Parker. 21(who let that happen) They/Them pronouns. I draw things. I don't have official commission rates yet, but if hit me up if you're curious. ko-fi.com/CuttlefishKitch if you feel like supporting me.
finally getting around to posting my piece from the Avatar of Fear Zine! Meet Elizabeth Fuller or, as she’s also known, The Lady of the Lake. She’s a character in a fic I’m probably never gonna write...
ID under the cut:
A digital painting of Elizabeth Fuller, as an avatar, drowning her husband in a lake.
Elizabeth is a white woman of emaciated build with long black hair, which drifts upwards towards the surface of the lake, several locks appearing to encircle her husband, one even wrapping around his upward reaching arm. She wears appropriate dress for a puritan woman from the mid sixteen hundreds including a grey bodice with full sleeves, white wrist cuffs, and tabs around the waist bound in lighter grey bias tape, a navy blue apron skirt, the hem of which has been tucked under the bodice at either hip to make the apron shape and a fashionable drape around the back which billows out behind her as she sinks. Her skirt is the same grey as her bodice and is tattered and stained with mud around the hem. She wears a white kerchief around her shoulders, and a simple white cap. Her skin is sickly and sunken, with her skin clinging tightly to her bones. Her eyes have been gouged out leaving behind empty sockets and tattered flesh around where they used to be. A length of rope is wrapped around her wrists and extends between them.
Elizabeth’s husband is a white man of average build with medium length black hair. He is dressed in clothing of the same time period as Elizabeth. He wears a simple brown doublet with brass buttons down the front, a white collar, and white cuffs. His breeches are lighter brown and slightly baggy. They are tucked into off-white stockings over which he wears black shoes with silver buckles. His steepled hat is floating off his head behind him, and blends in with Elizabeth’s hair.
Elizabeth has both arms wrapped around her husband and is leaning her head on his shoulder. One of her arms pins one of his arms to his side and clutches his throat, the blackened thumbnail digging into his neck and leaving a cut. Her other arm encircles his abdomen from the back. With this hand, she’s interlaced her fingers with his and is digging her nails into the back of his hand while he strains against her. On both of their ring fingers, there is a golden wedding band.
The water is a deep murky green. The golden light of the sun filters through the surface at the top of the page, but the entire scene gets darker towards the bottom. Long strands of lake-weed reach up from the floor of the lake, drifting placidly around Elizabeth, but tangling in and encircling her husband’s legs as he struggles. He watches the bubbles of his last breath float above his anguished face as Elizabeth grins at his demise.
i’m so glad that my impact on a small little corner of the tma fandom has been disability headcanons, seeing all the POTS and EDS fics in the tags has got me tearing up a little and thinking i should maybe take another pass at that first POTS!Gerry fic
Hey everyone! The Avatar Of Fear: A Magnus Archive Zine finally here!
[ID: A cover image for the Avatar of Fear Zine of a desk. There are three documents, a tape recorder, a cassette tape, a photo, and a folder. The topmost paper reads ‘Avatar of Fear’ in big letters with the paper having a few coffee stains to the left. The next paper is a case statement for case #9780606 and it reads “Statement of (redacted) you are not safe. It will get you. My only hope is that my story gets to you before it does.” and then there is more text that is cut off by the tape recorder. A few notes from the archivist are scribbled on the paper in red and they read “I’ll be fine thank you” and “hm” by a word unseen that is circled, a final one is at the bottom reading “it could have been the wind.” The right edge of the paper has been burnt off leaving black scorch marks on the statement. To the left is a blue fountain pen laid across the papers near the tape recorder. In the middle of the image is a green-ish tape recorder with a tape already in it. There are three thin scratch marks across the recorder. On the labels for the buttons there is a symbol of an eye. There is a web attached to the left of the tape recorder. Left of the recorder is a tape labelled ‘property of the Magnus Institute.” On top of a folder is a yellow sticky note with ‘to record’ written on it and underlined. Also on the folder is a case label and underneath is a bloody handprint. In the folder peeking out is a dirty paper with the word ‘help’ repeating over and over. Finally to the right is a bloody old photo of a dark creature rising out of the water and it is labelled with the date “1/1/21.” /end ID]
We are extremely excited for you all to view this project finally as there was a lot of love put into it by the contributors!!
If you weren’t already aware this was a collaborative project to highlight fanworks depicting both artist’s and writer’s own avatar OCs and sonas from The Magnus Archives!
We have a fantastic collection of works from 29 different creators from all 14 entities!
You can download or view the whole zine here for free!
Image descriptions are provided for each image in alt text in the PDF.
Thank you to everyone for their support and interest in this zine! We hope you enjoy it!
Our wonderful cover at was done by @archivebottles!
How did you go about ripping the patho classic textures? I can't for the life of me figure out how to open or unpack vfs files (I'm on windows). Please, I desperately need Artemy's classic textures so I can further support my case that Artemy's patho2 design is more ridiculous than Daniil's from a garment construction perspective. Also hell yeah modding!!
i.... accidentally wrote down steps for the full texture editing process here, hopefully at least the first part of this is useful to you!
there are a couple of steps to ripping textures! to unpack the vfs archives, i used mor_converter, which is a tool made specifically for pathologic classic. the download link is here! iirc, this program is in Russian, but it’s simple enough to use if you don’t understand the language-- this IPL forum thread has more info. alternately, if you have Python installed, this english github project may work better!
you’ll want to unpack Textures.vfs for anything related to game textures; I highly recommend also unpacking Strings.vfs so that you can search the main dialogue file “main.dat.xml” (very useful for finding specific dialogue! this miiight not unpack fully to xml but I don’t remember how I set that...)
once you get into the unpacked folder, you’ll see a lot of .tex files, which you may not be able to open directly in an image-editing program. i’ve been using this web-based converter to save the relevant .tex as .png, but maybe your program can handle em directly! be sure to use adblock when using any tools on the web haha
the significantly harder part is gonna be re-packing your images if you want to edit them. you’ll notice that the texture filenames all end in either DXT1 or dxt3 (dxt3 is mostly used for NPCs); DXT1 and DXT3 are image file formats. you’ll need to save your files with the exact same name as the original .tex file you unwrapped, in the matching format! barely any program does this. NVIDIA has a photoshop extension for it-- if you don’t have PS, there’s also a standalone program. (both are found here & require you to make an NVIDIA account for some reason.) however, that only runs on 64-bit windows. if you’re stuck on 32-bit like me, I downloaded a copy of the MS DirectX Texture Tool (DXTex) from 2010, which worked.
anyway, load your edited PNGs into one of those, change the image format to DXT1/3, and export it as (exactfilename).tex. then go to your patho folder/data, and make a new folder called Textures, and put all your new tex files in there! you may also need to open config.ini, and change the line “TexturesType = VFS“ to “TexturesType = FS” -- this will let any files in your Textures folder override the packed archive!
after that, when you launch the game the new textures should be visible! some footnotes:
- texture filenames are in russian. if you’re looking for something specific google translate may help! you can also look through them by trial and error... NPC names are also formatted by russian transliteration (klara, andrei, han, etc.)
- some texture names end in _LQ: these are smaller texture versions used when the graphics are set to Low quality! if you only edit the normal textures and your game is set to Low, you won’t see the edits.
feel free to message me if you have any questions! and if you end up editing anything i’d love to see what you make. hell yeah modding indeed :]
everyone jokes about dankovsky’s ridiculous snake skin coat, but at least it looks like an actual piece of clothing that could exist.
meanwhile patho2 artemy’s smock/tunic/coat/THING makes NO SENSE garment construction wise.
I’ve been trying to pattern these things out for cosplay fun and I honestly can’t even tell how many layers this thing is even supposed to have!! I could write a whole essay on why this thing is fucking ridiculous, even in comparison to everything (yes even peter, anna, and daniil’s coats) else in the game. I hate it so much especially in comparison to his classic design. I have such a pet peeve for character designs that don’t take into account how the clothes would actually be pieced together, and to be fair it’s not an impossible garment to make, but it’s construction would be so frustrating and redundant and that doesn’t work with Artemy’s character! i’m the only one who cares about this but it BOTHERS ME!!
meanwhile clara’s clothes don’t appear to have stitching, and you know what?
who do you trust to save your town from a deadly plague?? leave your choice in the comments below
Image ID under the cut
[ID: A single image with a grey background, including a waist up painting of Artemy Burakh on the left, a painted bust of Daniil Dankovsky in the upper right, and a painted bust of Clara in the lower right.
Artemy Burakh is a biracial (Russian and the fictional indigenous Mongolian steppe people The Kin) brown-skinned man with short light brown hair and green eyes. He is looking upwards with a melancholy expression, and is lit by golden light. He’s wearing a brown and green leather tunic with two straps around each wrist. One hand is pressed over his heart, holding cuttings of the fictional plants White Whip and Brown Twyre. The cuttings extend from bare stems below his wrist to blooms of each respective plant over his left shoulder. White Whip has multiple smaller stems shooting off the main stalk that bloom with fibrous white tufts. Brown Twyre resembles the end of wheat, but darker, smaller, and less densely populated with kernels. Artemy’s other hand is slightly below his first and holds a metal scalpel in a reverse grip with the blade facing left. Behind him are navy blue paint strokes.
Daniil Dankovsky is a white, sickly-looking, Russian man with short black hair that hangs in his eyes. There is no strong lighting. He is glaring forward and scowling. He wears a white shirt underneath a red vest with red ascot and silver pin set with bright red gems. Behind him are dark brown paint strokes.
Clara is a white, presumably Russian girl with no visible hair. She wears a dark red beanie, a red scarf, and a brown sleeve filled with holes that covers her palm but allows her fingers to stick through. She is looking directly at the viewer with her mouth open as if in the middle of speaking, and her head tilted slightly to her right. Two hands are pressed, by the wrists, to either side of her head in front of her ears. The one on her right is her hand, and the other is completely skeletal. She is lit from her left with a pale yellow light. Behind her on her right are dark pink paint strokes, and behind her on her left are dark purple paint stokes.
WOOO BOY did this piece take forever!! Say hello to an illustration I did for @gerrydelano‘s INCREDIBLE fic, Two Ships Passing!! It was so much fun to work on and the process was so wild I might end up doing a Making Of post about it. Anyway, enjoy and GO READ TSP!!!
image ID under the cut cause it’s LONG
[Image Description: A one-point perspective shot of a bookshelf, cluttered with memorabilia. There are three shelves visible, with a focus on the center. The image is composed of mostly de saturated blues and greys, with brighter instances of pink and purple scattered throughout.
Each item in the image is a direct reference to elements of two ships passing, some symbolic and some literal.
From left to right, there is a small, pink conch shell sitting on the shelf. Beside it is a blue mechanical pencil. Behind them is a mason jar, half-filled with seashells and with two pink carnations stuck inside, and a half-open box of glow-in-the-dark stars with a faded label written on a piece of tape. There are twelve of the stars stuck to the back of the center shelf.
Next is a beige hourglass. Inside the bottom half is a green triceratops, slowly being buried by sand. Leaning against the hourglass is a black, spiral-bound notebook. Balanced against that is a bottle cap with a duck carved into the top, and a safety pin hot-glued into the back. In front of that, there is another pink carnation, lying down on the shelf.
Next to the flower is a ship in a bottle, with pink and purple sails. Wound around the cork is a silver dragon claw necklace, clutching a purple stone.
Behind this, a paper book is propped up against the back of the shelf. The title reads TIME and PLACE, written above a drawing of Jon and Gerry as children, sitting behind the frill of a green triceratops. Taped to the wall next to the book, visible above the top of the ship in the bottle, is flash art of a traditional swallow tattoo, with a blue body and red wings.
Partially underneath the ship in a bottle, there is an indistinct Polaroid lying down on the shelf. In front of it is a diya, which is helping to keep another Polaroid balanced. This one is specifically a photo of Gerry as a child, lying on his back in the sand at the beach. One leg of his pants is wet from being splashed by the ocean, and he's holding a kite string, grinning with his eyes closed.
Taped to the bottom of the shelf are four photographs.
The first is of Tim, sitting on the ground with his hand on Ophelia's back. He's wearing a purple tank top that shows his arm band tattoos and worm scars. Batman sits behind him on the couch. Gerry's hand is visible in the bottom corner of the frame, his nails painted black and Absynthe wrapped around his wrist.
The second is of Gerry and Jon posing for a selfie. Portia stands behind Gerry doing bunny ears over his head, while Bridget is causing problems in the background. Gerry is wearing fishnet over a purple bralette, and Jon is wearing a pink collared shirt.
The third is a closer shot of Gerry and Jon, clearly a second try at taking that same selfie. Gerry's eyes are closed as he kisses Jon's temple, and Jon looks a little bashful.
The fourth is a photo of Gerry and Jon peering over the back of a laptop, which is set up to be on video call with Kira and Basil, Gerry's roommates from America. Kira has short, curly hair and has their eyes crossed, tongue sticking out. Basil has longer, green hair, compression gloves, and is voguing.
The bottom shelf is full of books in various colors, a few in the middle fallen over to lean against others. The top shelf more uniform, the books held in place by a purple agate bookend.
In the far left corner beside the bookend, a cobweb can be seen.
ID: A black and white sketch of Gerry Keay in a manual wheelchair with spikes wrapped around the handles. He’s wearing jeans, a leather jacket, a bralette, a mesh shirt, and boots. He sports a grumpy expression and is hunched forward with his arms tightly crossed. He’s glaring over his shoulder and saying, “No. Fuck that place. You could not PAY me enough money to go there.”
so i grew up in gymnastics and many years later i'm (still) v hypermobile and discovered that most ppl aren't in constant pain but i'd pretty much convinced myself that my hypermobility, pain, etc etc was acquired from the sport and i couldn't have EDS (despite having Always Been Like This) but then i read your post and the bit about piezogenic papules and realized that, lo and behold, my feet do that!! so anyway now i'm feeling v validated abt my bullshit bones thank you for this
Of course!! No problem! I’m super happy I could help.
Also like, I used to ride horses as a kid. EDS is a degenerative condition, so it usually isn’t as bad when you’re little, especially since kids, in general, are a little bendier than adults. Plus, there are people out there who are hypermobile but don’t always have pain or the other symptoms I talked about. Pain is your body’s way of telling you something’s wrong and you should always do your best to listen to it and figure out what’s causing the pain.
Sorry I ranted and got a little off-topic, but this stuff is neat and I like talking about it!!!
your post about disabled gerry totally made my day! seeing stuff i have associated with characters i like makes me really happy :]
Aaaahhh!! I’m so glad! Have a chair user Gerry!
ID: A black and white drawing of Gerry, sitting in a manual wheelchair and gripping the wheel with a gloved hand. He's wearing a leather jacket with several pins, including a bird skull, an eye, the communism symbol, the anarchism symbol, an Ehlers Danlos zebra, a nonbinary flag, and a pronoun pin reading 'he/they.' Underneath the jacket, he's wearing a bralette with a mesh shirt. His jeans. which are tucked into thick boots, have rips on both knees. He has two studs in his ear, and an eye earing that dangles at his neck. He also has two piercings on his eyebrow, a nose ring, snake bites, and a belly button piercing. His expression is happy, and at ease. Next to him is a drawing of his wheelchair's handles, which is wrapped in spikes.
hello! i haven't talked to you before, but ron said that i could ask you for some advice on writing eds? (i'd like to know things to avoid/common things that could come up in everyday life that would be good to mention/the sort of aids and stuff they'd have maybe?/anything else you think is relevant)
Hi! Sorry this took so long, a combination of ADHD and chronic pain slowed me way the fuck down. Thank you for being patient!
EDIT: WEIRD HEEL THINGS I FORGOT!!
So, before I get into this I should probably say I technically haven’t been diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS for anyone reading) because it’s one of those syndromes that takes forever to get diagnosed with (it took a friend of mine’s mother over 30 years to get dxed). Many doctors, and everyone I know who does have EDS agree with me that it’s probably what causes my chronic joint pain and some of my other chronic issues. But just because three separate doctors have said “Yeah Probably” doesn’t mean I’m diagnosed!! Only a geneticist can do that!! And they had two-three year waitlists BEFORE the apocalypse happened.
I am diagnosed with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), Small Fiber Neuropathy, and potentially misdiagnosed with Fibromyalgia (once I get properly tested for EDS I might get undiagnosed with this because I don’t have most of the main symptoms of Fibro, but I got diagnosed with it anyway because it’s what doctors misDX you with when they don’t know what’s wrong with you and don’t want to do more tests).
All that said, I’ve done a lot of research about EDS (mainly because it’s the only thing that explains all my symptoms since doctors seem incapable of doing so), and know a few people who have either confirmed or suspected EDS, so I’ll link to some stuff, talk about the symptoms that often come with EDS, explain how the symptoms I have affect me, because just because someone’s not diagnosed doesn’t mean they aren’t having symptoms, and probs elaborate a bit about writing physical disabilities and chronic pain in general because it’s super important to me!
So RESOURCES aka how to make sure your post never sees the light of day because you’re linking things and tumblr hates it when people give other people information!!
Youtubers! If you want to know about the day to day of living with EDS or any disability or chronic illness I super suggest finding a youtuber that makes videos about their life. My EDS favorites are
Jessica Kellgren-Fozard
Annie Elainey
Amy Lee Fisher
Websites! If you’re asking random folks on tumblr I’m assuming (and hoping) you’ve already done the basic WebMD google searches and looked over the seemingly ridiculous lists of symptoms and related conditions, so here are a few websites that are made more for people than for doctors.
The Ehlers Danlos Society
OhTWIST (That’s Why I’m So Tired)
ChronicPainPartners (the fact that they have an entire section of articles called “Dealing with Doctors” should really tell you something)
Books! If you feel like doing actual reading! I suggest reading books written by people with Ehlers Danlos, to get a feel for how they portray themselves. I’m not saying steal, but it’s probably a good point of comparison to see how your portrayal feels. (haven’t actually read these b/c my ADHD doesn’t let me read)
Ria Ruse by Morgan S. Ray (a superhero book with a disabled super MC!!)
Mysteries of Maybelle by Imani Benfell (Imani is still in high school and has already written and self-published a book cause she didn’t have enough representation for herself how cool is she!!)
Bodies in Motion by Liana Brooks (tw for pregnancy problems and miscarriages in the link, because it’s a blog post talking about integrating EDS symptoms into the story without explicitly naming them as such)
OKAY, now for some rambling about EDS SYMPTOMS!!!
Ehlers Danlos is one monster of a genetic condition in complexity and variety. There are THIRTEEN different identified types of EDS, it often comes with Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) and/or POTS, and can lead to various other conditions like gastroparesis, chiari malformation, craniocervical instability, and/or bad teeth. So if you’re going to be writing a character with EDS consider what other comorbid conditions they might also have. I’m mainly going to be talking about Hypermobile EDS (hEDS) because it’s what I probably have and what I’m most familiar with. That said there is a lot of overlap in symptoms with the other varieties.
I started typing this section and realized I was going to have to break it down even more so we’re going to talk about Chronic Pain, Unstable Joints (Dislocations and Subluxations), Skin Things, Mobility Issues, and Other Weird Shit and how those things get addressed separately.
Gonna get the Other Weird Shit out of the way first. Because EDS is a malfunction of connective tissue it can fuck up all sorts of random things. For instance, I and many other people w/ hEDS have trouble swallowing. Shit gets stuck in my throat, I sometimes choke on and have to cough up food, and pills can be hard to swallow, which sucks cause I take A Lot Of Pills. If it doesn’t cause full-on gastroparesis it can cause IBS or other digestive problems b/c the digestive tract is mostly made of connective tissue. It can potentially cause heart problems even if they aren’t as big of a risk as in some other forms of EDS. Premature osteoarthritis is common because what you need is more joint pain. And Fatigue OH BOY THE FATIGUE. And of course the headaches, can’t forget those pesky migraines can we!
AND piezogenic papules!! I completely forgot!! Piezogenic papules are little white bumps that appear when you put weight on your heel. In some people they hurt, but in others they don’t. They’re technically tiny little herniations of fat peaking through the fascia in the heel. They were added as part of the diagnostic criteria for hEDS in 2017!
Now for Skin Things cause it’s not as big a thing in hEDS as it is in other forms. Basically, in a lot of forms of EDS, the skin is extra stretchy and extra delicate. It bruises and tears easily, people with the extreme versions of this can accidentally scratch something into an open wound if they aren’t careful. My skin is pretty soft and sensitive, I def have the typical velvety skin, and as is pretty par for the course of someone with hEDS my skin is a little stretchy, and sorta delicate. I’m not as tissue-papery as some people get, but I almost always have at least one mystery bruise or scrape b/c existing is hazardous. Most of scars are also pretty normal, unlike the extremely papery and atrophic scars (though I have a few tiny acne scars that are atrophic) that are common with other kinds of hEDS. Something that I DO have is Lots of Stretch Marks, all over my thighs, and even down to my calves. Which wouldn’t be abnormal, except for the fact that I’ve never been over 145 lbs and I’ve never been pregnant. Having a lot of stretch marks or striations in the skin without due cause happens because the structure of the skin isn’t as strong as it is in people with a normal amount of connective tissue.
I don’t have to worry as much about my skin but people that do are usually very careful with adhesives because they can irritate or tear the skin, which sucks when you need a lot of bandaids cause your darn skin won’t do its job.
Now on to the meatier stuff and since I’m mostly working backward let’s do Mobility Issues!! These can happen in loads of ways, but a lot of what causes these in people with EDS are the other two things I wanna talk about. Unstable joints lead to increased risk of injury when doing stuff people with fully functioning joints can do.
For context, I’m an ambulatory wheelchair user, meaning I can walk, but a lot of the time it’s better if use a chair. Mine is mostly for my POTS symptoms, but the fact that my legs aren’t also in absolute agony is a big plus. I use a custom manual wheelchair with a SmartDrive (b/c I’m very fucking fortunate and have good insurance) whenever I leave the house and have to be “walking” for more than a few minutes at a time. I can’t fully self-propel in a manual chair because it would be damaging to the joints in my arms and hands, but the smaller chair is easier to maneuver in less than accessible spaces (like almost everywhere). There was about a month-long span where I used a very cheap and very bulky electric chair while I was waiting on the ideal set up I have now. Before that, I also briefly used, and sometimes still use, an up-right posture cane.
People with EDS have widely varying mobility issues because of how uniquely it can manifest. My cane only gave me a little help with balance because if I used it in any prolonged capacity any pain it took away from my legs was relocated to my arms, and as an artist, my arms are more important to me!
If you’re going to write a character with EDS having mobility issues as a result of their EDS the best thing to do is to narrow down their specific needs. Are their knees complete and utter garbage but their shoulders and wrists strong? Maybe they can get away with using a cane. Can they not stand for longer than 5 minutes because of the vertigo from their POTS? Maybe they need a manual wheelchair. Would propelling themself damage their back and arm joints? An electric chair might be necessary! Plenty of people with EDS use all sorts of combinations of these aides to get around their life, consider how your character’s good and bad days would be. Do they have back up plans if they overestimate themselves? There can be a lot to manage, but don’t let it scare you off! Sometimes I try and make it into a resource management game (because I’m a game designer and that’s what I do), to make evaluating my energy and mobility needs more fun!
But now let's tackle some of the reasons those mobility aides might be needed. Unstable Joints.
Ever stepped wrong and rolled your ankle? It hurts for a few steps and then kinda fixes itself, or maybe it bothers you for the rest of the day and you put it up and ice it when you get home? When I was walking around outside my house that would happen AT LEAST once a month, usually more. Some times I’m sitting wrong and when I get up my knee isn’t a knee anymore and decides to just give out from under me. My knuckles are made of unruly popcorn and they Don’t Want To Stay Home!! Oh! And my shoulder is more often out a little out of its socket than it is fully in.
Unstable joints lead to Dislocations and Subluxations of varying intensity, and some people get them more frequently than others. Some can be severe enough to necessitate hospital visits and even surgery, some subluxations are so banal (like my fUCKING SHOULDER) that you just learn to live with the pain.
If a character is going to be in high action, combat-heavy scenarios, chances are they’re going to be popping out joints left and right. Hell, depending on the severity of their joint laxity they could be doing the same sitting at a desk. Again, it’s incredibly varied. I’d suggest setting some sort of baseline for yourself, of what a character’s joints can and can’t stand up to, and maybe do some research on which joints are most likely to pop out in general (hips and shoulders are big culprits being the wacky ball and socket motherfuckers they are). Then maybe have something pop out or hold up every so often when it shouldn’t cause hey! EDS is kinda just like that! Unpredictable!
Some ways people manage joint laxity is with braces, KT tape, and physical therapy. Braces come in many different forms, since I’m currently getting pretty much no treatment for my shitty joints I use mostly compression braces made for sporty people. It really is amazing how much a bit of tight fabric can do to keep my wrist in place.
More specialized braces often have solid parts to prevent the joints from hyper-extending (bending the wrong way) and causing further damage. If you ever see someone with what looks like diamond shaped rings around a bunch of their finger joints, chances are those are Ring Splints, and are there to keep the finger shaped like a finger. I want to get my hands on some and get some on my hands Very Badly, because my fingers hyper-extend SO MUCH when I type, and it makes my hand pain way way worse.
KT tape is another thing people often use. It’s stretchy tape you put on your skin and it basically functions kinda like a second ligament as well as reinforcing the joint and keeping the bones mostly where they’re supposed to be. The problem with this is a lot of people with EDS have very sensitive and fragile skin like I mentioned before, so KT tape can cause allergic reactions, chronic skin irritation, or just straight up take the skin with it when someone goes to remove it. Hence a lot of folks are really careful with it.
Physical Therapy is kinda the best (and only) treatment for joint laxity aside from Very Invasive and sometimes Highly Experimental surgery. It focuses on strengthening the muscles around the joints so they can do the work all those bone ropes made of body glue can’t. The problem is finding a physical therapist that 1) knows what EDS even is, 2) knows you have it, and 3) knows how to treat it without doing stuff that’ll Phucking Hurt You Worse!! Because exercising wrong with EDS can do Permanent Damage!!!
Again most folks use a combination of all of these things, or have next to no access to them b/c healthcare sucks.
Anyway, on to one of my favorite topics, Chronic Pain!! One of the reasons this post took me so long!!!
Chances are if your character has chronic pain as a result of their EDS there are gonna be some things they hate, including stairs, rain, thunderstorms, stairs, hills, uneven terrain, oh and did I mention stairs??? It’s going to vary person to person, but almost everyone I’ve met with pain from EDS has complained about their knees. For me the most debilitating pain is in my fingers and wrists. They’re by far my least stable joints but I use them constantly for stuff like drawing, typing, and sewing.
Because my joint pain is so wide spread, like most people’s with hEDS, it effects every single part of my day to day life. I can’t carry a heavy ceramic plate, open a bottle, or even use my computer without pain. It’s practically impossible for me to get comfortable in any position be it sitting or laying down, and as you can imagine that makes it hard to sleep a lot of the time. Moving too much hurts, but so does sitting still. I’m constantly taking braces on and off or cracking/stretching my joints so they pop back into place and hurt less.
Also being in pain makes everything else That Much Worse. I get tired way faster than I did before my pain was this bad (I had chronic pain for a while before actually realizing it wasn’t normal to not be able to walk down the block without feeling like your foot bones are trying to escape). My sensory issues and anxiety disorder are more easily aggravated because my base level of comfort is way worse. It fucks with my depression. And OH BOY does it make my ADHD worse because being in pain is fucking distracting as hell and makes it harder to make decisions and switch tasks. Also my ADHD often makes my other symptoms worse cause I forget to take my meds, don’t drink enough water, or can’t find my fucking braces because the item eating black-hole that comes with ADHD stole them. The intersection of mental and physical disabilities is probably a rant for another time though, so back to chronic pain.
Does it suck? Yes, undoubtedly. Is this incredibly debilitating? Of course it is, I spent the last several months unable to feed myself without assistance because there was a staircase between my room and the kitchen and I could only manage to climb it once a day. Is it overwhelming? Definitely, I’ve frequently broken down crying from a combination of pain and frustration because I’m having a bad day and there’s no relief to be found. Am I able to predict when it’s going to rain with uncanny accuracy because any change in barometric pressure makes me feel like every bone in my body is trying to kill it’s neighbors? You bet your fucking ass I am!! Does it sometimes make me irritable, angry, and occasionally dismissive of when abled people get cold or a temporary injury because the stuff they’re complaining about is my life every single day and all avenues of treatment and recovery I have could take years and still not entirely solve my issues? Yeah, and while I deserve a little extra patience I also have to be sure to check myself because I don’t want to turn into someone who’s nasty to be around. Do I sometimes need to sleep for 17 hours straight because it’s raining, I have migraine, and I’m in too much pain to be conscious? Yup, sometimes a few days in a row. Does living in constant pain mean I’m unable to do all the things I want to and does that sometimes make me wanna curl up in bed and never leave? Yeah, it happens.
But! And here’s the big important but, that’s not everything! I still write, draw, and talk to my friends!! It might take me a little longer but I get there. I’m still happy and excitable and make the time to write out five page long posts about EDS because it’s something I’m passionate about! My chronic pain doesn’t stop me. I refuse to let it. I never really wanted to go mountain climbing anyway, so I’m perfectly happy being able to make it up and down the six steps in my house, even if sometimes I have to sit and bump down them on my ass, or crawl up them like a cat. Chronic pain isn’t all I am. It isn’t a fate worse than death. It isn’t the only thing your character should talk about (though I do talk about my pain a lot cause I’m a complainer about almost everything). You can have your character be hindered by their pain, realistically they would be. You can have them seek comfort, support, and relief. Other characters can commiserate and be sympathetic, but it doesn’t mean their whole life is going to be one big pity party, that would be incredibly fucking boring. I know I’d be bored out of my mind.
All that said dealing with chronic pain, especially from EDS, is Complicated. Physical Therapy is the gold standard, but like I said before it can be a long and difficult process, and isn’t always accessible. Stabilization methods like I talked about before can help prevent pain, or reduce it by keeping bones mostly where they belong. Heat and cold help joints, relax muscles, and reduce inflammation but keeping them applied is rough and the relief doesn’t always last. Doctors prescribe anti-depressants, anti-anxiety, and sometimes even anti-epileptic medication to help manage pain, but everyone’s mileage with those varies. And I’m not at all qualified to talk in-depth about narcotics or other heavy duty pain-meds, but suffice to say the war on drugs fucked shit up for people that legit need that kind of help BIG TIME.
Now for my closer/bonus rant about EDS and Disability Writing in General!
Everyone always says write what you know, so if you really want to do disabled people justice, get to know disabled people! Make friends with disabled people, get involved with advocacy groups, consume content made by disabled creators both about disability and not! Disabilities are so fucking diverse, even EDS is such a complex disorder, and comes with so many potential co-morbidities, that practically everyone with it has a unique experience. There’s no way I can fully explain everything in a tumblr post. Hell, even if I could talk to you for hours probably couldn’t give you enough info to answer all your questions (especially since I’m still in diagnosis hell :,) ), so talk to a wide range of people with EDS and other disabilities!! I know it sounds like a lot of work but trust me, disabled people are some of the strongest, raddest, coolest, people you will ever meet that it won’t feel like it.
And don’t be afraid either, the fact that EDS and other disabilities are so wildly varied means that you have a little bit of wiggle room with your character’s experience. There’s so little disability rep out their I think people are WAY to scared to try their hand at writing it. So long as your character is a fully developed person in addition to being disabled, you give some logical thought as to how it would affect their life, and you don’t make their disability the butt of any joke it isn’t difficult to avoid ableist writing. PLEASE WRITE MORE DISABLED PEOPLE AND PEOPLE WITH CHRONIC PAIN/CHRONIC ILLNESS!!
Okay that’s it, again sorry it took so long for me to get back to you! My fingers were being little pests about it, and my ADHD (which is honestly more disabling than everything else a lot of the time lmao) was being an asshole! Hope this helps, and feel free to ask me more questions if you need clarification! It might take me a bit but I do love talking about this stuff.
i have been staring at this fckin fic for like two weeks and not only am i Big Stuck but pathologic has been eating my brain space like it’s movie popcorn and daniil dankovsky doesn’t have the self control to wait for the commercials to be over to start Munching
I know everyone’s buzzing about the new tsp chapter (phenomenal btw) but how would tsp Jon react to Cats (2019) 🤔
bridget has a particular love for terrible movies (the first question she asked was if he’s seen sharknado, because she has like... six copies, for the express purpose of lending them to people who haven’t seen it.) and so if tsp jon were to ever watch cats (2019) for any reason, i believe it would have to go like this:
every other post i have to remind you guys that i’m secretly a shitpost blog
Image id including the direct quotes from @red-reys that inspired it: "graphic design is my passion" meme, but the background is to the messiest archive you have ever seen and there a few explosions added in messily. it says "being an archivist is my passion" / meme of the kid looking proud as house in the background goes on fire, but instead of the kid face there's Gertrude.
That one bone-shedding lietner probably made Gerry a cryptid in the vulture culture community right?? just picture it:
He starts taking artsy pictures of the bones it drops, editing them on his phone, and posting them online.
No context, No text, the blog header is something like ‘If you can read Fuck You’ and it’s the only words on the blog aside from every post being ominously and unhelpfully tagged #bones
He actually gets a decent following because his photos are nice, he posts pretty consistently, and no one understands how he has so many fucking bones!!
There are blogs dedicated to reblogging all his posts and trying to identify what fucking animal the bones came from, and like assemble skeletons, or identify what region this person could possibly be from based on the bones he has but it’s impossible b/c they’re magic fear bones.
He SOMEHOW has bones from a deep sea fish that’s supposedly next to impossible to find and only a few specimens exist and they’re the subject of endless debate.
Gerry has no idea just how much of an incredibly frustrating mystery he is bc he doesn’t actually follow anyone or interact at all, he immediately deletes any asks or messages he gets, he’s only there to Post Bones.
He’s known in the community as The Bone Hoarder b/c he has by far the most extensive collection of bones ever seen.
People are pretty sure he’s based in London due to some internet super sleuthing and the occasional view out his window or Weird Cobblestone Bone Shot.
Melanie discovers this #Mystery b/c she’s internet savvy and sometimes you find very specific and fascinating rabbit holes when you’re internet savvy and also a ghost hunter.
She sees one picture from a spot she KNOWS is condemned, super hard to get into, illegal as fuck to be in, and haunted as all shit.
She points this out and everyone who knows about The Bone Hoarder goes buck-fucking-wild.
Jared is jealous as all get out, but also his biggest fan.
