Mar 28
not a suggestion: why are so many of you unnecessarily and uncomfortably Freaky with some of our posts
seen from Italy
seen from United States
seen from Singapore
seen from United States
seen from T1
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from Australia
seen from United States
seen from France
seen from China
seen from Malaysia
seen from Japan
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Pakistan
seen from Singapore
seen from Taiwan
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
not a suggestion: why are so many of you unnecessarily and uncomfortably Freaky with some of our posts
is it abliest to have a character who both has a prosthetic (left arm, traumatic amputation) and is a transhumanist? i've seen at least one person imply that transhumanism is an abled people thing, but this character kinda falls apart if you take away either aspect and i need to know if i gotta cull them
Hello, thank you for your ask!
In all honesty I don't know much about transhumanism, but from my research I don't think it's inherently ableist. If their ideology is centers more on technology helping people with accessibility and furthering medicine and medical care to improve people's lives rather than improving people themselves with cybernetic enhancements (which can have ableist pitfalls such as the 'magical cure' trope and erasing someone's disability because their prosthetic works just as well or better than their original limb), then it should be fine!
If any of our disabled followers who know more about transhumanism want to weigh in, feel free!
I hope you have a nice day!
Mod Rot
Hi! Im a the sims 4 player and i recently had the idea of creating a character with down syndrome, because i rarely see sims with disabilities. But, i came into a doubt: my DS sim has a sister that does not have DS. And, since i want to make it a realistic story, i want them to look like sisters genetics wise. The problem is, i dont really know wich facial features are influenced by DS and wich ones are influenced by genetics. I gave the same eye color and same freckles to them, but im really curious on how to make it "accurate". I did search about this but didnt get a clear answer. Also, sorry if this is not a good question, its my first time ever to do this
Hello, thank you for your ask!
Most sites list upturned eyes, depressed nose bridges, thin lips and a lack of philtrum as some of the most common physical symptoms.
If you learn better visually, Cleveland Clinic's page about down syndrome does have an illustration showing some common facial features present in DS. And while not a medical source, one of our mods also made a drawing tutorial for common physical symptoms of DS that could help as a visual starting place. Looking up photos of people with down syndrome and seeing what traits they share may also help.
Medical websites such as Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic are reputable and are designed to be readable to the average person. Hopefully once you understand some of the more common physical traits, doing more research to better understand the symptoms will be a bit easier!
Besides eye color and freckles, other similarities you can give them can be hair color, hair texture and eyebrows.
(Also, no need to worry about silly questions! As long as you research before hand, read out pinned post and see if we have any similar asks on out blog that may answer your question before asking you're all good!)
Have a nice day!
Mod Rot
Hi! I know that this might be a research question, but I was unsure as to how to google this. What insects/small animals would make for the best service animals and emotional support animals for fairies? I’m thinking of service insects for mental illness (I’m not being too specific here since there’s going to be a couple of fairies using these with different needs) being featured, but insects trained to replace the senses of sight or smell, often in combat (since faries see with a combination of sight and smell like insects, gases that smell pungent and obscure vision would probably be used a lot) but also recreationally for disabled faries would also likely feature. The size of the fairies is probably as tall standing up as a rat is on its fours (6-9cm)
-🧚🏻♂️🧚🏻♀️
Hi asker,
My first instinct is intelligent insects – ants, bees, spiders. A service animal has to have intelligence and skills to be trained and whatnot. "Smart" here I'm going to use to mean like, problem-solving, communicating, etc, at a degree higher than, say, a fly who's just trying to get to some fruit and therefore would not be an effective service animal.
Bees are very smart, and research shows they can even do some basic math. They have complex communication with each other and they do a lot of cool things like give each other directions; they're about 1-2cm if they're honeybees for example but largely they'll be a good size next to fairies. They can also fly, which if fairies can fly, would seem like a pretty good thing for a service bug to do.
Ants are strong and work hard and collaborate a lot. They're adaptable and social, good traits for a service bug. Size wise, the largest species is 6cm which is about fairy-size but mostly they're significantly smaller. The main drawback would be that not all ants can fly, but a flying ant could be a good choice for non-mobility tasks.
Spiders... well spiders are so variable that this really depends, but in general spiders are pretty smart. Jumping spiders are the smartest. They have strong senses in general, but especially excellent eyesight, and they plan different ways of attacking prey depending on what works best, meaning they can problem-solve. The main drawback on spiders is that most spiders are not social, which is probably important. However, there are some social spiders.
Dragonflies are extremely efficient predators, which makes them pretty smart. They can tailor their attacks very well and are super, super precise – they basically never miss. They come in many sizes too so some could be too big to help fairies but some are quite small and could work effectively.
Something else that might work is very small birds. They might be better for something like mobility assistance, in the way that large dogs or miniature ponies can do that for humans. Small birds are, generally speaking, pretty smart as well as social, and can in that way also fill the role of "service dog" for fairies.
The smallest bird in the world is a bee hummingbird (5.5cm average). Hummingbirds in general are quite intelligent (they can recognize people, which is neat, and have big memories) and quite small, although this one is the smallest of them all.
Esmeraldas woodstar (6.4cm), Calliope hummingbird (7cm), and Costa's hummingbird (7.4) are the next smallest birds and also all hummingirds, so the above applies as well.
A bonus for birds, is, of course, that they can also fly. The main con is that even the smallest ones are basically the size of a fairy and that's kind of big – even big service dogs are usually a significant amount smaller than their handler.
Also, I liked your ask! I really love fantasy and picturing fairies with service animals made me smile.
Hope this helps,
mod sparrow
Hello asker,
A service animal will need different skills depending on the tasks they do. Mobility animals need to be larger than for example diabetes alert animals. Guide animals also need to be relatively large.
I would reccomend researching a bit more into why specific dogs and dog breeds are chosen to help you figure out what you're looking for!
-Mod Patch
Hello, thank you for your ask!
For mental illnesses, service dogs are usually trained to provide comfort, prevent self harming behaviors (though limited to things like hitting ones head with their hands or banging their head), and can even act as a weighted blanket. Insects such as bees might work best, since they're social and intelligent enough to train. Anything more specific requiers more context to decide a better fit.
For fighting my first thought would defiantly be insects like ants and termites that already have species specialized for battle. Like Mod Sparrow said, not only are ants highly intelligent social animals but there are species that have developed large jaws, venom, chemical sprays and even rudimentary surgery (though these ants aren't particularly large and wouldn't help as mobility aids). The only potential downside (besides arial battle not being possible for a lot of species) is that they communicate through pheromones, and the faries would have to learn to make and be able to deploy them as needed to signal to the ants.
As for generally disabled fairies, I'd would also recommend doing more research on what the fairy needs from a service animal before deciding. Would it help with vision? Medical alert? Hearing? Retrieving items? Mobility? And for mobility you'd also have to think of how the animal would help, like if the fairy would be using it for support while flying or need them to fly the fairy, and if the fairy is riding it that then goes into issues power chair have such as support level, smoothness while traveling, padding, etc. Looking into what dogs are trained to do in these cases will defiantly help your search for small animals who can specialize.
If you need any more specific help, feel free to ask again!
Mod Rot
one of the main characters of a story i'm currently writing has gigantism. i'm aware that making a giant character exceptionally strong due to their disability would be inaccurate and ableist. so would it be weird to make the character buff/muscular despite them having around average strength/less than average strength due to plot reasons? some of the other main characters (that don't have gigantism) are also buff, and there two other side characters with gigantism that don't have super strength/ a muscular body. the character in my story also experiences side effects of gigantism other than being tall (chronic pain, heart problems etc etc).
btw you guys are doing god's work. thank you for your tireless efforts to make disability representation better and to educate others.
Hello, thank you for your ask!
One of the symptoms of gigantism is muscle weakness, which can make it hard to build muscle mass. I can't say for certain it's impossible for someone with gigantism to gain visible muscle, though the only example I could find was André Roussimoff with conflicting accounts on whether he had gigantism or acromegaly. Acromegaly is a similar condition that, while it does affect muscle mass and cause muscle weakness, doesn't tend to affect muscle size as drastically. People with it don't tend to grow as tall as those with gigantism, though, as it develops after bone plates have fused. From what I could find that might help with their building muscle, as typically those around the 6'8 feet to 7'4 feet (around 2 meters) range had more muscle and fat than who were taller.
I would say to do more research on those with gigantism and acromegaly, see what they realistically look like and try to find accounts of those who were able to build muscle mass (their strength, how difficult it was, how their disability affected that journey, etc.) and go from there. Try to aim for a realistic height and body shape, and question the motives of why you decided to make your character look the way they do. It's very easy to let biases accidentally slip in, so seeing if your character's appearance and disability is played for a joke/surprise, or if their creation was influenced by tropes is important. A larger character who's over 6 feet (1.8 meters) doesn't immediately fall into a negative trope, but they can easily reflect biases if you aren't thoughtful.
I hope this helped!
Mod Rot
A character I'm writing for had total knee replacement surgery and I was wondering if you have any mods or advice for how weather/seasons/climate pressure can affect those with metal/plastic joints?
Hello, thank you for your ask!
For a quick disclaimer while there are implants with no metal in them (such as ceramic-on-ceramic and ceramic-on-polyethylene) my orthopedic implants have metal so the answers will be mostly geared towards those, also because theres generally less info available on implants with no metal because they're not as common from what I could find.
A lot of the symptoms generally vary from person to person, things such as weight, age, muscle mass, bone density and placement of the implant all have an effect on how the implant feels- for example implants in areas with more body fat tend to be less sensitive to the cold than those in areas that are closer to the skin (such as the knee), but it's never exact.
The biggest thing that typically affects implants is defiantly the cold. It's very common for implants to become sore during colder seasons, and it can become outright painful or even cause stiffness. Your character would probably benefit from wearing thermal leggings/tights under their clothes during cold weather or in cold climates.
This is also true if your character likes swimming. Those who've been swimming will know the water usually starts out very cold and eventually your body gets used to it so the water feels warmer- but it doesn't work that way for implants, and it can hurt. Also the weight of the implant itself can affect swimming, so your character might struggle more to swim than they would expect.
When it comes to weather, rainy season can definitely cause aching, though I've found it isn't exact. Sometimes I don't feel anything during storms, and sometimes I get aches for no reason- though there are people who have very consistent soreness when it's about to rain.
Unfortunately I couldn't find anything on how altitude/climate pressure affects implants, and I'm not well traveled enough to give advice on it. If any of our followers with implants or who can ask people with implants about this want to chime in, please feel free!
I hope this was helpful!
Mod Rot
Hello! I’m trying to learn to draw the distinct characteristics of Down Syndrome, I came across this *blog, but it’s hard to tell if this is proper representation or pushing a harmful stereotype. Can you give me a little more information please? Thank you!
*Blog in question:
https://www.tumblr.com/saszor/760545308112453632/tutorial-for-drawing-characters-with-down
Link to the post
Hello, thank you for your ask!
While I understand your concern, this post doesn't include any stereotypes. Down syndrome's symptoms include specific physical traits, and the post simply highlights some to think about while drawing while also making sure to emphasize there is a spectrum of how they present.
Although this post is accurate, always be sure to do your own research and look at photo references when depicting specific conditions, and if you can find any be sure to listen to people who have said condition on what they want to see in representation.
Have a nice day!
Mod Rot
Hello,
As the guy who made the thing in the link is a mod on this blog (👋) I don't think we can give it an objective review. For what it's worth a large portion of the drawings in it were made with heavy referencing of medical images. I more than encourage people to do their own research in this area if they want to draw visibly disabled characters.
mod Sasza
I am writing a character who undergoes a total femoral replacement (with hip and knee replacement) about midway through the series. He had a very bad childhood injury that left his left femur mostly shattered and lack of any real medical supplies or medicine made it impossible for them to safely do anything more than splint his leg and hope for the best. That was five years ago and now the effected leg suffers from some pretty severe disuse syndrome. The severity of the old injury (his bone essentially healed all spiky) majorly impacts his quality of life due to the pain and it's also a risk to his health as it's very fragile and, if it breaks the wrong way, can create massive bleeding, so when he finally does have access to medical care, it's decided that something absolutely needs to be done about his leg. The femur is completely unsalvageable, there is no fixing it and no real way to even partially treat it, but as the rest of his leg probably can be at least partially treated if the femur weren't an issue, the doctors decided to try TFR to see if he responds well to that rather than the more drastic option of amputation at the hip.
The thing is, this character can shapeshift and I was considering having that play some role in his recovery to prevent some kind of catastrophic complication. He can't just shapeshift his leg to perfect function, that would be super complicated and very hard to get right, but I was thinking maybe he could use it to prevent soft tissue failure, keep infection from happening (his immune system is bad so an infection like that would probably kill him,) manage scar tissue and things like swelling, and just kind of nudge healing in the right direction. Everything else, the recovery period, the physical therapy, and the residual disability, would be allowed to happen naturally because trying to do it unnaturally could lead to something getting messed up. I really want the TFR to work for him, but would this be a magic fix for a disability? Or should I just scrap the shapeshifting part?
He's also got a lot of other disabilities, his leg is just one thing on a pretty long list, which is why I hope to be nice to him and have the TFR work.
Also, in regards to the hip and knee replacement, do you know what life is like with those once everything is healed? I want it to be accurate but all of the timelines and lists are about the healing process, not the day-to-day when everything is healed
Hello, thank you for your ask!
This first part is partially just opinion since the portrayal really depends on the execution, but I'm a bit confused on how he'd be able to prevent soft tissue failure but not able to heal his bone- not that I want you to heal his bone! I think the idea of a shapeshifter with a poorly healed fracture is very interesting, and his implant would only add to it as he'd probably be unable to shape shift the metal as well as be careful about positioning himself around the screws when he changes form. If you keep the shapeshifting, I'd suggest trying to think of different, realistic ways he can try to aid himself rather than having him be able to do things like manage swelling and scarring on his own since I worry that can easily get into the magical cure trope. Potentially adding limits such as being unable to change change cell type (like not turning tissue into more bone/making it harder to 'brace' the leg) and being unable to control body systems (such as the immune system), or consequences to altering 'fixing' himself (such as accidentally making the situation worse) that would make him not want to do it would help avoid falling into magical cure trope.
You mentioned already having information on the recovery process, so I'll only go into life afterwards. After physical therapy, the leg will still be weaker than his other for a long while afterwards, as not only is there healing from surgery but the leg muscles will be weakened/atrophied and pt won't completely fix it (unless your character can go to unlimited pt, but that isn't covered by insurance..). He would be sent home with a list or link or just told what exercises and stretches to continue doing at home, so he could incorporate those into his routine. Most of my research says pain would typically last anywhere from six weeks to six months, though in my own experience with a smaller implant it was closer to a year, and some amount of pain is basically a guarantee in this window. During this time (and probably afterwards) he would benefit from a mobility aid like crutches so he can completely take pressure off his leg when needed, though if he can't use or doesn't want them frequent sitting breaks can help. It gets better the longer he has the implant, but in my experience never fully goes away, even if it becomes more mild and less frequent. Soreness and pain are definitely exacerbated by use and putting pressure on the implant, but there are also random spikes of severe pain in the first year as well (and beyond, but definently less often and severe). Wether he also has soreness/pain for things like rain, cold weather and being in cold water vary from person to person, so I'd do some more research on how people in his age group with TFR are with those.
This was a rather broad answer for a broad question, so if you have any more specific questions on day to day living after getting an implant, feel free to send another ask!
Have a nice day!
Mod Rot