Summer, and the week I left was also the week I found out I’d been accepted.

And so okay now it’s 2019, and it’s October and now November again, semester plan again, dark again. My reading is piling up again, feeling overwhelmed again, laying on my kitchen floor again. But here’s the thing—my health is… fine? Midterm week I didn’t sleep, and yes I passed out twice, but no ER. For the past 18 months, I can count on one hand the number of mornings I’ve been unable to get out of bed because of fatigue. My heart still pounds too hard but my head doesn’t swim every time I sit up. I walk the streets of New York City like mobility has never been a problem. I always take the stairs. My brain doesn’t itch until it’s been 30 hours no sleep.

I couldn’t go to class last week. I lay on the floor of my kitchen and stared up at the ceiling and tried to get up, tried to type out an email to my professors, and I couldn’t do it. I was not too tired. I was not too weak. I was not in pain. I could not move. I try to write and try to write and try to write and the words don’t come. I eat instant oatmeal at 9 PM because I haven’t been to the store in a month. I have lost nearly 15 pounds since moving to New York. I clean the stove for two and a half hours but can’t bring myself to take the dead spider off the side of the bathtub. I check the door lock one-two-three times, pace the floor, sit back down. I do not read Austerlitz. I write a Canvas post for Self and Other but it’s nonsense. I do not write a Canvas post for Accounts of Self. I do not write a Canvas post for Applied Writing. I write a Canvas post for Illness and Disability and somehow forget to post it, the one thing I’ve actually done, because I’m too busy feeling sick at everything I haven’t. I shadow a doctor for the clinical witnessing assignment and everything is fine but when I try to write it up I have a panic attack that leaves me sobbing on my couch and the assignment nine days late and counting. It takes me eight hours to write two pages. I watch 18 hours of YouTube video essays discussing drama about creators I don’t even watch and play a stupid game on my phone for an entire weekend until I’ve spent $25+ in a labyrinth of microtransations and every time I close my eyes I see the moving dots.

In November of 2015 I had three overdue essays for Global Literature, and two more due in the next two weeks. More than half were on books I had not read. My pre-lab wasn’t done for organic chemistry, and I wondered for a moment, if I pretended to pass out, if that would be easier. I stayed up until 4 AM laying on my floor and listening to Hamilton. I was sick, that much is true, but when I felt okay I still sat at my computer and could not bring myself to write.

In 2011 I had so many unfinished assignments for my college-level English class that I resigned myself to failing and I went to school the morning of the final class, but I hid in the stairwell by the choir room until I heard the bell, and I never went back to that class.

2009 was the year my dad stopped being able to yell at me for not doing my homework, because no one, including me, could tell whether it was actually my eyes stopping me.

In 2008 I wrote 6 essays in the 5 days of Thanksgiving break because I had not done any work for Intro to Lit all semester. I pulled it off, somehow, even aced the class because of an unusually lenient late work policy, but what I most remember is the sick feeling of dread as I lay on the floor in the living room staring up at the Christmas tree and feeling invisible sand slip through an invisible hourglass and a vice tightening in my chest.

In 2006 I stayed up almost all night writing a paper and crying my eyes out because I couldn’t find the words to explain to anyone why it had been so impossible for me to get the work done, that I wasn’t being lazy or distracted, I just couldn’t do it. I wasn’t necessarily reading YA novels or watching TV or IMing my friends instead of working, I could sit and stare at a blank word document for 6 hours straight and still it would not get done. Everyone talked about potential, talked about how smart I was, but a gradebook that is half 100’s and half 0’s still averages out to an F. No one, including me, could explain the discrepancy. The logic of that simple math was not lost on me, the knowledge that turning in half-finished or not very good work was mathematically better than not doing it, but that didn’t mean I could do it. Words failed me when I tried to explain the illogic of my particular suffering.

I didn’t hear the term executive dysfunction until I was in my 20s. In retrospect I was tentatively told at 16 that I had “probably some ADHD and OCD”, but that psychiatrist was someone I’d been sent to by a neurologist because he thought she could fix my eyes, and when she said she couldn’t, I stopped making appointments. After I got sick, physically sick, the lines blurred between what was causing what, to the point where even I have no idea. Two of the Novembers missing here are ones I spent at CC, on the block plan where I only took one class at a time. My physical health arguably improved a little after transferring in January of 2016, but mostly it didn’t, not until Spring of 2018 at least. And you can see that evidence in dropped blocks, concussions from passing out onto hard surfaces, a couple of incompletes taken when viral illnesses (or concussions) compounded my other problems. What the block plan changed was the way things pile up, lessened the struggle of constant task switching between classes. (Admittedly, I also had fewer papers when taking mostly science classes. Writing takes much more energy, and it’s much harder to convince myself it doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth submitting.) At CC nothing ever really reached the level of catastrophe. Some of that is purely the ability to drop a single block, meaning when it was my physical health that was the problem, I didn’t lose a whole semester, just one class, then reset. But I should have realized sooner that the block plan wouldn’t account for the level of improvement if my physical health had really been the only barrier.

So we’re back to now. Grad school. November again. Dark again. Semester plan again. Too much writing again. Crushing dread again. Dysfunction again. Panic attack in the middle of the night increasingly elaborate organizing rituals scream of the subway tracks in my mind can’t stop can’t start can’t breathe can’t move burnout again. This time without the explanation of chronic fatigue to fall back on.

I have my tricks, have actually learned somewhat to cope in the past 18 years. Schedules help, break tasks into pieces that are as small as possible. Mindfulness meditation. Forgive yourself when it’s not perfect. Get started with something easy, set a timer for 20 minutes and only work for those 20 minutes and then let yourself stop if you want to (and surprisingly often, you won’t want to, sometimes that momentum is all it takes). If you work better in the night, work in the night, who cares what society says your sleep schedule should be. When switching tasks, physically get up and move to a different location. Allow yourself to procrastinate on work with other work if that’s what you have to do. Delete the stupid games from your phone. One or two missed assignments are not actually the end of the world, if you let yourself view it as piling up, you won’t be able to get anything done, so if you absolutely have to, just move through and move on.

It’s not a catastrophe, this November. It’s a fight, but it’s not a catastrophe. I read Austerlitz and forgive myself for skimming it. I write a Canvas post and forgive myself when it’s only 500 words and doesn’t make complete sense. I read Toni Morrison and Édouard Louis and classmates’ discussion posts about Deaf culture and identity and remember why this matters in the first place, that it’s not just a series of assignments to overwhelm me, it’s a series of interesting complicated exhausting important thoughts and questions. I get it done. Some of it. Most of it. I let myself sleep. I breathe. I remember to be grateful because I can get out of bed in the mornings and take the stairs. I am okay.

[film-focus-mind]

my essay on autistic representation in the media

I wrote this for three months for my usem class, it’s just my opinions on what is wrong with most autistic media representation

Abstract

The representation of those with autism in the media is, simply put, stereotypical and deeply flawed. From depicting people with autism as eternal children, rude, idiotic, or genius savants, the media portrayals play into and perpetuate harmful stereotypes. This portrayal affects how society views autism, despite how consciously some people realize that the autistic representation is not accurate and socially harmful. If a character with autistic traits is shown in a negative light, people will form implicit biases and associate autistic traits as being wrong and bad. Media representation of those with autism has to change to be more accurate and less abusive and stereotyped. There needs to be better autistic representation for the sake of both neurotypical people and people with autism. Stereotypes need to be rejected and replaced with people with autism as being people.

Keywords: autism, media representation, stereotypes, Autism Spectrum Disorder

My interest in autistic representation is personal. My little brother Leo was diagnosed with autism at age three. Despite this diagnosis, he never knew he had autism until he was thirteen. Around that time, the popular kids show Sesame Street started featuring an autistic character named Julia (Cohen, 2017). Julia talked like my brother did: in short incomplete sentences and sometimes repeating what others had just said, she got upset when there were loud noises, and she could not stand the feeling of paint on her fingers. As Leo and I watched the show and the character’s interactions with others, it dawned on me that Leo didn’t know what he and Julia had in common. My parents never told him because they didn’t want Leo to feel different.

“Leo, do you know why you’re like Julia?” I asked.

“Why?” Leo replied. “Why” in Leo’s case also meant who, what, where, when, and how. 

“It’s because you both are autistic!” I explained. “Your brains both work just a little bit differently.”

Although the Julia of Sesame Street was created as a caring and positive role model, she’s one of the few instances of positive representation of people with autism on television. Most autism representation shows people with autism as rude, child-like, dumb, or worse. Many characters who are on the autism spectrum are quite one- dimensional. Having autistic traits has been portrayed in a negative light or in an overly simplistic way. Autistic represetation hardly factors the experiences of actual people with autism. If the media portrayed people with autism as equals, there would be dozens of Julias in mainstream media (Safran, 1998). How is the media portraying people with Autism Spectrum Disorder? How can things improve? What does this say about society’s views on autism? 

For clarification, the terms ‘high functioning’ and ‘low functioning’ are problematic and will not be used in the context of this discussion because those words hold a very discriminatory view of autism, one that prioritizes the neurotypical ways of functioning over other ways of functioning. In this paper, the terms autism and Asperger’s syndrome will be used to differentiate between the two distinctly different types of ways that autism affects people. It is important to remember that Asperger, the doctor whose name is used to describe a branch of autism, was a Nazi (Baron-Cohen, 2018). That historical association speaks great lengths about how autism is/was viewed, considering how Asperger describes autism. Asperger’s opinions on autism would be considered very outdated and insulting to contemporary people with autism (Draaisma, 2009). 

Portrayals of autism in terms of fictional characters can be split into two distinct tropes, which are infantilization (Stevenson, Harp, & Gernsbacher 2014) and the savant (Draaisma, 2009). The former usually applies to autism generally, while the latter applies to those exhibiting the characteristics of Asperger’s Syndrome. Tropes are different character archetypes that group characters by their believed-to-be stereotypical traits. In a few cases of media representation, both tropes can apply to the same character, but for the most part they do not overlap. Both tropes only give a glimpse at the complexities of autism, usually leaving out autistic traits that can be seen as good.

To start, there’s infantilization (Stevenson, Harp & Gernsbacher, 2014), or for a better term, the eternal child trope. This trope portrays characters with autism of any age as child-like, and usually also naive or idiotic. These characters can be either autistic or have Asperger’s, but they act the same, naive, unable to focus, throwing tantrums, and generally interacting with the world in “innocent” and “unsophisticated” ways. Also, these characters typically have a special “obsessive” interest that they love talking about, some of examples of obsessive fixations are classical music, science, outer space, cartoons, trains, and dinosaurs. It is more harmful when adults are portrayed with this trope, as a person can be an adult with autism, and a mature autistic adult. We often think of neurotypical children as also having obsessive interests or naïve qualities, so the stereotype is not as blatantly discriminatory. Yet, when these are the only traits an autistic character has, that becomes problematic. This child trope creates a stigma of autism disappearing when one turns eighteen, or that people with autism are incapable of mental growth. Some examples of this trope that can be seen in mainstream film, television and book portrayals are Kirk from the television show Gilmore Girls (Palladino, 2000), Lenny from the great American novel Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck, 1965), and Amelie from the French movie Amelie (Jean-Marc, 2001)

Multimedia tropes are not the only case of infantilization of those on the autism spectrum. Most autism-based charities only show children with autism, effectively branding it as a children’s disease and leaving out the reality that many with autism are mature adults. In a study done in 2014, only eight out of 170 autism based charities had pictures that included adults with autism (Stevenson, Harp & Gernsbacher, 2014). When only children with autism are shown, it leaves out adults from the picture. Such absences also contribute to the man-child stereotype. When one only sees children with autism, and then meets adults with autism, they won’t be seen as the adults that they are. Adults with autism then get treated like children. Infantilization ultimately restricts the definition of what a person with autism is like, and the next trope does that as well. 

The next difficult trope is the savant (Draaisma, 2009). The definition of savant is someone who is good at one particular subject, at an almost unnatural level, but that other-worldly savant syndrome seems to come at a price. Characters with autism who fall under this trope are smart beyond their peers, but are depicted as being very rude and as lacking in key social skills. This character trope, like that which focuses on  infantilization, will show people have a special interest, like physics, medicine, drawing, learning languages to name a few examples, which they pursue with genius intensity and knowledge. These characters have friends, but are often depicted as being overly blunt and difficult or not nice to their friends. This kind of portrayal brands people with autism as being bad people and antisocial. Thus, the general public are led to believe that all people with autism must be rude (Safran, 1998). All people with autism are expected to be a know-it-all in one area, but are thought of as idiots if they are not. Some examples of the savant trope are Sherlock from the BBC’s television show Sherlock (Moffat, 2010), Paris from the sitcom Gilmore Girls (Palladino, 2000) and Sheldon Cooper from the tv show the Big Bang Theory (Cendrowski, 2007).

Sometimes, the savant trope is combined with the eternal child trope to create a doubly stereotyped character with autism. Typically these children are beyond their peers, but have trouble making friends, with a tendency to be alienated. An example would be Max from the tv show Parenthood (Holton, 2013). Max enjoys talking about beetles, wearing pirate costumes and he doesn’t like candles. When his parents find out about him being autistic, they resolve not to tell him of his diagnosis. Not telling kids of their diagnosis is bad because the children may be already feeling as if they are an outcast among their peers, but they don’t know why (Sinclair, 1999). Sometimes having information about what makes someone different can provide comfort in challenging situations. Keeping information like that from children with autism does more harm than good. It would deprive an understanding of themselves necessary to overcome their disabilities.

Another autistic stereotype is that autism affects more boys than it does girls (Lai, Lombardo, Auyeung, Chakrabarti, & Baron-Cohen, 2015, pp. 11-24). Most portrayals of autism on television are of males, effectively erasing autistic women from the narrative as well. This erasure actually has an effect on diagnosing autism because many believe that girls do not “get” autism. This also happens on a social level because females do not have the diagnosis that might help them understand their behaviors and social interactions at younger ages. With the bias of being a mostly male disorder, women with autism get diagnosed at a later age than their male counterparts (Bargiela, Steward, & Mandy, 2016). Many autistic women are not diagnosed until adulthood, which can set them back multiple years of working to get help with their disorder. Women being autistic is seen just as much of being an oxymoron as an autistic adult.

Autistic misrepresentation occurs even though characters are not explicitly stated as being autistic. When characters are portrayed with stereotypical autistic traits, they are understood by viewers as being autistic. When people see these traits being portrayed as dislikable, that may cause people to see those traits in a very negative light. This happens even before people with autism have a chance to prove those stereotypes wrong. In short, it doesn’t matter whether the word autism is used. Only the traits matter, not the label. 

How do autistic stereotypes affect people with autism? For starters, when people meet someone who shares traits with a negatively portrayed autistic character, people think that having those traits are linked with being a bad person (Safran, 1998). This leads to isolation, ostracization, and bullying. Stereotyping of any sort can be quite harmful. People will tend to judge all persons with autism they encounter in real life based on the examples they see in media. The general public will see what’s on tv and believe it to be true, even if subconsciously. It predisposes persons to negatively prejudge people with autism before meeting them.

People without autism are also hampered by these stereotypes by causing people with autism to struggle to find their respected and credible voice in social, educational and work settings. Successful interactions with people with autism require an unbiased and accurate understanding of them. These successful interactions are rendered less likely by stereotypical portrayals, which foster disrespect and distrust of people with autism encountered in real life. Everyone should want to treat everyone with respect, and correct their behavior if it is wrong.

People can actively undertake many strategies to make autistic representation more like Julia from Sesame Street, and less like every other character fuelling misunderstanding. The first solution is hiring actual people with autism as consultants for a show (Huws & Jones, 2010, pp. 331-344; Holton, 2013), ensuring the screenwriting matches up with the real experience of autism. Another way is to try to make a multidimensional and meaningful character, not a character who is merely a foil based on comic relief or being a challenge for the other characters. Autistic characters must exist as themselves, not as plot devices for other neurotypical characters.  

Another solution is to approach rectifying harmful stereotypes by using a character to educate non-autistic people about the realities of autism (Behind the Scenes, 2017). Upon seeing a character as a learning opportunity, research is done into the subject, and a more accurate portrayal occurs. People have a tendency to learn from engaging and considering fictional characters. Thus, making one accurate fictional character would do the most good when it comes to opening up people to the nuanced realities of autism spectrum disorder.   

.In conclusion, autistic representation in books, films and televisions shows negatively effects or influences therefore society’s general views of autism. These tropes are discriminatory and harm people with autism by spreading misinformation. There are many years of poor autistic misrepresentation that those in the media industry must work to undo.

References

Bargiela, S., Steward, R., & Mandy, W. (2016). The experiences of late-diagnosed women with autism spectrum conditions: an investigation of the female autism phenotype. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 46(10), 3281-3294.

Baron-Cohen, S., Klin, A., Silberman, S., & Buxbaum, J. D. (2018). Did Hans Asperger actively assist the Nazi euthanasia program? Molecular Autism, 9(1). doi:10.1186/s13229-018-0209-5

 Bringing Julia to Life [Behind the Scenes]. (2017, March 20). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhzfHVmSLRU

Cendrowski M (Director). (2007). The Big Bang Theory [Television series]. Los Angeles, California: CBS.

Cohen E (Director). (2017). Sesame Street, season 47 episode 15 [Television series]. Los Angeles, California: PBS

Draaisma D. (2009). Stereotypes of autism. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences 364(1522), 1475-80. Retrieved from https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2008.0324

Holton, A. E. (2013). What’s wrong with max? Parenthood and the portrayal of Autism Spectrum Disorders 37(1) 45-63. In Sagepub. Retrieved January 29, 2019, from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0196859912472507

 Huws, J.C. & Jones, R.S.P (2010) ‘They just seem to live their lives in their own little world’: Lay perceptions of autism, Disability & Society, 25:3, 331-344, DOI: 10.1080/09687591003701231

Jean-Marc D. (Producer), & Jeunet J. (Director). (2001). Amelie [Motion Picture]. France: Canal+.

Lai, M., Lombardo, M. V., Auyeung, B., Chakrabarti, B., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2015). Sex/Gender Differences and Autism: Setting the Scene for Future Research. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 54(1), 11-24. doi:10.1016/j.jaac.2014.10.003

Moffat S, (Executive Producer). (2010). Sherlock [Television series]. London, United Kingdom: BBC.

Safran, S. P. (1998). Disability Portrayal in Film: Reflecting the Past, Directing the Future. Exceptional Children, 64(2), 227-238. doi:10.1177/001440299806400206

Steinbeck, J. (1965). Of mice and men: With an introduction. New York: Random House.

Sherman Palladino, A (Director). (2000). Gilmore Girls [Television series]. Los Angeles, California: the WB.

Sinclair, J. (1999). Don't mourn for us. Autistic Rights Movement UK.

[calltomuster]

I made this post five months ago and I remember feeling so strongly about it, so fired up, so passionate, so angry -- as I should have, as anyone should, as I still do -- and it's a little funny to think back on what's happened since that time. Namely my health getting much worse to the point where I had to finally stop ignoring the worsening symptoms and go seek diagnoses. Turns out I have quite a lot of chronic medical problems that severely affect me on a daily basis and I am disabled. It's really quite something to read back this post, almost like my past self was not only arguing with ableism in the real world but also internalized ableism or an inability to comprehend that the label of disability could apply to me too. This is the sort of post that means a lot to me reading now, makes me feel seen, and yet when I wrote it I thought I was writing to an outside audience. Which I was, I definitely was, there are a lot of ableist people in the fandom who need to get this beaten into their brains, but it was also past me writing to future me and that's pretty wild.

With this new perspective in mind I want to add on a point that I think it's good for everyone to have in mind -- in fandom/fic and just in general.

You never know if someone is disabled or not. You wouldn't know it from looking at me that my entire autonomic nervous system is faulty and it affects things like my heart, my brain, my digestive processes, my thermoregulation, etc. You might see me taking a priority seat on a bus and think I'm just a lazy entitled young person, but you don't see the fact that my brain is literally not receiving enough blood to function properly and it's hard to even sit up right now. You might see me get up extra slowly and think I'm just weak, but you don't see the fact that my heart is having to overcompensate from the change in position and is spiking as much as 60bpm in less than a minute. You might hear me complain about the heat and not realize that my body cannot regulate its own body temperature well and the heat is making me physically sick. You might watch me get in an elevator instead of going up a few flights of stairs and think I'm weak and lazy, but you don't know that even going up a few stairs makes me feel dizzy and almost pass out. You might see me struggling to pay attention in class and assume I'm just a bad student, not knowing that my brain is being starved of oxygen because I've been upright for too many hours and that's why I'm having trouble concentrating.

These are all just examples, and they're only a few of the things that many people with invisible disabilities and/or chronic illnesses face. You just can't tell from looking at them! And that's the point re: Star Wars. You. Don't. Know. So, so, so many people are disabled and it's not visible. That exists in the GFFA too. Don't forget us when writing disability rep! Tell me the stories of a Jedi youngling with chronic pain and hypermobility who learns how to adapt katas for herself, of a Mandalorian with an NG tube who hooks up their feeds through their helmet, of a clone with epilepsy who has to avoid flashing lights from blasters because of photosensitivity. Tell me the stories of a Jedi Master who uses a hoverchair when going to the Senate because he can't stand for long periods of time, of a pirate queen with fibromyalgia who channels her pain into destroying her enemies, of a trainer with lupus who loved living on Kamino because there was barely ever any sunlight to hurt her skin. Tell me the stories of a Jedi Padawan who cries tears of happiness when they finally get diagnosed because finally, someone believes them, it's not their fault. Because nothing looked wrong with them and for so long they even believed themself that they were just faking for attention, just lazy and trying to get out of things. But they're not.

When I wrote the original post, I was focusing on the disabilities that we could plainly see in Star Wars, because I couldn't comprehend how someone could deny their existence when they were right in front of their faces the whole time. Now that it's been a little bit, I want people to remember that disabilities exist even when you CAN'T see them, even when you wouldn't know it from looking at a person, even when someone doesn't announce their disability or health status or medical records. There are so many disabilities in Star Wars, more than you would ever know. Don't forget them either.

Further reading:

Invisible Disabilities: List and General Information

What Happens When You're Disabled but Nobody Can Tell

Invisible Disability Project

How do you define invisible disability?

Once again, if you would like to see fics of Obi-Wan with a service animal for his invisible disability written by disabled and abled people alike, consider checking out the Service Animal Boga AU, which we warmly invite anyone to write in.

Disabilities exist in Star Wars. Period.

This post is dedicated to certain specific people who say they are not be able to reconcile service animals in Star Wars, especially Jedi, since the Force and technology exist. These people seemingly have never seen Star Wars, where disabilities not only exist but feature prominently in many cases — yes, even in Jedi. So let us prove them definitively wrong here.

From the very beginning, disabilities have existed in Star Wars. In fact, one could argue a feature of a disability is one of the most iconic things about Star Wars. Even people who aren't Star Wars fans, or who haven't seen the movies at all, know the sound of Darth Vader's breathing. Darth Vader -- Anakin Skywalker -- is unable to breathe on his own and needs to be constantly hooked up to a life-support system simply to stay alive. This in itself is an answer to the argument that the Force compensates for everything. Perhaps you might want to say it is the Force that lets him stay alive beyond what would kill someone else, but still it cannot take the place of functional lungs, or grow back missing limbs, etc. Anakin Skywalker is one of the most powerful Force-sensitives to have ever lived, and yet he can still be disabled and need assistance. (Also, because sometimes I see people making the argument that because of all the pain that Anakin is in, he should be forgiven for his actions, let me say this: Anakin Skywalker can be disabled and still be villainous and make choices that hurt untold billions of people. Being disabled does not absolve you of your bad decisions. Disabled people are people too, and all people make choices and that is what determines the kind of person they are. But that's another post.)

Another example of the Force not compensating for everything is Yoda. We see Yoda using mobility aids multiple times throughout the OT and the PT, from a cane to a hoverchair. He is known as one of the wisest and most powerful Jedi ever, and yet he still uses mobility aids. "Yeah, well," you say, "he still fights with his lightsaber and does all those flips, so that doesn't count." This is the same stupid argument that people make against ambulatory wheelchair users. Needing to use a mobility aid does not mean you need to use it all the time. Total paralysis is not the only thing that makes people need to use wheelchairs or similar mobility aids. Often, people are technically capable of walking or moving around or even fighting and doing backflips in Yoda’s case, but the amount of pain and decreased function that such actions would cause are not worth it except for short amounts of time or in dire circumstances. This does not make them less disabled, or mean that they are faking it. 

“Must be a Jedi thing,” you say. What about Chirrut Îmwe or Kanan Jarrus, who are both blind (or become so). The Force does not give them their sight back (aside from a certain final scene in Rebels). “It’s only for Force-sensitives, then,” you try next. Try looking at Saw Gerrera, who needs oxygen assistance and wears a pressurized suit over his body. Or how about 99, a disabled clone who helps in brothers and is commended as “a true soldier” upon his death? The clones are excellent examples, for that matter. Wolffe is missing an eye, Gregor has a traumatic brain injury, Echo uses extensive cybernetics to function, among many others. 

Maybe still you want to argue that sure, someone might have a limb chopped off or whatever, but technology has come so far in Star Wars that they're not really disabled. Hear me now when I say: having accommodations that help you function in everyday life does not erase a disability. Go back and read that a few times if you need to, because it’s important. 

Now, to be clear, I’m not at all saying Star Wars always has amazing disability representation. I know that’s not the case in many, many regards, and I will link below references that discuss it in more detail. But to say that something like a service animal does not belong in Star Wars is, frankly, extremely idiotic and ableist and ignores the long history of disability in the GFFA. Disabled people have always existed in Star Wars and other sci-fi/fantasy media and they always will. 

Further reading and other perspectives:

Disability in Star Wars

Blind Warriors, Supercrips, and Techno-Marvels: Challenging Depictions of Disability in Star Wars

How Star Wars: The Bad Batch delivers the disability representation the franchise needed

Twisted and Evil: Ableism in Star Wars

This post was written largely in response to a comment left on a fic in the Service Animal Boga AU, so if you would like to read fics about disabled Obi-Wan with a service animal, please consider supporting us there. :)

[metallic-girls]

If you know anything about autism, please read this!

I'm a 20 y/o girl with a physical disability. I've always been the "weird one" at kindergarten and school. But I was never diagnosed with a mental disorder. However, when I got into middle school, I learnt more about mental disorders and wondered if I could be affected. I considered having social anxiety, depression, ARFID, trauma and other unspecified disorders.

Some weeks ago, I started to get educated on autism. I'm a hobby author and wanted to write about an autistic girl, so I did some research. While writing and doing research, I started to relate more and more to my character's story. I could easily describe her having problems with and not being interested in social interaction with peers. I related to her while I wrote scenes where she felt left out like an alien for not being like the others, where she didn't know how to keep a conversation going without being boring, where she struggles to find out at what point in a conversation or phone call she can start to talk and when it's time to be quiet and listen. While writing about her needing a routine and not being able to accept even small changes in her life, I felt like I was writing about myself.

At some point, I decided to do more research and I read about typically autistic food intake problems. There are plenty of accounts, blogs,... for parents of autistic children about food. And I feel like these are exactly describing my own problems with eating. I've always been difficult when it comes to food, I'm considered a picky eater but I know it's more. Picky eating is different. My eating habits are terrible and I can't change it no matter how hard I try. For example, I need my mum to cut bananas in a certain way and remove brown parts of it so that I can eat it. And bananas are even a SAFE fruit for me, it's the fruit I can eat best on its own, there's actually barely any other fruit I eat in a "normal" way. Just for example.

I'm hypersensitive about sensory experiences. Many noises that others don't consider annoying maybe a little bit, literally hurt me. I'm very sensitive to smells, I feel sick if someone's eating a tomato or strawberry anywhere in the room and going by train is often almost making me throw up because of the many different smells. In a lecture hall, I notice the slight smell of smoke at people's jackets even though they are more than 10m away from me and I'm sitting next to the window.

I'm easily distracted: I can concentrate on a book I like for more than 1, sometimes even 3 hours, but if I'm not 100% into the thing I'm supposed to do, it's hard for me to stay focused for more than 5 minutes without help.

Even the less important symptoms like noticing many details and being fascinated by dates, patterns,... apply to me.

There are also other autism symptoms that I think apply to me, but I can't list them all.

I kinda suspect I'm autistic despite not being diagnosed during my whole childhood - even though I saw a psychologist a couple of times and I used to have doctor's appointments regularly.

I plan to ask my mum if I can see a professional to possibly get a diagnosis or get the confirmation that I'm NOT autistic. I think about not telling her details but I'm going to only say that I'm suspecting something and I want to see a professional to get it confirmed or not (it might not be the nicest way because she would worry but I know that I couldn't tell her before I spoke to a doctor).

Since I'm still insecure about the whole thing, it would really help me if you could tell me about your (or someone you know) story. How did you notice you're autistic? How does it show?

Even though I'm feeling like 95% of autism symptoms (that are mentioned online or in books) apply to me, I somehow feel like I'm exaggerating and maybe I'm just reading too much about it. I'm not really scared of getting the diagnosis - I would actually be relieved because it'd make sense and explain so much about my life starting from kindergarten until now.

I fear that my suspicion is ridiculous. I've always been different, shy, socially awkward and mocked by classmates. I've always wondered why I'm even different when it came to things that's couldn't be related to my physical illnesses. Why I couldn't have normal convos with classmates, why my ideas in houseplay were considered strange and dumb, why I never liked what my classmates were interested in, ...

But I'm scared that I'm over interpreting it and it's just me, not a disorder or something else, and that my suspicion is the most unrealistic thing my doctor will hear that week.