#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)

[moonlightviigil]

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

[cripple-culture-is]

I don't really feel comfy using the slur even tho I'm like 99% sure I could if I wanted to but--

The culture is your hs gym teacher pushing you wayyyyy too hard and continuously telling you that you're "not trying hard enough" because you aren't visibly struggling (except the visual struggling) and only being told your work is acceptable when you go home exhausted and in pain every day

Cardio days man

Like,,, to the point that you don't have the physical energy to take a shower,,, and barely enough to take a bath,,, and just spend the day in pain playing video games (but dang joints in pain make that hard too)

But it's a required class so... uh

Needless to say,,, you're dropping out and taking it online over the summer with a different teacher

And by "you" I mean me. This is my life. Sorry I needed to vent somewhere

That's alright =) I should really put a disclaimer here that states that if you aren't comfy using the word cripple, you could use other things (I'll get on that immediately)

OH NO!! That's not right. You should not have to deal with that. Sometimes schools can stink so much. I was homeschooled, but I had experience with public school, albeit incredibly brief. While my elementary gym teacher was perfect, my 1st grade teacher was not, and my needs were not met. I was not accommodated. Schools really need to improve how they treat disabled students.

Showers are tiring enough on their own, honestly. I feel the video game pain thing on a deep level. It's great to play video games, but wrist pain makes that action incredibly difficult.

Good for you! You shouldn't have to just stand there and take it when it is doing more harm than good. I hope the online summer class works well for you. You should definitely not have to deal with that much pain, and your HS gym teacher should've accommodated you (if I was in your position, my mother would've already complained to the principal and even the superintendent if that didn't work).

I understand what you meant =) And it's no worries at all. That's why this space exists. So physically disabled people can vent. I am at a point in my life where I can separate myself from other people's problems, so I am in a good mental state to be doing this.

You are welcome here. Even if you feel as if you have to apologize for venting, you never have to apologize for venting here. This is a safe space <3

[devouredead]

This series of questions comes from @crippled-lavender 's cripple ask game! 3. ] if you have chronic pain, what’s your “normal” on the scale and what do you consider a good day on the scale?

On the typical 1-10 scale offered at the doctor's office, I would say I'm usually about a five to a six. When I first really starting experiencing pain with my disabilities, I found it was hard to move or do anything, and all I could think about was getting it 'fixed.' Almost ten years now, and the pain is almost always worse. A lot of people, including a lot of professionals, have danced around the answer but come to find out, there's no 'fixing' it. It just is what it is. I didn't get used to it, like a lot of people assume people do. It still hurts just as bad, and I'm still hampered and I still can't do things because of it. I have learned to ignore my body's warning signals and put myself on hold-guess what, not really helpful. I guess I am more tired now as well, if anything. Less able to put up with it. These days, rather than 'being strong' or bearing through it (which worsens my disease as well as many other chronic illnesses) I just go back to bed. That's not a great idea, but I don't know what else to do on those days. I'm working on it.

At least usually, I'll still write if my hands can handle it. That's something. Best days are always zero and I never forget them! But they rarely happen at this point and payment's due the following day/s. For the sake of what's more common? Three. A day where the crippled parts aren't bumped aren't severely aching, in active flare, nothing pops out, etc, that's a good day, that's about a three. Uncomfortable but I don't have to talk about it to make it through the day. Disclaimer: I never have gotten asks (that haven't been personal attacks) so I just enjoy answering the questions. Please keep in mind the original post specifies that crippled (physically disabled only) are invited to use the specific questions.

[As always, if you enjoy my content please consider donating/visiting/sharing my surgery needs. I can't do it alone, and I appreciate everything done to help. https://gofund.me/d715215f ]

[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

[fakeloveaskblog]

Hi Logan, how do I even start? Save this number, if you want to. I have been supporting Remy through texts for a bit. They have revealed to me some very troubling things in the past. Things like, their boyfriend kicking their cane from under them as a ‘joke’? Those kinds of things.

Virgil, that's his name by the way, also kind of yells at them a lot at times, and tells them they're worthless except for the use he can give to their body and that nobody else will ever love them. They believe they are horrible. They believe they deserve it. They appear to think their disability makes them only a burden to him and nothing else and while I have tried to convince them to the contrary I honestly don't believe I can when they're still trapped by choice in such a toxic environment.

I have tried to help and give them the tools to better their self-esteem and combat that, and send them nice text messages in general, but that hasn't helped in anything more than a superficial level. If you can do something, anything, or could take their case to someone who can something, I'd really appreciate that.

(Words: 2088)

(Talk of U!Virgil)

Logan: "That is...That is" He took a moment to gather himself "That is even worse than I had estimated"

"This must have been happening the other times we met them too right? And we didn't notice anything. We should have- we-" Patty mumbled out. Her voice was shaky.

She had just gotten home half an hour ago or so, she wasn't even fully out of her cosplay makeup. Logan had immediately pulled her into a hug which wasn't uncommon but he'd held onto her so hard it hurt and he’d been close to collapsing into the hug.

All it took was her asking if he was alright for him to tell her everything. He couldn't keep a secret from her even if he tried.

Now they sat in the couch. Logan had his head leaned on her chest and she had moved her arms around his waist. All they'd eaten was some of the leftover pie from Lo's date a few days ago because both of them were far too worked up to even think about cooking.

Patty pinched the bridge of her nose and tried to think "Okay well if they're being emotionally abused as what we know suggest then...I..is there even anyone we can contact that could help. I mean there's no- there's no evidence right? Or well- it's just- it's their word against Virgil's and if they won't even say Virgil is abusing them then there's nothing!"

"We can kidnap them" Logan pointed out.

"That we can"

Logan sighed “Do you think talking to them would even make a difference? They seem to already hate me so now it’s even less likely that they’ll listen”

“Well honey you can always try. They go to the same therapist as Janus right? So you can just casually ‘run into them’ right?” She gave him a loving kiss “I know my lil smarty-sweetheart can help them”

He sent her a tired smile “I’ll try”

--

Remy wasn’t as upset from the therapy session as they usually were. It had mostly been discussing how they felt about maybe being poly. They still thought they deserved a smoke break afterwards though so now they sat on bench right outside the entrance, they were on their third cigarette.

They had their head leaned against the back of the bench and was looking up at the greying sky and falling leaves so they didn’t notice when Logan sat down. He kept his distance to not startle them but cleared his throat to get their attention.

“Are you also waiting for someone?” He asked.

They glanced over to him “Girl go fuck yourself with a rake”

“Noted. I will put it in my calender. I for one am here to pick up Janus after his therapy is over for the day. Mayhaps I will show him some more star trek”

“Okay great gal. Then I’m just like waiting for Remus I guess” They pressed the cigarette into their leather jacket to put it out so they could leave as soon as they saw their cru- friend.

Logan inched closer “Is your bruise healing well?”

“Just ‘cause we’re in the same place doesn’t mean we have to talk to each other!” They snapped back.

“Exscuse me, I was simply worried about your physical health”

They rolled their eyes and crossed their arms before mumbling out “It’s fine. It’s whatever. I haven’t done it again so like forget it” 

“I am relieved to hear that”

Silence fell over them. Remy refused to look at him. Logan tried to figure out what was the best way to ask them about Virgil.

“....Your boyfriend did not insult you once you came home right?” He asked them in such a soft tone as if any slight wrong saying would make them implode on themself.

“Girl there you go again with your stupid fucking bullshit. I don’t wanna like talk about it!....Not ‘cause anything happened but ‘cause I hate you! You don’t- we don’t- we’re not friends! Why are you just like forcing yourself in on my private life! It’s like- it’s like fucking stalking!”

Logan reached out his hand to comfort them but quickly stopped himself “I am sorry. I don’t know how to best formulate this but I sincerely don’t mean to upset you like, neither do I know how to not upset you. All I know is that I want you to be okay and that if my partner treated me like yours seem to do I wouldn’t be able to stay”

Remy’s hair fell in front of their face as they leant their head in their plams “You don’t get it” They muttered.

“I am sure I don-”

“IT’S NOT THAT FUCKING EASY! It’s not like I have any savings an-and I’m not able to keep a job and without Virgil I have no way to buy medicine and- Like do you just want me to walk out and become homeless and like starve to death? Is that it? Like even if I wanted to leave, which I don’t, It’s not like I have a choice!”

A quiet sniffle came from them. Logan gave them a moment to gather their breathe.

“I...I didn’t mean to make it sound like leaving was easy” Logan murmured “I understand that you have probably been forced to think like you have no choice but to stay. I am aware of how crippling manipulation like that can be” 

He leaned closer and even though they didn’t look at him he still sent them his most caring look as he continued.

“But I promise you that there are other options. You aren’t stuck. I am willing to let you stay at my apartment for however long you need and if you aren’t comfortable with that I am sure Janus or Remus would let you stay as well. I can even pay for a motel if that would be better. Depending on what part of your disability is making you unable to work I am sure that could be fixed. For example a wheelchair could help! My point is that you do have a choice, even if it’s very understandably hard to think that”

Remy’s shoulders were shaking. Logan gently placed his hand on top of their bony shoulder. Every vein was visible through their light skin.

At just the hint of his touch they flinched away. They stumbled up from the bench and took a few steps away. They looked at him with reddened eyes.

“No. No. Girl you- you just don’t get it! That’s all!” They spat out, their voice was shaky as well “You haven’t like lived with me. Once you or Remus o-or anyone spends enough time with me you’ll realize what an annoying overemotional burden I am! An-and then I’ll get thrown out! Okay!? So-so it’s not really- I don’t actually have a choice ‘cause I’ll just get thrown out. Virgil is the only who will ever bother to deal with me for this long! ‘cause he loves me! And no one else will love me like he does. S-so just shut up!”

Logan stood up as well and took an unsure step towards them. They looked so weak, as if a single push from the wind would make them crumble. 

“It’s okay. I hear what you are saying” Logan assured.

“An-and it’s like- Virgil needs me! And I need him! That’s like how it works! I can’t just leave him! What if- who will calm him down from his panic attacks?! And if I leave what if he gets s-so upset and like anxious he hurts himself! He’s said there was a chance he would!! I can’t risk it! I have to stay! He needs me! I-I need- I can’t- I can’t leave”

Logan nodded along “It’s okay. I understand. I understand”

“You don’t! You’re a idiotic bitch! I hope all your stupid fucking ties get destroyed in the washer!” Remy was close to yelling.

“Harsh but I see your point. To be honest everything you have said has made me even more worried. From my experience a relationship shouldn’t make you feel this way! It shouldn’t make you come up with reasons to stay! It shouldn’t hurt you!” Logan reached out to comfort them once more. “I promise it shouldn’t hurt”

“It’s not hurting me! YOU are hurting me!”

Logan was taken aback. He didn’t know what to say. His arms moved to hang helplessly along his sides. Remy opened their mouth to say something more but then

“Hey uh what’s going on? Are you roleplaying a death match?” Remus stood in the entrance to the building. He glanced between the two of them.

“This idiot is trying to destroy my relationship!” Remy exclaimed.

“While it is not my place to explain the full situation without their permission I can assure you that I am merely worrying for their mental and physical health and I am unsure if their relationship is good for them from what I’ve heard” Logan explained.

Remus barely even hesitated before moving in front of Remy. He moved his arms out and let them lean against him to catch their breathe, like he was a human shield protecting them from Logan. 

Logan hadn’t seen Remus angry before and he didn’t look fully enraged, but there was a hint of anger in eyes as he sneered at him.

“Well I’m sorry Loganson but not every relationship is totally perfect and works without any arguments like you and your wife relationship apparently does!” He spat out.

“I can assure you that me and my wife’s relationship hasn’t been argument free but that doesn’t mean I have ever even thought about insulting her like Remy’s boyfriend seemingly ha-”

“You’re not Remy!” Remus snapped “You’re a guy who dresses like a 40 year old math teacher who is losing the children in the divorce! Leave them alone!” 

Remy was bordering on cowering behind Remus. Their whole body seemed to shake as a few tears spilled down their cheeks. They met Logan’s eyes.

“If the bullshit you’re saying is true, which it like isn’t but if it was that- that means I’ve spent my whole life being abused” They forced out through tears “How can you Ever you expect me to live with that?”

Logan didn’t have an answer to that. He watched on as Remus placed his hands on Remy’s shoulders and gently guided them to turn away. He bonked their foreheads together and wiped their tears away.

“C’mon beanie-boo I can take you to the amusement park to cheer you up! Or we can find some lsd and get high so you can hallucinate beating the shit out of the stinky Log guy!” Remus exclaimed as they walked away.

A headache began to form in Logan’s head as he slumped back down on the bench. He stared out at the nearly empty parking lot. He didn’t understand what he did wrong. 

He wished he could talk to Virgil. He wished he could see him eye to eye and chew him out for ever making Remy feel like a burden, for ever making them feel trapped. A part of him wanted to punch him.

He was so zoned out into the overthinking he didn’t realize how much time was passing until Janus got out from his therapy session. As soon as Jan saw his boyfriend he let up into a shining smile and hurried over to him.

“Hi dear! Aww did you miss me so much you had to come pick me up! How charming!” Janus hesitated before kissing Logan on the lips. It still made him all giggly.

Normally seeing him so giddy would have made Logan overabundant with happiness....but now all he could think about was if he should tell Janus about Remy’s situation or not. They were friends right? Could it help? Would they listen to their friend?

Logan’s head hurt so bad. None of it made sense. There was no logical answer. How Janus reacted could make everything worse. He didn’t want to ruin everything more than he already had.

“Darling? Are you feeling alright? Has something happened?” Janus asked while taking his hand.

“I....I....” Logan looked over to you.

Logan: “I am so sorry to do this but do you have any idea what to do? The human emotion and it’s reactions are so illogical I don’t- I don’t understand- I don’t know what to do. I’m sorry- Should I tell Janus about the suspected abuse or should I lie?”

[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.

[rachelbethhines]

Tangled Salt Marathon - Rapunzel Day One

This is decent episode, and one of the few that isn’t filler in season two, but because there are problems with the over all character acs, there’s problems here with episode too. 

Summary:  Rapunzel and Cassandra come across an abandoned magic stall while searching for parts of their destroyed caravan. The stall contains a wand of forgetting. Cassandra impulsively wishes that Rapunzel would "just forget about everything" when she was tired of her trying to patch things up between them, which results in Rapunzel regressing to when she was still in her tower with Gothel.

The Episode Order is Confusing 

So this and The Brothers Hook aired on the same day. Now in the production order listing, Rapunzel Day One is suppose to come before The Brothers Hook and that’s how it’s ordered on Disney Plus. Which is where I’m watching this marathon and getting all my screen caps.

However The Brothers Hook did air before this episode according to Wikipedia. Also Hook Foot is nowhere to be seen with nary a word. So placing The Brothers Hook before would indeed make more sense in that regard. 

Yet Raps and Cass aren’t fighting in The Brothers Hook, so I don’t understand how this was supposed to originally work. What’s the correct viewing order here? Is Hook Foot just off screen with Fidella this episode, or is Cass and Raps ignoring their big fight in The Brother’s Hook? 

For Someone With a Disability Now, It Doesn’t Seem To Affect Things

Ok, to be fair, they do show Cassandra practicing here and later in Mirror, Mirror trying to relearn how to use her hand, and indeed physical therapy for injuries is a thing. Yet, two scenes isn’t enough to establish that. She regains usage of her hand really quickly and far too easily, given the type of injury it was. 

Disabilities, even unseen ones, still impact your everyday life. Yes, they don't ruin your life; you can still do things. But they don't just go away and you have to deal with it. 

Finding that balance between not making a character useless, while still recognizing that there are things that they struggle with when writing disabilities is a line that writers have trouble with. But if you’re not going to put in that effort needed to pull it off tastefully then don't introduce the concept. 

One Step Forward; Two Steps Back

Rapunzel recognizing that there is a problem, and wanting to fix it before it gets worse, can be viewed as progress. After all, avoiding the issue is why things got so bad between her and Varian. But, she’s still failing to see why Cassandra is upset and so goes about things the wrong way. 

And keep in mind, Rapunzel does have every right to be mad at Cassandra, just the same that Cass has a right to be mad at Rapunzel. Both girls screwed up.  

Yet, it’s only Rapunzel’s side of things that Rapunzel cares about, and therefore nothing actually gets resolved. 

This could have been a decent conflict for season three, but that’s not where the writers take things so we’re just spinning our wheels here. 

It’s also kind of shitty that Cass is the only person that Rapunzel is willing to put effort into righting things with. She still doesn’t give a crap about Varian, nor any other villain in the show. 

Well I Guess This Has to Come Before The Brothers Hook

They have the caravan in Brothers Hook, don’t they? I mean how else did they meet up with Hook Hand? But if that is the case then where is Hook Foot now? I don’t know.  

Cassandra’s Hurt Hand Only Matters When It Concerns Her Relationship With Rapunzel and Not How It Affects Her Character as a Whole 

An extension of what I was saying before, but it shows the fundamental problem with the writing for Cassandra. The writers only think of her as a conflict for Rapunzel and not as a person with like her own life and shit. 

Long Time, No See Owl

As soon as Hook Foot goes unceremoniously missing, then Owl shows up. I don’t think he’s been seen since season one, yet they act like he’s always been here with the group. 

Why is continuity and consistency so hard for this show? 

The Saporians Are Indeed Homeless, But Don't Expect That to Ever Be Brought Up

So things to note. 

This isn’t a village. It’s an encampment. What we see here are destroyed tents and caravans. The only permanent structure is a short stone wall. 

Secondly, the magic book they find has the Saporian symbol on it, and indeed the Saporians use the wand of oblivium to take over Corona in S3.  

What we can gather from this is that the Saporians were driven out of Corona after the first war. They’ve been living as nomads for centuries without their homeland.Yet their most recent settlement was destroyed by the black rocks sometime before season one started, along with most of their possessions and means of living. 

All of this would explain their motivations, goals, and why they picked now to try and take over and not just any other time.  

But don't expect any of that to be brought up or remembered by anyone come season three. We can’t have any po the bad guys, save for Cass, being sympathetic now can we. 

Also, just a side note. It’s funny how apothecary is treated as magic and alchemy as a science in this world, when in reality it should be the opposite way around. 

This is Not an Apology 

If you gotta throw a ‘but’ in there, then you haven’t really apologized. 

Rapunzel’s not sorry for Cass getting hurt. She doesn’t recognize nor understands why Cassandra feels the way she does, and she’s even attempting to try to. All Rapunzel cares about is how Cass being upset makes herself feel. She’s putting in this effort to ‘talk about it’ because Cass being outwardly angry at her is inconvenient to herself and nothing more. 

Rapunzel Still Hasn't Learned Boundaries 

Didn’t we already have this conversation back in season one? 

And like, yes, it’s not good for Cassandra to ignore her feelings, but what Rapunzel does here by pushing isn’t a good thing either. 

What's most frustrating though is that neither learn anything from this. Just like they didn’t learn anything in Under Raps or Goodbye and Goodwill. 

It’s aggravating to see the writers give us an actual conflict that’s worth having the mains fight over, only to be undermined by previous episodes and then thrown away altogether. 

So How Come the Wand Only Erases Part of Rapunzel’s Memory and Not All?

Like, this is suppose to be set for season three with Frederic and Arianna losing their memories. Yet despite Clementine using a similar wand, it doesn’t have the same effect on them as it does on Rapunzel here. They lose all their memories and sense of identity, while Raps just forgets a few years. 

Speaking Forgetting How Things Work 

Where did this handy dandy book with the cure go when Frederic and Arinna lost their memories? Why didn’t Raps go looking for it then, or force the Saparoians to give her the cure while they were in her custody? 

So This Plot Point Kind of Back Fires, and Winds Up Undermining Everyone’s Relationship with Rapunzel

First off, just repeating New Dream scenes from the movie, but with Cass in Eugene’s place is ill advised given the direction that the show went in. Whether you ship Casspunzel or not, it’s important to recognize that ‘sisters’ is what they are intended to be in canon. That’s the direction that Chris went with them, whether we like it or not. So either no one on the show knows how to write platonic female relationships, or this is gay baiting. Take your pick. 

It’s also lazy. 

But most damaging is that this only shows that Cassandra only liked Rapunzel when she was naive and stupid, and not the Rapunzel we have now. Tie in how her friendship with Rapunzel is based off of validation to begin with and we got a very unhealthy relationship, and not one that should be rooted for, despite the show wanting you to do just that.  

They even go so far to repeat the lines from the flashback in the last episode, as if this was a positive thing in their dynamic, instead of recognizing it for the really mess up thing that it. 

Then there’s the Eugene side of things that this calls into question. 

We know Eugene loves Rapunzel through thick and thin, but how much of their relationship is based off their first adventure together and not about how they work together in the here in now? 

Did Rapunzel just simply latch on to Eugene because he’s the first person that she met who wasn’t her mother and wound up being nice to her? If anyone else found her, would she be in a relationship with them instead? Is it healthy for her to never look for anything else? How much does Rapunzel actually like Eugene, for himself? 

Then throw in Eugene’s over idealization of Rapunzel in season three, they’re lack of communication issues, and Rapunzel’s crippling need to always be right, and I can’t say if New Dream should be what we’re rooting for either. 

This isn’t a Casspunzel vs New Dream thing, nor is it a personal dislike of Rapunzel herself. Rather, it’s a very serious question about the nature of Rapunzel’s interpersonal relationships vs her character development, and how that has to change things on some level, and if it’s still worth having those relationships now that she herself has changed so drastically. 

Is everyone being fulfilled? Is everyone getting what they need still? No? Then, why are any of these people still together? 

That needs to be addressed by the narrative now, and it never is. 

So Why Would You Say That Cass?

Rapunzel doesn’t know where she is and therefore has no idea what direction the tower lies in. If you’re heading south back to the camp then just say the tower is south. In fact it actually is south because you’ve been traveling northeast to the Dark Kingdom for months now, according to the map in Rapunzel’s Return. So what was the point in lying about that? 

In in effort make Rapunzel look smart, they had to make Cass look dumb and that’s not good writing. If you needed Rapunzel to suddenly not trust Cass then there were other better ways. The drawing she placed in her pocket should be enough on its own to tip her off, and all she has to do is reach into her pocket to put like a rock she found in there and then find it that way.

 So When Did Rapunzel Have Time to Build This Elaborate Mousetrap?

This would have taken hours, it’s not even been minutes. 

There’s making Raps competent and then there’s turning her into an overpowered invincible heroine. 

Now Pascal Is Missing

Oh is he with fucking Hook Foot now? 

He was right on your shoulder Eugene. 

If you’re going to have characters conveniently missing then establish that first, preferably in a visual way and not with exposition.  

So Rapunzel is Treat As In the Right Even When She’s Not

So Cassandra opening up about her feelings is treated as the solution to the problem, but it’s really not, or it shouldn’t be anyways. She can recognize she lied about the wand without having to doing something she finds uncomfortable, and it’s not like Rapunzel right now has any frame of reference for what Cass is talking about. 

All this amounts to is giving Rapunzel a free pass on her earlier bullshit.

Also if Cass repeating a phrase Rapunzel said earlier was all that was needed to jog her memory enough to trust her, then why couldn’t Eugene done the same? He was right there.  

This Doesn’t Resolve Anything

Ok first off that’s not what friends do. Friends actually work through shit. Friends make sincere apologies. Friends forgive each when they do. 

If you’re not doing that then you’re not friends and you should just leave. 

No one, not Raps, not Cass, ever apologizes for what happened in the Great Tree. They never try to understand what either of them did wrong, nor do they put effort into fixing themselves or addressing their issues and flaws. 

And you know what? That would be a valid reason for their falling out in season three. But it’s not used as such, so any resolution to their conflict there winds up feeling hollow. 

Conclusion

This episode, like with the Great Tree, gave me hope that this was all leading somewhere. Now it’s just a bitter reminder of how screwed up the writers’ morals are in this show, and how poorly planned everything was. 

[allthebooksandcrannies]

I know a lot of older people think it's a problem that so many young people don't want to have children, but I think it shows an increased understanding for how much of a responsibility parenting is and how much damage you can do to a child of you're not ready to raise someone.

I think that everyone is capable of being a good parent and I think that some people should never be parents. These may sound mutually exclusive but they aren't because there's a big if involved in the first half. That if, is that everyone is capable of being a good parent someday if they put in the work to take care of their own shit first.

When you become a parent or guardian, you are officially signing on to prioritize another person's physical and emotional needs before your own for the rest of their life. That means loving them no matter what they do or who they become. That means putting aside your own exhaustion and frustration at your day when they walk through the door so that you can be their champion and their confidant and their companion. That means teaching them how to process their emotions and think critically and empathetically and it means letting them find their own path, even if it's different than the one you wanted or imagined for them, but making it clear that if they need or want your comfort, your help, or just your ear that they will have it. You don't have to be perfect. No parent ever is, and it's important anyway for kids to learn in nontraumatic ways that adults make mistakes too and that's okay as long as you take responsibility for that and strive to learn and grow because of your mistakes. Kids learn by watching and listening to the adults around them and the things they conclude from those early years of observation will stick with them the rest of their lives.

I know that that sounds scary. It probably should because deciding to raise a child should be the biggest decision you can make, and if it's not, you may not be taking it seriously enough.

I also know that this is hard. And I have the greatest respect for people who truly understand this and decide to raise a tiny person anyway.

I'm also not trying to discourage you from becoming a parent. You may not be ready now, but that doesn't mean you can't be later. I personally would love to be a mom some day not I know that I have a lot of personal growth and healing I need to take care of first, to say nothing of the stabilization of my financial and career status.

The real question is what can you do to be a better parent, guardian, or even trusted adult to someone else's child (a really important and valid role and choice in itself!) later?

First off, you need to do some hard core introspection to figure out what traits and behaviors you have that might exhibit that would interfere in your ability to be a good parent. Maybe you're still emotionally immature. Maybe you're struggling with uncontrolled mental illness, chronic illness, or addiction. Maybe you've internalized some toxic ideas. Maybe you're still recovering from trauma or just now realizing that what you have even is trauma. None of these things makes you a bad person and none of them stops you from being capable to becoming a good parent. But, all of them can interfere with your ability to model healthy behaviors and coping skills to your child. Children learn through observation and, because their brains need the world to make sense and be predictable, they're going to interpret everytime you seem upset or lose your cool as being their fault. Young children aren't capable of going "mom is upset and snapped over something relatively trivial, she must be having a bad day/be tired/etc" because that's an interpretation of the world that is outside their control. Instead, they're going to go "I did x and mom got mad at me, it's my fault so I better not do x again" and that's a really harmful mindset that can contribute to self-worth issues and other mental illnesses like anxiety, especially if this happens long-term (for the record, you're going to make mistakes and you're going to snap over stupid things because being a grown-up is hard, so when you inevitably make this mistake it's important to be honest and upfront with your child about what happened, why, how it's not their fault, and you have to genuinely apologize for it, turning your mistake into a chance to model good adult behavior).

It's important to take care of yourself and let yourself grow and heal before bringing a kid into the mix because 1. you'll be a better parent if you start out in a better place emotionally and mentally, and 2. because you deserve the chance to be healthy and happy and it's much harder to address the things that are interfering with that when your also trying to juggle the additional emotional/mental demands of raising a child.

Additionally, I definitely recommend making sure you and anyone else taking a primary caretaker role in your child's life is in a stable financial and that the relationship between you and any other caretakers is stable and amicable regardless of what kind of relationship it is. The financial aspect is important because kids are expensive as hell (both the having/acquiring and the raising) and you want to be able to provide then with the best possible shot at life.

This isn't about me but I feel like the example will be helpful. We weren't poverty level growing up, but even as a child it was clear to me that we could be. My parents were 20 year old newlyweds when they got pregnant. My dad had been set up to inherit a position in his father and grandfather's construction company and did not go to college because they thought he was guaranteed a steady job. My mom was paying for a college education she couldn't afford because no one had ever explained how to get financial aid and scholarships to her and her parents were too caught up in their own shit to be anything but relieved about getting to make her future my dad's problem. Then they got pregnant. They started building a house that took much longer to build then expected because that construction business dad was expecting to inherit went out of business because it turned out that a cousin had been embezzling and my great-grandmother wouldn't let them sue or press charges against family. Mom had to drop out of college to raise me because daycare costs as much as she makes at work and she no longer has the time or funds. They had a baby they weren't prepared to raise and my dad's new job had him working in the Texas heat all day before going and working on our house at night so that we could move out of my maternal grandfather's house now that he was getting divorced and couldn't afford it. My parents society never saw each other and they were constantly worried about money. Less than two years after I was born they accidentally got pregnant with my brother. He ended up with failure to thrive and (although he did eventually recover) it raked up a serious amount of debt in addition to my mom's student loans and the mortgage. Flash forward four more years and my dad falls through a roof at a construction site and permanently cripples his ankle. Cue a year of the only breadwinner in the household being unable to work, several surgeries and massive medical bills we can't pay. A year after that my mom has to have a historectomy because her fibroids are causing immense pain and then they find pre-cancerous cells. Another year after that she starts having unexplained siezures and signs of organ failure that will take years to diagnose as a rare autoimmune disorder that will leave her disabled and, again, rake up serious medical debt. I found out in college that it came to the point that we almost lost the house but as a kid I still always knew we were struggling. And that fucks with a kid's head. There were reasons I didn't tell my parents that something was wrong for a week after I sprained my wrist when I was 10 and it wasn't just because I didn't want to sound like I was asking for attention (a phobia that also comes from having emotionally immature parents). I pushed myself ridiculously hard in school because I knew I couldn't expect any help paying for college from my parents. I still feel incredibly guilty anytime I spend more than 20 dollars even though it's my money and I need groceries or textbooks or gas or whatever. A lot of these issues would have been financially difficult and unpredictable, but had my parents been in a more stable position when they got married and started having kids, it would have been much easier to weather the storms.

Additionally, money is the main thing couples fight about, so if you can take that off the table as a significant concern before bringing kids into the mix, please do. Maslow's hierarchy of needs states that you can't address higher order concerns like personal growth of your worried about where your next meal is coming from and that goes for your children as well.

Again, I'm not trying to shame people for their financial difficulties. Most of us are playing at a game we were never intended to win and I get that not all children are planned. But, your good intentions unfortunately will not put food on the table or pay the rent and your children will have a lot less stress in their lives if you are able to make sure that things are as stable as possible before you bring them into it.

The same goes for your relationship with fellow caretakers. Don't try to have kids to save your relationship. Don't ever make your children feel like your relationship is in anyway their responsibility. Again, they need their world to make sense and if you're fighting they're probably going to assume it's somehow their fault. Don't do that to them.

Anyway, this rant turned out a lot longer than I intended but I think I needed to say it. In summary, raising children is not about you but your going to make it about you unless you take care of your own shit first. Children don't ask to be born. If you're not ready for that responsibility, either don't have kids or put in the work so that you will be. If you already have kids, and don't have your shit together, there's still time but it's going to be harder and you might have to do some damage control from any traumas you may have already inflicted on your child, regardless of your intentions. If that's the case, you have a responsibility to get your kid the help they need and do everything in your power to avoid further harm. You're the adult in this situation, and if you're going to be a parent, you need to act like it.

[aspire-to-the-light]

Micro-disability

I cannot follow pointer fingers, or rotate objects in my head. If you point at an object on a table of objects, I usually can't pick out the one you're talking about unless you get close enough to almost touch it; I just can't draw that invisible line in space and select the object you're trying to indicate. If you're giving me directions, you can't point to a house and say "turn left there" - all I'll do is look puzzled and repeatedly ask where you mean until you clarify with a description.

I knew someone once with an old shoulder injury that meant he couldn't lift one arm directly above his head. He could lift it most of the way, but not the whole way, so his reach was just a little less than others might have assumed, and sometimes he got odd looks if he had to ask for help reaching a high shelf.

A partner of mine can't be in rooms where too many conversations are happening at once. His brain can't filter out the ones he isn't listening to from the one he is, so he quickly gets overwhelmed and distressed and needs to leave.

I can't walk quickly without it taking up my entire concentration and becoming tiring very fast. I walk at an astonishingly slow pace naturally, and if I consciously speed up my steps then they subconsciously get smaller, and if I consciously lengthen my steps then they subconsciously get slower. Something about going faster is just very rapidly physically and psychologically exhausting, and I don't know precisely what it is. I can run forever without dropping at my comfortably mid-speed loping pace, but I can't go much faster than it.

None of these things fit the criteria to be disabilities, under the 'standard' definition. We aren't incapable of holding jobs or having fulfilling home lives because of these limitations. We don't need paid carers, or the government to give us benefits because we can't work, and it probably isn't worth medical help to fix the problem.

At the same time, a huge amount of the discourse around disability rights is valid and useful for discussing these problems. My partner ought to be able to say that a room is overwhelming because of the number of conversations happening, and people ought to respect that by taking him elsewhere to continue their own conversation. He shouldn't be judged for it, or have people assume he just isn't trying hard enough, or be shamed. He certainly shouldn't be fired for it; accommodations should be made.

Like with 'full' disabilities, micro-disabilities can become more disabling when there's an intersection of them. I also have auditory processing disorder; I struggle to hear people if there's background noise, or if they're looking away from me and not projecting towards me. In other words, if you're walking in front of me, I can't hear you - and because I walk slowly, I'm almost always trailing behind the back of the group. It makes me feel constantly excluded and dismissed from conversations while I'm walking with people, like nobody values me enough to slow down so that I can hear them.

The concept illustrates some aspects of how we think about providing accommodations, asking for evidence, and validating disabilities. Often, the policy of institutions is to require evidence of a disability before they will accommodate it. You can't get free medical treatment unless a doctor certifies you actually have the disease, or you can't get extra time on tests unless you fail some other tests, or you can't sue your employer for firing you unless you can demonstrate it's actually your disability that's making you late all the time. The thing about micro-disabilities is that almost nobody will ever be able to prove that they have one, because it simply isn't worth diagnosing. I can't go to a doctor and get a certificate that says I get nauseous if I wake up too early, or I struggle to follow pointer fingers, or I have to keep my hair short because I find it painful to hit a tangle when I'm brushing my hair, or I get stomach bugs more often because of my hopeless addiction to biting my nails.

My doctor simply does not have the time or inclination to measure my ability to understand finger-pointing, decide whether it falls below some threshold, and issue a certificate that says I am now Officially Disabled and my employer will be in Big Trouble if they fire me for being unable to follow pointer fingers. So if I want this to be accommodated - if I want people to give me descriptive directions rather than assuming I can see what they're gesturing at - I have to simply ask them to trust that I really am trying my hardest, I just can't do this.

How you treat micro-disability is, I think, a good lens into whether you truly respect the needs of disabled people. If you'll grudgingly provide accommodations to those who can prove they are really disabled, that's one thing. But people with micro-disabilities aren't really disabled. They're just... a little bit disabled. So do we accommodate them? Do we respect them when they say 'hey, I can't do this' or do we raise our eyebrows and ask them to try harder? Do we listen when they say things are harder for them than for others, or do we look at them oddly and tell them we've never heard of that disability before?

It's a more complicated question than it might seem, I think. Because we accommodate all sorts of micro-disabilities all the time - the ones that are ordinary enough that we don't even think of them as disabilities. Being too short to reach high shelves, or too weak of grip to open jars, or too broad-shouldered for a small-size jacket; these are things we accommodate all the time.

We don't think of someone as disabled for needing reading glasses, but neither do we think that they're faking because they only need the glasses sometimes.

The micro-disabilities people doubt are the odd ones, the ones we struggle to explain and understand. Neither I nor doctors understand why I walk slowly, and it isn't a common problem to have, and that's precisely why people assume I could just try harder and keep up.

Which is awkward when micro-disabilities are so often just tiny, rarely-reported or lesser-known symptoms of "official" disabilities. I have a diagnosis of ADHD, and the common perception is that that means that I can't concentrate or sit down. But it actually affects so much more than that. How many of my tiny mental symptoms are my ADHD expressing itself in ways nobody knows are associated with ADHD? Who knows.

It is meant to illustrate that disability is a spectrum. We cannot draw a line, anywhere in the progression from 'gets tired easily when walking' to 'walks with a limp' to 'can only walk with a cane' to 'can't walk and uses a wheelchair', and say with confidence that people on one side of the line are really fully disabled and those on the other side aren't. 'Micro-disability' merely points at the existence of some centre place between fully abled and being so disabled that it majorly impairs your ability to have an ordinary life; it's still a fuzzy category, with boundaries that almost make less sense the more you think about them.

It's a more inclusive view of disability, certainly. Almost everyone has some kind of micro-disability, whether it's slow reading or a food sensitivity or a chronically infected toenail that hurts when stepped on. Disabled people aren't some odd group of cripples hidden away in hospitals that you'll never meet; disabled people are everyone who can't do certain things that others can do, for reasons that aren't their fault. Some of us may need more or less help and support than others, but all of us just deserve people to listen to us about what we need.

It took a long time, but I ended up reframing a lot of my little difficulties in this way, and I think it makes my life better. I don't force myself to just try harder to navigate any more; I just take my phone everywhere and use Google Maps, rotating the screen for every turn I take because I can't do it in my head. It's... a thing worth introspecting about.

[the-based-brit]

I don't believe that you had the life of reilly. Tell us about your abuse, your feelings are valid

*WARNING! LONG AND VERY DEPRESSING POST INCOMING!*

My biological mother smoked and drank while she was pregnant with me, and I was born with two very severe and debilitating disabilities because of her - Dyspraxia and physical difficulties. The former significantly affects my ability to communicate, makes my brain to slow to process information, and it’s a lot like autism in that it makes me struggle to understand certain social cues and hold a conversation with other people etc.. My short-term memory is...well, very short. I forget things. I can remember stuff that happened years ago, but sometimes I forget whatever it was I did five minutes ago. My brain is broken.

The latter affects my motor skills. My hands are not very strong, and I don’t have a very good grip. Sometimes, I struggle to do things that require a strong pair of hands, such as opening a jar, and I have to get my dad and my stepmother to do it for me. I also can’t bend my right thumb properly, and my handwriting is very childlike and scruffy because I have difficulty holding a pen or pencil properly and it takes a while for me to write things down by hand. I’m much better with a laptop or smart device than a pen and paper. And I’m a writer. Or at least I hope to be some day. My right foot also flicks out and my left foot is actually stronger even though I’m right-handed.

My biological mother never bothered to quit drinking or smoking while she was pregnant with me because she was a selfish bitch with a heart made of stone. Instead of nurturing me and raising me right like she was supposed to, she emotionally abused and neglected me for many years. My dad divorced her when I was three years old because she was horrible to him, and more importantly, to me. He left her for my stepmother and never looked back.

When I got a few years older, she told me he cheated on her with my stepmother, but that was a big fat LIE. Nothing could be further from the truth. My dad was never a cheater and never even thought about having an affair. My so-called “mother” was just butthurt because he left her and thus, could no longer control him.

But she still had me, her boy, who was only three years old and, being so young and impressionable, I was easy to manipulate. So she used me to get back at them. The so-called “affair” was not the only lie she told me. She raised me to believe that my dad and stepmother were the ones who were abusing me and they were trying to take me away from her. I suppose that wasn’t a complete lie because my dad and stepmother did fight for custody over me, but that was only because they wanted to save me from my abuser.

But I was just a kid. I was young and dumb and naive and because she was my mother, I believed her. And every Monday afternoon (I lived with my dad and stepmother during the week and my biological mother had me every weekend), I came home from school, with an attitude problem because she told me horrible things about them. And I accused them of those horrible things and needless to say, they got SUPER angry with me and they would defend themselves, and afterwards, I’d feel bad for what I said, I would cry and I would apologise to them profusely.

And I would be left feeling confused, upset, angry and very stressed out. Until the end of the week, I would come home to her and I would tell her what they told me and she would lie to me again. And again. And again. I felt like I was in the middle of a battlefield. In fact, that pretty much sums up my life at home when I was a kid. Now it’s a lot more peaceful, but the damages that were done to me still never fully healed even to this day.

This happened every single fucking week because of her, and it took a massive toll on me. I was very stressed out, exhausted, frightened, traumatised, confused, anxious and depressed and it literally made me feel physically ill, as well as mentally. I could barely eat or sleep. I would often run to the toilet and throw up in it after eating even just a little bit of food because I was so stressed and anxious, I could not hold it down. And because of that I’m very skinny and underweight and even now, I still have problems eating, though I’ve gotten a bit better at it since then. I also suffered terribly from insomnia and that made sleeping just as difficult.

And this made it hard for me to do well in school. Because of all the shit that was going on at home, and because of my disabilities, I struggled to keep up with the other students. I could barely concentrate, I almost always needed help and I could barely get any work done. My grades are mediocre, at best and nobody could understand why and no one cared to. My parents and teachers just nagged me to work harder, and my special helpers in school insisted on doing more or less all my work for me.

Homework was a bitch, too. It took me, like, three hours at the LEAST to get it done because of my problems. To be fair, I was a pretty lazy kid who deliberately put it off because I didn’t wanna do it and I was young and stupid enough to think it would eventually make me not have to. I HATED my maths homework the most. In fact, maths was basically my WORST subject and I preferred English and IT and History, which I was better at. Science and Religious Education were also pretty cool imo. But I digress.

My learning disorder wasn’t the only thing that broke my brain. My biological mother emotionally manipulated me for years, and that broke me even more. Mentally, physically and emotionally, I was a mess. So many attacks on my mind. My body was left in pretty bad shape, too.

And I think the worst part about all of it was that there was basically jack shit I could do about it. I couldn’t defend myself physically because I was too young, too small and too weak. I couldn’t defend myself verbally because I was far too tired, too over-emotional, too terrible at verbal communication and couldn’t articulate myself well enough. And I was too emotionally abused and bullied, both at home AND at school to even TALK about it. That’s the thing about abusers, they don’t want their victims talking to anyone about their abuse.

And on the rare occassions I did talk about it, no one gave two shits and a fuck. Most people didn’t know about it. Some did, but most of them didn’t give a damn, at least not enough to do anything about it, like get me some help or get me away from my abuser. Because I grew up in a shithole of a town, where there are some good people but there’s a lot more BAD people.

Plus, my abuser was a woman and I’m male. And no one gives two shits about male abuse survivors like myself. I was often told to “man up”, “grow up” and “stop being a pussy” just for trying to open up about my feelings instead of bottling them up inside.

She was a feminist, too, my abuser. I had a biological half-sister who was nine years younger than me and she was treated like a princess while I was treated like dogshit. She never admitted to being one of those crazy man-hating feminist types, not in front of me, but looking back, I realised her actions spoke louder than her words. She was in part the reason I stopped calling myself a feminist years ago.

My dad and stepmother were fairly well-off. Not rich, but not broke, either. Definitely not. I come from a family of teachers. My dad was a teacher, my stepmother is, or was a teacher, and so is my older brother. I could have been a teacher myself if I wasn’t born disabled and abused and neglected for so many years. My dad works in a school full of kids with learning difficulties similar to mine, and he gets paid a lot of money to teach them. And they’re very materialistic and money-oriented people who vote for the UK Labour Party every year, but only because they tax you less. And they think they’re such good parents because they have money and they can buy me nice things, but in my experience, you need more than just money to be a good parent. You have to support your children physically, emotionally and mentally as well.

As George Carlin once said: 

It’s good that they had more than enough money to put food on the table, clothes on my back, a roof over my head...plus entertainment and any luxury item I wanted, but if they had just provided me with equal amounts of love and emotional support, if not more than equal, I would have been mostly ok. But I’m not. I’m broken. I’m aloof. I’m mentally scarred. I’m traumatised. I’m anxious and depressed. I’m very mentally ill, tired and damaged beyond repair.

Because truth be told, they weren’t much better than my so-called mother. Especially my stepmother. I guess she was not as manipulative, but she was very emotionally and verbally abusive. She would often yell at me over little things, and bully me constantly. Just like my abuser, and the other kids at school who harassed me every. single. schoolday. She was horrible to me. Far as I’m concerned, they are both as bad as each other. She’s calmed down quite a bit and she’s not so abrasive anymore, but she still has her moments, and the damage she’s done to me, emotionally, mentally, psychologically, had a permanent effect.

I never had a REAL mother. The kind who nurtures her children and loves them unconditionally. My family hates my guts because they think I’m a spoiled, entitled little brat and a very spiteful, vindictive, hateful little shit (I was a very angry kid. And for good reason) who always cries and complains when he doesn’t get his own way. I never had any real friends, either. I hardly ever speak to anyone in real life because I’ve tried so many times and it seldom ended well. That, and I’m crippled by a horrible social anxiety, which is not as bad as it used to be, but it’s still there.

I’ve never had a girlfriend, either. Or a boyfriend. I’m a virgin, and a loner. Fuck my life.