I hate to go "bluh actually I'm super sensitive" on that post about how it's fucked up to tag for body horror when that's just ordinary life for disabled people, but like, as a disabled person
(And I get that being visibly disabled means dealing with tons of people getting distressed about your disability and making you comfort them about it, and that sucks! And yet.)
It's great if you're desensitized and that kind of stuff doesn't bother you. The tag isn't for you.
It's for people like me. And since I'm having a bad day for stuff like this, I might as well describe why needing things like gore, mutilation, and body horror tagged for is not a travesty against all disabled people.
TW, of course, for gore, mutilation, body horror, and medical trauma.
When I was 13 I started having intrusive thoughts about putting my hand on the edge of a paper cutter and lowering the blade on them.
It took me 25 years to connect that with how, a few years earlier, a surgeon cut open my other hand and took out a malformed bit of bone.
I was shown x-rays of my arm, educated about muscles and tendons and ligaments, gave my consent for the procedure. In August, the plaster cast came off, but I had to keep a steel pin in one finger, so an occupational therapist fitted me with a thermoplastic splint to keep my hand still, and a little foam donut to put on top of the pin. Every few days I had to take the splint off and wash my hand with hydrogen peroxide, sloughing off fat little pills of dead skin. I remember being fascinated by how the thread in my stitches seemed permanently stained with blood. When I got the pin out, I held my arm by the elbow and the doctor held the pin with a pair of pliers and we both pulled towards ourselves and the pin came free. I can't remember if I cried, or if I'd already learned that panting through my mouth helped me cope with pain without making any noise.
I went to orthopedic appointments and stared at anatomical cross-sections of layers of muscle and imagined a scalpel sliding into my knee, destroying tendons and blood vessels. I watched doctors pull apart plastic and rubber models of joints to explain how the inside parts worked, and imagined that happening to my own body, how the bones would pop, how long the tissue would be so inflamed that even healing would feel like torture. I saw how the models abruptly ended with a top cross-section and thought about bone-in steak at the supermarket, about my own limbs and bone saws. I had to decide if I wanted a surgery that would break my femur and tibia and stretch them each half an inch apart to grow bone between them, warned about the pain and the pins and the leg brace. I decided I wasn't up for that amount of pain, and I'm still not sure I made the right decision.
My disabled experience trained me to see myself as meat and bone and gristle and sinew. Now I look at someone's surgical incisions and involuntary see the skin lift, the layers underneath fanning out like the pages of a book. I try to eat fried chicken, but if my teeth touch bone, I think, thigh, this is a thigh, my skin and muscle are stripped away, and nothing can truly repair them. I hear a factual account of a car accident and think about how the bones would shatter, slicing blood vessels and ligaments.
I have tried my absolute best to not make this anyone else's problem, which is in its own way pathological of me. But it is a problem. I hate that I see someone's insulin pump and think about infection causing the infusion site to weep pus! I also don't want to be doing what I'm doing!
But for fuck's sake. Do you really prefer to have to deal with people who would have avoided your post if you had tagged for gore or body horror or mutilation?
Comfort and repulsion aren't moral statements. It's not as though All Disabled People think or feel all the same way. Sometimes something isn't discrimination from abled people, it's a competing access need.
While I love the idea of Elita becoming unethical in the war against the cons, I have an alternative: Elita struggling to not commit warcrimes and genuinely trying to be merciful except she barely knows what 'mercy' is and it's played for comedy as well as seriousness.
*In a Decepticon ship that's going down.*
Elita: We need to abort!
Starscream *Is unconscious*
Optimus: What about Starscream?
Elita: What about him?
Optimus: Elita!
Elita: Fine! Fine!
. . .
Elita: *To Soundwave* You'd better tell us, or else I'll slice off your fingers a centimetre at a time!
Arcee: *Disturbed if a part of her is impressed* Primus, Elita!
Elita: What? It's better than the first threat I thought to give him!
Bumblebee: (Facepalms)
. . .
Elita: (In her most intimidating 'Superior officer' voice) Did you just spray me, Scout?
Bumblebee: (Sprays her again with a scolding beep)
Elita: Hey! Okay, okay! I'll be good! Yeesh!
. . .
Elita: (To a group of Decepticons over a megaphone) Surrender now, and we won't kill you! We'll probably- hang on. (Turning to Optimus) Is blasting their arms and legs off even if they do surrender ethical? I genuinely can't remember.
. . .
Elita: (Throwing a food tray at some prisoners) EAT OR STARVE, CON SCUM!!
Ratchet: (Forced to be the restraining element in the group while Optimus is away) Elita!
Elita: (Facepalming) Right. Right. (Trying to be polite) Uh, please eat, but there's no pressure!
*The Prisoners finish their bowls in seconds in utter terror of 'Polite Elita'*.
. . .
Elita: Optimus, is it a war crime to trap an enemy in a torture dimension where they can't die?
Okay okay hear me out new polyship; shintoga is good, togadabi is good, I think we should join forces and ship shintogadabi and toga makes shinso use his quirk on Dabi for dollification purposes and then she pegs them both and makes them make out and stuff
OH YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY CORRECT.
They would be so so pretty making out together with blank slash horrified slash horny as fuck eyes.......... toga would love love love this she gets not one but TWO freaks she can cut up and fuck until they pass out???? oh my god. she should make them scissor too. can you triple scissor is that a thing. She should cut the insides of their thighs up and mutilate their pussies and make them scissor and lick the blood and cum. I think she would like that
ASPD is feeling the need to tear your brain out of your own skull, this flesh is not me, this body is pained and hurt and wounded and I would give anything to crawl out and be away from this suffering.
I want to be a person. Why did they turn me into a machine?
In 'to hide a selkie's coat' it's was said that Imu will removing tounges AND eyes of the Slaves if they rest upon Dragon too long.
Would it only happen to the Slaves or to others as well? Can Imu get even more obsessive\possesive\jealousy?
Probably only to slaves.
Any of the God Knights or the Five Elders looking, Imu doesn't care, because they already belong to Imu and wouldn't be interested anyway. If they were, Imu would strongly...discourage them. Give them a warning and then escalate from there, if continued.
There's really no one else to see Dragon where he's kept so thankfully less people are at risk of Horrible Fate by Jealous Imu.
BUT, if Imu had ever let Dragon just out into Marie Geoise overall, there'd be a higher risk of some greedy lower-ranking Celestial Dragon wanting to buy Dragon possibly, or, heaven forbid, put their hands on him.
That would be "disappearing that one guy from the family line" type punishment justification.
