#our experiences and disability levels the same

[halfricanloveyou]

“hey so we’re gonna need you to focus up and pay attention and not talk for 3 hours straight. and no you can’t look at your phone or ask brief questions or think out loud and 98% of what will be said won’t apply to you.”

“also i know you have adhd and that you said your adderall wore off but so do i. you just have to learn.”

do you seriously think i am capable of that. what if i blew you up with a cool wizard beam attack? what if the beam was purple.

[daz4i]

not to sound mean but. now that i'm surrounded with fellow mentally ill people on a daily basis - all of them reaching debilitating levels of it while still trying to do their best - i hate ppl who say "ummm i have [mental illness] and i can still [do thing]. stop making excuses" even more. why don't you spend time with people who share your illness + those who have it but combined with other disorders + those with other mental disorders of all kinds and then maybe you'll develop some patience, sympathy and/or empathy towards people who are supposedly like you.

[lightning-system]

As a medium/lower support needs autistic who works with young higher support needs autistic:

We all matter. We all have the same diagnosis. We all deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.

But we are not the same.

I can mask and might be seen as 'odd' or 'weird' in public. The students I work with are seen as 'dangerous' and 'practically little kids'.

I can go to university and work with accommodations. The students I work with likely will never live independently and a few might find jobs that support them but still pay them less than an abled worker.

I have full control of my finances. The students I work with aren't allowed to make independent financial decisions, even if capable.

If I say 'no,' I'm making a choice. The students I work with can't say 'no' without being labeled as defiant and difficult.

I can feed myself, bathe myself, and take care of myself with extreme challenges. The students I work with are unable to take care of themselves without high levels of support/one on one support.

I had an IEP in high school but was mainstreamed in classes. The students I work with take separate classes and some rarely get to interact with their abled peers.

Our experiences are fundamentally different. Higher support needs autistics will experience a specific type of ableism I never will, and can never fully understand.

Lower support needs autistics need to stop saying we understand what higher support needs autistics are going through and then present autism as only being disabling because of society/lack of acceptance because that is dangerous. We need to stop saying every autistic person is capable of everything if given the right support because that leaves out huge parts of our community who will never be able to do certain things, regardless of support.

We are worthy of existence regardless of our abilities.

Autism is a spectrum. It is not the same for every autistic person. Autism acceptance and advocacy has to come with accepting, acknowledging, and listening to our higher support needs peers.

[chronicbitchsyndrome]

so... i'm seeing a lot of activism (like, actual activism, not just tumblr posts--letters & scripts to us senators, for example, copy written for press, etc) focusing on improving ventilation & filtration as primarily an access issue for immunocompromised people. basically, presenting the argument as "this is in service of this demographic, who is blocked from public access currently."

this is like. true. of course. it is the main reason i want clean air and i think it is the most pressing reason overall for it. but i think it's the wrong tack for building a clean air movement and getting legislation passed.

like, unfortunately, the vast majority of people in power--and of americans in general, tbh--are not immunocompromised and do not have immunocompromised roommates or family members. should you have to have this experience to understand that public access is a big fucking deal for, like, staying alive? no! you shouldn't! but most people straight up will not understand whatsoever unless they have personal experience with immune compromisation.

trying to change hearts and minds to have cognitive sympathy for disabled people takes a long time, decades' worth of work to just change a handful of people; meanwhile, getting legislation passed is 1) imminently important, 2) while still a lengthy process, takes significantly less time if it doesn't hinge on first converting the majority of the population to have sympathy for a marginalized demographic they have no contact with (and yes, they have no contact with us because we are barred from public access to begin with, again, i am aware of how fucked up this is).

here's some arguments for passing clean air legislation that are designed to appeal to a normative, conservative-leaning crowd:

air filtration is a public health and sanitation baseline just like running water. we provide clean water to drink and wash our hands in as a baseline for public life; we should also be providing clean air to breathe similarly.

improved ventilation and filtration in schools results in less sick days for students, meaning better attendance and less time off work for parents.

improved ventilation and filtration in the workplace results in workers taking less sick days. it also makes it less troublesome when a coworker comes in sick; it's less likely you will have to take sick leave as a result.

improved ventilation and filtration in hospitals, doctors' offices, etc, helps combat the health care worker shortage by reducing the amount of sick leave health care workers need. it additionally makes hospitals safer overall; for example, it makes it safer for cancer patients to be in the same building with patients with highly infectious airborne illnesses such as chickenpox.

improved ventilation and filtration in public buildings at large could improve the economy, as less workers stay home, more people enter the workforce, more people begin attending public businesses like bars and venues, etc.

if government programs to upgrade ventilation and filtration are created, this could create jobs for blue-collar workers, further improving the economy.

the last note i have is that, as much as this sucks shit, don't mention covid as much as you can avoid it. covid has become a massive culture war thing in the usa and as soon as you bring it up, the entire discussion becomes about virtue-signaling and showing in-group affinity--it doesn't matter what you're saying about covid, anyone who thinks "covid is over" will immediately shut down and become incapable of listening to anything else you have to say. and unfortunately, a majority of the population does, in fact, think covid is an irrelevant concern even for immunocompromised people in 2024.

importantly, all general air sanitation improvements will improve the covid situation significantly. in this context, you do not have to talk about covid in order to make real, material changes limiting the spread of covid. system-level changes that limit the spread of things like the flu and chickenpox are equally effective in limiting the spread of covid. take advantage of that!

[nightmaretour]

I think people with brain damage and neurodegenerative diseases' unique position on brain/body duality is so heavily appropriated by others and used to speak over us or put words in our mouths that I don't think we're ever actually allowed to speak about it ourselves. That's a huge loss I think, because I think we really do have a lot to say that could be very beneficial to the community and disability rights as a whole. Even to our understanding of the human experience and its physical nature, I think.

To have your body tangibly damaged, and through it your entire world and self too, to be changed so intrinsically that it spans both the body and the very essence of self. The inseparability of your physical disabilities and who you are not just on a spiritual or social level but a tangible, physical, neurological one, where even in a hypothetical future you couldn't cure the physical without changing the self, everything you experience, in ways that can be almost impossible to comprehend. The absolute, unavoidable understanding of every fiber of one's self as a physical phenomena, down to the very last thought or feeling, and coming to terms with it.

Unfortunately I think unless people stop using us as a mouthpiece to talk over each other, we won't get to have those conversations. If you want us to speak, you need to listen. I mean really listen. No picking and choosing, no deciding for us what you think it means. No trying to relate our experiences to your own when we tell you that no, those things aren't the same. Just listen and uplift our voices, especially those of us who can't communicate our thoughts and experiences very well.

[cripplecharacters]

Does Your Scarred Character Have to Hate Themself?

[large text: Does Your Scarred Character Have to Hate Themself?]

(TLDR: No.)

A frequent topic that shows up around facial differences is the self-hatred, self-disgust, self-insert-negative-emotion that we must surely experience. I want to ask* writers without FDs - why? Why do you feel about us in such a way that that's the most common way of depicting us?

*- rhetorical question. I promise I know the answer, but I'm not sure if writers do.

It's frankly worrying to me. Is it really that common to assume that disabled people have this internal, never-ending hatred for themselves? The overwhelming majority of us don't. We hate inaccessibility, when people stare, or some symptoms when they get in the way, or how expensive being disabled is, but I find the concept of us being so completely disturbed by our own disabilities extremely strange. It’s “tragedy porn” intersecting “most basic ableism”.

“But trauma!”

[large text: “But trauma!”]

Trauma of what! People with facial differences don't have some sort of default trauma that we come with like it’s a factory setting. We are a group of people with tens of thousands of stories and experiences.

“Trauma of experiencing ableism/disfiguremisia” - that's better, at least this means something. If you're writing a story about this, please get a sensitivity reader with a facial difference. You can assume how we feel all you want, but in my experience these assumptions are often bizarre and unrealistic. Or just end up writing the same “disability so sad” sob story that everyone has seen a billion times. If you want to write about disfiguremisia, you need to understand the nuance and have more than just the basic level knowledge (which 99% of people don’t have either). If you can’t do that, don’t write about it. Simple as that.

“Trauma of the accident” - thankfully, the accident is an event and a facial difference is a disability. If you want to connect these two like they're one and the same, you're almost surely going to demonize disability. People with traumatic spinal cord injuries, acquired amputees, people with TBI, people with acquired facial differences - we participate in our communities, we have hobbies, we date, we play with our dogs. Disability isn't a death sentence. Media who make it feel like it is certainly don't help people who do suddenly become disabled, don't you think?

Here's a post by @blindbeta about blind characters becoming blind through trauma that’s better made than anything I could hope to write here. I heavily recommend giving it a read.

And, I can't stress this enough - most of us didn't have “the accident”, most of us are born like this. "Traumatic scars" isn't the only facial difference that exists, far from it, it's only one of thousands. It's 99% of our representation and "representation". If you want to make a character with FD - please consider that we aren't a monolith. Just like not all physical disabilities are "wheelchair user with paralysis and somehow no other symptoms", not all facial differences are "traumatic scar with somehow no nerve damage".

The overrepresentation of it is incredibly telling, and sometimes - or very frequently - feels like the writer doesn’t actually even want to deal with us. They want to use our disability as a way to cheap drama, moral metaphors, tragic backstories. Not to represent us as living people who are much more similar to you than you apparently think.

Now, I do have enough awareness to know that that's a big part of the appeal. “Horrific Thing #2456 happens” and boom, instant drama. Of course, it's a reasonable response that they would hide their disability for years, avoid talking about it in any way, and magically change their personality to be mean and reclusive, or at least be constantly soooo sad about how much it sucks to be disabled, right?

Do I really need to say that having your character becoming disabled be the worst thing ever is ableism 101? We have been talking about this for so long at this point. Writing about the process of adapting to a specific disability is better left to people who have actual experience in it.

To give an example that will hopefully resonate more with Tumblr users, I will use the fact that I'm also gay. It's not perfect by any means but probably much more familiar territory.

Imagine, let's say, a character. He's gay. The story he's in is supposedly progressive, certainly not trying to be homophobic. The character has experienced an incident, maybe an act of aggression or a hate crime, that happened because he’s gay, which was traumatic. Happens IRL, sure. So of course the character starts hating being gay. He talks about how gross and disgusting it is, he never lets anyone know that he could be “one of them”, certainly not take a stance against homophobia. You can't mention him without mentioning the accident, they're seemingly fused together. No gay love, joy, even basic happiness, he would actually choose to be straight in a heartbeat if given the option to and complains that he can't. This is shown as a neutral, obvious thing that a gay man would do, no one comments on it. He stays like this the whole time, unless there’s a plot twist in the last 10 pages where the world is now magically perfect ("we fixed discrimination, yay!"). This is the only LGBT character in the story.

Keep in mind that there are people similar to this in real life, living with extreme internalized homophobia.

Reading comprehension quiz time: Is this, in your opinion, realistic and thoughtful representation? How does it feel when written by a cishet writer, versus a gay writer who is recalling his experiences? Do you think that it's reasonable for the majority of media representation to be like this, or very close to it? How would it affect younger gay people who might already be uncomfortable with being queer? Are gay men the target audience, or are they not even considered as a group of people who read books? Is this helping or damaging the general public's idea of how it is to be gay? Why or why not?

The Masterpiece

[large text: The Masterpiece]

From 13 to 19 of May, we are celebrating Face Equality week (what a coincidence!). It’s important to me in general - and I wish it was more important to abled people, but I digress - especially its theme for this year.

“My Face is a Masterpiece”

Great statement, it represents the community well, I do enjoy how bold it is. Very cool stuff, I love the work our advocates are doing.

But why do I bring this up?

Well, to very non-subtly show that we aren’t a self-hating group of people. We are a community, a community saying “our faces are beautiful, look!”, we are saying “treat us equally, and do it now!”. Our activism isn’t about self-disgust. It’s about fighting your-disgust. 

Why can’t writers keep up? Why are you still stuck decades behind?

Is this the only reason I bring it up?

The Call to Celebration

[large text: The Call to Celebration]

FEI, the org behind organizing it, asks a very simple question (emphasis mine):

“Why do we so often see stories about facial difference as a ‘tragedy’, when they should be about triumph?” “Calling all artists, allies, creatives, galleries.  You can rewrite the story to bring about #FaceEquality and celebrate the unique artistry found in every face. Your participation this #FaceEqualityWeek will help to tell the real story, that there is a masterpiece in every face.”

Here. We are calling for you to stop. Directly from the biggest international advocacy alliance group that's out there. If you create, this is for you.

The last argument to not have your character with a facial difference hate themselves? Because we don’t want this. We are tired and frustrated. For me personally, I’m also offended by this kind of assumption. We aren’t tragedies or cheap entertainment for abled people to pity or be horrified by. We are people, and if you can’t internalize that, you have no reason to write about us.

For once, celebrate us. Happy Face Equality Week!

mod Sasza

[theacecouple]

TOMORROW!

October 23rd, 2024 is the 4th annual Disabled Ace Day!

Disabled Ace Day, which takes place on Wednesday during Ace Week, is dedicated to awareness, visibility, and celebration of the intersections of Asexuality and Disability and advocates for material and social support of Disabled Aces everywhere.

With a vitally important election coming up in the US, we will be talking politics tomorrow on the The Ace Couple podcast by discussing the laws that create marriage inequality in our country for Disabled people, for Asexual & Aromantic people, and for Black Americans.

Obergefell v. Hodges may have allowed for same-sex marriage at the federal level, but it does NOT mean that we have true marriage equality in this country.

We encourage Disabled Aces from around the globe to talk about your own experience, be it personal or political, to raise awareness this Ace Week.

Disabled Ace Day logo by Emmalee Larghi Dahlgren

[enbycrip]

One common experience of disability all across the board - relating to everything from learning/intellectual disability to neurodiversity to physical impairment to chronic illness - is the way that “one little thing” can make everything - work performance, school performance, ability to communicate etc - go right off the rails and collapse.

This is an issue I frequently see abled doctors, therapists, psychologists, teachers, social workers etc speaking about in terms of “poor flexibility”, “need to teach resilience” etc etc, focusing on this as an issue *with the disabled person.*

And that illustrates absolutely *perfectly* why a) disabled people are the experts in disability, not abled “specialists”, and b) why the social model of disability *needs* to be taught and centred.

The issue in such circumstances is not some sort of “innate preference for rigidity” (you may laugh, but that’s a phrase I sadly *still* see used about autistic folks far too often) or even “innate widespread lack of capacity” in the disabled person. It is a symptom of a system - in this case, a disabled person’s *life* - that is under immense strain and operating without spare capacity available to be used to respond to unforeseen circumstances.

Disabled people are, almost universally, *master* adapters. Incredibly adept at adaptive thought; incredibly resilient and incredibly dogged. We are that way because we *need to be* to survive in a world that is incredibly ill-adapted for our needs. The reason we are *perceived* as “inflexible”, “rigid”, “fragile”, “incapable” etc etc is because we are, very very frequently, *already* operating at the limits of our capacity just to survive in a world that is incredibly hostile to our needs and to our existence.

The medical model of disability judges all people to exist in the same world under the same circumstances, and thus judges the disabled person to be “lacking” when we struggle. Thus the onus is put on *us* to “correct” this “lack”. “You need to build resilience”.

It is the exact same mindset that blames people living in poverty for their lack of available resources, and suggests “budgeting classes” or “stopping spending money on avocado toast and Netflix” instead of recognising the need to raise wages to liveable levels in low-paid work and provide genuinely affordable housing. Focusing on, and *blaming*, the individual rather than recognising the systemic injustice and the desperate need for systemic change.

“Resilience” as long-term quality more or less means “having the resources to put into dealing with unexpected difficulty while still maintaining other functions.” Whether those resources are time, energy, money, family or community support - if a person does not have access to enough of them, the system - in this case, their life - *will* become overstretched, and they *will* fail on one, or, very often, on multiple points.

That does not represent a personal or moral failure. It represents having access to insufficient resources to meet needs. It is genuinely that simple. And that is what needs to be addressed for disabled people to live and thrive.

[audhdnight]

Just thinking about the common experience of late diagnosed disabled people of “the normal amount of pain is none” and how we’re just supposed to know that despite *some* level of pain being OUR normal for our entire lives, even if it’s usually not super bad it’s just always there.

Thinking about how, when I told my mother this, she asked me “So what’s hurt?” Which is very different than “what hurts?”

I looked at her, confused. “Nothing is hurt. I just hurt.”

And she says “But where do you hurt?”

“Well, right now it’s my stomach and my ankles-“

She cuts me off. “So you twisted your ankle?”

“No,” I say. “My ankles just hurt. I’ve been walking today.”

Now it’s her turn to look confused. “Just walking doesn’t make your ankles hurt. You must have sprained them or something.”

But I shake my head. “Nope. This just happens on days when I walk more than a little bit. My ankles hurt first, then my knees by lunch time. And if I don’t take a nap and stay on my feet all day, my hips will be hurting too.”

“Oh.”

Joint pain is my normal. Sometimes, if I barely walk all day, the ache in my ankles is barely noticeable and doesn’t affect my functioning because I’m used to it. If I do what most able-bodied people would consider to be a “normal” amount of walking, almost all of my joints will hurt by supper. If I have to wash dishes or run any errands, I’ll hurt so bad I can’t walk for the rest of the day.

Then there’s the chronic migraine attacks. I used to have them multiple times a week as a child, and no matter how I explained myself, nobody ever understood that they weren’t just headaches. I experienced those too, and frequently, but they were not the same. Thankfully, at the age of eleven, I found an article explaining migraine triggers. I was able to identify a few of my own triggers, and the frequency of my migraine attacks reduced to maybe a couple a month. For a few years I was basically on cloud nine, I’d never experienced such a lack of pain before and it was so freeing. Unfortunately, migraine is a progressive condition, so the attacks have gotten more frequent over the years.

And then there’s the “random” pains. Some mornings I wake up and my stomach hurts. Or my chest. Or my back. These are just things I have to live with, because my body’s connective tissue is… well, for lack of a better word, faulty. And I never knew that other people didn’t experience this, because how could I? We never talked about it. Sometimes I’d hear people complain about back aches and just assume they were like mine. Of course, I knew that injuring yourself could cause muscle aches, obviously. But I just assumed that *most* of the time, other peoples bodies hurt like mine did. I didn’t realize that humans aren’t supposed to “just hurt” without a connected incident.

And when I try to explain this to able bodied people, their response is always the same. “Well, everyone’s back hurts sometimes.” “Everybody gets headaches sometimes.” “You’re not special just because you’re too lazy to walk. I still go to work when I don’t feel good.” And no matter how many times I try to say that No, you don’t get it, I *always* hurt, they still brush me off and dismiss me.

[trans-axolotl]

content note: this post talks about eugenics, incarceration and institutionalization, and violent ableism

tangent from that post because i didn't want to start writing an essay on someone else's post and this is about a conversation i had irl this month, not intended as a reply to that post. but i actually feel very complicated about the idea of whether or not we should be pushing for more "accessibility" in jails and prisons and psych wards and institutions. i put that word in quotes because i don't think there is ever a way that being incarcerated is actually accessible to our bodies and minds; it is a disabling experience on so many levels. i'm not going to list out all the reasons why on this post; i've made so many posts talking explicitly about the harms of institutionalization before and i don't want to do that again right now. Talila Lewis has given several interviews about ableism, incarceration, and disability that are really worth reading and go more in depth into what that violence looks like. Liat Ben Moshe has also given another interview about disability and incarceration that goes over many of the same topics. given that these places are intense sites of violence towards disabled people, it feels difficult for me to claim that they could ever truly be accessible in any meaningful sense of the word.

what's also true right now is that institutions and prisons are incredibly inaccessible for physically disabled people in particular. i've been arrested with a wheelchair, i've been institutionalized with a feeding tube on top of that as well, i've been held on medical floors for psych treatment before, and i know very well exactly how bad it is. i've watched myself and so many other physically disabled people almost die in these places because of sheer neglect. i have physically disabled neighbors who were killed in these places. it is so dangerous for physically disabled people who are locked up in these places, yet at the same time, often psych wards are so inaccessible that physically disabled people just can't even be admitted because wards refuse to take people with mobility aids, medical devices, specific types of medication or care needs, if you have some kinds of terminal illness, and on and on and on.

what's also true is that when these places are so inaccessible that many physically disabled people are excluded and unable to even access them in the first place, it doesn't mean that we then somehow access other types of care instead. it just means that we're also discarded and left to die. this also is a really similar dynamic for a ton of other marginalized groups that get excluded from psych care--many of my comrades who are people of color have also experienced this same type of denial of care. initially i think that can seem like a confusing contradiction--how is it that psych wards are locking up some people up against their will but refusing to take in other people? but when you start thinking about the underlying logic at the core of these systems, it makes sense.

psych wards operate under this idea that madness must be cured by any means possible, up to and including eradication. institutions are a way of disappearing madness from the world--hiding us away so that we don't disturb a sane society, and not letting us free again until we either die in there or are able to appear like we've sufficiently eradicated madness from our mind. preventing physically disabled people from accessing inpatient treatment is operating under the same assumptions--except that this particularly violent convergence of ableism is happy to just let us die, both because it eradicates madness from the world and because they view our lives as unworthy of living in the first place. eugenics is still alive and well in the united states and it's still fucking killing us; both inside institutions and outside of them.

i would never tell someone that they're privileged for getting institutionalized--i think that would be a cruel thing to say to someone who has just survived a lot of violent ableism. and at the same time, our current systems of mental health care are set up in a way where not being able to access inpatient care can be a deadly logistical nightmare. there are some partial hospitalization programs that have such a long waiting list that you can only really get in if you just got an urgent referral because you're getting discharged from inpatient care--how the fuck are physically disabled people supposed to access those programs? if you need meal support for your eating disorder 6 times a day and the only places that offer that are residential treatment in a house with stairs, what the fuck are you supposed to do? if noncarceral outpatient forms of treatment like therapy, support groups, PHP programs, peer support funding, etc etc etc are often prioritizing people who have recently been discharged from inpatient care, how are you supposed to access any type of mental health care at all? (to be clear i know that not all forms of outpatient care operate in this way, but a lot of state run/low cost programs that accept Medicaid/Medicare operate in that way, and i've seen it cause enough barriers that i know this is a very real problem.)

so when i think about what it would take to actually ensure that physically disabled people can access mental healthcare, there's a lot that comes up for me. on one hand, so much of my work is about tearing down institutions and ensuring that no one is forced into these places to face that type of violence. on the other hand, so many physically disabled people need care right now, and we have to figure out some way of making that happen given the current systems we have in place. i will never be okay with just discarding physically disabled people as collateral damage, and any world that we're building needs to be one that embraces disability from the beginning.

i keep thinking about the concept of non-reformist reforms that gets talked about a lot in the prison abolition movement. the idea behind non-reformist reforms is that usually, reforms work to reinforce the status quo. they're usually talked about in liberal language of "improvement" and "human rights", but when it comes down to it, they're still giving more power to harmful institutions and reinforcing state power. an example of a reformist reform is building a new jail that is bigger and has "nicer" services. or when the cops in my city tried to get funding for more wheelchair accessible cop vans. these are reformist reforms because when it comes down to it, it's still giving more money and legitimacy to the prison system and increasing the capacity to keep people locked up--even when people talk about it using language about welfare for prisoners, that's not actually what's happening. having more wheelchair accessible cop vans would be dangerous for the disabled people in my city--it's helped us out a LOT that it's so difficult for the cops to arrest multiple wheelchair users at once.

non-reformist reforms are the opposite of that--they're reforms that work to dismantle systems, redistribute power, and set the stage for more even more dramatic transformations. They're sort of an answer to the question of "what do we do right now if we can't go out and burn down all the prisons overnight?" Examples of a nonreformist reform are defunding prisons, getting rid of paid administrative leave for cops, shutting down old prisons and not building new ones, etc. they're steps we can take right now that don't fully abolish prisons, but still work to dismantle them, rather than making it easier for the system to keep going.

so, when we apply this to the psych system, what are some nonreformist reforms that could help make sure that all disabled people are having their needs met right now? Some ideas I'm having include fixing the problem of PHP/outpatient care requiring referrals from inpatient, increasing the amount of Medicaid/Medicare funding for outpatient mental health care, building physically accessible peer respites that allow caregivers to stay with you if needed, increasing SSI/SSDI to an actually liveable rate, creating more disability specific mental health resources, support groups, care webs, and a million other things we'd probably need to actually get our needs met. non-reformist reforms for people in psych wards right now might look like ensuring everyone has 24/7 access to phones and internet, ensuring that disabled people have access to mobility aids in these spaces, making sure that there's accessible nutrition for people with dietary restrictions and/or feeding tubes, and more.

when i see people saying that we need to ensure that psych wards or prisons are made accessible it makes me feel nervous. i worry that the changes required to do that wouldn't actually provide care to disabled people, i worry it would just make it easier for increasing numbers of disabled people to get locked up and harmed all while people claimed it was a success story of "inclusion." i worry that it would just continue to cement carceral treatment as the only option for existing as a disabled person, and that it would make it harder for us to live in our communities, with the services and adaptations we need. when i think about abolition, i'm always thinking about what can we do right now, what do disabled people who are incarcerated and institutionalized need right now, what can we do right now to ensure that everyone is surviving and getting their needs met. i'm not willing to ignore or discard my incarcerated disabled comrades in the moment because of my dreams for an abolitionist future, i'm always going to support our organizing in these places as we try to survive them.

overall i guess what i'm saying is that i think making inpatient psych care accessible would require dismantling and fundamentally destroying the whole system. I can't imagine a way of doing that within the current system that wouldn't just continue to harm disabled people. and that as a psych abolitionist i think that means we have a responsibility to each other right now to fight for that, to understand that physically disabled people not being able to access mental health care is an incredibly urgent need. I refuse to treat my MadDisabled comrades as disposable: our lives are valuable and worth fighting for.

i'm also going to link to the HEARD organization on this post. They're one of the few abolitionist organizations that does direct advocacy and support for deaf and disabled people in prisons. if you or one of your disabled community members ever gets incarcerated in jail/prison, they have a lot of resources. donate to support their work if you can.

[the-crystal-femmes]

Hi, we made a post like this long ago on our now defunct althuman blog, but we feel the need to redo and reconstruct this post as we realise that there are still misconceptions to things.

What is a physical alterhuman?

// pt: what is a physical alterhuman? //

[ DISCLAIMER: please do not take our words as the definitive fact. We are aware we could be wrong in some areas and appreciate corrections as long as they are in a civil tone. ]

Well, for starters; a physical alterhuman is someone who identfies as an alterhuman on a physical level, much like the name entails.

This can be experienced in many forms, and includes (but is not limited to!): being able to transform into an alterhuman being, the body being alterhuman, the "human" appearance being a veil or glamour, an alter in a collective who views the body as them when in front, etc.

A common misconception is that ALL physical alterhumans stem from delusions. This is not the case! However, those who are physically alterhuman due to delusions are still 100% valid and do not deserve to be ridiculed, hated, shunned, or any other harmful thing.

Physical alterhuman experiences are not all the same, it's always going to be a spectrum. Personally, for our collective, we are physically alterhuman but are unsure of specifics. This stems from many childhood traumas as well as things like our mental disabilities such as autism and attention deficit hyperactive disorder. The "human" everyone sees from us is a glamour, or a veil, that we cannot remove, but that does not make us any less of a physical alterhuman.

I don't like how this has to be constantly said but; no, someone being physically alterhuman does not give you the right to shun them out of the community, to try to police their identity, or come to harmful conclusions. It isn't anyone's right to meddle into another being's business, especially when you are a stranger on the internet. As much as some of you may come from good intent, you're not really doing a nice thing by telling others to get help or trying to "reality check" them for who they are. We personally find it ridiculous that this statement has to be said.

- Yellow Pearl (usually Ula would make these types of posts, however we notice that she's easily triggered and would rather not have her do that, so I'm stepping up for her.)

[sandplague]

pathologic 3 save & sound 2024 presentation

this is a quick attempt at a transcript of the presentation. I think I got most of it but there are some words I was unable to hear, I can't say I have a lot of practice doing this and that's on me so if any of you guys can help me I'll edit it asap

Ressa Schwarzwald: I'm Ressa from Gameowdio. Our team has been working on Pathologic 3 with Vasily Kashnikov and his apprentice Nikolai. This video will feature some of the audio stuff we've made together.

Our goal regarding audio direction was to give the real experience of being in the epicenter of an epidemic. Fully realistic, no bullshit. So we are obviously shooting this video in The Town. We realized pretty early that the game was quite different from the original Pathologic 2 because of the time travel mechanics. So for the prototype we built a time travel machine [the date November 1924 shows on screen], which appeared to be quite useful to record some source sounds, and [date changes to November 3024] make this video in just half a second using existing technology.

Let's start with the music.

Vasily Kashnikov: Hi, I'm Vasily Kashnikov, audio director of Pathologic 3 project. I'll tell you how our music is structured. We were already thinking about how the Bachelor's game would sound when we were working on Patholgic 2 and writing music for Haruspex. In Pathologic 2, the music had more ethnic and real motives (motifs?) and instruments. Since the city and its customs are familiar with Haruspex since he was a child, he is involved in the traditional way of life. In the case of Pathologic 3, this is the view of an outsider who evaluates everything from the point of view of rationality and science. Therefore, we are trying to make the Pathologic 3 soundtrack colder and more detached from the steppes and ethnicity in character. There is more synthesis, guitars at the same time, the Bachelor communicates with those in power so the soundtrack contains a large share of minimalist so-called furniture music that could sound in the beginning of the last century. Piano etudes and references to composers of that time: Satie, Debussy, etc. The soundtrack is a rather eclectic mix of dreampop, downtempo, and (?) minimalism.

In the city when the Bachelor is alone with himself, we emphasize the cold mind of the rhythm section: less emotional harmony, and sometimes electronic timbres. In the rooms where we need to separate the main character from those he interacts with, we use more expressive harmonies and more classical instruments: piano and guitar passages.

When we designed the interactive music system, we assumed that time is finite, and the music had to change depending on the amount of time the Bachelor had left. However, we later abandoned this system and now the music changes depending on the state of the Bachelor himself, who can fall into apathy or psychosis. To emphasize these states, we apply filters and effects to different layers of our tracks and get a slower, muffled sound in the case of apathy, and wired (?) nervous, glitchy in the case of psychosis. In the infected quarters, there are interactive systems that... [screen begins to distort] oh my god, Nataliya! Please stop this!

Nataliya Radina: Whoops, hehe, sorry. But yeah, basically the other system we created reflects everything you hear in the game. Such as... If we use our gun when dealing with the local thugs, the longer we aim the weapon at the people, the less sounds of the outside world we hear and the louder becomes the heartbeat. To add to the intensity, sharper tone was used along with a high pitch tinnitus sound. If the psychosis level goes to the maximum, it starts to damage Bachelor's health, which is accompanied by flashes on the screen, as well as low heartbeat and short breathing sounds.

Vasily Kashnikov: In the infected and rebel's quarters, there are also interactive systems that change the character of the music by adding or disabling instrument layers depending on the state of the world or the Bachelor's equipment to fight the plague. As a result, we have 12 tracks for each day spent in the city. they can freely switch between each other and several dozen themes for locations and characters, and all the music is subject to change depending on the state of the Bachelor.

Nataliya Radina: Since the game has a weather changing system, we also wanted to reflect that in our audio feedback as well. The game has global wetness parameter that shows how intense the rain is. The more it rains, the more squishy and muddy are the steps of the outside surfaces. Moreover, if you come closer to the window, you can hear the rain pondering on the glass. Even in the middle of the plague, we always have room for cozy moments, right? My favorite part of that system is involving cows. [cow moo]. So, when it's raining, you can actually hear very very soft sound of raindrops dropping on those bovine butts. And I personally think it's beautiful.

Artur Ramanouski: Hi, my name is Artur, and I was also involved in creating some sound assets for the game.

Probably the hardest thing to record were the footsteps. I had everything planned out: bought the equipment, got every type of surface, but...there was one small thing I overlooked: I live in a city with over 12 million people. Noise everywhere. The solution was simple and ingenious: I recorded everything on a Sunday, because in Buenos Ares, Sunday is the one day when no one does anything.

Nataliya Radina: One of the most important places in the game is the cathedral. There we have a system of ladders that control the speed and direction of time. Direction wise, we can have it flow normally, or reversed. [entire presentation is rewound very quickly so it's back to Ressa]

Ressa Schwarzwald: She is super professional.

Nataliya Radina: As for the speed, we can make it stand still, go twice as fast, or half normal speed. We created an audio system that has to (?) understand what is actually happening around (inaudible). When we reverse time, spatial effects are added to the surrounding sounds. Ambience, steps, and the mechanism itself. When time stands still, we increase the low frequencies in the ambience, and all the other sounds are muted to zero. Now lastly, when the time goes twice as fast, or half the original speed, the pitch of the surrounding sound changes accordingly.

The coolest part of this system is that it's been actually implemented into the game engine using only one parameter.

Ressa Schwarzwald: Thank you for watching. See you here, later!

[shizdrone]

Disability [and lack thereof] in Our Life

whoag it's time for a long post. and i mean a looong post. not only that, but there's no pretty pictures for you to look at. strap in.

DISCLAIMER [MANDATORY READING]:

This isn't some epic takedown of Our Life or GBPatch or anything like that. It's a great game with a great team behind it, and I am a happy fan. I'm just a guy with a interest in disability-related topics, so it made sense for me to look at a game I like under a lens I like and post my thoughts. Any perceived injustices are moreso reflective of general societal ignorance and I do not believe is indicative of any notable views of specific people. Go support the games and buy the DLCs, they're wonderful. Also, remember that I am one relatively unqualified guy. This hasn't been proofread, either, because I suppose my friends were a bit daunted by reading a 7k+ word yap. As you read, please keep in mind that it is a very real possibility that I am talking out of my ass. Please don't try and weaponise this post or its topics, mostly because that's actively harmful to everybody and is a dickhead thing to do, but also because, should I be misguided, you'll have egg on your face too. If it turns out this post was unproductive for the community, I'm nuking this post and fighting all of you. Lastly, I am aware the way I speak can be naturally authoritative and a bit scary to oppose - this isn't how I want to come across! I'm doing my best to have a neutral, if not constructive, tone here. However, it doesn't come to me very naturally, especially with topics I have a lot of interest in like this one. Please try not to read anything as hostile or judgemental or looking down, because that's really not how I feel.

cutting to the chase as much as i can because i imagine you're all already familiar, our life is fundamentally a game series with an inclusive and "feel-better" premise. players are given the space to express themselves and their diverse natures, and act through both comforting and uncomforting scenarios with the safety that things turn out well at the end of the day. in terms of minority representation, we mostly see this focus placed on queer topics - choosing and changing your own identity, expressing your joys and concerns, having other characters visibly express themselves and go through their own journies, etc. not all minority groups are given equal limelight - this is inevitable and is by no means an inherently unjust thing in isolation (especially given the game's primary focus on relationships, where queer topics are going to be most relevant). however, i do find that while most minority groups can easily find themselves in this series, disabled people comparatively struggle to be seen.

Pre-existing Disabled Representation

Cove Holden

i'm doing another disclaimer: i'm an autistic person talking about an autistic character. so, while i do hold some level of importance on this topic, my views, praises, and concerns reflect only myself and my own experiences. lots of people love cove from an autism lens and that is a testament to the power of the character. if i see even a single one of you read my criticisms and start shouting "cove is bad autistic rep it's official" i'm going to bash you over the head with a comically big stick as hard as i can.

cove is a character i can't quite embrace the same way other people can. that's not to say he's not my favourite our life character (bar liz) - he is in fact my husband. but when talking about autism rep, he's not one i go to in most cases. in fact, when playing our life for the first time, when the diagnosis drop happened in step 4 my initial reaction was "eh, i don't see it myself but sure". this mostly semmed from that, to me, cove feels like a sanitised version of a very archetypical "shorthand" portrayal, for lack of better term. i'll go over what i mean in a sec.

official sources have been inconsistent on cove's nature - sometimes, it's been stated that he was not initially written to be autistic, but somewhere around step 2-3 it begun to make sense to place this label onto cove and future moments were written with this explicitly in mind. but other times, it's been stated that cove was planned to be autistic from the very start. both of these possibilities are fine - lots of the best autistic portrayals, in my opinion, come from people who aren't thinking about autism so much as thinking about the people they know and the struggles they face, not drawing connection to any disability. personally, i'm more inclined to believe the former - looking back on the game, step 1 doesn't really contain much in the way of elements that feel intentional, while from step 2 onwards now i know the dev intent i can easily identify specific moments that were clearly written with the goal to bring these topics to the forefront.

now, to set a positive foundation for what i have to say, i'll be clear for a sec: when we consider the dev's intent, cove is a wonderful case of a positive autistic character. what struggles cove faces are treated seriously but not world-endingly, he is treated with the autonomy, grace, and respect he should be getting in the utopia-esque setting. but he's also not treated like glass by the writer, either - your families in good nature tease him for his clinginess as they will tease every other kid, and he's put into situations that he's not as comfortable with and given the space to express that without it being flipped to an extreme. not only that, but his autistic traits are given a healthy amount of screentime without being a substitute for his underlying personality. many characters forget to have traits that aren't linked to the disability, or will very clearly have Disabled Traits and Abled Traits. cove comfortably has a wide variety of personality traits, some of which are a direct consequence of autism (eg; special interest in the ocean), some of which are unrelated (eg; slurping drinks when mad), and some of which are informed by his lived autistic experience without being a direct consequence (eg; fowardness). in terms of execution, he's fairly good, and in terms of respect, many could learn from how he's handled.

the two things i don't vibe with on cove are firstly the nature of his autism in the context of the game, and then the consistency of his expression of this autism. i'll go over the first one first, as that's a fucking minefield and you'll have to bear with me for my hesitancy and slipups.

when we consider the setting of our life beginnings & always, we have to confront that, as you'll soon see, cove is our only non-cameo disabiltiy rep and only confirmed disability rep. as such, he's in a very tricky situation from the getgo. in all practicality, for lack of a less charged term, he's a token character - he alone props up all of the (intentional) disability representation, and all disability themes and portrayals (bar the cameo characters who i'll discuss later) have to be handled and digested through him.

it's for this reason that i feel very underwhelmed by his lack of "unclean" symptoms. what i mean by that is that whenever we see cove's autism as something explicitly expressed, it's something non-challenging for the audience that neatly fits into "quirky" or "awkward" or similar terms. he's got a particular interest in the ocean, he's socially blunt, he struggles to handle the soiree as a teenager (but can handle the [if i am not mistaken] similarly demanding charity event as an adult). all of this is very easy to digest as something that's only a tad atypical, that "ordinary" people might do - especially when filtered through the exaggerative lens of fiction, which does usually intensify personality traits for the sake of better communicating a character in a short amount of time.

unfortunately, disabilities are in fact a disability. as such, while for many this sort of thing is perfectly fine especially in such a positive setting, for me, when a depiction lacks anything challenging it feels vapid and lacking in substance to me. we don't see anything that might be considered less accepting members of the public might consider "weird" in a disparging sense (his ocean interest could be argued as this but i'm talking about things that the average person wouldn't consider shallow), like echolalia or strict needs for routine. and we most certainly don't see anything that would be considered taboo, like meltdowns (granted, i can see the difficulty in portraying this in a game like our life, but no shutdowns either?), rsd, or major difficulties with handling change (as in, beyond what an average person would have - i find it very hard to believe cove's nature in step 1 is atypical for an 8 year old in this situation!). without these elements, which are what defines autism as something beyond just a novel character trait and instead a fundamental disadvantage i face, it's hard for me to really see his autism as the disability i know and experience rather than a personality quirk.

this is also what i mean when i call cove a "shorthand" depiction. while extra little tidbits are thrown about in q&as and whatnot that might add a bit of extra spice here and there, his portrayal in the game focuses on only a few specific stereotypes that quickly communicate the intent of the character being autistic without actually interrogating the complexities. we don't see lesser known symptoms like hearing issues (apd represent 😤), gastrointestinal problems, or identity diffusion. we also don't see traits that require more dedicated time to convey or explore, like heightened sense of justice (NOT to be confused with a better developed sense of justice), the aforementioned meltdowns+shutdowns, or sensory needs (bar one which i will discuss in my next point). he is, in a way, a bullet point list of the most easily identified traits - what the masses see autism as and what can easily be identified with, but lacking in any individuality. this is another big part of why i am more inclined to believe that cove stumbled into his position as an autistic character - he neatly lines up with the stereotypes fiction likes to use to convey a certain uncomfortable-around-people heart-of-gold loner archetype that many people then place an autism label onto, without having many deeper levels that would imply heavy intent was baked into the character from the getgo.

(i should also note this does not mean that cove's lack of complexity is necessarily "inaccurate" or whatnot. autism is a spectrum disorder - it presents in each person differently, and not equally. rather, my point is that for the only character in olba to see myself and my friends in, he offers little to make me feel like the uglier parts of us are accepted as well as the photogenic parts, and partially as a consequence of that, there's not very much to his autistic portrayal that i feel capitalises as well as it could from the unique benefits of being in a "feel better" type game.)

my second issue is much easier to discuss - cove's autistic traits do occasionally come and go as the narrative demands. that's not in reference to things that will change with energy and mood, nor is it in reference to things that coping mechanisms can be reasonably built for, but rather i refer specifically to traits that should be fairly stagnant. the most egregious of this to me is his clothing - cove very consistently wears short sleeved clothes, and usually shorts (although sometimes trousers), along with being barefoot most of the time. even in some formal settings, like working at the library, he seems to roll his sleeves up as much as he can get away with. this checks out with certain tactile sensory needs, which is really cool to see as a way to show cove's needs in a way that both is treated as completely normalised and doesn't require any special exposition. however, this trait of his conveniently gets forgotten whenever we need him to look particularly presentable - namely, at the soiree, step 4 formal event, and his wedding (also his pyjamas, but w/e, and his wetsuit, which idk if you can really get away without that or how those feel in that scenario). i'm the opposite to cove - i aim to be covered up as much as possible - so i'm unsure what the sensations are like in some of these scenarios. but surely for his wedding, which is the most important day of his life after he's been diagnosed, he should be wearing clothes that he's comfortable in?

overall: very positive portrayal that goes much beyond what most competition does! that cannot be ignored! however, in the context of his place as the only canonically disabled character in the game, i find that we much more often see his disability portrayed only in its cleanest and most basic forms, more akin to a personality trait. so, under the premise of this post - disability within our life - i struggle to place much value on him.

(sidenote 1: if i'm not mistaken, it's been confirmed that while genetic components of cove's autism would come from cliff's side of the family, cliff himself is not autistic, so he will not be discussed here as he is for all intents and purposes canonically abled) (sidenote 2: i owe anybody who depicts cove with a short sleeved wedding suit my eternal soul. Please. I know aesthetically that's a tough ask but he deserves freedom)

Qiu Lin

another disabled love interest! very very good to see. and from what we can see so far, qiu lin is significantly less stereotypical than the usual Epic Zoomer Super Energy bullshit we often see, which is REALLY good to see. given how many adhd characters in fiction seem perfectly okay with belittling the concept down to "permanent sugar rush" or "internet addicted redditor" or whatnot, they're immediately ahead of a lot of the competition.

however, i do still notice that they have a bit of that "shorthand" nature cove had (it is, after all, what allowed me to catch onto qiu being dev-intended to be adhd before the announcement was made). obviously, being autistic and not having adhd, i have more familiarity with the intricacies and easier-to-miss elements of autism than adhd and hold little extra value in my insight over a generic NT member of the public, but so far i still notice little to qiu's presentation except "loses things" currently. granted, it's early days so for how little we know about qiu currently that's partially to be expected, and i understand that the team has dedicated sensitivity readers for this. i look forward to hopefully seeing some interesting things being done with their character, especially as the wombo combo of disabled + queer + foreign has a BUNCH of interesting interactions with each other that really do deserve to be explored.

Oma/Opa?

we don't have anything to go off of here yet. however, being old characters, we'll likely see some generic Old Person traits here, arthritis, chronic pain, mobility difficulties, etc. these are still disabilities even if you're old! however, i do expect that the game isn't going to integrate these as disablities so much as more shorthand for a character being old. this can be fine - i don't want to give the impression that every disability has to be given a big spotlight and be an important element and whatnot. in some cases, a character being disabled as a footnote and it having no or heavily limited on-screen depiction can be empowering in its own way, an extension of the idea of normalisation and a firm stance of "oh this doesn't impact me in the story we're telling so who cares". however, the reason i note this obsfucated nature with hesitation is because of the combination of heavily limited disability rep and the intended inclusive nature of our life. given the speculative nature of everything, however, i don't have much more to say here. it's very much just me shrugging my shoulders and noting that there's a slight amount of potential here, but i'm uncertain about it all.

Shiloh/Jeremy/Pran?

i'll be honest, i feel a bit out of my depth here and don't really want to interrogate these characters too much under a disability lens. they're throwaway cameo characters from a different series with a much different outlook, they aren't really written with hardcore disability narratives beyond "they're Difficult Kids[tm]" in mind as far as i am aware and instead simply happen to easily slot into an ND lens when we discuss this topic. (of course there's whole conversations about whether confirmed diagnosises matter vs simply registering their displayed behaviours and anti-psychiatry and all that but that's WAY out of the scope of this post and deserves better read people than me to discuss that anyway) i think at times their difference in tone from being cameos means their presentation, particularly in ol1, lends to villainisation for their nature. that doesn't inherently mean that disliking them is morally wrong or whatnot. after all, i'm not going to make out that i like shiloh; his very obsfucated nature does not mesh with me at all. but the characters who need the most accomodation and consideration also being the characters the community is most encouraged to dislike (eg; the only two characters you can punch in olba are jeremy and shiloh, if i recall correctly) does rub me the wrong way when i interrogate the game under this lens. from what i can tell, pran won't lean in as hard into being antagonistic, which i'm happy about.

(you'll notice that i haven't noted characters who wear glasses/contacts, like pamela and tamarack. there is a solid case that i should be noting these, however i personally feel that these present moreso as aesthetic traits, especially in a society that often forgets that glasses are a form of disability aid. in other words, while i would be inclined to say that a game whose cast composed of cane users is, in terms of its social commentary, a primarily disabled cast, i'd hesitate to say a cast of glasses wearers are expressing the same minority focus without having been given any further proof that the underlying vision issues are a major theme of the characters. that being said, it must still be acknolwedged that tamarack in particular does have the potential to meaningfully express her vision issues, which would make her qualify under my lens.)

across the 2-7 characters across the series, only 2 of which are confirmed(!!! in ol1 alone, we have at least 7 on-screen canonically queer characters off the top of my head, and potentially more i'm forgetting), of which only 2 are potentially physically disabled. in olba, we have 0 physically disabled characters, and 50% of the characters who can take on a "villainous" role (step 1 liz/step 3+4 baxter/jeremy/shiloh - people who you can clash heavily with to paint as the antagonist of your story), under the lens i am offering, toe uncomfortably into personality disorder topics (with no non-"villainous" alternatives). this, being blunt and honest, isn't great for a game that puts inclusivity as one of its primary themes, esp when the game is far more varied and consistently positive on other fronts.

[I WOULD LIKE TO SCREAM AGAIN THAT THIS IS NOT AN ACCUSATION OF ILL INTENT OR ABLEISM OR WHATNOT. THIS IS ALMOST CERTAINLY JUST A BYPRODUCT OF THE CULTURAL BLIND SPOTS THAT ALL OF US, INCLUDING YOU DEAR READER, HAVE]

while this will be slightly more controversial, i'm also not big on the variety of disabilities we're seeing. in terms of non-antagonistic characters, our three options are an autistic character, an adhd character, and two old people who i am presuming will have generic Old People Disabilities in lieu of other evidence. i'm not going to get into the complexities of it all here, as that's a subject you could write an actual essay on, but these are generally things already well recognised and mostly accepted within the community and its target audience. autism and adhd recognition are both exceedingly popular online, and old people being physically disabled in archetypical "bad bones" ways is par for the course for most people. in terms of groups who aren't already doing (relatively) well in these spaces - young physically disabled people, mental disabilities beyond audhd, physical disabilities that don't convenience the rest of us with flexibility and independence - there's only crumbs to work with.

Why Official Disabled Characters Matter

this is an easy one - it's for the same reason that every other minority group matters. approx ~10% of the 20-34 year old age demographic in the EU are disabled. add on the bias that the internet provides, being a space for inclusion and interaction for people who life and/or society give a hard time to (along with the extra concentrated audience we'll see around games to live a vicarious fantasy through like our life), and it's not unreasonable to assume a meaningful degree of the ol fandom are disabled. the idea that minority characters in our life and in general are good to have shouldn't be new to any of you, so let's instead ask a question about the most common counter-argument seen in these sorts of stories - why should specifically disability, which brings with it inherent hardships, be in our life, a game about positivity?

fortunately, we can immediately note that our life is a feel better game, not a feel good game. it's set in a world very much like our own, where there are societal injustices and unfair hands dealt to people. this means we get to avoid the long arguments about disabled people in utopian settings and whatnot - the setting already is one where disabled people should exist, no questions asked.

as a product of being a game about happy resolutions rather than happy journeys, our life is fertile ground for extremely meaningful disability representation. it offers a safe space for these topics to be explored without the stress of uncertain outcomes. even in scenarios where things aren't going to be fixed, they are going to be okay and life is going to be good. this, when applied to disability (where the problem is not exclusively a societal one and can stem from the self in a way other topics can't), is powerful.

we also see themes very much adjacent to this already explored. trans mcs are given the space to be uncomfortable with their body in a way that can't be changed, and the game will both acknowledge this and ensure that things are still good while respecting that fact. and characters like terry, renee, qiu show that people who face these problems are a part of the world, and that people like them do truly belong. we can see the good it's done for the community. disabled people should be able to see themselves portrayed through this lens, too.

Player Expression of Disability

to use an anecdote for myself, one of the big reasons our life resonated with me was because i had the choice to completely reject all touch from other characters (or at least, from the love interests who are obviously the most important characters - it's been a hot minute and i currently lack the tech to fact check the finer details), and the game treated it completely normally and embraced me (metaphorically) all the same. and to be clear: this is regarding something that has (or should have) very little direct consequence on my daily life, and it wasn't even an implementation that gave me the room to explicitly express my insecurities and uncertainties surrounding it, either. it was simply the most fundamental "oh, you're like this? no worries, we've got you covered" implementation with no further questions. that's a very small detail with very little consequence, yet it made a huge difference for me - to be given the opportunity to explore big personal details with big personal consequences, just as queer people can, would mean a lot.

unfortunately, player space to express disability is heavily limited. please correct me if i'm mistaken, but this should be a near-full list of aspects the player's mc can portray.

wearing glasses. obviously, earlier i noted that i wasn't considering that for pre-existing characters, but i am going to consider it for mcs because it being a product of player expression means the player prescribes to it their own intent and meaning. the people who slap on glasses to their character for the look do not detract from those who use the glasses as a way to show their mc has low vision. currently, if i'm not mistaken, wearing glasses never has any affect on prose other than the occasional line to say you put on/take off your glasses.

vitiligo. yes this can qualify as a disability (and it's more adjacent to disability than any other big group). it can come with the usual expected symptoms of a skin condition (easier burning, higher cancer risks, etc) and often has co-morbidities like vision and hearing impairments - along, of course, with the social stigmatisation and fetishisation. regardless, these options are present in the character creators.

facial scars. however, for the most part, these are all your generic clean line scars that look pretty and Aesthetic. as such, these won't be adequate for a lot of people with facial differences to depict a character they can identify with.

lactose intolerance/food aversions. can be used to show dietary requirements/arfid, although the games don't always give you the means to reject foods. still, a welcome inclusion.

visual/audial/tactile sensory issues. i'd say this is the part our life handles best by a long shot, which does speak to my privilege as an autistic person in these scenes. i can enforce heavy personal boundaries, i can customise the clothing worn, i can express when things are too loud or busy for my character, i can go as far as being completely not okay with the fireworks in step 3 with a variety of potential accomodations being offered, including even leaving early with every character being accepting of my needs (although admittedly this always makes me feel too guilty to pick). really a gold standard of what can be done on this front.

general speech difficulties (in olnf). again, another fairly good feature that's biased towards me. it seems the game makes a good effort to track how much you speak, and will adjust your automatic speech accordingly (including completely removing said speech). of course, there's a few growing pains with this - jumping from talking to not talking and vice versa can be a bit tricky to convey, and sometimes characters are a bit psychic when it comes it interpretting nonverbal communication. but for what it's aiming to achieve, the current system is really good, and the problems it still faces are problems that would be exceedingly hard to solve within a reasonable scope and don't make that big an impact at the end of the day.

ambiguous fill-in allusions. by that, what i mean is that the player can vaguely express themselves through certain generic choices they make - eg; a lack of impulse control by punching jeremy, or being unable to move fast by picking slower options. this, in its current form, isn't really much beyond what you'd get by default - very very few of the current options have any particular implications behind them, but it's something we should still consider.

in full, we've got a couple of aesthetic touches on your character doll (namely the ones that best line up with archetypical oc tropes), traits commonly associated with autism, and the archetypical potential to headcanon unspoken details. that's great for people like me and a small handful of other people,

Current Dev Stance

what's that? another disclaimer?: i said it at the start i'm saying it again THIS IS NOT A CALLOUT POST. i hold absolutely no reason to believe any form of bigotry resides within gbpatch. i am including this bit solely because i think it is an important talking point to lay out why i don't feel great about the current direction.

back in 2023 (while this isn't especially recent, i can't find any more recent discussion, and posts from 2020-2022 all say similar things, and there's another 2024 post where a similar answer is given concerning ND in particular), one steam user asked about MC disability rep:

"would it be possible to make it so an MC could be disabled? Ex. canes, wheelchair, working dogs. I know that would add so much extra work to your plates so I understand if not, but I walk with a quad cane so to see that in a character would be really cool. Genuinely no pressure. :))"

"I'm afraid it's not possible, even though I agree it'd be great. The issue is we can't add every disability there is in the real world or the game could never be released. And we have no good way of deciding which disability should get to be in the game and which of the many should be excluded. And it would also open up questions on why there's not mental health related conditions and only physical ones. That wouldn't be fair, but we can't do all of those either. So, the situation is that we have to leave those qualities as something the game just doesn't have, rather than having it as an unfair, only partially comprehensive feature."

i don't feel great about this answer. of course, it makes sense at a glance (ignoring the jump from "canes, wheelchair, working dogs" to "every disability there is"), but i feel it's misguided on a couple of levels.

the first is of course the idea of "all or nothing" are the only two acceptable outcomes. that everybody will have to fight to be seen, and those who lose will suffer more than they otherwise were. that somehow, other people being seen will mean the rejection doubles. i'm not going to argue that the people who wouldn't get in haven't been dealt an unfair hand, but i am going to argue that other disabled people getting in doesn't somehow make the others "less" included. they're in the same situation regardless. it's an inevitably truth of all accessibility work that accomodating for every single person is functionally impossible - that somebody is always going to lose out. that by no means means that we shouldn't be doing any accomodative work for the sake of "fairness", though. and in real accessibility work, it is possible to hurt through inclusion if you aren't wise - replacing a stairway with a ramp means people who struggle with inclines are worse off. in a game like our life, the options made for one person don't in any way impact another player who doesn't want to pick them.

the second is of course the presumption of an "all of nothing" dichtomy in the first place. as i've already laid out, our life games do have disability representation already, heavily weighted towards people like me. we are already in a biased scenario. but even if they were to, in some comedically misguided move, remove the mc disability rep that exists, we still wouldn't have an all-or-nothing dichtomy, because abled people and disabled people are on the same sliding spectrum of person. i won't go too deep into theory, but as a summary, all aspects of life are exceedingly hard to categorise, and attempting to cleanly cut exactly where abled people end and disabled people start is extremely hard. it is not suddenly fair and equal towards all widely-agreed-upon disabled people - the minority of our spectrum - if none of them are represented, because abled people - the majority of our spectrum - still get represented.

a good analogy of how i view this answer is to consider if it was instead about mc ethnicities, and the answer given was something along the lines of "it would be unfair if we picked and chose which ethnicities were in, and then we'd get questions about why have we only got eurasian ethnicities and not african ethnicities, so it's best to not have any degree of foreign ethnicity given to the mc." this would only "solve" the issue by enforcing every mc to be the setting-default white american as if it is somehow an opt-out of the topic and not in any way just another more heavily represented group of the same concept, all while ignoring that the game still has bias through qiu and the exploration of their chinese culture the game will feature.

(and to refresh - as noted at the start of all of this, having some bias isn't inherently wrong. it fundamentally makes sense for the purpose and scope of the game that we'll see more of qiu's background than yours. but if a dev stripped your background entirely and claimed that the game was not giving any nationality more attention than others while qiu is still clearly there, that wouldn't add up, right?)

now, of course, scope is still a very real concern. gbpatch are right in that it would be a bit dodgy to excessively feature one group of people over another (however one must remember this is the pre-existing current situation we want to solve in the first place, and opting not to act doesn't change that), and disability inherently impacts day-to-day life, and thus the writing scope of the game, much more than other currently customisable aspects. if they tried to go down a big List of Disabilities and add variations for all of them one by one, they wouldn't get very far before they'd have to give up. so what can they do, if they have a set-in-stone cast of characters and an inability to add specifics to our mcs?

Potential Alternatives & Conclusion

first off, let's be realistic. overhauls of the cast aren't happening, and that's reasonable. two of the most important lessons when working with disability, especially in regards to accessibility and as is most relevant here fictional portrayals, is that good-but-not-great is better than bad, and perfect only exists in your imagination. yes, if disability was considered a more important part of our life now & forever from day 1, the cast would probably look very different. but with where progress now, changing the cast heavily does genuinely pose a threat to the project's health, and killing the project in misguided pursuit of perfection is not helpful to anybody (in fact, it means there would be with less disability recognition than there was before, because now we don't have any of the characters). acquired disability might seem like an option to get the best of both worlds by introducing these elements in later steps that have yet to be written, but i would find it very unwise to speculate on internal plans and presume that they have space for this sort of thing (in addition it'd be a bit unusual and not the greatest storytelling to have half of the cast suddenly acquire a disability between step 2 and 3). ultimately, i think only people within the team would be able to adequately identify spaces for character tweaks, so i'm instead going to focus on something where there is known space to adapt - the mc. after all, this is where the player gets to express themselves the most.

the best way to figure out what mc changes are possible is, of course, to assess the pre-existing mc options already offered to the player. what makes so many of these options powerful, as far as i can tell, is their versatility and cost-effectiveness. you can state you're intersex or that you transitioned between steps, but you don't have to clarify any further and the game will offer you enough to see yourself and not stew on it. you can choose not to talk for a while and the game will work with you, but whether that's because you're quiet or you're scared or you're doing a secret dare is up to you. when you choose your background, you can just fill in a couple of generic relevant details about how far away it was/etc and any extraneous details are left for you to know - you don't even have to fill in the name of where you came from.

as noted, i think gbpatch are right when it comes to not being able to incorporate "every disability". however, i think one can dodge this by better embracing the game's reliance on players filling in the gaps and opting for a more relevant lens of incorporating disabled experiences rather than a medical lens of incorporating disabled diagnosises - like is already done with the autistic experiences of sensory needs and speech problems, which other people with adjacent symptoms can also enjoy. when focusing on this, not only does it become clearer as to what disability inclusion can look like in a realistic and practical sense, but it also becomes very clear why disability does in fact belong in our life.

if we go back to the initial steam question, i think the op was already onto this by offering specific mobility aids instead of specific disabilities. for example, wheelchairs aren't just for paralysed people - they're for people with chronic pain, people with general mobility issues, people recovering from surgery, little people, and all sorts of others. with one fell swoop, you could cover a whole range of bases (yes, this would be in an incomplete manner that wouldn't portray other complexities of the disabilities in question, but remember that this is only one wide-use addition so far so additional options akin to the ones noted later can help patch up holes. and even if it were only this, good-but-not-great is better than bad). however, this is also one of the most straining potential inclusions - mobility aids, while not requiring quite as much narrative change as you might expect, are still ultimately present at all times and do heavily inform the mc's capacity. in a game where all three main characters' bedrooms and i thiiiiink your classroom are up a flight of stairs, and you'll be spending a lot of time in the forest, there's a lot of very big questions to be asked that could have unfortunate answers. that's not to say this should be given up on right out of the gate (after all, the mobility offered by different mobility aids varies - for some, stairs would just be a hurdle instead of a major barrier), but it's one where i definitely understand the scope argument and at the very least would say should this be tackled you're reallllly going to want sensitivity readers for this. although ofc you're going to want sensitivity readers anyway. nothing about us without us. still, this is a particularly lucrative option for inclusion, should it be possible.

so, let's consider options that still need a reasonable amount of legwork behind them, but aren't quite as daunting as retrofitting mobility accessibility into the game. two of the big obvious disabilities people's minds will go to are blindness and deafness. for many people, they'll simply think of total blindness and deafness, both of which immediately seem a bit far fetched - total blindness would require a rework of the vast majority of prose in the game, and total deafness raises a bunch of questions about sign languages, balances between groundedness and the game's rose-tinted tone, and Deaf culture. however, these are spectrums - sight loss and hearing loss are both not all-or-nothing. i think partial sight/hearing loss are both much more feasible, only requiring regular-ish tweaks rather than persistent overhauls (again, both of these have potential to offer additional overlaps - as an example, hearing difficulties are comorbid with the pre-existing vitiligo).

amputation (referring both to the removal of limbs and the lack of presence at birth) is also something that, while tricky to draw boundaries on, would be less overarcing than you might think. having an mc without either arms nor legs would be particularly taxing on writing, but individual limbs would only matter in particular cases (legs in particular would mostly leech off of anything provided for mobility aids, should that be present). that being said, exactly how you'd define what is/isn't allowed to the player is unclear to me.

more doll options with disability in mind also have a lot of potential. in particular, positive representation of facial differences beyond sanitisied slashing scars (inc. facial paralysis) is in extremely high demand. each requires its own graphic(s), which can't be ignored, and care would want to be taken with both the handling of the graphics and considering if there's any need for text differences (sometimes the answer is no, but sometimes there's additional consequences one might not immediately consider). again, a need for boundaries to be drawn here where deciding on a place to draw the line for scope's sake isn't the clearest. of course, that's not the only option that could be added to dolls - hearing aids are the first one to come to mind, and there'll be more that could be identified with more than the 5 sleep deprived seconds of thought i've given this.

the occasional out-clause, like seen in the fireworks part of olba step 3, could also grant a bit of room for additional expression. perhaps part way through the bike-riding moment in olnf step 1, your mc might not have the energy to keep going and needs to sit down for the rest of the moment or potentially go home early, with the option having a clear tone of physical incapacity but leaving the details to the player. or you'd have a moment where you're intended to go into a space with bright flashing lights and you can opt to not go in at all and the cast give you the option to either wait outside for them or they'll stick with you and skip the arcade/club/whatever, to express epilepsy or visual sensory needs or other such problems. things like that.

and on the lower-tax end of the sliding scale, i feel more attention towards potential disability with the player's fluff choices could make a whole world of difference. if players get to choose how well they're doing in school, perhaps they could specify if they're struggling or need support in specific subjects, to offer a more granular way to express dyscalculia, dyslexia, various learning difficulties, etc? or during a sleepover moment, you can state that your sleep schedule is Fucked as per usual, and let the player decide why that is. even just the option to take your medication when waking up one morning could resonate with many people (especially if a bit of extra granularity is given, leading to bits of personality like a rude step 1 mc who has to take a lot of medication being particularly grumpy about it).

i'd also like to note real quick that, of course, these topics don't always need big screentime or being particularly pointed out. as i noted earlier, olba accomodating for my touch aversion as simply as it did was meaningful to me, and it's in part because it didn't have any big screentime that it hit the way it did. whether something deserves a big moment like leaving the fireworks or whether it should just be a passive avoidance of certain things like saying no to touch is all a very case-by-case situation.

lastly, i imagine we're going to see an obligatory Step 2 Identity Angst moment like in olba, where we can be ambiguously upset about our queer (or yet to be discovered queer) identity. if we're not intruding, i think this sort of moment is begging for space to introspect about disability, too. especially given that qiu's probably going to be there for it, and if they're going to be looking for somebody to bond with over a queer identity they've yet to figure out, they should get to bond with somebody over a disability they've potentially yet to get answers to as well.

this is all just stuff that i can think of within an afternoon or so. there is a lot of potential territory that could be explored that i haven't considered (eg; i haven't really talked about ND very much here, mostly because what already exists is mostly catering to this first and foremost), and i do earnestly believe it is all worth considering.

overall, it's these experiences that make "disability" a group with community. if we assess the category by just what the diagnosises say, so many of us have fuckall in common. even groups that an outsider might expect to be homogenous, like blind communities, are varied. but it's the shared consequences, experiences, joys and frustrations that make us a semi-coherent category. i think that's what our life should be focusing on should it be interested in disability rep (which, judging by how well it caters to me, it is), as that's both how you keep scope in check and how you elevate the rep from name-drops and well-intentions to something that you can look at and go "what the fuck. that's me."

ONE LAST DISCLAIMER BECAUSE I REALLY REALLY DON'T WANT ANYBODY TO GET THE WRONG TONE FROM THIS: our life fucks incredibly hard as it is. in the same way that partial rep of disability is a good thing even if it's not complete, the game's commitment to minority rep is a good thing even if it's missing a lot of disabled people. the devs behind it are doing great work, and even if they were to find this and go "hmm nah i don't agree that this is feasible for the game" i'd still be just as happy as i am now to have spent maybe a bit too much money on the kickstarter. but ultimately, i do see that i am getting the better end of the stick compared to my friends and other people, and that makes me a bit sad. even if as small a change as adding one extra option were added, like the aforementioned pills-in-the-morning, was added with the intention of widening the player's expression of disablity, it would make me a very happy bunny.

and another reminder that i'm just one autist with a mediocre amount of disability knowledge and this post isn't gospel etc etc i am VERY paranoid about the potential for people to be destructive about all of this if you can't tell but i think this is still worth posting

and another reminder that there should be nothing about us without us, please remember this. i do not reflect the vast majority of disabilities i have mentioned here and if these were integrated into the game you'd want to be listening to people who actually do reflect them

and Please. Cove James Holden with short sleeve wedding attire. My soul is up for grabs. Really, that's the only reason I posted this (lying)

[drdemonprince]

What are your thoughts on the terms “high/low support needs” or “high/low functioning” in regards to Autistics? Both terms feel inaccurate, limiting, and ableist. Are there better terms out there for us to use? Or should we reject more strict definitions and embrace stating our needs and capabilities directly and plainly?

Yeah both sets of terms flatten the diversity of the Autistic experience to a greatly misleading degree. I would qualify in the eyes of basically everyone to be either high functioning or low support needs, strictly because of the fact I have a job and can communicate verbally at a "high" level -- and this masks how much a fucking car wreck the entire rest of my life has been in order to prop that "functioning" up and how many things I cannot do. This kind of shit gets people denied disability benefits and accommodations which can straight up kill them. hell the only reason i have worked myself to debilitating illness multiple times is because i am assumed to be able to function highly and had no choice but to. on the converse, people labeled as low functioning/high support needs typically have their competencies and agency utterly denied to them.

it's far better to be really specific. the same way that it's preferable to do a body part inventory than it is to assume what organs a person has based on their assigned sex. what KINDS of support does a person need? what can they and cannot they do? you really cant take anything as a given. i know intellectually disabled nonspeaking autistic people who are very adept at painting and cross country skiing. meanwhile i am super physically inept at a ton of things. it's all so complex

HOWEVER I will say that we do need a framework for discussing the privileges that maskers have relative to Autistics who cannot mask. There are huge advantages i have and freedoms i enjoy being able to mix and mingle (kinda) in neurotypical society that my nonverbal and intellectually disabled peers lack, and this causes them to get decentered in disability conversations and that's a huge issue.

[potstism]

❤️‍🩹 my take on a PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder) flag 🧠

clipart .png credit

i had been waiting from months to a year to see someone design a flag for PMDD since i'm not very confident in my own ability, so i decided to go ahead and bite the bullet with an attempt. this is currently planned to just be a draft and may be subject to change with new updated versions in the future.

TW FOR MEDICAL TRAUMA/ABUSE: although this topic is not very widely discussed, or at least doesn't seem to be commonly present, online among the disabled community, my personal experiences with PMDD have made acknowledging its existence as well as its consequences quite necessary to me. as of the time of writing this, i am 19 years old, and when i was 15 exactly this time of year (as well as the first similar incident a couple months prior), i had an intense hyper-emotional episode the week before my period that was so bad i ended up getting institutionalized at a psych ward against my will and have never been the same since. for years now, i've been on a birth control pill that suppresses my cyclical hormones and prevents my period from occurring most of the time.

before getting into the stripes' meanings, there are two factors to explain behind my thought process:

dark teal is considered to be the awareness color for this disorder, although i went with a light aqua color because i think it looks better with the pink, and it's in the same family so i believe it still works.

pink is meant not to represent femininity necessarily since uterus-owners can come in many different gender expressions, but rather fit with the vibe of internal organs, especially since pink is closely related to red which is how warm blood appears (and is a key element of uterine cycles).

as for the stripe meanings, here is my proposal for each single word:

awareness ─ suffering from premenstrual dysphoric disorder is a very real thing that happens to müllerian individuals everywhere. according to the cleaveland clinic, which i am an active visiting patient of, about 10% of people with our reproductive body types who are at least of minimum pubescent age may be affected by it. although it does not tend to be a risk toward physical health, it is often a deadly threat to our mental state and well-being, which can lead to suicidal ideation.

strength ─ i consider this to be an invisible disability, with most of the symptoms taking place within our internal worlds and fighting a constant battle with negative thoughts + emotions. in addition to this, physical symptoms also arise and can cause severe discomfort before menstruation even begins. all of this happens within the confines of our own homes, and we tend to suffer through it alone. people who do not have PMDD probably fail to realize how strong we have to be in order to get through this difficult time repeatedly & endlessly, despite their well-intended efforts.

diversity ─ this is intended to have multiple meanings, and to include anything i may not have come up with so far. for one thing, there are plenty of different experiences to be had with this disorder, such as varying levels of cramping + sickness or depression + anxiety. on another note, not only do our bodies each work differently (some may also have endometriosis and/or PCOS, which are also intersex conditions, as a double-whammy), but many of us do not conform to societal ideas of gender despite all having these parts in common. there are infinite possibilities to mix & match with presentation & identity, which is not limited by biology.

flesh ─ although many factors are involved in this process, including hormones, PMDD centers around the uterus, which is an internal organ. the flesh represents the physical aspects of this experience, and how we must take great care of our bodies in order to ease how we feel.

pain ─ there is so much physical + mental pain that builds around this disorder, which deserves to be recognized, sympathized with, and treated. the deep pink (to me) somewhat resembles what ibuprofen & benadryl pills look like; painkillers & antihistamines respectively (i'm not sure if anyone else needs the latter, but my skin's condition gets really reactive when i go through my cycle).

anyone is free to reblog/use accordingly, although you may have to be mindful of permission/credit with the uterus imagery from the source!

tagging for reach (it may not fit your gimmick exactly, so feel free to ignore if you're uninterested, or reblog somewhere else!): @idwl @satyrradio @spaghettimakesflags @obnebulant-mogai @caeliangel @intervex @arco-pluris @beyond-mogai-pride-flags @radiomogai @themogaidragon @neopronouns @mad-pride @disabilitypride

[five-thousand-loaves-of-bread]

see more and more “entire life told/thought i high function but actually am just very high support need” (autism context) and get more and more annoy at that

everytime see everytime click into page and everytime realize by “very high support” (yes see multiple include the “very”) they mean comorbid anxiety depression cptsd trouble make friends because people think “weird” bullied lose speech need remind shower need remind things (but able do and if no remind after a while will do) trouble school trouble job etc am forget.

and all that hard struggle yes no deny. deserve all the help and am not say it easy.

but it not “very high support need.” not even “high support need.” have higher need than what nondisabled neurotypical society expect you to is not “high support need.” yes, know many people do this because want validate self and past and trauma. but. not need be high support to be valid or to receive support. not need be high support for past trauma & past neglect & past not get support to be valid.

and. it water down definition of “high support need.” kick actual high support need out. us who extra vulnerable because need physical help most or all bADLs. need constant 24/7 supervision to be alive to not accidental harm self or die. need medical services for stuff people (include these people) take for granted, like just be able communicate, walk (yes many high support need autistic people struggle with that even without specific physical disability dx), feeding, etc. no awareness of self or other people or surroundings or danger. need 24/7 behavioral support. experience explosive emotions that even terrify self self no understand and cannot control behavior so destructive. many very high support, if not get support they literally die. not exaggerate. that how high of support they need.

(and even debate about whether should write this list. because. unless you high support yourself or experience these same amount yourself or close to someone who is or give care for them, very high chance you not get degree of symptom am talk about. plenty autistic struggle emotional regulation, for example. some struggle with severe intense lose control explosive behavior, include some level 1s. but unless you experience it self or read lot lot lot lot about & by people who do, found that average person include average autism community person not know what am mean by explosive emotion.)

it not “gatekeeping” or “call fake.” it me get frustrate at people misuse medical term that used describe extremely vulnerable population, who rely on other people to keep basic alive, many us have trouble or have limited language communication or have none at all, we need keep medical term describe us because many us cannot explain cannot list you our support need, either because long or private or make us feel awful or literal no communication/intellectual ability.

by validate self you harming us. “well it just one person identify themself not affect you [eye roll].” no, not just one person. but even if just one person, people around them see, and think, oh, that high support need, that very high support need, am educated. and that spread. and actual high support need people like am describe are ignored people don’t think they exist.

please. talk about own experience. no matter “there people more struggle than me.” am not say cannot. am not say “look at these actual struggles yours mild shut up.” it autism spectrum, there spectrum of experience. there more than “no support need” vs “high support need.” there things in middle. even low support need—that just mean low compare to other autistics. not “your support need your trauma not important.”

but please. remember us. leave our terms alone.