#this is about how none of you can cope with disabled people being different from you and having independent lives

[crippled-peeper]

people who feel existentially threatened by my blog posts should all climb into this cauldron full of vegetable stock and be boiled

[queermoths]

google: how to explain to abled ppl who will never fully grasp either that my chronic sleepiness and chronic fatigue are so so different from each other and also so much more than "just [sleepy/tired/not getting enough sleep/getting too much/whatever bs they insert]" like. best way i could try to describe This is: im sleepy but nothing fixes it. not all the sleep in the world will take the sleepy away/wake me up. i could sleep forever and still be immeasurably sleepy.

and also im Tired. so fucking Tired (different from sleepy). and nothing has fixed either. not exercising (that makes it worse), not caffeine (makes me calm and focused but also sleepy not awake), not being social (just drains me more), not therapy, not mindfulness, *literally* nothing fixes either.

and sleep has this magnetic pull on me that i *cannot* escape. the return to slumber is an inevitability i continue to endure and spend every waking moment actively resisting, no matter how "fine" i seem. (maybe ill write a poem about this idk.) and waking up from sleep is shit its so hard for me to be properly "awake." im groggy, on top of the sleepy and fatigued. and if that grogginess finally gives me some semblance of respite from it, im still weighed down by the expansive and seemingly neverending chronic sleepiness and chronic fatigue. and somehow im meant to just fucking "manage" (a more "socially acceptable" way of essentially saying, "cope, you lazy motherfucker.")

as if *any* of this is manageable. as if it could somehow be solved if i "tried harder." as if any of this is the more palatable version so many abled people sing to the fucking hills.

and none of this is even doing the chronic fatigue or chronic sleepiness justice, really. and i haven't even mentioned the fucking chronic pain, either. like holy fucking shit. can i catch a fucking break, please? apparently not.

but so many ableds seem to think that this all is comparable to like, being tired from a long day at work/working out in the gym. and they think that for us chronically ill people, our issues are just "mindset" or "not trying hard enough." or some "punishment" we "deserve." which, like, im not going to start unpacking the whole "disability is punishment" bullshit that institutions and individuals spout without even thinking twice.

idk im just so done. im done.

[cinthau]

Wanted to make my first actual talking post cause I need y'all to know that this space is safe for those who may not feel welcome in their own communities.

No matter anything, you are loved.

Aspec people? Your love is so different from what others expect it to be, and if you're loveless you're so so valid and I love you in the same way I love the universe. Asexual, aromantic, aplatonic, asensual, every a- out there: you're not broken. You're not wrong for being yourself and I love you like all the stars in the sky, so many more than what's visible.

Alterhumans? No matter what/who you are, you're beautiful for exploring your identity as something non-human, human-adjacent, or human in a different flavor! You're amazing and wonderful and I'm so proud of you for even considering being yourself in a world not built for you. Human, animal, object, concept, doesn't matter because you still deserve respect and love. I love you like all the little bugs I find outside, all beautiful and free.

People with conflicting labels? You're so cool. I don't care if you identify as a man and a lesbian at the same time. I don't care if you identify as a woman and a gay bear at the same time. I don't care how you identify, you're a living being and you're just as valid as everyone else. I love you like trinkets, all so unique and beautiful in your own ways.

Systems? You're spectacular and no origin of system or headmate could change my mind. Your system came about from trauma? I'm so proud of you for coping with your trauma and living your life happier and healthier with others that can support you. No trauma? That's okay! It's none of anyone else's business how you came about, what matters is that you're living your life the best way you can and I'm so proud of you. I love you like yarn, all so wonderful and varying and full of endless possibility.

Disabled people? Your disabilities don't make you any less deserving of respect and love, no matter what anyone says. You don't need to prove your usefulness to anyone that actually deserves to know you. You're allowed to be "useless". Your existence is a blessing even though I know it can be so difficult or impossible to do even basic tasks, and your worth is way beyond whatever anyone tells you you "should" be able to do. I love you like plushies, made to love and be loved, made to exist.

Neurodivergent people? You're so strong. This world was not built for your mind that varies so greatly from what's expected of you. Those of you that have a "dangerous" disorder, you're so valued and I'm so proud of you for being your best self, no matter those that say you're insane or manipulative just for being yourself. I love you like nature, unpredictable or scary to those unwilling to understand, you're beautiful not despite your brain but in tandem with it.

Xenogenders? You're epic. It's so awesome that you've been able to identify with concepts, objects, animals, characters, literally anything! You can be anything! Isn't that amazing? I don't care if it's cringe, I don't care. You're being yourself and that's so amazing. I love you like art, found in every place you look if you're looking with an open mind.

Religious people? It's so amazing that you've found something to believe in that helps you live your best life. As long as you're not using your religion to put others down, you have my support. It's so spectacular that you have something you believe in. Please don't let anyone take that away from you. I love you like rainbows, a miracle of life and a wonderful sight to see.

People with personality disorders? You're so valid. Granted I don't know much, but I do know that you deserve love and respect just as much as anyone else. No matter how misunderstood or mistreated, you're safe here. I'm always willing to learn and understand how to be a good person to everyone, no matter how "scary" you are. You're wonderful and I hope you know that. I love you like the ocean, full of so much vastness and beauty below the surface.

I love you I love you I love you!!!

However,

If you are a shitty person who forces yourself onto others or thinks that others are below you for what they believe in, do NOT be anywhere near my page. If you are any sort of -phobic, any sort of "minor liking person", any sort of asshole: I will automatically block you and you are NOT welcome here.

If you use my wholesome post to start drama or controversy I will block you. This is not a safe space for you if that is your intent.

This page is for loving, not hating.

[tarnished-angelcoric]

As a fellow working adult system, can I ask about what kind of job you have? We're finding it extremely difficult to agree on any kind of job and actually just turned in our 2 weeks at the current one because several alters are deeply unhappy with it. I feel like none of us can agree on what we want, especially long term career stuff. How did you find your work? Is it fulfilling enough for everyone? If someone doesn't like it, how do you manage to cope with that?

Sorry for all the questions, just been very stressful job hunting when no one likes anything and I was wondering if you had any advice/ your experience with it.

-In Calus

no thats so real. honestly, finding work,, really sucks jdbsjdbjd its definitely not easy. we're in a position where we kind of Have to work to support ourselves, theres really not any way around it. ill try and answer all of your questions in order.

so we work in retail at a mall, which is. a monster all of its own, but its what we have. we've had other jobs too: food service (dont recommend, sucks ass), food delivery (stuck with this for 2 yrs and honestly wouldve stayed longer if we hadnt moved, this one was actually pretty okay), and at an animal shelter (had to leave bc we're physically disabled also and the work put too much strain on the body, but otherwise really liked it, work was pretty solo so socializing wasnt an issue). honestly id say retail isnt an Ideal job for a system unless youre relatively under control, it can certainly go haywire. only reason we have this job is bc we had just moved and were Desperate for work, applied to a billion places and took the first one that got back to us lol. *i* personally dont mind it. we dont all share the same opinions about it, but we are mostly in agreement that you gotta do what you gotta do, yknow? this probably isnt a lifetime career for us, but itll hold us until we can find one.

our system is a little bit tricky in the fact that im the one whos fronting the majority of the time, and so for the most part, the bodys life is "my" life. almost everybody else really only fronts on occasion, and so i tend to take the lead on bodily decisions. i dont want to call it "my" life, but when it comes to things like that (especially work), thats kind of how it is yknow? and since im almost always fronting, i tend to be the one that deals with work unless its a rare occasion where im triggered enough to be pulled from front.

i wouldnt say that our job is fulfilling to everyone, i dont think? there are certainly those of us who dont like it, especially the social aspect. those parts tend to not front during work, unless something goes awry and they Need to be pulled forward – though, we've been in therapy long enough that those of us who Dont mind working can handle it okay.

its really just a thing of. we Cannot move back in with family, thats Not an option. and unfortunately, in order to Not move back in with family, we Have to work. we dont really have any other viable options. so none of us really Love our job, but we do what we have to in order to survive. n so even the parts that Hate work will do it if they have to. a lot of it just comes down to us being realistic with ourselves and knowing that we have to do things we dont like sometimes in order to make ends meet. n obviously our situation is different from some peoples in the sense that i as the host am almost always fronting and rarely leave front, so mostly everybody else doesnt have to worry too much about work because i can usually handle it.

finding a proper Lifelong Career has always been harder for us, n we tend to hop around between things quite a bit. its again a thing where its Mostly up to me, because ill be the main one dealing with it, but its still hard to come to a consensus that everyone will like. we still havent found that answer, truthfully. we liked helping at the shelter, bc it was pretty solitary work and didnt require a lot of socializing, but unfortunately it doesnt seem to be a good option with the direction our physical health is going.

i wish i could say that it was easy, i wish i could give you the magic puzzle piece to solve the problem. but for us it really is just a matter of Life Sucks But You Do What You Gotta, and that will have to do until we can find something better. i wish you guys the best of luck with finding something that works for you, and you can always talk to us if you have any questions or need anything <3

other working systems feel free to weigh in if you have anything to offer!

[the-starry-seas]

You gotta tell me more about Whisper's problems. How bad could it *really* be for ne and Sol to be drinking buddies?

LOL well-

The biggest thing is, well, y'know. The kind of people who say "an army of child slaves sounds like the perfect way to solve problems" are probably the kind of people who dehumanise said army of child slaves. Jango straight up calls them livestock. Plus the whole barcode and CT numbers thing. Enough to give anyone issues when it's all they know! And that's not accounting for the extra trust issues coming from the fact that the Aces were betrayed by a clone from their own company.

Also I have a really incoherent set of thoughts about clones not having personal autonomy or the ability to say 'no', and the ways that can break them. And about how much worse that is for clones with touch aversion, like Whisper. And about how nonverbal episodes can make anything difficult, but are potentially lethal in a life-or-death situation. And how with emotions being all... fucky wucky, sometimes the only way to feel something is to get punched in the face. Kiss with a fist is better than none, etc etc.

(I also have a lot of thoughts about there being a different version of the clone chip that's installed with "live" programing, when sending a clone back to Kamino for reconditioning would take too much time. These chipped clones have to obey every order they're given, even if it would kill them to do so, and are forbidden from fighting back against anyone hurting them. I have even more thoughts about Whisper being threatened with a chip like that and being scared shitless because ne could never let the Aces endanger themselves to protect ner.)

This is entirely headcanon, but, Kaminoans are transphobic as hell when it comes to the clones. The army was made male on purpose and there's no reason for them to not stay that way. They hear about a clone changing up their gender and consider it a 'programming aberration', something tweaked in the DNA that makes the clone a little cuckoo for cocoa puffs in comparison to the 'real' soldiers. For one thing, Whisper is not fond of being called an aberration. And apart from the effect transphobia has on a kid, it's just stressful to wonder what's enough to get you taken from your family.

But that's not ner only aberration, as far as the Kaminoans are concerned! Or would be concerned, if they knew that Whisper was autistic. Which also brings a whole new set of Shit Whisper Doesn't Want To Deal With. I'm ready to kill someone with my bare hands like a gorilla after 15 minutes in a Wal-mart supercentre, and Whisper spent ner entire life in either a multi-million-people city or a war zone. Considering ne has no idea what a coping mechanism is (presumably some kind of machinery), is it really any surprise that ne has a load of emotional disregulation and anger issues?

The Aces did a lot to protect Ember and keep his deafness a secret. An unintentional side effect of that is that he sees his deafness as a Problem that would get them all killed if anyone figures it out. Did the Aces try to accommodate Whisper's own disability and accidentally teach ner the same thing? Does Whisper think there's something wrong in ner brain, and that ne needs to be fixed to be normal so ne's no longer a problem that ner family has to keep covered up? Yep. It sucks when your family teaches you shame, especially when they never meant to.

Also Whisper is asexual and demiromantic so like. That is also very alienating when you realise that you're not physically capable of feeling something that everyone else considers a defining trait of being human. Which also definitely ties back into the whole angle of Kaminoan dehumanisation, and the whole "ah fuck gotta fix the brain to be normal" thought pattern.

But the big thing is the child murder! In canon, one of the Cuy'val Dar had a fight ring, and multiple cadets died from their injuries. Whisper got kicked into the fight ring when ne was seven years old. Ner first time there, ne ended up killing ner opponent. And ne was efficient enough about it that Priest kept bringing ner back for more fights. Killing other cadets (some of them younger than ner) since childhood has, what's the phrase... deeply fucked ner up.

There's also the fact that ne internalises everything instead of relying on ner family for help or support. Everything is ner fault, therefore ne has to fix it all on ner own, too. It's like a damage multiplier against ner emotional state. The other Aces don't even know about the fight club thing, ne told them it was intensive training for consideration for an ARC program. That's gonna be a fustercluck.

[the-heartstring-chronicles]

This is a bit long, but is something that has weighed on my mind since I watched the episode last night. I come from a place of being a physically disabled from birth Trekkie who has watched episodes of TNG/all of Trek since she was 8, thirty years ago. I touched on this a little in my review last night, but here is my full analysis on a problem I saw with the episode that goes beyond which villain is behind door number 3

Some vague Spoilers ahead for Star Trek Picard s3 episode 9 but no way to avoid them if I am to discuss this topic.

In 2023, apparently, we still have issues in Star Trek of all places, with coping with disability and difference.''

And what bothers me most is those issues are issues had by my two favorite characters in all of Trek about their own progeny.

This progeny has a genetic issue inherited from their father, as a result of a trauma the father suffered that altered his DNA.

The progeny has the potential to be dangerous because of what they've inherited, like world ending dangerous. But so far, they had seemed until last night, to be kindhearted, smart, sensitive, fun, like their folks. And to only use their potentially dangerous differences to take out bad guys, to protect people they care about and to try to save the day.

And yet, the minute, the dad finds out what the cause of the issue is, his first solution is to put his progeny in an institution, no joke, the calmest, gentlest guy in the history of Trek is like, you know , we'll just put you there, you'll be fine. And when his progeny asks what Star Trek's biggest moral leader sees when he looks at his progeny, basically either a choice between saying whether he sees his child or a monster, he says nothing.

And the mother of this child, the character who usually is a cross between the world's best at her position, the most accepting person ever and funny as heck, says to her progeny, that they can fix this/ deal with it. Not I love you, not I see you, none of her normal character stuff, just an allegory for how some parents might deal with this stuff in the real world. Not an example of how to do better

And the parents refuse to talk to each other about any of it, to even comfort each other. Despite being the Star Trek pairing known for talking to each other about everything, they won't even soothe each other, even as friends or parents.

So basically in stuff set in 2403, the writers went with disability/difference can be potentially dangerous and we should fear before we love and panic before we think and say really ablestic crap, because trauma and/or training overrides who characters were written to be for 40 years prior. And makes for good drama

I'm hoping the last episode next week has the writers making them believe they acted like jerkholes, but if not, I will maybe consider long and hard about writing to both the new producer and to both actors (They are both big advocates for justice and inclusion of all in Trek media, at conventions and in the actual world ie politics and organizations. And have spoken up about how to handle plots on screen and issues off screen many times) and I'm disheartened that no one nixed this plot or at least this handling of it.

A big name creator also pointed out on youtube that this could be an allegory for how some parents reject their LGBT+ children too and the issues with that plot, i have to say it's possible as well.

Which doesn't make again, for pleasant or safe viewing for a generation of folks of all different walks of life who just wanted to see characters they trusted as a distraction or as validation of their real struggles, the way Star Trek has always been, not a mirror of injustices and pain for drama.

[schizodiaries]

hi, i hope you're doing good! i just started a mental health/recovery sideblog to help me deal with my schizophrenia and did diagnoses, and i was wondering if you have any advice for running a blog like this? i really like how you use yours creatively, and i want to get the most out of my experiences <3

Hi there, I’m doing great. I hope you are doing fine as well.

I don’t know if I have much advice for making a mental health blog, but I can at least tell you how I like to run mine. Here’s what goes through my mind when considering what to post here on schizodiaries:

I like to reblog relatable posts, memes about mental health, resources, and informative posts about schizophrenia, coping skills, and general mental health topics.

Sometimes I like to use this blog as a journal to document my mental wellness journey. Be cautious about what you share though, make sure none of it is personal or sensitive information that someone could take advantage of (e.g. listing your triggers).

Having a tagging system is nice, I try to tag every post both for organization purposes and in case someone would like a certain topic blacklisted from their dashboard.

I personally try to steer away from drama and discourse, as it can be stressful for some people and myself, but that doesn’t mean I can’t offer my two cents on a topic every now and again.

I like to have a theme with all my blogs. You might have noticed my theme on this blog is the white rabbit. So I’ll occasionally reblog posts pertaining to white rabbits.

I’m still trying to get better at this, but accessibility is important to a lot of disabled people, so I’m trying to refrain from reblogging images without IDs. I don’t know how to write them myself so I rely on others to do it. I also try to refrain from formatting my posts with different colors or fonts.

If an original post “breaches containment” or starts getting weird comments you can always lock the post and prevent it from being reblogged. You can also do this with personal posts that you prefer not to be shared.

I’ve never had to deal with anon hate or hate comments, but my solution to it is to simply ignore and delete them. Block them if you need to. Don’t even give them the time of day or the attention they crave.

Most importantly, as cliche as this might sound, just have fun with it. I have a great time running this blog and interacting with the schizospec community. At no point should it feel stressful or uncomfortable running a mental health blog. If you need to take a break, please do so, and if it gets too much you can always delete the blog.

[stitchthesewords]

for the trope rating thing, for no particular reason.... resurrection as a trope. interpret however you want to >:)

WHOOPS. I HAVE LET THIS SIT FOR FAR TOO LONG. SPARKS I AM SO SORRY. ILY SPARKS. [This is from an old ask game. Just. So everyone knows.]

Okay so I LOVE resurrection. But you gotta be careful w it. There are some LOVELY metaphors to made w came back wrong trope and developing a disability later in life. Having to learn how to sit in your own skin again.

I ALSO love when its a resurrection as a cleansing. Not in. uh. The way I'm about to rant about but - When its a character coming back and deciding to fucking grab onto the reins of their own life and take it back and make it better for themselves I EAT THAT SHIT UP OH MY GOD

HOWEVER. Far. Far too often. When it is a disabled character [usually physically disabled, but sometimes mentally]being resurrected, the resurrection removes their disability. Now. To clarify. I think this can be done well, especially when looking through the lense of a terminal illness or degenerative disease and frankly, I HAVE seen it handled well by someone who is experiencing those things or otherwise has done research and can handle it respectfully. Where's that whole post about two people from a marginalized community can need different things in their representation? yeah, that. BUT. Especially in like, sci fi for some reason, when a character who was disabled is resurrected, they are no longer disabled. They don't explore any of their feelings about no longer being disabled, they don't struggle with having to learn to do things differently [because when you're disabled, you DO do things different from someone who is ablebodied. I don't know how to dice an onion finely with a knife bc it is a motor skill that is too risky for me to cut myself, so instead I use one of several kinds of mechanical food choppers], they dont struggle which I think is the big difference between 'came back not disabled' handled respectfully versus disrespectfully. Disability whether people want to admit it or not is a struggle. Coming back without the struggle WOULD be a relief to a character, sure, but then it opens up an ENTIRELY new doorway or grief and longing for something you feel like you shouldn't be missing, and feeling like you've lost part of your identity, and a whole host of other things. Like, look, even if there was a cure for Cerebral Palsy [Which. Um. I have a hole in my brain. There's not gonna be], it's not affecting my quality of life. If I was resurrected without cerebral palsy, sure, my life would physically get better. But to me it would be like I came back wrong. This is an entire part of my identity, something I have developed my entire life around coping with, something that all of my memories are tied to. I would be grieving it long before I was able to learn to live an abled bodied life and if we're gonna come back to life not disabled I want to see that grief!!! I want to explore what it means to have the memories of a disability but not of its affects any longer. COME ON. Stop using ressurrection as an excuse to be a lazy writer and not write a disability anymore my god.

None of this is directed at you sparks. 😭🤣In fact - I'm plugging this because Sparks handles Disability in their story GIHASM so well!!!! And I know for a fact that Sparks is handling writing disability as respectfully as a writer SHOULD so everyone, if you haven't read it, -> here

[eldritch-queern-magicat]

Shit, this is gonna be heavy. Trigger warning for discussion of cult abuse and self-harm. I'll put a cut somewhere.

Foster care with the Pentecostals, and then to a fair degree my great-grandma, trained me to be constantly ashamed of myself and self-flagellating about it. In that typical fundamentalist religious context, of course. Since I had ADHD, everything I did was either wrong or not good enough most of the time. And they taught me that if you feel guilty, it means you are sinning and need to be punished. Standard fare for their brand of Christianity.

Now, this is complicated by the trigeminal neuralgia a lot. Since it was a pretty severe burning pain for such an early age, it's the impulse control problem. That is, there was none. And the pain was also seen as a punishment from God, once they finally believed that something was wrong with my face. For... Ah, yes, that's right. It was for the crime of literally being the legal definition of a bastard (a thing no child ever has a choice in). You know, because you're supposed to get married before you have any sex at all, or you're sinning. According to them.

But that I actually understandably had no impulse control was a problem, too, because everything is problematic to them. Even though if they'd had any compassion at all, they'd have understood that I was going through something unspeakably painful, and that I needed to be treated with kindness instead of scorn. Like, I'm only digging half my face completely bloody because there's nothing else I, a four/five year old child, can do without help from other people who actually know what's going on. Trust me, no one was more afraid of what was happening than me.

Also, especially to Nanny, I was destroying the beauty God had also still blessed me with. So I really had a lot of reasons to feel bad and guilty and ashamed. And they of course made sure I knew that, even if they were being 'subtle' about it. To say it didn't help me cope with the pain any better or stop picking at sores would be a massive understatement. I literally believe the stress of it triggered even more pain that I couldn't just ignore.

I was also unable to communicate with others effectively, and was constantly, sometimes even intentionally, misunderstood. I was a freak, and people consistently bullied me. Nothing I did ever seemed to make much difference when people were hellbent on judging me for my disabilities. And even when people didn't, it barely mattered with everything else that happened.

So I was extremely repressed and traumatized to the point that I believed I deserved being punished for anything I felt guilty about doing or thinking or being incapable of getting everything right every time, including the first. Since mistakes weren't allowed. It also led me to lie a lot about things like homework that no one understood how I struggled to complete because of reality that I wasn't a perfect student even though I was also pretty smart. Because that's not how education works, but a lot of people will try to con you into believing it is.

And subconsciously, I simply continued the barrage against myself, since my parents and grandma weren't so strict and my very dysfunctional mind just screamed at me night and day that I have to punish myself. But at the exact same time, I also still believed I was weak for succumbing to the pain and self-harming, even though it felt like my rightful punishment. Because the assholes brainwashing me were nothing if not constantly contradicting in their own beliefs.

-Carl ⚾😺

[plagasitize]

some rambling about the game put under a cut because it got a little long, aha.

replaying the original so i can get my picks of what to take from each game as my 'canon' and regardless of opinions on the originals writing / dialogue ( which is very 2000s and certainly regarding ash is inappropriate half the time ) i do think the remake fails when it comes to capturing the comedy of the original. part of the charm is l.eon thinking he's very funny and witty ( he's not ) - it's supposed to be a dumb american action movie that's why all these characters fit the tropes and stereotypes you would expect. i spoke briefly about how whilst i like s.addler in the remake, i think his og counterpart is just more interesting - they feel like two different characters instead of an improved one. characters like r.amón especially lose a lot of their flavour when all the comms scenes are removed. it's the one issue i have with all the remakes - they lack that campy charm by opting for serious 'realism'. l.eon still makes jokes but none of them land because he's so much more serious and whilst his jokes were bad in the og, i think him deflecting / coping with humour is an interesting trait.

i think operation j.avier suffers the worst from it though. they had the chance to add it in-game, even in just a cutscene, to finally give context and backstory and instead they changed it entirely to remove any mention of m.anuela ( even j.avier himself ), the virus ( though i understand many people new to the series due to the remakes won't know what t v.eronica is ), j.ack's infection and dismissal ( him working for s.addler and not w.esker is an odd change, but if they committed to it could have really worked - a disabled, disgruntled, isolated war veteran let down by the government is the perfect target for a cult ) but not to mention that the 'you can't save anyone' / 'this time it has to be different' makes far more sense when you consider m.anuela ( especially as l.eon could have no impact on saving m.arvin and by this point he already knows a.da is alive ) - especially if they canonized the 'bad' ending where she turns to ash ( as we never see / hear from her again, which is fine - personal take that not every one-time character has to return, even if i like them ). the parallel of a young innocent woman, infected, under l.eon's protection, would have worked much better than 'the government killed all these men for...reasons?' ( why were they killed? did s.immons have something to do with it, showing more of his corruption prior to six? were they infected with the virus they don't mention? as the series progresses this happens more and more, and l.eon himself aids in the coverups of rc etc etc, which could have added more context to the issues between him and j.ack but instead it just comes across for people who have are new that j.ack's blaming l.eon for...reasons? ). they could have sown the seeds of future events whilst bringing in the important things that get missed because it's in a railshooter side game and it's a missed opportunity! also i think if they did acknowledge the canon of m.anuela's survival that her and ash could have gotten on really well ) even if it's unlikely they'd meet.

ash definitely 'won' in terms of improvement ( though i never found her annoying, fandom just was outrageously sexist / harsh on her - whilst it's better now, her being relegated to the 'braincell haver' or the 'daughter / sister / niece' of l.eon ( and usually l.uis) when she's an adult woman not that much younger or the rampant over sexualisation of modders which is a plague upon every modding scene is still... not great. god forbid we treat women as more than accessories ) but i do wish they kept in a litte of her sharpness. it's been a long time since i've played the og so i'll have more thoughts but definitely the scene where she runs away / they get separated is a huge improvement. i've seen people say before the og ash was 'bitchy' but her shoving l.eon away always felt like panic - she's frightened! the remake definitely did a better job of showing it ( and the effects of the p.laga in general, although i do think they should have kept in the scene with l.eon and a.da, even if they changed it so he doesn't choke her, to show how it's effecting him too - especially as iirc he isn't given a dominant p.laga like ash is so he should be suffering far less control, although i suppose maybe that is shown in how he's rendered immobile repeatedly whereas she is controlled? who knows ). either way, the relationship between them two of them is vastly improved and though i wish we'd gotten to see more of her interactions with the rest of the cast ( though i do find her 'for l.uis' a nice touch - i'd like to explore their relationship but definitely the revelation that he's partly responsible because whilst l.eon knows, she doesn't ). it would have been nice to get a gauge on her relationship with her father, for her to talk about her experience being kidnapped and growing to trust l.eon ( especially as her security failed to protect her / were in on it and the subsequent distrust it would form in the government ).

tldr; there's a lot of things it improves on but equally as much it fails with ( that's what rp is for! ) but i'm glad after all these years ash has stopped being utterly ignored or despised by the majority of fandom.

[muldxr]

An outcast named Matilda

A close reading of Harry’s song and its literary namesake, where it strongly resonates the disabled experience.

Backstory: Matilda began as a children’s book by Roald Dahl - published in 1988. It was then directed and adapted by Danny DeVito into one of the best films of all time - released July 28th, 1996.

Matilda is a young girl stuck in a household with unloving parents and a hostile school environment. She loves to learn and reads several books a week, since she is basically left to her own devices at home. With her newfound telekinetic abilities, she hones this power and eventually stands up for herself, and at the end, finds her own family.

You were riding your bike to the sound of it’s no big deal / And you’re trying to lift off the ground on those old two wheels / Nothing ‘bout the way you were treated ever seemed especially alarming 'til now / So you tie up your hair and you smile like it’s no big deal

"You" = Matilda, right off the bat. Riding your bike, literally, perhaps, going from place to place and exploring the world, or, going through the motions and watching time pass by, saying that whatever you've been through is no big deal. The "bike" here is worn down and you're trying to just get by off the meager crumbs you get.

And here's the first link to disability, the first one I actually thought of when I first did a lyric read. Being deaf for me has always brought in a factor of communication struggles for me. always being told, "It's no big deal, never mind, I'll tell you later." If I had a nickel for every time someone told me that, I'd be richer than the 1%. Trying to do everything yourself based on this mentality and the meager love you get from being different.

"Nothing about the way you were treated ever seemed especially alarming 'til now": It isn't until you go out to a different place that may have people just like you, like a school or a special event, when you realize, how you were treated all your life by your family was actually dehumanizing and demoralizing. You internalize that ableism by telling yourself it's no big deal. "Tie up your hair" can be a direct nod to the ribbon in Matilda’s hair, or a coping mechanism or what have you, telling yourself, it's no big deal.

You can let it go / You can throw a party full of everyone you know / And not invite your family 'cause they never showed you love / You don't have to be sorry for leaving and growing up

The chorus; also, the part that resonated with me the most. It really emphasizes the subject finding a family (everyone you know/people alike them) and making peace with the insufficient memories of the past (not invite your family). The people that aren’t there don’t know the subject well, don’t love the subject, because the subject is so clearly different from them and wasn’t thriving in that environment. Now that they’re older, they’ve grown into themselves and their identity.

Matilda, you talk of the pain like it’s all alright / But I know that you feel like a piece of you’s dead inside / You showed me a power that is strong enough to bring sun to the darkest days / It’s none of my business but it’s just been on my mind

“All alright” may be a call back to “no big deal” - again, internalizing that trauma and pain of being ignored and hated into something lesser. Not allowing it to harm you, minimizing what you went through.

"A piece of you's dead inside." Link to Golden's "Hopeless, broken," / Lights Up's "The dark running through my heart" / Falling's "what am I now?". This part of me is broken, is not worthy, all the love I was supposed to get is not there, not nurtured enough. Major recognition of the loss of identity and personhood disabled people go through, wrangling with the desire to want human connection and recognition, when being treated like shit makes you feel dead inside.

"Power" / literal reference to Matilda’s power? Or the resiliency of experiencing trauma. I try not to take this as "inspiration porn", which is all too common when discussing abled people's view of disabled people, but the next line is exactly why I feel like this is important to bring up. He's acknowledging the subject's strength, their ability to bring light to the sad moments, of all those times it was "no big deal", of all the rainy hopeless days.

“None of my business...” Harry feels like he doesn’t want to entrench or ask more of the subject, but he cares enough to try to talk it out and learn. Very, very resonant of my abled friends who are willing to learn about my experiences.

You can see the world / Following the seasons / Anywhere you go / You don’t need a reason 'cause they never showed you love / Don’t have to be sorry for doing it on your own

You can do whatever you want. You CAN. disabled people are always often told no, they can’t do this, they can’t do that, they’re lesser. But this part is so nurturing and positive, to reassure Matilda she can do anything she wants because she doesn’t owe the family anything.

I’ve never felt genuine love from my own family (mainly extended family but I won’t excuse my parents from this narrative). I know it’s different for everyone, esp with different disabilities and whether it developed later in life or you were born with one (in my case). This is traumatizing. It’s alienating. I don’t know family history. I barely remember my cousins’ names or know anything about them, because they never expressed an effort to communicate with me. So it’s hard to attend events and still feel left out, different, pitied.

You’re just in time, make your tea and your toast / You framed all your posters and dyed your clothes / You don’t have to go / You don’t have to go home / Oh, there’s a long way to go / I don’t believe that time will change your mind / In other words, I know they won't hurt you anymore as long as you can let them go

Welcome home, welcome to the party, welcome to the place where you can be you and not have to ask for anything. “You don’t have to go home” - “home” signifying the old place with the family, the subject’s cut ties with them and Harry’s saying that it’s okay to do that (yet he keeps saying in interviews that Home is not a place, it’s a feeling, with his friends, and That is Interesting)

“They won’t hurt you anymore” - covert/overt ableism can be avoided, all that pain and harm can be unpacked once you’ve left that family, and you can start to heal.

You can let it go / You can throw a party full of everyone you know / You can start a family who will always show you love / You don’t have to be sorry for doing it on your own / You can let it go / You can throw a party full of everyone you know You can start a family who will always show you love / You don’t have to be sorry, no

FOUND FAMILY AGAIN AAAA. Finally letting go of a performance of “faking it”, of now being around people who Get It and, in my case, with whom I can communicate freely and easily. Found family is so fucking important, it’s a community, and in this case, it’s such a small world once you’re in it. And figuring out how to do things on your own, how to be independent, how to express yourself fully; these are all things I’m relearning because I was perceived as unable to speak for myself (pun not intended).

The last lyric is a reminder and an assurance to be unapologetically yourself, don't apologize for trying to mold yourself into a world that simply hasn't caught up to accommodate you yet.

Thanks for reading 💚

[askaborderline]

I have bpd and my usual outlet (d&d) fell apart due to drama (not any I was involved in) with other players and so I’ve been hyper fixating on my FP again which is great except??? I’m constantly splitting, I’m possessive, I want to fight everyone, I am going from in love to couldn’t care less to absolute devotion and dedication again, I can’t even ask to spend time with them because I feel like I’m asking too much and because I’m quiet about all of it, they don’t know how I’m feeling bc aforementioned anxiety takes over my ability to communicate and set boundaries. I just.. forgot how awful it is to fixate on them like this.

I’m also super sexual as a response (sex = no abandonment right? - hypersexuality as a trauma response for an aro-spec/ace-spec was a funny turnout for me innit) but I’m So Terrified of rejection that I never initiate and the times I do initiate, I feel like a predator or something so I just feel anxious all the time and ALL of this has been triggering my psychosis & paranoia and I don’t know how to make it stop. my outlet (d&d) is nigh impossible to get going again Bc of how hard it is to get people into a group on time at the same time when life gets in the way. I’m trying a bunch of different outlets like art and writing but nothing seems to be filling the cavity and I don’t know how to break this fixation because I get stress nightmares about them (fp) and even if they show they care, my brain will twist it with reasons that I’m just being manipulated or that I’m being manipulative by having these feelings at all.

DBT doesn’t seem to be helping either because my brain knows how to talk around reassurances, reminders, urge surfing, etc. when I’m like this. It just feels like distress with no soothing, not from myself or from FP or from other friends or any of my outlets. Idk most of this is just a vent but I just.. I’m kinda at my wits end. I know eventually it’ll end but I’m just… tired of it. It’d be different if I was able to soothe, but nothing- not even my destructive coping mechanisms feel good, not that they should but it’s kinda like.. damn nothings working. What am I supposed to do when neither healthy or unhealthy coping mechanisms are working and the strongest outlet I had that Did work is nearly impossible to get set up again? (I tried working out but I have disabilities that make exercise more costly than safe). I’m at least eating healthy and drinking water (with electrolytes to keep me from dehydrating on days when my body simply forgets it exists).

Hi anon,

"Just a vent" this may be, I hope it helped you to get this off your chest and just written out somewhere. Frankly, I know all too well what it's like to be "at wit's end" - I've spent the better part of this year in complete shambles myself, dealing with the worst symptoms of this disorder imaginable and barely pushing through. And yeah, I'll be upfront with you - sometimes I have days, weeks, even months where none of my coping mechs seem to put through, where my hobbies fade away into a dull gray uninteresting mess. It does happen. Not everyone can be recovering all the time, and that's okay.

What is important is you keep trying. You're already eating and drinking, which is one hell of an achievement in a situation like this. If it takes a little bit to work up to other forms of self-care, that's okay - it's important that you keep trying, but if it doesn't work you're not a failure. Struggle is a sad certainty with this disorder, but you're right, it will get better eventually, you just have to push through it.

I'd also like to strongly emphasize that you are not a predator, though if it helps you find some solace, I struggle with the same problems very frequently - hypersexuality combined with a fear of making someone uncomfortable. My mood swings have been about as intermittent and violent as yours seem to have been, and I know it's a special kind of hell to live in, but it's important to remember you're not a bad person - you were just born with a brain that wasn't made for this world.

None of this is to say you're doomed or all hope is lost. I reiterate, it will get better. But for now, you just need to keep holding on, keep trying, and if it helps, take some solace that I, at least, am going through much the same things you are. Just had some major fallout with my FP myself as I felt attention-starved, so I really get it. But you gotta keep pushing.

I have faith in you. If you ever need to vent more or talk, feel free to write me an ask. You got this :)

Cheers, Jane

[savemeadansemacabre]

hozier’s jackie and wilson as my anthem to autistic existence

so tired trying to see from behind the red in my eyes no better version of me i could pretend to be tonight

sometimes the best me i can put forward still isn’t enough for people- can’t it please just be enough when i can’t give anymore? sometimes my mask is dusty or rusted or tarnished- can’t it be enough that i still wear it for you and try to fit your ideal even a little? better yet, can’t i put that broken mask away for a while til i can dust it off, shiny and new? even better, why can’t i rip up that fucking mask, smash it with a hammer, throw it to the fire and give up trying to fit in, especially when it hurts me? can’t i just be honest that it always hurts me?

she blows outta nowhere, roman candle of the wild laughing away through my feeble disguise no other version of me i would rather be tonight.

my favorite people in the world are those i can be my authentic self with and just breathe. people who love me for me and judge me for none of it. they see right through the masks i wear, and let me take it off around them, too. they talk with me about my obsessive interests, don’t judge me for the way i need to look away or fidget, let me be quiet when i need to. there’s no other person i’d rather be around these people than my authentic self.

i need to be youthfully felt 'cause, god, i never felt young

i think i grew up too fast. i was called smart and mature, shy and an old soul. i was praised for being so good with adults, but they never thought to wonder why i could barely talk to kids my own age? i’m mad now. mad that nobody told me it’s not my fault, my brain is just wired differently. instead, i grew up too fast, needing to learn how to work for myself when nothing else would, forced to cope, forced to learn and copy the mask that the world wanted me to be. sure, i got to play pretend and have fun with friends like any other kid, but i also had to learn to just shut up instead of crying and shutting down when my emotions got too big, to talk when i just felt like shutting the world out and throwing away the key, or to sit still and nice like good kids are always praised for. i wish i hadn’t had to live like that and instead just got to actually feel young while i still was.

she'll know me crazy, soothe me daily better yet, she wouldn't care

i need to know that i have friends who love me for me, quirks and all. friends who know how i work, or at least try to, and help me through the tough times, or at least try to. i know some people in my life are like this. i think others would be. others, i’m kind of scared to find out. would they question me, write me off, ridicule me? i’m honestly scared of opening up and finding out.

we tried the world, good god, it wasn't for us

this world just wasn’t made for a mind like mine- i’m coming to learn that nowadays. but, i also struggle a lot with coming to terms with that idea, too. are neurodivergent people disabled? i agree with the idea that the world isn’t built for a mind like that and that puts you at a disadvantage in the world- so why can’t i accept that i’m living at a disadvantage? do i struggle enough to deserve to say that i do? 

i’ve just been in a very stressful place lately and this song has been helping me through it- right now and for a long while back, honestly. more recently, these lyrics have really got me thinking and feeling, and i think i need to let myself do that right now. i hope someone can see this and like it or relate- if you do, thank you and i’m sorry x

[senadimell]

The Mysterious Benedict Society as an adaption

So far, The Mysterious Benedict Society adaption feels very faithful to the books. There are definitely changes (Constance, for instance, has been aged up, and likely has a different background. This is understandable. It would be nigh impossible to portray her as she is in the books in live action format--for example, none of the kids in the book suspect she’s a toddler, let alone two years old). However, most changes have all felt reasonable and add to plot and pacing.

I especially enjoy the additions: showing the adult side of the team, for example, or Ms. Perumal’s growing concern about Reynie’s whereabouts, or the girls’ nighttime conversations. Some changes are more extreme. The Mr. Curtain of the books is clearly a villain. He’s condescending and rude, and the only people who like him are bullies. Mr. Curtain of the show is much smoother. It’s easy to see how he’s managed to influence people. Similarly, the L.I.V.E. curriculum is much less obnoxious in the show (not just memorizing nonsense by rote), and as a result, the school’s students seem less stupid and cruel. You can see why they enjoy attendance.

I’m particularly pleased that Number Two’s weirdness has been amplified. Mr. Benedict’s found family is delightfully strange, and I love watching their unusual rhythms. It will be easy to believe when (or if) it’s revealed that the women have been legally adopted into Mr. Benedict’s family.

Similarly, I love how they intensified the quirky feel of the setting and characters. Of course Number Two built a house in the woods in a day because she has a woodworking hobby. Of course there’s secret tunnels and drawers and compartments in Mr. Benedict’s house. Of course Milligan’s disguises and mannerisms are wackily memorable instead of just matter-of-fact. The books themselves have a stylized feel at times (they kind of remind me of Lemony Snickett’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, though with none of the grimness).

I love the overall aesthetic. When I first read the books, they didn’t strike me as being set in the past, but the vaguely vintage feeling works excellently. (I was also a fully grown adult before I realized that the Incredibles wasn’t set in the present, so...) The color schemes, costumes, and sets have distinctive feelings and coordinate well. The effect is stylized rather than naturalistic, which is appropriate and amplifies the tone of the scenes. The bright colors and rough textures of the wooded hideout and its inhabitants’ costumes contrast nicely with the clean lines of tL.I.V.E.’s vintage-pastel interior and sleek exterior.

I also enjoyed the way they did Kate’s flashback as rough home footage. Similarly, I enjoyed the way they showed four kids solving problems on the same screen, how they illustrated Reynie’s thought process with overlaid sketches of the problems, and the way words show up on the screen during the tests for emphasis. The combination of animations, showing multiple things at once, and creative angles for emphasis did a great job conveying the feeling of the tests. (Unfortunately, I lack the vocabulary to describe the techniques they used here).

There’s two things I didn’t enjoy. The first was killing Sticky’s parents to make him an orphan. It mattered in the books that he felt rejected by his own parents. Making it his aunt and uncle who (seemingly) care more about money and fame than the child they’re raising feels a little too much like the wicked stepmother trope. I don’t know why the showmakers decided that Of Course They’re All Orphans, because while most of the book characters are orphans, Sticky isn’t, which serves to show that you can feel rejected and hurt by your parents even when you’ve got an ordinary, non-abusive nuclear family. It’s about feeling isolated, whether or not you’re technically alone.

Secondly, all the wheelchairs have been removed from the adaption. I’m not sure why this was done. Sticky’s mother has bad arthritis and requires a wheelchair. In the books, this was done without fanfare; it was as normal as anything else to oil Ms. Washington’s wheelchair in damp weather, or load and unload it from cars in later books. She was more of a background character, so it didn’t affect the plot, but the casual background representation was a welcome contrast to many books that assume being disabled is strange and uncommon, and that disabilities only exist when they’re plot-significant. The aunt who replaced Ms. Washington used no mobility aids, which disappoints me, especially as the woman she replaces in the books is ultimately shown to be a flawed but loving parent who’s dedicated to making up for her mistakes.

The other person missing their wheelchair is Mr. Curtain, the villain. I’m also not sure why this was removed? It could be to avoid the Evil Disabled Villain trope, but in the book, I didn’t feel like his disabilities were treated as a moral flaw or an excuse for his villainy. He shares his narcolepsy with the unquestionably benevolent Mr. Benedict, so it didn’t feel like his condition was used to vilify him.

He and Mr. Benedict act cope with their condition differently: Mr. Benedict relies on trusted family members for support and chooses to sit on the floor and avoid positioning himself in tall places from which he could fall, whereas Mr. Curtain disguises his narcolepsy by wearing mirrored glasses and using a wheelchair that secures an upright posture, so that no one knows when he has an episode. He does use his wheelchair aggressively, banging through doors and zooming around and forcing people to jog and keep up, but it felt like his use of mobility aids grew naturally from his character.

The books also include a scene where he shocks the children by leaving his wheelchair to chase them. They assumed that using a wheelchair=completely unable to walk, a common view in US society. Importantly, I didn’t feel like the scene was framed as particularly deceptive, like he was lying to them by using a wheelchair when he could walk. Rather, it fit into a pattern of Mr. Curtain managing assumptions and expectations: he doesn’t want people to take advantage of his weaknesses, yet wants to hold a few cards close to his chest. He doesn’t have to lie to people, just let them see and hear and assume what they will.

I don’t use a wheelchair or have narcolepsy, so I’m not in a position to say whether or not the books have good representation. Maybe the fact that Mr. Curtain is evil, and also zooms around and bangs through doors, is uncomfortable. Maybe the fact that his nefarious devices are wheelchair-accessible and in fact designed around his chair sends the wrong message. Maybe using mobility aids to conceal a disability sends a bad message, or maybe it would be better if the good guy was the one to use a wheelchair to cope with his disability. I don’t know. I do know that Mr. Benedict’s condition is played for laughs in both the book and show, and that might be uncomfortable. I do think it’s worth noting that Mr. Benedict’s narcolepsy is seen less and less as funny as the books go on, and grows to be seen as an endearing quality that emphasizes how much he loves people, since his attacks usually underscore with strong emotions and convey worry for his loved ones or joy at their company.

My own sense is that both approaches to narcolepsy make sense, and neither is shown to be inherently faulty. Rather, it’s Mr. Curtain’s character that’s to blame for his villainy--his arrogance, condescension, and mistrust. Both characters feel well-developed and consistent, and their disability is only one part of them. Their disability is colorful, but it’s colorful in the same way as the main characters (Sticky’s anxiety and memory, Kate’s gusto, eye for measurement, and bucket, Constance’s precociousness, etc).

As for why Mr. Curtain’s wheelchair was cut, I’m not sure. Maybe the show writers just didn’t want to deal with the ramifications of depicting a villain in a wheelchair, and decided to cut it altogether (a lazy reason, I think). Alternatively, it seems like they’re depicting narcolepsy without cataplexy, eliminating the need for a wheelchair (a better reason).

On the other hand, Mr. Curtain’s attitude and mannerisms bear the least resemblance to his book counterpart of all the show’s characters. They’re incorporating some backstory from the other books to build a secondary plotline, and I’m not sure how it’s going to play out. From what we’ve seen of him so far, S. Q. Pedalian is also drastically different (shy, cloistered, and openly acknowledged as Mr. Curtain’s son, instead of the gregarious, bumbling, misfit Executive of the books). The TV dynamic between him and Mr. Curtain is largely unrevealed as of yet. Since these changes constitute departures from the book, I’m not sure how the future story’s going to play out around them, and what that reveals about why the wheelchair was cut when it was so characteristic of Mr. Curtain’s mannerisms while other things (like Mr. Benedict’s use of plaid) were included.

Still, it does disappoint me that two wheelchairs were erased, and no one in the show uses one, not even background students. 

Overall, though, apart from the orphan and wheelchair situation, I’m very pleased with this adaption and think that the pacing works wonderfully. It’s a near-ideal format for a video adaption (I think animation would be best, but this is a close second).

[samwontshare]

Okay so I rewatched parts of Endgame to write a Sambucky fic. I haven’t seen this movie since the theaters and then S8 ep 3 Game of Thrones destroyed my life.

-The fact that The Snap took Hawkeye’s entire family way outsides the odds proves how much the universe just hates Hawkeye.

-I forgot how much I fucking love Nebula. I want more Nebula and Rhodey. Bucky and Nebula would get on, too. Disabled superheroes club unite.

-I did like the beginning of Endgame. Everyone was just so wrecked and they played it so well. Thanos living his best life in his cottage. That was great.

-I still genuinely do not understand why Steve looks at Peggy’s picture when he’s talking about bringing everyone back from the Snap because he ‘doesn’t know what he’ll do otherwise.’ Like does she represent everyone he’s lost, like Sam and Bucky, his closest connections that are actually dead from the Snap? It doesn’t make sense.

-Is that Steve running a support group because he asked himself, “What would Sam do?”

-This was actually the best scene dealing w the fallout of the Snap. The MCU was definitely not ready to address the full scope of what The Blip means and you see that lack of follow through in every movie/series post Endgame.

-Steve Rogers: “You gotta move on.” UNLESS

-“...Thanos should’ve killed all of us.” I think this is the reason Steve goes back in time, honestly. The Snap just broke him. Without Sam and Bucky, with the enormity of this failure, Steve just lost his ability to cope. Steve has always needed someone to save him from himself but they’re gone. Even though they get most people back, they still lost Tony and Nat and 5 years. Steve can’t win. And Steve Rogers cannot cope with losing. So he rewrites a history where he wins. I don’t even think it’s about not being able to get over Peggy (though they did try to shoehorn that in hard), it was about Steve needing to be in control of his life again.

-It’s one of those situations where I can understand the character’s individual choice, but from a storytelling and narrative perspective, it doesn’t make sense with the story they were telling in the Captain America movies and it’s deeply unsatisfying and confusing. It leaves so many questions and potential consequences. I wasn’t even in this fandom at the time and had zero opinions on any ships, and I was like “this makes no sense.” It still doesn’t. But you know what good for Steggy shippers, ya’ll really won. Stucky fandom, as someone who had to watch Game of Thrones S8 wreck my fandom life, I feel you. My deepest sympathies.

Anyway I skipped to the end after the support group scene. Dammit here we go:

Had to watch the final battle. Cause I had to hear Sam say on your left.

I still lowkey ship Tony/Strange

What you don’t see in the finale battle is where Sam and Bucky keep saving each other. That happened.

The backflips they had to go through to explain why Carol Danvers doesn’t end this movie in 5 minutes. Lol

Tony Stark takes no prisoners. RIP coerced alien soldiers. I have a hard time believing they couldn’t have saved Tony between a portal to Wakanda and magic but fine heroic moving death it is.

Sam didn’t have to go that hard and put a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. But he did.

Okay the finale scene with Sam, Steve and Bucky. The whole reason I watched this lol. So it looks like they’re at the wreck of the Avengers compound. It’s unclear how much time passes between final battle, funeral, old man Steve and the stones. I still theorize Sam and Bucky get arrested after this because they’re fugitives and need to be pardoned.

It’s clear Steve told Bucky and fans were right about this for ages, but why not tell Sam??????? Like seriously wtf??? Couldn’t have said HEY Sam any interest in becoming the new Captain America??? 😂

That last look Steve shares with Bucky; right in my fucking heart.

So when Steve leaves he has no shield because it was destroyed by Thanos. When Steve comes back, he brings a shield to Sam. This seems to confirm the separate branch theory. The shield Sam has comes from a different timeline. Which means Steve came from a different timeline, maybe using the same tech. So it’s possible he rescued Bucky from HYDRA and he, Peggy and Bucky lived a great polyamorous life in that verse. Aw.

But that begs the question of how Steve got the shield in a different timeline. Like WHAT. Did he go find it in the Arctic? Did he convince Wakanda to make another one somehow? Like wtf? Again this ending makes no sense.

Poor Sam. He seriously has to deal with one last mindfuck, losing his best friend that he gave up everything for, and Sam being stalwart and true, just rolls with it. At least Bucky knew. Bucky had the chance to go back with Steve (but for a million reasons Bucky could never go back, that’s what this fic is going to be about lol). But Sam is just left to deal with one more loss.

Can we talk about how Bucky 100% supported Sam getting the shield from the start. Bucky was READY for Cap Sam Wilson. Bucky was like nope this shit is written.

You can see that imposter syndrome revving up to 1000% on Sam’s face. And he turns to Bucky for confirmation this is really happening.

I think this also explains why Bucky is so defensive about the shield. It really is the only thing left of his past. It’s his only tie to the Howling Commandos, to Steve, to the person he was before HYDRA took everything. And the only hope he has in staying behind is the certainty that Sam will be Cap, and that’s the hope that makes him stay. The thin vague tie to Sam and the possibility of their future. So for Sam to reject the shield, oof, I bet that felt like a rejection of Bucky himself. Because Bucky stays for Sam.

(None of this explains why Bucky then ghosts Sam. That is the biggest mystery but there are many delicious possibilities. It’s also possible that Bucky didn’t really ghost Sam - we know his flip phone is just something he has for show. He could be talking to Sam on his smart phone. And they had another falling out.)

Dear God the emotion in Sam’s face as he processes that he’s being given the shield. Cue existential crisis!!!!!

And on to TFATWS.

[bigskydreaming]

Fandom Stuff To-Do List (basically just stuff I want to get to this week in any order, now that I have Completion Capabilities. Not meant to be a promise of any specific things on this for sure getting done, just these are stuff on my mind to get around to when I have the chance)

- Finish meta post about the wings fic AU and how peoples’ wings are affected by massive physical or emotional trauma that changes them as a person (aka do Babs’ wings change when she becomes Oracle). Which will of course segue into a mini-rant about how our culture tends to view trauma and the acquisition of physical disabilities as something there’s no coming back from, like there’s a ceiling on how good a person’s life can ever be after certain things happen to them. 

And that’s why so much of our media content is geared towards treating disabled people and survivors almost more as resources to ensure ‘the same kind of thing’ doesn’t happen to people it hasn’t happened to yet and thus ‘can still be saved/protected.’ Rather than people just fucking acknowledging that trauma is just destructive change that’s impact is relative to how many resources a person has to cope or deal with that change and incorporate it into their life. And that people don’t need to be protected from trauma or accidents as much as is hyped because its literally impossible to ever prevent anything bad from happening ever, so rather than hyping the illusion that ‘this sort of thing could never happen to you as long as you do xyz and don’t do abc’ more attention and focus should be shifted to acknowledging that its still gonna happen sometimes no matter what people do to prevent it or keep safe from it. Because these sorts of trauma ARE EXTERNALLY ORIGINATING and thus there’s literally only ever so much people can do that’s originating within the self to control/protect from being affected in certain ways by stuff originating from outside the self, aka inherently OUT of our control. 

And thus IMO we’d all be better served as a society by paying less lip service to the idea that people can be guaranteed safety or protection from various things and instead have more of that focus and attention shifted over towards the acquisition and building and distributing of more resources to help people in the EVENT of certain things happening to them anyway. Which in turn helps spread the narrative that you know what, even if these things happen, even if you are disabled, even if you are traumatized, that’s not the end of the road, that’s not a dealbreaker, that’s just a CHANGE that we as a society are here to help you through. It just means that your life is different now, that you may be different now, but different doesn’t have to be bad, it doesn’t have to come with a ceiling or limitations, it just means a change in perspective. 

Bad things will still happen, just like bad things still happened before your Big Change, and its important to remember not to glamorize or romanticize the Before time because that tends to gloss over the fact that nobody’s life was ever perfect before big change or trauma hit anyway. So why on earth should it be a surprise (or any different from anyone else’s life) that life isn’t perfect after big change or trauma? That doesn’t mean it can’t still be GOOD. That you won’t still have good days, good surprises, happiness, friends, joy, laughter, that maybe it takes more resources or just DIFFERENT resources to get there than it did before.....but everyone’s life is different and everyone requires different resources to achieve various desired results or experiences in the first place, so its not the end of the world to have to switch your focus and look in different places for different resources now. 

There needs to be less focus on what HAPPENED to people and more focus on what EFFECT it had on them, specifically. On how it changed them and what those changes mean they require now in order to live their life fully and happily,  that just might be different from what they needed before. There needs to be a shift in focus from just the trauma or accident or THING that happened that changed the course or direction of a person’s life as like....the definitive point their life changed, because that THING that happened was still just a THING. It came from the outside. It was external. It literally WASN’T ABOUT THEM, and thus focusing on IT can only ever reveal so much about the PERSON it happened to. 

No, the point of focus for a person’s life changing in the wake of massive trauma or an accident isn’t WHEN that happened, its when in the aftermath of that, however long it took, when that person, that survivor, finally got up one morning and realized they had a new normal. That they weren’t the person they were before, but they aren’t aimlessly lost in a single long-lasting trauma response searching fruitlessly for personal landmarks to reorient themselves when those landmarks simply don’t exist anymore, because they don’t HAVE to find or lean on those old familiar landmarks anymore. Because they’ve found new ones, found their footing in a new landscape, a new approach to living and perceiving the world around them and how it impacts and intersects with them. 

Gimme a change in focus to how recovery isn’t a thing you can ever FIND, that you can ever ACQUIRE by searching for it...and so its less vital that we hold up the idea of it as some kind of semi-mythical Holy Grail its okay to send knights eternally questing for on just the possibility of its existence because hey at least its something to shoot for, when not so deep down a lot of people shelling out advice for recovery that isn’t rooted in their own experiences or utilization of the same advice they’re selling but rather is born of ‘eh, you want something I can’t give or help with and that’s making me uncomfortable so lemme point you in a direction just vague or far away enough that I don’t have to worry about seeing you and your aura of Making Me Uncomfortable around for awhile’....

.....nah, instead how about looking to how resources might be better utilized just....supporting people until they can reach that point of recovery in their own time and their own ways. Because by its very nature, you can spend years working on recovering, on finding a new normal, a new sense of stability in your life, but you’re only ever going to ‘find it’ the day you realize that you’ve ALREADY found it. That you don’t have to go searching for it anymore because its already there, you settled and replanted yourself without even realizing it. Recovery in the wake of trauma is about searching for a way to feel better, to heal, to move past something, and the answer to that need is a feeling of no longer needing to search or find that ephemeral something, because you’re content, you’re okay with who and what you are now. And you don’t need to look anymore for something you wake up and realize you’ve already found somewhere along the way. 

Being disabled, being traumatized, being hurt, being CHANGED by some kind of big ass fucking Meteor Of Suck smacking into the planet that is your life and wiping out the fucking dinosaurs of this weirdo metaphor, like....yes, it leaves a mark, makes an impact, oftentimes a BIG one. But like, without the meteor that ended the dinosaur age or whatever, none of us would even be here because the point is just life goes on, and there’s no predicting what it will look like tomorrow, so yeah it could be worse and maybe it’ll never be like it was before, but there’s absolutely zero proof it couldn’t maybe be BETTER, even if it doesn’t ever look the way it was before. 

Change is just change. Its not the enemy, its just the point of life. Like we’re born and then things change every single day of our life however long it is and then we die. Birth and death are the bookends, and constant change is every single page of the book in between that. Change isn’t the villain of our story, change IS our story. 

And its OUR story, so it never gets to be defined by what someone else does to us in the story, because the hero’s journey isn’t about what MADE the hero set out on their quest, its about their QUEST itself, its about their TRIUMPH, its not about what happened its about what THEY decided to do NEXT because of it. Its not about the catalysts for our changes, its about what we decided to DO, who we decided to BECOME, once those catalysts hit the page and necessitated further change. 

Your trauma, your change, none of those are YOU, because YOU are the person you see when you look in the mirror and take all of that in, view it as part of you, your story, something that left a mark just like every single experience of your life has left SOME kind of impact no matter how small, and who you changed into, decided to become, how you incorporated all those marks and changes and experiences....THAT is you. The ENTIRETY of that map, not the single markers along the way, no matter how loud or dramatic or attention-grabbing they try to be. 

You are the map of your experiences and you only look to a map, a map only matters to you when its about leading or finding the way to where YOU want to go, with intent. No road map gets to take the wheel of the car just because you aren’t going in the direction it said you were supposed to go originally. If you get lost, you get lost. If you end up somewhere you didn’t expect, you end up somewhere you didn’t expect. If you realize you no longer want or need to go where you were setting out to originally, if you change your mind or decide another destination is better suited to you, you get to look to your map and draw a new route accordingly, because its YOURS, it only exists because of you, not you because of it. 

Your trauma or whatever else is fucking up your life may be big fucking pieces of the mosaic you are when you see yourself in the mirror metaphorically speaking cuz I want this analogy to be inclusive for blind people too and I just realized I need to spend more time thinking up alternative ways to express that sentiment that don’t rely on a singular axis of experience to convey it, because that’s kinda the point in and of itself: 

We’re all born with toolboxes that give us a variety of tools to approach life with, to build things out of, to build OUR life out of. The aim of civilization, of society, of being a species that only made it this far by being communal and building things together, pooling our tools to build things none of us were equipped to build with just what we already had...is that ideally, the toolbox we’re born with gets added to by others around us. Our parents or guardians or teachers, our friends and loved ones, the random person at the store who saw someone was a dollar short at the grocery store register and offered one of their own or the way we can add to someone else’s toolbox by simply asking if they’re alright when we can see they’re not and then just like that they have the added resource of the knowledge that someone cares enough about them to want to know what’s wrong. 

And none of our toolboxes are identical. None make it all the way to our deathbed with us while containing the exact same tools we started with, some are missing, some are added. Some we didn’t even realize we had. Some we never even used. Some we used the hell out of and are worn to pieces and some are shiny and new because we wore out the older version of them and needed a replacement. And sometimes big fucking meteors of suck smack into our lives right when we’re just minding our own business and enjoying our own jurassic age and everything changes forever, but millions of years later we might still be around and now we just look like chickens and alligators and sharks and all the other creatures that are basically just dinosaur descendants in a different form because we’re hardy as fuck and damn I really need to get over this metaphor it is not the analogy I’m looking for but oh well. 

Point is, sometimes Change happens and the tools we’re used to leaning on when building our better, ideal lives and optimal experiences, like....maybe they just don’t work for us anymore. Maybe we can’t grip the old familiar ones the way we used to, maybe our eyes have gone to shit and we can’t wield the more precise instruments with the precision we’re used to, maybe the nails we were using to build stairs in our dream house are fucking useless cuz they’re not the right size when building the wheelchair ramp our new dream house needs instead.......and so fucking what? What does any of that actually say about US, about who we ARE, about what our life could be or how good it could get? 

Absolutely nothing. Because the toolboxes we were born with were still only ever just tools. What we ARE is what we make with them, what we build out of ourselves, what we choose with intent to become. So what if our old tools aren’t up to the task of actualizing our new dreams? That’s what we need other people for. That’s what society SHOULD be for. That’s when what we need is not to be FIXED, not to be restocked with what we had originally but is now no longer of use to us or what we need or maybe even not what we want.....no, all we need is....new tools. New resources. New kinds of help. 

And again, that’s what society is SUPPOSED to be for. To help us define ourselves not by the problems we face but our solutions to overcoming them. To help give each other new tools and teach each other how to use them when change necessitates hunting around for something that’s easier to grip now. And if we all come into the world starting out with different tools than everyone else anyway.....what does it MATTER if somewhere along the way we have to swap out the old familiar ones we started with and look for new ones we didn’t need originally? 

A cane is just a cane to help someone walk because for whatever reasons, their legs or spine need that tool to help get them where they want to go. A cane is not proof that it will never take them to a destination where they’re every fucking bit as happy as people who made it to the same place without the use of one. A cane is not THEM. Its just a fucking cane. Same thing with glasses, with wheelchairs, with prosthetic limbs, with hearing aids. Same thing with support groups, with therapists, with trauma centers. 

Like do people ever think about how fucking AMAZING it is that we have prosthetics at all? That somewhere along the line, people saw a problem, saw a need, that was not ‘oh this person (or maybe even ‘they themselves’ because let’s not go the saviorism route and forget that disabled people have had plenty the fuck to do with designing or dreaming up or building the tools disabled people use to navigate life while working with a different set of physiological tools than most people are equipped with. Like this isn’t a ‘oh look how good other people are to people in need’ point but more just a ‘people-as-in-society-overall-which-includes-both-able-bodied-and-disabled’ point). 

Like the point is the response to seeing that was not just ‘oh so and so or maybe even me is damaged beyond repair,’  no instead it was just ‘this person’s legs aren’t currently equpped to do what this person needs or wants them to do.’ And people said okay the solution, the answer, the RESPONSE to seeing that problem or need was not to sit back and think about how much it sucks that this person can’t walk on their own and how limited or ‘lesser’ their life will be than other peoples’ because of that, no they said instead, hey, what if we just BUILT THEM DIFFERENT LEGS. Like, just THINK about that. We, as a people, communally, as in more than one, pooled resources to BUILD PEOPLE NEW FUCKING LEGS. 

And all it ultimately took, the catalyst for THAT, for changing the lives of people who use prosthetics as tools in their day to day lives....the catalyst for that CHANGE was NOT in fact....whatever happened to make various people need prosthetics in the first place. No, the catalyst, the change that got us to the point of people having the OPTION of prosthetics at all, was the point in time where people saw a need, and came up with the solution of prosthetics to address that need. When they said not oh that’s a problem or oh sorry you have that need, but oh I have an idea, or oh here’s what we can do about that. The defining element wasn’t that something needed building. The defining element was WHAT PEOPLE CHOSE TO BUILD BECAUSE OF THAT. 

Just like severe trauma is a catalyst for change in a person’s life, a meteor that no one saw coming and can dramatically reshape the landscape of their life, wipe out familiar comforts and landmarks they use to orient themselves.....but at the end of the day, that person is not the meteor itself. We don’t call them whatever we call that meteor, we call them by their fucking name because they’re still the same fucking person, just in a different place now, with different needs, with different dreams or wants or goals. Who they are isn’t how rough they have it while they’re going through the most....because how much a trauma shakes up a person’s life is directly relative to how equipped they are already to deal with that particular trauma or change. 

So by its very nature the ‘worst’ or most changing traumas are the ones that we’re personally LEAST equipped to deal with at that particular time on our own, and how fucking stupid is it to try and draw conclusions about a person based just on how they react in the immediate aftermath of an event whose defining element is that it was a destructive change that was uniquely impactful because it hit them where they were least equipped to deal with it? 

Like, NOBODY is equipped to handle well, like, an event that relative to THEM SPECIFICALLY, like....is something they’re not equipped to handle. LOL. Like, that’s so fucking dumb, but that’s who we ALL are when in the midst of massive trauma responses - just people hunting desperately for new normals, new landmarks, new awareness with which to recenter ourselves, reorient ourselves, redefine who and what we are in relation to our lives and society and our loved ones in the wake of a massive change that shook things up and required repositioning ourselves because the spot we used to be positioned on no longer exists.

And what the fuck can you learn, can you actually KNOW about a person based solely on the fact that ‘oh this person is having a hard time dealing with something that there’s literally NO good way to deal with?’ 

People talk a lot about how revealing trauma or tragedy is, that you can learn a lot by seeing how someone handles a huge trauma or tragedy being thrown at them, even in fiction. But y’know what? There’s a ceiling on how much that alone can ever reveal, especially if the lens of time through which you examine that person or character is limited just to the aftermath of the trauma, the thing that HAPPENED to them. Rather than focused on the beginning of their new journeys, once they’ve reoriented themselves, acquired new tools, picked new destinations or goals for their lives and set out to now make THOSE a reality....just like people before or without massive trauma or tragedy are similarly not defined by the LACK of what didn’t happen to them, but simply by......what destinations or goals they pick for their lives and their journeys to get there and what they do and what choices they make along the way. 

Nah, if you ask me, a person’s truest essence isn’t revealed by what they do with whatever limited tools or resources they have when struggling with a massive trauma or tragedy that’s only massive specifically BECAUSE it hit them in a way or place they were ill-equipped or unprepared to deal with. Because the essence of that person, the truth revealed by examining that struggle, the answer in focus when looking through just that finite lens....can be boiled down to the exact same thing, no matter WHO you put in that place. 

What they do in the wake of a massive trauma is simply ‘as much as they’re capable of given their limited resources or capabilities at THAT SPECIFIC POINT IN TIME.’ Which is inherently....not a lot. Completely subjective and relative to every individual, given the different traumas, resources and needs or injuries relative to every individual while they’re going through their fucking worst....but that’s still the point. 

A person struggling with things beyond their capability to handle well at that given moment given their current state or resources.....is ultimately never going to appear as anything other than.....a person struggling with things beyond their capability to handle well at that given moment given their current state or resources. Wow. Really pegged that person huh. Got them all summed up, totally differentiated from every other person to ever go through shit, just by seeing them.....not handle it great when by its very nature of fucking course they’re not going to handle a trauma they’re not prepared for with any degree of ‘great.’

Like, is it any wonder our society has this built in presumption that experiencing certain traumas or tragedies just fucking CONDEMNS that person to from then on live a life that will never actually measure up to being as optimal as it maybe could have been if that hadn’t happened? What other conclusion are you gonna draw, about how good or not a person’s life is in the wake of massive destructive change....if you’re only ever focusing on or looking at how they react at the specific point where they’re LEAST equipped to deal with that trauma or tragedy well?

Because thing is....that’s not a person. That’s a snapshot of a person. Try and define me or sum me up by looking at a fucking Polaroid of me when I was ten or whatever. Go on. See how revealing that is. Tell me what that says about me.

People can’t be defined by negative space. By what they’re NOT. By all the ways in which they can’t be what they MIGHT have been had something happened different, or all the things they COULD be if they were born into different circumstances. You do that, you’re not describing a person, you’re describing hypotheticals that you can apply as desired to ANY person, with just a few tweaks here and there, and thus always find a way to picture them as you want to for your own personal purposes, agenda or comfort, rather than gaining any insight whatsoever about who they are as defined by the space that they DO fill up, with intent, by their choices.

We don’t look to the early history of our species and talk about all the people who DIDN’T discover fire, maybe even just because they were born in a fucking wet climate or whatever where it was inherently more difficult to happen across the realization that striking sticks or stones in certain ways can make a very useful and helpful flame. With the point being that even if we DID talk about those early humans as much as we did the ones who got actual bonfires going, the fact that they simply ‘weren’t the ones to discover fire’ actually would reveal shit about them in and of itself, because who’s to say that the reason, the ‘culprit’ for that was that they were simply too dumb or whatever to figure that out instead of just being they lived in a climate that made that discovery particularly difficult or less likely to happen by chance? Y’know? 

But no, anyway, we talk about the ones who DID discover fire, because the turning point for our species which that was, like, we don’t look at it and define it by the lack of it happening sooner, at the problem that not having fire was for the people who came before that discovery. It was the triumph that mattered, it was the choices made in the wake of that discovery, it was how people put that new tool to work and not oh how revealing it is about the rest of early humanity that they didn’t put that tool to work in similar ways because it simply wasn’t even a possibility for them when it was simply a resource they didn’t have.

Nah, IMO a person’s truest essence is revealed not by their problems or their lacks, not by the hypothetical maybe me they could have been if they went through life without anything bad ever happening to them and thus who they’ll never actually be now. Its not revealed by taking a snapshot of them in the moments or days or even weeks following a trauma or tragedy that struck with an accompanying seismic shake-up of all their existing stability and support systems that ultimately limited how much or many of the resources they’d previously acquired or built could even be of use to them in dealing with things now. You don’t learn anything substantial by putting people in a room with only two exits and one of them locked and then act like its an insightful revelation that they ultimately make their way out by means of the finite options available to them when their options have been actively limited by forces outside them and their control, even if that wasn’t the ‘optimal’ answer to that predicament and you wanted them to make other more ideal choices without acknowledging they literally were limited to the most basic of fucking choices available. No, IMO the actual revelations about people come in their declaration of a new want or wish or ask or goal AFTER they’ve found their footing and are ready to live again rather than just cope. 

Why define ourselves by our needs when we’re most ourselves when dreaming of our wants?

You don’t gain the most insight by watching someone flail about when they’re at their lowest and just floundering. You want insight, you look to see what tools they use to pull themselves upright, what resources they ask for or seek out in order to build something new that they can place upon their new shaken-up-and-reformed foundations and from there find some stability with which to pull themselves FORWARD. Instead of just clinging to the shattered remnants of whatever their source of stability was previously but is no longer useful for that purpose, maybe not even because they WANT to cling to just that or are afraid or unwilling to move forward, but because they simply can’t reach any fucking resources with which to do anything BUT just cling to what little they could grab, and what they actually need is just someone to offer them said resources instead of just acting like they really did something by looking at a person lacking in resources and then judging or defining them simply by all the things they AREN’T doing to better themselves or their lives, WHEN THAT’S ONLY BECAUSE THEY’RE LACKING THE FUCKING RESOURCES TO DO ANY OF THAT.

You see who a person is not by comparing them to who they MIGHT have been before, because who can say with any certainty what person they might have been the day after that massive trauma or tragedy, had said trauma or tragedy never actually occurred? Who can guarantee that person, that hypothetical maybe-me is ACTUALLY better than who they are or can become now?

Nope. You wanna know who that person is? That’s who they declare themselves to be the second they stop trying to define themselves by who they WERE and thus who they’re not anymore....but rather by who they are NOW, and who they want to be from here on out. You don’t look at the person who’s been pushed to the ground and say oh that’s that person, that’s who that person is. No, all that tells you is that person was pushed to the ground by an asshole, and surprise surprise, they fell because that’s what fucking happens when someone pushes you to the ground, lolol. That’s not the nature of a person, that’s the nature of physics. Wow. Person A is affected by gravity and the forceful aggression of assholes in their vicinity. The uncanny insight of it all.

You wanna see that person, you look at who they are AFTER they’ve pulled themselves back up. You see what they do THEN. Once they’re back in control of themselves, their life, in the driver’s seat.

You can’t define people by the lack of something. A lack of control, a lack of choice, a lack of resources. Because we are our choices, we are the journeys we take, we are what happens on the next page of our story because the next page of our story only EVER happens because each and every page we decided to MAKE something happen next. 

And we can only MAKE those choices, versus have them made for us and which thus says more about the person who forced those choices on us than it does us for simply being unable to stop that, we can only TAKE those journeys, versus being forced into certain directions and paths and down certain roads by limited options that say more about how little a person can do with only finite options available to them rather than say anything substantial about what directions a person might go in if they had actual options and choices available to them beyond just being presented with two routes that both equally suck, we can only do anything substantial with any of that, anything that says anything about US rather than just descriptive of our circumstances....

We can only do anything with all of that AFTER we’ve gained or taken back or regained control over our lives. AFTER we’ve found our footing. AFTER we’ve said well guess what, this happened then, but guess what else happened today? I got out of bed and said okay so we’re just not gonna worry about that because its over and done and it doesn’t get to be the only thing that matters about us. So instead, how about what matters right now is whatever the fuck I choose to do today, because THAT is up to me, THAT says something about me, THAT is not just some random rock crashing into me from outer fucking space and saying knock knock, fuck you. THAT is ME, saying with intent, THIS is who I am now and THIS is what I’m going to do today, and THAT’S an actual story about me and my choices and my PERSONHOOD. Versus just a summation of how shitty I looked while being smacked in the face by a mountain of bullshit and me without so much as an umbrella.

THAT’S a story about a person. That other thing, that fixation on the rock that crashed into them without warning? Its ultimately never going to be anything other than the story of how a person got hit by a fucking rock.

All of which is to say, so yeah, in that wing fic AU, Babs’ wings do change after what happens with the Joker, even though her wings had already settled.

BUT, the key thing about that is....the point of CHANGE for her wings was NOT when the Joker shot her. Its not when her life, when SHE changed, ‘because of that.’ Because maybe her wings didn’t work the same way anymore after that happened, because they represented who she was before that. And before that she was and thought of herself as someone who could grapple between buildings, flip kick into bad guys, do cartwheels across rooftops, and she can’t do those things anymore so maybe her wings don’t work for her in the way they used to because they were ‘designed’ for someone who lived life in a way she was no longer capable of. 

But her wings didn’t just change then and there, they still remained the same as always even if they weren’t as useful because maybe she could still fly perhaps, but not land in the ways her wings were designed to do that, due to the changed capabilities of her legs and spine which were meant to work in concert with her wings. 

See, because the point is.....if the wings are the ultimate expression of the self, even acknowledging that she was in fundamental ways CHANGED at that point (not lessened, but changed, made different, needing different things and having different wants).....the point is, at just that specific time, in the immediate aftermath of that trauma, what would her wings have changed into? What would they LOOK like, simply because say, two days ago, the Joker shot her and now she’s paralyzed? If she’s no longer the old her, how could the new her POSSIBLY be defined by that little data, that little definition, that small an image or encapsulation of everything she still MIGHT yet be or become once she’s out of bed, out of tears, out of grief for the goals that are no longer viable and now ready to say okay, now let me decide what DOES come next for me now.

So yes, Babs’ wings do change after the Joker shoots her, but they remain as they were for awhile. Just not as useful to her now that her toolbox of physical capabilities was less equipped to accommodate her newly changed needs and approaches to life.

When they change, its because she’s already become Oracle. That’s who she is now, Batgirl is a part of that but more about who she was. It’s part of the foundation she built her new self atop, its never going to not be a part of her, never going to leave, it still matters....but it is not the building itself anymore, it is the bedrock that made it through the seismic upheaval of her life and thus was sturdy enough she felt safe building something new on it, something that could ride out further earthquakes thanks to having it to ground her. But as integral as it is to what she built in the wake of her big quake....it is not the house she houses her self-image in. That’s Oracle’s domain now.

And so when her wings do change, it happens overnight, while she’s asleep. Dreaming of everything she wants now, everything she wants to become. They change not in a ‘this is happening’ sense, much like we’re never fully aware of how far into our recovery process we are.....instead, they change in a ‘huh, so this happened’ sense. Just like we only realize how much we’ve recovered, how much we no longer need to define ourselves by a quest to be better, happier, more alright...once we’ve already found that happiness or contentment and realized the reason there’s no longer the same drive to pursue some abstract image of recovery is simply because we no longer need to go anywhere to get that, we’re already there and this is what that looks like.

And so when one day Babs wakes up feeling different and looks in the mirror to see her wings no longer look like they used to but rather seem much more suited to the woman she is now, the woman she envisioned in her mind as a new goal or destination of self-determination, that she chose to become with intent, that she worked to become so she could be defined by something other than what some asshole did to her, so that she could be the sum of her deeds rather than the snapshot of her tragedy.....its a sign of change. Of her change, and proof that her life is not now what it once was, and never will be again.....but its not some big momentous reveal, more just an exhale of affirmation for something she’s already known for awhile and just now has the distance and perspective to see actual proof of. 

Its the marker of the fact that actually she’s okay with it, she’s okay with herself, her new self, because she doesn’t need to be who she might have been without that trauma, she doesn’t need to be a maybe when who she is? Has no more of a built in limit or ceiling or cap on happiness and success than the woman she was before her trauma had. She doesn’t love what happened to her, but its just something that happened to her. Its not who she is, THIS is who she is, this is THAT, and this she’s more than okay with, she’s proud of, she’s like damn I look good. Life threw a punch at her and she got into a wheelchair and rolled with it, and if you’re busy looking at the bruise from that punch because you’re so focused on the fact that it happened, you’re missing the real story. 

And that’s the way she pulled herself out of bed every morning for a year and into her wheelchair to train with escrima sticks in whole new ways of fighting so the next time the Joker tried knocking on her door, he wouldn’t get to pull the same shit twice. Because she’s not the same woman she was then and anyone focusing on THAT instead of watching out for all the ways she can still kick ass, some old, some new, some that she invented herself because necessity is the mother of invention and Babs has always been driven to be the top of her class for reasons that have everything to do with just HER and absolutely nothing at all with what happened to put her in a class where fighting from a wheelchair was a tool she felt she needed -

Well maybe they need to get clocked across the head with a stick to drive home that they’ve missed the entire point, that if you’re there looking to see a tragedy you’ve got the wrong fucking address cuz she’s doing just fine.

And so she wakes up one day and looks in her mirror and sees her wings have changed overnight and they look nothing like she remembers but tbh, she likes these a lot better, likes the way they feel, the shape of them, they just FIT....and then she just nods her head decisively, quietly pleased but in no rush to make any big announcement, because for her, this changes nothing. Its just a sign that change has already happened.

And its like....duh, she already knew that, and she’s more than okay with it, so semantics can wait for another time. She’s Barbara Gordon, the Oracle of Gotham, and she’s got shit to do.

And okay, so clearly, I ended up just writing that post instead of writing the rest of that to-do list, so I’m gonna now go make another post with the ACTUAL to-do list, and like, yay, I can cross this off I guess? My process is so mysterious, oh unknowable ways.