#Idk but this is a disability related issue for me

[theeverdream]

Piece of highly-anticipated media: releases on a Friday

Person, on Monday: are spoilers still an issue?

Me: ......... what

[arsenicflame]

i sometimes get the impression that a lot of people forget that while our flag means death is a comedy, it does know how to handle trauma well within the narrative. we are shown it over and over with the flashbacks for ed and stede and jim. at no point do they play the real trauma of the situation for laughs, its treated with the weight it deserves, while still being part of a comedy show

[heir-of-the-chair]

You know, when they said “you never stop learning things about yourself” I don’t think they meant five consecutive years of having a new identity crisis.

[genshin-imptrasht]

Y’all don’t even understand I love Neuvillette sooo so much

[tabooballoonpolice]

Raise your hand if your mental health is shit and every day is fucking exhausting and you just want to stop trying but that's not an option because you have school/a job/important responsibilities and life doesn't stop just because you're depressed so you have to just go about your day doing the stupid things while feeling dead inside and also somehow convincing everyone you're fine because telling the truth takes way more energy than it's woth because people will listen in the moment and it feels like you're finally making them understand and they say they're gonna support you but the second the conversation is over they literally treat you exactly the same as they were treating you before so you decide to just stop telling people anything unless you're in crisis and even then it's not "crisis-ey enough" because you're still acting like a functioning human because your brain physically will not let you shut down so from the outside it just looks like you're a lazy ass bitch with a really fucked sense of humor.

[cascadianights]

Something I've been thinking about a lot and don't have the words for yet is... the way many leftist spaces are really quick to either 1) list all aspects of their identity as proof they can be talking on this subject (therefore if you do not ESPECIALLY if someone disagrees w you you are by default assumed NOT part of the group speaking out and over it) and 2) in the lack of those identifiers assume privilege.

Not just in the terms of "I disagree so you must be outside this group/not have this apply to you" but also in terms of the thin slice decision based on a profile picture or an intro of how oppressed you must be (not) and how much privilege you carry (assumably all of it). And the way that interacts with my whiteness and any trace of femininity I can't squash because people see a picture of me and come up with a story (str8 yt probably cis girl from Large City California and Money) and that story is inherently at odds with almost all parts of my identity ESPECIALLY the ones I'm struggling with most in terms of them being visual.

The real world does not doubt my poverty as I walk through the store with holes full of clothes and a tennis shoe half flopping off at the bottom. The bullies in school never doubted my queerness or the way my looks othered me - my thick eyebrows my thick, dark body and chest hair on top of large breasts sagging against a dollar store sports bra. The people in public may doubt my disability, until I start rocking back and forth and pinning my ears bc the lights and screens and dance music at the tmobile store is Too Much or I faint mid conversation and wake up confused and bruised. My being trans is easy to overlook some days, completely at odds with everything about me another. My being assumed to be a str8 cis woman burns in my veins and gut like poison. My skin is pale and white and that means I've never faced racism, but it also means that when my dad tried to explain how important his native ancestry was to him and how his father (long dead by the time I was born) and grandmother (actually native) cared so much about it and it was his connection to them, I basically told him we couldn't be native because we are white and destroyed most of the things he gave me related to that bc I was taught that anyone who looked white pretending to be native was a liar and a colonizer, and it took me until I was TWENTY EIGHT listening to a native activist talk about how those ('liberal leftist') ideas were based in and perpetuating blood quantums set by the government and the idea that we just needed to breed the Indian out of the man by diluting it and teaching the next generation to ignore and walk away from it and my entire worldview on a part of my identity and how Id internalized how I was meant to view it cracked and I still haven't figured out how to renegotiate that or the way I treated that ancestor and all the ancestors of hers by internalizing those beliefs, or the way that poverty means most of my family died young or in abusive relationships and I have DESPERATELY little to go off in terms of family stories or traditions or knowledge or trees farther back than my great grandparents. Every woman in my family as far back as I know married an abusive man, and at least one was killed by her husband! Some of my family came from Ireland and Scotland as refugees, hundreds of years back, and just stayed in the north until abuse and poverty chased them south. My family tree is one of unspoken mental illness and autism that gets talked around, one of poverty, one of abusive men and strong women fighting to survive.

And anyways none of that can be put into an intro section or summarized into neat lines and boxes of identity and my whiteness is inherently entrenched in generations of poverty and refugees and questions of identity and the way my femininity is seen as amplified no matter what I do, and that part of me being seen as the Exact Same in a conversation or quick slice judgement as a Berkeley blue eyed white woman whose family owns a house in the hills and has 300 generations back of middle-upper class wasps (this is about a real person and I can name 3 similar ones off the top of my head) feels so wrong and debilitating and undermining and invalidating and without a doubt almost always Additionally poses me as str8 and cis and then I am told passing as such is a privilege when every part of my being is screaming to be seen as my actual self or as some more realistic version of my actual self or at least not as some immediately discarded Karen talking about shit I know nothing about instead of a disabled queer person who grew up in poverty left my home state and family as an early political and climate refugee and has spent years engaged in real world activism

[iliveinprocrasti-nationn]

“i doubt you’ll have it” “my sister had it and she was fine” “you don’t have it. but if you do have it, it won’t be serious” shut up!!

[lexalovesbooks]

Oh god. Reading Angela Chen’s Ace and I’ve reached the chapter about disability. As someone who is in all likelihood autistic and also has some physical body issues that, if I told someone about them would 100% make them think I’m automatically disqualified from having sex, this is uh. putting thoughts into words

[obsidianstrawberrymilk]

A short list of things I would have changed in HoO

It takes place ten ish years after the end of PJO. Percy and Annabeth aren’t a part of the seven but instead appear as cool older mentors to help out the Lost Hero trio. They both have careers and live in New York and go to Sally’s house for dinner every weekend.

Caleo isn’t a thing. In fact, let’s not even mention Calypso. At most we mention she was freed after the last war as idk proof demigods have some power or something.

More than 1 Asian character. Give this one ADHD and dyslexia bc shocker Asian kids can be disabled as well.

For that matter a properly disabled character. I have a deaf OC I would use if I rewrote the series.

Leo is aroace. His arc is about learning that his self worth doesn’t have to be tied to the people around him and his friends love and care about him and he doesn’t need romance to be complete. His flirting is overcompensation bc he doesn’t feel romantic or sexual attraction and is afraid he’ll be alone forever.

Drew and Piper become friends. Drew’s mean girl bullshit is outdated and boring and it would have been a lot cooler to see her icy exterior thaw and her help Piper with her charmspeck (explaining how Piper learned how to use it to begin with) and take on an older sister role

Neither Leo nor Piper become head councilors to their cabins because that’s dumb

Keep the chapter title style from PJO. It was so fun and one of the highlights of the series for me. The relatable nature of PJO in general was kinda lost in HoO and it’s a shame bc there was such a variety of characters for people to identify with there.

Give Reyna a girlfriend or at least a homoerotic friendship that can become an actual relationship in the next series or something

Frank is 14 and he and Hazel aren’t dating, they just have mutual baby crushes on one another.

For that matter what the fuck was ‘Frank is magically not fat due to Mars’s blessing’ bullshit? Frank is a fat character who stays fat but learns to be confident in himself and his body type.

Stop The Adultification of Hazel 2k23. Hazel is 13, she’s the youngest member of the seven and despite her trauma I think that should be obvious. I think emphasizing her relationship with Nico could be fun here - he’s in his 20s so him taking a more ‘that older sibling who toes the line between parent and sibling’ role here could be fun.

Also, I don’t want Hazel to have Hecate’s blessing or whatever. Between her being a magical horsegirl and the daughter of Pluto there’s already a lot of room to expand on her powers that was never used - I think doing more with her cursed jewels and metals powers and her learning the other aspects of her powers, like Shadow Travel, would be fun.

Instead I think having a daughter of Hecate as a part of the Seven would be cool, because we could still have a witchy character with mist manipulation and magic powers.

Give Jason an actual personality, please. Bro’s been a child solider practically since age 2 and has spent his whole life with the weight of other teenagers’ lives on his shoulders as praetor - give him perfectionism issues and anxiety. We’re told that he’s spent his whole life helping others compromise instead of being his own person - show that. Let his arc end with him deciding to try and live a mortal life and find out who he is beyond being a war general.

Show us that Octavian’s a piece of shit, don’t just tell us.

Leo and Piper are the ones who fall into Tartarus. Nothing romantic ever happens but we get heavy emphasis on their friendship and we get to see their grief over Leo’s mom and Piper’s grandfather respectively

Piper’s grandfather has died a few months ago and she cut her hair herself when her dad didn’t want to let her due to that (correct me if I’m wrong but it’s a tradition in Cherokee culture to cut your hair when a loved one dies, correct?), which is why it’s all uneven. A lot of her insecurities stem from going from growing up in rural Oklaholma (not in a reservation bc there aren’t any there) without much money to suddenly being catapulted into a millionaire Hollywood lifestyle and having everyone criticize everything about her and be really racist, all while her Dad drew farther away from both her and her grandfather. Her arc would be reconnecting with both her culture and Dad and learning to find who she is and her self worth again.

They defeat Gaea in a way that isn’t so anticlimactic and fucking stupid

[circuslollipop]

vampires can be excellent metaphors for a lot of things but one thing i've never seen discussed is a very surprisingly straightforward one and that is a metaphor for having special dietary needs. and i mean. they literally do!! they need blood! in some cases specifically human blood, and in some cases they literally cannot eat anything else!

and sometimes i think about that, about existing as someone with special dietary needs. for me, it's a combo of sensory issues due to autism as well as lactose intolerance and gastrointestinal problems, probably also due to autism. it means that while i am learning to try new things every now and then, the list of foods i can and will eat is quite limited. and for other people, it can be numerous other causes, both medical issues/disabilities or personal beliefs (i'm going at this from a disability angle because that's where my personal experience comes from).

and oh boy. the absolute vitriol i've seen thrown towards so-called "picky eaters". i've gotten open stares as a kid when i do something weird like take the cheese off my pizza before eating it, and even grown-ups just would not leave me alone about it! and later, i've felt like an absolute burden when i would say something like hey, there's nothing at this restaurant i can really eat; can we get something else? and while they eventually said yes the annoyance was palpable! like i've gotten reactions to voicing dietary needs that basically amounted to did you just ask if you could drink my blood?

idk, man. vampires and something about having dietary needs and being made to feel like a monster bleeding people dry because of it. other people may not feel the same but i can certainly relate. i feel like something could be done with this.

[storm-and-starlight]

Rodimus and ADHD

I'm gonna start this out by saying that Rodimus having ADHD is something that's been pretty fundamental to my understanding of the character since I first read MTMTE/Lost Light (seriously, I can point you to the exact panel when I went "oh okay this is Canon to me now") but also that I've almost never seen a portrayal that really vibes with how I interpret it? A lot of the fics and fanon I've come across tend to take a fairly... typical view on and portrayal of ADHD where the things that are focused on are hyperactivity and task/responsibility/boredom avoidance, and to me that's not... it's not the, like, the fundamentals of how I read Rodimus and ADHD? It's not the main issues that affect who he is and how he interacts with the world -- those would instead be the impulsivity and the... idk how to phrase it, the "ADHD trauma"? It's really distinct and I'll get to it later.

The impulsivity is fairly easy to get to, and fairly obvious -- the best representation of how it manifests in Rodimus specifically is in the initial description of the Rodpod, where someone (I can't quite tell who from the panel) says "you know what he's like: he obsesses over something, then gets bored" and then it's revealed that Rodimus presumably commissioned an entire ship built in the shape of his own head. That's really what I see as the main ADHD symptom -- the mix of obsession and impulsivity. We see it when he gets everyone to go on the quest, we see it when he tries to chop off his own arm because he thinks it might stop the future from happening, we see it in his plan to stop the sparkeater -- it's basically how he responds to every problem he's presented with, and often significantly more than that, and that kind of impulsivity is very much a noted feature of ADHD. (Being briefly but intensely obsessed with something before losing interest and dropping it is also a really big ADHD thing -- just look at the cycle of hyperfixations that's so common in fandom).

(Also, when combined with his ego, recklessness, and carelessness, you get basically the entire negative side of his personality out of this, which is why I consider it so fundamental to his character -- significantly more so than, say, task avoidance.) (though recklessness, and carelessness are also fairly common with ADHD -- it's related to impulsivity in general.)

The "ADHD trauma" thing is a little trickier to explain: it's basically how I describe the constant awareness that you have screwed the hell up in the past when it's important and you are going to screw the hell up in the future when it's important and hating the fact that it happens and yet also being completely and fundamentally aware that it's something you can never, ever change about yourself no matter how hard you try (because you have tried, in the past, and it has never worked even a little bit). Like, hello, that basically describes my entire childhood and also the lives of most of my friends who also have ADHD. The panel that convinced me that he does have ADHD is the one that basically explicitly describes this, in Lost Light where he and Drift are talking after they return from the Functionist Universe and Rodimus says "Oh, I know what I'm like. That's the trouble. I know exactly what I'm like -- I just can't stop myself," because, like. that's it. that's the experience in a nutshell.

And like, I'm not saying that this is super severe -- he definitely has more self-confidence than is often warranted, but he also does have a lot of self-esteem issues, and I think this is really the root of them: failing, over and over, until you reach the point where you start thinking that it's bound to happen someday and that everyone will hate you for it forever. That's a super common experience with the kind of disability that ADHD is, especially if you don't know you have it in the first place, and that combined with all the smaller traits (the impulsivity, the hyperfixation, and yes even the task/responsibility/boredom avoidance) is what really convinced me that he is an ADHD character.

[crippled-peeper]

seeing posts about how nobody takes adhd seriously or talks about it is funny when you have a spinal cord injury and 80% of the disability-related content on social media is about ADHD and 90% of disability “influencers” have it and talk about it and you are bombarded with ads for virtual therapy on every site but you’ve literally only ever seen ONE (1) SINGLE other user like yourself and are told to suck it up and stop being ableist for even pointing it out

people without spinal cord injuries absolutely love to scream in my face that I get everything I want and all the “disability rep” is spinal cord injuries and nobody ever “invalidates” me and my only true issue is that I secretly really hate ablebodied people with ADHD, not that society is literally designed to exclude ppl like me

idk dude I’m fucking tired of it

[aesthetically-dying101]

TW vent abt some ableist shit i got hit with today (maybe?) i need advice

This is a genuine question to every disabled person on this app cause idk if i'm the one going insane, but basically i was sitting at lunch with some friends today, and this other girl i didn't know (jessica for the sake of online privacy) started talking to me.

Then she pointed out my hearing aids (signa, they're pretty discrete but are visible) and asked about them.

So i explained my disease and my nervous damage and whatnot... (i'm hard of hearing, as in 80% loss in my left ear, 70% in the other)

She then told me she related to me, and for a second i genuinely thought she was either deaf or hoh... BITCH I WAS SO WRONG

She told me that during this summer she went scuba diving and water got stuck behind her eardrum. (she has no issues now, she recovered 100%)

So she knew how i felt, she then went on a tangent about how hard it is to lose your hearing.

???

Is it wrong that this pisses me off??? Like you can't relate to me?? You barely understand what it's like to lose you hearing.

So uh yeah, this feels so weird to say to someone who's disabled, like idk, to me it feels like telling someone who's lost a leg that you relate to them bc you broke your leg.

Yeah anyways, am i being dramatic? Cause i feel like i'm justified but it could be coming from a nice place?

[magnificentempress]

my possibly unpopular opinions on therapy/psychiatry

- Just like suffering is not inherent to womanhood, suffering is not inherent to humans. Just like it is not okay to just expect that women will be subjected to suffering, it is not okay to expect that it will happen to anyone and it's just the way things are.

- Therapy is not inherently wrong for trying to alleviate the suffering, but I fail to see the doctors acknowledging the fact that the suffering is a collectively shared experience, and suffering is caused by someone. Moreover it is the whole point of therapy to focus on just yourself, "take responsibility"(for the harm that was done to you?) and seeing what you can make do. Basically because again, doctors cant really tell their patients to go overthrow the gvt or divorce their shitty husbands. Thus endless copium instead of, yknow... something actually meaningful.

- Antidepressants arent inherently bad but they cant cure you. They are just psychoactive drugs. Caffeine, tobacco, cocaine, they all are psychoactive in one way or another, and your brain doesnt really care if the substance is legal, illegal or prescribed. It modifies the symptoms but it cannot actually cure you. Or something. If you struggle with depression/anxiety related issues, I would highly recommend that you try to look for a way to alleviate them that is not just you popping pills for 10 years in a row.

- Our society is purposefully built to fuck us up. Just like "dyslexia" is not a thing in societies that dont have a writing system, "ADHD" or "depression" or "anxiety" are non-syndromes, they show only in very specific circumstances. It is possible to reform the world so that it doesnt force suffering and disabilities onto people.

- Psychoactive drugs that actively alter people's neurochemistry and may lead to both psychological and physical dependency are catastrophically overprescribed and one day the big pharma will be held accountable for their crimes lol

- I repeat that I do not oppose psychiatric medicines as a concept. Psychiatric disorders fuck people up, I know it personally. BUT. Sorry but there is a difference between a socially-induced disorder like anxiety, and a disorder of a purely biological genesis like bipolar mania or schizophrenia. I dont think depression or anxiety are easy. But consider what, someone suffering from delusions in mania cannot CBT their delusions away, they basically have to be on meds. MAYBE think really hard of the pros and cons here. You are lucky to have a relatively healthy brain, dont wash it down the drain.

- Medicalization and profiting off of any suffering is highly concerning. The transgender pharma will also pay for their crime of persuading (otherwise healthy) people that they cannot exist and will literally kill themselves without unnecessary medications and surgeries.

- If you have agreed on me on the previous points but my opinion on transness triggered you, consider unbrainwashing yourself? Idk? Can't you put 2 and 2 together? These are literally the same kind of phenomena.

- I say it all as someone who has been on antidepressants for a long time, and also who knows many people who were on antidepressants for a long time. I've seen both huge benefits and huge debilitating side effects.

As a matter of fact I am also completely normal and can be trusted w

[castleclerics]

mike going blind in s5 theory

i've had this this very weird gut feeling since s4 came out that mike is going to go blind to some extent in s5......

mike and blindness is mentioned a couple of times (but not too many for ga to notice) and idk why but i can really see mike becoming physically disabled in some way by the end of the show. maybe that's because i'm projecting but idk i can't let go of the idea for some reason it just feels right to me???

not only does lucas tell him that he's blind but he needs to "wake up" and if you take it in a literal sense it sounds so vecna’s curse-y

it's interesting that he's also literally blinding himself in s4 but in s3 lucas blinds him

(gif credit to emblazons)

literally why is it always lucas. even the “did mike see it? then it doesn’t count.”

and in s2 after will gets possessed lucas asks the party “do you think it’s true sight?” and later in the same episode mike brings up will having true sight in the av room.

also in s1 lucas has his wristrocket and says “the demogorgon’s not real. but if there’s something out there i’ll shoot it in the eye and blind it.”

maybe it’s lucas’ bridge to max and mike, them both having dealt with blindness to some extent ? and mike is super paralleled to max and max couldn't see anything after getting vecnaed. and he's obviously screwed next season with henry so i could see them healing max and making you relieved she's ok then throw you for a loop and pass the concept of her being blind onto mike.

eddie also says vecna is "missing" his left arm and eye but our vecna isn't missing an eye, it's just blindness. and it’s also the wrong eye.

and it just reminds me of “oh no lucas my arm lucas look my armmmm” and mike is grabbing the opposite arm that vecna is missing/is his claw hand... mike wheeler blind in left eye s5 real i'm calling it

(and i know these mentions of blindness are probably all a metaphor for mike's deal with his sexuality and being blinded by internalized homophobia but they usually never stop with just one meaning, these writers love their double and triple meanings/foreshadowings and making them literal lmao)

this part is just me rambling but thinking about how this could relate the queer aspect of mike wheeler; will being gay but also having his supernatural problems add so many layers to his character. so mike being queer and blind possibly because of the supernatural forces would be so interesting and add a similar level of depth to his character like will being tied to other planes of existence and henry do. and since the supernatural things in this show are literally a metaphor for forced conformity, mike and will's issues outside of their sexualities are both caused by this metaphor for forced conforming that they will accept and understand how to live with once they accept their queerness.

the forced conforming is seen in every character on this show and by the end of s5 i believe they'll be released from those societal expectations, and for mike that means sexuality-wise like will. his possible blindness could be the visual and physical representation of the damage of that conforming.

also just one last fun thing: there's a really small band called mike wheeler band that have these songs (the first one reminding me of "only love makes you that crazy") but look at the other one :O

[manyminded]

reasons I probably have autism (non exhaustive list, I’m rlly sleepy rn but insomnia is kicking my ass)

special interests - to my understanding, they last longer and the things u r interested in are broader. the poster child for my sp/ins is the osc, a genre, which I have been heavily invested in for over a year. (side note: they feel a lot like hyperfixations, almost identical for me, but sp/ins last way longer. most hyperfixes, for me, last up to [but usually less than] 3 months.)

adhd and autism are comorbidities

while it’s hard to tell if you know me, I definitely struggle with social cues. I can read them well; but presenting them myself is hard. my mom always told me to stop talking to myself, I over share all the time, I ‘talk out of turn’, etc etc

even though I can READ social cues/rules I have a general disregard for them; I tend to think they’re stupid and bad. (one example is I refuse to shave my legs and care very little for skin care)

i was always “a pleasure to have in class”, and while that isn’t usually a sign of autism, I’ll tell you why it could be in me. I never knew what could get me in trouble, and the rsd I have makes me want to avoid that as much as possible - so I become over complacent, afraid to test boundaries and avoiding any slight danger to my “goodie two shoes” life.

almost all of my friends are autistic, or have some other flavor of neurodivergency. we come in packs. we can sniff each other out, man. (side note: in online spaces, I usually end up in primarily autistic communities, almost always on accident. it comes with the overlap of most communities I’m in that, while not inherently linked to autism, have a big portion of their members be autistic.)

A little related to the previous point - I can almost always tell when someone is autistic if I’ve hung out with them like, 2-3 times. It’s not even conscious it’s just an instinct of like “oh hey another of my kin. hello 👋” Yk?

sensory issues. I’ve always been a “texture girl,” especially when it comes to food - I have been a “picky eater” for most of my life (although that has started to lessen over the years.) and while sensory issues aren’t inherently autistic, they are closely linked.

the fact I’m writing this at all, tbh. no neurotypical would do this I don’t think

I always get really fucking mad when ppl are ableist, especially in the context of autism. but maybe that’s the other disabilities talking idk (the memory of kids saying “don’t make jokes about being autistic when you aren’t diagnosed!” and rolling my eyes because Have You Met Me)

tbh creature

there’s probably more but I’m sleepy and mostly writing this to spite my mother bcuz she insists I’m not autistic. for some unknown reason. idk man