#you just have to be physically disabled and tired of being a good cripple

[headpainmigraine]

Some of the posts in this tag have been a shitshow lately.

I don't know if you guys are former Twitter users, or a couple of 14 year olds pretending to be mentally ill 20-somethings (honestly, my money's here), but please stop clogging up the tags.

If you decide to be a cunt and just do it anyway, go ahead, the people who actually use the tag properly will just block you, and you won't have that community to fall back on if you ever do want to actually talk about cripplepunk relevant stuff.

If your post isn't about being physical disabled and doesn't mention physical disabilities, then the cripplepunk tag doesn't apply.

Tagging posts 'cripplepunk' when you're not talking about physical disabilities or being crippled is called cross-tagging, even if you're crippled yourself.

Your posts can, and will, be flagged as spam by other users if you do. That's a site-wide rule.

It doesn't matter if you, personally, as the person making the post, are cripplepunk - if the post doesn't mention physical disabilities, the tag doesn't apply.

Talking about punk in general without talking about physical disabilities - the tag doesn't apply.

Talking about punk music - the tag definitely doesn't apply.

You can listen to Taylor Swift and dress like Barbie and still be Cripplepunk.

It's not an aesthetic, fashion, or musical genre.

The 'punk' in Cripplepunk comes from the rejection of what a crippled person is 'supposed' to be.

We have tenets.

The only thing you HAVE to do to be cripplepunk is agree with those AND be physically disabled.

To the people in the community who aren't just blocking these posts on sight and actually try to inform the people making the posts about this, just in case they just didn't know, I applaud your stamina because good grief, they make it difficult.

[artsyaech]

going into next year, remember to keep fighting for disability and mental health rights!

[PT: going into next year, remember to keep fighting for disability and mental health rights!]

remember to:

put image IDs and plain-text on posts

tag eyestrain and flash warnings (DO NOT use #epilepsy, that puts epileptic people in more danger)

remember to tag potential triggers! (very important, i hate it when posts include my triggers and don't tag it)

remember that hyperfixating on / having a special interest in a problematic thing does NOT mean you're a bad person, as long as you acknowledge the problems with it. also, i can't believe this isn't talked about more, but a hatred for a thing can also turn into a hyperfixation / special interest! example: i had a hyperfixation on harry potter in a way that i absorbed criticisms of it and knew everything about it, but only because i wanted to be able to articulate how much i hate it and why. hyperfixation / special interest in something does not mean you like it / endorse it! (rant over)

PLEASE stop clogging up disability tags with fanfiction. yes, it's good that you're representing disabilities, but instead try tagging it with #disabled character or #disabled reader or something of the sort.

something i wanna leave in 2023, but unfortunately don't think will be going away soon is ableist / saneist slang or slang that makes light of disabilities / mental health. examples of this include: "delulu", "letting the intrusive thoughts win", "psycho", "schizo" (when referring to something that has nothing to do with schizophrenia), "bipolar" (when referring to something that has nothing to do with bipolar disorder), "sociopath", "psychopath", "narcissist" + MANY more

please stop infantilizing autistic people. i'm so tired of being treated like a baby.

c-punk is NOT an aesthetic and it is exclusively for physically disabled people. and if you're not physically disabled, call it c-punk.

uplift disabled and mentally ill voices.

below is a list of disabled creators you can support!

@my-autism-adhd-blog. summer (she/they) talks about their life as an autistic individual who has ADHD. super cool blog!

@cripplecharacters. a group of mods help answer questions about writing disabled characters. learned a lot from them.

@mogai-transcriber. (nameless) (she/he/it) describes mogai posts.

@accessmogai. reign (she/her) is a great mogai transcriber too. high quality IDs for all

@cpunkwitch. super cool witchy blog. cassandra (it/he/her/neos/none) is super cool and it's nice to hear a disabled voice in the pagan community.

@crippledpunks. cool positivity blog that talks about disability and educates on cpunk

@accessfashion. multiple mods add image descriptions to outfits. super epic stuff.

@cane-you-dig-it. disability and cpunk stuff. also just a super cool and talented individual.

@autistic-af. i wish she was my aunt, she's super sweet and her cat posts always make my day!

@crippled-peeper. relatable posts tbh.

@crippled-dinosaur. dino (it/he) talks about physical disabilities and cpunk

+ many more! feel free to add to this list

[fatfemmefreaquency]

complaining/ self-indulgent misery about the job market/ economy/ how much life sucks these days if you’re disabled, especially in canada under the cut

no longer doing sex work because i hit a point of extreme burnout on it circa 2019/2020 has meant losing… just so much income

and like. the only thing scarier than what that burnout meant for my finances is that now i’m at a point of just emotionally not having the bandwidth for a remote job any more (working on the computer: i do bookkeeping, medical billing, run a remote office (medical), and some freelance graphic and web design and social media support for small businesses (mostly non-doctor health clinics and registered clinical counsellors, by referral)

but like. i’m so tired of working alone. i want to work around people again but my disability/ pinched nerve & muscle weakness stuff definitely means i don’t have the capacity to do manual labour again or even just like… a coffee shop or cook job (RIP—food & bev service is what i did pre-pro domme stuff. and i loved it)

like, uh, what does anyone do to make money these days????

i’m tired of being broke/ poor. i’m tired of relying on the goodwill of family for housing (even if i know i’m so very lucky to have the option—the goodwill comes with strings attached). i’m tired of not having extended health care, so i have to decide between things like medication vs. food and transport

i’m physically not able to do any kind of heavy lifting or a job where i stand all day. most customer service jobs won’t hire you if you have a physical disability (ask me how i know)

like i am GREAT at customer service. but i just need to be able to sit periodically and can’t always lift 50lbs (an application requirement at most jobs). on a good day i can lift 150lbs or more. on a bad day? I can’t even lift 10lbs

i am so good with people and v good at selling things—i just need to be allowed to sit sometimes (and i live in a capitalist hellscape (canada) where you cannot sit if you work in a shop. because corporations and even small business owners are stupid as fuck and don’t understand how productivity works)

there’s no way i have it in me (emotionally, physically) to go back to the labour of sex work (the emotional labour of online, or the emotional AND physical labour of in-person)

and i don’t have a degree. turns out completing somewhere between 2/3rds to 3/4ths of a BA before dropping out due to chronic pain & a deeply ableist and inaccessible university culture does NOT give you anything to show for it

life and livelihood just feels increasingly untenable and having an entire ‘career’ that is just… multiple ‘side’ hustles that make me increasingly less money (thanks, fiverr, big tech, and AI for completely devaluing my labour and expertise by saturating the market with undervalued/ underpaid or free options that will do the only work i’m capable of for pennies. yay!)

i’m so goddamn tired. and i’m scared of staying alive in a world that is so fucking unforgiving when you are disabled & broke

the irony is that for the first time ever i am no longer suicidal. and honestly? that’s WORSE than when i was. before i could at least tell myself “well if this becomes unbearable, i can always die”

but now things feel unbearable AND death doesn’t seem appealing at all

people will say shit like “tired of being broke/ poor? just get a job”

but like. WHERE? get a job HOW?

I live in a small-er town. there are no jobs

and no one wants to hire you if you’re a fucking cripple

“no one wants to work” NO. WRONG. it’s just that no one wants to pay a living wage to so-called “unskilled” workers and they especially do not want to pay a living wage to disabled people

“go on disability” disability wouldn’t even cover the cost of my medications, let alone food. and I make enough money from freelancing (like $1000/month) that I wouldn’t even qualify for full disability. the one thing disability would give me is money to pay family for the housing they let me have at like $2400 less than the market rate (because a 300sqft above-garage apartment like mine rents for about $2800/ month where I live)

i’m already on the “fair” (sic) pharmacare plan (for low income people) in my province. it doesn’t cover dental (my mouth is KILLING me. I have a toothache 24/7 and there is NOTHING i can do about it without ~$600, which i do not have to spare)

I can’t currently go get my diabetes medication because until I reach my annual deductible ($500), my meds will cost $300/ monthly—which i currently just don’t have, until i wrap up a contract job I’m currently working on and get paid

i just…. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. I hate it here

and because it’s canada we don’t even have options like venmo or cashapp or whatever to ask friends for money—that’s an american only thing

even if i did? I wouldn’t feel all that comfortable doing so. everyone I know is just as bad off if not worse. i’m not taking money from anyone else living hand to mouth like I am

especially not because if i was willing to eat my pride and ask for more support from my parents they’d try to give it, if begrudgingly/ with shaming attached

i just… wish i lived in a country with an actual fucking safety net

we hear all the time about how good we have it in canada. but I’m sick of needing to drive three hours just to see a family doctor/ PCP/ general practitioner

sick of living in a small town where there is no fucking lab that does bloodwork outside of the hospital lab which is overrun and overtaxed because most of the labs are privately owned and it just… isn’t profitable to offer lab work in a smaller rural town ????? as if profit is more important than making sure people can get diagnostic tests in a timely manner?????

“oh at least you have healthcare!” what fucking healthcare? the bus between here and the city costs $30 round trip. there’s no public transit between here and there and the private coach company charges a lot. there are almost no specialists (gyne, endocrinologists, etc) in town because, again, it’s not cost-effective to have them in a small town and we’re only a 1.5 hour drive from the city

“everyone can afford a car, right?” NO. gas costs fucking $1.89/ L right now at the pump and insurance is like… $400 a month. my car doesn’t have winter fucking tires and while they do have Mud & Snow all seasons, the snow is two feet high outside and those tires are 5 years old. i am not taking the highway on them—plus i need a jump start probably after the cold snap

and even if i was gonna drive down to the city to see a doctor all they’d do is prescribe me more medicine that my “fair” pharmacare plan might or might not cover (if it isn’t the first line treatment then it costs $$$)

i hate it here. i hate this country so fucking much with its “at least we’re not the usa” bullshit. canadian exceptionalism is just “we’re better than america”

get the fuck out of here with that

the healthcare system fucking sucks actually. minimal medication coverage, no access to psychotherapeutic care that isn’t just… the worst and most ineffectual group cbt you can possibly imagine, no dental (well, dental in a year or so—thus far state-funded dental coverage has only been rolled out to senior citizens and children of low-income families. not low-income adults)

if you don’t live in vancouver, toronto, or montreal or the immediate metro areas of those cities the transit is a fucking joke

cost of living is insanely high in smaller towns

cost of rent is… also a nightmare

like… all of our taxpayer dollars just go to the police/ the rcmp

so many of the roads in my town are not paved or filled with potholes but if there’s a protest downtown sometimes there’s a cop to protester ratio of 1:5. why do we need a police force with hundreds of Mounties, each with their own massive police truck, for a town with 22 thousand people and virtually no crime????

public university costs less than the usa i guess. if you can get in

oh, you got into one of the handful of public unis? well congrats. hope you’re not disabled and that you don’t want any accommodations beyond an extra hour on tests and being able to withdraw late in the semester from courses (with a W on your transcript so everyone knows that even though you didn’t *technically* fail that course, you *are* a quitter. oh, the private colleges will expunge the course entirely with a doctors note after a late withdrawal? too bad you’re disabled AND too poor for college!)

and culturally just like… fuck. it is so goddamn lonely here. Canadians are nice but they sure aren’t kind

everyone’s out for themselves. there’s no community, unless you want to join a church and then there’s just… abusive cult-y community

i’m so fucking tired

i’m so tired

and i want a job, i guess. because i’m literally not going to survive without one

but idk how to find one that isn’t actively making me depressed, stressed, and so lonely and isolated that I want to break down sobbing at the end of each day

like what the fuck, actually

this is the bad place (for real for real)

but what kills me is it doesn’t have to be. like it is actually possible to have a functional healthcare system, to cover dental and medications for patients

to cover psychotherapy

it’s possible to actually support pwd, too. and not with just a pittance that ensures they will always be hungry and on the brink of losing their housing (of course that would make it really hard to convince us to kill ourselves via MAiD, but canada would rather pay for disabled suicide than pay for disabled people to eat food and wear clothes and have a roof over their head! neat! yay! eugenics!)

it’s possible to have mutual aid and a culture where people genuinely care for each other

it’s just that white people and the wealthy/ powerful have no compassion or solidarity with others and settler colonial nation states despise basic human decency

i’m so sick of kindness and food being luxury goods

so fucking sick of housing being treated like an investment before it’s treated like a human right

and i’m so sick of the fact that any taxes in this country just… line the pockets of corporations or pay the salary of cops who brutalize the public

our grocery stores are pretty much all owned and run by three companies that have a de-facto monopoly and a long history of price fixing and price gouging—the government did a whole big inquiry into it and then just wrapped it up with a “well you should fix that, we guess” no fines. no new legislation. no response.

rampant corruption is just… what canada is. what it’s always been

and watching the land die around me because of negligence and active hatred of nature is also so goddamn depressing. seeing how low the creek is this January. how dry and brown the evergreens are even in winter. watching the sky turn orange in the summer with forest fire haze and the grass dry to a crisp and the leaves on the trees get coated with mildew because they’re weak due to lack of nutrients and moisture in the soil

smelling the humus in the forests dry up

hearing that the local golf club owner shot a bear because it kept wandering onto the course

i’m so tired of the complete disregard settlers have for the land and its creatures. it’s their land, more than it is ours

one of the major climate activists in my province was just deported on bullshit justifications that he had “disturbed the peace” at a protest by resisting a cop that was being excessively violent when he cuffed him (an instinctive response, to “fight back” by struggling when a cop is fucking putting their whole weight on your back and hitting you) and that meant his visa was revokable

i just. it’s so important to have hope

but this is such a goddamn hopeless country

they keep us so small here. i feel so so small today

I don’t even want to think about what is going to happen with the election this year (fuck pierre polievre and fuck the Liberals who have just… destroyed this country utterly and are now proposing austerity as a “fix” for an economy they broke)

i REALLY don’t want to think about the trade war trump & the republicans/ the US just launched and what that will mean for the cost of living, especially groceries

i just want to go to sleep and never wake up (unless i wake up in a better world, or at the very least one in which i’m employable and have enough money to afford basic “luxuries” like food and housing and medication and keeping the heat on, and maybe, idk, a bit of fun every now and again that isn’t just pirated media consumption)

[decathectbloom]

SORRY IVE DIED

There has been SO MUCH happening back to back in my personal life and im just... so tired

i moved out of my mom's house last year to get away from a very stressful situation, and then immediately thrusted into yet ANOTHER stressful situation with my current roommate.

granted, i don't blame them for getting injured at work, but what i don't appreciate at all is that they pretty much stopped looking for work. its been about three months now that they don't have a job. leaving me to pay for full rent, my own car payments, food, gas, etc. all by myself. mind you, i work a shit minimum wage job, ALSO partially physically disabled myself... yet im still able to do what i need to do for the both of us.

they left me for two weeks without telling me, leaving me to take care of their cats, which is fine... if i was told anything. but nope. im not making money here at all since i have to spend it all on their rent and my own stuff.

it stresses me out because im the one doing the main cleaning of the place and working, while they have done nothing but play games, get high, and go over to their partners houses.

we have had a discussion about this, and it turned into me being the bad guy. they claim that (in their words, not mine) "no one wants to hire the adhd cripple."

them knowing fully well that this is the shit i wanted to get away from when i was living with my father, so i didnt have to take care of a grown ass adult who is fully capable of doing things, moved out, moved in with them to take care of their crumbling relationship with their ex, and now back to the 24/7 maid and wallet.

ive tried to talk to them about how this makes me feel, but i guess im in the wrong because they have a fucked up back and cant do anything... but they can. they feel good enough to go to their partners place... so whats stopping them from getting a job.

so just for my own sanity, im going to be making plans on moving back in with my mom so i can help her out since she got majorly fucked over by my father. i can at least have my own freedom back when i go back since my father moved out.

theres so much more on my plate that i havent mentioned. but its whatever. im just so tired of being everyones fucking maid

[bigbarabelly]

Last post reference but fr I keep being like I’m good just busy or tired! And forgetting I didn’t get diagnosed with adhd until I turned 30 and have struggled with crippling depression outside of chronic physical issues not including uterine garbage my entire life. And then wondering why I forget to post or why I’m so tired and can’t finish coms in a timely fashion. Disability man. Quit pretending to be “normal” and own what you cannot control or you’ll just keep over burning out

[rubberduckyrye]

Dear, why do you want to be put on record as being mentally disabled. There are a lot of things that can happen as far as bodily autonomy goes when that happens. Unfortunately.

Because.......... I AM mentally disabled?

Because I have diagnosed AuADHD? C-PTSD? Crippling Anxiety and depression?

Because in combination with my physical disabilities, I cannot find or do meaningful work that won't leave me in panic attacks so bad that I can no longer visit that establishment without hyperventilating?

Because if I'm not found "disabled enough", I'm found to be essentially homeless and dead, if it wasn't for my amazing partner who I am in debt to BECAUSE I cannot work? Because I'm tired of screaming into the void that I don't want to be a financial burden to people anymore, that I deserve to live the life I didn't have any say in living, that I shouldn't be punished or judged based of how much of a good (or in my case: bad) capitalistic cog I am?

Like buddy idk if you're new here or not but I'm already on the record mentally disabled. It's already in my medical record that I have these disabilities. They aren't going anywhere. They're already doing whatever the fuck they're going to do to a doctor's first impression of me. I already know this and have accepted the consequences.

I'm just praying that our government stops telling me it wishes I was dead, for the judge to declare I'm actually disabled enough to "earn" disability income. Because the consequences to that are far more severe.

Edit: I'm sorry for the initial strong wording anon, I'm assuming you didn't know I'm trying to get Disability Income specifically, which means I need to be seen as a certain degree of disabled and it's a very long, disheartening, and tiring process that makes you feel like the worst person in the world by subtly gaslighting you every step of the way. Your ask came dangerously close to sounding like a Disability Income Dismissal which made me go into a defensive mode. It's not your fault if you didn't know, and I'm sorry for the initial bite to your ask.

[magnoliamyrrh]

sorry talking a lot abt disability today these months have been fucked

but having a degenerative condition really just is living with a prepetual grief. always, always prepetual loss and grief. you lose 90% of the futures, the dreams the hopes the wishes you wished for yourself and thought you could strive for. you lose so many opportunities, you lose so much because you couldnt push as hard, you see them go by before your eyes all the time. you mourn what could have been. you lose hobbies, one by one by one by one the things you enjoyed doing and that brought meaning to your life become too painful, too exhausting, physically impossible, too damaging. you start doing them less, you stop doing them all together. you mourn for them, you keep mourning for them. your body keeps getting worse, sometimes else is always getting worse and some other symptoms keep fuckin coming, you mourn the days when you felt so bad but better than this. when you could do the smallest basic tasts without it being harder,more painful, more damaging. when you could still run, still walk, still stand. you mourn every time you get worse, every time you become more limited, you attend a funeral for every time some part of you becomes more crippled. you lose friends; if you have friends who are very good and deeply care, theyll stick, but its still hard. other than that, you lose many friends, you lose most acquaintances, you meet or talk to few people anyway - too often too exhausted to talk, to hang out, to walk with people, to do what they want at these ages, to be fun. you cancle too often and people get fed up, youre too tired at the age where people are at their peak, your life is too depressing and crippled for them, anyway. you mourn. you mourn for the people you used to know, for the time you could have spend having fun instead of laying in bed, you mourn for the people you could have met. you mourn the decades pass. you mourn your childhood, you mourn your teenage years, you mourn your 20s, you mourn a youth that - especially when mixed w trauma - u never had, you mourn your future

you mourn. all the time. you lose constantly, all the time. you mourn so much that if you dont find a way to reach a state of radical acceptence and peace w the temporary nature of everything, of losing everything, you go insane

[rjalker]

[Plain text:

crippled-pvp:

"I’m sick of “accessible” going from a word that meant “disabled people can physically access this space” to ablebodieds using it to describe their comfort levels and sensory needs. my brother in Christ we can’t even get through the fucking front door"

Pemenantly-sprained-ankle:

"Look. Everybody deserves to have their needs met.

But some of these are more important and dire than others.

People who can’t climb stairs are literally being left behind in fires and that’s not as important as having no music playing in the background.

D/deaf and hoh people literally cannot understand breaking news reports and evacuation mandates and that’s more important than the music being turned down.

Immunocompromised people cannot fucking access healthcare because y’all refuse to acknowledge that the pandemic still exists and wear a mask, and that is more dire than the lights not being too bright or whatever the fuck.

People experiencing severe psychosis are literally arrested and killed for showing symptoms in public and that is more important than you getting a sensory friendly movie experience.

Excuse me for being a mean angry cripple but people’s lives are at stake here and you’re acting like it’s the same thing as providing a sensory comfortable experience (which you can likely accommodate yourself).

Yes in an ideal world all disabled people should be accommodated but not all of those are as important as others. And in the real, shitty world that we live in, we need to fucking prioritize life."

crippled-pvp:

"Because sometimes when I’m venting about being physically unable to get on the inside of a building I don’t also want to hear people bitch at me about the lights inside of a building I cant even go into like it’s my fucking responsibility as the greater cripple to fix all sensory accessibility problems before I’m allowed to experience 1 microgram of anger at being left outside

sleeping-god-domain:

Also to add to the lights bit, you actually need to check them and their wiring for epileptics and photosensitive people. It's not always as simple as having a janitor fix them. I'm getting tired of lights being lumped into neurodiverse needs only and not also disabled needs."

End plain text.]

The problem being discussed here is that people who only care about neurodivergent people will think that "accessible" begins and ends with "having quiet areas" for autistic people, and fuck every other kind of disabled person who might want to go there.

It's not about taking away accessability for autistic people who get sensory overload.

It's about not pretending that that's all that needs to be done.

Physically disabled people need to be able to get in and out of the building safely and just as efficiently as everyone else, without having to take a half hour detour that can only be accessed with help from an employee who isn't even trained properly.

If you go into a building and start having a screaming meltdown....you can literally leave whenever you want.

That is not at all the same thing as there being literal physical barriers preventing physically disabled people from entering or existing there in the first place.

If the meaning of "Accessible" is shifting to mean "only acceptable to ablebodied autistics", that's not fucking accessible. And that is not an acceptable "shifting of language". That needs to be fucking killed before it starts, because it's ableist as . If your venue does not welcome physically disabled people, then you don't get to claim it's accessible for disabled people.

Excluding physically disabled people while claiming accessability is the entire problem.

No one should be happy with "accessible" starting to mean "only accessible to ablebodied autistics and that's good enough because fuck those annoying cripples"

I’m sick of “accessible” going from a word that meant “disabled people can physically access this space” to ablebodieds using it to describe their comfort levels and sensory needs. my brother in Christ we can’t even get through the FUCKING FRONT DOOR

[swapauanon]

Let me put it like this, though: What you are suggesting is that a man born with a frail body that leaves him dependent on his sister's Semblance for survival can ONLY ever be a parasitic abuser, even if he doesn't want to be. That rhetoric is used to demonize real disabled people who are often unable to leave their homes or even feed themselves and rely on the whims of their family and neighbors to survive. All further humiliating him would do at this point is REINFORCE those harmful ideas. On a meta level, I want to believe that CRWBY is better than that. Because I am ALSO fucking disabled, and I'm TIRED of people acting like the way my brain is wired makes me less human!

The fact that he needs a caretaker due to his fragile body is treated as an inherently abusive action by Theodore, even though it's something he never asked for.

The Volume 9 epilogue showed him and Gil looking DEEPLY uncomfortable with Tyrian and Mercury.

Plus, his Semblance requiring PHYSICAL CONTACT TO WORK, meaning he'd likely only be able to use it on Salem ONCE if he jumped ship.

And, as I already mentioned, he's a self-loathing wreck who ended Before the Dawn ATTEMPTING SUICIDE as a last ditch effort to at least have SOME agency in his final moments.

The fact of the matter is that they NEED to do something more interesting with him than "generic evil cripple who's too much of a parasitic weakling to be anything more than a drain on resources".

There's also the fact that Theodore uses ACTUAL ableist language when describing him (reminder: "parasite" is a SLUR when used to describe disabled people), and Theodore explicitly only hates Jax because he physically CAN'T take care of himself.

At the end of the day, he and Gillian are in a sustained misunderstanding of what they really want.

Jax attended Shade Academy because he wanted to prove he could be useful, and Gil was uninterested in becoming a Huntress, only attending so she could help him achieve his dream.

When Theodore expelled Jax for being disabled, Gillian dropped out so she could take care of her brother.

We don't know who's idea the Crown was, only that all of the WILLING members were more loyal to Gillian.

Because Gillian's Semblance (which manifested when she was about four or five years old) allows her to transfer Aura between different people, their father decided that her Semblance must be the reason Jax was born so weak. As her Semblance requires her to consciously KEEP any Aura she transfers from going back to its original owner, this lead to Jax believing that his sister was LYING about loving him the entire time and was holding his own SOUL hostage to keep him dependent on her.

In the book, he reluctantly goes along with whatever Gil wants, believing she'll let him die if he doesn't, until he stops caring about whether he lives or dies and just wants to go down in a blaze of glory.

And then he got a psychic lobotomy courtesy of Yatsuhashi, meaning it's unclear how much he even remembers, or if he's even able to mentally function on the same level as he could in Before the Dawn.

So we don't even know if he's WILLINGLY serving Salem or is just a confused shell of his former self going along with what Gillian THINKS he wants.

It would be EXTREMELY unsatisfying for the boy who was constantly rejected by his own people because of his own body to be written off as beyond redemption, because Jax believes HIMSELF to be an unlovable monster beyond hope of redemption, thanks to everyone except someone he thinks is LYING to him telling him that's all he can ever be.

After all, nobody in Vacuo ever saw him as HUMAN. The only hope he ever had for a brighter future was his father telling him he was descended from royalty. Why WOULDN'T that lead to him being resentful?

Seriously, Jax isn't like Adam or Ironwood. He's someone who genuinely TRIED and still WANTS to be good, but has been rejected every time he's tried. He chose cruelty because nobody would LET him be good. Nobody would LET him EXIST. I do not think tearing him down FURTHER is the solution here, when all constantly tearing him down for reasons beyond his control is what drove him to Salem in the first place.

Honestly, what I'm really hoping for is that someone will call Theodore out for his BLATANT bigotry that was NEVER challenged in Before the Dawn. Jax is only a threat because Theodore treated him like an inconvenience instead of a person.

If he's still like he is in Before the Dawn, then odds are he'll probably be EXTREMELY self sabotaging while "serving" Salem, hoping that either her enemies will kill him on the field of battle or that she will put him out of his misery if he disappoints her enough, all the while Gillian is running interference and helping Salem because she wants to protect her brother from her wrath AND thinks he wants Vacuo destroyed for driving him this far in the first place.

Thus why I would prefer to have him be SAVED rather than written off as subhuman trash. He's been humiliated, abused, and exploited enough by people professing themselves to be heroes. Why shouldn't one of the actual heroes just put their foot down and say "No, what you did to him was wrong, and what he's become as a result of how YOU treated him doesn't retroactively justify it! I'm going to clean up YOUR mess and make this world one ACTUALLY worth saving!"

Takeaways from the Volume 9 Epilogue:

--

One thing I really like about Oscar’s ‘If there was anything I wish I could borrow from you…’ monologue is that it laid out/confirmed something I’ve always felt was a major aspect of Oscar’s dynamic with Ruby that I nonetheless feel a lot of the fandom has missed: That Oscar very much sees Ruby as a mentor and an example to follow, and how their dynamic is specifically a foil to what we saw between Ruby and Ozpin. That Ruby acts as a mentor and example to Oscar in the same way Ozpin was to Ruby, and that Ruby is a far BETTER mentor and example to Oscar than Ozpin ever was to her. Which, as an aside, is a dynamic I can’t help but feel a lot of people have been misinterpreting as ‘ship-teasing’ and is one of the main reasons I’ve simply never been able to see Oscar as any kind of viable love-interest to Ruby. Frankly the dynamic of ‘Ruby is the mentor and example to Oscar that Ozpin couldn’t be for her’ is simply so much more INTERESTING than any kind of romance could ever hope to be.

--

Even in animatic form, Winter basically going overdrive on the maiden powers was a sight to behold. And her own monologue had all the self-deprecation we were expecting. Our girl is clearly holding on by a thread and it’s going to be REAL interesting seeing how she reacts and adjusts to her sister not actually being dead. As in, I can imagine a situation where Winter tries to throw herself into a heroic sacrifice with the belief that Weiss would make a better Maiden than her.

Also, Winter’s monologue giving major focus to how Penny is super-super-dead-dead-and-definitely-not-coming-back-for-really-realsies, as she is talking to the sister who she ALSO believes is DEFINITELY also dead? Specifically with the words that Penny is gone, when Penny’s last words to her were that she’d be ‘part of you’?

Yeah, there is no way in hell we’ve seen the last of Penny XD

--

The CROWN. Like it was only a few shots, but as someone who read the CFVY Books (which you totally should if you haven’t, they’re great), holy shit I was NOT expecting them to pop up here.

I mean, in hindsight it makes perfect sense that they’d be involved in Volume 10. They’re basically Vacuo’s equivalent to Vale’s criminal element and the White Fang splinter faction as Salem’s co-opted insurgency group, with Jax and Gillian joining Roman, Adam and Jacques as the latest of Salem’s unwitting patsies. It’s definitely going to be real interesting seeing the crew deal with them. Like it’s really fun to imagine Team RWBY in particular being kind of exasperated at seeing Jax’s probably doing a whole ‘With Salem’s help I shall be King!’ shtick after everything they’ve seen with Roman, Adam and Jacques.

Oh and if you don’t know, Jax has a mind-control semblance, so him trying to use that on Yang could actually lead to a sneaky callback to the Justice League crossover, ie; Yang doing a ‘Yeah, I’m not doing THAT shit again.’ XD

--

Qrow’s whole vibe through this is fascinating. Like his section may have been the one we already saw, but after seeing the abject depression and growing despair of all the other characters, Qrow actually being OPTIMISTIC hit so much harder.

--

Raven showing up at the end is… interesting.

I’ll admit that ever since we saw that specific clip a few months back, I’ve been rather conflicts about Raven showing up to deliver RWBY+J to Vacuo, particularly after Ruby’s tree vision. Like for one it felt a bit random and unnecessary. The tree already deposited the Ever After team outside of Vacuo so they didn’t exactly need help getting there. Not to mention that it kind of clotheslines the story-thread set up by Ruby’s vision; that she now has a reason to track Raven down to get the ANSWERS to what happened to Summer. Finally, it’s just kind of… random? Like where did Raven even come from to get the team?

But now having seen the clip with its intended context, I’m definitely more on board with it. Particularly hearing from Kerry and Eddy that the original ending for the penultimate episode had RWBY+J going through the portal to arrive at their memorial stone, and met by a ‘Mysterious Figure’, ie; Raven. Here it feels like were getting more set up to get answers later as to what Raven was doing at the memorial.

And really, now that I’ve thought about it more, this method kind of puts the thread of Ruby going to Raven for answers even MORE into focus. Like the story reintroduces Raven in the present right after Ruby got a vision basically saying ‘hey, Raven is important’. And now going into Volume 10, we’re pretty much perfectly positioned for Ruby to pull Raven aside for those all-important ‘Why were you fucking my mom? What happened to my mom?’ questions.

--

Finally… yeah that ending hit me a LOT harder than I was expecting. Like that ending was HOPE in its purest form and it was honestly beautiful to see. Particularly right now with the future of the show seeming so uncertain. I’ve personally been optimistic about RWBY’s future (in a manner not unlike Qrow’s vibes I suppose lol), but damn the hopefulness of that ending hit especially hard, and was something I’ll admit I needed. And I imagine the rest of us could use as well.

We'll be getting Volume 10. And 11, and 12, and however many more it takes it finish this story. At this point, I have no doubt of that.