#and as a disabled person this is particularly horrific

[avelera]

Maintaining Scope of Violence in Your Story's World

I saw an interesting discussion in the Baldur's Gate 3 subreddit, commenting how a player's immersion was broken when a version of the player character, known as "The Dark Urge", is apparently to blame for a particularly brutal murder and yet the companion characters don't turn on him/her/them immediately. The commenter was baffled given the brutality of the killing. Yet many replies pointed out that other members of the party are also murderers or tapdancing on the edge of committing atrocities, not to mention other mitigating circumstances that it would be spoilers to go into.

This got me thinking about scope of violence in genre fiction and how, on top of all the other difficult jobs the writer has before them, establishing what level of violence is "commonplace" vs "shocking" can be a surprisingly delicate process.

(Cut for length. Includes references to Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon, John Wick, and NBC's Hannibal in an exploration of how to establish the scope and scale of on-screen violence. TW for discussions of violence against children in shows like GoT and HotD, though it is largely in abstract terms.)

I'm reminded of "House of the Dragon" (HotD) which, I must confess, I found to have rather patchy and uneven writing.

One moment in HotD that I found rather dissonant, shall we say, was when a child of the nobility loses his eye in a brawl with other children. His mother, an aristocrat, is understandably horrified and enraged. However, some of the threats she makes to equally powerful Houses over the incident feel, dare I say, disproportionate to the event, given that her threats could lead to the world as she knows it being plunged into civil war, all over what amounts to a tussle between children, albeit one that ends in a particularly gruesome manner.

On the one hand, any modern mother likely would completely freak out at such an appalling injury as a lost eye from a knife fight between children. That would be a major shock to a modern community, where such violence is quite rare. And in fairness, the aristocrats of the world of "Game of Thrones" and HotD by extension are largely insulated by their privilege from the day to day violence we see portrayed in the series. If anyone was realistically going to have a modern response to a child's maiming, it would be the sheltered daughter of a noble house with regards to her beloved child.

However, as understandable as her reaction might be to modern viewers and to those who take into account her sheltered upbringing, in my mind, the show's narrative wobbled there in terms of establishing the level of violence that is considered commonplace in the world of HotD/GoT. In the first season of Game of Thrones, we famously saw a child pushed out of a window, permanently disabled and left in a coma for months, and while this is a major event that creates a great deal of tension and conflict, ultimately the family after their attempts at individual revenge the fact is they can't start a civil war over this single event. So in a way we're sort of left with: this is just a thing that happens that we have to suck up and deal with, even if certain individuals might wish to and continue to pursue a personal vendetta. Couple that with commoner children being murdered and the deaths going completely unremarked upon by wider society, we're left with the impression of a world in which brutality, even brutality against children which would grind a modern community to a halt, is simply an ugly and relatively common part of life. A life with so much ugliness and personal violence that it really almost gets lost amidst all the other horrors.

Which makes the HotD mother's reaction feel... disproportionate. Not in relation to her child's suffering, which is entirely understandable, but her view of what retaliation constitutes a proportional response comes across as hysterical. Too modern. Children are horrifically injured in the GoT/HotD world all the time. Frankly, by comparison, a lost eye is almost minor compared to a loss of mobility in a rigorously martial world, access to which Bran lost with his fall. We don't get as good of a set up of what the conflicting morals of this world are, we don't get the comparison between commoner and noble children as clearly as in GoT, we don't really get all the conflicting views of "When is it normal to start a civil war over a child's injury?" - the sense of scope and scale of violence and how we and the characters are supposed to react to it... wobbles.

Along these lines, I've also pointed out that in shows like NBC's Hannibal, the show is scrupulously careful about not really referencing global events like wars. In my mind, there's a simple reason for that. Your average drone attack on civilians in the Middle East kills more innocent people by accident than Hannibal Lecter has ever killed in his entire murderous career. Compared to weapons of war, one murderous serial killer is barely a rounding error in terms of death and human suffering. So the show has to remain almost claustrophobically intimate so we never get confronted with the "So what?" of the individual death and human suffering Hannibal and the other serial killers bring about on a very close, personal basis. The horror style is meant to force us to imagine ourselves if we were the victims (or the killer) in these incredibly intimate murders. If our suffering was writ large. If every individual death was massively significant. But this is in contrast with real world mass casualty events which would dwarf many times all of the deaths in the Hannibal show combined.

As a final example, the moment the first season of "True Detective" lost me was when the value of a single life also wobbled dramatically. The conceit of the show is that a single murder, or a half dozen at most, murders of young white women is worthy of a major, multi-year investigation. Yet when the investigation inadvertently leads to an outbreak of violence in a predominantly black community, shown almost immediately to kill more people (in front of their children, even) than were lost in the entire murder spree of white women that's being investigated, the show didn't seem to care at all. Individual white female victims were worthy of a breathless investigation into their untimely loss, but twice that number of black people killed in an outbreak of violence directly linked to the investigation didn't even seem worthy of commentary or reflection at all. The value of a single human life was no longer consistent. If these deaths aren't worthy of justice, then why should I care about the few individual deaths being investigated?

As with any measuring of scope in fiction, it's very hard for the author to do alone. It really is an instance where an outside pair of eyes is incredibly valuable.

But things to keep in mind while crafting a narrative around violence is just how much are readers or viewers supposed to be alarmed by individual acts of violence. It's common and indeed necessary for modern media to establish the rules of its world. Even stories nominally set in "our" world actually do almost as much worldbuilding as any fantasy tale in this respect. In a cop drama where each episode is built around a single murder, we need to inhabit a world where a single murder is worthy of dozens of people spending time and resources bringing the killer to justice. In such a world, a mass casualty event of several deaths should be shocking. To this end, like in NBC's Hannibal, it's probably best to avoid mentions of mass casualty events caused by war or natural disasters.

By contrast, an action film like John Wick might place less value on individual deaths (beyond the motivating deaths of a single dog, which is thoroughly commented on within the story as feeling disproportionate and therein lies much of what makes the plot so unique. I'd argue it is also the cutest dog ever born, but I digress). We're not going to see a lurid headline, "John Wick murders 26 local men in cold blood, read about this tragic loss along with quotes by their devastated wives and children on page 6". To a certain extent, the violence there is meant to be just shocking enough to thrill, but we're not meant to get too invested in the details of the actual body count.

And, to go even more extreme, in war or disaster movies, we see or have narrated that thousands have died at a time. Again, to go back to Game of Thrones/House of the Dragon, one reason it's hard to see the mother's reaction to her child's maiming as anything but a bit disproportionate is because we see with such brutality hundreds if not thousands of men, women, and children dying directly or indirectly as a result of war. While it's understandable that a mother would burn the world down for an injury to her child, we're not well placed to agree with or sympathize with her reactions on the broader scale, in terms of retribution that would lead to war, against a backdrop of brutal mass casualty events in the thousands where even more families are devastated and more children injured or killed.

As a final, positive word on the Game of Thrones universe, the early seasons of the GoT were actually very good at controlling the audience's reaction to the scope of violence. Namely, the Battle of the Blackwater sticks out in my mind. The world of GoT is so grounded in the mud, in ugly, personal but intimate violence done with hands or blades, otherwise rudimentary weapons, that the first time we see an explosion on a near-modern scale feels as genuinely breathtaking to modern eyes as it might have to the Medieval-eseque eyes of that world. Yet there are movies chock-full of explosions where the explosions lose impact and importance, become background noise, because they're simply one of many. By rigorously tamping down and limiting the scope and type of violence to largely hand to hand combat, Game of Thrones set up a moment where modern warfare-style explosions are awe-inspiring. Against that backdrop, the appearance of fire-breathing dragons on the battlefield is also arresting, though their capabilities would likely be dwarfed by a modern fighter jet and many viewers of GoT would be familiar with films where the scope and scale of violence is much bigger and more explosive. It feels big in GoT because the scope and scale has been so small to that point.

Once you as a writer have established the modernity of your violence, the scope and scale of it, the average body count, the importance of a single human life, it's important to stick to it. If a character has a differing view, then they should be noted as having it by the narrative. A grizzled war veteran might shrug at a small town murder investigation of a single individual, but a sleepy town might lose its mind over it. In the modern world, the lives of children are put on the highest pedestal, but once you establish in your world that some children's lives are of lower value, then showing a mother act with an understandable modern sensibility of horror and outrage still needs to be commented on so we understand where her reaction falls within her society, especially if it's in contrast. That is what teaches us how to watch and appreciate the narrative choices as they're meant to be appreciated.

[luna-rainbow]

I liked the Russo bros until I heard an interview with them made about 4-5 years ago (just after Endgame I think) where they elaborated on why Bucky didn't get the shield.

It made me really mad how flippant they were about Bucky's "mind being damaged" and then started joking about him being crazy and dangerous. They even said at one point that he was "corrupted".

Just the amount of ableism was horrific. Mental health issues and brain damage do not arise from or make a person morally corrupt.

I get that Bucky would not have wanted the shield before the HYDRA programming was removed (which it had been by that point) but seriously? Also, why should having trauma or mental health issues disqualify someone from being Captain America?

Ah yes, the good ole ableism.

Much of the MCU is incredibly ableist. I think the modern world, despite all our efforts, still segregates disabled people from view. A lot of writers, especially if they come from comfortable upper/middle-class families and smooth-sailed through college, would never have had much interaction with a visibly disabled person as a fellow human.

Mental health is an invisible disability and still often seen as a weakness of the will. I think this is part of the disdain for Bucky and this weird push in TFATWS to write him into a Generic Dude. This is why Zemo says “there’s never been another Steve Rogers” because Bucky’s mind did break, and it broke because (the writers) see him as weak-willed and deficient, rather than because…withstanding 70 years of torture is something none of us can fathom.

I can’t find the post from a while ago (Tumblr being Tumblr) but someone wrote an essay about disabled characters in the MCU and the fact that disability is used as a narrative tool to signal a punishment for moral deficiency. And their (unnatural) regaining of their abilities as a nod to them recognising the error of their ways. The example they used was Rhodes, who was “punished” by becoming paraplegic then regaining his walking when he reconciled with the rest of the Avengers. (Civil War being what it was, I’m genuinely not sure that the writers felt Steve was the correct side, but anyhow)

But this theory is particularly true in how Bucky is written and what each generation of writers have said about him. The arm, once bearing the insignia of wings and now bearing the red star, was a visible symbol of what happens to his mind — a soldier’s failure, having his identity and loyalty ripped from him, and another new, deadlier identity transplanted against his will. But a failure nonetheless, because a real hero wouldn’t have fallen. And this is why in Civil War, the arm needed to be forcibly taken from him, because it was a mark of his identity as the Winter Soldier and of his crimes against a hero’s family. The arm is then given to him in Infinity War as an opportunity for atonement, to fight for the “greater good” (as if fighting against Nazis wasn’t right there in his history). And he is reminded in TFATWS it can be taken away at any time if he misbehaves, that no matter how hard he works that original flaw will always hang over him and any minor mistake needs to be punished to bring him back in line (a point reinforced by Sam’s constant jibing at his time as a prisoner).

And then people wonder why Bucky fans are pissed off about the gross ableism.

[lynmars79]

Reflecting on the meme responses and jokes to episode 12 of season 3 Midst--and don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying the reactions too, after sitting on this for two weeks--and there's specific ways in universe, and by the narrators, in which Weepe's Fold disability is treated compared to others afflicted by their Fold scars.

He's hardly the only weird or monstrous looking person in the cosmos, particularly those who live within the Fold itself, and now many of the citizens of Midst who survived the moonfall. There's people with extra eyes, limbs, even heads. Fiona's left leg is now a man named Jacob. Giselle's personality is replaced by frogs. Fuze's upside down mouth, hidden behind his facial hair. Ettie's constant laughing. Saskia's doubling can even be horrifying in a few ways, though she's currently coping and using it as an advantage, most times.

And then there's Moc Weepe, who was the most noticeably Fold-affected person on Midst pre-tearror. Because of what happened in the Arca, his situation became a lot worse--a situation he tells Imelda was an inevitability someday.

(Was it really? Or is that his assumption, given how events in his life tend to happen? That if it wasn't Imelda pushing him like that, someone else would have sooner or later?)

Weepe's appearance is described as ghastly and horrific, and it is! He's a translucent jelly of a person, innards on display, the Fold visibly slinking through his system. He has to constantly have a pump going, not unlike people who need their constant oxygen, or drainage bags, or other outward signs of their disability.

Weepe's falling into a(n often dicey) trope of his outward appearance reflecting the monstrousness within, though his descriptions in that way are different from others afflicted by the Fold. Many of them are noted by the narrators as simply existing, a little odd but nothing grotesque, even when the descriptions given would be extremely off-putting. They're spoken of as normal, if noticeable, ramifications of exposure to the Fold. The images and descriptions of the Sequester citizens that Phineas, Lark, and Tzila encountered in season 2 could also be considered monstrous by some.

But it's Weepe specifically who murders people with his own tainted blood, even selling it to others (like Lark, unknowingly). Having his security use it to kill Kozma's entourage. I doubt he's sending any samples to the Mothers now. There are indications, too, that Weepe is exaggerating how weak/ill he is to take others off guard (like Kozma). It's Weepe who weaponizes his Fold affliction, with all sorts of justifications pertaining to his own survival and success.

(Perhaps Saskia to a degree also, using her doubling to literally be in two places at once, passing information between herself, but for very different reasons.)

I say in another post that I gotta respect Imelda's monster-fucking game (I've been on the internet for 30 years, y'all). Especially since I consider her as a monster of another kind, the True Believer with ambition and seeking power, somehow seeing Weepe as a key to her own success, willing to do anything to achieve that. So far it's working, and there have been some concerning appendices about her actions as Archauditor already.

It's not so much about Weepe's horrific Fold-altered state (though that is part of it, but unlike with other Fold-afflicted characters). It's not the middle-aged aspect of the participants (that may be part of it for some younger listeners, though Lark and Sherman hooking up is also considered normal to sweet, and Imogen Loxlee is forever a catch).

It is two horrible people, who have done horrible things to each other as well as to other people, giving in to a long-standing tension (Weepe describing Imelda in detail down to her "little sexy suits" during his Arca ranting, and her fawning on Midst and into the Highest Light didn't seem entirely business-driven) for their own dubious reasons that likely have nothing to do with actual romantic emotions, and are more likely as much about their parallel schemes as about the sexual attraction over their matching ruthlessness

Of the relationships, complicated as they all are in this series, it's the potentially most toxic we are shown as sex occurs, in an exchange to cut the various tensions and issues with this particular hookup; it's actually one of my favorite narrator interactions, the awkwardness and uncertainty playing up the funny to describe the scene without describing it.

I just also look to all the discussions about aging, weight, and disabled, and other folks who fall outside our society's norms for desirability, and wish the narrative descriptions did lean a little more on Weepe's actual monstrosity, and not the grotesqueness of his Fold-afflicted appearance. Cuz when they do turn on the Actual Monster Weepe mode, he's terrifying regardless.

Besides, the pump sound effects and ability to "see" Weepe's physical reactions definitely added to the creative descriptions of that scene in a way that wouldn't be possible otherwise!

Anyway. Mostly feel like there's some unintentional line toe-ing happening in some of these descriptors and reasons for them, which is going to happen in pretty much any and every media, especially a semi-improvised one, as our diabolical businessman--inspired by various traditional villain characters--slips further into villainy himself and his oft-described appearance reflects it.

[mandy4ever69420]

opinion on sheila?

i don't care for her. as a person. i've found her miscellaneous shenanigans a lot more enjoyable upon rewatch, though, since i'm no longer trying to find a way to still like her as a person. it's very sad for me to not like her because she is played by JOAN CUSACK whom i adore + naturally she fucking kills it in her performance. alas she is not dom top rosalie mullins from school of rock 😔

i contemplated leaving my response at that but i DO in fact think she's really interesting! i thought, you know, some other people have made Some posts about how she fucks up but tbh, come to think of it, usually they only go so far as to say "she did bad thing, therefore bad" and dont go past that! which is tragic. SO i'm going to. i hope.

please keep in mind as you read this that my biggest problem with sheila is her attempt to, as a white christian woman, adopt and raise a handful of native american children, which is a facet of cultural genocide (article II, item e) that the ICWA was literally created to prevent. i also dislike her for other reasons, but this is the biggest

sheila is probably the strongest example within shameless of a character being cute, charismatic, or "nice" on the surface, in a way that really powerfully distracts from the type of harm they're capable of.

particularly, in addition to being "nice" and carrying joan cusack's INCREDIBLE charisma, sheila is also disabled! she's terrified of a lot of things, and mocked by her husband for it. she absolutely deserves sympathy for her struggles with agoraphobia and a LOT of people conflate sympathizing with someone with having to accept their behavior. this is the flip-side of people not understanding that someone who has done something scary or messed up still has a sympathetic internal experience.

season one has sheila most of the time unable to enact harm because of her limiting circumstances. although she repeatedly ignores frank's sexual boundaries, he's also definitely taking advantage of her hospitality the entire time. frank often will lose sympathy points by acting horrifically in other ways, sheila's behavior will be ignored for how sympathetic she is. in season one, sheila also APPEARS to be a great and supportive mother to karen, specifically because of the contrast in how overtly judgemental and controlling eddie is. while watching this show with a friend of mine, she made the great observation that when sheila comes out of her shell a bit, you can really see how she wound up married to such a stuck up conservative asshole.

even so, sheila's inability to support her daughter hurts her. that's not to say she's at fault for the way her agoraphobia leaves karen feeling adrift, just that it happened. i really like season 1 sheila. karen also spends a lot of time feeling that it's her responsibility to take care of sheila, and while it's extremely nice of her to do, the fact is that sheila needed an adult's support, not her teenage daughter's. when karen spends so much time acting protective towards sheila, which sheila was undoubtedly both touched and embarrassed by, i think this also pushes forward into both of their minds the way that sheila views karen in some ways as more of a bestie/equal than a child under her care.

note also here - sheila seems to have no grown up friends! there are a couple times when she tries to branch out (christianmingle, selling sex toys) but they don't seem to work out. she even sort of alludes to knowing people at her old job at a hair salon, but she seems to never have actually be close to them, just sort of friendly. she is extremely lonely, probably since even before she developed agoraphobia.

sheila is loud and brash and strange, which masks in ways that she may also be very very insecure. it makes sense if she only bonds with little kids if she's terrified of the judgement of an adult. (this is also a problem with kash - though obviously, kash takes this in a worse direction by pursuing ian romantically). she's also GOOD with little kids. she absolutely is not good with teenagers. i would absolutely trust her to watch a toddler, i don't think there's any real problem with that.

however, please see: sheila playing with liam, she asks him "which do you prefer, the baby, or the whore?" this line is hilarious. it also points to her having more or less the same conservative view of sexuality that results in karen's DaddyzGirl plotline. it feels relevant she uses a blonde barbie to represent the "whore".

sheila also seems more involved in catholicism than the gallagher family. to be sure, the gallaghers are catholic, but i didn't get the impression that it was as much of a religious identity to them as something they just inherited and went with.

by the time jody shows up in karen's plotline, sheila is established so aggressively as being kooky and unable to handle a lot of the "real world", that when i recall thinking, oh, well, she shouldn't be letting this guy around her daughter, but i'm not sure she understands whats happening. and it's true she probably didn't. part and parcel to her viewing karen as more of a best friend than a child in here care, and her inability to understand teenagers the way she does littler kids - she just defaults to trying to interact with karen as another adult.

sheila being more catholic also adds an interesting layer to how much she wants karen to go out with jody, given that karen is a bisexual girl, even if sheila might not be aware of that.

i assume we're already in agreement that she shouldn't have allowed karen to marry a 37 year old - which she definitely had to consent to. in an interesting parallel here with my general read of mickey being the karen to ian's lip, the united states does allow people under 18 to get married, but only with a parent's consent. mickey is the only other character i can think of whose parent gives such horrifying and enthusiastic consent to their marriage (and, similarly - both lip and ian show up to these weddings, get drunk, and make an ass of themselves)

sheila viewing karen as a best friend more so than a daughter also is what leads her to believe it's acceptable, just kind of bitchy, to sleep with jody. jody is another incredibly immature adult. this is a running and well executed theme in most of the predatory characters on this show. karen didn't want him, and sheila later apologizes for all the wrong reasons.

sheila obviously gets hit with another massive wave of loneliness and regret after she kicks her daughter out - she doesn't seem to understand that attempting to force someone to keep an unwanted pregnancy or child is a surefire way to ruin a relationship, and almost certainly thought that karen would go into playing this "sweet little girl" role she expects of having a cute, blonde, daughter. this also shows up in sheila's idealization of karen's relationship to jody. sheila can't accept that karen is outspoken and independent, she wants karen to be a housewife and a princess - karen apparently loved princess stories as a small child (or sheila thought she did), and sheila is unable to accept that that's changed - and she wants jody to be the prince in this story.

even when karen comes back, sheila still can't wrap her head around karen not being obligated to be a mother. she's horrified to learn that karen had told hymie's father's family that sheila "wasn't safe", when karen just wanted desperately to go back to before, because she wanted her mom to love her, and she wanted to feel close, without the imposition of an unwanted child from a traumatic pregnancy.

this might be a reflection of the disaster that was sheila's marriage - a lot of women will try to make up for what they feel they missed out on by projecting onto their daughters' lives. sometimes this is just awkward, but sheila decides to send her brain damaged, absolutely unable to consent, daughter off with jody. when karen becomes disabled sheila sees her no longer as a best friend, but more like a doll. come to think of it, this might be why she got so enthusiastically involved in ..."activism"... for down syndrome. it's an exciting role to play for her.

jody makes probably one single good point in his entire life, which is that hymie should stay connected to his chinese heritage. he obviously didn't care THAT much, and sheila wasn't really listening, because these two later separate hymie from family who DO want him (tommy and his mother) to participate in this fanciful idea.

sheila is, after that, somehow surprised to learn she feels lonely again! she desperately seeks out community however she can - this time in latching onto being 1/32nd menominee after taking a DNA test (as per my memory?) - there's not really anything wrong with wanting to know more about a part of your heritage, and if she'd been more normal about this, who would've fucking cared?

carl doing a crappy imitation of black culture while he believes himself to be 1/8th black is the closest comparison here. sure, sheila also might've really identified as native at that point, maybe she meant well! however, sheila is a grown adult, who tries to build this connection through children. carl, is, however fourteen years old, and he tries to get involved in black culture by hanging out with and emulating older people, befriending and protecting nick, and failing pretty embarrassingly at getting a date. even so, carl's behavior is cringeworthy enough to get commented on by pretty much everyone in the show.

and sheila's attempts to adopt these random children are the culmination of her "cute little baby" obsession - it doesn't escape my notice that she barely pays attention to the oldest (gary?) and focuses heavily on a little girl - and her desperation to find community. she again ignores frank's right to consent or not (and.. the legality of bigamy) to marry frank solely to acquire cute little kids, and, by her hope, a connection and real reason to be involved in a tight knit community.

one of the points at which joan cusacks acting really sticks out to me is when she's at the hearing in hopes of approval for her adoption, and she's sort of playing hard at being "in" group - to boost her chances at getting approved adoption, and because she really, really wants to be "in". she kind of believes she's getting there until the council start to talk to each other in menominee which she, of course, has no clue at the beginning of how to understand. they're just speaking in their own language, but she feels an acute sense of exclusion. when they conclude and simply say "no"- no explanation offered, because why bother to explain to someone who is not going to get it - she has this devastation on her face, because she realizes she was not going to be "in" anyway, no matter what.

when it comes to these kids, yeah, they may have wanted to live with her. but they're kids! they like wifi, and cool snacks, and tv. children deserve a lot more respect and to be trusted, but they also can't understand why it'd be harmful to grow up in a white christian household.

sheila reattaches herself to frank pretty aggressively in response to her new, new, new, old loneliness. she again views someone's daughter as a peer (or adversary) and not a daughter - though with sammi, at least she's a grownup with boundary issues.

sheila's writing is less compelling to me after this, but that might just be because when she really really does try to adopt these kids, i kind of blacked out from rage, and couldn't stand to really look at her. in my rewatch i might pick up on more in s5. she does get pretty involved in the gentrification plotline, though, which is well written, but super difficult for me to look at directly (high fives for anyone who will never afford a house in their hometown) i really hope that her independent sheila life will give her some self confidence by herself, so she'll feel better AND stop twisting herself into these convoluted choices and taking really bizarre kinds of advantage of people in an effort to find ANY community. but idk maybe she'll become a scientologist or something. who really knows

[iammadelinepod]

Canada Day is still such a problematic thing. Unless and until we treat first Nation communities with respect and inclusion and basic human rights supports and address race bias and the amplification that first Nation women experience on gender bias plus disabled first Nation person's experience over and above the usual nonsense (IE how with many disenfranchised and discriminated upon diseases like long viral diseases these communities are not even getting diagnosed). Also lgbtqia+ and two spirit first Nations experience an exponential amount of discrimination over and above the usual horror.

We have not yet met the bar of adequate on how we treat our first nation communities. The lack of addressing of gender, race, disability and disease bias within Canada must be recognized as being far over and above that difficulty for first Nation communities as well as people of color particularly, women of color.

It is nice to celebrate a long weekend, Canada has done some good things, but we think we're farther along our human rights accomplishments journey than we are. We have a long way to go. Until we do a Country-Wide *putting on of our big person underpants* and addressing bias in all of its forms within the education, bureaucratic, governmental, legislative, and corporate systems, I don't see how any of this changes, ever.

What's happening to me, the death March off a cliff of gender and disease bias is beyond horrific. But even in the midst of the difficulties I'm experiencing I can only think wow, how much harder it must be for racial discrimination on top of that especially for our first nation communities

The first 5 episodes of the podcast give you a synopsis of what's happening to me. And if you choose to listen remember how much worse it is for those POC communities (I'm not sure it's letting me properly post it via the link feature in Tumblr so I guess you'll have to copy and paste it if that's not clickable) https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/i-am-madeline/episodes/Ep--1---How-do-you-solve-a-problem-e110jks

Here's the latest episode, *Queen Of The Cranky Arses* https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/i-am-madeline/episodes/Queen-Of-The-Cranky-Arses-e2lbfaj

The GoFundMe has most of the news media article links and updates if you need more information(I think I put them in the pinned post of this tumbler as well. But honestly I'm so tired I can't remember). If you decide you'd like to donate the media pieces have links to the GoFundMe so you know that it's for real and it's me.

(but here's the last article for convenience sake https://ricochet.media/en/3991/Canada-MAID-policy-death-by-poverty )

https://gofund.me/cff39173

[yeastinfectionvale]

OKAY so kind of part right. Naomi doesn't drive anymore, but she does work as an engineer with Williams. Her father drove rally cars in the 90s, before he lost his hand in a horrific accident. Despite this Naomi was raised around cars (her mother was a mechanic), and fell in love with driving and karting, though her dad always warned her against that life since it, by his own admission, made him absolutely miserable before permanently disabling him. She showed great promise, though, and her parents wanted to support her through it all, so long as she always aimed for better than her best.

She and Suki drove in f2 together, usually ending up vying for first place against each other. Naomi kept his advances of friendship at arms length for a long time, worried it would distract her from her father-given mission. She was a reserve driver for Alpine for a time, driving her first and last f1 race in Monaco in 2022. Eventually, she and Suki got closer, since Suki is Not one to give up trying to be friends with people, and she really did feel quite lonely. Their friendship was pretty well publicised, and for a long time, people speculated they were dating. It was racing against her that Suki had his big accident, and she witnessed the whole thing, ending up striking his car and having her own accident which, although overshadowed by the more dramatic injury served to her friend, put her out of commission for the foreseeable future.

Suki did assume she wouldn't want to be friends with him after, but she turned mostly to him for comfort. She decided herself after watching what had happened to her friend, what had happened to her, and what happened to her dad, that she just wasnt willing to risk it, especially since she, at that time, believed her chances of ever getting into f1 were extremely low, deciding instead to go to university to study engineering and help out around races for some experience. Her parents were extremely disappointed, and her father particularly blamed Suki for a while, refusing to speak to him and being generally bitter. It took some talking to from Naomi to get him to come around.

In the wake of the accident, Naomi and Suki spent a LOT of time together, and as Suki recovered and went back to driving, he was offered a place driving for Aston Martin, and their supposed relationship ended up even more publicised. With Suki not particularly wanting to stunt his growth by coming out, he just went with the lie and the two of them fake dated for basically the entirety of his rookie season. Which is funny because tho the media ate it up, literally any queer person who had ever seen Suki in person would say That Boy Does Not Like Women.

Anyways here are some pictures I've invented of her

Also she's from London. Do with that info what you will

OOOOOOH RALLY DAD (GROUP B?) THATS SO COOL. OH CHOOSING TO LEAVE RACING AND STUDY MUST HAVE BEEN A TOUGHT DECISION TO MAKE WOW. GOD THE F2 ACCIDENT MUST HAVE SHAKEN HER BADLY. THE FAKE DATING BIT IM CRYING OOOF.

Oooh I think what September was to Suki, Naomi might be to Mina (minus the whole toxic yaoi hehehe). But the most important thing

ANOTHER LONDONER (Mina is buzzing). Where in London???

[tgirldomme]

this isn’t me hornyposting! just as a warning

TW: discussion of EDs.

do your know what’s beyond depressing? the prevalence of disordered eating and restricting in the trans community, particularly for tgirls but in general also

obviously this is so upsetting because of how horrific eating disorders are, and how body dysmorphia can bury into your subconscious and make gender dysphoria even worse.

but a decidedly less important, but still saddening, consequence of this is how it’s impacted trans beauty standards, and therefore the average trans body people see online - particularly in contrast to the average trans body IRL.

90% of trans people you see online will be white, skinny and able-bodied - yet in real life, the beauty of transness is how beautifully diverse we are from one another. a high proportion of trans people irl are disabled, but you certainly wouldn’t see that from online trans spaces. BIPOC trans people are also sorely underrepresented - when was the last time you saw a black trans woman, or Asian enby, or any non-white person at the top of a trans subreddit.

but i think the hiding of plus size trans bodies is particularly depressing because of how it enables disordered eating and thinking - no one is going to develop a disability, or change race, because of a lack of representation, but i know plenty of gorgeous plus size trannies who’ve felt immense external pressure to get skinnier.

its so upsetting that a diverse community like our own seems to (inadvertently or otherwise) champion a tiny subset of our population, which in turn creates a harmful (and, for many, unachievable) beauty standard.

anyways rant over back to hornyposting

[korya-elana]

I'm sorry but quite literally 'crippling anxiety' is EXTREMELY ABLEIST... It is grammatically correct and makes sense in the English language. But it is soooooo horrifically ableist as someone who is crippled and struggles with physical disabilities and has been called cripple and such, do NOT use that word. It is a SLUR. People have DIED for being cripples. Not just eugenics but because people didn't care to create safety measures, procedures, etc for disabled people. People have been harmed and hurt and generationally put at disadvantages. People have been discriminated immensely for being crippled. I say cripple because I am cripple but it has MEDICAL AND HISTORICAL WEIGHT. Using it outside of it's medical context, while grammatically correct, is horrifically ableist and harmful. "R*tarded' is also 'english language correct' but we do not SAY IT because it is ableist. So is paralyzing, blind, deaf, etc. These words became acceptable in the English language because of the rampant ableism that nobody cares to stop. CONTINUING to use these words only makes things worse and further harms minorities. Please do not use these words. As someone has multiple physical disabilities, do not take our terms out of what they ORIGINALLY* were.

*as in paralyzed used to ONLY mean medically paralyzed. But because of ableism and people stealing the term, it is societally and language appropriate to use it in other contexts. BUT it was stolen and therefore is not ethical to use. And it CONTINUES to harm people.

There used to only be the medical definitions of these words. Ableism is what allowed them to be added to normal vocabulary. Please do not continue to use them. "Paralyzing anxiety" should be overwhelming anxiety, crushing anxiety, etc. "Crippling depression" should be debilitating depression. "Task paralysis" should be executive dysfunction, etc. People who continue to use these words incorrectly need to understand they are participating in SERIOUS HARM.

Listen to me, as a cripple speaking. Calling it 'crippling x' is ableist, harmful, and needs to stop.

Sorry to get so off track but this is actually a huge problem for us.

Anyway, as for finding new terms. I would suggest something like being a 'unit' or being a 'complex' being a 'organization' and 'institution', etc. Literally any term that doesn't already have medical weight, context, and historical usage. like being an 'endogenic unit' instead of 'endogenic system'. the suffix -genic would refer to plurality and not systemhood because systems can only form traumagenically but plurality has multiple ways.

The problem between pro and anti endos isn't really the concept of plurality it's the language you are using/appropriating.

Hey now. Ease up. I straight up said that I am a cripple. As a cripple, when using it in a medical context, it is a reclaimed slur. I call myself a cripple all the time and that is my right as a physically disabled person. Outside of a medical context, like stating student debt is crippling our nation, is not regarded as a slur because it's using one of the non-medical definitions. English, as a language, has multiple meanings to almost every single word and cannot be judged by one definition alone. That's just how language works.

As I stated earlier, I don't believe we'll ever agree on the terminology due to your heavy medicalization usage. We can agree to disagree with that and move along. It wasn't even my original point.

I do enjoy seeing more and more Systems straying from using "System" in their collective names. I've really enjoyed seeing things like "[X] Collective" or like you said, unit. The problem with these terms is that they can't be used as a blanket term for everyone. Even CDDs have used these alternate terms. But if someone asks "Are you a System or a singlet?", particularly in psychology settings, what are endogenics supposed to say?

[system-of-a-feather]

Hi, as my designated bird professional i have a bird related question, in particular if you know any tips or tactics on how to approach people in public to get them to stop feeding ducks and other birds?

bc i was in a park yesterday with some friends and a stranger sat down next to us and started throwing bread (and fries??!) at the birds; which is not only prohibited but we could directly see why, bc they then started swarming us too and one of the bigger seagulls got so greedy that it bit a smaller one in the neck and wouldnt let go for a while(?!?) it was kind of scary situation and i was very uncomfortable and wanted to say something but i... didnt ;_; we just got up and left and i still feel bad about it so i wanted to ask if you maybe had some... tips and tricks so i can prepare in case something like that happens again :D

As the resident hand-thrower over some of this stuff, yep I do XD Im just gonna ramble on about this topic some and give some tid bits about why you don't do that stuff usually.

I will admit, the amount I stress it personally varies depending on what food they are feeding, how much they are feeding, and what species they are feeding. In all cases it is technically (and for valid reason) illegal cause the idea is that it can 1) create dependence on humans 2) cause them to become too comfortable with humans which can result in them "attacking" or being perceived as attacking humans which can end up with humans calling to have them killed 3) if not eaten, the food (particularly bread) can rot in the environment and make it unhealthy for them to live in 4) for migratory species it can encourage them to skip migration which can potentially fuck up population dynamics

So as a disclaimer, I tend to "care less" if the birds fed are birds that don't tend to migrate as much / the damage is done (mallards, canada geese, any released domestic ducks and geese, any non-native ducks and geese that were likely also released from farms) as it doesn't really harm them anymore than they already are so long as the feed stuff is actually good for them. By "care less" I mostly mean "don't feel that bad about not saying something."

That said, I do actually support feeding waterfowl In Minecraft that are KNOWN to have been released from domestic settings occasionally - especially if theyve been recently dropped off - as a means of kinda helping them wean off of human care and into natural foraging. But again, only if you KNOW they were released into parks and only if you can reliably feed ONLY them. (usually my go to for this is if they are non-native domestic ducks and they - without hesitation - eat from your hands, its probably safe to say they were raised on a farm or in a domestic setting; this is pretty helpful for not feeding waterfowl that weren't released like this too because even the imprinted ones will be hesitant to eat directly from the hand imo)

If any food is given to any waterfowl species, bread and processed high carb foods are horrible for them and can directly cause horrific long term disabilities if they are fed too much bread. The two largest conditions they tend to develop are these things called "Angel Wings" which - due to poor nutrition - the feathers around the wings grow back in incorrectly and make their wings practically useless; I'm sure I don't need to explain why thats horrible for a bird. Additionally, when given too much bread, you tend to get these obese and misshapen waterfowl that become so heavy in the rump that they are also completely unable to fly (you can see in the right image how much the rump sags).

Both of these can be relatively difficult to rehabilitate and medically treat and thus a lot of these birds are either put down or - if they are lucky - sent to a sanctuary.

Admittedly, a large portion of people feeding bread and other unhealthy foods often know that its illegal and that they shouldn't and do so anyways, so I will say most of the time you confront them, they will get awkward and leave for a bit but theyll likely come back again if you just tell them no.

Usually my go to is to kind of try to find a way to kindly bring it up and the negative affects (usually talking about angel wings is and showing it to them and explaining the long term affects of angel wings is one of the more visceral things that kinda make some of the better people go "oh maybe I shouldnt do this" as the other points tend to be a lot more of a concept than a real thing to them) and deeply suggest that if they care for the waterfowl to Not Feed them Bread

And a lot of them still want the attention and experience of feeding the ducks, which is something you can't really convince people against doing if Angel Wings doesn't deter them, so when I realize its probably that case, I usually just go "if you HAVE to feed them, please feed them something more nutritious for them like peas, cut leafy greens, grapes, oats, and cracked corn.

Most of the time, I have to settle with damage control because people are stubborn.

That said I still do tend to try

As for why french fries are unhealthy and bad to feed...

[thessalian]

Thess vs Putting Off the Offputting

I am going to go to bed in a minute. I just don't want to.

It's not that I'm not tired. Oh no. I am fucking exhausted. Thing is ... if I go to bed, then I will wake up and it will be tomorrow and I will have to do more overtime and it will be hell. I mean, I know that's going to happen anyway and I should face it well-rested, but ... I'm just struggling to face the whole concept of "another week of overtime".

Also, admittedly, there's other sources of stress. The Conservative Party conference is going on, and the Tories are ... terrifying this year. Suella Braverman is referring to the Human Rights Act as "the Criminal Rights Act" and yelling about how "multiculturalism has failed" (lady ... you are distinctly Not White. Could you please not be such a boomerang bigot for five minutes?) and it's just awful. Not to mention the health secretary talking about "bringing sex-specific language back to the NHS", which basically means not letting trans women onto women's wards - mostly this is discussing patients, but there's enough of a thing about how "NHS staff should not declare their pronouns to each new patient". There's a whole bunch of transphobic "we know what a woman is" bullshit and then it comes back to Suella Braverman, saying that people who are facing "discrimination" over their sexuality or gender presentation are not valid asylum-seekers. Yes, even including people from countries who will actively imprison, torture, or execute people for being in any way queer.

The country I live in is ugly as hell, and I don't feel safe here, but not only do I have to live in it, but I have to deal with it while disabled, all the while watching every bit of safety I might have here be stripped away - as a queer person, as a disabled person, and yes, as an immigrant. I may have some privilege because white, but that didn't work for the Polish people who used to live here until they became Brexit scapegoats. This place gets more bigoted and awful by the day, and trying to focus on the day-to-day doesn't help, particularly not when I'm consistently pulling overtime that is not recommended for my level of disability because our office runs horrifically understaffed. So, yeah, the idea of getting up and repeating the whole mess of overtime, interspersed with seeing what horrors the current government is going to try to force into practice before they're finally forced to hold a general election ... it's offputting.

But seven former Bioware employees are suing Bioware after Bioware laid them off the other month and entirely shafted them on severance pay. So something might be going right for someone, somewhere. Something needs to help me get to sleep at night...

[beardedmrbean]

Operators of four New York nursing homes siphoned more than $83 million in Medicare and Medicaid funding to line their own pockets — all while allowing residents to live under horrific conditions, including letting them sit for hours in their own filth, state Attorney General Letitia James alleges in a new lawsuit.

Kenneth Rozenberg and Daryl Hagler, the co-owners of Centers Health Care, pilfered the government cash meant for the care of nursing home residents at four facilities in the Empire State, according to the AG’s suit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court Wednesday.

Going back as early as 2013, Rozenberg and Hagler weaved a complex web involving networks of other corporations and fraudulent transactions to enrich themselves, their family members and other business associates, the filing claims.

The scheme left their facilities were chronically understaffed, resulting in the widespread neglect of elderly residents who were forced to remain in their own urine and feces for hours, were allowed to become dehydrated and malnourished and whose wounds were left to fester, the suit alleges.

And while these problems had been going on for a while before the pandemic, when COVID-19 struck the struggling facilities collapsed — with 400 residents of all four homes dying from the virus in 2020, James claimed.

The facilities included the Beth Abraham Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in the Bronx; the Buffalo Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing; Holliswood Center for Rehabilitation and Healthcare in Queens and Martine Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in Westchester.

One Beth Abraham Center resident broke her hip in October 2020 after falling multiple times when taking herself to the bathroom when her calls for assistance went unanswered, the AG claimed.

Another woman at the Buffalo center wasn’t evaluated despite taking a spill from her bed and when her daughter visited, she found her mother unconscious. The elderly woman was later diagnosed with a brain bleed, according to the suit.

In one particularly egregious case, a man at Martine Center died of sepsis because his bed sores weren’t properly cared for and they turned into ulcers, James alleged.

James wants a judge to stop the homes from being able to take on any new residents until they hire proper amounts of staffing.

The AG also called for monitors to be put in place to oversee the financial and healthcare at the facilities and is seeking for the defendants to return the $83 million they allegedly embezzled.

“The owners of Centers Health Care allegedly used these four nursing homes — and the vulnerable New Yorkers who lived there — to extract millions of dollars for their personal use, leading to elderly residents and those with disabilities suffering unconscionable pain, neglect, degradation, and even death,” James said in a statement.

“Rather than honor their legal duty to residents to provide the highest possible quality of life, Centers leadership and their associates seized every opportunity to put personal profit over resident care,” James alleged.

Jeff Jacomowitz, a spokesperson with Centers Health Care, denied the allegations and vowed to fight the case in court.

“Centers Health Care prides itself on its commitment to patient care,” Jacomowitz said. “Centers denies the New York Attorney General’s allegations wholeheartedly and attempted to resolve this matter out of court.”

“We will fight these spurious claims with the facts on our side.”

The AG has filed three other similar lawsuit against nursing homes including another that accused the owners of the Village of Orleans Health and Rehabilitation Center in Albion of stealing $18 million and leaving residents in inhumane conditions.

_______________

Recommend against opening the link, lots of pics and they're gross

[millenianthemums]

random thought, but lately i’ve been so bummed out by the way society at large, particularly christian culture, seems to believe that anyone who is particularly successful or particularly unfortunate must have done something to “deserve” it. it seems like the root of a lot of horrific abuse toward disabled, traumatized, and low-income people, and it’s probably the main reason people still think billionaires are hard workers.

i understand that the idea that horrible things can happen to anyone, at any time, no matter how good of a person they are, is a really scary thought. it definitely scares me. but trying to reduce that fear by pretending that every horrible or wonderful thing that happens randomly is actually metaphysical justice throws so many people who are already suffering under the bus and makes their lives so much harder. just leave people alone and stop making horrible assumptions about their lives just because they’re suffering.

[holdharmonysacred]

I keep seeing a really weird uptick in posts dunking on SU discourse shit and arguing that the show never did anything wrong, and I think that’s pretty unfair to both the actual complaints being made and SU itself, you don’t do a show good by acting like all criticism of it is inherently invalid. It usually happens in the context of shitty old “UGH people can’t handle MORAL COMPLEXITY” (read: Diamonds discourse), so I think it’s worth saying:

The problem with the Diamonds is at the end of the day, they are a victim of not just mechanical issues like bad writing and poor time management, but of horrifically clashing themes and metaphors. The Diamonds are introduced as metaphors for a whole host of real-world oppressive authorities - they are queerphobes, they’re racist, they hate disabled gems, they run a caste system that enslaves people, they’re colonizers who destroy other planets - and the show commits to these metaphors onscreen in detail for most of the series. The Crystal Gems fighting against the Diamonds is a metaphor for activism and resistance against real-world oppression, like Garnet’s entire thing being a metaphor for the fight for gay rights. And this is the metaphor that a lot of SU’s fanbase signed up for in the first place, particularly with the show’s hype as a progressive piece of media, which caused some problems when the show just up and yeeted the whole thing into the garbage can in the latter half of season 5 and swerved into “Actually the whole show was a metaphor for reconciling with shitty bio family members the whole time". Had the show committed only to the themes of family from the start, rather than hamming up “and the diamonds are oppressive tyrants who hate marginalized people” for basically the whole series, the firestorm when the Diamonds got redeemed at the end probably wouldn’t have been as bad because the audience wouldn’t have spent the past several years of watching getting primed for “the Diamonds are tyrants and metaphors for real-world oppressors”. By committing to these clashing metaphors though, the show blundered into an end message of “If you want to end homophobia, activism isn’t the solution, you should instead try to convince your homophobic grandma to Just Stop Being Homophobic, and she’ll magically change her mind! Also if you instead cut ties with your homophobic grandma due to said homophobia, you’re a baaaaaaad person”, and that is what actually set people off. (It also doesn’t help that the show had the bad luck of airing during a time in history were all the shit it was using as metaphors was getting way way worse IRL, and the audience was growing keenly aware of just how much “just talk to bigots to make them stop being bigoted” does not work).

How could they have avoided all of this? I have no fucking idea. Honestly I think the thematic core might’ve been a time bomb waiting to go off regardless, because marketing a message of “you should reconcile with your shitty family members!” to a queer audience when more often than not said audience has very good reasons to cut ties with their own shitty family members is just setting yourself up for failure. I do think though that if the crew was that set on the family themes, they shouldn’t have committed as hard to “the Diamonds as oppressors” as they did, because it really is a little silly to have, say, the conclusion of Peridot’s arc be “You cannot simply talk Yellow Diamond out of doing colonialist, oppressive bullshit, you have to fight back”, only for the end of the series to do a 180-degree turn and say “Actually you can talk Yellow Diamond out of doing colonialist, oppressive bullshit!”.

[laocommunity]

Heroic Actions of Bystanders: How They Helped Overpower the Suspect Behind Japan's Deadly Shooting and Stabbing Rampage

Heroic Actions of Bystanders: How They Helped Overpower the Suspect Behind Japan's Deadly Shooting and Stabbing Rampage Heroic Actions of Bystanders: How They Helped Overpower the Suspect Behind Japan's Deadly Shooting and Stabbing Rampage On July 26, 2019, a deadly rampage in Japan left 35-year old Satoshi Uematsu with 19 dead and 26 injured in one of Japan's worst mass killings. However, the inspiring response of Japanese citizens helped play a significant role in neutralizing the attacker and limiting the tragedy's scope. The attack At around 2:30 a.m., Satoshi Uematsu, a former employee at the care home, broke into the facility and gruesomely killed 19 disabled residents as they slept. He turned himself in at a nearby police station shortly after, admitting his crime and presenting a bag of knives. The heroic response The killer turned himself in, presenting little resistance. Still, it was the courage and swift decision-making of local law enforcement and citizens that helped stop the attacker. A young female caretaker called the police after Uematsu showed her images of the killing on his phone, prompting immediate action. Numerous citizens who heard about the incident that morning also showed up at the care home to show their support, providing first aid and helping the victims escape. One particularly significant example of bravery came from a 77-year-old man named Kiyoshi Matsuda. Matsuda, who lived near the care home and worked part-time at a nearby factory, heard the sounds of screaming coming from the facility. Without hesitation, he rushed to the home despite the risk to his own life. He eventually encountered the killer on the ground and helped hold him down until police arrived. Another brave individual was Ryo Hasegawa, a 23-year-old firefighter who had just finished his nightshift and was on his way home. Upon hearing of the attack, he immediately turned back and rushed to the scene. Arriving well ahead of the police, he helped evacuate those in the building still alive and assisted the critically injured until additional medical care was available. How Their Actions Helped The courage and quick response of Japanese citizens played a crucial role in neutralizing the attacker. Their actions helped provide support to the victims, which would have been in peril due to the killer's violent intentions and the rapidly flowing reports of the massacre. Moreover, it helped limit the number of casualties, allowing for a better recovery and healing process for the community. Conclusion The horrific tragedy that occurred in Japan in 2019 was shocking and left many wondering how something like this could happen. Still, it is the brave actions of the Japanese citizens that provide hope and bring light to the situation's darkness. The heroics of the many residents and first responders are an excellent example of how, in a world where negative narratives dominate news cycles, everyday people have the power to act for good. By highlighting these heroic bystanders' deeds, we can recognize the courage and positive impact that everyday people can have in emergencies and personal crises alike. References - "Heroism: How everyday people helped stop a killer in Japan" (CNN) - "Japan stabbing: what we know about the attack on the Care home and the victims" (The Guardian) #NEWS Read the full article

[clouds-of-wings]

As a disabled person who has firsthand experience with medical prejudice and neglect for being disabled, and who has been put in dangerous situations by doctors who knew their actions (or lack of action) would unnecessarily endanger me even to the point of death, and who knows of many other disabled people with the same experiences, please do not overestimate the good will of doctors and the medical community. Please listen to the severely disabled when we say that the MAID expansion will be abused. We know this because we are already abused. I know it's weird that people who go into the medical field often hate the disabled but it's true. The ableism is horrific.

No, doctors won't be allowed to literally directly kill their patients. That's not the concern. I'm not gonna write an essay on it because I'm confident that, if this issue is of concern to you, you'll come across explanations of why people are concerned. Please keep this in mind.

I assume this ask is from the same person as the other one, I believe what you're saying about the medical field (it's not particularly weird to me, some people love abusing power and go into fields where they'll have power over vulnerable people) and don't really have anything to add apart from what I said in response to the other one.

[fizzycrip]

it feels like you can hardly go a week or two without hearing yet another story of airlines failing disabled flyers.

most recently is the story of gabrielle assouline, who was not properly warned that the jet bridge to a southwest airline plane was inaccessible to her wheelchair, resulting in injury and paralysis.

staff was not adequately trained on how to provide assistance to wheelchair users, and failed to warn of obstacles on the jet bridge, even after her meticulous planning alongside the airline to ensure that all parts of her trip would be accessible.

it’s sad to say that i am hardly surprised by incidents like these in the news cycle. the airline industry has a long history with disabled passengers facing harassment, violation, and injury on their flights, and southwest airlines certainly does not deserve for this story to go unheard.

i am going to link her gofundme, which is raising funds for her recovery and rehabilitation. please spread the word!!

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-gaby-recover-after-horrific-accident