#I used to debate whether I had autism or if everyone around me was just awful at behaving | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

reptileofdoom · 11 months

Text

Public PSA and Callout Of Hawkshadow/Luna: A Continued Pattern of Hurt and Manipulation Part 1 of 2

Hello, my name is Autumn aka reptileofdoom on Twitter & Tumblr. I debated whether to make this post for a long time and continually questioned myself; however, I've realized that if I don't, that guilt will sit with me for a long time. This post is directed toward Luna; known on AO3 as hawkshadow, on Twitter as @/dage_mingjue and on Tumblr as @/petesbubblebutt and @/hawkshadowwrites.

I am extremely concerned that Luna continues to be a big name in the community; her "big name" status gives her credibility that is, frankly, undeserved, and it makes people lower their guard, which allows her to take advantage of them better. Please, please be on your guard around her.

This isn't just my story. Other people have given me permission to use their names and testimonies as part of this post. I have done my best to provide proof and evidence of everything mentioned, and when unavailable, I encourage readers to question. Please reply if you would like additional information regarding any of the points in this post.

Since I will most definitely be accused of clout-chasing, let me be clear: if you follow me just because of this post, I am going to shatter your kneecaps. Do not follow me for this, I repeat.

Some screenshots have had information covered solely for the sake of privacy. I think she's dangerous, but I don't want to give her personal information to the internet, or involve unrelated people. That being said, due to the nature of the issue, sometimes it's impossible to cover without removing relevant information.

Additionally, due to who she is and how she operates, I have opted for the safety of posting conversations IN FULL; which means 5-10 screenshots for each conversation. I would rather be safe than sorry, because I WOULD otherwise be accused of concealing. So this will be a long read, which is why I am using a "read more" break.

So, here are the basic details, presented first from my own point of view:

Luna and I used to be quite close fandom friends, in the period of August 2022 - January 2023, when our big "breakup" happened. During that time, Luna created an extremely uneven dynamic within our friendship: constantly talking about her own problems, trauma-dumping, and complaining about various things. My own personal issues, when brought up, were either never addressed or I would be outright berated for bringing them up.

Additionally, and I am using this word with its full intended meaning: she would intentionally gaslight me, making me question the reality of our friendship, claiming that I was "emotionally manipulating" her, all the while trampling over my own boundaries and not being able to give even basic courtesies expected in friendship. She blatantly took advantage of my autism, gaslighting me by telling me that social norms didn't work the way I thought.

For full context: I am autistic. At the time of our friendship, I lived with my parents, who have for years emotionally abused me for said autism. There were many unsafe things about the environment I was in. On top of that, there is an 8 year age difference between myself and Luna. (She is older.)

I bring up my own age not as a "gotcha", but as important context to keep in mind for the conversations you are about to read as we get into the meat of this. I am aware that Luna is also neurodivergent but 1) that is not the same thing as autistic and 2) I gave her many, many benefits of the doubt throughout our friendship. Please keep in mind neurotypes are not an excuse for continued horrible behavior.

(About my own age: I am 20 years old. When entering Kinnporsche & Vegaspete fandom, I was under the impression the show is merely 18+ and it is labelled as such in most places. I did not even hear of it supposedly being 21+ until a few months ago. Nevertheless, I do my best to respect everyone's comfort and leave spaces not intended for me.)

One last disclaimer: I am not trying to frame this as a "cancellation post." Most of all, I intend for this to be a warning for anyone in a similar position to myself, easily taken advantage of. If, on the other hand, you read everything and see no issue with any of Luna's behavior, then I will not argue with you. I am not asking people to abandon their friendships with this person - merely to guard themselves from being hurt the way I was, over and over again.

Timeline of event (summary):

Luna and I first started talking in August or so. Unfortunately, due to the mutual blocks, a lot of our Twitter history is inaccessible to me; but I know the rough timeframe because at the end of August is when Luna and I sent each other our first DMs on Discord. Most of the events happened there; some others happened in her server, which I left after our breakup and have no interest in returning to.

In October is when the first concerning behavior popped up; on the 31st of October I attempted to pull away from the friendship, not quite realizing what was happening but becoming aware that every interaction I had with Luna left me feeling anxious and panicky. I was guilted into staying and feeling bad for ever trying to do that. Our worst interaction happened in November. After this things calmed down throughout December, precipitating again in January when we made the decision to work on and post fanfiction together. The posting of this fanfic became the straw that broke the camel's back.

A deeper dive into these events:

A lot of this is going to seem like very personal drama. Unfortunately, it is only through showing all this that I can show the horrible manipulative tactics she would use. Please bear with me.

As mentioned previously, the beginning of our friendship was on Twitter, where we have now blocked each other. As such, I have lost access to our DM history. I have tried downloading my Twitter archive and various other methods, but nothing I have tried has allowed me to regain access.

Proof that I can't message and/or look at DMs from her:

Proof that our DM conversation did, at one point, exist (yes, unfortunately I have to use vegetable porn here to prove my point):

Since we were not too close during the Twitter era, there thankfully isn't much that needs to be brought up from those days. However, there is one extremely critical fact in those conversations: It was there that I told Luna about my living situation and trouble with parents. Most of all, I very specifically told her I would get called "emotionally manipulative" just for having meltdowns.

It is now impossible to retrieve that conversation, unless by some miracle she unblocks me. I do not have high hopes for this happening. For now I ask: please just believe this happened and keep it in mind.

With that established, we get into when the manipulation started blatantly showing. It first came about as a result of... a GC, of all things. That Luna would frequently post screenshots of and I felt envious of. Perhaps it was my own mistake to not resort to clear communication immediately, but here is a conversation where I first brought up the topic, implying I would really like to join.

Her responses aren't.. bad, per say. Obtuse, more like. There is nothing incriminating here, but look at what she focuses on, what specific things she does not address - and where the conversation ends up, with who comforting whom.

(From now on, passages of interest will be circled in yellow.)

So Attempt #1 was a bust, right? Okay, no biggie, we commiserated a little over mutual insecurities, I just have to ask my friend outright so she knows what I mean-

Right. I am not quite sure how to commentate this entire exchange, even half a year later, but let me give it my best shot.

At this point, you're probably still giving her benefit of the doubt. "She is just really, really bad at knowing how to communicate" you might say. That is what I told myself at the time. (Note: I am hyper empathetic so please know that at every point I was primed to believe her and empathize.)

It's really, really awkward to have to make this point through conversation about people essentially unrelated to this, but this unfortunately became our driving issue. For context, this famed GC had all of.. 5? 6? people apart from her. So if you are imagining a massive server with strict rules? Nope.

Next, notice how instead of just. Admitting she can ask her own friends a question, she tries to make me seem unreasonable. "What, you want me to stop mentioning my friends?" basically. She then also, specifically, makes a point of saying "You are not being rejected." This will become important later.

At around this time, I came to realize: this friendship wasn't good for me. I did not have the words for it, nor could I believe any of the blame was on her, but I knew a few things:

I was always the first one to start conversations.

It would take Luna long amounts of time to reply.

When she did reply, it still ended up being an unbalanced conversation, with me doing about 70-80% of the talking.

Every time I talked to Luna or was waiting for a reply, I would feel horrible, anxious and, in short, like shit.

Now, I turned all these issues inward and looked for the root of the problem inside myself. Having been blamed for my autism all my life, it ended up being my justification for many of these things, sometimes in creative ways.

This is the message I sent Luna on October 31st and the ensuing conversation:

My first message doesn't fit the screenshot; full text is in image description.

She then proceeded to post MULTIPLE screenshots of her latest conversations with not only fandom friends, but real life people including HER ROOMMATES. As proof of her lowered capacity for responding to people. I will save my commentary for the end; Let us continue:

A screenshot of her Twitter DMs to show who she has responded to and when.

Interjecting that at this point she still had not done the extremely basic thing of just. Asking her friends if she could invite someone. And notice the use of the word "manipulative."

Let's take a pause here because I shit you not, that was the end of the conversation.

Did you see the immediate guilt-tripping? The language implying I am to blame for everything? "If YOU think our friendship is toxic" "if YOU think this is best for you"

There are many things she says here that are, in hindsight, INSANE. But chief among which is her insistence on hierarchy and social dynamics.

Do you see why I wrote that she took advantage of my autism?

"I'm not the one at fault, YOU are the one who is fundamentally misunderstanding how group dynamics work."

I talked to my friends about this. I vented to them about being so dumb and stupid I couldn't even understand a basic thing, without showing them the conversation of course. I felt immense self-hatred because she convinced me it wasn't her being weird and unreasonable - it was just me being dumb and disabled!

And a necessary reminder: She was very clear about the fact that she WASN'T rejecting me. She really DID want me there! It's just she had no options :(

Why did I make myself seem so pathetic as to practically beg her to let me join her group? Because at the same time, she'd tell me shit like I was her favorite person and encouraging me to go make friends with the other people and surely THEY would want to then invite me.

Last of all, please notice how the conversation ends. Two apologies and no response. But a prompt idea? Something fandom-y? Yeah, she'll engage with that and make no acknowledgement of anything before.

A lot of these conversations are so frustrating to look back on in hindsight. Obviously, she had no interest in me and did not actually care for a proper friendship. I was somebody to conveniently vent to and get fanfic ideas from; otherwise, I don't think she had much interest in me as a person. (Something further supported by the things we're gonna be getting into next.)

Now, where we last left off I was guilted into continuing this friendship. A friendship, I emphasize again: I had multiple times stated was unhealthy for me and was actively causing me frequent breakdowns.

The following conversation happened as a result of something in the server. As mentioned: I no longer have access to those records. In short, however: Luna and I had a short disagreement where she stated she didn't like something I was saying. Which was fine! I felt very apologetic and apologized. To which she responded "okay" and... nothing else.

So I sent a few message in the server chat. Waited. No response for hours. My anxiety went through the roof - I started having an anxiety attack and, in desperation, DM'd Luna multiple times privately because I had no idea what was happening: whether our disagreement was resolved, or if she was still mad, or what. I would like to make it clear the only thing I was looking for was just a confirmation of: "are we good?" If the answer had been "oh, yeah, I accepted your apology" there would have been zero problem. Instead, this is what happened:

This is the conversation, in its entirety.

Do you see why I used the term gaslighting? In its full, actual definition as an abuse tactic?

It is hard to write a commentary for this. Look at how many times she twists what I say and mean. To be clear; I am fully aware of how passive aggressive my language in this conversation becomes. I am not proud of it. But as mentioned, I had been worn down by months of constant anxiety; in a weird way, I do feel proud looking back, that I was able to stand up for myself in this moment. In the end, I put all the blame on myself again, which led to a.. small concession from her.

I hope it is clear from these images that I was never looking for more than 5 seconds of her time, whenever she was able to check her messages. The expectation with messages, in general, is that the person will get to them when they get to them. Her insistence that I was being selfish, messaging her while she was at work, comes out of nowhere and is especially strange because.. she would message at work all the time. It was not a boundary she had ever enforced before.

I am not coming here from a position of "we argued once and now I hate her." I am coming from a position of "this is a person who messed me up for months in a way that has required extensive therapy." THIS is why I am making a post like this, about how dangerous she is and how much I want people to be aware so that they can please, please protect themselves.

She would constantly come to me with more intense problems, all the time. She had me talk her down from panic attacks at work. (Not shown because 1 - image limit, 2 - it is very personal, and I still feel bad exposing her personal stuff.) But when I had a single time it got bad, when all I needed was "yeah, I'm not mad, don't worry"? This was the response.

There is more. It gets worse. Unfortunately, I have hit the 30-image tumblr limit: this will be continued in a second post, that is linked:

PART 2

#hawkshadow #vegaspete #kinnporsche the series #fandom stuff #fandom drama

40 notes · View notes

graylinesspam · 4 months

Text

I guess I feel like stirring the pot tonight but I'm gonna actually put my two cents into this "tiktokification of autism" debate for a second. I'm gonna need everyone on this, the "we piss on the poor", website to take a fuckin breath.

In psychology there's this pretty simply concept they teach you in the 'intro to' class which is that when it comes to hereditary mental conditions if you carry the genes for a condition it's probably going to affect you a little bit, even if it is not a diagnose-able amount.

As a personal example My own great grandfather has Bipolar disorder and has been medicated for it for longer than I have been alive. As a result all of his children were very familiar with the symptoms and were quick to point out when each other was displaying or describing symptoms of that disorder in their own live. That stuck around for my mothers generation and now my own as well. None of his children have been diagnosed with the condition because they do not display these symptoms with a consistency or extreme that hinders their ability to live their day to day life. A couple of aunts have chosen to go on mood stabilizers because it makes their lives more enjoyable to live without the riding the emotional ups and downs. Which yes, many of us experience hormonal based emotional roller coasters that dictate whether or not we're capable of experiencing positive or negative emotions but those symptoms are so mild that they are not considered diagnose-able.

Where as pawpaw (who was diagnosed) had huge mood swings that would leave him so manic he destroyed the brick divider wall in their kitchen to open the space up one random day, followed by a week where he wouldn't even sit up in bed to take a sip of water. His children's experiences were more periods of increased confidence followed by periods of malaise.

The criteria for having a condition diagnosed is that it has to cause persistent and significant interference with your ability to live your life.

Now if you've followed me through that rant then listen to this one. Tiktok (and i am not advocating for that app lets keep it neutral) by it's very nature is an app that relies on quick reading and comprehension. Those videos aren't going to hold you're hand through explaining what they mean, you just need to figure it the fuck out using things like common sense.

So if you see a video where an autistic person is sharing the less irritating and sort of funny trait of their condition and it's something that "everybody experiences" or something that's totally "not" a symptoms of autism, maybe instead of immediately rolling your eyes at it why don't you take a minute to ask yourself if it actually is tho?

like sure not everyone who puts on music while they clean has autism, but ask yourself what if that trait did fit the diagnostic criteria, what would that look like? Because for me it meant that I literally got fired for a cleaning service job for smuggling my phone with me because despite being very competent at cleaning I physically could not do it without listening to music. I'm not talking about it was too boring or I just had a bad time at it. I mean I literally forgot how to clean a toilet and ended up having a crying meltdown at lunch after only getting through two rooms because I needed my music in order for my brain to function properly. I'd call that having a significant effect on my ability to live my life.

Maybe not everyone who has a specific hobby they keep up with for years is autistic, but the people whose hobbies consume them, leaving room for less of other experiences in their lives? the ones who buy too much merch and watch the content over and over and don't pick up new material? the ones who maladaptive daydream to the point of it interrupting their real life experiences, or have periods where they actually wish they could think about anything else? And also maybe the same kinds of fandoms attract those autistic people.

so next time you see a video about "if you were obsessed with these fandoms growing up then you might be autistic" maybe think about what the word obsessed might mean to an autistic person (whose has very literal and black and white thinking). Because assuming that they mean the most bland fucking vague horoscope version of a behavior or experience they're describing is exactly where you'll go wrong.

Btw, this is a good scale to use when wondering if you should get something mental or physical diagnosed.

#autism

2 notes · View notes

not-enough-teeth-and-treasures · 3 years

Text

An Autistic’s Perspective on Tears of Themis’ Representation (spoiler alert: it’s bad)

Before you read, I should warn you that there will be spoilers for Chapter Five! Read at your own risk. Also, trigger warning for discussions of ableism and harmful disablility stereotypes. I get pretty heated as well, so if you’re not a fan of swearing and stuff, then it might be best to skip this.

So, I was debating whether or not I wanted to talk about this, mostly because this game doesn’t do anything new in regards to the perception of autism in media. Unfortunately, it ends up leaning into a lot of not great tropes and goes into “what the fuck that’s incredibly offensive territory” waaay to quickly. So here I am.

The most prevelant character with autism (or who we start out thinking has autism. Don’t worry, I’ll get to that) is a small, supergenius child (a boy as well *sigh*) is so overdone at this point that there aren’t many new criticisms I can say. The stereotype of autism presented in media is overwhelmingly extremely intelligent (usually with sciency or math based interests) men with no ability to socialize or be kind to others. This not only paints autism as a disability that effects men primarily (which creates intense stigma around AFAB autistic people and makes it harder for us to get diagnosed or believed), but also creates this expectation of greatness. Autistic people are often held to superhuman standards, which further others and dehumanizes us in the eyes of allistic people. The vast majority of autistic people are not savants, and that it perfectly fine.

But all of this is pretty standard. The red flags started popping up when it was revealed that the autistic kid, Hugh, doesn’t actually have autism and is faking it in order to keep people from asking hard questions about him or trying to pry into his life (which is full of secrets). I’m definitely not a fan of perpetuating the idea that people fake diabilities in order to manipulate people, so this plot twist was not my favorite. However, it wasn’t really enough to inspire me to write a whole ass essay about the representation. And then I got to the fucking text conversation with Vyn.

Here is where I’m gonna put a trigger warning for talk about eugenics, curing autism, ableism, and basically just a fuck ton of awful shit. Fuck, this makes me so mad.

So, I went in and took screenshots of both options just to see, and all of them lead to terrible bullshit. Lets start out pretty light with the MC and Vyn discussing symptoms.

This is a pretty limited and honestly incomplete explanation of autistic behaviors. These can definitely be symptoms, but they’re heavily overcovered and really basic. A lot of autistic people don’t have these symptoms, and it would be really nice if more media branched out and covered more of the spectrum. However, considering they don’t do anything different in any other areas, I’m not surprised.

Also not a fan of Vyn’s use of “abnormal.” It has some very negative connotations and is a bit insulting, honestly. These behaviors are perfectly “normal;” they’re just not as accepted by neurotypical people. Plus, no behaviors can really be labeled as normal because humans are complex and different.

That was the easy shit. Let’s get into the truly awful garbage.

This is treading into ABA territory here. For those of you who are unaware, ABA is pushed as the best autistic therapy, but a large majority of autistic adults consider it to be abusive and unhelpful. This is mainly because it seeks to “correct” many behaviors that are helpful for autistic people. It seeks to surpress stims (which are behaviors that improve the mental health of autistic children), force us to talk (as opposed to letting us use sign language and technology), and more. This harms our mental health and makes us ashamed of who we are. These behaviors do not need to be “corrected.” We don’t need to act “normally.” All this therapy does is make us more palitable for neurotypical people, and it’s bullshit.

It also doesn’t help that ABA was pioneered by Ivar Lovaas, a man who did not believe autistic people were human. He developed ABA as a way to “build a person” using harsh punishments such as withholding affection and ELECTRIC SHOCKS. If you think this is a think of the past, you’d be wrong. Electric shocks are still being used to harm disabled people. Look up the hashtag #StopTheShock to learn more and help push for legislation that bans this practice.

Oh, and did I mention Ivar Lovaas also inspired gay conversion therapy? Because he did! So yeah, fuck ABA and fuck Vyn for performing it (god damn it, Vyn, I liked you a lot).

And now, onto the eugenics. Fuck my life.

FUCK! THIS! BULLSHIT!

I am so tired of autism being treated as this horrific disease that needs a cure. I had a perfectly fine childhood. Yes, it was hard at times, yes I got traumatized, but a large part of that was due to ableism and abuse from teachers and peers. A large reason why autistic people suffer is because the world is not built for us, and we are often denied accommodations that would make our lives better.

It is beyond offensive and disgusting to suggest that we would be better off not existing than “suffering so much” because of autism. Because that is what this game and everyone else who thinks there should be a cure is suggesting. There is no me without autism. it literally affects my brain structure. You are wishing for a completely different person when you tell me that autism should be cured.

Now, I’m not going to get into the horrible consent issues that arise from talks about a cure, including genetic editing, fear mongering to parents so they think abortion is the only option, and straight up Nazi style eugenics. I do not have the spoons to delve into that exhausting discussion. But if you want to know more, then there are so many incredible autistic people who have written blogs, Twitter threads, and more about why a cure is a terrible idea.

Oh, and if you’re going to come at me with the “severely autistic people should be cured” bullshit, don’t bother. There is no such thing as “severe” autism, first of all, and second, non verbal autistic people (which are who people think of when they talk about “severe” autism), largely don’t want a cure. There have been so many surveys of tens of thousands of autistic people, and the result is that the overwhelming majority do not want to be cured. We want support and proper accommodations. Listen to us.

So, in conclusion, fuck this text conversation and it’s ableist and offensive bullshit. I really wish ToT had stayed away from autism, or at the very least did not touch on therapy or a possible cure. For a game that is about genetic experimentation on children and how bad that is, it sure peddles a lot of eugenics.

Fuck, this text conversation actually made me ill and I hate that. I’m so done with constantly trying to prove to the world that I am a human being who deserves to exist. I’m gonna go cuddle my service dog now.

#tears of themis #vyn richter #autism #autistic perspective #autism representation #seriously can we stop treating my disability like a disease? Is that so fucking hard?#i don't need a cure #i deserve to exist #aba is abuse #autistic people deserve to exist #hugh tears of themis #tot #tot vyn #god damn it vyn I simped for you

132 notes · View notes

the-ghost-king · 3 years

Text

Schizophrenic Nico, here's why I think it's possible:

I want to start off by saying these are just my thoughts, there is no one way to be schizophrenic or to have schizophrenia. It's also important to note that many of the schizophrenic symptoms overlap with other mental illnesses/nuerodivergences like ADHD, Autism, Depression, and OCD which I know many people who head canon Nico as having. I'm not arguing schizophrenic Nico is more correct, more canon, or more right, but to explain some thoughts on why I think it's possible/very likely he does so I can use this for future reference in various thing.

I am using the term schizophrenia as a catchall for all "types" of schizophrenia, but not for schizoaffective disorder which I would say Nico probably doesn't have.

Children born in the winter/those who were "sickly" as babies are more likely to develop schizophrenia. It may also be possible if your mother was sick while pregnant with you, or having a father who was significantly older when he had you.

A stressful life, especially trauma, are more likely to develop schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. It likely has something to do with excessive dopamine production, but it may also have something to do with the same genes that control the sleep-wake cycle. Schizophrenia is more common with other mental illnesses or with other nuerodivergences or developmental delays.

Common symptoms include:

Hallucinations

Delusions

Disorganized thinking

lack of motivation

slow movement

change in sleep patterns

poor grooming or hygiene

changes in body language and emotions

less interest in social activities

Now what does this mean for Nico, and why do I think it's likely he has Schizophrenia?

Let's start with Nico's childhood, "children born in the winter/those who were "sickly" as babies are more likely to develop schizophrenia". Although Rick proposed two birthdays for Nico, the fandom generally accepted the January date more fully. We also know that Nico is described as small when he was younger, smallness is common in children who grow up sickly, but it is also common in children who's mother was ill while pregnant with them. We obviously don't know if Nico was sick as a kid, or if Maria was sick while pregnant with him, but again being born in the winter makes these things more likely, as well as consideration for the time period Nico grew up in and the larger variety of illnesses going around at the time. (He is vaccinated against some things though).

Trauma and Nico... do I really have to go into super detail on this one? He spent his childhood growing up in a fascist country that was extremely racist/anti-Semitic/homophobic/etc, his mom died when he was a child- in front of him, his father intentionally gave him amnesia, his sister died when he was a child, he then proceeded to become homeless living/spending lots of time with Minos who verbally (and possibly physically) abused him, becoming aware of his past memories, becoming aware of the fact that many people hated him because of his father and because they thought he was joining the other side (therefore, he was "bad"), he fought in many battles as a child, fought monsters alone, was often faced with life or death situations, went to Tartarus alone (where the goddess of misery told him he was "perfect"), was trapped in a hostage situation with little/no air for a long time while people debated whether or not to save him, was outed against his will, was freed only to travel again fighting monsters and then win a battle, was eventually made to quest with Apollo despite still having lots of healing to do in ToN. So stressful life? Fuck yeah, that doesn't being to cover it.

Genetic factors, obviously nothing here is confirmed so I'm speculating a little bit again, but the common idea in regards to Hades children through the series is that they are "bad". Mental illnesses have been stigmatized for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and often mentally ill people were made out to be weird/bad/etc. It's more than possible there is some sort of genetic factor taking place, also "having a father who was significantly older when he had you". Although I doubt godly genes work the same as mortal ones (trust me I have lots of thoughts on how god genetics/DNA work, but that's not the point right now), I think Hades being the oldest out of all his brothers and having a reputation for having "questionable" children says something... We have no information on Maria's family history at all.

As for schizophrenia often occurring with other mental illnesses and/or neurodivergences: Nico canonically is implied to have either ADHD and/or Autism, and is canonically stated to have PTSD. I think most people would agree that saying Nico has or has had depression isn't a stretch in the slightest.

So canonically we can all agree Nico has severe trauma and coinciding mental health issues/neurodivergences, so out of 4 possible issues I’ve first presented we guaranteeably have two. If I wanted to stretch this a little I would give myself a half point for him being born in the winter and a half point for the aspect of Hades genetics but I won’t do that.

On top of that schizophrenia usually appears during teenage and young adult years in people who receive diagnosis; most people live with mental illness for a few months or a few years in some cases before they're able to receive a diagnosis. Nico being 15 (16 by the end of ToN/shortly following the end of ToN) is about the age that schizophrenia would start to make an appearance. It's also more likely to be found in men, with men also noticing the appearance of schizophrenia appearing early in their lives, and experiencing more negative symptoms in comparison to the higher commonality of affective symptoms in women. That's a really complicated explanation to basically say there's 3 more things that would make Nico having schizophrenia make more sense.

Alright, let’s go back to the list of symptoms I provided:

Hallucinations

Delusions

Disorganized thinking

lack of motivation

slow movement

change in sleep patterns

poor grooming or hygiene

changes in body language and emotions/behavior

less interest in social activities

Once again, some of these are not solely related to schizophrenia and can be the result of other mental health issues, I’m just going to go down the list and add in some moments from the books in which Nico shows some of these traits/behaviors.

Delusions/Hallucinations (more later)

Our best chances for understanding Nico's thought process is in Blood of Olympus where he has a P.O.V... Sometimes Nico's thoughts do derail, or sometimes they get a little confusing, but not always, and when talking to others he is consistent and aware of what he's saying, as well as blunt. Anything "off" about his thought patterns to me just seems like ADHD..

Dietary changes (whether or not you think he has an eating disorder) are behavioral changes (I personally think Nico has AFRID)

Within House of Hades Nico's poor sleep patterns are constantly referenced, and I'll give him a pass on poor hygiene because he's in the middle of a quest but still..

I have extremely complicated feelings on what Will says here, it's possible Nico is an extremely unreliable narrator (unlikely, it seems many people are bothered by him and only maybe a handful aren't), I've also thought at many points this was Rick trying to backtrack some stuff with Nico because he realized he'd made his story a little too harsh for a kids book, it could also be Will's trauma kicking in and that happening... I'm not counting it as full proof about Nico disliking social interactions, but Nico does try to leave even after this conversation and isn't convinced to stay until the last chapter, so maybe there's something to be said about people's dislike of him for being a Hades kid- but I think it's fair to say Nico also dislikes people at least some because he doesn't have interest in trying to befriend anyone either, and is quick to assume all people dislike him (paranoia/low self esteem/and some other possible stuff). There's lots of discussions to be had about this quote and other similar ones, and I don't think a broad brush approach of "Nico good everyone else bad" is accurate it's more, "Nico is good but he fails to try and you have to work on your own mental health everyone won just go to you, and also people dislike Nico for silly reasons and need to get over themselves and make an effort too". (I'm extremely oversimplifying my thoughts and feelings to keep it brief.)

More on delusions and hallucinations:

Now I want to state that lots of schizophrenia symptoms share a lot of commonalities with ADHD and with depression, so although I might include some moments you think are just ADHD/depression I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with you but they could also be schizophrenia or coexisting mental health issues/divergences. I also went through the DSM-5 for schizophrenia (the DSM-5 is just this big book with lists and it’s how doctors diagnose any mental health issue/divergence), I also looked through the DSM-IV (an older book from before DSM-5 which is no longer really used) and the differences between the diagnosis was fairly minimal but they quit categorizing types of schizophrenia and instead rely more on a couple of word descriptions that seem more in line with a spectrum rather than a checkable box.

In order to receive a schizophrenia diagnosis, two (or more) of the following, each present for a significant portion of time during a 1-month period (or less if successfully treated), and at least one of these symptoms must be (1), (2), or (3):

Delusions

Hallucinations

Disorganized speech (frequent derailment or incoherence)

Grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior

Negative symptoms (i.e., diminished emotional expression or avolition).

It’s important to note that only one of these need to be checked off/true if the patient has voices which narrate their actions/behaviors/thoughts or if the person has more than one voice conversing with each other.

Nico deals with auditory hallucinations (2), he believes the voice belongs to Bob, his titan friend he left in Tartarus:

However this isn’t and immediate diagnosis because Bob’s voice doesn’t talk to another voice(s) in Nico’s head, and we don’t know if Nico has voices running commentary on his behaviors/thoughts.

The reason I state we are unaware if Nico has commentary isn’t because Nico hasn’t said anything, but because many people with schizophrenia before their diagnosis believe the narrative voices are just their thoughts and are a normal internal monologue- usually patients don’t realize anything is wrong until the voices start providing commentary on their actions so instead of “washing the dishes now” the voice(s) might say “wash the dishes now, you’re so lazy you can’t do anything, idiot” during a period of psychosis which may help them acknowledge that the voice(s) isn’t the way most people experience internal voice(s). It is very possible Nico is unaware he is experiencing narrative thoughts and simply assumes that his experience is something most people have, but I won’t use this to argue my point because it’s not confirmation of anything.

Returning now to Bob, Nico knows he is hearing Bob’s voice but he believes Bob is calling to him from Tartarus. Now, Nico says the voices are calling to him from Tartarus but there’s no confirmation of this anywhere… What I think is happening is Nico has a guilty conscience. He feels bad for “using” Bob to get out of Tartarus and various other things, so he feels bad that he is still down there. However, we don’t really know if Bob is calling to him or if Bob is able to do that- what I personally think is happening here is Nico’s brain is convincing Nico that Bob needs him because Nico is upset with himself for not helping Bob more, but also because Nico has never “sat still” before without a quest. Nico has also always felt the want to be needed/important...

It very well could be a delusion.

Schizophrenic patients often experience delusions which make them think they are destined for greatness, or that they have some divine/high force calling out to them for help that only they can provide. It’s an extremely common thing in individuals who experience delusions, and is in fact one of the most common delusions experienced. So although Bob could really be calling out to Nico, I don’t think he is, it doesn’t entirely make sense and there’s lots of little things which point to it being not entirely real- like the fact that nobody else knows about it? Or how absolutely sure Nico is that he need to return to Tartarus? It seems like a mixture of PTSD, delusions, and trauma response (returning to the trauma), working against him. I’ll say delusion is very likely (1).

Using these two factors alone there’s sufficient evidence for diagnosis, but let’s keep going just to see.

For disorganized speech (3) this isn’t something Nico seems to struggle with, and even if he did “derailing” could be ADHD or Autism, so I don’t think this symptom pertains to him.

Changes in behavior (4), seem to all be explainable via depression and/or PTSD- he has begun to express emotion again in Tower of Nero upon learning of Jason’s death he is said to be upset by Will and he walks off to be alone, seems like depression to me. Emotional/Behavior changes from schizophrenia tend to relate more to bipolar disorder rather than a depressive disorder, so I would say if Nico has schizophrenia he probably doesn’t have emotional or behavioral changes from it. If he did he might have some catatonic behavior, but this seems to be clearing up some in Tower of Nero so I’m not super sure on that, maybe during bad periods of psychosis behavioral changes occur, but I would lean more towards this isn’t a symptom Nico personally deals with. Negative symptoms (5) tie into this same idea, it’s possible it’s schizophrenia, but it’s more likely PTSD or depression at work.

So why do I care so much about the possibility of Nico being schizophrenic?

I feel like canonically/fanonically making Nico schizophrenic does a few things, firstly schizophrenic rep in media is extremely extremely awful- can you think off the top of your head of a schizophrenic character who isn't from a horror film/a murder/a villain in their own story? Maybe, but personally I can only think of one which is Charlie from Perks of Being a Wallflower- and even then? That's not canon, it's only implied- and it might not even be true

Schizophrenic media representation always paints schizophrenic people as bad, scary, and evil, and although the horror genre is extremely well known for being super ableist, transphobic, racist, homophobic, and misogynistic (just the final cherry on top) having one of the first- if not the first openly confirmed schizophrenic characters in children's media not only be someone who has lots of character development, and isn't a stereotype, but also be someone people have grown up with, cared for, and sympathized with- would be extremely monumental.

People with schizophrenia and other related disorders aren't something to be scared of or to think of as bad, and often times they're more bothered by whatever they're experiencing than you are.

I don't have schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder or anything like that, but I have various undiagnosed mental health issues which often lead to me questioning reality, or having to set aside time to convince myself that no there isn't a man living in my wall... Having a character have to question those things, work through those feelings, and learn to trust themselves and care for themselves even with those difficulties would be really great to see in media, not just for people with schizophrenia but also for people with similar/related disorders who might share symptoms see parts of their own struggles in a good, educative way.

I have to finish this in two parts because tumblr keeps breaking because there's too many words in my post lmao (2nd part here)

#nico di angelo #pjo #hoo #toa #percy jackson #will solace #solangelo

197 notes · View notes

chaotically-cas · 3 years

Text

29 Things I Think Allistic People Need To Hear

From an autistic person

Not my usual content but I felt it needed to be said.

Saying “everyone is a little autistic” is really hurtful. Yes, everyone has their struggles but these struggles are far different for autistic people. Saying everyone experiences it is invalidating & harmful.

Being graded on eye contact & standing still is wrong. I’m pretty sure at one point or another we’ve had a project we were graded on & one of the grades was eye contact & not fidgeting. These things are extremely hard for autistic people & they are practically second nature. It’s like holding in a sneeze.

Stim & figget toys in schools. Of course fidget spinner’s & stim cubes can be bought & should be bought by anyone. If you want one, get one. But the way schools are banning them is crazy. They are very necessary for autistic people & it’s so much harder for them when schools ban their use.

QUITTTTT BABYING US!! We aren’t ‘uwu babies’. We are humans. We are perfectly capable of functioning without allistic people’s pity & looking down on us. We are our own people that don’t need a hand to hold in every damn situation. We aren’t cute because of it.

Listen to autistic people. Everyone is all for advocating for people until that group of people want to advocate for themselves. So shut up & listen once & maybe you can learn something you didn’t know.

Creative writing in class is difficult. You don’t know how many bad grades I’ve gotten on because I can’t think of a good story out of my ass. It’s extremely hard for autistic people. Please give us a prompt it’s more helpful than you know.

Role playing in class. I think we’ve all had to do something where we research a famous person & have to assume their identity. This is again, so hard for autistic people. It’s hard enough for us to be ourselves. Most of us can’t understand these actives enough.

Slurs. Quit saying retard. It’s not an insult. It’s not funny. It’s offensive & every time you use it you’re hurting a disabled person & spreading harmful stereotypes. It’s not just a word. It’s not just a bad word. It’s a slur. Same as the f word or any other slur. Don’t use it.

People talking over us. No I dont mean just in conversations. Although that is another issue. I mean organizations like autism speaks that put words into autistic peoples mouths instead of letting them speak for themselves.

Stop making fun of our special interests. Whether you find anime cringey or think an adult loving Aladdin is childish just stop it. These things being extreme joy to us. They make us happy in a word that we don’t understand. So just leave us alone & let us be happy.

Don’t stare at us if we’re stimming. Especially in public. If you see me flapping my hands. Don’t stare. If you hear me humming quietly, don’t judge. These activities aren’t for your viewing pleasure. They’re for autistic people to regulate & express how they’re feeling.

Normalizing ableism. It’s so normalized. Whether it’s phrased like “suffers from autism” or how regularly ‘retard’ is used in classe; ableism is so often over looked especially by adults. There are no many micro aggressions they are just passed off as us not having a thick enough skin. When in reality it’s really damaging.

People first language. If you ever correct someone by saying “no, they’re a PERSON with autism. Not an autistic person”. Literally shut up. We’re autistic. We’re people. Being autistic doesn’t make us any less human so you don’t need to make it seem like it does. We’re still human no matter our disably. People don’t have to be reminded of this.

Using words like psychopath & sociopath. Calling autistic people these things just because you don’t understand us is disgusting. If you don’t understand these terms don’t use them. Just because we aren’t good at showing empathy in some cases doesn’t make us ‘psychopaths’.

Tone indicators. This is both the over use & not using them that’s an issue. Saying things like “/j /hj /sarcasm /srs /lh” all in one post defeats the whole damn purpose of them. & not using any at all especially when joking around or using sarcasm can lead to a lot of misunderstanding. It’s not that hard to use one or two at the end of a post. /srs

Picky eating. Literally stop making fun of autistic people for not liking a lot of foods or ordering the same thing at every restaurant. A lot of textures & flavors are very bothersome to autistic people. They can cause overstimulation or even panic. Just let us be. So I eat mac & cheese 4 times a week. I didn’t know it effected you so much.

“Ugh you’re so annoying you can’t ever get a joke”. No hearing that is what’s annoying. Tones are hard for us to understand so while most people pick up on it autistic people are more likely to read too much into it or take it seriously. It’s simple to use tone indicators in text or even to say “I’m joking”. It won’t make your joke less funny. It’ll just help us understand more.

Be specific if you want things from us. Don’t just say “hey I need a pencil”. Or “the dishwasher needs put away”. Most likely we’ll just be like, yeah, ok, and? Be specific please. Say things like “can I borrow a pencil?” or “can you undo the dishwasher?”.

Faces seeming to look weird. A lot of us having facial stims that can alter our faces. Whether it’s excessive blinking, eyebrow raising, or face scrunches. Don’t ask us what’s wrong with our face or what we are doing. For me, because of my facial stims & tics my eyes/eyebrows are permanently uneven. Don’t bring it up.

Classroom behavior charts are horrible. Autistic people don’t behave the same as allistic people. Simple as that. What they see as ok behavior, others don’t. & some times they don’t realize these behaviors will get them in trouble.

Police brutality. Especially in black or brown autistic people. It’s so common that people call the police on autistic people stimming in public because they are seen as dangerous. & when these autistic people can’t understand what’s going on or can’t make eye contact they are labeled as more suspicious. Especially black autistic people. Just look at Elijah McLean.

Feeling dumb. Especially in schools or other scholarly conversations. Some autistic people aren’t able to keep up or fully understand everything that’s being said or presented. Which leads to us feeling dumb. Give us time to process or aso questions please.

Feeling robotic. You’ve most likely heard autistic people being compared to robots at one point or another. Whether that’s for the impaired ability to establish empathy or something else it’s an extremely negative & hurtful stereotype. Especially in media.

Saying ‘I forgot’ is a valid excuse. There is so much going on in our heads. So much to process & remember. We forget things. Everyone forgets things. Especially autistic people. Please don’t yell at us for always forgetting to do the dishes. It’s not like we chose to forget.

The harmful effects of the vaccines cause autism jokes. Aside from the whole anti vaxers debate, perpetually the idea that we shouldn’t be vaccinated because it causes autism is disgusting. It’s treating autism like a disease. Like the person who has it isn’t worthy. Or that autism is so chronic it will ruin everything. It’s like people avoiding cheese burgers because it’s rumored they make you ginger. It’s preposterous.

Yelling at autistic people for struggling to want to learn new concepts/concepts at all. This not only goes for in school but in just normal conversation. It’s hard for autistic people to grasp things they don’t have an interest in learning. So please don’t yell at us for not understanding everything about a band that we don’t care about, we would if we could. It might not seem like a big issue but it happens more than you’d think.

Intrusive thoughts. (Tw: rape mention & violence) Most of the time autistic people experience extreme spells of intrusive thoughts “omg he’s going to rape you image him raping you” or “stab yourself in the side right now” or much worse. & when autistic (and other) people try to talk about it they are labeled crazy or insane. It’s a normal occurrence to have these kinds of thoughts. We don’t want to. But they happen. That’s why they’re called intrusive.

Executive disfunction. This is basically when autistic people are views as lazy but we physically & mentally just can’t. Where tasks as seemingly simple as going to get a glass of water feels like a mountain to autistic people. It’s not that we are lazy. We physically & mentally can’t work up to it.

Class rank & graduation requirements are unfair. Autistic people socialize differently. It’s just a fact. Our brains work differently in classes & outside of it. We could be working our asses off to understand our English class book, but we get an F. Not to mention how most schools require community service hours to graduate. Yes community service is good but it can be very hard for autistic people.

Please feel free to add on but a lot of these are drawn from personal frustrations. Please listen to autistic & other disabled people more. All these also applies to those with ADHD/ADD or any other mental illness where the situations apply. You’re all valid & amazing.

I love you all. 💕

#autistic #actually autistic #autism psa #listen to autistic people #rant #the outsiders

48 notes · View notes

jellyfishinc · 3 years

Text

Good Morning Everyone

Before I begin, I just want it on the record: I am a 26 year old middle class white girl who is only talking about the movies mentioned from a moviegoer’s perspective, and is not in any way shape or form trying to suggest she knows anything except her personal opinion.

Since by now Disney Pixar’s Soul has dropped on Disney+, and judging by the reactions I’ve been seeing, that no doubt that means we’re all worried about how well it’s going to do overall with the general public, and are no doubt worried in the long run it’s going to be labeled as another flop.

But I what I really want you folks to remember is that some of the best films were also initially labeled as cinematic flops, or as doing mediocre at the Box Office, and all it took for them to be respected as such was that same thing we’re all wishing we had more of: Time.

Example 1: The Nightmare Before Christmas

To date, there’s still debate on whether it’s a Christmas movie, Halloween movie, or both, despite the director’s official statement on it. Tim still gets fan mail thanking him for making it, claiming it saved their lives.

If you haven’t already, I suggest you go watch the episode about it from The Holiday Movies that Made Us, so you can get a good look at all the time and effort that went into making this movie into what it is.

Even with all the initial lukewarm reception, it’s a classic film that still holds up, even after all this time, and it was made by misfits, for misfits.

Example 2: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty remake

A lot of people legitimately forget that this movie even exists, but I have noticed that once they’ve actually tracked it down and given it a fair shot, a popular reaction I’ve seen is, “Why didn’t this do so well if it’s so great?”

And I have to say, after seeing it myself, I have to agree. It has a message that I know for a fact that many can relate to, especially if you’re like me and are still at a stage in your life where there’s so much you want to do with your life.

I have no doubt that given even more time, this movie will come to be given the respect it deserves.

Example 3: Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Note: In case it’s not obvious already, I do have a bit of a soft spot for Tim Burton films, but that doesn’t make what I’m saying about them any less important.

I won’t go as far as to say that it was necessarily a flop, but I do know for a fact that it was heavily criticized by people who had already made up their minds to hate it because the original film had already been around for a long time.

And for those that may come across this post: I respect your opinion, and I won’t waste your time listing all the complaints people had about this film, but I want to at least touch on a few that stand out, because because I feel like there’s some of you out there that are judging it too harshly because you don’t know the full extent of everything that happened with both films.

The first one: Roald Dahl hated the original film, so much so, that the planned sequel that would’ve followed Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, was promptly dropped. It’s because of that that after he’d passed, his widow flat out refused to let anyone else touch the story again.

And that didn’t change when she was approached by Tim Burton about it, either. But because it’s Tim, he clearly knew how skeptical she would be because of it, so he was very respectful and showed her some of the concept art he had drawn up for the film.

Her reaction? She LOVED it. In particular, the design for the Bucket house. If any of you wondered why it looked so crooked and funny, there’s actually a reason for it. Tim had it specifically designed after Roald Dahl’s famous writing shed. And it was that that convinced her the story would be in good hands, and she gave him her blessing to make the film.

Number two: Johnny Depp’s Wonka Portrayal

Many have criticized his portrayal as being too weird and a far cry from Gene Wilder’s portrayal, which for many believe is what ruined the remake.

For the record: I used to agree with you, until I saw a very in-depth analysis that managed to show me what I had missed initially.

Essentially what it said was that it’s actually a more accurate idea of what would happen to a person who willingly shuts himself away from the outside world, with only his workers for company.

And I am absolutely not to make light of where America is right now, but consider: we all make jokes about how we’re all going to be an antisocial wreck when we’re finally allowed to resume like normal, having not seen hardly anyone in person in weeks, maybe even months at a time.

Now imagine instead the pandemic lasts for years, from when he had to let everyone at the factory go, all the way to when he finally decided to reopen to a select few. What do you think a person who goes through something like that would look like?

Like it’s shown in the film. And on top of it, he’s also portrayed as someone who suffers from flashbacks of traumatizing moments in his life, and while I personally don’t suffer from them, according to those that do, it’s a very accurate portrayal.

There's also a whole analysis I did about how this Wonka has undiagnosed autism, but I'll be nice and just say a lot of his personality suggests it.

But like with the other listed films, more and more people have been revisiting this film with this new knowledge and found it’s value.

But please don’t take this as me bashing the original, because that’s not what I’m trying to do. If you still like the original even after knowing all this, that’s fine. You’re more than welcome to say so. All I want to do is share the truth.

Example 4: How the Grinch Stole Christmas, live action adaptation

I've seen everyone including the Nostalgia Critic have nothing but disdain for this film, and it seems to me that it's largely because of the same problem Charlie and the chocolate factory did: they thought the original was better.

What I have to say about it is they both have equal value, and to me still have the same message, even if the live action remake came at it from a different angle.

In the original cartoon, the Grinch just hated Christmas and that was that. The Whos loved Christmas, and that was that. Even when she Grinch stole everything, the Whos were still happy. And it's my firm opinion it was just a reflection on the time period it was made, in that Christmas was just a holiday to celebrate with family and friends.

In comparison, the live action remake was more of a reflection of how Christmas was already rapidly changing into the commercialized holiday we have now. And in that regard, it's incredibly clever to set up the film like this, because, again, with time, we start to sympathize with the Grinch more, because most of what he says about how people treat Christmas is true.

Some were okay with him hating Christmas just for the sake of hating it, but if you can invent a backstory that's not only plausible, but relatable, then I'm all for it.

So now that I’ve taken up about 5 minutes you’ll never get back, what does this all mean for Soul?

Only that even if it does flop, it will be in good company, because flopping has proven to be a rite of passage for many of the great films, and given enough time, it will get the respect and recognition it deserves.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk :)

#not spn #disney pixar soul #soul #pixar soul #movie flops #nightmare before christmas #charlie and the chocolate factory #secret life of walter mitty #rant #this is what happens when i have a thought that won't leave me alone #now you all get to listen to it too #thanks for coming to this ted talk

19 notes · View notes

letmetellyouaboutmyfeels · 3 years

Note

Hi! Long time follower here, never talked. Love your blog. Please please give us the Wuthering Heights rant. I really want it now!

My dear nonny, I’m truly sorry it’s taken me so long to get to this.

First off, I have to admit two prejudices when it comes to my reading of Wuthering Heights. First, I’m not a fan of Romantic literature. Second, I’m not a fan of what I would call “interpersonal dramas.” For example, TV shows like This is Us or films like August: Osage County are not my cup of tea. They’re about the dramatic and serious relationship between characters and family members and I just don’t care. I get that in my real life, give me dragons.

So that influences my opinion of WH and makes me predisposed to not be a fan. But I just really fucking hate that book, I’m sorry, I do, and it’s not because of any lack of writing skill involved in writing it, it’s because it’s a goddamn misery piece about people being assholes to each other and then dying miserably.

Like, I get it, we’re supposed to feel bad for Heathcliff because of his lower status and how people treat him, but he’s also an asshole? He eavesdrops on a conversation that he only hears part of (and therefore misunderstands) and proceeds to punish the person who was speaking, and she has no idea that’s why he’s doing it or what he overheard. God FORBID he tell her.

But then I suppose I’m an idiot for expecting anybody in this damn novel to talk to anybody about anything. Communication is something none of these people have ever heard of in their entire lives. And yes I get it! Suppressed emotions! Hidden passions! Yearning! Guess who did all of that while still having characters treat each other (generally, at least in regard to the heroes) with respect and communicating and learning the folly of not communicating?

JANE FUCKING AUSTEN AND SHE DID IT WITHOUT STUPID PLOT CONTRIVANCES

My God, Heathcliff, I fucking get it, you’re fucking miserable, you know what I’d say if one of my friends went out and brooded in a fucking torrential rainstorm? GET BACK INSIDE AND BROOD IN FRONT OF THE FIRE YOU FUCKING MORON. The whole Romantic movement had a lot of focus on the power and beauty of wild, untamed nature, but there’s a line between appreciating nature and just going out to prove to everyone how sad you are and wallowing in self pity and I have no tolerance for that bullshit.

Oh! And that’s even if we IGNORE the racist undertones of Heathcliff being dark skinned and compared to people from places like India and called racial slurs as a result and how he turns into a violent petty vengeful man who abuses the woman he claims to love YEAH THAT’S A GREAT REPRESENTATION OF PEOPLE OF COLOR RIGHT THERE the only thing almost as infuriating is how in every adaptation he’s played by a white man. *screams into pillow*

And maybe? We’re supposed to read WH and Heathcliff’s journey as a cautionary tale of sorts? Hey look what happens when you let rage, jealousy, and vengeance consume you. Not a great look. Not that I’m saying any of the Bronte sisters were the kind of people to write morality tales. But perchance we weren’t supposed to like Heathcliff so much? That’s up for debate but doesn’t change the fact that far too many people in this world seem to think he’s a goddamn “tortured romantic hero.” Ha. Ha ha. Ha. Honey he’s not tortured he’s a bully. Cool story! Still murder!

And I’m sorry but I fucking hate the treatment of women in this. Nothing against the women themselves, really, but they’re not anything other than plot devices to be used by the men to hurt the other men in the story. Catherine only ever makes one solid choice for herself and that’s marrying Edgar and then Heathcliff proceeds to punish her for it for years.

Yeah, there’s nothing more romantic than, “If I can’t have you, nobody can.” Wow look my panties just fucking fell off, that was so romantic. *gags*

God and poor Isabella, he manipulates her and uses her and abuses her. Also Edgar, can we talk about Edgar? Edgar’s a good dude. He’s a good dude who loves Catherine and loves his daughter and really didn’t deserve this bullshit. But oh no, his soul isn’t made of the same stuff as Catherine’s, their souls aren’t the same, don’t you see? He’s not PASSIONATE and YEARNING and TORTURED!

Look, I get the temptation of that whole shtick when you’re sixteen. But if there’s something that age and experience has taught me, and most other people, it’s that relationships that are full of sweeping passion and tortured emotion are not the sort of relationships with which you can actually build a life together. While it’s said by a cultist trying to manipulate a lonely and traumatized woman, the quote, “Does he feel like home to you?” in Midsommar is a very apt question to ask. Finding someone upon whom you can rely, with whom you feel safe, with whom you feel comfortable, someone who is willing to put in the time and dedication to their relationship with you, is far more important than sex in a nor’easter and frankly I never saw the appeal of that tortured sweeping romance even when I was sixteen.

Everyone’s talking about how this guy is an “enduring icon” and such bullshit when the fact is he’s abusive. He never showed Catherine proper appreciation while she was alive and chose instead to hurt her, he abused everyone else around him whether they deserved it (Hindley) or not (Isabella). Catherine’s not a ton of fun either, faking insanity to hurt her husband because he doesn’t want her to cheat on him and then falling into actual insanity and starving herself to death because she can’t see her One True Goddamn Love.

If was her one true love then WHY DIDN’T SHE MARRY HIM? YOU CAN’T HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO. THAT’S NOT HOW THIS WORKS. If you love someone, you love them enough to say, “yeah we won’t be rich but we’ll find our way in the world.” Catherine loved her status and material comforts more than she loved Heathcliff, full stop, I don’t want to hear anything more about her tough choice.

And it’s okay that she wanted financial security and social status! There is nothing wrong with that, especially when Edgar was a pretty good guy all things considered! But for God’s sake woman stop throwing a tantrum like a fucking five year old. You made your choice. You don’t get to whine and cry about it. You can’t refuse to marry the guy and then get mad when you can’t have an affair with him. You should’ve fucking married him! Why is this so hard for people to understand!? She’s spoiled! Cathy’s just fucking spoiled!

Maybe it’s the autism but this is why I fucking hate dramas. Nobody communicates. Nobody is logical. Everyone blows everything out of proportion. God I hate people.

And again, I’m not saying that these characters were written to be characters that you root for, nor am I saying they’re characters you’re supposed to condemn. If anything I would say they’re characters you’re supposed to be drawn into in spite of yourself and get swept up in “THE DRAMA” of it all. Which is fine but honest to God that doesn’t make this book any better than any of the dozens and dozens of other similar stories out there. And whatever the author’s intentions, the way readers throughout the years have sighed and pined over this book and acted like it was such a great example of doomed romance pisses me the fuck off.

It’s not anything special, sorry. It’s about a bunch of horrible people doing horrible things to each other because they’re all petty and selfish, and the only other kind of people who exist are victims and idiotic bystanders. It’s not romantic, Heathcliff and Catherine’s romance is unhealthy obsession that’s more about themselves than about each other, and I fucking hate it.

#mads answers things #mads rants #upon further reflection reblogs are allowed #but I'm still not getting into a literary discussion with anyone #this is a rant and I don't want to play 'I'm back in my college class' thanks

9 notes · View notes

valideity · 3 years

Text

[the original post that i’m replying to by @colorsinautumn is in the source link but basically it went like this:]

y’all, i feel like i need to remind y’all that there’s a huge difference between ignoring what’s going on, and taking a mental break because you’re exhausted with trying to keep up with the situation in the country right now. this shit is no joke and is weighing incredibly heavy on people such as myself and if you need to take a break from this and just log out, please do. please take care of yourself and don’t feel bad that you’re not keeping up with things at every second of the day.

god i keep reading the notes on this post about being privileged to take a break and i feel the need to explain a few things. one, a black man wrote this post. two, i clearly emphasized the point of ignoring what’s going on. I understand that non black people have the privilege of being able to “log out” and not be effected by this. black people like myself don’t have that privilege of just being able to log out. what i’m trying to say with this post is that you shouldn’t be feeling like shit all day and having anxiety attacks and generally feeling incredibly overwhelmed all the time. taking care of your mental health is not up for fucking debate and I don’t care what the color of your skin is, this applies to everyone. take care of yourself mentally and physically. i can’t believe I have to argue that people have the right to care for themselves amidst all the shit going on in the world today.

i’m a white person and bro, the shit going on in the US earlier in the year was a real catalyst to my first psych ward admission (not like police brutality against Black, Indigenous and people of colour, and other marginalised and multiply marginalised populations is a ‘new’ thing).

i felt completely powerless and like i had to prove my whole entire moral worth as a person via social media and while i learnt that the best thing to do was to amplify Black, Indigenous and people of colours voices AND to spread resources and awareness was the best thing to do in that situation, as well as show up to protests and educate ourselves, i just totally shut down as i couldn’t find the RIGHT posts to share, I didn’t want to spread trauma-porn to my BIPOC followers already suffering, and i couldn’t find something to do that seemed authentic and genuine (seeing as this was NOT a new problem), and in my mostly-white social media circles had barely even been addressed before George Floyd.

at one point, i didn’t even know whether we (whites) were doing this for solidarity or purely for reputation, and THAT thought fucks me up.

and i still dont know if my radio silence due to wanting to seem authentic and genuine during this time was more of a reflection of me and my personal faults and schemas and insecurities rather than a genuine desire to be more consistent and mindful in my awareness-spreading and a preference to have in-depth discussions with the people around me about what was and still, always, is going on in the fucked up world we live in

anyway, i still have a lot of guilt and regret over being so silent in that time and wish i could give out a billion of the sincerest apologies to Black, Indigenous and people of colour (and other marginalised identities), who may have seen my internet presence and thought of me as not an ally or safe presence to them. so, for what it’s worth and for whomever may see this, i’m so, so sorry.

i appreciate @colorsinautumn ‘s sentiment of looking after your mental and physical health despite your skin colour. it resolved me of a lot of the shame i’ve been carrying since that time. but i’m still fucking internally debating the quality of my heart (but that’s my own shit to deal with).

“...I understand that non-black people have the privilege of being able to “log out” and not be effected by this. black people like myself don’t have the privilege of just being able to log out. what i’m trying to say with this post is that you shouldn’t be feeling like shit all day and having anxiety attacks and generally feeling incredibly overwhelmed all the time. taking care of your mental health is not up for fucking debate and I don’t care what the color of your skin is, this applies to everyone. take care of yourself mentally and physically. I can’t believe I have to argue that people have the right to care for themselves amidst all the shit going on in the world today.”

since then, i’ve come across a few resources that i’ve found to be very accessible for people with ADHD and other learning disabilities who may struggle to read:

the first one is a documentary (with subtitles) on the continuation of Australia’s foul and disgusting treatment towards our First Nations peoples. it’s called Utopia, and you can access it for free here:

https://vimeo.com/168410495

vimeo

the second one is a book called Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. If you have the money, I’d highly recommend purchasing the ebook, to support both the author and the publisher (Arsenal Pulp Press is very good and publishes lots of antiracist and queer content from authors with marginalised identities). If you can’t afford the book, https://gen.lib.rus.ec is a way you can get it for free. It’s about the intersectional Disability Justice movement, mutual aid, ‘care webs’ and life with neurodivergence (they have autism and other NDs) chronic illness and disability as a whole as a person of colour. It is an easy and accessible read, with essays in small chunks of writing, and using text-to-speech on iOS or mac, or, apps like Speechify and fonts like OpenDyslexic make it a lot easier.

the audiobook is available on the app/website Scribd if you’d like to read along with the audiobook.

youtube

this video is also an excellent starter for those who are interested in reading the book. it is also officially close-captioned (rather than auto-generated)

‘left-tube’ creators like philosophytube have a lot of content about police brutality, prisons, solitary confinement and racism to check out

if you want to read a book or get an introduction/discussion about it (with subtitles), searching youtube for the book title and author is bound to come up with something. Take Alex Vitale’s The End Of Policing (published by Verso, whom i highly recommend for both books and educational videos) for example:

youtube

or, Police: A Field Guide (a book about the history and abolition of the police) by David Correia and Tyler Wal (also published by Verso), brings up an interview with Vitale, Correia, and Wall:

youtube

or, this, an interview about the book and discussion:

youtube

, and, this youtuber has just started uploading the audiobook to youtube:

youtube

as well as The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.

so yes, there are accessible ways to educate yourself about this stuff, whether you have ADHD, dyslexia or another learning disability—it just took me a while to figure it out.

I hope this post was helpful to people like me who struggle to read and/or pay attention but want to educate themselves in the ways that Black people have recommended.

5 notes · View notes

matildaisautisticandproud · 4 years

Text

April 8th - 30 Days of Autism Acceptance

April 8: What are some misconceptions/stereotypes about autism that you hate?

1. People with autism don’t want friends. Albeit this might be true to some, this isn’t true to all. Most autistics, I’ve found, want to have more friends, but either don’t know how to go about befriending people and/or people don’t want to spend time with them. Personally, for years, I always longed to have a friend who got me and that I could be open with. (I struggled to actually be myself around people my whole life and still do.) My roommate, Missy, is that friend now, but you don’t know how lonely it is going through grade school without a best friend.

Lots of other girls had besties and many of my friends had friends that they shared their most darkest secrets with; they were super close to each other. Since I didn’t know how to go about forming that connection and I am generally a reserved person, I never had that friend and it was painful. I wanted a best friend, but I didn’t know how to establish a strong connection, maintain it, and most people thought I was “weird” and didn’t really want to be my friend.

I don’t mean to throw my own pity party by saying this, but I was the person who others would one day make me feel on top of the world by including me, but then, would distance themselves once they were done with me and make me feel terrible. This constant cycle of inclusion and exclusion, interest and disinterest, was really damaging to younger me. It frustrated me and made me think the reason I couldn’t have a close, good friend was because there was something wrong with me. (There’s never something wrong with you (unless you’re a murderer or that of the like). It’s society who is in the wrong for tossing aside such a beautiful human being.)

2. People with autism can’t feel or express emotion. This statement is 100% false. By saying this, people are invalidating the emotions of autistics, which is never okay. It is true that many on the spectrum have the inability to recognize their own emotions and/or don’t express their emotions as “normal” people do, but we still have feelings. Just recently, I have gotten better at identifying what I’m feeling, but I’m still not adroit with it. Also, I think that I feel a lot more deeply that those not on the spectrum, as do many autistics. Because I don’t really express my emotions, I’ve had people say that I seem “emotionless” and “robotic” all throughout my life. I never did and still don’t think much of it; it’s just how I am.

I get scared, sad, furious, elated, and more. Just because I don’t express my emotions in a way you can understand doesn’t mean I don’t have them. My body language is just different. (Also, I’ve learned to internalize all my emotions and grievances so, no body really knows what’s going on in my head.)

3. All autistics are just like [insert name here]. As I’ve stated numerous times before, the nature of ASD is that no two manifestations of it are exactly the same. Two autistic people may share similar experiences and struggles, but autism still affects them at least slightly differently.

4. Autistics can’t understand the emotions of others and are apathetic. Many autistics actually experience “too” much empathy. Some are apathetic, but as are some people who aren’t on the spectrum. Everyone is susceptible to being apathetic.

5. An autistic person has only struggles; they’re just their autism. Yes, autism is a key part of every autistic’s life, but it is not the only aspect of who we are. I think people should focus more on what a child can do than what they can’t, overall. Sure, Mark may not be able to handle going to the mall due to overstimulation, but he is especially skilled in painting. People should focus less on faults and flaws. Just focusing on such things will make life drab and miserable; plus, people as a whole are more than just their struggles.

6. People can grow out of autism, and it is only present in children. I, along with many others, are proof that this is false. I dislike how the struggles of adults (with and without autism, ADHD, and other disorders) are ignored in society. Not all problems go away with adulthood; it isn’t some cure all.

7. “There wasn’t all this autism/ADHD/etc. stuff back in my day so, it can’t be real.” These disorders are very much real. Perhaps the numbers have been increasing, but maybe there has just been a decrease in ignorance and an increase in compassion and acceptance. Also, diagnosing has gotten much easier, and since there is more knowledge available (i.e. the Internet) than ever before, people can self-screen and then determine whether or not to be tested. The only reason I am diagnosed is because I took the time to research different disorders via the Internet and decided to get professionally evaluated.

8. “Autism is caused by one thing.” Whether this “thing” be vaccines, a gene mutation, bad parenting, trauma, etc., this statement has been proven false by science. When studying the cause of autism, scientists have found that in one person, one gene could be the contributor to the person’s autism while in another, it’s a combination of several genes. The cause is unknown, but bad parenting has been debunked. However, there is evidence to suggest that the presence of heavy metals within a person’s system may be a possible cause. (Numerous children with autism have been found to have high levels of heavy metals within their body.)

As for the vaccine statement, it is unknown whether or not they do or don’t cause autism. There was a study carried out with the goal of proving or disproving the claim, but since the data was skewed, the results are invalid. I don’t necessarily support the claim, but there is not enough evidence for either side of the argument for me to take a side. I am a neutral in this debate. Though, I don’t believe that one should risk the death of their child just because they’d rather not have an autistic child. We’re not that bad; several parents love having an autistic child.

9. Autism only affects the brain. Again, I and many others are living proof that this claim is false. Many people with autism have co-occurring conditions like allergies, food sensitivities, gastrointestinal disorders, and epilepsy. Personally, I have numerous food sensitivities and gastrointestinal issues. I haven’t gotten a name as to what is wrong with my digestive system, but I do know there is a problem given what I experience on a daily basis.

10. All autistics are intellectually disabled. All statements that start with “all autistics” are automatically false. Even if the claim doesn’t pertain to autism itself (i.e. a political belief), autistics, like other people, have their own sets of beliefs and their own lifestyles. We’re human just like you; all that’s different is how our brains are wired and the struggles we endure.

To combat this claim, many autistics have a normal to high IQ level and can excel in school. There are those who have lower IQs, but they still can excel. One’s potential to be great isn’t dictated by IQ or a disability (or an ability and/or advantage for that matter).

11. Autistic people are great at STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) classes. No. Although I especially excel with math and loved Algebra and Calculus, not everyone does. Some of us are great when it comes to STEM courses, but others of us struggle. Not all of us are even remotely interested in STEM, as well. Some of us prefer the arts, labor-intensive activities (i.e. construction), et cetera. We all have our different strong suits.

12. All autistics are savants. Some are, some aren’t. Although we all have special interests, most aren’t savants, actually. I don’t know where I fall when it comes to being a savant or not, but I’m not some super-genius. I didn’t invent some new scientific thing when I was 12 nor did I make a groundbreaking discovery. I do want to do something great with my future career, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be worthy of stardom and fame or be labeled as a savant.

The one thing I dislike is how people dismiss the existence of savants because they hate the stereotype. Autistic savants do exist, as do non-autistic savants, and saying that they don’t is harmful. Stereotypes come from somewhere, right? Savants exist and they deserve representation and appreciation too.

13. Autistic people don’t have relationships and moments of intimacy. Yes, they do. I personally don’t want a relationship right now nor do I want to engage in such intimate acts, but others do.

14. Autism kills marriages. This myth was made widespread by the infamous organization Autism $peaks. Sure, it may end some marriages, but why marry someone who is autistic then? If you truly loved the person then, you would accept them, autism and all.

15. Nonverbal autistics are all intellectually disabled. Although some are, not all are. A handful are highly intelligent. Autism isn’t a one size fits all thing.

16. Autistic people can’t do anything on their own/will never be independent. Some autistics won’t be able to be independent, but not all. Others don’t need any support while some, like me, need minimal support. People with all sorts of aid requirements exist on the autism spectrum. Each of us needs differing levels of support; also, especially so if one also has a chronic illness, some days I will be able to be completely independent, but the next day I may need lots of external support.

17. Having an autistic child is a tragedy. Yes, autism does make things more challenging, but there’s a silver lining in it. Like every other child, autistics are capable of great things and have talents. If people would just look past the struggles, label, and faults then, they’ll see an amazing person who isn’t just a diagnosis, but a fully fledged human being.

18. Autistic people are just rude. On honesty, we are not trying to be rude when saying the truth. In our brains, it is something that is acceptable to say. Many of us thrive on being honest as our brains tend to rely on logic more than anything else. By pointing out the size of your nose, we’re not trying to be rude. Personally, I don’t really struggle with being too honest, but sometimes I do say things aloud that shouldn’t be said. I just think of it as uttering an observation; I have no rude intents. When I am trying to be rude, you will know XD.

On conversational difficulties, it’s not that we don’t want to talk to you, it’s that we don’t know how to continue and/or initiate conversations. Not all autistics struggle a lot when it comes to social communication, but some do. Those who do, we just don’t know how to go about conversing “as normal”. We can’t help it. We’re not being rude. I struggle to continue and start conversations, which has led to many people thinking that I don’t like them. If you want to have a proper, lengthy conversation with me then, you have to start it and be able to keep it going.

On eye contact, we don’t mean to seem rude by not looking you in the eye when talking. For me, maintaining eye contact is distracting, which means that my focus is being directed away from what you’re saying, making me not able to adequately listen to you. Some autistics have little to no problems with eye contact.

19. “You don’t have to stim. Therefore, you’re just doing it to annoy me.” For me, it takes a lot of courage for me to feel comfortable with stimming around you. So, by ridiculing me for doing something that soothes me, you’re furthering my insecurity about it and hurting me. People who stim do it to self-soothe and to regulate themselves. Would you rather I shutdown (go nonverbal), experience sensory overload, or even have a meltdown? I don’t think so. Let people stim. Some of us don’t stim, but it is a lifeline for some of us.

20. “You don’t look autistic.” Well, riddle me this: What does autism look like to you? Apparently, we have completely different views on what an autistic person looks like. For me, an autistic person is anyone (a friend, neighbor, family member, student, teacher etc.) from any walk of life of any religion, lifestyle, culture, etc. The “autism look” is the generic person to me. Is there a specific way we should look, though? Please tell me more about your vision of how an autistic person outwardly appears.

I could go on about this subject for hours, but I’ll stop myself here. If you want me to debunk more myths and/or react to certain common sayings/stereotypes then, please leave a message in my ask box. I really, really, really! want to write more about this topic.

26 notes · View notes

system-of-a-feather · 4 years

Text

Entropy System’s System Pride Day Questions

So I finally got around to watching that video and felt it was a pretty good and interesting set of questions and felt I would go ahead and answer them in terms of our system so those that follow can get a little more knowledge about us and our experiences. This is all answered by Riku - the current host of this system. Plus I lost track of time and totally didn’t notice System Pride Day coming up so lets just have this be belated System Pride Day post

How old was the body when the host discovered they were part of a system?

That depends really which host we are talking about. I am currently the third long term host that this system has had and I can’t personally speak for the two hosts before me since I don’t know how aware they were of the situations that were going on. Personally, I didn’t know about the presence of other alters (even as a protector since I normalized everything odd about it somehow?) until I was about 13 or 14 when a certain incident kind of freaked me out since I co-fronted clearly for the first time and didn’t know why I couldn’t control my body. From there Aderis kind of made herself prominent and pretty well known and it kind of moved from there. With that being said, I didn’t know anything of Dissociative Identity Disorder or that it was an actual disorder with a basis in trauma until I was 16 or 17 years old. Prior to that I alternated between thinking it was “normal”, “imaginary friends”, “intense and out of hand roleplaying”, and “just my imagination.”

How many members do you have / are you aware of?

We are well aware of seven members existing currently. According to Ray, we have a fragment that is dormant that most of us don’t know about but isn’t particularly much of a current worry. There might be others, but to our current knowledge, we are seven.

Do you attend formal therapy? Have you in the past?

I am currently seeing a trauma / dissociative disorder specialist and have been seeing him for about a year and a half now. I have been in the mental health system for about four years now and saw a different therapist prior. (I’ve also bounced around between therapists for short periods of time, seen three psychiatrists, and been in group therapy)

How many misdiagnosis have you had?

I wouldn’t say I’ve had any major misdiagnosis in the past as much as “inaccurate” diagnosises in the sense they weren’t “wrong” but they danced around the issue / were more technical or were hard to confirm and have been brought into question. I have been diagnosed with OCD and Aspergers in the past however, lately it seems more likely that OCD is more “OCD tendencies” and is under debate, and Aspergers - when I saw an Autism specialist - was hard to pinpoint whether or not I had learned a lot of traits from my two family members that have it or if I had it and coped pretty well. The other thing that has been brought up with my current therapist is if the autistic traits are more centralized in some alters more than others.

I’ve also been diagnosed with what I like to call “understatement” diagnosises where they are right, but don’t really fall under the DSM-V’s typical line of “the disturbance is not better explained by another mental disorder” such as Generalized Anxiety Disorder.

Do you have a proper diagnosis?

Yep. My current therapist diagnosed me sometime last year.

My previous therapist - the one that specialized in autism and not dissociative / trauma disorders - did bring up the concern almost immediately though when I first started therapy because apparently one of the first issues you talk about casually being “I’m majorly depressed because my online self is way better than me and handles life way better and I just suck so I should just stop existing so we can have a better life” while also not knowing what dissociation is apparently quickly pings off concern.

Hilariously that therapist ended up dismissing it and so I did as well until my current therapist was like “Uh, I’m pretty sure you have DID.”

What is one situation that you are really proud of your system’s teamwork?

One situation? Man there are a lot, but I think I really am just proud of how well all of us have pulled together to manage living away from home at college and shit. Plus running this blog, but mostly college and juggling that, self care, recovery, goals, money, and a social life all at once.

What is the biggest hurdle you’ve overcome so far as a system?

I would probably say figuring out how to function, communicate, trust, and organize ourselves - especially how we relate to other people in our life and who to decide to let in our lives and who to not. We used to have a lot of issues with codependency and systems having drastically different opinions of people in our life so coming to figure out a way to mutually respect one another and trust each other’s judgements and understand where one of us might be biased / incorrect / swayed by trauma, extreme personality traits, or lack of insight and assigning responsibility / a order of respect / trust on topics to each alter. Really just getting our life in order and learnign to properly respect the experience, opinions, and individual knowledge of each part was probably the hardest for us.

Is your goal final fusion or functional multiplicity?

We are currently striving for functional multiplicity. If final fusion does occur down the line naturally, we aren’t 100% opposed to it, but honestly as we are, we are pretty comfortable and adjusted to living life as a team. We don’t really see the need to have to fuse unless it helps or unless a part feels like they would prefer / function better integrated with another part that agrees. We aren’t against fusion, but also we don’t see too much of the point.

Do you feel that each of you and your alters each deserve happiness, safety, and acceptance?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

I would also like to extend that to pretty much anyone who has a single molecule or more of carbon in their body (save for some objectively horrible people as exceptions).

But I really do try to help and hope that everyone in my system, and anyone in systems reading this, can get the happiness, safety, and acceptance that they deserve to have since no one deserves to live with anything less

We all are working hard to make this life work out so I feel its the least we deserve. It’s the least you deserve.

#alter: riku #did #osdd #dissociative identity disorder #actuallydissociative #actuallydid #actually did #system pride #questions #asks #ask #about us #about

15 notes · View notes

zen-garden-gnome · 4 years

Text

REALLY investigating the debate over vaccines (from a lay-person’s perspective).

I want to unravel some things about the vaccination debate, following days of research into the matter. It wasn’t enough for me to know how I felt, already. I didn’t think my personal relationships had to suffer maximally in order for me to live honestly. So I decided to dig in and make myself more knowledgeable, and to let myself empathize with more people. There was so much to cipher through and it took so much time that I had to take notes to help keep things connected. The process reminded me that the internet is not as easily traversed for all its users, and that in the end, the “vibe” one picks up decides a lot of what we’re willing to follow any deeper (particularly, whether or not we even notice a “vibe” in the first place). Zooming way out also reminded me of just how many “entry points” there are for this subject, and helped me empathize with a lot of people. It turns out, “anti-vaxxer” is a term applied to people across a pretty wide range of subtly differing perspectives. I think we can all agree that the despair and disgust and distrust the world is experiencing won’t improve if we can’t get our attention back, ‘cause that’s largely what this is about. We are inundated with so much manipulative information that we struggle to steer our attention toward the core values that we mostly share, which takes us further and further away from each other’s realities. We know less and less about each other but think we know so much more because we’re surrounded by manipulative/self-preserving chatter.

I wanted to cut through the noise and show where some things connect, and where some others only appear to. For anyone who knows there’s a lot going on but doesn’t know where to begin approaching it. For anyone who feels on the fence in any way. For anyone who feels isolated by their view of the circumstances. For anyone who struggles to understand why so-and-so would think such-and-such. For anyone who thinks they already know. For anyone with even a passing curiosity. And of course, for myself. I’ve worked to collect and organize this for all and anyone. I do my best to stay objective without pretending I don’t have my own opinions. My research wound up focusing on a few key people and their research, the theories that have arisen, the science used to address them, and the demographics who are the most moved by it all. This is an entire research paper and I had no idea it would go this far when I started.

Judy Mikovits is a former medical researcher and current anti-vaccination advocate. She has some valid criticisms of how the US government handled the release of treatments for HIV and for the poor ways people treat their immune systems. She claims in her book (and in a viral video that recently hit the internet at the kick-off of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US) that Anthony Fauci barred her from continuing her research at the National Institute of Health (he denies this). She refers to the COVID-19 pandemic in quotes ("pandemic"), refuses to wear face masks, and discourages others from doing so because she thinks that taking care of one’s own immune system and cleanliness is all she should need to do, by her own words. Vaccines (and just temporarily breathing in more of one’s own carbon dioxide) aren’t worth the risk, she says. Mikovits has spoken at numerous anti-vaccination events and her retracted papers are frequently referenced in their propaganda (and there’s no denying it’s propaganda).

When she was a virologist and medical researcher, Judy started working to uncover viral causes of diseases when she was hired by a couple whose child had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and wanted to find the cause. The work she published in Science magazine about proposed retro-viral causes of CFS in 2009 was retracted when peers from 9 separate labs failed to get the same results and negated her findings (and when two of her co-authors reported that their patient samples had been contaminated by the virus in the lab, as opposed to the virus already being in the samples). Two years later she was fired from her job over the quality of her work and control of her lab samples, which seems relevant considering the apparent reason why her 2009 results were supposedly wrong. She was arrested and tried for stealing lab equipment and documentation when she left. She returned some of the lab notes and the criminal charges were dismissed.

Judy continues to reference her outdated research to this day (the research about specific retroviruses causing some specific diseases). Now she’s using her debunked data to fire up her main argument: that up to 30% of modern vaccines are “contaminated” with retroviruses and the government is trying to cover up a dangerous problem with its vaccines, putting everyone at risk (especially young children who get a large host of vaccines in a relatively short period of time).

This was where I knew I had to learn more about how viruses and vaccines interact with our bodies. A retrovirus is commonly called an RNA virus, which is a virus that uses a host cell to replicate its viral RNA as DNA. This is the opposite of what DNA viruses do, which is to use the host cell to replicate their DNA as RNA. An RNA/retro-virus also has a type of enzyme that allows it to insert its new DNA into the host cell’s DNA. This altered genetic information can lead to increased erroneous cell production, which increases the likelihood of developing cancer and other diseases depending on where the viral DNA is injected into a host cell’s DNA. Whatever gene is changed may cease to function, leading to disease. For example, HIV is a retrovirus that results in a syndrome that makes one prone to all kinds of diseases.

As it turns out, some vaccines do contain retroviruses! And it also turns out that that’s ok. Sometimes that’s part of the genetic material virologists are working with. Some of our vaccines are only possible with that genetic material. The presence of a retrovirus doesn’t necessary do anything to the vaccine. The vaccinations don’t infect patients with retroviruses because the retroviruses found in the vaccine are non-infectious. It’s an extremely important part of how a good vaccine functions. Viruses can cause diseases, but vaccines don’t contain live infectious material. That’s why there were no reported issues with retroviral infection by our vaccine safety systems (systems that exist because vaccines have never been perfect and always have some potential for side effects, so their risk factors are studied thoroughly). When the technology was available to investigate the retroviruses previously unknown to have existed in the MMR vaccine, they were confirmed to be non-hazardous.

Mikovits is clearly a knowledgeable professional in her field and has some valid opinions/points about health, medicine, and federal failures. But her identity seems to be wrapped up with the debunked research that changed her career, and no professional knows everything, even in their field. The wrongness isn’t my concern. It’s what she’s doing with it, and the fact that she’s ignoring the research negating her old findings.

Kent Heckenlively is the co-author of Judy's new book, and an anti-vaccination activist. The fact that he's also a lawyer really stands out to me. The founders of the Westboro Baptist Church (the "God Hates F*gs" group) are ex-lawyers who use their offensive protests to rile people up and then sue them for "hindering their rights." It's how they make their money. Anyway, Kent is co-founder of a group called Age of Autism, which claims to be dedicated to helping kids and families with autism. But as you can probably tell by the name of the group, they're much more concerned with the fact that they perceive a dangerous uptick in autism statistics (an issue that’s related much more to the evolving access and categorization of statistics and disorders than anything else). Age of Autism doesn’t actually tend to involve people on the autism spectrum in their work (other than to use them as examples), and their focus is not on helping (or even understanding) those with autism, but on getting rid of autism--as if the spectrum of conditions related to autism was a single “disease,” and as if it’s unacceptable that people exist with those conditions (more on that later).

As autism has increasingly become a recognized "condition," it's diagnosis has become more common, and because it's really only diagnosed based on social behavior, it may go unnoticed prior to ~18 months, if it’s noticed at all. Many more people live "on the spectrum" than we ever know (did you know Sir Anthony Hopkins is also on the spectrum?), and before it was more widely recognized, we had all kinds of names (and institutions) for people living with more severe effects. Kent's daughter was diagnosed with autism at around the age that she got some of her vaccines, which led the distraught father to believe it was vaccine related. Sometimes people do have mild reactions to vaccines (nothing’s perfect), and I can understand parents being scared and hurt for their children. I can also understand questioning various authorities. We know good and well that governments use poisons (Agent Orange in Vietnam), diseases (smallpox in the colonies, syphilis at Tuskegee), and vaccines as playing cards in their efforts to control people/power (we saw it again when Trump tried to get exclusive rights to the Coronavirus vaccine being researched in Germany). But lots of people see “Thing 1 Happens, Thing 2 Happens After, Which Must Mean Thing 1 Caused Thing 2.” Unsurprisingly, people can develop identities that revolve around getting rid of the "disease" of autism.

But Autism is not a disease. Autism is an umbrella term for a range of neuro divergences (to be diagnosed you have to hit like... 4 out of a possible 15 some-odd behavioral checkmarks), and issues like those relate to aaaallll sorts of things. Things that people with autism talk about often. If anti-vaccination organizations actually advocated for people with autism, they’d let people with autism advocate for themselves. Because people with autism do self-advocate, and they take umbrage with groups like Autism Speaks and Age of Autism. People on the autism spectrum often have lots to say about the agendas of these groups and the resources that are taken from the those who actually need them. From the Autistic Self Advocacy Network: “While no link exists between autism and vaccines, of greater concern is the willingness of those who promote this theory to suggest that exposing children to deadly diseases would be a better outcome than an autistic child. Vaccinations do not cause autism – but the use of autism as a means of scaring parents from safeguarding their children from life-threatening illness demonstrates the depths of prejudice and fear that still surrounds our disability. Autism is not caused by vaccines – and Autistic Americans deserve better than a political rhetoric that suggests that we would be better off dead than disabled.”

Folks on the spectrum sometimes have lots to say about the toxic living conditions of their childhoods, too. About neglect and abuse and trauma. It’s important to keep in mind that the behavioral issues tied to autism are also the behavioral conditions often tied to things like PTSD and ADHD, both of which relate to life events/patterns. As a teacher, I’ve learned a lot about the links between developmental/behavioral problems and the (dis)ability of parents to respond to their children based on their children’s needs (rather than primarily on the parent’s own traumas). For young children, especially with any kind of special need (a very broad term), simply navigating through a world that’s inflexible with their needs can be traumatic. Our environmental conditions can even effect how our genes are expressed over time (literally, sometimes time IS the trigger for gene expression). Everything is born out of its environment—out of our food, our water, our sense of security, our parents’ genes, everything.

Which brings me to one of the biggest stories in the vaccination debate: that of Hannah Poling. I bring this up because this is the one I was most familiar with, and the one I empathized with the most--particularly because there was a court case related to it. When she was 19 months old, she received 5 vaccines, and two days later her parents reported new behavior—lethargy, irritation, and fever. Months later, she was diagnosed with mitochondrial enzyme deficit (MED), which means the conditions she displayed were also contained within the autism spectrum. Her parents successfully sued for compensation under the Vaccine Injury Compensation Plan, a program started by the federal government to address public concerns of vaccine safety in light of the noise raised by anti-vaccination groups in the 80s. However, MED is an autosomal recessive disease, which means both of Hannah’s parents had to carry the gene in order for her to get it. She already had it, and either it hadn’t expressed itself yet, or her parents hadn’t noticed (or reported) the symptoms so early in her development. Indeed, the Poling case only claimed that her vaccines exacerbated her symptoms, but this raises 4 important points: 1) There’s no evidence that this is possible, and not because “no one’s looked.” 2) We should really think critically about whether or not we should withhold treatment for diseases like smallbox and whooping cough under the unfounded notion that some vaccines may exacerbate existing conditions, 3) under-reported is the fact that Hannah presented other immunological challenges prior to her vaccinations, and 4) despite a popular claim made by anti-vaccination groups, there’s actually no evidence that multiple simultaneous vaccines can overwhelm an immune system.

That last one was really important to me, because I had read years ago that a child’s immune system was potentially too underdeveloped to handle so many vaccinations. The notion seemed logical enough, and I felt awful for parents who had these real fears. But it turns out, the immune system of an infant has the potential capacity to respond to thousands of vaccines simultaneously. It has to! Babies are RAW, lol. And it turns out, medical researchers can be pretty damn thorough, so they knew this well before they were delivering grouped vaccines to toddlers. And while the number of vaccines given to children has increased, they contain even fewer antigens than they used to thanks to medical improvements.

But I have another name. Andrew Wakefield was stripped of his medical license in Britain and came to America, where he became a prominent anti-vaccination activist. He published findings in Britain in the mid 90s that claimed that measles (and “therefore” its vaccine) caused Crohn's disease, but peer research failed to repeat his findings and his claims were subsequently debunked. After shifting his focus to the measles vaccine and autism, he wound up leaving the school of medicine where he worked (under “mutual agreement” at the school's request), because he repeatedly refused to re-attempt the research which had formed the basis of his initial claims. Andrew moved to America to continue pushing his theory that measles and its vaccine caused autism, despite already admitting that it was "not proved." He's barred from practicing medicine in the UK and is not licensed in the US.

I bring up Wakefield because the fuss he raised lead scientists and doctors to look into these claims. It makes sense for these potential issues to matter to the medical community, after all. All resulting work refuted any connections between autism and these vaccines. Luckily, this work also looked into some other claims about vaccines, too, such as the concern that mercury in vaccines could cause autism or other conditions. Ethylmercury is used in the preservative thimerosal, which prevents bacterial growth in vaccines. Methylmercury (the mercury found in fish) can be highly toxic to people, while ethylmercury clears more quickly from the body--so quickly that the small quantities used in vaccines don't have time to build up or cause any problems, other than the possibility of a red rash at the injection site (and the fact that, inevitably, some people are allergic to it). However, given the rising concern in the late 90's and gradual improvements in medical science, the use of ethylmercury in vaccines was reduced in 2001, and for childhood vaccines was completely eliminated. Despite this, it remains a popular concern.

There are so many other people and cases and theories, but these seemed to be the big ones.

...But there’s one more variable I need to dissect: The general focus on eradicating autism, as opposed to supporting the autistic. Parents and their supporters are trying to find the right thing to do. It’s their earnest desire to overcome the problems they’ve been led to see, and their energy is being funneled away from them and used against all our best interests. (Perhaps it’s worth considering, too, where everyone else’s energy is being funneled these days…) For me, this is the variable that’s hardest to talk about, because it asks people to look at their own shadows with acceptance and forgiveness.

The development/behaviors of people on the spectrum aren’t necessarily “wrong,” but we’re subtly and explicitly told to see them this way. Many of these behaviors/developments are very natural responses to toxic/inhumane social and environmental conditions and expectations (some of them are even specifically considered evolutionary pros, traits that help people survive these environs), albeit at times difficult to interact with and other times self-destructive. Everything has extremes. And between environments and genetics, parents aren’t always able to recognize the myriad little things that might contribute to developmental and/or behavioral issues. Since so many of these things lie on the autistic spectrum, “autism” becomes a target in and of itself. Parents may see their children as victims of a toxic world, and they may see themselves as strong shoulders under (secretly) unwanted circumstances. Many parents also feel that “no good parent would ever feel that way, so I don’t either.” This kind of inner conflict is incredibly difficult for people to deal with, but the truth is, conflicting thoughts and emotions are perfectly normal. Emotions are valid and thoughts don’t define us. Both are fleeting. Feeling like we’re not “allowed” to feel conflicted makes us feel guilty/bitter/both. (Tested by God” and “blessed by God” have the same ring, sometimes.)

Some parents also experience guilt/bitterness over the possibility of being part of the environmental/genetic (especially genetic) circumstances that contributed to a child’s disorders. Or, guilt over having been unable to bring them into an accepting or supportive society. Plus the guilt over being sometimes unhappy with the resulting circumstances of one’s life. Guilt. Frustration. Bitterness. Sour grapes. Saving someone else from this “burden” and future children from sharing in this “unacceptable” situation becomes a righteous cause. Furthermore, in finding the person/thing to blame, they’d finally be allowed to express all that despair and frustration. The emotional attachment and roiling undercurrent is very attractive to manipulative individuals. I see it happen a lot, and I see people with autism talking about it. My heart truly aches for everyone going through this. But none of this helps the person on the spectrum. Nor does it help the well-meaning parent.

Maybe parents and supporters wouldn’t be so desperate about and fearful of autism (and vaccines) if having a child with special needs wasn’t so isolating. Maybe if our communities, institutions, and organizations focused on empowering and supporting the vulnerable, on creating equity where ever possible, autism wouldn’t be so overwhelming and wouldn’t even be as common. Maybe if we responded to people on the autism spectrum (and everyone else) as they are, instead of how we want/expect them to be, then the whole situation would change entirely.

In my research and personal interactions, the common thread among those who question the overall value and trustworthiness of vaccines is that of a “dark world” full of “bad people.” Things are so dark, apparently, that the global medical and scientific community is less trustworthy than the few who disagree with it on this particular issue. Is it any wonder? Our culture is exploitative and manipulative, and lays out a set of requirements for human value that even the neurotypical struggle to meet. We all hurt! We’re all wary! And of course we are!

But it turns out, much of the darkness we see in the world relates to what we’re looking for (or at the very least, what we’re trained to look for). In an age of endless, algorithmically-driven “information,” it’s very difficult for many folks to navigate, discern, and prioritize--especially when it’s a personal issue, making it easy to exploit our emotions. The machine keeps us fearful and hungry and separate, but perhaps we shouldn’t despair over that. After all, the active effort to keep us fearful and separate reflects our underlying nature to work together, to connect, and to grow.

Researching all this was complicated. Lots dead-ends, seemingly believable stories from once-trusted professionals, self-referential content, emotionally manipulative content, questionable authorities (authority is always questionable), and a shit-ton of complicated medical research. This is the amount of research it took for me to pick through everything. It’s no joke.

And that brings me back to the present. To the stuff happening right now. Areas surrounding anti-vaccination communities are seeing a drastic rise in diseases that had been long gone before the anti-vaccination craze. Not everyone is equally susceptible to pathogens, and our willingness to receive imperfect but well-researched vaccines is about everyone else in all communities, not just ourselves. No matter what anyone chooses to believe about the “source” of COVID-19, it’s disabling and deadly and highly contagious, and just because it may not be highly visible in someone’s community doesn’t mean it’s not ravaging other communities. As for uncertainty over the Coronavirus being “real,” if a person is only willing to believe resources calling for them to be angry and afraid and suspicious of everyone else, it seems to me that one would have to investigate their own worldview, along with one’s view of themselves and their own shadows. If one sees the world as inherently bad and humans as inherently fucked, that relates to how one feels about oneself and an incomplete notion of the lives of other people. That is the perspective of a traumatized person. Self isolation is deadly, so we ought to be wary of things that seek to isolate us. These self-isolating notions are fed back to us by the algorithms guiding our internet activity, keeping our behaviors predictable and controllable. We keep clicking and returning, fed by a sense of tragic righteousness, by the same programs designed to keep people coming back to slot machines. The internet is not a neutral entity because it functions in a capitalist, undemocratic state. It must be used carefully. The book Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff highlights the nature of these algorithms and the systems which use them. But more importantly, it also highlights the things about humans that make us lovable and forgivable. The things that make it possible to manipulate us in the first place. There’s a lot of wild shit going on, but it’s not happening because “humans are bad.” It’s happening because we live in an age forcibly ruled by the most self destructive culture/ideology on the planet. It’s the ideas, not the species. That means we have work to do. Inner work.

Sources:

https://speakingofresearch.com/2019/04/24/celebrating-world-vaccination-week-pt-3-the-post-wakefield-fallout/

https://www.pennlive.com/nation-world/2020/05/who-is-judy-mikovits-and-what-does-she-have-to-do-with-anthony-fauci-and-the-coronavirus.html

https://vaxopedia.org/2018/12/29/are-vaccines-contaminated-with-retroviruses/

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmp0802904

https://autisticadvocacy.org/2015/09/asan-statement-on-gop-primary-debate-comments-on-autism-and-vaccination/

https://autisticadvocacy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/First-Hand-Perspectives-on-Behavioral-Interventions-for-Autistic-People-and-People-with-other-Developmental-Disabilities.pdf

https://sciencing.com/differentiating-rna-dna-viruses-4853.html

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/03/a-fake-pandemic-antivaxxers-are-spreading-coronavirus-conspiracy-theories/

https://www.thechildren.com/health-info/conditions-and-illnesses/q-vaccine-safer-getting-real-disease

Also so much Wikipedia.

#health #vaccines #empathy #autism #virus #society #zgg

4 notes · View notes

allisondraste · 5 years

Text

Let’s Talk About Cole

Hi! It’s me again with another segment of “Allison Can’t Stop Analyzing Dragon Age Characters.” This time, I am going to be talking about fan favorite Cole. I think it’s relatively universal for people to like Cole and to enjoy his character. People like to draw him, write about him, and just talk about our Fade Friend all the time. It’s great!

However, the nuance of Cole is a little harder to understand, and as with most characters, he often gets reduced down to basic qualities and then those basic qualities are changed ever so slightly that the character starts to not even feel the same anymore. I love Cole, and I have done some research about him in order to write a handful of scenes involving him, so I am just here to share some of the things that helped me out while I was learning about what makes him tick!

Step 1. If you have not read Asunder, I cannot more highly recommend it. It has so much information about Cole’s back story. Also, if you haven’t read Asunder and you don’t want spoilers for Asunder, you should probably go read it and then come back to my post later.

Step 2. The Cole section of this post right here is literally magic. The whole post is magic, but since this is a Cole meta, I’m specifically referring to the Cole piece.

Step 3. Things about Cole that are essential to understanding him:

Cole is Neurodivergent ( and no, it’s not up for debate)

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, “Neurodivergent” is simply a word that describes a person whose mind works and processes information in a way that is considered different from an average joe neurotypical person. Often times neurodivergent is used to describe autism, ADHD, and other conditions that affect neurological development.

Because Cole is a spirit, he processes the world around him differently from non-spirit characters in the Dragon Age Universe. He perceives different things and understands things differently from how other characters might. Cole also has some misunderstandings and misperceptions about human social norms and boundaries, that he becomes more acquainted with over time. It is important to note that this development happens *regardless* of the path chosen for him with regard to Varric V. Solas (I am not a fan of this particular part of his character arc, but I am going to go into that later). The fact that Cole is neurodivergent means that someone who is neurotypical is likely going to have a hard time understanding him and may perceive him as “childish,” “naive,” or “helpless.” They might also have difficulty understanding his speech patterns and especially recreating them if they seek to write him!

Neurodiversity is so important, and Cole is excellent representation, so it’s equally important that we strive to do our research and make sure that we are not removing that representation or presenting neurodiversity in a way that its harmful to others. Different is different, not bad, and certainly not less.

Cole is Not a Child

I mentioned above that there is a tendency to interpret Cole’s neurodiversity as childishness or naivete, and even when it is unintentional, it is an ableistic view point that can be harmful to entire communities of people. There is a pattern (not just in DA fandom, but also in DA fandom) whereby neurodiverse folks are often viewed as children. They’re infantilized and treated as if they are helpless and/or cannot make good decisions on their own. Cole suffers from this as does Merrill (sometimes Sera, too).

For Cole, this situation is not helped by the fact that the game portrays him as helpless and in need of a “father” figure to help him choose his path. Hence we see Solas and Varric arguing on whether Cole should increase is affinity for spirtdom or for humanity. I understand that everyone has their own opinion for what the “better” path for Cole is, and I’m not here to argue that; however, I do think that his arc would have had so much more meaning and been so much less invalidating for neurodivergent people if Cole had the autonomy to make his own decisions. In Asunder, we see Cole being very independent and making his own choices, figuring out who and what he is. At the very end, his very last line in the entire book is, “I’m not helpless anymore.” I don’t think that sounds like a character who cannot make his own decisions.

Fun fact: Cole is designed to be approximately 20 years old, which is the exact same age that Alistair was in Dragon Age: Origins. (While Alistair is also the victim of infantilization… it still puts things into perspective a little bit). In order to avoid the “kid”/child dilemma, it is best to conceptualize some of the things in Cole commonly interpreted as childlike or immature as “newness.” In Inquisition, Cole has only been in the mortal realm for a few years, and he has only been cognizant of the fact that he is not a human, but a spirit of Compassion for even less time. Rather than treating him as a “baby” it is best to treat him as someone who is just learning a new culture, a new world.

Cole is a Spirit of Compassion, Not a Spirit of Matchmaking and/or Meddling in your Personal Affairs.

A trend I see often is Cole as matchmaker, or Cole as interested in every detail of everyone’s sex life or Cole being a filterless vent for whatever the people near him are thinking. It’s easy to assume that about him, as he does comment on a few relationships (Cullenmance, Solavellan, and Bullmance) in particular; however, there is an interesting tidbit of how Cole’s thought reading works located in his banter with Dorian.

Dorian: That little trick, Cole, when you dip into someone's mind and take a drink?

Dorian: Do you choose what you're looking for, or is it random?

Cole: It has to be hurt, or a way to help the hurt. That's what calls me.

Cole: Rilienus, skin tan like fine whiskey, cheekbones shaded, lips curl when he smiles.

Cole: He would have said yes.

Dorian: I'll... thank you not to do that again, please.

Essentially, Cole can only tap into thoughts that are 1.) Painful or 2.) Can help lessen the pain in some way, shape, or form. So, when he accesses thoughts about an LI or something else very personal, he does so to HELP. It is not random. It is not filterless. It is a very pragmatic way to be compassionate. When I was thinking of ways to explain this, the first thing that came to mind was the work that I do as a mental health professional. We are actual practitioners of compassion. It is our job to listen to our clients and help them to solve the problems that are causing them to suffer. We ask a lot of deep questions and probe about a lot of personal things, but it is very targeted. We do not ask intimate questions just out of curiosity or just for the heck of it. It is geared toward the issue at hand. That is exactly what Cole does.

Unless prodding your OC about the details of their sex life is going to make them feel better, he will not bother.

Cole is Not an Innocent, Precious, Little Cinnamon Roll

First of all, that goes along with the infantilization of his character, so it’s just a really ill-considered choice of language to describe him. Second of all, it is simply not true.

I understand that for people who have not read Asunder or played the Champions of the Just questline (and especially people who have done neither) there is very little information about him to judge his character on, and what we do see is a person whose only mission, his sole purpose, is to help the hurt. That does seem very wholesome.

In Asunder, we see a much different side of him. Believing himself to be Cole, a young mage who died of starvation after being forgotten by Templars, Compassion roams about the White Spire in a confused and lonely daze, unaware that he is actually a very powerful spirit. He is called the Ghost of the White Spire, a legend that is terrifying to those that inhabit the tower. Why? Because he murders mages.

If you are thinking “oh, he probably killed them because he felt them suffering and he thought it was the only way to end their misery,” you are thinking exactly as I did, and you would be wrong. While he did target individuals who were despairing, it was not altruistic. He killed them because it felt good when they died, because that was the only time anyone could see him. The way the book describes it, it was almost an “addiction” or a physiological need for him to kill. He was distressed by his actions, but was not able to stop without Rhys’ help.

Over the course of the book, Cole learns more about his past and figures out what he is. He also, through the help of his relationship with Rhys and Evangeline, comes to understand that he does not have to murder people to be seen and remembered. When he is sent to the Fade using the Litany of Adralla, it all finally clicks and he returns to haunt Lord Seeker Lucius, for all the pain and suffering he caused his friends and loved ones. It is such a brilliant character arc and I so wish that we got to see more of it in the game.

Cole is a Person the Entire Time (Human vs. Spirit/Varric vs. Solas be damned)

Regardless of your opinion of Solas, one thing he gets right is in arguing that Cole is already a whole and complete person when he joins the Inquisition. He actually argues for the personhood of all spirits in general, and I think that any reasonable person can look at the spirits (and demons) with whom we have interacted so far and, putting aside feelings about Solas, draw the same conclusions.

Let’s take a look at all of the Spirits/Demons we have had actual interactions with thus far:

Valor

Justice

Compassion

Command

Wisdom

Choice

Desire

Pride

Sloth

Rage

Fear

Envy

While some of these interactions were minimal, each of these entities show qualities that one would associate with personhood. Qualities such as motivation, goals, higher order thought processes, emotions, etc. When we meet Justice in DA:A, he is a thinking, feeling being who longs to right wrongs and comes to care for mortals a great deal. He comes to this conclusion on his own after interacting with his companions in the events of the game. Choice, or Imshael, who we see in The Masked Empire, and in DAI, has such an identity of his own that he does not like to be referred to as a demon. I could go on. These are not mindless, thoughtless creatures, and so viewing them as people just makes sense. This is part of the reason I do not like the Solas vs. Varric questline (aside from the fact that Cole should be able to choose or not choose as he wishes). Cole is already a person, and Varric’s line of thought is not “making him more human,” it is only serving to make him “less compassionate,” and that’s all. He becomes more selfish which is why he is able to have more of his own personal goals (it’s not because he did not have them before; rather, it is because they were drowned out by everyone else’s).

This is not to say that I think Cole should have to forgive his abuser. He shouldn’t. Not unless he wants to, and that choice should be his to make, not Varric’s, not Solas’, and not the Inquisitor’s. I have an opinion as to which path is better, but I’m not going to discuss that here because it will detract from the actual point which is that the language of “human” versus “not human” is just bad and here’s why.

It implies that forgiveness is not a human quality.

It implies that in order to be considered a person, one has to “think” and “do” as everyone else does.

Because of Cole’s romantic/sexual interest in Maryden when Varric’s path is chosen, it implies that lack of romantic/sexual attraction is not “human,” which is aphobic.

Because of his Maryden interest in the “human” path, and because he has “become more human” in his thought processes, it implies that neurodivergent people cannot or are not interested in relationships, which is ableist.

TL;DR: I’m not a fan of that questline. Your mileage may vary.

Finally, and Probably the Reason You Sat Through the Rest of It: Cole’s Speech Pattern!

Cole’s speech is really difficult to capture in a way that is both enough and not too much. It is not as simple as just seeing how much alliteration can fit into a chapter. Sure, Cole uses a lot of alliteration, and it is incredibly fun to play with while writing him; however, his communication is not as simple as that. If you check out the link I shared in Step 2, it will take you to a Character Files reference where there is some information about Cole’s speech pattern that is much more in depth than I am going to go so definitely check it out. When I am writing Cole, I categorize his speech into three different types:

Synesthesia

- the alliteration, the purpley flowery descriptions, the metaphors, the in the moment, no regard for grammar, run on sentence speech he is known for. This comprises most of his dialogue.

Direct thought reading

- when he is actually quoting characters’ thoughts or stating their feelings out right. He might speak as them or he might speak as himself observing them.

Cole’s own thoughts

- Yes, he has them, and he has a lot of them. Many of these show up as his interpretations of and suggestions for others regarding their hurt. However, he also shows a lot of agency of thought. He wants to know if Dorian thinks he’s handsome, he talks about wanting there to be more rabbits in stories because Bunny was Cole’s sister’s name and it reminds him of her. Cole expresses a lot of his own thoughts and feelings if you just take time to listen.

Writing Cole effectively involves a good balance of all three types and I recommend just playing around with it!

To Sum It All Up

Cole is amazing, but he’s also often misunderstood and mischaracterized, and Allison has a lot of feelings about it that you could spare yourself from reading if you do Steps 1 and 2 and skip the middleman. The end!

#dragon age #dragon age inquisition #cole meta #understanding cole #writing reference #my ramblings

158 notes · View notes

autisticsuperpower · 4 years

Text

We Need To Do Better, I Need To Do Better. #BlackLivesMatter

Here we are now more than a week later.

Civil unrest.

Nation wide now turned world wide protest.

Police Brutality happening in a continuous and never ending cycle.

George Floyd

Breonna Taylor

Ahmaud Arbery

Dion Johnson

Eric Garner

Sandra Bland

Michael Brown

Trayvon Martin

Just some of many names that have been brought to my attention over the past decade.

What’s always been a part of my attention is that there are rules.

When you break a rule, such as senselessly killing someone, there are consequences.

I’ve seen and heard many powerful speeches and posts from my fellow friends that are African American, that are fellow social justice advocates, and regular citizens like me who are fed up with the constant police brutality that has been going on over the past many years.

I’ve also seen and heard some “excuses” from others that these were justified or that these were simply mistakes.

I don’t believe that these police officers and white men with weapons made mistakes.

I believe that they all knew EXACTLY what they were doing.

I believe that they all KNEW they were in trouble when the cameras began rolling on them, but they continued to do it anyway.

There’s not really much to debate about when you see almost all of America, including myself, outraged over these senseless murders that keep happening time and time again.

There’s a lot of understanding into this.

I’ve been listening to so many people over the past few days expressing their anger, their breaking points being reached.

I’ve been listening to the African American community, really thoroughly listening to all the communities that have been affected and have had their lives torn apart by police brutality and systematic racism.

I’ve been thinking a lot in recent days a lot about privilege, a lot about class, and a lot about injustice.

I’ve also been thinking about silence and the repercussions of that.

You see, in order to truly understand and to be an ally of POC, I have to truly step into other peoples’ shoes and get more depth of what life is really like for other people.

Many of you know that I grew up as an Autistic straight white male in a small suburban town in Northern California, but what a lot of you may not know is 1) the demographics were and are still mostly white and 2) the level of ignorance was and still is pretty high.

Many of the people from my hometown don’t understand at all what other walks of life including the Latino, yes, the Autism, but most especially, the African American communities, face on a regular daily basis, and to be honest, they just don’t care and/or refuse to educate themselves.

The level of ignorance hadn’t stopped then and it still hasn’t stopped.

I’m hearing and seeing many insulting comments on TV and on social media regarding, “Oh, they shouldn’t be protesting like this” and “Oh, they shouldn’t be protesting like that”, especially on the topic of looting.

I understand that looting’s not comfortable to some, but let’s be very clear: Racism’s not comfortable to everyone, and having too much privilege is not comfortable to everyone, either.

I’ve been outraged for a long time with how justice has not been served for victims of police brutality, for instance, the officer that choked Eric Garner to death was never charged, the officer that shot and killed Trayvon Martin was acquitted, the officer that shot Michael Brown and left his body bleeding to death in the streets was never charged, and the officers that brutally beat Rodney King were acquitted.

I’ve been outraged for the past few weeks that White Trump Supporters can carry their assault rifles, their military weapons, and threaten local politicians to reopen their barber shops, their salons, and their gun shops without any consequences from the police, while Black Lives Matter supporters that are protesting peacefully are being teared gassed, pepper sprayed, and shot with rubber bullets and shrapnel.

I don’t want my future students that I’m about to student teach think that it’s acceptable for law enforcement or high positions of power to brutalize other cultures and ethnicities for just playing with a toy that looks like a weapon, that it’s okay to call 911 on a colored family for simply having a barbecue in the park. I don’t want my future students to think with these racist acts of violence towards African Americans that “this is what it is”, because it’s not the way it is.

The reason why I’m saying all of this, is not just because I have many good friends that are African American, but also because their feelings and voices are meaningful to me. Every time I’ve watched these murders by the very people that are supposed to protect us, I think of my friends that are having to fight for their rights to go jogging around their neighborhood or to ask help from strangers. Their rights to have mental health crises, sell CDs, or can go to Church or to a club on New Year’s Eve. Their rights to relax in their own home and breathe without the fear of being harmed or killed.

This has gone on for far too long, and this has gone long enough.

This systemic racism is wrong, it affects everyone, whether they see or not, and at this point, the local and national governments need to step up and make vital changes that will not undervalue POC. If they’re not willing to do so, then it’s simple: we’ll vote them out, and I’ll start with voting out the dictator-in-chief this November just like how I voted against him 4 years ago.

Tamika Mallory said it best that this cannot be looked at as an isolated incident. People are saying enough is enough. And as a white man, it’s time for me to stand up and say that I see you. I hear you. I stand with you. I’m fighting with you and for you. You have a right to be heard and you deserve to be heard. And that’s why I say “Black Lives Matter!” 🖤

1 note · View note

carfucker9000 · 5 years

Text

On Sex With Cars, a Mechaphilic Exposure

+ I should preface this by saying that most of us do develop strong romantic or otherwise generally emotional attachments to our object partners. Many of us cross out of the Mechaphilic aspect of Objectum Sexuality as well and take on other Object Partners (Instruments, Buildings, Stuffies, etc). This is mainly about us good ol' carfuckers because we all LOVE talking about fucking cars even when we're not doing it.

- We're also capable of having human partners and attraction too, obviously.

- Typically speaking the emotional side of our relationships involve lots of projecting emotions and personalities onto our vehicles. This can stem from many reasons from nature vs. nurture to traumatic experience, abuse involving vehicles even if indirect, or other cases. We know they don't reciprocate that love but I mean... It's hard to admit. Go easy on us.

- A good portion of us are LGBT and/or on the autism spectrum. This doesn't mean all of us are, but most.

+ There are a few big No-No's in the community, despite our seeming lawlessness (we're really just loveably tacky). Mainly, don't do anything that would endanger your body or privacy.

- Don't touch hot or moving parts

- Do not fuck while it's running in an enclosed space. It's okay in the open.

- Don't expose yourself purposely to people who are non consenting.

- Do not ingest chemical substances which will harm your body. There is a man infamous for drinking used motor oil who was kicked from our group. He's also very... Weird. He thinks he can get his car pregnant. Don't be like him.

+ Lots of relationships I've seen among our numbers vary, but widely center around physical affection. This has a wide range of expression and can include but is not limited to:

- Kissing, rubbing or licking our automobile, anywhere inside or out

- Hugging, embracing and cuddling the automobile, again anywhere inside or out. Think of inside vs. Outside being like, little spoon vs. Big spoon.

- There's feeling up the vehicle in more overtly sexual ways. We know realistically that the vehicle doesn't derive pleasure from the acts but lots of us are animists who would like to believe so anyways.

- This includes fingering, fondling, grinding, what have you.

+ The actual Sex Acts include numerous positions. Usually if you can imagine it, it's been done or talked about:

- Grinding against the bumper, quarter panels or grille. One of my favorite places with Grace was his trunk, it had a very good height for me.

- Fucking the exhaust. It is exactly how it sounds. Sex toys are often used. AMAB members describe using masturbation sleeves so they don't get cut or infected. AFAB members describe using strap-ons for the act as well.

- Give it it's own dick: mostly an AFAB thing in my experience, but one option with raised vehicles or vehicles which can be put onto a lift is to mount a sex toy beneath the vehicle, usually on the rear differential. This, to me, sounds like a lovely subbing experience.

- Handling the shifter: yup. The obvious. If your lover is equipped with a small-enough floor shifter, this is a viable option for a fun ride. Many mechs will change out their factory shifter for a more usable model.

- Tire worship: think foot/boot worship, but with tires. One of my personal favorites. Definitely gets me worked up pretty well. Extends to other bits as well.

- The hitch. Yup, some find use in their towing hitches whether it's the part itself or modifying a sex toy to be mounted on the hitch.

- a classic is just plain masturbating in the driver's seat to share an intimate moment. I did it on the road at night for the sake of privacy only. Don't attempt while moving. It's thrilling as hell but dangerous.

+ The Sex Appeal: of course, just like with humans, we find different features appealing in different ways! All of us interpret things in unique ways, but I can offer a bit of personal insight:

- Faces: humans typically experience pareidolia which is a feature evolved so that we can recognise other humans faces. This also causes faces to emerge in the most inhuman of features. Different features can help to construct the "personality" of a car, from the shape of the headlight "eyes" to the grille giving a friendly smile.

- Body types: everyone has different preferences. There are certain stereotypes which follow different cars: sports cars usually are viewed as sexy, model-type bodies. Pickups have a strong and intimidating air. Many like the idea of being dominated by trucks. SUVs, vans and hatchbacks are typically cutesy or maternal. Sedans are, I guess your average and represent a wide swath of presentations.

- gender in automobiles is fairly tricky. Different people see features in different ways and genders assigned to cars tend to be assumed based on the "energy" they give off. Initial impressions of this energy are made when the car and driver first meet, some even say this is how the car introduced themselves to them. There is a bit of debate, at times, or minor disagreement on the gender and "personality" of automobiles. Luckily this has far less consequence than issues revolving around human identities.

- the shape and features of the car's body are viewed in unique ways as well. Opinions range based on qualities like personality and practicality (ie, how well can i sexually interface with my vehicle? Is it comfortable to handle? Is it aesthetically appealing?) Some people prefer sharp angles, some prefer swooping curves, some prefer boxy bodies and still others prefer even different combinations of shapes.

- Many features of the car's body can be discussed analogously to the human body. The "face"— front end, headlights, hood, grille, bumper; the "body"— fenders, suspension and tires seen as extremities; the "hips"/"ass"— the curvy bits over the rear window or trunk, the tailgate of a pick-up, the taillights, the rear bumper. They're even seen in a similar way to humans: more muscular or sleek appearance. Bubble butts or thick bodies with the appeal of more to hold and love. Big tires on vehicles like trucks can seem almost cutesy as well, although I haven't personally noticed a bias as far as vehicle type when it comes to tire worship.

+ Other aspects still may revolve around the sensory aspect of loving automobiles, and not just their looks.

- a good rumbling engine always makes me feel safe and protected. Also a good sleep aid.

- the feel of the car's paneling or interior is often a great comfort.

- electrical features like a car's HVAC system and audio system can create a uniquely comfortable environment specific to the driver's likes.

- the feeling of vibrations from the car running are typically comforting and fall in with rumbling/revving noises.

- the sway of steering on the go is typically a sensory comfort for myself as well.

- taking travels and making memories with our automobile is just as important as with any other friend or partner.

- doing silly things like going out on "dates", sightseeing or learning special driving techniques. Many have certain roads or areas they say belong to them and their auto.

- I guess this is also in with the sway of steering, but on a more sexual note, watching a car bounce/rock on its suspension is fairly arousing.

- maybe it's just my piss kink, but watching the exhaust in some vehicles both smoke/steam and drip condensation is pretty hot.

- the feeling of being surrounded and protected by a partner whether it's sexual or not is just nice. Kind of makes me understand soft vore.

I'll add more as I think of it but that's it for now.

#mechaphilia #objectum sexuality #object sexuality #mechanophilia #carfucking

140 notes · View notes