#that writer on twitter saying that telling writers to read is ableist

[marisatomay]

i’m so sick of writers who proudly proclaim that they don’t read and directors and actors and other filmmakers who smugly say that they rarely watch movies or any artist who acts like an audience is stupid for connecting with their work like what the fuck is wrong with you that you hold such contempt such derision for the art that you have chosen to make the art that so many people dream of the opportunity to make the art that brings meaning and connection to people’s lives it’s unbelievably disrespectful to both your audience and the art-form and if you can’t muster basic respect for either your art-form or your audience then kindly fuck off and do something else

[showtoonzfan]

If you’re not familiar with the musical “Ride The Cyclone” and it’s current script situation with one of its main characters, this post is not for you! Thank you!

So I understand the “Ride the Cyclone” Fandom is really upset, including me ESPECIALLY and we all have a right to be, but I think at the same time, we all need to realize these four things regarding the “Ricky Potts script change” situation: Keep in mind I am NOT disabled so I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but I do want to share important things that I think most of the fandom needs to acknowledge:

Despite the change being an unnecessary piss poor decision and a HUGE downgrade compared to what the script was like before, we need to acknowledge that Ricky STILL has a disability. He may not have the same one he had before, but being mute from trauma is in fact a disability. I say this because everyone keeps saying he’s no longer disabled and that’s just not true. Again, it was still a bad change but his disability wasn’t completely erased like everyone keeps saying.

Disability representation in theater and casting more actors with said disability’s is something that NEEDS to be spoken up about, but harassing the creators and actors are NOT the way to do it. If you’re just telling the crew to off themselves and painting them as one note monsters, that is not getting anyone anywhere, and not helping.

Speaking of portraying people as one note, some of y’all honestly need to stop painting Brooke Maxwell and Jacob Richmond (the writers of the original script) as irredeemable monsters. Again, this issue in theater is something that desperately NEEDS to be spoken up about, and voices need to be heard, but as much as I hate to say it, we really DON’T know all the details on why the script was changed. We don’t know what was going through the writers heads, we DON’T know the full story, so seeing everyone say the writers changed it simply because they were ableist and nothing else are just jumping to conclusions way too early. Regardless if you think they’re truly ableist or not, regardless if you’ve lost all respect for them, these writers are still PEOPLE at the end of the day, and people make mistakes. There is always room to grow, there is always room to learn and improve. We need to actually speak up and inform them that this change was not a good one, instead of just screaming at them, sending threats and calling them ableist pieces of shit, something that I’ve seen SO many people do and it’s an issue. It’s hard to actually IMPROVE yourself when everyone is just calling you bad names and not seeing you as a layered person.

At this point of making this post, people really need to stop arguing with Kholby Wardwell (actor for Noel Gruber) on twitter. I don’t care if you like him, I don’t care if you don’t like him……STOP….arguing with him. I shouldn’t say everyone is, but there are a few, and there’s no point guys, stop harassing him. He’s made it clear on how he feels about all of this, and its obvious at this point, nobody can change his mind on his viewpoints. People also need to stop calling him ableist as well, because if you’ve read his twitter thread, you can tell he never had malicious intent. Of course I’m not excusing some of the way he worded or said things, but again, these issues for the RTC crew as a whole need to stop being viewed with a one note lens. While it’s not hard to say “theater needs to hire more disabled actors and make it accessible for them”- it’s ALSO not hard to NOT see everything as black and white, mainly the motivations behind the writers and actors. These are all things that need to coexist within the fandom, and people also need to stop pressuring the others to speak on this subject. Again, when you speak up about an important subject matter like this, doing it with aggression is not the way to go.

With all of that said, this script change has heavily disappointed me, even hurt me. I personally thought it was perfectly okay for Ricky to be a kid who got a degenerate disease at 6 years old and lost his ability to walk and talk, but somehow the writers felt the need to change it. It was unnecessary in my opinion, because I felt like the script wasn’t really the issue, it was casting able bodied actors as disabled characters, and getting rid of Ricky’s crutches five minutes into the show. That, as well as treating his disability as a joke, mainly the comments by Ocean. These were all criticisms the show has gotten over the years, so it hurts to see that what we got was the writers idea of “improving” that. Instead of “improving” it however, it felt more like they erased the issue so they wouldn’t get controversy and could avoid the problem, without putting in the effort. HOWEVER, despite that I don’t truly feel like that was the writers intentions. For now, I’ll give the writers the benefit of the doubt, because I do believe that they truly felt like they were helping and encouraging the disabled community, even if the outcome didn’t turn up that way. Again, we STILL don’t know the full story, so I sincerely hope Brooke Maxwell and Jacob Richmond come out with an official statement soon giving us the full insight to why they did what they did, since the new script has gotten so much backlash. It’s clear this change has done more harm than good, and with respect, I hope the writers can be educated and more open minded to why their idea wasn’t the best at all. I have always praised the writing of this musical, I haven’t been in the fandom that long but it has become one of my current favorite musicals of all time, and Ricky Potts has always been a character I adored, and he deserves SO much better. For all of this to happen because of one huge fuckup, hurts. At the end of the day, we all want the same thing. We all want disabled people to be treated like human beings, with respect, and have more accessibility, not just in theater, but EVERYWHERE. We all have a right to be mad, we all have a right to speak up, and I just hope that as a society we all can educate one another without it being taken too far. I sincerely wish the fandom, the writers, everyone, can bounce back from all of this, and society improves as a whole when it comes to the disabled. I will still continue to enjoy Ride the Cyclone, and watch it over and over because no script change can get in the way of my enjoyment of the show. With that said, things NEED to change, and I especially hope the Mccarter Theater gets the consequences to their horrendous action of illegally firing it’s only disabled actor. With that said, feel free to say your thoughts, feel free to disagree, I just needed to get this all out. Thank you for reading.

[improbablecarny]

it’s important to me that everyone understands that the current Writing Twitter Discourse was started by some twitterhead who makes her money by selling expensive writing workshops to people writing a “listen up, chucklefucks”-style condescending thread about how writers NEED to have comp titles from the last three years when trying to sell their books (these are books similar to yours, for marketing purposes). I really have to stress here that this thread had an extremely abrasive, mean-spirited tone that suggested that anyone unable to do this was unable simply out of pride, laziness, and a lack of skill.

many people, especially and including other publishing professionals, pointed out that this was 1: not universally true, as many agents do not require recent comps, or even comps at all, and 2: marginalized authors were very clearly an afterthought for the OP, which she went on to prove by making some ridiculous tweets telling marginalized authors that they had to use comps to water down their themes and experiences in an inoffensive and digestible way in order to prove that their book was still marketable to cishet white abled people. the backlash included discussion of disability, including ADHD, as well as time constraints related to school/parenting/working 80 hours a week to not die in our global pandemic capitalist hellscape/etc, that made reading every current release in the hopes of something you could maybe compare to your own book somewhat difficult, if not impossible.

at some point in the resulting flurry there came a tweet from someone saying, and I directly quote, “If you have major time constraints or ADHD or similar issues that prevent you from reading novels, then maybe being a novelist isn’t right for you”.

which many read as a statement that if you do not have the support network that allows you a focused, dedicated amount of time for reading (ONLY recent releases, remember!) and writing as mandated by increasingly ridiculous industry expectations as marketing labour is shrugged off onto authors, and if you have a disability that makes it difficult to level with the pace expected from abled authors, then you do not deserve access to a form of creative expression. i think OP tried to say that ISN’T what they meant, but surely you can see how it reads that way -- especially in light of what the initial thread was saying.

somehow, this has mutated into “entitled YA writers think they never have to read anything ever or know anything about storycraft in order to sell billion dollar fanfic reskin franchises”. some of this seems to be based in bad faith readings of a disabled author, who as far as I'm aware does not even write YA, discussing xer own experiences as a disabled author, in a thread xie have now deleted for the transphobic and ableist harassment received (including people accusing him of being antivax because xie shared xer experience in being overprescribed tylenol, which ultimately caused liver damage. what????). this person is famous/infamous for various reasons, some sillier than others, and I'm not dismissing any criticism that other disabled people may have regarding his tweets, but the vitriolic blowback on a disabled person sharing xer experiences with the industry, to the point where it has completely overshadowed the initial problem being discussed, seems ridiculous to me.

I’m sure there are some people who unironically think that the average person can write the next great novel without having read one at all, without having put any theory into storycraft at all, but I think it’s concerning that this semi-theoretical has taken a front seat to a perfectly legitimate discussion about the increasingly ridiculous marketing demands foisted onto writers, industry pay-to-players doling out advice that’s both bad and revealing of harmful attitudes within the industry (including a disregard for non-traditional forms of storytelling and non-Western, non-English novels), and the fact that the industry clearly favours people with a level of privilege that allows them to dedicate hours and hours of unpaid time to writing, reading, and marketing.

look at it this way: if someone can't sell their books because they refuse to learn to write and think they're above doing so, then that's a them problem and we can leave it with them.

if someone is writing good books but they are unable to sell them because people in the publishing industry are beholden to marketing trends that quash creativity, demean everything outside of a very narrow scope of recent, western work, and require hours of unpaid labour with very high risk vs reward, maybe there are some problems we should prioritize talking about over "weird guy being cringe online".

also the way the conversation immediately degraded into telling disabled people to bootstrap it into success and learn to "overcome" their disability? not a fan!

[heartisamusclethesizeofyourfist]

tell me the ana mardoll discourse 👀

Oh, that really sucked. Lengthy rant incoming, because this is one of those discourses that sucks up about six different issues and tangles them all up, and it continues to nag away at me in all sorts of ways. I've been trying to find a way to write about it here for a while, and it's been rattling around unproductively in my head, so I appreciate you providing me the spur to finally do it... maybe this will be the thing that finally lets me stop worrying at it. I suspect the tone's going to be all over the place.

*

So, about a month or so back, Ana Mardoll, a prominent social justice commentator on Twitter, turns out to be working for Lockheed Martin. Cue an absolute screaming flood of people delighted to see him knocked off his supposed moral high ground (like, huge amounts of glee, that don't quite feel in keeping with their supposed concern about the victims of Lockheed Martin weaponry)...

Because here's the thing; Mardoll gets people's backs up in the way people who talk about social justice stuff often do, but also for reasons that include ableism and transphobia and just sheer aesthetic distaste for how he expresses himself about his identities (idk, that was cited weirdly often in the celebrations of his downfall; it's bad enough to work for arms makers, but if you work for arms makers and you're a bit twee then God help you).

It also wasn't independent of the increasing backlash against neurodivergent people and the confidence we've gained as a community in talking about our stuff publicly. I'd noticed for ages that a lot of people moaned about him in terms that suggested his Twitter presence caused them significant ongoing rage, yet somehow they couldn't bring themselves to use the mute or block tools to free themselves from the sight of him. There was a lot of hate reading going on, is what I'm thinking.

But most of all, the people enjoying his reputation getting tanked tended to skate over the (well known and constantly referenced) fact that his job only came out when he got doxxed by a noted hate site as part of a lengthy saga of transphobic harassment (they'd gone after his family, even) - i.e. the people currently chasing keffals around the world, and who spend their time targeting autistic and trans people for harassment and - sometimes successfully - baiting them into suicide.

Normally left wing people are against doxxing, and against this website full of TERFs, Nazis and generally dodgy people, but re: Mardoll they were falling over themselves to ignore their principles, which was ironic because they were mad at him for ignoring his own principles. And of course that must've been a huge win for the hate site, as it showed them that if they picked a hated enough target, they'd get very little blowback, at least from cis people .

Moreover, the rush to cancel Mardoll on Twitter employed a great deal of ableist rhetoric which felt horribly familiar from the past decade-plus of UK media/Tory discourse on disability, work and benefits.

Basically, the Twitterati instantly assumed everything Mardoll was saying about his limited capacity for work, struggles finding suitable work, general income and financial stability was fake, and in the light of that assumption, they also tore to shreds things about him that were contextually unsurprising for a part-time working, disabled, self-published writer, i.e. his having a few income streams such as a Ko-fi, publishing stuff, and indeed crowdfunding for mortgage payments. There was a general assumption that he must be loaded, with self-publishing used to claim both that he was a failure and that he was raking in the cash.

They also made up daft strings of illogic, like "he says 'boy' in his profile; a boy is under 20 and therefore he is doing a massive con where he's posing as a nineteen-year-old" - which was a trip to read as an older Millennial who remembers Mardoll being a prominent early-2010s feminist blogger (and not being six years old at the time). That's easily verified with Google, but people were too perversely hungry for the situation to be somehow worse than "social justice guy works for an arms maker" to bother doing so.

And maybe everyone's worst suspicions about Mardoll are right; maybe I'm being desperately naive here. But I do know that people have been conditioned to think that disabled people are lying about work/money stuff, and they had no interest in considering how that default atmosphere of suspicion and condemnation around disabled people and work as a subject might well have made it harder for him to reach out to his online networks about seeking less morally compromising work . Or in the fact that the way the conversation was playing out was making a ton of other disabled people feel it was unsafe for us to speak about our own work or financial situations.

And c) surprise surprise, leftist Twitter then turns on disabled people when we point out that it's already bad enough the guy works for LM, but as he's highlighted that family connections were the only way he'd been able to get part-time, work-from-home gig that paid enough, then maybe there needs to be a bit of nuance in how we talk about this, and could they please bring this level of energy to actually improving material conditions of disabled people?

Don't get me wrong; I don't want to absolve Mardoll of working for flipping Lockheed Martin for fifteen entire years. I think there's definite questions a lot of us need to ask ourselves about what we're prepared to compromise on morally for our livelihoods, and for how long, and whether we're really as completely stuck as we think we are, or there might be chinks of light and possibility and it's only that the traumas of surviving an ableist world have beaten out of us the capacity to trust in them. (I know, like a lot of disabled people, a thing or two about feeling stuck.)

I found it disingenuous how people were ignoring that these questions of ethics in the job market bite disabled people a hell of a lot harder and more quickly than they do abled people, and it was so clear to me that the way it exploded on Twitter was incredibly counterproductive and 75% about the lulz/snark for a lot of people.

Treating Mardoll as the Absolute Worst also doesn't sit right to me when so many people on both sides of the Atlantic are government workers: how do you decide how much better working for a government with policies that do harm at home and abroad is than licensing software for an arms manufacturer, as Mardoll has been doing? Is it ever morally acceptable to work in HR for the DWP, given their persecution of disabled people? What about being an admin assistant at an asylum seeker detention centre? Are your hands clean if you profit from providing goods or services to the Tory MPs who devote their lives to policies that are killing people? Might a lot of people in fact need this stuff to be discussable?

And people really didn't want to know when we pointed out that, while fifteen years of being unable to get anything else does raise questions, ableist recruitment practices are incredibly common, many workplaces fail to offer disability accommodations, and it costs more to be disabled to start with.

Having watched at close range as disabled loved ones stuck for many years with employers that treated them like shit, because chucking the job in felt too risky, I don't find Mardoll's decision to sit tight all that surprising. Of course there are disabled people who courageously cling to their principles no matter what the personal cost, but the cost the bear will be a damn sight steeper than it would be for a non-disabled person, and that doesn't make them extra principled, it just makes this ableist world extra shit.

And the refusal to explore those questions when Twitter had recently spent months discussing recent US labour relations upheavals (for perspective, someone recently was said to have been digging for dirt on whoever runs the Jorts account), the politicisation of work-from-home arrangements, the risks to disabled people forced back into workplaces/universities/schools in person, trans healthcare being under threat, the more general healthcare costs/access mess in the US, the medical risks for women and AFAB people of living/working in certain states after the fall of Roe...

On my timeline, there was also a lot of Extremely Sudden Concern About Weaponry and Colonialism from British lefties who I had never once seen give a flying fuck about colonialism's equally real outworkings right here on their doorstep, i.e. Boris Johnson's ongoing efforts to absolve the British army of their Troubles atrocities, the disproportionate harm being done to Northern Ireland by Brexit, or the fact we literally don't have a functioning Executive right now: indeed, that's a common enough problem in Northern Ireland that this website exists:

https://HowLongHasNorthernIrelandNotHadAgovernment.com/

It was revealing to watch Twitter lefties well-actuallying disabled people about all the deaths and disabilities Lockheed Martin weapons have caused like that was some sort of gotcha; like nobody with a Twitter account could possibly have grown up in a conflict zone, or been disabled in a bombing, or live in a place where bombings and shootings still happen.

Like none of us lives in a place with a complicated peace, with the UK's highest rates of physical disabilities/chronic illnesses and mental health problems, of unemployed disabled people, and with suicides among kids who don't even remember the conflict, all problems you can't untangle from the fact this is a post-conflict society where social progress was stunted for so long. A place where the writer of that last piece was herself murdered a few years ago, because it still fucking happens in peacetime. Because the violence hasn't really gone away, not entirely. And nor has the violence of the state.

Anyway, that's why I can't get the Ana Mardoll discourse out of my head.

[vtori73]

You know... I find myself thinking about some person I followed on twitter weird interpretation of the Twilight Zone episode, time enough at last, and how it just continues to ANGER me, lol!

I just... I won't argue it is a possible interpretation and maybe I need it explained to me like I'm 4 but it just seems like a rather poor take on the episode.

The criticism of the episode was that it's ableist because it is about the dangers of being reliant on tech and just... I'm sorry I just don't get that interpretation AT ALL. Like I get why someone would claim it's possible, I see that, but the idea is the thing we are meant to takeaway from the episode just seems a bit ridiculous. I would get it if they made it a point to emphasize the glasses, the tech, or show others making it a point that he is too reliant on tech versus them but it's actually the opposite everyone seems against him reading (because he refuses to participate in the world around him unless it is through his books), something that is definitely not tech, and tells him to grow up to move on to stop wasting his time on useless things. Then bombs were dropped and he was saved by tech, a bank vault, and was the only survivor. He was sad at first because everyone was gone but then it wasn't because now he had all the time in the world to read but then he didn't because his glasses broke.

Yes he is reliant on glasses, a tech (a VERY old tech) but the thing is... he is reliant on them regardless because that's how poor eyesight works. Everyone would know that, even the most able bodied person would know this, they wouldn't just magically be able to read without their glasses and picking glasses as warning on the reliance of tech is a rather poor choice, the point just doesn't land because even if he didn't rely on glasses... he wouldn't have been able to read the books regardless. Yes, he is reliant but that wasn't the point, he just happens to be a man who needed glasses to read.

Honestly, if you actually pay attention to the story the reason for him having glasses makes sense. He had all the time to do what he wanted something looked down upon by the people around him, something that you can do even after the world has been bombed that can easily be taken away from you by a simple action. Now, I can see why people would be upset if you tried doing this with a different disability aid but I also don't believe you COULD substitute just any aid in this situation because the aid in question wasn't the main focus, it was the hobby (does this even make sense, lol, I'm passing out so maybe not).

It's mainly a story of "be careful of what you wish for," he wanted to read but everyone else around him kept him from doing so and he put up with it then the world ended and he realized this was perfect because now he can read all he wanted but due to cruel fate he could no longer. Also, themes of solitude versus loneliness with how he wanted to be alone with his book, even fate is inevitable with foreshadowing of him being unable to read due to his glasses falling earlier in the episode.

Honestly, thinking about it and how Henry Bemis is portrayed in the episode his equivalent of today would be... a gamer. A lot of people feel sympathy for Bemis and some feel the exact opposite, and while I feel more in the middle about him I think it's interesting to think how the same people who feel sorry for Bemis in the episode would NOT feel the same way if he was a gamer instead of a bookworm even though there really isn't a difference between the two and we shouldn't just treat one better just because the hobby is considered intellectual.

In closing though, regardless of everything above I think jumping to assume ableism with this episode is a rather bold assessment to make and underestimates Rod Serling as a writer and person. I'm not going to say Serling couldn't have possibly been ableist/was perfect BUT... if you watch any other Twilight Zone episodes by him you come to realize how much of his work is about humans, humanity, and how people ALL people have value. And, you can tell he means it too with how much the sentiment is repeated, he even CREATED the Twilight Zone in response to the murder of Emit Till, originally it was supposed to be something else but he was censored and thus the Twilight Zone was born.

The core of his work was about caring for our fellow humans so knowing this it only makes sense that Bemis was always meant to be punished in the end. What is interesting or rather great about this too is that while some might take issue with that and think Rod is bullying bookworms/introverts he has had similar character of wanting to escape to fantasy world's, past, etc who actually do so and aren't made out to be bad guys for wanting and even doing so successfully and are shown understanding at times (example, the Santa episode, the actor episode of the guy who thinks he is the character he is playing, the lady who use to be a big star, the children with horrible parents who want a divorce, the guy who wanted to escape his job and home and go to a small town, the old people who wanted to be young again and probably many more) and there are PLENTY of examples of people being punished for not caring for their fellow humans too because again it's the beating heart of his work.

You can argue why Bemis, a disabled man (a very normalized disability but a disability nonetheless), was the one learning the lesson but again plenty of other non-disabled characters learned similar lessons because it was never about his glasses, it was about his quick disregard of his fellow humans.

[fmhiphop]

Beyoncé Will Remove Ableist Slur From New Song 'Heated'

Just weeks after Lizzo used a slur in her song “Grrrls,”  which she's since removed, Beyoncé appears to have made the same mistake in one of her latest tracks, “Heated.” After receiving backlash, a spokesperson for the singer released a statement saying the lyric would be removed. The lyric in question is currently, “Sp-zzin’ on that a–, sp-z on that a–/ Fan me quick, girl, I need my glass.” Australian writer, Hannah Diviney, wrote an op-ed for Hireup criticizing Bey's use of the slur. She also expressed her frustration with the music industry. The article gained traction after being picked up by The Guardian. feels like a slap in the face to me, the disabled community & the progress we tried to make with Lizzo. Guess I’ll just keep telling the whole industry to ‘do better’ until ableist slurs disappear from music. Beyoncé is far from being the only artists to ever use the term. In fact, it's extremely prevalent in hip-hop. However, as Diviney points out, Beyoncé is one of the most influential artists of this generation. She is a cultural icon, and that title comes with responsibility. The History Of Spastic As A Slur In The US And The UK Social media users have exchanged words across multiple platform on whether it's ever appropriate to use the word. Some argue, just because it's a slur in the overseas, doesn't mean it's a slur in the US. Some go as far as to say it's a term used in AAVE—African-American Vernacular English—and we shouldn't punish Black artists. However, this is ahistorical. The term “sp-z” comes from the shortened version of the condition spastic paralysis. Even the positive context ascribed to the term, as it means to “go crazy or wild” on the beat, directly refers to the movements of a person with the condition. International disability advocates explained the history of the term, yet some people still struggle to understand how the term is offensive. Other Artists Who Have Changed Lyrics Lizzo and Beyoncé aren't the first artists who have had to change problematic lyrics. Some artists who have adjusted or removed offensive lyrics include Taylor Swift, Future, Michael Jackson, and the Black Eyed Peas. Some used slurs for the LGBTQ community, others used racial slurs. One of the Black Eyed Peas biggest hits, “Let's Get it Started,” originally contained a slur in the title and chorus. The group received backlash even back then. With this happening to two of the biggest artists right now, maybe we'll see a big change in the music industry. Until then, advocates, and allies for the disabled community will continue to let their voices be heard. Written by Kimberly Stelly | Instagram | Twitter  | Spotify Follow FMHipHop on Twitter  | Instagram   | Spotify Read the full article

[battylite]

nvm looked it up and figured it out. someone said “And the fact you OPENLY ADMIT that you're defending Brandon solely because of his "ability" or "talent" is so telling.”

LMAO do you mean someone said Ana was attacking Brandon because he has talent or that someone was arguing in his favor because they want to be on the side of talent? Literally the definition of he’s not gonna fuck you bro

Anyway insanity under the cut

The drama of the week was whether saying to be a writer you need to read is an ableist statement— or do you need to read to be a GOOD writer. Which, this was the funniest response by far:

You can't read? You think you don't have the attention span or processing capabilities to read a novel, but yet you can write your own? Most people find one objectively harder than the other. You also have no opportunity to critique other's work; people naturally develop habits based on what they see others do that they DO NOT want to replicate because shame and negative attention is more potent. There's the answer to why you can't criticize your work and no one else can either. You're also just exposing that you don't really care about being a better writer than you already are, which I guess doesn't really imply you're a bad writer now, but you're completely oblivious to your own blind spots, and in 5 years I'll be that much of a better writer than you. I really want to spam reply every tweet like this with the Dunning Kruger competency curve. Congrats on making it to unconcious incompetence!!

This was the tantrum resulting from a tweet that was literally "Oh. Okay." And this.

Brandon blocked him a while ago over a similar argument, and Ana thinks that means Brandon can’t interact with any of his tweets. So you can make a post where everyone knows who you’re talking about but the person the tweet is about can’t address it? And then your go-to reaction is to reply with a grocery list of reasons why people can't call you out on your bullshit and why they should feel guilty about it? And then you want to cry about people dogpiling you like you didn’t just do that to someone else? You can be x y and z and still be an asshole on Twitter. Not sure when we decided our own mental health wasn't our own responsibility. Nobody is required to back read your tweets before they rightly dunk on you. Not to mention it was the most harmless reply possible; frankly I think Ana was just pissed he didn’t get more of a reaction.

These people want to play the victim card so badly. This is an absolutely insane take??

I know I operate under the cold weather condition that the solution to most problems is to ignore it, but if the twitter cosmos was deleted in its entirety tomorrow this argument could not exist. You are not being marginalized, you choose to self publish your writing online and you have a Patreon. You can't blame other people for a choice you made. Alternatively you could send your book to an editor and they can tell you it's not good and you can come back and cry about it then. Like hoooolllyy fuck just admit you jerk off to negative attention and then leave the rest of us alone. Anyway fuck this guy for making Brandon deactivate and if you haven’t seen the Tylenol thread it’s insane

[dilfdoctordoom]

On Tom Taylor, the Current Nightwing Run & Ableism

I did mention I was gonna do a post about it, so here we are. There are some things I want to make clear before we begin: the issue exploded on Twitter on the very first day of disabled Pride month; disabled people have been discussing the ableism in Taylor’s Nightwing run since it began; nobody has blamed Taylor for what happened to Barbara in 2011. We are, however, blaming him for the way she is written in his series during 2021. 

I am also going to be discussing the ableism in the fandom in this post. The reactions I have seen, from here to Twitter to TikTok, are showing not only a great misunderstanding of the situation, but a purposeful misunderstanding. The very real reasons disabled people are angry right now have been twisted to make us seem ridiculous and overly sensitive and I cannot help but feel that is very intentional.

Another quick addition: disabled people are not a monolith. Barbara Gordon spent over 20 years as a paralyzed wheelchair user. Stating (and I would like to note, never truly showing) that she is a part time cane user now is still erasing her disability. These things are not interchangeable.

So, with that out of the way, let’s begin.

Tom Taylor’s run is ableist. That is a fact of this situation. He made the active choice to include a version of Barbara Gordon that is ableist caricature. Story wise, the role that Barbara plays could have easily been filled by anyone else. There is no real season, within the narrative and outside of it, for Taylor to include this version of Barbara Gordon, who has received a decade of criticism from disabled people. It’s very well known that this iteration is problematic, to put it kindly, and Taylor is aware of that. 

He made the active decision to include her, anyway, showing, at the very least, that he is passively, if not actively, ableist. Passive ableism is still ableism and disabled people are allowed to take issue with that.

That alone is reason enough for disabled people to be angry. But that’s not why things exploded on Twitter.

On July 1st, the very first day of disabled pride month, the new design for Barbara was dropped. After months of teasing Barbara’s return to a wheelchair using Oracle (see: Last Days of The DC Universe, Batgirl (2016), etc), they debuted... a new Batgirl costume that the artist has openly said draws inspiration from the Burnside suit.

There’s a lot of issues to unpack here, so let’s start small: the issue with consciously calling back to Burnside. The Burnside era of Batgirl stories was... beyond awful. The villain of the series’ first arc, was an AI based on Barbara’s brain patterns when she was disabled. It was evil because of all the rage and pain Barbara felt. The actual Barbara, on the other hand, was good -- because she was able bodied. Because her PTSD had been tossed aside. It was a horrifically ableist era that drove the idea that Barbara’s life was terrible when she was disabled; that it was some horrible, twisted secret.

Comics have kept that narrative going. Barbara is seen hiding books on chronic pain; she reacts aggressively to the mere idea that she could be in a wheelchair again, acting like it would be weakness. Whereas Barbara had once been Oracle not because of, but in spite of, her disability, who was fantastic representation for the disabled community, she now acts like it is the most shameful thing in her life.

To call back to Burnside is to call back to that ableism and make no critique of it. If anything, it’s to embrace the ideas of that era.

There is also the design itself to consider. Many people have pointed out the inclusion of a back brace, as if that saves it from ableism -- it does not. Any person who has ever worn a back brace can take one look at this design and know that they did not consult a disabled person. Hell, by how impractical that thing is, I doubt they even Googled a picture of a back brace.

It’s a superficial acknowledgement that Barbara is supposed to be disabled. Something that was apparently thrown in to appease the numerous complaints of Barbara being able bodied; something that no one working on it put any effort into.

When it comes to aids, this is not a new thing for Barbara in Infinite Frontier. She’s said to be using a cane occasionally, that we got a better look at in Batman: Urban Legends, and as any cane user can tell you... that is not a cane that could feasibly be used. It’s another pathetic attempt to acknowledge that Barbara is supposed to be disabled, without actually doing anything of importance.

[IMAGE ID:  A segmented cane with a tri-pointed handle with a wrist strap. There is a stripe across the sections to connection them, labelled “solar battery charger buttons”. The text reads: “telescoping antenna doubles as cane or weapon if needed”. END ID]

Dropping this design (which we have now established to be problematic) on the very first day of disabled pride month is a sickening move. The very first day, and DC has doubled down on their disability erasure, thrown in superficial things like a back brace to act like it’s fine.

Tom Taylor is definitely involved in this, whether you like it not. No, he is not in anyway responsible for the events of the New 52 and what they did to Barbara Gordon, but that does not absolve him of blame for what is currently being done to her in his run.

When the design dropped, it started trending due to disabled fans reactions. To be clear: we were directly calling out the ableism in this design. This was Tom Taylor’s response:

[IMAGE ID: A tweet from TomTaylorMade that says: “Hey, @Bruna_Redono_F I think our new Batgirl suit is getting some attention.” He then adds a winky face emoji and tags @jesswchen and @drinkpinkkink. Attached are a screenshot showing that Batgirl is trending in the United States and a picture of the design itself. END ID]

This is him, bragging about how the disabled community reacted. Perhaps before this tweet, you could’ve made an argument that he was not ableist, but after he flaunted the fact that disabled people were rightly furious over this, like it was something to be proud of? No. If you are defending him, you are a part of the problem.

Taylor has included ableist writing in his Nightwing run, beyond the inherent ableism that comes with the current iteration of Barbara Gordon (whose inclusion, yet again, is his decision).

[IMAGE ID: A panel from Nightwing #79. Barbara and Dick are standing in his apartment. Barbara is saying: “I have some pretty new technology holding my spine together. I’m happy to do most things -- eat pizza in the park, take down low-level thugs -- but leaping from rooftops seems... unwise.” END ID]

What Barbara says in the panel above has bothered a lot of disabled people. The implication that she couldn’t “eat pizza in the park’ and “take down low-level thugs” without a spinal implant that conveniently erases her disability is... fucked up, to put it mildly. Those are both things that Barbara has done in a wheelchair. The first one is something wheelchair users can do and the implication that it’s not is beyond offensive.

But, let’s leave Barbara behind for a moment. I have previously mentioned that disabled people have been discussing the ableism present in this run long before July -- and that ableism is not only centred on Barbara. Dick is also a player in all this.

Dick Grayson was shot in the head. I don’t believe I need to retread the story, but just in case: Dick was shot in the head by KGBeast, developed amnesia from the event, and went by Ric Grayson for a long enough period in comics. If you have been active within the DC fandom for the past year or so, you know all about this controversial storyline and its fallout.

The Ric Grayson arc concluded itself the issue before Taylor became the writer for the series and ever since his tenure has begun, Taylor has completely ignored the reality of Dick being a disabled man. We understand this is comics, that things do not function the way they do in our world, but still -- it is clear that this gunshot wound to the head has affected Dick massively. We had an entire arc dedicated to how he struggled to find himself in the aftermath.

Taylor is choosing to write Dick as an able-bodied man, despite his canonical injuries and how they would impact his life.

This man is choosing to give empty gestures towards Barbara being a disabled woman (as discussed above, the completely dysfunctional back brace, etc) whilst writing her as able-bodied as possible. He writes both Dick and Barbara as able bodied as humanly possible. That is ableist. He is ableist. This is the same man that said he made a dog disabled ‘in honour of Barbara’. I do not think I need to elaborate on why that is bad.

The least he could’ve done, was get a sensitivity reader. We know that Taylor is not beyond getting people from marginalized communities to consult on his work (see: Suicide Squad), so why, when writing two characters that should be disabled, one that the disabled community have been criticising for a decade, does he not reach out to a single disabled person? A mere Google search could’ve improved the situation massively. In both the new design and the current writing, it is beyond clear that this is not just an able-bodied person writing it -- it’s an ableist person.

He could have listened to the numerous disabled fans that spoke out. Instead, he chose not only to refuse to do that, but to describe justifiable anger as ‘raging’. He treated us like we were crazy for daring to speak out about blatant ableism being parading around of us in our pride month.

Tom Taylor has failed to do the bare minimum and in doing so, he is, at very, very least, guilty of complicity. Again: passive ableism is still ableism.

The argument at hand is not just about Barbara Gordon and the continuing ableism that shines out from her current writing. The argument is about the treatment of disabled characters in his run. It has also become about the way he treats physically disabled people.

We also can’t have this conversation without acknowledging the fandom’s role in it all. I waited a day to write this up, to allow all the reactions to flood in... and I am sickened.

We have everything across the board. Able-bodied people that have actually listened to disabled people, who have supported us (which is deeply appreciated). Able-bodied people who may have had good intentions, but a skewed sense of the situation and perpetuating some of the more insidious lies being spread around (IE. that this is only about the new costume).

There are, obviously, the ableist reactions, though, that we will be discussing here. People deeming the current issues as ‘crazy’, calling disabled people ‘overly sensitive’ and ‘delusional’. Many people have completely glossed over the examples given for why Taylor, specifically, is ableist, and instead have resorted to telling disabled people that we are wrong and should be mad at DC instead.

It’s important to note that Tom Taylor is an adult man. He doesn’t need a fandom to attack disabled people for daring to call him out. He is not the victim in this situation; he has, for quite a few disabled people, been the aggressor.

I have seen claims that Infinite Frontier is a ‘slow burn’, implying that disabled people need to patient... as if we have not waited a decade for less ableist writing. There is a complete refusal from able-bodied fans to actually listen to what disabled people are saying. They would much rather rush to the defence of the (honestly rather mediocre) current Nightwing run. 

Disabled fans know that comic book spaces are ableist. We know that both DC and Marvel and many of their writers are ableist. We are still allowed to be pissed as hell about it and acting like the current reaction being had right now is disabled people being ‘overdramatic’ is yet another example of how the able-bodied side of the fandom both refuses to listen to and undermine disabled people when we call out ableism.

We know it when we see it. We always do and we always will and we will always be able to recognize it far faster than an able-bodied person. If this many disabled fans are coming out and talking about an issue, calling it ableism, then it’s time for you shut up and listen.

Stop being a part of the problem and start supporting disabled fans for once.

[hamliet]

Hi it's sad anon again who hates Tros, 100 and GOT's endings and now just hate the execution of AOT's ending. :) The only thing I liked was Falbi and Levi rest were just so disappointing. This was my last hope to have a better ending but no. In the end I feel like I am the one who is a fool used to look up to these writers. I feel so hopeless being a writer now because all of these authors so is care about rushed endings not the story the built up and how fans despise when I criticize the end.

2/ I am just going to stop consuming media as whole because nobody cares about art. Its a time waste. Sorry if I am being negative. Twitter is hell and everybody talks that I have no story reading skills.

First of all, I’m sorry you are in pain, and I am sorry you are getting attacked with ableist attacks.

I suggest reading stories that have already ended so you can prepare yourself. Most series’ endings are met with disappointment even if they are later reevaluated (Monster, for example, was met with a lot of disappointment and yet it is imo the absolutely perfect, top tier ending). That’s one of the boons and drawbacks of serial fiction: it enables engagement, which is great, but also leads to fans imagining so many things and investing so much emotional energy into various theories and preferences that it is natural they will be upset when their expectations are not met, even if the ending actually fits the story. Whatever attracts people to a story differs, so it will never please everyone.

I’ve said I really liked the ending and the more I read it the more I find it beautiful, but I can’t tell you you should like it and I don’t think it’s perfect.

I prefer characters and themes, so was pleased; others very much like worldbuilding and plot, and so were not. That’s fine. Imo, the flaws of the ending have been flaws throughout the series: AoT has always had iffy worldbuilding, overly-convoluted/convenient plot twists (Fritz/Reiss, Reiner in Shiganshina, etc) and bad pacing that is either too rushed (haha pie?) or too slow (Marlay Arc). But its strengths have always been its themes and characters. Eren was never OOC--yes, we all assumed he was a hero, but his goals never really changed and his flaws never did, either. The dude never had good plans.

The one place this was weakly executed imo was Historia, and if she is your favorite (she was mine after Armin up until this final arc), that is completely valid for people not to be satisfied with that, or to be triggered by the terrible context of her arc. Or just not to like the arcs because of preferences, because even what attracts us to the themes/characters can be different and thereby lead to one being satisfied and one not.

Anyways, it’s fine to feel whatever you want, but this is why I found it highly satisfying.

I will caution that I don’t think it is fair to say the author doesn’t care. Isayama has been clear about Eren’s direction and Mikasa being the center of the story (he actually said this, so it baffled me people didn’t get it) since like, 2013 at the very latest (look at past interviews). He’s stated Mikasa is the center of the story and spoken about Eren taking a dark turn since then, too. I don’t think there’s any evidence this ending was not what he planned; just the journey was  flawed, but not unusually so.

[homestuckexamination]

Your explanation on the discourse was really interesting because... it catered entirely to the team? I know we all like this webcomic, and don’t want something we spend so much time on to have anything bad, but if we love something, it’s okay to admit there’s something bad or many bad things going on. There’s a least one member who’s name I won’t say that is without a doubt at fault and has said and done many horrible things, including saying they wrote their part just to anger fans

Let me put my view out there anon, even though I’ve talked about this at large before. First of all, as I’ve said ad-nauseum before, I will say that in the context of The Epilogues and Homestuck^2, I am someone who likes what is going on. I genuinely enjoy the direction of the story, with no external prompting, and the Discourse always catches me off-guard because I never realize what people are going to be arguing about next, because when I am going through the story, I really DO enjoy what I am experiencing. Of course it is not perfect, by any god damn means, however, I am parting from the basis that my opinion inherently differs from the vocally negative voice of the Fandom right now.

I am a Content Creator. I am a writer, and I have started dabbling in art recently. I have plans, and ideas, to write a book, I want to create an original setting, that I’ve designed through an amalgam of my experiences, my points of view, and the things I like, as well as my hopes and dreams. Do you know why I side with the Team and ‘cater’ to them when I talk about Discourse? Because. The Fandom. Fucking sucks right now.

I have voiced my opinion on the Epilogues, and had death threats and suicide bait sent at me because I DARED to defend them! I have seen the Team- The same Team that made Pesterquest, one of the most Fandom-positive pieces of media I have ever had the pleasure of playing through, being sent those same threats and suicide bait at a scale I cannot even begin to comprehend. I have seen Queer Authors express their identity and experiences in the text, and people twisting them in some delusional way to accuse them of being Queerphobic in turn.

Do you know why I seem to ‘side with the Team’? Because I like the content they are producing, and the ‘fans’ are a ball of vitriol that tells me that if I like the Epilogues, I am either delusional, a bootlicker, or evil. Because I see the ‘fans’ pop into a post the official Twitter is doing, about supporting BLM, and what I see is people ignoring the contents entirely to send the team insults and ask ‘WHEN IS HIVESWAP ACT 2′ like a broken record. Because I see the ‘fans’ latching onto someone on the Team like the ONE SOURCE OF ALL EVIL, and proceed to doxx her, call the police on her, and threaten her and everyone close to her until she has to step down and drop off the team, during a global fucking Pandemic.

Am I biased for the Team? YEAH of fucking course I am, because I like the things they are exploring, because I related to things they are writing, because I truly do believe they’re doing something fun and entertaining, and what I see in turn in the Fandom, is hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate HATE.

You say that it’s okay to admit there’s something wrong or bad in content you like, but at this point it’s that the worst of the Fandom doesn’t even like the content. They actively do nothing more than dislike it, and consume it ONLY to be angry, threaten and throw insults around. And if you even so much as dare to claim that, hey, maybe these aren’t healthy habits of Media Consumption, and you should, you know, not keep following something that makes you actively seethe and that you go in with the inherent idea that everything being written is being made to hurt you, you get called ableist for daring to tell people that they should take care of their mental health and not stay in a constant state of anger.

It IS okay to admit there’s something you dislike, or many things you dislike in content you follow, so long as you actually enjoy the content overall. It is more than okay to be critical of things you like. However, there is a difference between being critical, and being hypercritical to the point of rage and bandwagonning. Take Roxy for example. Roxy. Roxy is one of my favorite parts of the Epilogues, and I have seen them beyond recognition by the Fandom. But because the trans girl Roxy Headcanon was so popular, there’s so much vitriol around it. And it is okay to prefer to read Roxy as a trans woman. I do actually! It is one of my favorite headcanons! My own name is Roxy! In fact, with the ‘dubious canon’ divide and the Team’s explicit encouragement of the Fandom to have their own takes and read, they have done MORE in the way of elevating headcanons that diverge from their content than basically any other content creator I’ve seen before.

But then, then people start down a negative spiral. Well, transmasc NB Roxy sure wasn’t something they expected, right? It is not bad representation in the slightest, between the Epilogues and the deeper exploration of Roxy’s feelings in the Pesterquest Route, they are a really solid and interesting case in my mind! But there’s not even the sliver of positivity to be found. Why, surely, the ONLY reason why Roxy would be a trans guy instead of a trans woman, is because the Team is aware of the headcanon and is trying to spite the fans! Ergo, transmasc Roxy is an ATTACK on Trans Women, and as such a transphobic addition to the story!!! 

And in the process of doing so, you’re erasing the identity, experiences and relation a queer team has with a character they have messed with, and turning a positive piece of representation around to CALL the team TRANSPHOBIC for it. You’re ignoring the possibility that ANYONE could read Roxy that way, and that the ONLY possible reason for it is SPITE and SPITE alone. Imposing your view on the read of the character, twisting the context of the content around to make it to be negative, and keeping that furnace of hate and distrust going.

And this is. With. Literally. Everything. Again, I have been on the side of the Fandom that likes the content since the Epilogues came out. I have seen the Fandom ignore, and twist, the actual positive beats of the Epilogues like they never existed in the first place, and exacerbate the negatives. I have seen people call them literally evil, and throw extremely puritanical views of what kind of Media should exist, and what things should be scrubbed off of Media entirely, forever. I have seen the most minor of shit spark discourse, because the Fans are prompted to disregard every single positive thing and positive reading, and instead twisting authorial intent from something that could be fun, from a projection of their own experiences, into a personal assault that surely no one could ever enjoy.

If you ask me to see the bad in the content I like, and the creators that I follow, I ask you, too, to see the bad in the ball of vitriol this Fandom has become over the past year. My opinion is informed by the reaction the Fandom has had to the content I like, and what it has told to me, by the reaction I’ve seen them have, as well as by the words of the Authors on the topic, and the content they have pumped out. I have seen and read ‘receipts’, I’ve seen every last piece of discourse happen, no matter how minor it may have been, because I am lucky to be a mildly loud voice in the Fandom because of this blog.

So when I seem to side with the Team instead of the Fandom, know that I am not making an impulsive choice to cover up the flaws of content I like. I have seen enough going around to inform this choice, and I know who I’m defending. And if you think “catering” to the Team rather than the Fandom considering what the Fandom just did is strange, I honestly don’t know what to tell you. We just have inherently different points of view.

[deafaq]

Deaf culture is not universal. If it's offensive in one culture it may not be in another. You said this yourselves. Yet you tell us don't do this or that in our stories. Well, our stories is not real life Deaf culture either. Perhaps we can use an idea that is offensive in certain real life Deaf cultures but not offensive in another real life Deaf culture. It's simply different cultures. Also of course, fiction can include our own cultures, including non-earth or non-human.

Hello,

yes, its indeed not universal. And if lets say Chinese Deaf person wants to tell a story about their experience which differs from mine, i am all for it.

But this blog is here as a source for hearing people - mainly hearing people from western world who speak English, so our culture applies. We do mention in our ask box to include language. We generally assume that when sign language isn’t specified, the asker means ASL or some other language from a western country (Like AUSLan, BSL, LFS). General Deaf culture of Western countries, attitude of hearing majority and Deaf history is similar in many aspects and our guide broadly applies. If someone asks for a history/culture/etc about specific foreign country, we are happy to find links or info and we will mention we have no personal experience with let’s say Korean Deaf culture.

And even so, our suggestions and guides are still.,. guides and suggestions. We are not forcing you to follow them. You can indeed write whatever you want. Our guides and suggestions are information. They inform you “this is how it is for us. If you write opposite of this and don’t listen to us, we won’t be happy.” But honestly not being happy is at most what we can do (write some reviews or complain, perhaps). Not like that stopped authors before - there are tons of innacurate and downright offensive books and stories about deaf people out there in the world. They are actually more common than the accurate ones.

However, I do dislike your argument about writing in fantasy world. Yes, its a fictional world with fictional aliens/elves/blue people. But the readers are not. We cannot divorce ourselves from our reality. If the black people in your fantasy love watermelon and fried chicken its still a racist stereotype even if you say that “oh, culture in my fantasy wordl never created those connotations!”. If you describe the women in your fantasy world as an objectively weaker sex who needs to be dominated by men, its still sexists, even if you say “oh but in my fantasy world its biologically true”. So if you write a deaf elven character whose sign name you invent, tell me she taught green little aliens sign language in three days and was then magically cured by them, I will still call it audist writing. Perhaps someone else won’t - but I will. 

And as for “it might not be offensive in another culture”... Well, or it might be. Lot of ableist ideas and discrimination of deaf people are pretty much universal. Lot of Deaf people around a world feel a certain kinship, because their experiences are often similar. For example - the feeling of being excluded and not listened to. There might be smaller differences among the cultures, but for example lip-reading being difficult or difficulties in deaf education are pretty much true everywhere in the world. And even with those smaller differences... if you are not from said culture which is different, I think its a moot point. If you are for example USA writer who writes in English, saying that certain stuff is okay in Iran or India is... not very relevant, unless you are planning to write for primarily Iran or Indian audiences.

And again. You can write anything you want. We are not a censorship comittee. We don’t go around archives or publishers to stop them from producing books we don’t agree with. We might write an unhappy review or complain on twitter, but we literally cannot stop gyou.

Just like we can’t stop you from writing anything you want, you can’t stop us from voicing our opinion about it. 

Mod T

[laraslandlockedblues]

I have something I’ve been thinking about, especially now that I’m back over on Twitter (admittedly with a new account than I’d had before) and have been trying to reconcile how I utilize different platforms and why.

Long rambles so I’ll be sure to tag this long post and put under a read more.

TL;DR - I essentially traumatized myself for a political group doing research after the 2016 election, and while I thought I could handle it I found out I could not. I walked away from politics and at the same time discovered that fandom/fanfic writing was alive and well and I lost myself into writing for DA. I literally did actively avoid politics through tumblr and fandom because it was what I needed to heal. It’s why I’ve been such a shitty ally, and while I know that doesn’t excuse my inaction and silence, it hopefully explains why I hid behind privilege and often didn’t speak up. However, moving forward, that will be different.

I can no longer stay silent.

Almost four years ago, after crying my eyes out on election night, I became part of a group that was trying to decide what the fuck we could do moving forward. We all took up roles and duties we were suited for, and at the start mine was to delve into research. I was good at it, and at the time I assured them that I was able to read things that could make your skin crawl and walk away unscathed. It was a skill we needed.

And so, I set to work. I dove into the world of pro-Trumpers, the alt-right, the radicalization of young white men through the internet, and I worked on learning. I would spend my days reading reddit, 4chan, wherever I could find them gathering and sharing their ideas and plans. I took notes. I studied their lexicon and wrote it down. I figured out how they dog whistled and what terms they used around “normies” to try to bring them into the alt-right. I studied how they were trying to “red pill” people. I studied the way they actively were trying to push the Overton Window so that their ideas could be enacted further down the road.

For weeks this was all I did.

At first I was fueled by my rage and disbelief at the election, and I was hopeful we could figure it out soon and overcome. As time went on, though, I lost that hope. I couldn’t walk away from the research unscathed. I carried it around with me, crying over what I was reading, what I was discovering. The depths of hatred in people shook me to my core, as well as the realization that I had been blind to it and even a part of it at one point. 

I was raised by conservatives who admire Ayn Rand, after all. It took me living out on my own and speaking to people from all walks of life that I finally began to shed both religion and my formerly held political views. Two of my closest friends are the children of illegal immigrants. They were the first of their families to graduate from college. Going to their graduation party (as well as others for their families) changed my whole world. Being the only white, English speaker in a room was exactly the kind of experience a lot of people in our country need to have.

And now I was having to research people who actively hated some of the best people I’ve ever met, and also actively worked to never be in the sort of situations I had found had changed me so completely as a person.

I gave up. I sank into such a deep depression I took to drinking more, drinking so that I could sleep instead of staying up until 5am, until I had to go seek a counselor. I was in a red state, in military healthcare, and my counselor only saw the symptoms and side effects of my depression, not the cause. I didn’t feel safe telling her that I was thoroughly depressed because of what I saw happening to my country. Because of the election.

So instead I was treated as an alcoholic, as if that was not a symptom and was in fact the main cause (don’t @ me, I know it makes it worse. But it was not the cause.)

Then I discovered Mass Effect for the first time. And I replayed Dragon Age. I fell in love with Garrus and once more with Alistair and Fenris and Cullen. Late at night, a little tipsy and wishing Garrus had had more of a romance, I googled him and discovered Ao3. And I began devouring fic. And then I had an idea for my own (Goose Bumps).

The rest is well-documented history, here.

I sought refuge in fandom and fanfic. I sought refuge in telling stories. I admittedly used some problematic tropes when I first started out, so enthralled by just finally *writing* again that I didn’t pay attention to how I was consuming the media. I hadn’t written in so long, having hit writer’s block with a mystery I’d been working on (inspired by the “sundown” town I had to visit in-laws in in Illinois), and the act of just writing anything was so liberating for me I gave little thought to anything else.

Never mind the fact that my first real interaction with someone in fandom led to me being manipulated, gaslit, and abused. We’ll gloss over that part.

But these things all compiled into a me who was no longer vocal when I saw things that were more than just concerning and needed to be addressed. I ignored things that made me angry. I saw mutuals sharing important political messages and my heart would start racing and I would log out for the day. I couldn’t see the content without having an adverse reaction to it. I also didn’t want to make myself a target by saying anything - after all, I had written fics and been targeted by an abuser simply for that. What sort of reaction would I get if I helped to call out problematic art and artists?

I was frozen by fear.

I let myself be silent. I let myself take refuge in my privilege as a white cis woman. I let myself only write and block anyone who was racist/sexist/ableist/terfs/you name it. I blocked and moved on.

Because I could.

I had that luxury.

I am no longer frozen by my fear. I am now emboldened by it. I understand wanting to seek refuge in fandom. I do. If moving forward me being political here on this platform causes you distress and you have to unfollow me, trust me.

I get it.

But I can no longer allow my silence to enable those who seek to cause harm. I can no longer stay silent in the face of what is happening in the world, in my country, in my backyard - in my fandom.

This is not in response to anything more than my determination to be better than I was. For three years I’ve allowed myself to seek shelter, while not allowing others the same decency or courtesy by creating a safe space free of racism or other harmful ideologies. I’m not the only one who deserves to seek shelter in fandom. White women are not the only ones who deserve to seek shelter in fandom.

If those statements seem radical or uncomfortable to you, feel free to show yourself the door.

This is not an attempt to explain away my past (in)actions. I don’t need pats on the back. I don’t need reaffirmation. These thoughts have just been circling in my head now that I’ve finally reconnected with that group and have been politically active on Twitter and my personal Facebook again. This blog is still mostly fandom and shitposts. But I also want to be better in how I participate here, instead of keeping it just to my Twitter.

Racists, TERFs, homophobes, sexists, fascists (yes, you’re a fascist if you’re “anti-antifa” get fucked), nazis, etc - none of your like are welcome here. My art is not for you.

[vettingsanders]

Vetting Bernie Sanders

Sanders the Politician

Voted five times against the Brady Act which required universal background checks and a waiting period to buy firearms https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/oct/13/hillary-clinton/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-voted-against-brady/

Voted against the AMBER Alert System http://archive.boston.com/news/local/vermont/articles/2006/09/21/sanders_vote_on_amber_alert_emerges_as_key_campaign_issue/

Voted in favor of dumping nuclear waste on the poor and predominantly Latinx community of Sierra Blanca, Texas https://www.texastribune.org/2016/02/28/Sanders-Nuclear-Waste-Votes-Divide-Texas-Activists/

When asked if he would visit the site in Sierra Blanca, answered “Absolutely not.” https://archives.texasobserver.org/issue/1998/09/11#page=11

Voted against the Iraq War in 2002 but voted to fund both the Iraq War and the war in Afghanistan https://www.alternet.org/2015/05/bernie-sanders-troubling-history-supporting-us-military-violence-abroad/

Voted for the 1994 crime bill https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/bernie-sanders-has-dodged-criticism-crime-bill-vote-while-others-n1020726

Touted his vote for the crime bill on his website at least until 2006, as proof he was “tough on crime” and “strong on the cops” https://web.archive.org/web/20061018180921/http:/www.bernie.org/truth/crime.html

Supported primarying President Obama in the 2012 election cycle https://www.thenation.com/article/yes-bernie-sanders-wanted-obama-primaried-in-2012-heres-why/

Signed a resolution as mayor of Burlington affirming that marriage is between “husband and wife” https://www.washingtonblade.com/2016/02/06/clinton-surrogates-pounce-on-sanders-over-82-marriage-resolution/

Argued same-sex marriage was a states’ rights issue in 2006 https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=57&v=kej9QAsS3uI&feature=emb_logo

In 2006, after same-sex civil unions had been legal in Vermont since 2000, responded to a reporter asking if same-sex marriage should be legalized in Vermont with “Not right now,” after the “very divisive debate” preceding the civil union legislation https://web.archive.org/web/20160407064606/http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060607/NEWS/606070302/1003/NEWS02

Has passed three bills in his twenty-nine years as a Congressman, two of which renamed post offices: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/browse?sponsor=400357#current_status[]=28&enacted_ex=on

Is nicknamed “the Amendment King” for his reputation of sponsoring roll call amendments to bills during his tenure in the House of Representatives, but came second in House amendments passed during that time period to Rep. James Traficant, whose tenure was 5 years shorter than that of Sanders: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/mar/24/bernie-s/bernie-sanders-was-roll-call-amendment-king-1995-2/

In total, has introduced 513 amendments in 29 years in Congress (averaging 17.69 per year) in comparison to senior Vermont Senator Leahy’s 942 amendments in 44 years (21.41 per year avg.), Secretary Clinton’s 296 amendments in 8 years (37 per year avg.), Senator Warren’s 180 amendments in 6 years (30 per year avg.), Senator Klobuchar’s 254 amendments in 11 years (23.09 per year avg.), and Senator Booker’s 140 amendments in 6 years (23.33 per year avg.) https://www.congress.gov/member/bernard-sanders/S000033?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22Bernard+Sanders%22%5D%2C%22type%22%3A%22amendments%22%2C%22sponsorship%22%3A%22sponsored%22%7D

Oversaw the Department of Veteran Affairs as Senate chairman of the Veteran Affairs Committee during the 2014 scandal in which dozens of veterans died while waiting for medical care from Phoenix Veterans Health Administration Facilities https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-veterans-scandal-on-bernie-sanderss-watch

Sanders Campaign 2016

Breached the Clinton campaign’s voter data and harvested and stored voter information https://time.com/4155185/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-data/

Received a 645 page letter from the FEC detailing the campaign’s finance violations https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-bernie-sanders-donors-who-are-giving-too-much/482418/

Paid a $14.5 K fine to the FEC after receiving donations from non-citizens https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/376373-sanders-campaign-pays-145k-fine-to-settle-fec-complaint

The Nevada campaign director sought to rig the state’s caucus by urging staffers to buy double-sided coins for tie-breaking coin tosses http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/sanderss-nevada-director-floated-two-sided-coins-for-tiebreaks-report/ar-AAhHiAI?getstaticpage=true&automatedTracking=staticview

Initially decried superdelegates as “undemocratic” (https://www.cnn.com/2016/02/23/opinions/superdelegates-democratic-party-kohn/) before attempting to persuade them to go against the primary’s outcome and back Sanders instead of Clinton https://www.npr.org/2016/05/19/478705022/sanders-campaign-now-says-superdelegates-are-key-to-winning-nomination

The Mueller Report confirmed that Russian interference in the 2016 election boosted Sanders’ campaign as well as Trump’s https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/politics/read-the-mueller-report/

Had no reasonable path to victory after Super Tuesday (https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/was-the-democratic-primary-a-close-call-or-a-landslide/) yet insisted on taking “our fight” to the DNC convention four months later https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/bernie-sanders-vows-continue-fight-convention-n588011

The campaign was accused by staffers of sexual harassment, demeaning treatment toward women, and pay disparity by gender https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/02/us/politics/bernie-sanders-campaign-sexism.html

Weeks before the 2016 general election, Jane Sanders retweeted a video from an April town hall of her husband telling an attendee to “make these decisions yourself” regarding whether or not to vote third party if Secretary Clinton won the primary https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/politics/2016/09/26/retweet-bernie-sanders-wife-jane-raises-questions/91140254/

Sanders Campaign 2020

Appointed Russian interference denier and Jill Stein 2016 voter Briahna Joy Gray as the campaign’s National Press Secretary https://twitter.com/briebriejoy/status/888555665865814017?lang=en

Following promises to run a civil campaign, hired David Sirota, a man who’d spent months attacking other primary contenders online, as a speech writer.  The campaign also confirmed that Sirota had already been serving in an advisory role prior to his official hiring https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/03/sanders-promised-civility-hired-twitter-attack-dog/585259/

Press Secretary Briahna Joy Gray called for the doxing of a Sanders critic on Twitter. If there was any repercussion for this behavior, it has never been made public. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/8/14/1879124/-Bernie-Sanders-s-Campaign-Doxed-a-Critic-on-Twitter

Hired and fired YouTuber Matt Orfalea within 24 hours after being alerted of his sexist, racist, homophobic, and ableist content, suggesting he was not vetted before his hiring https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/bernie-sanders-matt-orfalea-mlk-youtube-video/

Hired and fired Darius Khalil Gordon after two days after being alerted of his sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, and ableist Tweets https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2019/12/bernie-sanders-new-head-organizer-called-people-fgs-bhes/

Sanders National Campaign Co-Chair Nina Turner claimed that Biden’s strong support among Black voters is due to the voters’ “short memories” and “not a true understanding of the history” https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/473161-top-sanders-officials-hits-biden-over-riding-on-obamas-coattails

Paid staffers working 60 hours a week an average of 13 dollars per hour despite Sanders campaigning on a 15 dollar per hour minimum wage https://www.vox.com/2019/7/20/20700841/bernie-sanders-minimum-wage-staff-pay

Sanders Himself

Two days before the 2016 general election, Sanders tweeted “I do not believe that most of the people who are thinking about voting for Mr. Trump are racist or sexist” https://twitter.com/berniesanders/status/794941635931099136?lang=en

Unsuccessfully and habitually ran for office from 1972 until his election as mayor in 1982, during which time he held no steady job and could not afford to pay child support for his son Levi.  In 1974, Levi’s mother Susan Mott was quoted in a Burlington Free Press article stating that she was refused apartments because she was a single mother on welfare: https://twitter.com/m_mendozaferrer/status/1093295853907922946

Despite conceding the 2016 primary and stating that “Secretary Clinton has won the Democratic nomination and I congratulate her for that” (https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/11/politics/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders/index.html), he later made the Trump-esque statement “Some people say that if maybe that system was not rigged against me, I would have won the nomination and defeated Donald Trump.” https://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders-defeat-donald-trump-2016-rigged-primary-dnc-nbc-kasie-hunt-1446116

Stole electricity from his neighbors in the 70s https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/bernie-sanders-vermont-119927

Stole food from the refrigerator of the Vermont Freeman’s publishers https://newrepublic.com/article/122005/he-was-presidential-candidate-bernie-sanders-was-radical

Was asked to leave a hippie commune in 1971 due to sitting around engaging in “endless political discussion” rather than working https://freebeacon.com/politics/bernie-sanders-asked-leave-hippie-commune/

At age 28, wrote an article for alternative newspaper Vermont Freeman entitled “Cancer, Disease, and Society.”  In the article, he argues that sexual repression can cause cancer, and women who are virgins, have fewer orgasms than their peers, or simply don’t enjoy sex are more likely to develop cervical cancer.  The article includes statements such as “the manner in which you bring up your daughter with regard to sexual attitudes may very well determine whether or not she will develop breast cancer, among other things” and “How much guilt, nervousness have you imbued in your daughter with regard to sex?  If she is 16, 3 years beyond puberty and the time which nature set forth for child-bearing, and spent a night out with her boyfriend, what is your reaction? Do you take her to a psychiatrist because she is “maladjusted” or a "prostitute," or are you happy that she has found someone with whom she can share love?”  He also argues that the education system contributes to cancer, as does having “an old bitch of a teacher (and there are many of them).”  https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2157403-sanders-cancer.html

Appeared to still hold these views as of 1988, when he stated "I have my own feelings on what causes cancer and the psychosomatic aspects on cancer." https://time.com/4249034/bernie-sanders-alternative-medicine-cancer/

Called Planned Parenthood “part of the establishment” for endorsing Secretary Clinton https://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/planned-parenthood-bernie-sanders-218026

In his 1998 autobiography, quoted an article calling his 1996 primary opponent Susan Sweetser “too brassy, too bitchy” https://books.google.com/books?id=_2YjBm2_JGUC&pg=PA173&lpg=PA173&dq=sanders+too+brassy+too+bitchy&source=bl&ots=SWrIR5Xa8m&sig=ACfU3U2-Hj1-UXIOM0Zz274h6_Nu8juoBg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjHhtObq6LmAhWvUt8KHc8mDVUQ6AEwA3oECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=sanders%20too%20brassy%20too%20bitchy&f=false

In the same autobiography, repeatedly used the n-word and chose to keep the word in the text when republishing the book in 2015.  Note that Lyndon B. Johnson was able to make this same point in the sixties without needless slurs https://www.inquisitr.com/5620596/bernie-sanders-under-fire-for-use-of-n-word-in-2015-book-clip-from-audiobook-version-goes-viral-friday/

After saying millionaire senators are immoral (https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/24/politics/bernie-millionaire-senators-immoral/index.html) and railing against millionaires and billionaires in his 2016 campaign, Sanders responded to criticism of his millionaire senator status by saying “if you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too.” https://theweek.com/speedreads/834228/bernie-sanders-says-millionaire-like-write-bestselling-book

Was booed by women of color at the She the People presidential forum by being unable to say anything of substance regarding racial issues, instead just constantly reminding everyone that he marched with MLK Jr. https://www.thedailybeast.com/bernie-sanders-met-with-boos-after-name-dropping-martin-luther-king-at-she-the-people-summit

As mayor of Burlington, fired the assistant city treasurer when she was jailed for an anti-war protest https://academic.oup.com/publius/article-abstract/21/2/131/1917641?redirectedFrom=PDF

Despite participating in a civil rights protest, never bothered to vote until he ran for election and voted for himself: https://imgur.com/gallery/mmS40Gq#460q6bS

Repeatedly accuses his female opponents of campaigning on identity politics, from saying “It is not good enough for someone to say, 'I'm a woman! Vote for me!” regarding Secretary Clinton’s campaign (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/21/13699956/sanders-clinton-democratic-party), to his 1986 governor race against Madeleine Kunin, who stated, “When Sanders was my opponent he focused like a laser beam on “class analysis,” in which “women’s issues” were essentially a distraction from more important issues. He urged voters not to vote for me just because I was a woman. That would be a “sexist position,” he declared.”  https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/02/04/when-bernie-sanders-ran-against-vermont/kNP6xUupbQ3Qbg9UUelvVM/story.html

Upheld a ban on rock concerts as mayor of Burlington like a Footloose villain https://i.redd.it/atpybo1rcwa31.jpg

Had a heart attack at age 78, making his continued life expectancy 3.1 years https://www.cardiovascularbusiness.com/topics/acute-coronary-syndrome/study-65-older-mi-patients-die-within-8-years

[cllynchauthor]

That post you made was a mess, just fyi. 1) I went through the thread you linked, and I found the authors reasonable and respectable. The playwriter's worked with people with disabilities for 10 years, and it's clear he cares about the issue. 2) The fact Lawrence is a puppy isn't automatically pejorative. That's how art works. I haven't seen the play, but it's probably a metaphor for the teen's lack of agency or something like that. Also writing something a certain way doesn't mean you -

“- approve of it. Have you even seen the play? 3) Please stop pretending anyone represents the autistic community and that you guys speak with one voice. It’s seriously dehumanizing to think a large and diverse group of people shares the same views. In that view there is an autistic man who loved the play - I guess his voice doesn’t count because he disagrees with you?”

--

I love this anon message because it contains pretty much every argument that people are using against the autistic folk protesting this play. 

Like, I’ve been watching #puppetgate unfold since day one, read the reviews, read the responses from @allinarowplay. You think I haven’t heard these points before?

I’ve read them so many times now in tweets and reviews that your message just looks like one of those ransom notes that are made from cut and pasted words out of the newspaper.

But since Tumblr is new to #puppetgate, SURE, let’s address them! 

First of all, my #puppetgate summary was a truthful, if flippant, tl;dr of the past two weeks’ worth of Twitter drama. 

I apologize if my brief humorous take on a complex and nuanced debate didn’t meet the standards of a random stranger on the internet. 

Let’s discuss it in more serious detail.

1) You can care about an issue and still handle it really poorly. No one doubts this playwright’s intentions. But, as you say, he was a CARER for 10 years. That doesn’t mean he understands how it feels to be autistic and in fact, ableism is built right into ABA and other therapies used by carers. 

So yeah, he cares. And he still made an ableist play.

Also, the thread you mention was BELOW the video I linked to wherein the puppet designer says, and I quote:

“Laurence is non-verbal, and the power that puppets have is that they explore movement and with a turn of their head or a small movement they give life and character that you wouldn’t achieve with a human actor.”

Which is why I snidely summarized their position as 

“ This puppet is going to be SO MUCH more like an autistic child than a human could ever be!”

https://twitter.com/allinarowplay/status/1092410318960148481

Also, there is a brief shot of their script in that video at 2:19 and if you pause it and look at it you can see that the parents are joking about how their kid is like a puppy.

“Shits wherever he wants” is clearly visible.

This is the stuff the positive reviews consider funny, honest, and brave.

According to reviews, the child is present in the background throughout most of the play. Which means they talk like this IN FRONT OF HIM and this is never brought up as an issue/problem. 

In fact, non-autistic reviewers don’t even seem bothered by it, probably because they share the common misperception that non-verbal high needs autistic people don’t understand what is going on around them. So…. yeah. I don’t care how well meaning the playwright was. 

The playwright consulted the National Autistic Society and they told him they couldn’t support the play “due to its portrayal of autism, particularly the use of a puppet to depict the autistic character alone.”

But he didn’t change his mind about the puppet.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/critics-say-new-play-that-uses-a-puppet-to-portray-an-autistic-boy-dehumanises-those-with-the-condition/ar-BBTk5kC

So again - sure, maybe he cares. But he also wasn’t willing to change his vision despite the warnings of the Autism organization that he was hoping would endorse his play. 

2) Of course a puppet isn’t inherently pejorative. For one thing, the autistic community is very positive about Julia, the autistic muppet on Sesame Street.

The outrage involves a lot more nuance than that. First of all, it’s the choice to make the puppet grey and ugly. This was obviously an artistic decision. The first version of the puppet has black hair too and no eyes, just dark sockets like a skull. 

Not exactly Julia.  

And even with that, I was on the fence and willing to wait for the reviews to come out before I made a judgement. 

Like you, I thought perhaps it would be made clear in the play that his puppet-ness and greyness represented lack of agency. And maybe the designer was thinking that way. 

But if that is the case, it does not come across. 

In fact, the reviewers who enjoyed the play repeatedly dismiss the controversy by saying that the play “isn’t really about Laurence.” 

https://www.timeout.com/london/theatre/all-in-a-row-review

“The production is also about the situation, rather than about Laurence himself.“

https://www.thereviewshub.com/all-in-a-row-southwark-playhouse-london/

“sadly the grey-faced puppet adds nothing to the production that a living actor – adult or child – could not have provided.”

I’ve read a LOT of reviews of this play by now. 

Reviews from mothers of autistic children who feel a kinship with the stressed, unhappy, dysfunctional parents. 

Reviews from people without a connection to autism who feel like they learned something. 

Reviews from autistic people and disabled allies who cringe at the ableism. 

None of them - NONE of them - allude to any kind of symbolism or thematic point running through the play which justifies or explains the puppet or its weird appearance.

And the reasons for the puppet given by the playwright, director, and playhouse make very little sense. 

In that promotional video I linked to they say that the puppet can communicate better than an actor could. I disagree. So does a non-verbal autistic mime who commented in the thread below. 

They also say that it allows them to avoid being offensive or stereotypical, which makes little sense because they still had a grown man grunting and flapping on stage, just with a puppet sprouting from his waist. 

They repeatedly argued that they couldn’t use an autistic child, as if acting wasn’t even a thing. They repeatedly argued that a human actor couldn’t do the sounds and movements, even though a human puppeteer was doing just that.

My favourite one was the review (linked above) that argued that “Laurence isn’t a character a person could play (neurotypical or not) as his autism is so particular and at times violent.”

...Has this guy never seen Titus Andronicus? 

A person can play ANYTHING.

On Broadway I have seen human actors play cats, lions, baboons, and witches. 

On multiple occasions a fine-boned actress has been used to play Peter Pan. I’m pretty sure you could cast a small actor to play a pre-teen boy. Then the play wouldn’t have attracted so much negative attention.

As for “writing something a certain way doesn’t mean you approve of it.”

True. 

My fans can tell you that my main character spouts a fair amount of ableism. They’ll also tell you that this flaw is addressed openly and resolved as part of her character arc. 

They’ll ALSO also tell you that the “villains” of my story embrace ableist ideals. So yes, I wrote ableist stuff. But you can tell by the waythese things are framed how the writer wants you to feel about them.

No, I haven’t seen the play because I don’t live in the same country as it and it would take 12 hours to fly there. But I read what people write about it and I draw my own conclusions.

And the fact that ableist jokes are punchlines does not endear me to the playwright or the puppet. 

You say you haven’t read the play, and from the sounds of it you haven’t read many reviews either. 

If you think it’s wrong for me to criticize it after watching all of this unfold over days and days, and reading a dozen reviews by people who loved it and people who hated it, then how is it right for you to defend it?

3) Aw, look at that straw man lying on its side! You did a good job there.

Nowhere in my puppetgate summary do I claim that 100% of autistic people feel the same way.

I was summarizing what has been going down on Twitter over the past two weeks. I know because I was there. Don’t believe me? Actually spendsome time on the puppetgate hashtag and the actuallyautistic hashtag and see what people are saying.

And of course less than 100% of #actuallyautistic people feel the same, but I want to point out that at the time of this writing, my #puppetgate summary post has nearly 11K notes, all of them expressing disgust at the idea of this play.

Autistic people are disgusted. Autism allies are disgusted. Even people with no connection to autism can often see why this is effed up.

Yours was the only message I have received trying to defend the idea of a play featuring a messed up family arguing, discussing bukkake, calling their child a “puppy” using language which results in the play being rated as 16 plus... all in front of their eleven year old…

But what really bothers me is that somehow people come out of there identifying with the parents and thinking that it is “brave” and “honest.” 

They blame autism for what it has done to this family.

THE DAD SHAT ON HIS WIFE’S PILLOW AND BLAMED IT ON HIS OWN SON.

And the really sad thing is that your lonely messages in my inbox didn’t contain a single unique thought. I’ve been seeing those tired excuses and straw man arguments all over twitter for weeks.

They don’t stand up.

I’ve performed in theatre. I was willing to withhold judgement until more details about the play emerged. 

I was hoping they would say something brilliant and profound about what life is like for an eleven year old child with autism who is being sent away because his messed up family can’t stand it any more.

But facts are facts… they didn’t.

All they are doing is telling audience after audience that it is funny to insult your autistic child in his very presence and that autism wrecks marriages.

You can understand why a LOT of autistic people would be a bit sensitive about that kind of message.

It doesn’t have to be everyone. 

[xxlovendreamsxx]

do you support pain-somnia

Yes. 1000%. Because that fucking thread about them on twitter is absolute bullshit, full of lies and also putting words into their mouth that they never said. I’ve been absolutely livid about it since I learned about it, had half a mind to make a twitter account just to counter all the lies on there.

Day’s original thread earlier wasn’t manipulating anyone, it was advising people to watch what they say because these jabs at fan content have been bothering fan content creators. What sort of jabs? Things like saying you’ve been so deprived of content for the ship and how this novel is “so much better” because it’s not a fanfic. It’s discouraging for fan writers to hear, and they were trying to warn people about the effect these kinds of comments were having on fan content creators. Because in the end, after the hype dies down for the novel, all you have left are these creators. Where is the manipulation? It’s a boldface lie that they manipulated anyone. 

And then comes the matter that they apparently do not support small creators. What the genuine hell? Because they don’t read and reblog from them? Readers all have preferences, standards. Some topics they can’t stand to read about, some that immediately have them clicking out of a fic, some writing level they can’t tolerate. I can’t stand first POV anything, for example, and it sends me running. Same for cliche bad tropes like playboy Sasuke or super jealous Sasuke--we all. Have. Goddamn. Standards. And. Preferences. Day has never said their ideas were superior. They have said to be icked out by some subjects or tropes that had them exiting the fic, which is understandable. Does that mean they have to reblog from small creators anyway? Just because they are more popular? 

Newsflash, but when you do that as a popular creator, you tend to fall into a hole that never ceases to deepen where literally every small creator comes to you asking you to read and review and reblog their stories which can be exhausting and time consuming to anyone who is busy like they are. Getting attention and an audience takes time--there are no shortcuts. Don’t get angry because popular creators don’t always promote your works--it’s not their job.  

And god. The other zine. The other fucking zine. Man have I never been more pissed off in my life about all those accusations with that goddamn zine. 

Let me tell you something: I was in there for a while. Trying to paint them as the poor little victims? Oh boy is that ever laughable. Without getting into details, let’s just say it wasn’t the greatest time in there. The environment was toxic as hell. I quit. Many other people quit. Participants who stayed and were only in their zine were paid double while others who were in both were only paid half “to be fair” (where’s the fairness in that? there wasn’t any--there were just being petty.)

These accusations of trying to sabotage them is absolutely fucking ridiculous. Asking them not to announce their zine? All that other bullshit? Like what on earth? I don’t even know where to start. They (the other zine) did mistreat their creators. They laughed about how Seasons wasn’t going to make it and were never going to have enough money to actually go through with the realization of the project. Begged a creator who wanted out of their zine to stay by offering them MONEY (sketchy much?). Did not listen to any advice Day and the other mods gave to them because they were noticing the bad choices they were making. They were not kind, they were not angels--they were not remotely damn victims. Day was a dedicated and available mod, which is more than I can say for the other zine who were barely present and got offended if you had a problem with anything. 

I was never going to talk about my bad experience and the ones I know many other creators had with them because that was the mature thing to do, and karma would speak for itself when the time came. But accusing Day in that thread of all these things when they and the others mods have made the experience of a being in a zine 10x better than the other team? When Day told us many times of the advice they had tried to give so they would not make such mistakes but the team simply ignored it or got pissy about it? Give me a goddamn break, they were the better person here. Better than those people have ever been to their contributors and to Season’s team.

Lastly, this whole thing about only wanting to make money is just... god I’m exhausted thinking about it. Writers spend hours and hours of their time making content, yes? Just as artists do, we take a considerable time of our day to provide the fics you read. Artists have commissions, and a good 99% of the time, no one has a problem with that. But as soon as a writer dares to request money for their work, that’s somehow a big problem. Do any of you realize how largely silent the reading community is? How many people read, possibly like, but don’t say anything? How many readers feel entitled to have the next chapter as soon as possible when this writer isn’t even getting paid? No?

Then how, good gracious, in the fucking world is it so offensive that a writer would set up someway to get a little money for the extensive time they give the fandom, and rewards these willing patrons with earlier updates? Especially a writer who is disabled and doesn’t have the same privileges that able-bodied people have when it comes to work? But somehow that makes them money-hungry? You are helping them make their lives a little easier by offering just a little money for something they love to do and dont feel they are wasting their time doing. They have explained many times how patrons are the only way they feel people are still interested in their works because people are so fucking silent and never bother to leave a comment. 

So much of the fandom takes its content creators for granted. So many get offended when there is an opportunity for them to get a little money because they don’t want to pay them for content they could have for free. For content they have been getting for free for so many years. It makes them feel entitled. But guess what? No reader is entitled to anything if you don’t pay the creator. You don’t pay us. Write the goddamn subsequent chapters or stories you want yourself if you are so entitled to have content. 

Have some fucking respect and stop getting so enraged at creators who choose to take this opportunity to get money if they can when chances are they probably fucking need that money. Day is an amazing person. They are one of the kindest people I know, hardworking and dedicated to the fandom. 

Anyone who tries to imply otherwise is a blinded idiot. And that person specifically who made the thread? A special fuck you to your ableist ass. Literally cannot get over how you would tell someone you don’t even know at all that your life (and a dozen other people as you so sweetly put it) is harder than theirs.

Find someone else to spread your stupid lies about.

[fmhiphop]

Beyoncé Will Remove Ableist Slur From New Song 'Heated'

Just weeks after Lizzo used a slur in her song “Grrrls,”  which she's since removed, Beyoncé appears to have made the same mistake in one of her latest tracks, “Heated.” After receiving backlash, a spokesperson for the singer released a statement saying the lyric would be removed. The lyric in question is currently, “Sp-zzin’ on that a–, sp-z on that a–/ Fan me quick, girl, I need my glass.” Australian writer, Hannah Diviney, wrote an op-ed for Hireup criticizing Bey's use of the slur. She also expressed her frustration with the music industry. The article gained traction after being picked up by The Guardian. feels like a slap in the face to me, the disabled community & the progress we tried to make with Lizzo. Guess I’ll just keep telling the whole industry to ‘do better’ until ableist slurs disappear from music. Beyoncé is far from being the only artists to ever use the term. In fact, it's extremely prevalent in hip-hop. However, as Diviney points out, Beyoncé is one of the most influential artists of this generation. She is a cultural icon, and that title comes with responsibility. The History Of Spastic As A Slur In The US And The UK Social media users have exchanged words across multiple platform on whether it's ever appropriate to use the word. Some argue, just because it's a slur in the overseas, doesn't mean it's a slur in the US. Some go as far as to say it's a term used in AAVE—African-American Vernacular English—and we shouldn't punish Black artists. However, this is ahistorical. The term “sp-z” comes from the shortened version of the condition spastic paralysis. Even the positive context ascribed to the term, as it means to “go crazy or wild” on the beat, directly refers to the movements of a person with the condition. International disability advocates explained the history of the term, yet some people still struggle to understand how the term is offensive. Other Artists Who Have Changed Lyrics Lizzo and Beyoncé aren't the first artists who have had to change problematic lyrics. Some artists who have adjusted or removed offensive lyrics include Taylor Swift, Future, Michael Jackson, and the Black Eyed Peas. Some used slurs for the LGBTQ community, others used racial slurs. One of the Black Eyed Peas biggest hits, “Let's Get it Started,” originally contained a slur in the title and chorus. The group received backlash even back then. With this happening to two of the biggest artists right now, maybe we'll see a big change in the music industry. Until then, advocates, and allies for the disabled community will continue to let their voices be heard. Written by Kimberly Stelly | Instagram | Twitter  | Spotify Follow FMHipHop on Twitter  | Instagram   | Spotify Read the full article