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[nickwastheretoo]

Geto becoming murderous and cult leader makes sense. Guy has pretty strict ethical code, is highly compassionate and empathetic, has to deal with the worst humanity has to offer, literally eats it, and has no stable support system? Yeah.

Like Gojo? He could simply not care.

Geto? He was fucked.

[lunar-solstice-plur]

Finally this thing is finished. Took way longer than I thought it would. Well, it had a bit of a sour ending at first (venting and all), so I wanted to bring it back around a little. And the frames doubled lol.

But here we are, with our second comic.

[leathersys]

jackrabbit .1

[nickwastheretoo]

As much as I appreciate people attributing Jax's violent behavior toward Pomni in the mindscape to intrusive thoughts, I really like the idea that violence is just a really bad/maladaptive coping mechanism for him. He has violent thoughts and urges and acts violent toward the circus crew and npcs because it (poorly) helps him deal with stress, distress, anxiety, anger, frustration and dysphoria. There's also not much consequences to his actions in the circus with everyone being physically revivable and in the case of npcs being reset and disposed by Caine anyway. And the only real consequences are either people not liking/hating him or his friends abstracting which both contribute negatively on his already poor mental health and make him double down on his violent and dismissive way of coping with it all.

[purple--starrrs]

By the way it's like. Really fucked how society's thoughts on epilepsy is just "get over it." Seizures can cause permanent brain damage. Seizures can kill people. Seizures hurt like hell. Allow me to reiterate that seizures can kill people. And you're just gonna casually put flashing lights, a common trigger for seizures in your advertisement, in your animation meme, in your edit, on your billboards, without even thinking about putting a simple disclaimer? That's unbelievable. Your little anime edit could deadass cost a life and you're not gonna put a warning because it's "inconvenient" or "people like that shouldn't be on the internet" (ableist) (the problem exists outside the internet also). Or you'll give insufficient ones like putting it in the captions or only giving like one second before the flashing lights appear, meaning that the trigger's already in motion before anyone who needs the warning can read it and save themselves from literal physical danger.

We need to start commenting under other people's posts about how to properly warn for flashing lights and eyestrain. We need to be emailing and calling companies about their possibly triggering advertisements that could induce seizures. We need to stop tolerating ableism and start speaking up for the more vulnerable.

Also, stop putting epilepsy warnings. That's like saying "warning: schizophrenia" on a post including unreality or "warning: dyslexia" on a post with a typing quirk. First off, the disability mentioned isn't the only group of people that this could trigger. Second, it doesn't truly get the message across and instead makes it worse for those with the disability-- scrolling through the epilepsy tag on Tumblr should get you to view the content of other epileptic people, but no, you just get a bunch of flashing lights and eyestrain, even though you could instead tag for, oh I dunno, flashing lights and eyestrain.

Anyways this Disability Pride, and for every month that comes after, think about epileptic people and others who are triggered by flashing lights/eyestrain. Happy pride to those who experience seizures too frequently due to the unaccommodating and ableist societies we live in!

[selene1311-f]

All of this is worth the read, so reblogging for visibility.

Just to try and help out and spread the word, there are two chrome extensions I've found that might be able to help.

Seizafe: This extension scans youtube videos and warns you if they contain things like flashing lights that could cause a seizure.

CogniShield: This extension (supposedly, it has like no reviews) dims the screen to a safe level if flashing lights are detected; it can also be used to limit volume. It might help.

If anybody else knows of any accessibility tools, please share them.

[nickwastheretoo]

I watched someone's Firewatch playthrough yesterday where they picked the option to say Ned loved Brian. Now (whether what happened to Brian was murder or a negligent accident) this struck me as odd, because I'm so used to people saying that bad parents don't love their children (for a good reason). Usually this is for parents that are canonically abusive, but it made me think about that middle ground where a parent thinks that they love their child but where the child doesn't feel loved. In this case it's more the parents actions that would determine whether the audience would consider the parent to love the child.

For example in Everything Everywhere All at Once Evelyn is dismissive and in some universes straight up abusive of Joy, but the Evelyn we follow eventually realizes her mistakes and changes for the sake of Joy. In this instance you could say she loves her truly, doesn't only think that she loves her like she did in the early parts of the movie.

Of course it depend on how the parent's change was written. Nagisa's mom from Assassination Classroom did change, but would she have realistically changed thanks to Nagisa's little talk with her? Probably not. It's hard to say that she would love him even though she changed.

For another manga/anime example there's Endeavor from my hero academia. I would say that his change was done better (though you could criticize some of the writing choices), but the moment that sticks out to me is him assuring Natsuo that Natsuo never has to forgive him and that that doesn't make any less of a person. He acknowledges his child's feelings about the situation and puts them above his own. That does show change and willingness to prioritize his children's needs unlike he did before.

I guess all this is to say that if you want to write a parent that's not good, but want them to love their children, show them either really caring for their children or show them to really change to care for their children.

[rrivlet]

you like psychotic people. reblog.

[leathersys]

The full list of criteria for the DSM-5 diagnosis of DID and OSDD.

Feel free to reblog with your filled-out sheet. Do not send us asks about your results.

Disclaimer: We are not a medical professional. This is only a reformatting of information from the DSM-5. Some information may be inaccurate. We are not equipped to provide any advice. Please do not ask for our advice.

Under the cut: Criteria for dissociative amnesia, other disorders comorbid with DID and OSDD, and the signs of feigned DID/OSDD.

*None of the above disorders are required for a diagnosis of DID or OSDD.

[alteredpanel]

[nickwastheretoo]

The moment when you realize ooh, my mental health ain't mental healthing right now.

[leathersys]

lets all survive together

[nickwastheretoo]

This is relatable to be honest. It's easy to fear that if you open up to someone that they're going to use it against you and then project that fear onto others.

If you struggle with this here's a reminder: good friends won't use your insecurities/trauma/worries against you. Good parents won't use these against you. Good mental health professionals will not use these things against you.

If you want to connect with other people start small. Tell them about your day over text for example:

-How are you doing?

-I had a headache today so that sucks :/

Start small and build up that trust step by step between you and your friends and loved ones. There are people out there who care about you and won't use your vulnerabilities against you :).

[nothingenoughao3]

On Ableism in Fandom (or, Conversations Nobody Wants to Have)

(Hey @camelosuspeito, this is the essay about ableism and fandom you said you wanted to read forever ago!)

I'm going to take a massive risk by mentioning a specific scenario in a specific fandom. I call this a risk due to the chance that the entire discussion will derail into people arguing bitterly over whether or not my representation is correct. I ask you, the reader, to please take in and internalize the following:

Even if your experience doesn't align with mine, my experience did in fact happen. Both can be true. I will not engage in arguments where people begin by demanding screencaps or calling me a liar, because a good faith discussion means you must assume that I am telling the truth about my experience.

While I am naming a specific fandom about which people care very much, this phenomenon has occurred in multiple fandoms I've been involved with for decades. I will prove this by naming another more-obscure fandom, but these are far from the only two. This is a systemic issue that pervades the world at large, and fandom is merely one space where it pervades.

So anyway, Our Flag Means Death.

There's a scene in s1 (I haven't seen s2 so keep in mind that my commentary can only include what I've seen) where Edward Teach is asked to sign a contract. He does so with an X. This made perfect sense to me. The X often indicated that someone could not read in English. Teach was repeatedly portrayed as being of a class which would not have been taught to read (literacy was an extremely rare trait in this time frame). So he can't read. No big deal. Several of my OCs can't read either.

Then I made the mistake of finding Discourse about this on Twitter. (Keep in mind for the sake of this discussion that s2 had not yet been released, and I still haven't seen it.)

Some of the Discourse was interesting and useful to know--such as Indigenous use of the X on a contract. And some of the Discourse involved valid anger and concerns regarding certain fans' laziness and stereotyping regarding characters of color. I certainly did not want to be one of these fans, so I read on.

The argument was, over and over: "You can't say Edward Teach is illiterate because illiterate people are stupid and being stupid is the worst thing you can possibly be."

Which, wow. Y'all just said that, huh.

Here are several things.

For starters, let's go over the first half of the assertion. Being illiterate is an extremely common condition. In the United States alone, it's estimated that 21% of the population--or 43 million adults--have low or no literacy. Of those, 8 million could not participate in the survey "either because of a language barrier or a cognitive or physical inability to be interviewed". In the interests of accuracy, then, it's important to understand that the vast majority of people who are illiterate do not qualify as "stupid".

If you have met five adults in your life, you have met someone who was functionally illiterate. If you don't know who the illiterate adult is, it's because you're such a smug asshole that you are not a safe person for illiterate folks to be around, just like every other invisible or hidden human condition which is systemically oppressed.

Now let's address that second assertion.

This assertion, that being stupid is the worst thing you can be, is pervasive throughout the world, and fandom spaces are no exception. Even fandom spaces which pride themselves on being safe spaces for the disabled fall for this trap. The only thing unique about how it was applied to Edward Teach was how people just, like, said it with no self-awareness. Usually, it's more couched and padded and hidden than this.

For example, claiming that you "support disability rights" while also only ever discussing conditions you don't consider to be truly disabling. This is most common among certain neurodivergent advocates, who want the umbrella of disability rights to cover them while also arguing that the only thing which disables them is a hostile and unsupportive society and not their conditions in and of themselves.

Fans who do this will insist on a very narrow and specific portrayal of "representation of disability in fandom", which really just means "only my personal experience with autism can be represented in fandom works".

As another example, there's a fetishizing of perceived intelligence on Tumblr that I personally don't think needs to be expounded upon, because it's so obvious, but I'll give it a shot.

Have you ever wondered why it is that most of the Tumblr Sexy Men are, like, really fucking mean? It's because there's a logical/social fallacy at play to make them appealing.

Humans are social creatures. We need each other to survive. We have developed rules to make it easier for people to get along with each other in large groups. When someone aggressively and repeatedly rejects all of the rules, and behaves in a way that's hostile, rude, or cruel, we make an assumption about them.

We assume that they must not need other people to survive.

We think they must be very smart.

This is lazy writers' shorthand. If you, for instance, want to write a character who is smarter than you are, well, that's hard. It'd require tons of care and research and even then you might not get it right. But if you make (we all knew this was coming) Sherlock really fucking mean, the audience will go "Oh, he must be brilliant, since he can afford to flaunt social rules!". At that point, Sherlock can also be foolhardy and make a variety of terrible decisions, but the fandom will still insist he is Smart Because He's Mean.

(See under: nearly every single Sherlock Holmes adaptation except the Granada and Soviet series. And the most popular adaptations, BBC Sherlock and House M.D., are the worst offenders with regards to this specific One Weird Trick.)

Note that I'm not addressing anything about linguistics in this post so far, even though I could. The words we choose to express contempt for others frequently rely on suggesting they are not intelligent, but I'm well aware that providing a list of words you can't say won't address the issue of how we treat real human people in our thoughts and hearts.

So here's another example.

I have written more fic for L4D2 than any other fandom in my current era. I wrote multiple fics with Nellis as the endgame pairing. I portrayed Ellis in several stories as a guy who fucks, loves, thinks things through carefully, possesses moments of insight and moments of obtuseness. And then, after a few tens of thousands of words, I had Ellis conversationally reveal that he has an IQ of 65.

There were a couple of people who were caught up by that specific reveal. One admitted that they felt defensive on behalf of Ellis--but then, they did the proper, good thing. They thought through why they were defensive, and realized that they still--despite being a wonderful advocate for disability rights overall--thought of that level of cognitive disability as an accusation.

In those fics, I had a few reasons for why Ellis had such a low score: he was impoverished, he hadn't eaten breakfast the day he took the test, he had issues with his teeth that gave him chronic pain even as a child, he might be a little neurodivergent. But one of those reasons was that I figured he probably had a cognitive impairment. I included this about him because I thought it made him, and the fandom, richer.

And yet... it was an accusation. In a way that suggesting that a character is neurodivergent simply is not. Because neurodivergence is not perceived by fandom as being bad.

It's not disabling.

I am begging y'all to consider this. You don't have to change your fandom behavior overall, and certainly, do not stop headcanoning characters with conditions you share.

However.

Maybe you should remember people who will never get better, even if everyone in their life supports them and society changes to fit their needs.

Folks with cerebral palsy will not stop having cerebral palsy if you're very nice to them. Folks with TBI will not be healed by society no longer displaying their triggers in public. Folks with cognitive disabilities will not become smarter no matter what you do. So maybe your goal should not be to ignore everyone whose conditions will not materially improve along with societal attitudes becoming more progressive.

Maybe, instead if justifying why you think intelligence (a nebulous and ascientific concept as it is) is so damn important, you should stop placing value on intelligence. Maybe you'll be a happier person. Maybe you'll stop making judgement calls on others and, relatedly, yourself for failing to meet a specific metric. Maybe you'll admit that "intelligence" is a social construct, no different from gender or sexual orientation in that we've arbitrarily valued a specific form of it and devalued all others.

And maybe, you'll stop suggesting that the absolute worst thing you can say about a character isn't "He murdered his own father" or "She committed war crimes" or "They're an abuser who harmed everyone around them", but "I think they're an idiot".

[lexlovestvgirl]

Look jax, i know we don't get along but We can't both exist. I'm going to become half of you… and I need you to know that every moment you love being yourself… that's me… loving you.

[what-am-i-doing-in-this-fandom]

hey, I was just at "things got better" island and everyone there is talking about how excited they are to meet you

[switchblade-dragon]

Hey yeah so this post literally kept me alive for like 6 months. Thank you. And OP is so right. Everyone on this island became my best friends. And guess what? Now they can't wait to meet *you* and they talk about you every single day.

[foxilust-esp]

Happy pride month!!

Fanart list

[nickwastheretoo]

For all the water creatures out there, you can create pretty good waves if you glide your arm along the water's surface.