#also the problem with my wheelchair but i already made a post for that and got some good advice

[thedisablednaturalist]

How can I make sitting at my desk more comfortable? I currently don't have the space for an over the bed desk, and I use an office chair (it's an exec chair, a nice leather chair given to us after an office closed down and had to get rid of all its furniture) but as comfy as it is, I still get fatigued sitting at my desk. I would like to use my desk more instead of laying in bed to do work (as my desk is where my desktop computer is, and since it's fixed now I want to use it). I've considered an under the desk foot hammock but idk if it would work. Bending my knees hurts so I'd like to be able to sit up but have my legs be stretched out flat instead of bent.

[depressedbloggerwrites]

i feel like writing an essay on why jeffannie is a horrible ship

disclaimer before i rant: you are completely entitled to your opinion on whatever ships you prefer! this is just what i think :)

i'm going to begin with the most obvious problem with jeffannie: the age difference. at the start of the show, she's eighteen (a TEENAGER, guys) and he's in his thirties. they are at vastly different stages of life. he has way more life experience than her.

even if we ignore that, they just make no sense together. they already have that father/daughter dynamic, and the chemistry community reddit is constantly on about is nowhere to be found. all the kiss scenes felt forced (maybe not debate 109, but i'll talk about that later). also, jeff having two awesome women competing for his love, and then going after the teenager with a boyfriend...interesting.

i don't think jeff is necessarily predatory; he is very clearly not exclusively attracted to girls as young as annie, but that doesn't mean his attraction to her isn't at least slightly iffy.

i saw someone say annie and jeff, a recovering addict and someone who currently has an addiction, would not have a very healthy relationship in the long run, and i agree. as the original poster said, annie worked so hard to put her addiction behind her, and being with jeff wouldn't be good for her.

also, whoever made that tumblr post saying every jeffannie episode would work better with jeffbritta or abedison was 100% right, which is why i'm going to discuss the problems with each jeffannie episode.

jeffannie began in debate 109, when annie and jeff had to argue the point that man is inherently evil on the greendale debate team, and the debate ends in a scene where the leader of city college's team launches himself out of his wheelchair; jeff instinctively catches him, and the leader uses this to support the point that man is good. annie proceeds to grab jeff and kiss him, which makes him drop city college's leader, which wins them the debate, because 'he dropped him because he was horny!'

god.

obviously, you can see why that made me uncomfortable to watch, but i guess you could look past it in the comedy and chaos of it all. anyway, jeffbritta would have made that episode so much better. britta would definitely be on the debate team, and since she and jeff actually had a normal age gap, which would make everything far less creepy.

next, let's talk about the worst thing in the world:

pascal's triangle revisited.

actually, the episode was fine. i enjoyed it. but that kiss at the end makes me so angry. jeff, you have these two beautiful women who you have been pursuing this whole season, and you go and kiss the teenage girl. THE TEENAGE GIRL. jesus fucking christ. and she had a boyfriend too. you know what would have worked? abed convincing annie not to transfer instead. infinitely better chemistry, and an abedison kiss that actually impacted the plot would have changed my life.

the conspiracy episode was excellent, but jeffbritta would have made it perfect. i don't think it expanded on anything problematic jeffannie-wise though, so that's a win.

and then you have intro to political science. i haven't really seen anyone talk about this, and it's once again not a bad episode, but i really think the writers just didn't want britta to have a storyline that actually developed her character, because she would have devoured in annie's place during this episode. jeff's dynamic with her is already perfect, and it would make so much more sense for them to run against each other, as opposed to jeff and annie.

all those alternate timeline jeffannie scenes in remedial chaos theory already sucked, but i didn't care too much because i knew they weren't going to push it into anything too serious, but then you had annie tell jeff he reminded her of her father mid-makeout and it's just...wow. so the creators knew they had this very obvious father-daughter like relationship, were fully aware of it, and still forced the ship. cool.

now, don't kill me for this, but i'm one of those people who actually genuinely, really liked season 4. and one reason why i liked it was because the one major jeffannie scene they had was the imaginary alternate timeline one, which acknowledged that jeffannie would not be good together, and was hilarious. so thank you season 4, they can never make me hate you <3

introduction to teaching was also great because there was a plotline centered around jeff and annie that never tried to force any sort of awkward romantic chemistry (at least that's how i remember it), which seems impossible in community. honestly, this episode just proved that platonic jeffannie is superior to romantic jeffannie.

but that period of bliss where there was no romantic jeffannie didn't last long, because then you have g.i. jeff.

i love g.i. jeff. it's one of my favorite episodes, and was phenomenal for jeff's character. there was just one line, where animated coma dream jeff tells animated coma dream annie, 'look at the rack i gave you.' that was just kind of gross and didn't sit right, especially since a major plot point of this episode was jeff turning 40 and having a crisis. annie was *checks notes* 23-24 during this episode. the age gap is still very concerning here, and was made worse because of the fact that it really highlights how jeff is aging.

and then season 6 got so close to leaving jeffannie behind, forever, and then they had to ruin it with the series finale. i'm just saying, we couldn't have a platonic jeffannie goodbye like we got with jabed (speaking of which, the jabed goodbye arguably hurt more than the jeffannie one)?

anyway, i am desperately hoping we get jeffbritta/abedison (or trobed!) in the community movie, even though i know that's probably not going to happen, i do not like jeffannie at all, and thank you for reading my explosion of angry thoughts!

[cg29fics]

Gone

Having issues with my post’s again. So If you are reading along with this then you may need to check you’ve not missed previous chapters.

Tagging 🔖 Sorry if I’ve missed anyone - If you would like to be tagged in these updates then please let me know and I’ll add you to the list: @janetm74 @drileyf @katblu42 @psychoseal @weirdburketeer @alexthefly @misstb2 @thundergeek59 @burningcowboyhoagietaco @dragonoffantasyandreality

Countdown to the final chapter - 3 - left to go. You can also read the complete fic on Ao3 or FFNet - CreativeGirl29

Previous. Chapter 51 - Persuasion.

Chapter 52. Preparations

“Oh, thank you,” Jeff exhaled with relief when Gerry uttered those beautiful words, ‘Virgil’s going home!’

“I knew that would make you happy,” Doctor Sylvia, responded, “however, there are conditions. Nothing too serious, I’ve already gone through them with Brains, and I’d like to go through them with you too.”

“Yes, of course,” Jeff replied.

“Dad,” Virgil mumbled, from the wheelchair as he began to wake from his nap.

Jeff bent down and held his son’s hands. “Hey, are you okay?”

Virgil shook his head and yawned. “Pain and sleepy.”

“Don’t worry we’ll get that sorted for you.” Gerry said, leaving to get some help.

Jeff stayed by Virgil’s side while the nurses and Doctor Sylvia helped him back into the bed and gave him some medication. When he was happy that Virgil had once more fallen asleep, he turned to Gerry and whispered. “Can we speak somewhere quieter, so we don’t disturb him?”

“Of course, come into my office and we can have a coffee and chat.”

… …

“So, the conditions,” Gerry began, when they were both settled and drinking coffee, “Virgil will need to continue having regular scans on both his back and legs. Brains told me that you have the equipment for this, and I’ve asked him to send the results to me. If any unexpected complications do arise, Virgil will need to be brought back here immediately!”

“Absolutely!” Jeff confirmed.

“Also, as I’ve mentioned before we really don’t want Virgil putting any weight on his legs yet, which means he will need to be restricted to his bed, a sofa or a chair. Any other times he will need to use a wheelchair to get around your home. Brains said that he will be making the home wheelchair friendly, and we have plenty here you can choose from.”

“That all sounds fine with me, the only problem will be making sure Virgil sticks to these rules and accepts that he’ll need help to get around!”

Gerry smiled. “Well tell him if he doesn’t he’ll have to come back here, and it may cause him to be out of action a lot longer.”

“That should do it,” Jeff chuckled, “anything else?”

“You will need to bring him back in to see me as an outpatient when it’s time to remove the casts,” Gerry informed him. “Other than that, then he’s good to go!”

“Great, then when can we leave?” Jeff asked, smiling broadly.

“Well, I would like to run some final tests tomorrow, so I’m thinking the day after that.”

Jeff nodded. “That should give Brains plenty of time to make the adjustments that are needed, and the rest of the family a chance to prepare everything else.”

“Good,” Gerry said, placing his now empty cup on the desk, “I bet you’re looking forward to telling Virgil this news?”

“Actually,” Jeff grinned, “I would like to keep the news a secret, I’m thinking that it would make a wonderful surprise for him.”

“Well, I’m sure when you do tell him, he’ll be over the moon!”

… …

Two days later:

Jeff felt like he was bouncing down the corridor as he made his way to collect Virgil from the ward room. Thankfully the days had passed by quickly since he had received the news from Doctor Sylvia, and it was now time to let Virgil know that he was finally going home, and that it would be today! It had been extremely difficult to keep it from him, but Jeff knew the surprise and look on his boy’s face would make it worthwhile. Thankfully, he had been able to share the information with his family, and to say they were happy would have been an understatement, they were ecstatic! Gordon and Alan had taken it upon themselves to help organise the welcome home party with their grandma’s help, John immediately offered to help Brains with any adjustments to their island home, while Scott went over plans with his father to fly them home.

Now standing outside his son’s private room, Jeff exhaled with relief thankful that Virgil wouldn’t have to see this room again. He could now return home and recuperate in the comfort of his own room, surrounded by the things that made him happy, and with the company of people who loved him very dearly. Pushing the door to the private ward room open, Jeff beamed at Virgil who was propped up in the chair next to his bed. “Good morning son, how are you feeling on this fine day?”

“I’m okay, pains not to bad.” Virgil replied smiling at his father.

“That’s fantastic!”

Virgil watched as his dad literally skipped into the room, he was far too energetic for 9am on a Wednesday morning, thinking about it he’d never seen his father this lively. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Jeff answered, trying to look innocent.

“Okay, something is definitely going on. You’ve got that same look in your eyes that Gordon gets when he’s concocting an elaborate prank!”

“No,” Jeff protested, “I don’t get that look.”

“Err, yes you do,” Virgil said matter-of-factly, “come on admit it, you’re up to something, what is it?”

Jeff grinned back at Virgil. “Okay, okay… I’ve got something planned, but you will have to wait until Doctor Sylvia arrives, then I will tell you.”

“I knew you were up to something,” Virgil retorted. “At least now I know who Gordon inherited that look from!”

Jeff released a hearty laugh. “I always thought he got it from your mother.”

Virgil raised his eyebrow at his father and eyed him suspiciously. “No, definitely from you!”

A few minutes later Doctor Gerry Sylvia entered the room with a small computer pad in his hands. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” Both Virgil and Jeff responded.

Gerry acknowledged Virgil. “I’ve got something I need you to sign.”

“Does this explain why my father is being very weird?” Virgil questioned.

“It will,” Gerry chuckled, handing him the computer pad.

Virgil took the pad and began reading the short statement on it, his eyes widening as he did. “Are you serious?”

“Yes,” Gerry stated.

“I’m going home?” Virgil asked, not quite believing his eyes.

“If you press the yes button on that discharge form, then I’ll be taking you home today!” Jeff informed him.

“Today?” Virgil questioned, this time not believing his ears.

“Yes!” Jeff answered. “Now hurry up and click yes, so we can go!”

Virgil grinned from ear to ear and pressed the acceptance button on the pad. “Okay dad, I’m ready to go home!”

“Great,” Jeff responded, “because we’ve got a plane to catch.”

“Are we going home in Tracy 1?”

“No,” Jeff replied, shaking his head, “Scott and I have organised something a bit more special than that.”

“Thunderbird 2?” Virgil questioned hopefully.

“Yes,” Jeff nodded, “your green lady is on her way!”

[winglssdemon]

I've mentioned it a bit before but while I'm on my ableism soapbox...

If you're fat and saying/implying that people shouldn't fat shame you because you're healthy...that's ableist as fuck. Fat disabled people exist and you cannot be healthy at every size either. It is literally physically impossible to be healthy at every size. And that should be okay! It's up to you to decide how to treat your body and no one should shame you for your body, abled or otherwise.

Also, it is also p fuckin ableist to get mad at people who need to or want to try to lose weight for health reasons. Disabled people already got a shit ton of health problems, maybe we/they want to be able to help or get rid of the ones they have.

It's also kind of terrible to try and act like no one deals with the effects of binge eating and overeating. Binge eating has never really been taken seriously in general and it's not super well known, but I am noticing an increase in people acting like if someone talks about their binge eating and how it has made them gain weight, that they're then fatphobic for doing so. Sometimes people gain weight and become unhealthy from either binge eating or using food as a coping mechanism. There's nothing morally wrong with being fat from BED or using food as a coping mechanism, however, trying to normalize binge eating and eating emotionally and acting like they're not forms of disordered eating is both harmful rhetoric and honestly kind of ableist too.

I'm disabled and I am fat because for quite a few years I've turned to food as a coping mechanism against pain. Unfortunately, a lot of sugary, high fat, ultra processed foods can actually worsen pain. Plus you can only get a new wheelchair every five years and with the world being so inaccessible to wheelchair users, getting a bigger wheelchair just isn't always feasible. I have had to start a real attempt at weight loss (through eating healthier food, stopping emotionally eating, and increasing my physical activity) and while I still am overweight, I am slowly working on getting to a healthier weight that will work best for me. And it's not fatphobic to do so.

And honestly, it's been really nice to lose some of the excess weight I've had. I do actually feel better generally, I have less asthma symptoms than I used to, my endurance is way better, my hypertension is definitely improving (ofc that is also because of the healthier foods), and I really just can't explain what it's like to just be relieved to not being going to the kitchen almost every night and eating all the junk food to try and make yourself feel better for just a few seconds when you know you're gonna be miserable about it after you finish. Like it's such a frustrating cycle to be caught in and myself and others who are learning both healthy coping strategies and how to stop harming our bodies through food should be allowed to talk about it without being shamed for it.

So yeah, basically calling people fatphobic for taking care of their health the best way they know how is pretty damn ableist. And acting like just because you're healthy means you shouldn't be body shamed is ableist as fuck. No one should even be body shaming anyone and idk how that's becoming a controversial take.

(I also have a much larger and researched post with sources coming about the issues with haes, BoPo, and all the misinformation that is being spread within the communities.)

[fraulinekritzkrieg]

Life update - Cancer talk

TRIGGER WARNING FOR CANCER

Hello, my darlings!

Gosh, been a hot minute since the last post so I will give you all an update! Last time I said the doctors found out I had a low blood count, but that wasn’t the only problem they stumbled upon. Through my bloodworks they realised I also had elevated liver enzymes. They had an idea that it might be caused by the chemo, but I still had to get a CT scan just to be sure. It made me nervous because they had told me it could have been becasue of the sickness too, which instantly made me anxious if that meant the cancer had spread. Thankfully it had not! The chemo was the culprit of both the blood count and the elevated liver enzymes.

This meant that my chemo treatment was cut shorter than expected. I was supposed to get my very last chemo treatment on the 28th of July, but that was scrapped. It also meant that the operation that I was supposed to have on the 15th of August was now pushed forward to THIS Wednesday, on the 3rd of August. As for the low blood count I did end up getting a blood transfusion. I was given two bags of blood and already after about 15 minutes I felt amazing! Before the transfusion I had to sit in a wheelchair whenever I went to the hospital, because I couldn’t walk for very long before I got so winded and exhausted. After the two blood bags I was able to leave the hospital walking in my normal pace! I had colour in my cheeks again, I could feel warmth in my extremeties and I was able to actually DO things again. Before I spent over half of the day sleeping, sitting in front of the PC or laying on the couch. I couldn’t do anything else because my energy and strength were simply not there.

So, yeah... I’ll be getting my operation on Wednesday and won’t be home for a while. I don’t know what the plans are for me after the operation. It really depends on what the tests of my lymph-nodes tell them. It might me more chemo in form of pills, nothing or radiation therapy, depending on the lab results, but that’s out somewhere in the future.

If you have questions or just want to chat, just hit me up! Getting messages from you gusy have been such a treat!

Until then, remeber you are loved, you are valid, and you are appreciated!

[paranormal-potatoes]

Here is a sad prompt with the old man, Gherman:

"....You were... My sunshine, My only.. S-sun... Shine, You made me happy... When skies... We-were gray... You'll ne-never.... Know, Dear, How much I loved you...."

*His voice becomes shakier, Tears begin to fall*

"....So please... Oh please don't take.... M-my sunshine away...."

"....Gehrman, Are you....crying?"

okay i swear i meant for this to be angstier but uhh idk, not as much crying, could be more but i need to just post what i have before i overthink and then never do it bc ~anxiety~ also this hasn't been betaed or edited that much so. also ended up longer than i thought so under readmore. also ended up only having like 1 line of the song being said/sang bc i feel weird about including songs in stories unless its like. karaoke or a song playing on the radio

takes place in my time travel au. anyways have this before i chicken out

given im posting this from my phone, i hope the formatting doesnt fuck up.

=====

“...my sunshine, my only sunshine...”

 

“... are you singing?”

 

Taylor startles, spinning around and knocking their Saw Cleaver to the ground, fortunately missing the bottles by the work table.

 

Hm, I should probably move those, it’ll be quite a mess if they break.

 

“Fuck! How are you so quiet? You’re in a wheelchair!”

They’ve been here some time, their mask hanging around their neck instead of pulled up to their nose. A new scar marks their neck, likely a fatal one from its placing.

 

They retrieve their weapon, placing it back on the table.

 

He should probably ask how they’re handling the constant dying.

 

“Were you singing?” he repeats instead.

 

To his amusement, their cheeks immediately redden.

 

Good gods, they need more sunlight, they’re paler than Maria was.

 

They rub the back of their neck, embarrassed.

 

“No? I’m not that good at singing.”

 

And some self-confidence. Are they this nervous in combat?

 

“I was just humming, I’m sorry if–”

 

He interrupts, “Why are you apologizing?”

 

They shrink a bit and he can hear Ludwig lamenting his people skills, already poor before his confinement. He prefers teaching over reassurance.

 

Gehrman tries a different approach.

 

“What can you hear?”

 

They blink, tilting their head to listen, the burnt feather edges of their cap making them even more birdlike.

 

Hm, I wonder if Eileen is still the Hunter of Hunters.

 

“Wind. The fire. Messengers chittering,” they frown, focusing.

 

“And what does Yharnam sound like?”

 

Their expression blanks for a moment.

 

“Before nightfall,” he clarifies.

 

“Um. Dogs, people moving inside their homes. Quiet talking, birds. Water in the canal. Wind, fire crackling. Huntsmen walking around,” they list.

 

He lifts an eyebrow.

 

“Oh,” they realize what he’s getting at. “It’s a lot quieter here. There’s less, uh, life.”

 

“I might prefer quiet over dozens of talking people, but that’s a preference, not–” he gestures around them.

 

“That’s a choice.”

 

Well, this was a choice, too, but not one he knew the extent of.

 

Their expression suggests they’re familiar with choices being taken from them.

 

“Your humming, or singing, isn’t a problem. You’re welcome to continue.”

 

They nod hesitantly.

 

He leaves.

 

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~

 

After that, he hears Taylor humming in the Dream, sometimes singing softly enough he can only catch some of the words.

 

(“...my sunshine, my only sunshine...”)

 

They always turn to humming or simply stop when they notice him.

 

They’ll come looking for him at times, if only to say hello, sometimes asking questions or showing him something they’ve found.

 

He almost starts laughing when they show him a Reiterpallasch and Chikage they recovered from Cainhurst. He’s less amused when they explain they found an unopened summons addressed to them, even less so when they admit they accepted a covenant with the Vileblood Queen.

 

They grudgingly tell him what happened in Cainhurst, about Logarius and the Vileblood slaughter, how the grounds are overrun with bloodlickers and dead women roam the halls.

 

He doesn’t know how to feel about that.

 

Maria’s mother came to the funeral to see her daughter again, refusing to look at any of the hunters. Her cousin, Cole, spent ten minutes glaring at Gehrman, blaming him for his cousin’s death.

 

He doesn’t disagree.

 

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~

 

Taylor brings more weapons to show him, ones they found in Yharnam or the dungeons.

 

They’re extremely delighted to show him ones recovered from the dungeons, enamored with the Beast Cutter and Boom Hammer.

 

He shows them a picture of the Whirligig Saw, telling them it was designed by the Powder Kegs, who also made their Rifle Spear and the Boom Hammer.

 

Their eyes glitter in excitement.

 

Perhaps telling them about it was a mistake.

 

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~

 

They find some of Teague’s old writing from before he shortened his name. He would be delighted someone else who rejected gender would take his name.

 

Teagan looks far livelier than when they first arrived.

 

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~

 

He finds himself humming as he puts them back together, stitching their chest closed.

 

A beast didn’t do this. This was done by a knife, someone was careful and deliberate. Someone with experience carved them open.

 

(“H–help...”)

 

He shouldn’t have let himself become this attached. Once the hunt ends, they’ll be gone, forgetting all of this. He and Plain Doll will be alone once more.

 

He keeps humming and putting them back together.

 

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~

 

He finds himself humming the tune again while working on a Saw Cleaver.

 

He’s accepted this isn’t a dream, which leaves him with time travel. Somehow he’s in the past, before the first Blood Moon, before his contract.

 

Before Maria’s suicide and Teague’s death.

 

Before Teagan.

 

He’s sure they had something to do with this. If it were a dream, he’d say Flora was responsible but it isn’t.

 

Are they somewhere in the past? Or did they take his place?

 

No. Why would he have been pushed into the past if they had? So where are they? What happened to them?

 

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~

 

Teague, unsurprisingly, comes to find him, leans against the doorframe in silence.

 

“Still having too realistic dreams?”

 

He doesn’t answer.

 

“Or, uh, are you just not sleeping to avoid them?”

 

“Like you’re one to talk.”

 

Teague and Maria carried the most guilt over the hamlet. Maria threw herself into caring for her patients and Teague tried to run from it for a long time.

 

They all did. Sooner or later, it caught up to them. He hopes they at least found peace in death, but he doubts it.

 

Sometimes he thinks he got lucky, undying as he was. Other times he envies them for finding release from the guilt.

 

He wonders how Teague would react if he told him everything. Probably think he went mad. Perhaps he has. He has no proof anything he remembers happened at all.

 

Even his right leg is back, which keeps taking him by surprise. He keeps expecting pain when he walks for too long but it never comes. His memory isn’t failing him constantly and the world is no longer foggy.

 

It feels like a gift. It feels like a curse.

 

He shouldn’t have gotten so attached to Teagan, he shouldn’t have let them get so attached.

 

He has nothing of the dream but memories, a song he doesn’t even know the words to and the knowledge Teagan likely sacrificed something to give him a sunrise.

 

“... Gehrman, are you crying?” Teague asked.

 

He reaches up and finds tears.

 

“It would seem so.”

 

“Want to talk about it?”

 

“No.”

 

Teague snorts.

 

“Yeah, figured. It’s like pulling teeth with you. Between you and Maria, I’m about ready to get Ludwig involved. Let you two get motherhenned.”

 

“I’ll tell him you’re the one who broke his bedroom door.”

 

Teague holds his hands up in surrender, alarmed.

 

“Geez, alright, alright! No need to go that far, damn!”

 

He wipes the tears away.

 

“But, uh, seriously. I’m willing to listen.”

 

“I know. Go to sleep, if I have to wake you up in the morning, I’m using a bucket of water.”

 

“Only if you stop for the night and get some sleep yourself. Don’t think I haven’t noticed your shitty sleeping habits.”

 

He sighs but lays his tools down.

 

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~

 

“So!” Ludwig claps his hands, grinning brightly. “Someone from the south brought word of a village that had a three day long storm.”

 

Maria’s expression tightens. If he didn’t know what to look for now, Gehrman would have missed it. He kicks himself for missing it last time.

 

“And? Storms can be fucked up,” Teague said, picking at his nails.

 

“They aren’t normally preceded by a light burning through the woods and the waters rising several feet before the storm. It happened a month ago. They’ve requested assistance, the wildlife has turned aggressive and avoids the deep woods.”

 

“What is the village’s name?” Maria looks as she always had, but Gehrman can see the guilt and shame weighing on her now.

 

“Aramore. I thought us five could go investigate.”

 

“No, originally you wanted to take some new Hunters and I vetoed it because they wouldn’t be able to convince you not to adopt twenty children,” Laurence said, amused.

 

Ludwig waves him off.

 

“Bet we’re still coming home with a kid,” Teague jokes.

 

“Don’t jinx us, Amelia’s enough,” Gehrman said.

 

“Yes, my daughter is wonderful,” said Laurence, deliberately ignoring the two’s meaning. “She’d probably like a sibling. Or maybe one of you two will bring home a child.”

 

“Hell no, I’m not having kids ever.”

 

“I can barely tolerate adults, what makes you think I want a child?”

 

Teagan comes to mind. He doesn’t know when they were born or even their birth name but he thinks they would be the only child he’d choose to care for. Although, with his luck, he’d traumatize them more than they already were.

 

He turns his attention back to Ludwig, pushing the thoughts aside. The chances of him being able to find them again are low, especially without a birth year and family name. And even if he could find them again, he wouldn’t be able to do anything. They mentioned a mother once, clearly living and he’s not kidnapping a child.

 

It's pointless to consider.

 

He has nothing from the dream but memories and a song he doesn’t know the words to.

[justanothergreb]

Icebreaker Review (or how Jackz wonders if some authors actually do research anymore)

Content warning - maybe some potential spoilers, but also talk of sex, namely the ridiculous sex in this book. Also this is all just my opinion, you can differ but no need to get nasty because I didn’t like the book.

Oh my god a book review! Well a review of a book so bad it needed a post. I’m really starting to believe that Booktok, while doing great things for getting people into reading, is a bloody menace for making terrible books popular. Spoiler - Icebreaker by Hannah Grace is one of the worst books I’ve ever read. 

It’s long so it’s going behind a cut...

Romance is not normally a genre I venture in to (unless it’s the Jane Austen-kind or Kate Cann-type books) but this book seemed like it would appeal to me. Ice skating - yes please. Ice hockey - yes please. People raving about the x-rated content - yes please indeed. My god was I reminded why I avoid this genre.

Let’s start off with the characters. Anastasia is so irritating. She’s whiny, she’s judgemental and just not likeable at all. Nathan is a wet blanket with a big dick. I’m sure some would be very excited by how much of a prince charming character he comes across but he’s so bland. Aaron was an attempt at the only child trope (a trope I as an only child despise) but was just a thoroughly vile character. Henry was blatantly written by a British person as he came across so thoroughly British in his nature I forgot he was American. I also lost track of when we discover JJ is gay and how many times Robbie is spoken about like he is able-bodied when he’s in a wheelchair. Far too many side characters for me which just burred into one mess of a cast. 

Now the setting and some of the plot points. I’m all for suspension of disbelief but do we really think a college in Los Angeles would be seemingly specialising in winter sports? Also the way most US sports work you are drafted into a team AFTER you graduate so how was Nathan already signed to a team? What was the purpose Nathan’s dad? Was he there just to be a pointless dick? Why all the side characters? Can you just swap from being a pairs skater to a solo skater? All the skaters I know went solo to pairs but never the other way round. 

Now the writing. It bothered me from the out because I could pick up this was written by someone not American. Too many phrases and ways of saying things which were so obviously British it drove me nuts. Was I shocked that the author made a joke about it in her little “About Me” bit? Nope, more shocked that her editors hadn’t pointed out just how blatant it was in places. If you’re going to write a book, at least also do some proper research on how things work in other countries. I’ve never heard an American student call it “a lecture” but that’s what college classes were referred to in this. The not understanding the basics of how the drafting systems work in sport. It might seem trivial but for me, it really bothers me when writers don’t make the effort for things to at least reflect the setting of their book. 

On the subject of things not being reflective of real life...that Uber scene. Sorry how was any of that plausible? A car with seven people including a wheelchair user (who from my imagination/understanding of the car layout would surely be in the position Nate/Stas are in??) and no one notices what you’re up to? Are they asleep? Ignorant? 

In fact this was one of my biggest problems with the book - the sex scenes. They were ridiculous. It was like reading instructions for porn scenes. I often wonder if authors who decide to make their male characters well endowed actually have experienced this themselves because if they had, they’d know that a lot of the stuff they write is nonsense. Painful, not comfortable, nonsense. I’m all for a bit of some of things going on in this but it was borderline ridiculous how much these two were at it and in the positions they were supposedly in. Athletes or not, I just wasn’t buying it. I often find first person sex scenes a bit cringe and these had me cringing. A lot. 

But my biggest problem - how was this over 400 pages? Nothing happened. It dragged on and on and on and it felt like absolutely nothing happened. 

This took me nearly a month to read. Eurgh. 

[olko71]

New Post has been published on All about business online

New Post has been published on http://yaroreviews.info/2023/01/call-to-ban-forced-switch-to-prepayment-meters

Call to ban 'forced' switch to prepayment meters

Getty Images

Citizens Advice has called for a ban on energy companies “forcing” customers onto prepayment meters because they are struggling to pay bills.

The charity estimates that 600,000 people were put onto the pay-as-you-go method last year, with 160,000 more expected by the end of the winter.

Some have meters installed, while others have smart meters automatically switched to prepayment mode.

Last year, regulator Ofgem wrote to suppliers about the issue.

A government spokesman said it expected energy suppliers to do all they can to help customers who are struggling to pay their bills.

“Suppliers can only install prepayment meters without consent to recover debt as a last resort,” he said.

‘New protections needed’

People using prepayment meters pay for their gas and electricity by topping up their meter, either through accounts or by adding credit to a card in a convenience store or post office.

This is a more expensive method of paying than by direct debit, but is sometimes the only option for people who have struggled to pay and are in debt to an energy supplier. Many rented properties also have prepayment meters.

Problems can arise when residents no longer have any credit left on the meter, and have no money to top it up – leaving them unable to cook or heat their homes.

Citizens Advice estimates that 3.2 million people across Britain ran out of credit on their prepayment meter last year, the equivalent of one every 10 seconds. The advisory service said it saw more people who were unable to top up their prepayment meter in 2022 than in the whole of the last 10 years combined.

“The staggering rise in the cost of living means many simply cannot afford to heat and power their homes to safe levels,” said Dame Clare Moriarty, chief executive of Citizens Advice .

“New protections are needed to stop people being fully cut off from gas and electricity. Until then, there must be a total ban on energy companies forcing those already at breaking point onto prepayment meters.”

Who can get the latest cost-of-living payments?

In November, the BBC revealed how a rising number of households were having their energy smart meters remotely switched to prepayment meters.

Suppliers can use the technology to swap customers onto the prepayment method without their permission.

Citizens Advice is calling for a ban on this practice, as well as ruling out energy suppliers going into homes to fit prepayment meters, until more protection is put in place.

It gave the example of one of the charity’s clients who said her power went off just before Christmas, and later discovered her meter had been switched to prepayment mode.

“I assumed it was a power cut. I had no way to make any calls, so my daughter and I were left in the dark all night with no heating, lights or means of making any food,” she told the charity.

“I explained that I was on the priority services register. I also said I’m in a wheelchair and unable to access my meter, but none of it made a difference. I’m now reliant on my sister or her husband to go to the post office to help me top up my meter.

“Over Christmas I went without energy because the credit ran out, and the post office was closed, so my daughter and I sat there cold, in the dark.”

Getty Images

The charity said it had heard other cases including when someone unable to top up even though their medication needed to be refrigerated, or a single parent with a young baby left without light or heat for 48 hours because she could not afford to put money on the meter.

It said one in five households including someone who is disabled or long-term sick, which ran out of credit last year, went on to spend two days or more without an energy supply.

Ofgem stipulates that certain groups such as disabled people and those with long-term health conditions should not be forced on to a prepayment meter.

However, Ofgem and Citizens Advice said people could choose to move to prepayment if they wished.

A government spokesman said the regulator Ofgem requires energy suppliers to offer solutions for customers in, or at risk of, debt or disconnection.

“This includes offering emergency credit to all prepayment meter customers and additional support credit to customers in vulnerable circumstances,” he said.

Simon Francis, co-ordinator of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, said: “The staggering extent of the prepayment meters scandal is now clear.

“A full ban on the forced transfer of customers to prepayment meters, including via smart meter mode switching, is now the only acceptable course of action.”

Why is this allowed and what can you do?

Before smart meters existed, energy firms would have to get a warrant to enter your home and physically install a prepayment meter

Now, smart meters enable energy firms to switch customers from direct debit payments to a prepayment meter system remotely

Ofgem rules state that energy suppliers must have effective checks and balances in place when switching the mode of a smart meter

The regulator advises customers with concerns to speak to their supplier. Under Ofgem rules they must offer payment plans you can afford and you can ask for emergency credit if you use a prepay meter and can’t top up

Breathing Space, sometimes called the Debt Respite Scheme, is a free government scheme that could give you up to 60 days’ space from creditors to set up a debt solution. Step Change debt charity can help you to apply.

Citizens Advice offers this guide: Stop your energy supplier moving you to prepayment

More on this story

Energy firms remotely swap homes to prepay meters

9 November 2022

Who can get the latest cost-of-living payments?

1 day ago

[splendi-city]

of hospitals

i am not the healthiest person. i guess on first glance i seem physically, completely capable. i have all my limbs, no obvious disabilities, and i am able to portray living a full life. however, behind the scenes, i go through problem after problem. now i say problem as an umbrella term because fuck knows my body is broken in a million more ways than i will ever be aware of. different vague health issues every damn time. but whatever, this is not meant to be a self-pity post. point is i’m sick a lot. consequentially, i spend a decent amount of time in hospitals. 

a little bit of self-pity is to be warranted in this paragraph. having to go to the hospital so much, it doesn’t seem like its a big deal anymore. those around me simply let out a sigh, “again?.” and i guess its fair. after a certain point there is no longer a sense of urgency? so u don’t rly care as much knowing at the end of it, no matter how sick i am in the moment, i am really just fine lol. regardless, it doesn’t feel great. no matter how many times it happens, my pain is still my pain. i would like to be taken care of, treated, manja-ed. but no one really does that for me. i am expected to be able to handle it with grace, simply because i have done it before. and i wish that were the case but truth be told, i am weak every time i have to go through this. and having to go through this more often than most just means that i am drained more and more every time. at this point, i am a shell of myself just dreaming of a day where i don’t feel some sort of random excruciating pain at any part of my body.

then came him.

i would like to believe i made my peace with the fact that i am responsible of taking care of myself, in general but also more specifically in the context of hospital and emergency room runs. but somehow this boy waltzes into my life, actually takes charge of making sure i am okay and physically comfortable at all times. he makes an active effort to be there for me, to care for me, to make me feel better. i was going through a whirlwind of pain today, one of the most excruciating ones i have ever felt in my life. all i had to do was tell him. without skipping a beat he was working out the logistics of how he could be the one to bring me to the hospital. how he wanted to be the one there to hold my hand through the entire process. the past few times where he actually had to bring me to the hospital, he was the most attentive person i have ever gotten the privilege to witness. from driving me (when he doesnt even drive), to pushing me on the wheelchair around the whole hospital, to letting me sleep on his lap in the waiting room, to just making sure i’m well-fed and comfortable. i’ve never been pushed on a wheelchair unless i was unconscious. he keeps saying “smol ting ony.” when it means the absolute world to me that i have one person that actually takes my pain seriously. who would actually go out of their way for my comfort. who would reassure me my pain is valid, no matter how much i try to gaslight myself that it isn’t. 

i’ve never had this from people who weren’t family. and even so, my family is truly over it and too tired to put in the effort anymore lol. i have never felt safe in hospitals. i’ve always felt like i had to fight and fend for myself. but now i have him. he makes me feel so loved and cared for. he makes me feel like i’m not alone. he is already an amazing boyfriend, through a million other facets of his presence. but seeing how he treats me when i’m sick, is a really good bonus. i would have never expected this treatment from anyone, and i am so so grateful that he came into my life to show me that it is possible to have someone with you going through tough times. this is the kind of love i believed i didn’t deserve. one i didn’t think i would ever get the privilege of experiencing. and for that i thank him. thank you sayang, for all that you do for me. for making hospitals bearable, nay, fun. if i had to go through this lifetime of pain and sickness, i’m eternally grateful to have you by my side. (preferably i would just like to stop getting sick, but ykno). i am forever indebted to your kindness, tolerance, and patience. you are truly my light at the end of this tunnel, and i love you endlessly for it.

thank you for your gentle hands, and for pushing me on wheelchairs. 

[ellenmaeparkerdmc22]

How can I transform Mill Road Cemetery to better suit the elderly community in Cambridge? (Version 2)

Mill Road Cemetery was consecrated in 1848 and is not currently an active burial site. Andrew Murray (who also designed the Cambridge University Botanic Gardens), designed the cemetery layout. Because of this, the space has a park-like feel today and is used in a similar fashion. Age UK reports 1.4 million older people in the UK often feel lonely. Campaigntoendlonliness.org states that 3.8 million people aged 70+ in the UK live alone. Older people’s quality of life is then often further worsened by loss of family and friends, chronic illnesses and also sight/hearing loss.

Using this already park-like space to solve a small part of the issue of lack of social support for the elderly in Cambridge interests me because I think the potential of this space is currently untapped. It can be made wheelchair accessible, and can provide something of interest for most – even those with sight and/or hearing impairments and mental deterioration.

Agespace.org currently hosts lunch clubs in Cambridge (transport is sometimes provided). University of the Third Age is an organisation that teaches older people new skills, and I would like to bring this idea to the elderly in Cambridge.

The immediate impact of this project will hopefully positively affect the mental health of those the project is aimed at, and therefore also hopefully this improved wellbeing will affect loved ones and carers.

For this applied research task, my primary research will lie in the investigation of the current space of Mill Road Cemetery. I will collect quantitative secondary research in the form of data on the elderly and mental health, and find out about the elderly’s relationship with local green spaces in Cambridge. A culmination of all these things will sum up analytical research, as I will use critical thinking skills to solve the problem.

Using this research, I would like to form a design proposal that turns Mill Road Cemetry into an activity and learning hub for the local elderly people – somewhere they can socialise, take part in recreational activities, and perhaps learn new skills. Hopefully, within this proposal, I can plan projects like a community garden or a mural.

I will need to carefully consider the approach in which I propose to spread the word about the hub, and also the approaches I take with any graphic design for printed or digital media used, as I want this to be accessible.

There are two audiences for my project proposal – those directly involved in the workshops and events, and then also possibly loved ones or carers. Somehow, any marketing material I create must appeal to both.

I need to keep accessibility at the forefront of any design – thinking about making elements as readable as possible. However, I don’t want the designs to be uninteresting as a result. I will think about designing for tablet screens as well as printed media.

In my opinion, I think many events held for the elderly can be advertised in a condescending way. I hope to be able to create a service that is accessible and enriching to a wide range of both cognitive and physical abilities.

If this project is successful, I would expect a positive impact on the Mill Road locals’ lives as well as the elderly that are directly involved. I hope this project to change a current system/solve a socio-political problem would open up opportunities to be involved in similar work post-graduation, using design to uplift others.

[gallus-rising]

So You Want To Write Johnny Fic

I have read many a Johnny fic that, while still being excellently written, have had passages that made me want to tear my hair out. I don’t attribute any malicious intent on the part of the author, it’s just that generally speaking, people don’t know how to write for disabled characters. So I’ve made a little guide here to hopefully help out my fellow fic writers :) And even if you yourself are not a fic writer, I hope you still give this thing a look! I wrote this with fic authors in mind, but I also addressed a few things that I feel are a problem with the wider SBR fandom.

Two things before we get started. First, a disclaimer: I myself am not physically disabled. I have several close family members who are, and they’ve used a variety of mobility aids across my lifetime. They’re what drove me to write this, as I’ve grown up just knowing some of the ins-and-outs and thinking, “well duh, that’s just common knowledge! Everyone has a family member that uses a wheelchair!”. That said, everything here is going to be second hand, so please, just think of my post as a primer! Go out and find advice written by people that are actually physically disabled. And to any wheelchair users that might come across this post, please don’t hesitate to correct me if I’ve misspoken at all!

And second: I’m not going to go into detail on the “Magic Cure” trope. That’s a whole other can of worms, and I don’t want this to get too bogged down. For anyone that’s already familiar with the trope and would like to avoid it, I offer a few alternatives to canon towards the end :)

Okay! Some general things first.

DO NOT USE THE WORD ‘CRIPPLE’ IT IS A SLUR.

Yes, in the time period SBR takes place it might’ve been a commonplace medical term, but there are many hurtful words that were used then that are now considered slurs. If you aren’t physically disabled yourself, don’t use it. Don’t have other people describe Johnny using that word, don’t have Johnny use it in a disparaging or sarcastic manner, do not use it. I can’t stress enough how hurtful some people consider that word to be, so avoid it entirely.

A few miscellaneous things about wheelchair use.

The term “wheelchair bound” has more or less fallen out of use. Most people don’t feel “bound” to their wheelchair, it grants a great deal of independence after all! If you ever find yourself needing a word to describe “person that uses a wheelchair” then just “wheelchair user” is your safest bet.

It's incredibly rude to start steering someone's wheelchair without them asking you first. Imagine you're out shopping and you stop to ask someone what aisle the soda is on, and instead of just telling you, this stranger grabs you by the hand and drags you to it. How would you feel? Now crank that up by 11. Many people consider having their mobility aids touched without their consent to be a form of assault. The only situations (outside of major injury, of course) I can think of where Johnny would ask someone to push him would either be to go up a steep incline, or to help get up-n-over a bothersome step.

Even in 2021 America, 30 years after the ADA, most buildings aren't accessible. Next time you're out and about, pay attention to the architecture around you. How many buildings have a small step at the entrance? How cramped are places like public bathrooms? Are the sidewalks even? You don’t have to go super in depth into these things, but if you're like me and sometimes get a bit hung up on, like, room layouts or whatever, it’s just a few things to keep in mind!

They make bags specifically designed to fit on wheelchairs, either off the back, or under the seat. Just like other handbags/backpacks, you can get ‘em in fancy patterns or more plain/nondescript. What would Johnny keep in such a bag? I don’t know, what kinds of things do you take with you when you're out and about?

Don’t describe Johnny entirely by his disability.

Oftentimes I’ll be reading fic, and come across a sentence like this:

“But, Gyro, I love you,” declared the wheelchair user.

Or this:

The paraplegic held his middle finger up, not even looking up from his book

It’s rude, it’s clunky, and did I mention it’s rude? Think of it this way: what if instead of using a wheelchair, Johnny was incredibly nearsighted and had to wear glasses? Would you still write about him like this? That doesn’t mean you need to ignore his wheelchair entirely, of course. Much like glasses, it’s a physical object that can at times get in the way, be lost/broken, or used to help identify someone. An example:

“Wait a second, have you seen this guy?” Gyro asked, “Blonde, stupid hat, wheelchair and a grouchy face?”

Be careful you’re not infantilizing him.

Yes compared to the other protags Johnny cries a lot. But Johnny is also; competitive, ornery, determined, sarcastic, and 19 years old. Be careful when describing him as a 'boy', and don’t make a big deal about him having youthful features. Don’t have the other characters coddle him either. Gyro respects him as someone that can hold his own, Diego and Hot Pants see him as a rival in the hunt for the corpse parts, and Valentine views him as a legitimate threat. I understand in hurt/comfort and more shippy fics we tend to go overboard sometimes, I feel I’ve been guilty of this as well, but keep in mind the extra connotations surrounding Johnny. The infantilization of disabled people is a huge problem that affects all of us across the board.

Tread lightly on the topic of his self-image.

Johnny does canonically have some self esteem issues in regards to his injury, but unless you’re working very closely with a beta, I’d steer away from the topic. Injuries and illnesses that result in lost mobility are intensely personal things to go through. Unless you have firsthand experience, it is an incredibly difficult topic to navigate.

If you do want to explore Johnny’s self-image in your fics, remember his injury isn’t the only thing he’s gone through. Johnny also; feels responsible for the death of his brother, was all but disowned by his father, regrets the hedonistic rockstar lifestyle he lived at the height of his career, and didn’t have any real friends before he met Gyro. Our poor guy has been through a lot! ;u;

It’s really not necessary to talk about any bowel/bladder dysfunction he might have.

Again, this is just one of those things you shouldn't touch on if you’re not disabled yourself. This is another problem that affects disabled people across the board, and it’s weird and gross how fixated ables can get on this. And yes, this includes jokes I've seen about him wearing a diaper. It's very insensitive, and it needs to stop.

Yes, paraplegics can have sex.

Quadriplegics too.

Sorry, smut writers, but I'll be of no help here. I don't exactly spend a lot of time talking with family about our sex lives. I'm also Very asexual. Just know that yes, many wheelchair users are consenting adults, and yes, that means they have sex. Here’s a disabled sex educator I’ve been recommended to help get you started though! (Note: she has chosen to reclaim the previously mentioned slur. This is a personal choice, not a free pass for you to use it in your works.)

DO NOT USE THE WORD ‘CRIPPLE’ IT IS A SLUR.

Once more, if you didn’t get it the first time.

And now here’s some rambling more specific to Johnny’s injury.

(And when I say this is a ramble, I mean it. Sorry lol.)

So Johnny’s paraplegia (we’ll get back to that term in a second) is the result of a spinal cord injury (SCI), but there’s a lot of different things that could mean. Spines are complicated, and I’m gonna try here to not only work out what happened in canon, but also how you could translate it into your various AUs!

Here’s your spine.

As you can see, it’s sectioned off into four parts, and each vertebrae is numbered. SCIs are roughly identified by the specifically affected vertebra. So for instance, if you break your neck you might have a C1 fracture, C2 fracture, C3 fracture, ect.

Now here’s Johnny immediately after being shot.

Just eyeballing this, it looks like he’s been shot through the abdomen/mid back, which would mean his injury is lower thoracic/possibly upper lumbar. Injuries to these areas can result in loss of sensation below the injury site, lifelong chronic back and abdominal pain, some difficulty breathing, and yes, complete or incomplete paraplegia. (See, I told you we’d get back to that.)

Complete paraplegia is pretty straight forward, it means all of the nerves at the site of the injury have been totally severed. That’s it. Absolutely no sensation, (though some people still experience nerve/phantom pain, because the human body plan is only slightly better designed than the horse’s). This is probably what most people think of when they hear ‘paraplegia’. Even with modern medical science, there’s not really anything that can be done here. Nerves are complicated, man.

Incomplete paraplegia is a lot more varied. All it means is you at least have some sensation in one or both of your legs. This can range anywhere from; total paralysis in one leg and completely normal function in the other, total paralysis in one leg and reduced functionality in the other, reduced functionality in both legs but not full paralysis. The possible experiences here are vast, and I again want to encourage you to seek out blogs/vlogs/books/ect by physically disabled people. Someone with incomplete paraplegia might use a wheelchair full time, walk with crutches or a cane, or switch between mobility aids depending on their pain and energy levels.

It’s also possible for incomplete paraplegia to degenerate to complete paraplegia later in a person's life, either due to inadequate medical care, further health complications down the line, or simply the slow and inevitable march of time that comes for us all!

Okay, here’s where things start to get more subjective.

My personal headcanon is Johnny is an incomplete paraplegic who (assuming he gets proper treatment), would be able to walk with the help of some kind of mobility aid.

From what little we see of Johnny's time in the hospital, we can tell it's absolute dogshit. I'm not qualified to speak on what may or may not have happened surgically wise, but I feel like it's safe to say he never received any kind of physical therapy.

When Johnny wakes up, he's almost completely unable to move. That's most likely due to spinal shock. Once someone with a SCI has been stabilized and is, you know, no longer dying, the injury site becomes inflamed. While the vertebrae and surrounding tissues are inflamed, any signals from the brain are going to have a very hard time traveling past the injury site. Spinal shock can last anywhere from about a week to over a year. After the inflammation subsides, a person may find that they have more functionality than they originally thought. But, in all that time spent healing, the person is losing muscle mass and the nerve pathways are going unused.

My idea here is with real post-op care, Johnny would've been able to walk, either with crutches or a cane. Though he would still have his wheelchair for high pain days and days where he would otherwise have to be on his feet for longer than would be comfortable. Given that by the end of SBR Johnny has both the power of god and anime on his side, I don't think "Jesus retroactively gives Johnny physical therapy" is too outlandish of an idea.

It’s important to remember that the spectrum of experience here is massive! Even if you decide to go along with my specific headcanon, the scenario I outlined here could lead to anything from "Johnny can walk with mobility aids, but it's very painful for him", to "Johnny can walk with mobility aids, and he rarely needs to use his wheelchair", and anywhere in between!

Keep in mind all of the terminology I've used here is very modern. I don’t know much about medical history, so I’m afraid I’ll be no help in keeping your fic 100% historically accurate, but I’m sure few will fault you for that :P

Welp, I think that's it! Thanks to my awful sister @heartattackkidd​ for reading over this, and thank you for sticking with me all the way through! And remember, just think of this as a primer on the topic.

I hope I've been of some help to you, reader. Reblogs are highly appreciated <3  Now go forth, and write fic!

[heartshapedcreaturefromcriptoon]

So I guess Pennywise ain’t considered ablest even though the horror icon she’s based on, Goddamn fucking bit both of a child’s arms off and made him struggle and crawl and bleed the fuck out before devouring him and then the leper shit happened with Eddie, huh?

You know what? This post has the same energy as disfigured people unironically starting their own “I Am Not A Witch!” campaign over The Witches remake even though that movie was terrible and a slap in the face to Anjelica Huston and should never have been produced in the first place. Disregarding the fact that the source material already has it’s issues while GDT has been implementing disability in his narratives throughout his work since the start of his career but apparently people only started paying attention after he won an Oscar?

Like, do we think that this person would feel significantly dehumanized if they found out that the spawn of The Creature from The Black Lagoon also happens to be Australian and loves sports? Or if they knew about this, would they suggest Monster High as an alternative to consuming adult media?

Do we think that every single disabled person who ever threw a fit over The Shape of Water would feel significantly dehumanized by this?

I’d say 50/50.... Since I once saw a slam piece for The Shape of Water written by an adult disabled person whom unironically and in all seriousness compared Princess Ariel ( a protagonist from a G Rated Disney Film) to Elisa Esposito (a protagonist from an R-rated Adult Flim) just to argue what a twat Elisa supposedly was throughout her movie and of course how she should’ve ended up with Strickland and how Ariel was supposedly the better “Representation” out of the two women, because Ariel ended up with a human....... I think I vaguely remember how this adult disabled woman who was possibly in her 30′s or over, also openly wrote about about how she was certain Princess Ariel would be able to “Kick Elisa’s Ass” in the event of a hypothetical fight between the two fictional characters....  Because that’s a very mature and nuanced way to criticize film.  While the irony of how The Shape of Water at it’s core essentially is just an underwater retelling of Thumbelina (if we’re going to be bringing Jodie Benson into this) was basically lost on this women throughout her entire article.

Wake could be Elisa and The Amphibian Man’s own son, overall having ... a body... like that...  for as much as we know .... ^_^;

I have my gripes about the way Wake’s story was handled in that episode (since we’re dealing with Monsters it could’ve been something so entirely different even though it was more of the same; infantilization bad, blah blah... boring, safe, story only written to teach ables and that’s the main problem. Same “Special Episode” every decade. Even at Monster High where the main protagonist that started it all is the daughter of one of the most disabled coded monsters of all time and her limbs can and will friggin detach themselves from her body on a whim which is also the main focus of her character intro:

But that’s besides my point here....

Like okay, we already have a fish man in a wheelchair at Monster High: A franchise with a fandom that has already accepted Greta as a Trans Icon TM.

But God. Fucking. Forbid. God Forbid, if some little girl who also happened to have Ectrodactyly or some other limb disability were to see herself in Greta and want to play with her? That poor delusional thing would just be dehumanizing herself, now wouldn’t she?

And what if that girl also happened to be trans? Even worse!

Yeah, I need to know where all of my crippled monster lovers are at because it’s the cold takes like the above that are actually so tiring for me to have to read and listen to. Over. And Over. And Over Again.

The person who made the bad Shape of Water review is a freaking paralympian for a living. So clearly a biased jocks perspective and not a horny goth’s.

The OP above phrased what they’re saying as if they don’t enjoy horror at all. And I know that they’re are some people who interpret Monster High as an “alternative” to “Actual Horror”...

(Like dude? The original Gremlins designs already had three fingers and this is already way toned down as per usual, with Monster High Dolls? You really want a girl with a limb disability to have this potential representation be taken away? In favor of just giving Greta fingers and hands that present as more “human” or “normal”? Go buy the 2016 reboot and fuck off!)

I didn’t want the Pennywise doll in the first place because of that whole painful scene in the beginning having to watch the little boy suffer and then the whole leper scene....  I did not see the second movie, nor do I really have any desire to.

If I did buy her it would be for my mother and if I did play with her, I would have a little custom clown wheelchair built for her, keep her in it always, and then have more of her personality and accent be based around Tim Curry. 

If this offends any of you, I can assure you, I do not give a fuck.

Because reading this honestly made me want to go on ebay and pay a reseller just so Greta can finally have a home with someone who actually appreciates her. (And Gizmo too. And I don’t see any of you throwing a fit over his cute lil’ hands because who thinks like that?! No one!)

I can think of people saying it’s a racist film, because at the end of the day, like yeah, and I can definitely understand saying The Witches in general is ablest among other things, including the shitty shitty remake, even though I think that people could’ve picked a better name for their protest than a Christine O’Donnell quote...

But, I’d never thought I’d see a white person claiming that gremlin hands were actually ablest, no less on a fashion doll that’s been drastically toned down from it’s source material.

This is the same level of asinine bullshit as someone claiming that Operetta’s existence “felt ablest” to them because The Original Phantom of The Opera was disfigured... So discarding the fact that Operetta was the offspring of a literal ghost in this incarnation, I guess OP was offended by the fact that Monster High let a disfigured outcast of a man find love and fuck and then let his equally disfigured daughter attended their school.

But going on both these peoples logic, are Jackson and Holt not already considered ableist and dehumanizing because Systems exist?

Are Peri and Pearl not already considered ableist and dehumanizing because conjoined twins exist?

What they already did to Ghoulia in the reboot is a literal can of worms so we won’t go there right now.

I just thought of another thing going by this logic though: Do we feel as though Garret Sander ever felt significantly dehumanized by the Werecat or the Grady Twins because he is a twin? Of course not!

I really gotta hand it to the dipshit in the above screenshot though because they made me see this Greta doll in an entirely new light now: Not only is she a Trans Icon for Monster High, she’s also another Disabled and Disfigured Icon in Monster High.

Another thing that I noticed? Watch this everyone:

Finnegan Ryder Wake’s debut episode title ....

Gizmo’s favorite song from the Gremlin’s 2 Movie, canonically ...

I mean, I know that Finn already has a girlfriend in Gigi I guess? And I was going to suggest this as a Halloween prompt to make the wet blankets who think that Greta’s existance is an ableist hate crime even more uncomfortable and angry by drawing Finn Seducing Greta, getting to her heart through Gizmo and singing his exact favorite song, only of course replacing the words “willing” with “wheeling” .... And then just have all three of them having a private little dance party together which ends with Greta covering Finn in kisses ......But if any one did want to use my idea for an art prompt I can assure you that I wouldn’t be stopping you.

Okay, so uh .... Update.... Remember how I said that the person who made the above post made me so angry I could just pay a reseller and get it over with? Remember how I implied in my last post regarding someone else being a complete loser about Greta, how collecting was all new for someone like me and money was no object? Well, in the spirit of speaking about something not stopping us ....

Here are the pretty babies, safe at home with someone who actually loves them, taken off the hands of someone all business and no cutesy bullshit or faked Mattel purchese price markups whatsoever in item description, only actually purchased by me once completely sealed shipment box was shown to be physically in dude’s hands, pre-checked by me personally via youtube before actually placing order just to ensure said box was real and that other people were already receiving their shipments from Mattel Creatioins that quickly (it was and they were) and so my actual buy was shipped to me within 48 hours of my order with constant UPS tracking updates from ebay... Considering how I see people in these tags every other day who like to be calling these Skullector Dolls “shitty customs” and I paid little more for this Greta than I do when I find a OOAK on Etsy that I really do admire, I claim that this was a really fair exchange. Not “good” of course, but fair.

I honestly just wish the money that I paid for one of her “Customs” in this case was actually going to Rebecca Shipman herself considering how many ungrateful shits some of you have been to this woman for giving you the Skullectors series.

But why pay extra in the first place, you ask?

Well, besides fact that Greta Gremlin is worth it the first place, I’m going to paint a picture for you:

Imagine being someone who uses a wheelchair and a hand splint, and having your caregiver claim that they’re going to help you, but then all they do is hijack your own card, tilt your own computer over to their side, and then proceed to read your own credit card info out to you like as slowly as humanly possible, number by number as you’re attempting to type that in with one hand while your hands are shaking as it is already and your computer was tilted to one side for some reason and no one offering to actually help type for you. Now imagine if you’ve already flubbed up the whole “I Am Not A Robot” thing two times prior to this and realizing the irony of how the one test getting you through to payment, but one that you knew in your gut you were going to lose her on, is the one test asking you to “identity stairs”.

Now imagine how the sense of powerful irony and rage you feel, carrying around the knowledge of how you lost Greta Gremlin because you metaphorically had to climb up a pair of stairs in order to be allowed to access her .... Is tripled coming across some absolute ding bat whining about how disgusting and ableist Greta Gremlin supposedly is for being born having three fingers, exclaiming how she’s “Monster Highs 1st Ableist Doll11!!1!!1!1!!!11 n no 1 iz goin 2 caaaaaaaaaare... :’(″

When a character..... like Pennywise.... canonically exists in this universe.

This post seriously had me livid and the abled-bodied autistic 19 year old who wrote it should be ashamed of themselves, but I’m grateful that this display of absolute dingbattery from an adult teenager with a Jojo icon gave me the extra push that I needed to spite some of you ungrateful bitches before Christmas.

I really just said “fuck the stairs” and took an elevator. I already got the BeetleJuice one, retail price on Mattel Creations, first try (cause I had someone helping me type then). 

I was not going to just give up Greta after that especially not after seeing some of you guys’ appalling behavior regarding this doll.... And I know I’m definitely not as spoiled as some of you grown adult Cheapy MCcheapskates who whine about having to pay $60 while tearing apart everything about these dolls anyway when you know that it’s just Rebecca and her team who are essentially building you these gifts from scratch to be able to even afford the reboot. One of the reasons I didn’t get into Monster High as a teen is because since I refused to settle for a shitty android, I couldn’t actually afford my own iphone until I turned 25, meaning my first ever phone that I own now is the iphone SE 2020 that just came out last year, just for clarification if some of you think not having a phone in that era wouldn’t effect anything or make someone feel left out. Why buy dolls if accessing extra perks and features required a cellphone?  Why buy dolls that reminded you of how you were too poor to afford a cellphone?

I also adore the clearly campier direction these Skullector’s are going in, for the record. And I can’t understand why the rest of you mediocre foamy squirrels keep demanding Jennifer’s Body and Johnny Depp and more pale faced humanoid characters while you’re treating Rebecca Shipman like shit.

I’m as happy as ever with the results of my decision to take this extreme risk and personally I think Finn would be proud of me for choosing to take the “elevator” out of spite to get to Greta after reading That Post too.

Because posts *like that* are the reason why no one takes actual discussions about ableist microaggressions seriously.

Bite me.

[friezagirl]

So, so… Let's talk about Jake in the last episode. :3 Frankly, the first time he appears in the sixth episode is to protect, as always, the system. Marc is in danger, he suffers from Ammit's magic stick, Steven can't do much more and then they see that Layla is also at gunpoint. In short, here is a chaotic, stressful, heavy, agitated and dangerous situation; so Jake had every reason to lash out at everyone and kill them. He remains in the violent character even though he always does it only to protect the system and to save Layla and, in this case, the world, that's it. Instead, much more difficult to frame is the post credit scene, both because not much is explained to us and because things are shown to us in a mysterious way. We see Jake take Harrow and head outside, he's the aggressive type so he kicks the wheelchair, so far so good, the problem is I can't understand why he killed the nurses and the guards. The only reason I can think of is that maybe they were Harrow's followers, maybe they were just there to get their leader back; because if this were not the case it means that he killed innocent people for no valid reason other than just because they didn't let him through. I don't even understand why the nurse allowed Jake to leave with a patient without making sure everything was okay, but okay, good for Jake that he can be so amalient (?), ahahahah. Maybe she thought he was a relative, but boh. Oh, maybe, actually, since they'd let him in anyway and no other doctor or nurse seemed to object to it, she too decided it was okay. After all it's a psychiatric hospital and they don't let everyone in without a reason, so the nurse must have understood that it was a family member, also because it was always Marc or Steven who brought Harrow to that place, so they had already seen him. Now, instead, speaking of the limousine, it's a nice quote to the comics, as well as Khonshu who has an elegant dress, but he put me a couple of doubts: in the comics, it's Steven the rich one, playboy and all Bruce Wayne style with a Alfred butler, etc; even if the plaque shows the surname Spector there too in the comics; but, I mean, why does Jake have a limo? If he has the plaque with Marc's last name and Marc knows nothing about it, it means it belongs to Jake, so is Jake rich? XD I realized it's a comic book quote, I really appreciated it, not to mention Jake's confirmation that he literally made me scream with joy, but I also want to understand the meaning of the scene, hahaha. Jake only drives a taxi, he likes to be discreet, not to be noticed because he takes information, but if he now he has a limo he means that he does a different job, right? I'm curious, please, give me a second season, a third, a fifth, a trilogy of films… Everything.

Oh right, I was digressing too much and forgetting the main point of the scene that I appreciated because of the meaning I decided to give it, which is Jake killing Harrow the same way they were killed by him. Two gunshots straight into his chest, and so I see it as a clear symbolism where Jake wants to avenge Marc and Steven; Harrow made all three suffer, with those two gunshots he was aiming at Marc and Steven, so Jake felt right to give them back. In my opinion, Jake must have felt all the pain that Steven and Marc had to go through in death reliving all the memories again, and then Steven ended up in the Duat, and then they came back and all, but they suffered, they had to relive again all their psychological pains, and Jake sure must have watched as aloof and not physically present. Jake must not have appreciated, either for himself or seeing his alters suffer again. They are a system, even if we didn't see Jake, he was there, because I mean, only Marc and Steven went through the gates of Osiris, but despite this Jake went with them, so he must have witnessed all of theirs torments as they saw the memories. And Jake blamed, of course, on Harrow, because he was the one who had brought them all to that place. Of course, it was a psychological journey that helped Marc deal with pain, accept it and overcome it, same thing for Steven, who also discovered and faced reality. But Jake's in charge of protecting them, in my opinion he's a self-imposed task, huh. He lets them live their lives, he doesn't intrude, he doesn't talk to them, he's like their guardian angel; he only intervenes by order of Khonshu and to help his alters. So he decided to take his revenge for them by killing Harrow. I reiterate that I would really like to know more about his story about him, about what he must have gone through, and when he appeared. In the comics Jake came right after Steven, so it must have been because his mother beat Marc too much and couldn't take him anymore, so, without knowing it, he created an alter who could handle him. Sad. :C

Beyond all this then, the most obvious reason is precisely that Harrow killed them, and Jake has to protect the system, he has to help them, must take revenge, so, in my opinion, it was more a personal motive of Jake rather than Khonshu, even if the two things crossed each other. By this I mean, then, that if it wasn't because Jake wanted revenge, I doubt he would have killed him. And it's just a hypothesis of course, knowing the Jake of the comics at least. I want to clarify that I am speaking like this, giving a sense to the scene but from my knowledge of comics where I was able to read and understand Jake's thoughts and motivations, my knowledge of DID is not much, I just read wikipedia and saw some videos of people who have it and who explain it but I'm not an expert at all. In this post, as in the others where I talked about Jack, I have discussed just trying to make sense of Jake's behaviors, right now I'm not referring to their disorder, okay? I'm just analyzing the character. If I have said wrong things I apologize and I will be happy to read any answers and explanations about it. :3 Lastly, I find it interesting that each of them can speak two different languages: Marc can speak Arabic and American, Jake can speak American and Spanish, and Steven can speak English and French, as well as to the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Nice, really cool, I wonder how and where Jack learned that language. And I hope I have explained it all decently, I don't wish it had been chaotic.

[ganymedesclock]

These are questions I've had for some while and it's hard to find someone who'll answer with grace. This mostly relates to disabilities (mental or physical) in fiction.

1) What makes a portrayal of a disability that's harming the character in question ableist?

2) Is there a way to write a disabled villain in a way that isn't ableist?

In the circles I've been in, the common conceptions are you can't use a character's disability as a plot point or showcase it being a hindrance in some manner. heaven forbid you make your villain disabled in some capacity, that's a freaking death sentence to a creative's image. I understand historically villains were the only characters given disabilities, but (and this is my personal experience) I've not seen as many disabled villains nowadays, heck, I see more disabled heroes in media nowadays.

Sorry if this comes off as abrasive, I'd really like to be informed for future media consumption and my own creative endeavors.

Okay so the first thing I'm going to say is that while it IS a good idea to talk to disabled people and get their feedback, disabled people are not a monolith and they aren't going to all have the same take on how this goes.

My personal take is biased in favor that I'm a neurodivergent person (ADHD and autism) who has no real experience with physical disabilities, so I won't speak for physically disabled people- heck, I won't even speak for every neurotype. Like I say, people aren't a monolith.

For myself and my own writing of disabled characters, here's a couple of concepts I stick by:

Research is your friend

Think about broad conventions of ableism

Be mindful of cast composition

1. Research is your friend

Yeah this is the thing everybody says, so here's the main bases I try to cover:

What's the story on this character's disability?

Less in terms of 'tragic angst' and more, what kind of condition this is- because a congenital amputee (that is to say, someone who was born without a limb) will have a different relationship to said limb absence than someone who lost their limb years ago to someone who lost their limb yesterday. How did people in their life respond to it, and how did they respond to it? These responses are not "natural" and will not be the same to every person with every worldview. This can also be a great environment to do worldbuilding in! Think about the movie (and the tv series) How To Train Your Dragon. The vikings in that setting don't have access to modern medicine, and they're, well, literally fighting dragons and other vikings. The instance of disability is high, and the medical terminology to talk about said disabilities is fairly lackluster- but in a context where you need every man you possibly can to avoid the winter, the mindset is going to be not necessarily very correct, but egalitarian. You live in a village of twenty people and know a guy who took a nasty blow to the head and hasn't quite been the same ever since? "Traumatic Brain Injury" is probably not going to be on your lips, but you're also probably going to just make whatever peace you need to and figure out how to accommodate Old Byron for his occasional inability to find the right word, stammers and trembles. In this example, there are several relevant pieces of information- what the character's disability is (aphasia), how they got it (brain injury), and the culture and climate around it (every man has to work, and we can't make more men or throw them away very easily, so, how can we make sure this person can work even if we don't know what's wrong with them)

And that dovetails into:

What's the real history, and modern understandings, of this?

This is where "knowing the story" helps a lot. To keep positing our hypothetical viking with a brain injury, I can look into brain injuries, what affects their extent and prognosis, and maybe even beliefs about this from the time period and setting I'm thinking of (because people have had brains, and brain injuries, the entire time!) Sure, if the setting is fantastical, I have wiggle room, but looking at inspirations might give me a guide post.

Having a name for your disorder also lets you look for posts made by specific people who live with the condition talking about their lives. This is super, super important for conditions stereotyped as really scary, like schizophrenia or narcissistic personality disorder. Even if you already know "schizophrenic people are real and normal" it's still a good thing to wake yourself up and connect with others.

2. Think about broad conventions of ableism

It CAN seem very daunting or intimidating to stay ahead of every single possible condition that could affect someone's body and mind and the specific stereotypes to avoid- there's a lot under the vast umbrella of human experience and we're learning more all the time! A good hallmark is, ableism has a few broad tendencies, and when you see those tendencies rear their head, in your own thinking or in accounts you read by others, it's good to put your skeptical glasses on and look closer. Here's a few that I tend to watch out for:

Failing the “heartwarming dog” test

This was a piece of sage wisdom that passed my eyeballs, became accepted as sage wisdom, and my brain magnificently failed to recall where I saw it. Basically, if you could replace your disabled character with a lovable pet who might need a procedure to save them, and it wouldn’t change the plot, that’s something to look into.

Disability activists speak often about infantilization, and this is a big thing of what they mean- a lot of casual ableism considers disabled people as basically belonging to, or being a burden onto, the able-bodied and neurotypical. This doesn’t necessarily even need to have an able neurotypical in the picture- a personal experience I had that was extremely hurtful was at a point in high school, I decided to do some research on autism for a school project. As an autistic teenager looking up resources online, I was very upset to realize that every single resource I accessed at the time presumed it was talking to a neurotypical parent about their helpless autistic child. I was looking for resources to myself, yet made to feel like I was the subject in a conversation.

Likewise, many wheelchair users have relayed the experience of, when they, in their chair, are in an environment accompanied by someone else who isn’t using a chair, strangers would speak to the standing person exclusively, avoiding addressing the chair user. 

It’s important to always remind yourself that at no point do disabled people stop being people. Yes, even people who have facial deformities; yes, even people who need help using the bathroom; yes, even people who drool; yes, even people whose conditions impact their ability to communicate, yes, even people with cognitive disabilities. They are people, they deserve dignity, and they are not “a child trapped in a 27-year-old body”- a disabled adult is still an adult. All of the “trying to learn the right rules” in the world won’t save you if you keep an underlying fear of non-normative bodies and minds.

This also has a modest overlap between disability and sexuality in particular. I am an autistic grayromantic ace. Absolutely none of my choices or inclinations about sex are because I’m too naive or innocent or childlike to comprehend the notion- disabled people have as diverse a relationship with sexuality as any other. That underlying fear- as mentioned before- can prevent many people from imagining that, say, a wheelchair user might enjoy sex and have experience with it. Make sure all of your disabled characters have full internal worlds.

Poor sickly little Tiffany and the Red Right Hand

A big part of fictional ableism is that it separates the disabled into two categories. Anybody who’s used TVTropes would recognize the latter term I used here. But to keep it brief:

Poor, sickly little Tiffany is cute. Vulnerable. How her disability affects her life is that it constantly creates a pall of suffering that she lives beneath. After all, having a non-normative mind or body must be an endless cavalcade of suffering and tragedy, right? People who are disabled clearly spend their every waking moment affected by, and upset, that they aren’t normal!

The answer is... No, actually. Cut the sad violin; even people who have chronic pain who are literally experiencing pain a lot more than the rest of us are still fully capable of living complex lives and being happy. If nothing else, it would be literally boring to feel nothing but awful, and people with major depression or other problems still, also, have complicated experiences. And yes, some of it’s not great. You don’t have to present every disability as disingenuously a joy to have. But make a point that they own these things. It is a very different feeling to have a concerned father looking through the window at his angel-faced daughter rocking sadly in her wheelchair while she stares longingly out the window, compared to a character waking up at midnight because they have to go do something and frustratedly hauling their body out of their bed into their chair to get going.

Poor Sickly Little Tiffany (PSLT, if you will) virtually always are young, and they virtually always are bound to the problems listed under ‘failing the heartwarming dog’ test. Yes, disabled kids exist, but the point I’m making here is that in the duality of the most widely accepted disabled characters, PSLT embodies the nadir of the Victim, who is so pure, so saintly, so gracious, that it can only be a cruel quirk of fate that she’s suffering. After all, it’s not as if disabled people have the same dignity that any neurotypical and able-bodied person has, where they can be an asshole and still expect other people to not seriously attack their quality of life- it’s a “service” for the neurotypical and able-bodied to “humor” them.

(this is a bad way to think. Either human lives matter or they don’t. There is no “wretched half-experience” here- if you wouldn’t bodily grab and yank around a person standing on their own feet, you have no business grabbing another person’s wheelchair)

On the opposite end- and relevant to your question- is the Red Right Hand. The Red Right Hand does not have PSLT’s innocence or “purity”- is the opposite extreme. The Red Right Hand is virtually always visually deformed, and framed as threatening for their visual deformity. To pick on a movie I like a fair amount, think about how in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the title character is described- “Strong. Fast. Had a metal arm.” That’s a subtle example, but, think about how that metal arm is menacing. Sure, it’s a high tech weapon in a superhero genre- but who has the metal arm? The Winter Soldier, who is, while a tormented figure that ultimately becomes more heroic- scary. Aggressive. Out for blood.

The man who walks at midnight with a Red Right Hand is a signal to us that his character is foul because of the twisting of his body. A good person, we are led to believe, would not be so- or a good person would be ashamed of their deformity and work to hide it. The Red Right Hand is not merely “an evil disabled person”- they are a disabled person whose disability is depicted as symptomatic of their evil, twisted nature, and when you pair this trope with PSLT, it sends a message: “stay in your place, disabled people. Be sad, be consumable, and let us push you around and decide what to do with you. If you get uppity, if you have ideas, if you stand up to us, then the thing that made you a helpless little victim will suddenly make you a horrible monster, and justify us handling you with inhumanity.”

As someone who is a BIG fan of eldritch horror and many forms of unsettling “wrongness” it is extremely important to watch out for the Red Right Hand. Be careful how you talk about Villainous Disability- there is no connection between disability and morality. People will be good, bad, or simply just people entirely separate from their status of ability or disability. It’s just as ableist to depict every disabled person as an innocent good soul as it is to exclusively deal in grim and ghastly monsters.

Don’t justify disabilities and don’t destroy them.

Superpowers are cool. Characters can and IMO should have superpowers, as long as you’re writing a genre when they’re there.

BUT.

It’s important to remember that there is no justification for disabilities, because they don’t need one. Disability is simply a feature characters have. You do not need to go “they’re blind, BUT they can see the future”

This is admittedly shaky, and people can argue either way; the Blind Seer is a very pronounced mythological figure and an interesting philosophical point about what truly matters in the world. There’s a reason it exists as a conceit. But if every blind character is blind in a way that completely negates that disability or makes it meaningless- this sucks. People have been blind since the dawn of time. And people will always accommodate their disabilities in different ways. Even if the technology exists to fix some forms of blindness, there are people who will have “fixable” blindness and refuse to treat it. There will be individuals born blind who have no meaningful desire to modify this. And there are some people whose condition will be inoperable even if it “shouldn’t” be.

You don’t need to make your disabled characters excessively cool, or give them a means by which the audience can totally forget they’re disabled. Again, this is a place where strong worldbuilding is your buddy- a handwave of “x technology fixed all disabilities”, in my opinion, will never come off good. If, instead, however, you throw out a careless detail that the cool girl the main character is chatting up in a cyberpunk bar has an obvious spinal modification, and feature other characters with prosthetics and without- I will like your work a lot, actually. Even if you’re handing out a fictional “cure”- show the seams. Make it have drawbacks and pros and cons. A great example of this is in the series Full Metal Alchemist- the main character has two prosthetic limbs, and not only do these limbs come with problems, some mundane (he has phantom limb pains, and has to deal with outgrowing his prostheses or damaging them in combat) some more fantastical (these artificial limbs are connected to his nerves to function fluidly- which means that they get surgically installed with no anesthesia and hurt like fuck plugging in- and they require master engineering to stay in shape). We explicitly see a scene of the experts responsible for said limbs talking to a man who uses an ordinary prosthetic leg, despite the advantages of an automail limb, because these drawbacks are daunting to him and he is happier with a simple prosthetic leg.

Even in mundane accommodations you didn’t make up- no two wheelchair users use their chair the exact same way, and there’s a huge diversity of chairs. Someone might be legally blind but still navigate confidently on their own; they might use a guide dog, or they might use a cane. They might even change their needs from situation to situation!

Disability accommodations are part of life

This ties in heavily to the previous point, but seriously! Don’t just look up one model of cane and superimpose it with no modifications onto your character- think about what their lifestyle is, and what kind of person they are!

Also medication is not the devil. Yes, medical abuse is real and tragic and the medication is not magic fairy dust that solves all problems either. But also, it’s straight ableism to act like anybody needing pills for any reason is a scary edgy plot twist. 

(and addiction is a disease. Please be careful, and moreover be compassionate, if you’re writing a character who’s an addict)

3. Be mindful of cast composition

This, to me, is a big tip about disability writing and it’s also super easy to implement!

Just make sure your cast has a lot of meaningful disabled characters in it!

Have you done all the work you can to try and dodge the Red Right Hand but you’re still worried your disabled villain is a bad look? They sure won’t look like a commentary on disability if three other people in the cast are disabled and don’t have the same outlook or role! Worried that you’re PSLT-ing your main character’s disabled child? Maybe the disability is hereditary and they got it from the main character!

The more disabled characters you have, the more it will challenge you to think about what their individual relationship is with the world and the less you’ll rely on hackneyed tropes. At least, ideally.

-

Ultimately, there’s no perfect silver bullet of diversity writing that will prevent a work from EVER being ableist, but I hope this helped, at least!

[kasuna-kotonoha]

I need to spread my Post Game Kokichi brainrot, alright? 

-First things first, the game was a simulation, and all the participants were taken in by the future foundation.

-So, because of how physically traumatic his death was, Kokichi was paralyzed when he woke up. However, this slowly reduced over the next two days until he was simply paraplegic.

-He also has difficulty breathing on occasion, and gets migraines or bounts of full body pain sometimes. Doctors aren’t sure how permanent these, along with the paralysis, will last. At some point, Kokichi just...stopped improving, and they’re concerned this is as good as it’s going to get.

-Because of the nature of his death, he was actually the last of the 16 to wake up. (No ones sure why Tsumugi wasn’t affected the same way. The best explanation for it is that hers was much faster, and thus her brain didn’t go into shock.)

-Kokichi hates having to rely on others so much, now that his mobility is more limited.

-He didn’t leave his room for almost a week and a half after waking up.

-His hair is a lot lighter than in game. 

-He also has heterochromia

Now for some with other characters under the cut

Rantaro 

-Kokichi and Rantaro, after a few conversations, start getting along fairly well.

-Rantaro takes something of a brotherly attitude with him.

-Rantaro likes to talk about his sisters, and Kokichi will talk about DICE

-Help each other with the migraines they get

-Doesn’t mind getting help from him.

Kaede

-Actually get along pretty well.

-She’s one of the few people that doesn’t fill him with extreme annoyance when he has to ask for help.

-She plays piano covers of various meme songs. It annoys the hell out of everyon except these two.

-They both have breathing difficulties, Kaede more so than Kokichi, but they’re always ready to help one another though it. 

-Actually okay with pranking people on occasion with him, provided its actually funny and harmless.

-Kokichi teases her all the time, and she does the same in turn.

Kirumi

-Has no problem helping Kokichi whenever he needs it.

-This makes Kokichi kind of uncomfortable, since she takes on a lot of responsibilities already.

-Tbh, she kinda does take a parental role with Kokichi, but it could also be seen as more of a ‘big sister’ type of relationship.

Tenko

-Still doesn’t really like him that much.

-However, she doesn’t hate him to the point she wouldn’t help him if he needed it.

-She, surprisingly, became extremely defensive while the two were out doing some errands and someone had the audacity to insult Kokichi’s disability.

-Granted, it was a guy, but the act was appreciated nonetheless.

-”...that never happened, got that?”

Korekiyo

-Kiyo is the one who understands best the bouts of overwhelming pain Kokichi can get, since he gets them too.

-They don’t hang out that often, but when they do its usually spent in silence, reading or simply helping one another through a pain spell.

Miu

-Once they reconciled, they became prank buddies.

-Miu made several modifications to Kokichi’s wheelchair, which include but are not limited too; a grabber arm, taser extension, and a pop up sun shade and fan..

-They frequently hurl insults at one another, but there’s a mutual understanding that genuinely hurtful ones are off the table

-They help each other with invention designs, though Miu helps Kokichi more often than the other way around. 

-She made sure her lab was wheel chair friendly, with minimal floor obstacles, and tables on hydraulic legs that can be lowered to a level Kokichi can use them.

Gonta

-Like with Miu, once they reconciled, they became good friends.

-One of the few people Kokichi doesn’t mind asking for help from

-Gonta ‘sadly’ had to ban Kokichi from his lab, since a wheel chair is more likely to crush a bug than a person.

-Will put Kokichi on his shoulders occasionally so he can get a different view point.

-This also allows Kokichi to go places that would be otherwise inaccessible.

-Gonta took him on a whole hike this way. Of course, this meant Gonta was carrying the weight of absolutely everything they brought with them on the trail, but Gonta handled it no problem

-Kokichi helped Gonta improve his Japanese grammar. Because of this, Gonta’s intelligence started becoming apparent.

Kaito

-A few weeks after the game was over, they discovered they were brothers.

-This caused them to avoid each other like the plague for almost 48 hours.

-Kaito tries his best, but Kokichi, being the gremlin he is, doesn’t always make it easy.

-However, its...nice to have family. Not that Kokichi would admit that, of course.

-Later, they also learned of their sister, Mikan.

-Kokichi really dislikes asking Kaito for help, even though he’d be totally willing. 

-Kaito drags him a lot of places, whether Kokichi was willing or not (usually not)

-It’s just...kinda awkward sometimes.

-Kaito drags him along to hang out with Shuichi, Maki, and Kaede.

-Not even Kaito can convince him to like Maki. 

Tsumugi

-Kokichi likes to complain about how she got no side effects even though they died in very similar fashions.

-That’s about it, Kokichi prefers to not talk to her, even though Shuichi being her brother can make that difficult.

Keebo

-Like with a lot of the others, Keebo and Kokichi get along a lot better outside of the environment of a killing game.

-Keebo is also no longer a robot, which Kokichi really doesn’t mind, even though he made a show of complaining how he wasn’t a cyborg anymore.

-Gets roped into Kokichi and Mius schemes.

Maki

-Kokichi would never admit it, but Maki still scares him Which isn’t really unexpected, since she tried to kill him several times. 

-Is the most scathing in his sarcasm with her.

-It’s on Maki to gain Kokichi’s trust. Kokichi also tries to make sure he’s more trustworth than he was in game.

-Maki tries to be as helpful as possible with him.

-She’s eventually convinced to teach Kokichi how to shoot various weapons. But not crossbows, at least not yet.

Himiko

-Kokichi helps Himiko with her shows sometimes.

-They get along decently well, though they both prefer to hang out with other groups most of the time

-Himiko gets no small amount of satisfaction that she’s taller than Kokichi now.

-Doesn’t mind getting help from her, though there’s a limit to what she can do with how short she is.

Shuichi

-Things were very awkward at first, considering everything.

-However, they began to improve their relationship, mainly though chess matches.

-Kokichi is the undisputed overall victor, and Shuichi suspects that the times he won, Kokichi had simply allowed him to win.

-No one is sure what, exactly the status of their relationship is. Are they just really good friends? Friends with benefits? Actually dating? Who knows.

-Even Shuichi and Kokichi don’t quite know how to define their relationship.

-Shuichi doesn’t mind helping Kokichi when he needs it, and Kokichi doesn’t mind either.

And that’s that. Feel free to leave your own ideas below.

[my-plastic-life]

Creating Kagome Part 1: The Doll

WARNING: VERY LONG POST AHEAD!

The journey began with me finding someone who could make Kagome’s school uniform since there’s no way I can do that lol. If her outfit couldn’t be made, the entire project would be in vain. Fortunately, I found a very talented seamstress who’d made Sailor Moon outfits for Made to Move Barbie bodies. I contacted her, and she said she could make Kagome’s uniform! Yay!!!

Next up was choosing the perfect doll. That alone took a good month and a half. I’d planned to use a Barbie for sure because I’m familiar with Barbie and her mechanics (i.e., head swaps and body compatibilities), plus she’s the most common fashion doll for clothes and accessories. And these days, she comes in a variety of skin tones... which turned out to be a big deciding factor for choosing the perfect candidate. I was making this doll specifically to go with my 12″ figure, and if you look at official images of the couple, and even watch the episodes, you’ll see that they have almost the same skin tone. In Barbie terms, the purple top Made to Move doll (ironically, the Asian one) was too pale in comparison to my figure. If I were making Kikyo, she’d work. But I wasn’t. I was making Kagome, and despite the story, the two are vastly different in terms of personality (and even, in my opinion, appearance - I never thought they looked that much alike).

My first plan was to use one of these dolls:

They’re both anime Mattel dolls from the Barbie Video Game Hero movie. They already had the anime face, so I thought whichever one worked best would just need a reroot and a body swap and I’d be done! WRONG. The neck hole in the doll’s head was vastly smaller than that of a Barbie, and I wasn’t comfortable cutting it to make it larger. I only had one shot, and knowing me, I’d mess it up drastically and be majorly sunk. So I knew I had to use just a regular Barbie instead, one without the anime face mold.

So then I found some Barbies that had the appropriate skin tone - I chose the wheelchair body, and of course it had to be a Made to Move body for posing capabilities. Victory! But of course, anime characters have those distinctive large eyes, and a Barbie face wasn’t going to cut it. So I had to contact a repainter on Etsy and ask if he could repaint a Barbie face to resemble Kagome’s. Then we had to determine the best face mold for that because of how defined the lips were. Anime characters also have tiny noses and mouths, so we agreed that the Lea face mold would be the most effective.

The doll I finally decided on was a Fashion Fever Lea circa 1999. Her skin tone matched the Made to Move body, so I was thrilled to finally have a doll picked out!

She did, of course, need a reroot because she had blonde/brown streaks in her hair, and Kagome’s hair is solid black. I can’t reroot, and I’m hesitant to dye doll hair for fear of staining the doll or her clothes, so I had to send the head off to get her rerooted. When that process was done, I sent her to my painter.

This process alone took about three months. When I finally got the doll back and complete, I was so happy - until my mom, who isn’t even an avid fan of the show, asked me if I thought the doll really looked like Kagome.

(NOTE: That uniform is one I got from a different seller, and she’d mistakenly used an old 90s TNT body rather than the Made to Move body as the base, so it’s a little large on her. That backpack was made by Beautyshare on Etsy).

So after looking at the doll, while I do love her, I decided that yes, she is more of a “Barbie as” version of Kagome rather than the actual character. The problem was her largely defined nose and mouth. Nothing wrong with her, but I decided I needed to keep looking. Like I said, being an OCD perfectionist is both a blessing and a curse.

So I continued to hunt for the perfect doll to use. I thought a Momoko doll might work, but she was too short and also didn’t have the desired face sculpt. So I finally decided to just type into Google Images one day “11″ anime doll.” I had no idea what would pop up, but what I got changed everything. Among the results were, of course, some Azone dolls and generic action figures, but then my eyes drifted to this doll and my jaw dropped:

Her face really helped seal the deal - her eyes were already the perfect shape, and she had that itty bitty nose and the small mouth that was smiling! She’d obviously need her eyes painted brown, and her eyebrows would need to be black and not blue, but I knew I could do that easily enough. Larger anime eyes are easier to paint those little details on as opposed to the tiny Barbie eyes.

The next step was to see if I could even find this doll. She’s an older one, based off an old Sega game known as Sakura Wars. I’ve never heard of it, but at this point that was irrelevant. I was making props in between searching for the right doll, plus having some custom made due to my lack of ability to sew and ordering others (thanks, ReMent!), so I knew I had to get this doll going. To my pleasant surprise, eBay had a large assortment of this doll available, all in the United States!

My next concern was whether or not the skin tone would work. All the anime dolls I’d seen so far (Azone, Obitsu, and even custom-made ones by other people over the years) had that super pale skin tone that belongs to Kikyo, not Kagome. So I looked at several listings, trying to determine if the skin tone would work. Then luck really came to my side as I found this doll for sale deboxed, resulting in a much lower price (this doll wasn’t expensive even in the box, but hey, I’ll save money wherever I can! I don’t need the box!)... and the seller was actually holding the doll in their hand! That allowed me to see the doll’s skin tone in comparison to someone’s actual hand, and it was almost the exact same shade. So I knew I had to jump at this chance.

Next up - wait for the post office to deliver this doll (don’t get me started on the USPS...). I was so anxious, wondering if she’d be okay for what I wanted to do. When she arrived at last, I opened her up and was pleased to see that she was about Barbie-sized (a tad shorter but her head wasn’t too small like some other anime dolls out there, so it would fit on the Made to Move body), and her skin tone didn’t look like the purple top Made to Move. That’s good. So, moment of truth. I took the doll into my doll room, where the decapitated body was waiting. I held the Barbie hand up to this doll’s face, and...

SUCCESS!!! A perfect match!!! The relief and excitement that washed over me was intense! At last I had an anime doll!!!

Of course, nothing is quite that simple. This head removed from the body super easy (it’s just a peg inside, no hooks at all), but the head hole was too small for the Barbie body. But only by a little bit. So I took a chance and grabbed my X-Acto knife and sliced off the inner ring inside the head. That did it! It took a little bit of elbow grease, but the head did get on the body! I then had to use a bit more force to slide it down the neck so it didn’t look like it was just sitting on top of it, but I got that too!

Original neck hole:

After using the X-Acto knife:

The prepared body (the neck peg is necessary to secure the head to the neck, but I did completely remove the hook portion since that isn’t necessary and it was too tall for the head anyway):

On the body!

Next up was the hair. I’d hoped to just dye the hair, somehow, thanks to various YouTube tutorials. Her hair was blue, and obviously that wouldn’t do. So I took it out of its ponytail, and received yet another surprise... not a pleasant one, though. Because the doll’s hair had been in a ponytail, the manufacturers apparently thought there didn’t need to be a lot of said hair, so there were a TON of bald spots! So even if I did manage to color the hair, there was no way there’d be enough of it to make it look how it should. So to Etsy I went to find a rerooter!

What luck I had yet again when I asked a few potential rerooters and came across Paradise Doll Designs, who was actually following me on Etsy and turned out to be a fan of Inuyasha! So I knew I had my candidate! And she did a superb job! I enjoyed talking to her during the duration of the reroot, which didn’t take long at all! The process took about a month starting from shipping the head to it being shipped back. Yes!!!

Even my mother agreed that this doll looked better than the Barbie! LOL! So when the reroot was done, the head was returned! Every time I got a step closer to my ultimate goal, I just felt like this:

Now granted, the character’s hair has kind of “spiky” shapes in the back, and her bangs aren’t uniform in size and kind of stick up, but keep in mind this is doll hair, so there’s only so much that can be done with it. It’s not like a sculpture that can be manipulated, even with a ton of hair spray and mousse. I used some of that (cream and spray meant specifically for synthetic/doll hair - I’ve read not to use real people hair products on dolls because it could cause damage down the road) on the back to give it that kind of uneven look, and once I got the outfit on the doll, it really helped tie it together!

Source photos:

I looked at those pictures for so long trying to get the hair just right! LOL It looks better with the outfit on, because when the doll had no clothes on, there was no perspective or context. :D

So the next step for this doll was getting her eyes painted! Finding the right shades of brown wasn’t as difficult as I feared it would be. I managed to get the eyes painted, though of course one had to be stubborn while the other was nearly perfect. But I eventually got them! I’d bought some special tiny acrylic brushes just for this project, and had been saving them in anticipation. I used one of them to go over the blue eyebrows with black paint (no Sharpie in case I made a mistake), and though they aren’t perfect, the bangs cover up the imperfections.

Source photo:

Well, she should be done by this point, right? Not quite. Remember the lovely rerooter I mentioned? Well, she was also among those on Instagram who discovered that it’s possible to switch out Barbie doll hands! YES! I was terrified to do that for fear of breaking the little pegs, but with Sara’s guidance, I managed to accomplish it! She told me that the DC Super Hero Girls dolls, also by Mattel, were perfectly compatible with Barbie. This was ideal for me, as the hands that were designed to hold swords and hammers would be perfect for Kagome to hold her bow, walk her bike, and even hold her little bottle of jewel shards (more on props later)! So... hand swap time!

This doll is my biggest hybrid doll ever. Sega doll head, Barbie Made to Move body, DC Super Hero Girls hands, completely custom-made outfit and accessories, full reroot, fresh face paint, etc. All in all, I am so excited to have this doll at last! And just in time for the anime’s 20th anniversary!!! Yes, the anime debuted in October 2000, and 20 years later, in October 2020, the series not only celebrated its 20th anniversary, but also dropped a sequel! And the manga that the anime is based off of? This year is its 25th anniversary! It debuted in 1996! I thought this was the perfect time for such a large project that’s been nine months in the making (plus 17 years considering when I first had the idea!). So now, behold, the final product:

HALLELUJAH!!! This has been a long, and at times stressful, journey, but I am so ecstatic now! I had so much fun bringing this character to life, not only to go with my beloved 12″ figure but also because I enjoy turning dolls into characters that I love, that I’ve decided to try my luck at making some others... I think Miroku and Sango should join in, don’t you? :D They most likely won’t be as perfect/detailed as Kagome, but I’m still excited to get started on them as well!

Stay tuned for the post about Kagome’s props - because no doll or figure is complete without those!

CREDITS: Reroot by Paradise Doll Designs School uniform by elenpriv Face paint by me Bow and arrows by me Quiver customization by me