#cognitohazards are incredibly yes

[haikyuupaladin]

TLDR; Writing and joking about disabilities as stemming from a supernatural source (which includes SCPs) is an ableist trope that should be avoided, as it either trivializes or demonizes disabilities.

So I’ve seen some posts both recently and in the past from the SCP fandom joking that photosensitive epilepsy is actually just the SCP cognitohazards being real. I know no harm is meant by these posts, but it got me thinking about how people aren’t aware of how disability being treated as though it’s from a supernatural source is ableist, or maybe people aren’t aware that it’s a generic ableist trope, not just specific supernatural sources, or don’t realize that SCPs count as a supernatural source. But this post is going to focus on why disability stemming from supernatural sources should be avoided. I will be talking about this from the perspective of someone with epilepsy, but I’m trying to keep the discussion somewhat general to disability as a whole.

There are two general versions of disability stemming from a supernatural source in my experience. There’s the “possession/curse” type of supernatural source, and then there’s the “psychic/superpowers” type of source. Both of these sources are harmful in their own way. Both of these tropes should be avoided.

The possession/curse source of disability should be avoided because it sends the message “you’re not actually sick or disabled. You’re just a bad person and this is your punishment, and if you could just rid of all the impure evil in you you’d get better. This could’ve all been avoided if you’d simply been smarter and made better choices. You deserve this.” This is also what people are accidentally or purposefully implying when they suggest religious methods of any kind to treat or cure a disability. It turns disabled people into villains in the eyes of the audience, or even if the curse isn’t portrayed as their fault, it usually ends up contributing to stigma around medical treatment, as it can never be aided by actual medical treatments in these stories, because it’s not actually a medical condition.

Psychic/superpower sources on a surface level seem like they should be less harmful to most people. But the issue here is that it often erases the struggles of the disability in exchange for the powers or treats the powers as more beneficial than the drawbacks of the disability. The disability also tends to go away once they understand that they have powers. This makes it harder for real people to get others to treat their struggles seriously.

And I know people think that people don’t actually believe that the sources of disabilities could be supernatural in the way it’s used in fiction. But while I’ve been lucky to never have these uses against me personally, I’ve seen others in the epilepsy community who have had to explain to people that they’re not possessed. I’ve seen people in the disability community have to explain that their disability doesn’t come with superpowers, or that yes, their symptoms actually are that bad to deal with and no, there’s no silver lining to having those symptoms. People believe this stuff, and it’s harmful to perpetuate these ideas by using these tropes.

Also, one more problem with this trope as a whole, though somewhat less important than all of the above, is that it erases representation. “Oh, you thought this character had epilepsy? No, sorry, they’re just psychic. Oh you thought this other character had epilepsy too? Sorry, no, they were possessed. We just used your symptoms to convey these things because we thought it was cool/looked dramatic/mysterious.”

Please please please, reconsider using these tropes, they can be incredibly harmful.

[leonstamatis]

for a long time i didn't know about arturo & teddy. so in my brain arturo and malik were dating and that was just kind of a background thing for a while when i was writing the garages. i still think they're fun i think the catboy deserves a cognitohazard partner and the cognitohazard deserves a catboy bf

listen. yes. you’re so right. that thing about cats staring into space and being able to see ghosts but it’s malik and the cognitohazard boyfriend. this is incredible. thank you for sharing.

[pchjun]

Item: SCP-9148

Class : Esoteric / Narative

Special Containment Procedures : A Document containing SCP-9148-C shall be distributed into various webnovel sites, with standard rates and proper translation of SCP-9148-C shall be made as well. SCP-9148-C is to be distributed and spread naturally through the internet, and no personnel is to interfere, change and delete the document containing SCP-9148-C without clearance of all the 05 council. All personnel of all clearance level are encouraged to read SCP-9148-C in their own time. With agreement of SCP-9148-A and SCP-9148-B, The Foundation will also distribute SCP-9148-C into other worldlines as well with the help of The Foundation's own reality transportation devices.

Item Description: SCP-9148 is separated into four : 9148-A, 9148-B, 9148-C, and SCP-9148-D. SCP-9148-A is a adult human male of Korean heritage that stands 6'1 tall, the name of SCP-9148-A claims to be his is Yoo Joonghyuk. SCP-9148-A shows an incredible strength, speed and agility with anomalous properties that when activated can extract information and detect lies from the effected personnel. SCP-9148-B is a young humanoid female that stands at 5'0 tall with a single horn protruding the the forehead. SCP-9148-B shows reality bending anomalous properties of varying degrees. The name that SCP-9148-B claims is Biyoo. SCP-9148-C is document of a webnovel containing what SCP-9148-B claims to be a message for her father, SCP-9148-D made by SCP-9148-A's creator. SCP-9148-D is human of omniscient knowledge of SCP-9148-A and SCP-9148-B worldlines, whose soul that has been fragmented and scattered into various other worldlines.

Addendum 1 : SCP-9148-A and SCP-9148-B are discovered in South Korea, [REDACTED] when their presence are notified at Site-[REDACTED] through a reality anchor malfunctioning die to their presence. At first contact, SCP-9148-A creates a plasma barrier from an unknown source of power, and attacks the MTFs sent in to take them into Foundation custody.

The following transcript is an interview with SCP-9148-A with Dr. Lim

Dr. Lim, : Hello, I am Dr. Lim and I'm your interviewer for this evening

9148-A : Get straight to the point, why am I here? I'm wasting precious time.

Dr. Lim : Ah not much of a small talker eh? That's quite alright, so let's just get straight to it then. Would you say that you pose a threat to the normalcy of this world?

9154-A:... No. I do not have any qualms in staying in this world line for long, me and Biyoo are just here to spread his story so that he will come back to us.

Dr. Lim : he? Who's he?

SCP-9148-A pauses for a while.

9154-A :...my Life and Death Companion.

Dr. Lim scribbles down onto his notes

Dr. Lim : Would you say that SCP-9148-B's - or as you call her, Biyoo- is your charge at the moment?

9154-A : yes.

Dr. Lim: Why must you spread the document containing cognitohazards into this world? Why couldn't you find your Life and Death Companion yourself?

9154-A :... That bastard is a reader. He only reads what he wants to read and is too stubborn for only both of us to find his fragmented soul on every worldline. We have tried to get him back once.

9154-A : It failed. This is our only attempt to get him back.

Dr. Lim : I see... Let's say, if we help you spread this SCP-9148-C, what will we gain?

9154-A : You may prevent the apocalypse from happening.

Dr. Lim's back sat straightened after the comment.

Dr. Lim: could you please elaborate on what you said?

9154-A : My Life and Death Companion, is a god, a god that dreams of what he reads. His dreams will become a reality in another worldline, and he read the story that i lived through. He sacrificed himself to maintain the passage of time of our worldline.

Dr. Lim : and if he does dream of SCP-9148-C?

9154-A : he will dream of the ending of his own story, and not mine's.

Dr. Lim : and your story is?

9154-A :... An apocalyptic one. Of which will turn this world into ruins.

Dr. Lim writes down some notes.

Dr. Lim : If we help spread SCP-9148-C, in other worldlines will it prevent the other worldlines from being destroyed?

9154-A : Yes.

End of transcript.

Additional Notice : SCP-9148-D is to NOT be tracked down and contained due to it's fragile nature.

[benevolentwanderer]

I am so, so fucking tired of the idea that the most important thing in the world is the protection of children from cognitohazards

Like, as a creator, you need to put the work in to make your cognitohazardous (NSFW, obviously triggering, nuanced subject, etc.) content avoidable. (I do it by not fucking posting it, or authoring things for nsfw venues under a different pseudonym, or putting it behind built-in age-blocks (ex. 18+ markers that lock posts behind a wall)) But, sometimes, that isn’t gonna work anyway. 

Kids are curious. They poke their noses everywhere. It’s not on us when there’s not someone to stop them from bypassing security. It’s the same basic idea behind saying that someone with a fence that says “no trespassing” and an in-ground swimming pool is at fault if a kid climbs the fence in the middle of night when everyone’s asleep and drowns.

Comparing that to someone like, god, like the Ren and Stimpy guy.... that’s like saying the pool owner in our last example is the same as one who invites the kid into their home, drags them to the pool, and then holds their head under while they struggle to death. Those two things are not even vaguely comparable. 

How could you. How could you ever say something like that. How could you make light of child abuse like that.

I am going to skip the story of the first time I accidentally read a book with a sex scene. (It was very brief; in The White Dragon, all of about a paragraph long.) Instead, I will tell you about the time that happened when I was perhaps 11 or 12, which had a long-lasting and chilling effect on my self-image. I checked out a book from the Middle School library - a new book, preread and curated by the librarians, set in the golden age of the Middle East - and halfway through, discovered a passage where a girl panicked over the integrity of her hymen after sex. For years afterwards, every time I thought about that general part of my body, I remembered that.

Was the librarian wrong for shelving it at a middle school? Perhaps. It was a book that would have been passable for a 14-year old, fine for a 15-year old. Did it cause me longterm harm? Well... yes. But! I’m also a transman, with moderate to heavy neurological dysphoria. I was already uncomfortable with that part of my body, I just didn’t know why, and that book gave me a (wrong) reason for my angst. I turned out fine, ultimately.

Who knows. Maybe at some point I was a CSA victim, and my head is all fucked up, and that’s why I don’t particularly care how people choose to spend their sexual fantasy time, and don’t think it leaks into their work in ways that will hurt children when there’s an entire board of people checking over episodes of a cartoon for inappropriate content, and those incredible failsafes that are supposed to be protecting kids don’t actually do anything at all.

But I also think that treating someone as fucked-in-the-head because they have a different perspective than you is.... hm.