#it's a pretty good representation of internalised ableism

[ferryfoam]

Would you guys burn me at the stake if I say that I think Chrysalis is actually a really important insight into Julian's character and his view on his own life and the people around him at the time it takes place. It's an episode that doesn't hold up today cause of the very ableist writing and kind of shitty moral but I think it's necessary that it's there and also occurs at the time it does in the show

I'll have a more insightful analysis on it one day cause I really want to talk about it (I want to make better researched ds9 analyses with actual clips from the show and whatnot instead of just vaguely referencing events from memory that could be completely wrong but unfortunately I do not have the time to be doing all of that. I would really like to in the future though)

[44-lost-at-sea-ucjau-44]

Hey, for all you Chonny MaJash fans that headcanon Heart as photophobic, I thought I'd make this post as someone with chronic photophobia that's like actually bad enough that it's considered a disability on like. Advice on how to write/portray photophobia and whatnot

I'd appreciate it if you reblogged this 🙏 it's a pretty easy disability to get right and most of you definitely do but… not all of you

If you can just reblogging this for any character with photophobia is good! 👍 that can be useful for peoples as there's like a stunning lack of information on this out there

First off, disclaimer:

There is literally NOTHING wrong with making like, supernatural or animalistic photophobia. Can't do light cos you're a shadow creature? Cool. Can't look at like bc you're an olm with sensitive eyes-under-skin? Awesome.

Photophobia is much more commonly a symptom than a full-on condition but like… as a photophobic person I remember discovering the name of the thingy from clucking Plague Inc. Necroa Virus from some miracle and having to wear sunglasses for my eyes

And then I got my hands on a pair and was saying how happy I was and then this CUCK named Ryan Mackin (dumb name btw) in sixth grade told me "or you just wanna look cool" bc people don't commonly associate sunglasses with conditions and I felt stupid and didn't wear them until eleventh grade

I'm an adult now and sunglasses REALLY do help 👍 I gots all kinds of cool pairs and I look snazzy wherever I go but I HAVE dealt with ableism you wouldn't realise people have over just light-sensitivity. And like, my mother (whom I most likely got it from) has it too but actually didn't believe me for the longest time bc of her own internalised ableism and I even remember finding a kid on Discord who had it too and had ZERO idea that it was an actual condition bc there's legit NO representation out there nor is it ever commonly-talked about

So just. If you can, which you don't have to obv I literally do not and will not judge at all as a photophobic person, portraying realistic photophobia can teach someone out there like little sixth-grade AXYER with vampire eyes (as I like to call them) that it's a thing and they can get treatment for it

TREATMENT: As previously mentioned, sunglasses are your best bet if you cannot see an eye doctor. Even just local Walmart glasses section sunglasses can go a long way, it's really not that hard to treat photophobia (which is, again, why it's so surprising that people can be so ableist). A lot of people make Heart use a blindfold for the photophobia alone which is a bit overkill considering even in really severe cases of photophobia you don't normally need to be FULL-ON blindfolded to treat it. Normally, just a pair of good shades can do the trick and staying in dark/dim rooms.

From my experience, the longer you're in a bright room the more your eyes will begin to get this "stale" feeling and they'll start to sting and eventually feel like they're burning slightly, especially when you close your eyes. Ya gonna wanna be in dark/dim rooms for as much as possible, they can even cause headaches if you're around brightness too long

Yes this includes phone screens. Yes this includes laptop screens. Anyone who can consistently have their screens on high or sometimes even medium brightness probably does not have chronic photophobia

Prescription sunglasses are a thing and are generally what an eye doctor will give ya. Generally you'll get glasses that can transition from shaded to normal and generally you'll have to pay a pretty penny for it. A lotta photophobic folks actually won't even get them and will just stick with normal sunglasses, simply cos it's cheaper and not much less effective

If you want a photophobia-accurate Heart, give that girly some shades (or a visor! They make visor-sunglasses, it's what I use for Heart cosplay)

ABLEISM: That's right, ableism section in big bold letter, we get a LOT of it in small ways. Def not nearly as bad as say, wheelchair-users or cane-users, but we nonetheless get it pretty darn bad at times

I get that most people with CCCC AUs don't have Heart exist in da physical world, with real, talking breathing human beings, but if you do this part'll be useful. Or if you just want Mind to be ableist in his hatred towards Heart. I mean, it wouldn't be inaccurate, it's said that Heart "[struggles just to stand]" and Mind calls him weak all the time as an insult. He even meant that insultingly! So ya maybe you could use dis for dat

I've had people wonder why I wear sunglasses a lot and usually I'm happy to answer and they're happy to understand, but I've heard people be really condescending about it before. Things like "do you tilt your head up because you can't see out of those things" no, I tilt my head up because sometimes I want a better look at something and they're still tinted. "Can you not wear those in-class, they're really distracting" I'd love to not, believe me. "You can't wear them bc then everyone would be allowed to wear them" Is everyone disabled? "Or you just want to look cool." Shut up, Ryan.

In da workforce they are also rather brutal about it tbh. I didn't have a doctor's note at my first like actual job so they wouldn't let me which is pretty fair as people would definitely lie about having photophobia just so they get to wear shades everywhere but I think the lying is part of the problem.

Photophobia's a really easy condition to fake and it doesn't help that you can just pull the "eye doctor didn't believe me" card and it really sucks. Please don't fake photophobia if you can; we're already hardly represented and it really puts us in an insanely bad spot if you do that. Most places allow you to wear sunglasses and it like isn't even that interesting of a condition to fake. Don't assume anyone is faking photophobia, for obvious reasons, that doesn't help either; we're just gonna have to go with the honour system and hope no one's scummy enough to do that.

Anyway, Heart's probably been told at least a few times that he can just deal with it and that he's overreacting. That's a common one too.

SMALL DETAILS: Just some small stuff about my personal experience that I thought wouldn't hurt to share

-My brightness on EVERYTHING is always all the way down, or close to it

-I own like, fifty pairs of sunglasses; lots of weird ones also

-I never have the light on in my room unless I have to show someone something; for light I have a space projector, as I can't be in total darkness for another unrelated (non-physical) disability

-Flashlights are my enemy. I will get actively fuming with someone if they aren't careful with one around me

-I won't scream bloody murder if light gets in my eyes but it is pretty funny to shout "MY EYES!!!" and/or "OH MY POOR BABY VAMPIRE EYES!!!"

-I don't know for certain but I feel like migraine photophobia is exemplified if you already have it

-It's pretty common to only wear the sunglasses/use the tinted mode of glasses when you need to. They do still obscure your vision pretty badly and you wouldn't wanna wear them if the room IS dim enough that you don't have to, as it makes dim phone screens, words on paper/books, people's faces, room-navigating and people's gesturing very difficult to see

-Photophobia is a VERY diverse condition. You can have extremely severe photophobia where you're literally considered legally blind and cannot do anything involving sight p much or you can have very mild where you kinda just can't be in very bright rooms. It's a spectrum

-People with lighter eyes are significantly more likely to get photophobia than people with darker eyes. If you want an accurate Heart, giving him blue eyes or even white eyes would probably be a little bit more accurate

-Having a medical card is useful if a place tries to stop you from wearing sunglasses

-Idk about every photophobic individual but I actually actively remove my sunglasses to get a better look at something or enjoy a nice view

-Also, I usually don't wear them at home bc my family keeps the home dim. Photophobic people will tend to have dark/dim rooms or households if they can

-There are good days and there are bad days. Sometimes you don't even need the glasses (not that you'd wanna test it) meanwhile other days it feels like your eyes got licked by a solar flare from looking at a lamp post

-In my experience, ironically enough, daylight doesn't really hurt my eyes that much. May be different for other people tho

Anyway that's my two cents. Hope it means anything to anyone and if you are ALSO photophobic pls do add your own information <3 again you do not have to make biblically accurate photophobic Heart but it can be really really helpful for photophobic folks who don't even realise something's wrong

Peace ✌️

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

actually y’know what i'm elaborating bc i think it was a pretty decent headcanon for my literal twelve year old self. but i headcanoned frisk as being blind bc i reasoned the simplistic graphics represented their eyesight (since you can be legally blind while still having some level of vision, i reasoned frisk would be able to see in front of them blurrily so the basic 8 bit graphics are a representation of that) and the narration frequently describing things in more detail was narrator chara helping frisk to navigate once they realised frisk was blind. i honestly just thought the idea of the main character being disabled would have been really cool. and like honestly i think that’s pretty good reasoning for a literal child? like idk how accurate i got it bc again i was twelve and while i have very bad vision and moments where i can barely see anything i'm not blind myself and i probably didn’t do a lot of research bc I had undiagnosed extremely severe adhd. but like i think the mindset i had at that age was pretty decent considering i was a child struggling with heavy internalised ableism.

[babysizedfics]

On that hcs list you made a while ago there was a prompt about Logan’s sticker chart, could you maybe talk about that one?

hello so I have had this in my inbox for quite awhile but I think I am finally ready to answer it! also this may have slightly different formatting than usual because I'm actually dictating this to my phone since I don't have the energy to type so the grammar and such may be a little different than usual but I hope that's okay

The original idea was that Logan wants to implement a system that will enable Roman to believe more of the positive reinforcements that his caregivers consciously give to him a lot of the time - Because despite because despite their best efforts roman can still be pretty insecure

So the idea of a sticker chart comes into logans head where Roman get stickers for good behaviour such as cleaning up his toys or emotionally supporting his little brother when he needs it. And Roman totally gets into it he really enjoys having a physical representation of his caregivers pride in his good behaviour and just being able to see a table full of pretty stickers that show him what a good boy and good brother he is just makes him feel really nice about himself and makes it easier to believe the nice things his caregivers tell him

now Logan also wants to implement the sticker chart for virgil but it needs to be different than the way they have set it out for Roman for multiple reasons. first of all if they both got stickers for good behaviour such as cleaning up toys or helping the caregivers with chores Virgel would naturally not get many stickers because of the fact that he does get overwhelmed so easily even when big and is so young when regressed anyway that actually he doesn't tend to do a lot of chores or cleaning up. so it would cause virgil insecurity and distress to see Roman get more stickers than him and would probably exacerbate his internalised ableism

The boys are also quite naturally competitive with each other when they're both big and I think the caregivers would want to avoid any kind of animosity or competition from the sticker charts if the boys started to compare the amount of stickers that they both got

so vee doesn't get stickers for good behaviour or for doing chores that would likely overwhelm him - instead virgil gets stickers that represent his mood!

whenever he feels giggly or overly happy especially when his little then his caregivers encourage him to pick a pretty sticker and put it on his chart. then at the end of every week he looks back over his sticker chart and can see physical evidence that his regression does help his mental health and isn't something to be ashamed of! it also helps them to generally track his mood, if he gets less stickers one week than another then they can try and address what is making vee feel more anxious or upset than usual with this sort of visual hindsight

I have also mentioned on the in character blog that the family are trying to help Virgel overcome his agoraphobia by arranging for him to go on walks with someone accompanying him often. they are trying to improve 1) the length of time that he can be out of the house, 2) the distance from the house that he feels comfortable being, and 3) his overall mood about being out of the house.

I think they would have a separate sticker chart for this sort of exposure therapy method so that every time vee at least attempts to leave the house he gets a sticker and if he gets through the walk he gets a second sticker and if he was able to get through it without having any panic attacks and he gets a third sticker. it's very important that he gets that first sticker literally just for being able to step 1 foot out of the house because that shows that the family are appreciating and rewarding him for trying to step out of his comfort zone even when it's tricky and he can't go through with it

but yeah the boys both have sticker charts that are catered to their individual needs and they both have positive effects for them in the long run

and patton is very proud of his partner for thinking of it and Logan totally first proposed the idea in the form of a PowerPoint presentation lol