WOAW! Two Salem...the Boys

disability in fiction

You know how Viktor sometimes gets this superpower, when he can just ignore the fact that he can’t move without a cane or a crutch?

People with mobile disability do not forget about their pain. And I believe people with any other don’t do either, but I can only speak for the mobile type. We do not fuck through it because the sex is so great. We groan and stop having sex in the middle because with pain it sucks. Our dicks go soft and our vulvas dry out at the pang of pain, especially when it comes in the spine/legs area.

Our partners have to be mindful, careful, present and attentive. They don’t get the luxury of losing themselves, they have to listen, observe and pay attention because a lot of things can be misread during sex. They have to make sure we are alright after.

Did you ever get a cramp during sex? Multiply it by an impossible number and then it’s still probably not good enough.

So yeh, Viktor can’t just abandon his cane and lift someone up. He will probably drop his cane by accident and then lean his entire body weight on you. ‘His leg hurt but he ignored it because the pleasure overwhelmed the pain’. No bitch, he fucking pulled out and asked for a breather, his dick flopped and now he needs a cuddle. Own it. It’s HUMAN. It’s cool. It’s beautiful.

Write about his cane, make it good looking, make the crutch in the colours of house Tallis, describe the braces, I wanna read it! It’s not boring!

And for the record - this is not an angry rant, I just have a big mouth. Love you all people who create art and send it to the world, it’s awesome. Don’t be afraid to explore something you don’t know, just imagine yourself when you had the worst flu of your life, the worst food poisoning of your life, when you were so hungover you wanted to cut off your head, when you fell off your bike and your ass hurt for a week and think if you wanted to have wild sex on the floor. Nah.

sounds about right

trentmicrowave.gif

can we talk about the sheer accuracy of some of the in-game dialogue in Disco Elysium?

i’m talking specifically about the Giant Seraise Hornet, where Encyclopedia says this:

i work with honeybees in an apiary on my college campus, and i’ve taken so many yellow jackets, wasps, and hornets out of the hives. i’ve seen hives completely destroyed by wax beetles and hornets. but the thing that gets me about Disco Elysium’s off-handed analogy about the assassins is that this is literally true. 

the Giant Seraise Hornet is a direct reference to the Asian Giant Hornet (which you might know better as the “murder hornet”). 

from Penn State University:

and according to Wikipedia, the Asian giant hornet can kill 40 honeybees a minute because of their mandible size.

but it isn’t only the hornet-murdering-honeybee relationship that they got correct! they also got it right that sometimes the honeybees win:

I know that the developers must have put an incredible amount of research into this game, but as someone with a huge interest in the environment and beekeeping, it’s so cool to me that they got a real-life parallel so specifically correct. 

it’s such a direct parallel between the mercenaries and the dockworkers and the hornets and the bees. sure, the dockworkers could win, but only if they’ve coevolved. Apis mellifera, the European honeybee, didn’t coevolve with the Asian giant hornet… and those hives tend to be completely decimated.

just like the Hardie boys if Harry makes the wrong move. the mass slaughter in Martinaise depends on whether or not you as the player can learn to adapt quickly enough in seven days to save your colony. and i think it’s genius.

i think it’s interesting how adora and catra’s different forms of abuse affect their outlook on humanity; catra doesn’t really believe that there’s good in the world as a whole and is in constant state of self-preservation so she doesn’t care to fight for what’s seen as morally right most of the show, adora has complete faith in world but none in herself when it’s not tied to other people & values pretty much any good civilian/person’s life over her own. she’s always willing to die for a good cause and puts what other people want above her own wants. they’re both very extreme but only grow from that as they come back together. catra remembers the positives in her relationship with adora and realizes that she always cared about her, then begins to do the right thing because while there’s bad in the world, there’s also good. she doesn’t have to shut herself off from everyone and align herself with an oppressive regime to be safe as there’s safety in connection and humanity. her relationship with adora isn’t perfect and bad things still happen but she continues to do the right thing and protect her + other rebellion members out of love and knowing that despite her own extensive pain, good still exists in people and etheria can and Deserves to be salvaged. after adora allows herself to fight for catra again and express her love she breaks fully the confines of her controlled destiny as she-ra. for the first time in the show she allows herself to consistently want things that aren’t related to her duty. and once she hears that catra loves her there’s a push to believing in herself once again as she doesn’t need to martyr herself to matter to other people, she can just exist as herself in order to be loved and that can co-exist with her love for the world and it’s inhabitants neither one coming before the other.

i actually want to kill myself because im so far behind in life.

TRENT REZNOR ‼️‼️

Actually I'll never forgive Punk Rave and Killstar and fast fashion brands for tricking people into thinking that being goth or punk or emo is expensive. Babygirl the only goth brand names you need to know are Rit, Good Will, Etsy, and Studs and Spikes, we used to shove safety pins through our ears and then they started selling earrings that look like safety pins for 15.99. We used to dye thrifted wedding dresses black and they started selling gothic gowns for 300 bucks. We used to put studs on boots we found in the back of the good will and they started making Demonias. DIY or die wasn't perfect it can be exclusionary to disabled people but whatever the fuck we've got going on right now is so much worse. It's not any more inclusive to the disabled and it is exclusionary to the people who made punk, to the people who made goth, to the people who made emo. If you've got the funds and you don't want to do diy pay someone else to do it for you but please let it be a small artist or a friend not some guy in a suit who's made it his business to gentrify punk. You can turn flats into platforms with flipflops, hotglue and gumption don't let anyone tell you different.

Isn't it weird that Azula was all but said to have been abused and/or tortured in her asylum yet no one in-universe or outside seems to care or think how it could have negatively affected her? For a show that handled so many difficult topics with grace (ex. genocide, child abuse, ableism, sexism, etc.), it seem weird that the ATLA franchise seems to perpetuate harmful stereotypes about mental illness.

It is unfortunately not weird at all, because of something I call “The Azula Bias”, and because the comics are poorly written due to the writer’s failure of understand what made the original show so important in the first place.

There were some problematic aspects surrounding mental illness on the show, but nothing even close to what the comics did. Azula’s breakdown was, for the most part, something to show us that she was a literal child soldier who had been neglected, groomed, and abused. Zuko and Katara were talking about “putting Azula in her place” before the Agni Kai, yet the music made it all sound like the tragedy it was, and Zuko clearly felt no joy with his victory. He was watching his sister cry with a somber expression, and Katara literally had to give him emotional support. That happened because, at that moment, Zuko finally understood that he was not Ozai’s only victim.

There were plans for a Book 4, and one of the stories it would involve would be Azula healing and redeeming herself - with Zuko’s help. That would be the perfect way to have that happen because Zuko knows what it’s like to be raised by Ozai, to be constantly put under pressure and having to sacrifice everything to please that man, only to get no reward because nothing is ever enough for that bastard. Zuko made many mistakes and he knows he could have ended up like Azula if things had been difference, so it makes sense that he would now understand that it might not be too late for his sister. It would be a natural conclusion to their story.

The problem is that the main writer who was planning on this, Aaron Ehasz, was not involved at all with the comics, meaning there was a considerable chance that that storyline would be botched. Which unfortunately was exactly what happened.

Instead of trying to help Azula because he cares about her and finally understood why she did the things she did, Zuko now seems to only have kept her alive because A.The writers gave him all the power and personality of a doormat and B.They’re related and killing family members is a no-no. Zuko’s motivation to be in his sister life are the old bullshit of “You can never, ever, ever cut ties with a family member and you are obligated to forgive every bad shit they’ve done to you” instead of it being something he chose to do because he loves Azula, empathizes with her, and finally understands why she did the things she did.

On this bastardized version of the story, Azula is not Zuko’s sister. She’s not his antagonist or his enemy. She’s not even an obstacle he has to overcome or a plot-device. She’s his burden, a cross he has to bear - which is how many people view their disabled/mentally ill relatives, and the writers validated that. Kiyi, one of the few likeable characters on that shitshow, was literally the replacement sister/daughter. The perfect child that Azula failed to be. The writers even try to disguise this by having the characters say that Azula is delusional when she claims Ursa had Kiyi to replace her, but that doesn’t change the fact that this exactly why they created her. They gave the “normal” family members a cute, “normal” kid to compensate them for the “broken” one.

Azula’s mental illness was treated as a replacement for her personality, and even as more reason for the characters and the audience to hate her, even though she had no control over what she was doing. Even the way she was drawn was meant to look scary, like she was nothing but a threat that had to be dealt with, and her pain was something we should either ignore, or even cheer. 

Zuko locked her up in a terrible institution that abused her, and didn’t visit her until he needed something from her? That’s what she gets for being a bad sister! That’s karma for you! 

She’s constantly being physically assaulted by the other characters? She’s Azula! Of course they’re doing that to her! She’s dangerous! 

Ozai groomed and abused her? Well, Ozai is a monster who is horrible to everyone. She ain’t especial. 

Ursa neglected her? Oh, but she didn’t mean to, so it’s okay that it happened and that she’s not trying to make things right in any way.

What do you mean Iroh she have at least tried to help her? Nobody could help her! Bitch crazy!

The writers weren’t telling a story about a mentally ill 14 year old finally getting the love and support she needed, and learning to be better with the help of her older brother who is truly sorry for everything that happened and wants to give her the same chance he was offered. They were using her as a way to make Zuko look like a saint, and their target audience was those fans that seem to believe that Azula is a robot who has no emotions, and was built by Ozai solely to make Zuko’s life harder, so anything that is done to her is okay - it’s not like she’s human or anything.

Amazing pottery skills

(x)