Yay! I Finally Get To Post This!

No thoughts, only this mess

This is 5 days too late, but I felt like re-drawing my half-thrown together Halloween costume because I really needed an excuse to draw something spoopy.

Can you tell I love old timey ghost stories?

Do you want to write a good disabled character?

I've been seeing the topic of disabled characters being thrown around for a while now, especially when it comes to good or bad writing. Usually, the topic is what you shouldn't do. There are a lot of great posts explaining this, and I don't want to repeat what has already been said dozen of times. Instead, today, I would like to give you exemples of what I, as a disabled person, consider to be great writing, and give you further analysis on why do these characters work !

Toph from ATLA

Toph is a blind little girl who feels like she struggles to find her place in the world as her parents prevent her from doing anything but very simple activities as they fear she might get hurt

First of all, Toph is strong. Like, really strong. She's a champion who has won multiple prizes, she loves fighting, and she even became aang's mentor. She's not a cliché of a poor little girl who can't do anything on her own, and we love that.

The relationship with her parents is rather realistic and a good source of conflict for her character. Depending on the disability, family can get either overwhelmingly protective or deny you're struggling completely. Toph is in the first case, and her trying to prove to others and herself that she can do things on her own is excellent for character growth.

Her disability does define her. We have to stop demonizing the fact that yes, some people are disabled. Toph is blind, it's part of her character and she wouldn't be the same without that trait. While characters that aren't defined by their disabilities are a GREAT representation, sometimes it's really nice to see a character whose disability is an inherent part of themselves, especially when they don't care/are proud of it like Toph. Toph has no problem making jokes about it, even mocking people who forget it.

Her bending doesn't magically cure her disability. Too often in fiction, some characters are met with a cure that gets rid of all of their problems. That is not the case for Toph. Her bending does help her quite a lot, but she can't read, draw, she's completely lost when she's flying ... Everything isn't just solved by flipping a switch.

Edward from FMA/FMAB

Edward is an amputee whose goal is to find a solution to help his little brother recover his lost body and recover his own lost arm and leg that he lost after an accident.

While Edward's goal is directly linked with his disability, it doesn't define him completely. Edward mostly feels guilty towards his brother for his mistake, and seems to think more about his safety rather than recovering his own limbs. It's interesting to state since too often, disabled characters tend to have for only goal to "fix themselves"

Slowly throughout the manga/anime, his goals get more and more different, diverging completely from what he used to have in mind. This drives him even further away than him just trying to find a cure.

When you think of Edward, the first word you have in mind probably isn't disabled, despite it being shown in the first episode of both series. This character has a full personality, background, job, ideology and thoughts. He's not just "the disabled one"

Yet, with that in mind, Edward's disability is still a very important part of his life. His automails may malfunction. He needs them to be repaired rather often. The process to get them onto your body is extremely painful and you can see everything around it is very time consuming.

Eda from the Owl House

While Eda's curse isn't exactly like any other real disability (if you can find a way for my chronic pains to turn me into a harpy sign me up), her writing does have many, many similarities to chronic illnesses.

Eda is a women in her mid forties who slowly learns how to live as a criminal witch with two children to take care of and a curse that slowly grows more powerful with time

Eda's curse is something she deeply hates and desperately tries to get rid of, but it isn't something about her that's constantly shoved in our face. It does have consequences, but getting rid of this curse clearly isn't Eda's main goal during the series.

However, with that in mind, the curse does take a huge part of her life. She has to take a medication for it, with huge consequences if she forgets it, she slowly grows weaker until she's completely unable to perform something she used to be so good at (that thing being magic), the presence of the curse has a huge impact on her mental health ...

Another important thing is that this curse doesn't affect just her, but the ones she loves as well. Being unable to talk about her problem makes it difficult for her to form bonds with others, one of the main instances of that being with Raine, her ex-partner. The fact that she hides her pain and distress makes it even worse for everyone and she feels like she can't really ask for help.

Another really important thing that links her to real-life disabilities is that her mother is desperate to find a cure, even going to find quacks who pretend that they can help. At this point, eda doesn't think she can be cured, or at least not by any regular means, and feels distressed to see her mother repeatedly saying that she found a cure. This is something that happens a lot with disabled people and can be a great source of interpersonal conflicts.

Finally, Eda accepting her curse and taking it as a part of herself is a really healthy way to portray acceptation. She's not cured. She doesn't gain the magic she lost back. However, she does gain confidence and happiness with it

Movie Night!

feat. Keito, Sen and Asuma

local autistic person realises that in order to discover new music they have to listen to new music: 4 dead 26 injured

As much as I would love to say something like “kudos are just as good” or “Count your blessings, every kudos is someone who loves and appreciates your work” I feel this more than I could ever preach that.

Srsly, comment on your favourite fics, let the author know that someone sees their hard work and appreciates it.

Let them know their work made you feel something, anything at all.

Don’t be silent, or your favourite authors will be.

Do you have schizophrenia?

Asking cause i read one of your posts where you said you made a schizophrenic oc for yourself

And if you're comfortable talking about it, i would like to know more about schizophrenia, in order to write it as accurately as possible /nf

Omg first ask, yay!

…. But no, sorry to disappoint. I have a few friends who’ve experienced psychosis or visual/auditory hallucinations for various reasons so there’s definitely a personal level of experience and investment there but for the most part I just went on a research binge reading as many posts and interviews and answers online from people who do experience it as I could find.

Big reason I wanted to make a schizophrenic character is because I just really enjoy exploring different forms of representation, even if it goes nowhere beyond a few notes. But yeah thats pretty much it. Best I can recommend is to just explore and get yourself a bunch of primary sources, pretty much do what you’re doing now and shoot some asks out there too, but sadly I’m just as much in the dark as you are.There are quite a few blogs on tumblr I believe from people talking about what it’s like to suffer from schizophrenia but I can’t remember which.

Hope that’s at least tangentially helpful :)

"Don't you think I know that?!" Lance shouted, angry tears welling thick in his eyes, "Do you really think, that after all this time I'd be so thick as to think they actually care about me?!"

"Because, I just can't." He growled, it made him startle for a moment, the sheer malice in his voice almost animalistic, "Believe me if I could come back I would, but right now I just can't, and you need to leave before I do something I'll regret."

“No Jon, I’m sure you needn’t worry about that,” Jon blinked back fog as his silent reply, down at the papers and employee records and things he shouldn’t have being pushed aside and sorted through on his boss’s desk: a birth certificate; school records and accompanying information; medical forms he would have forgotten about if he didn’t recognize his name and relevant professional diagnoses and disability grants, “I was actually considering a transfer for you.”

hmmm... can you tell i'm an angst writer? ψ'(._. )'>

WHEN YOU SEE THIS, SHARE 3 RANDOM LINES FROM 3 WIPS

He chokes out something about needing to talk, manages to get in that it involves both Sam and the thing that killed Mom, and hangs up so forcefully he nearly tosses the phone to the ground

At the very least, it had to be more fae- fae that wouldn’t be so kind to him as the Archivist.

Gertrude may think that she alone bore the burden of doing what must be done, but Jonah had shouldered that responsibility long before she was born, much as his Archivist may like to forget it.

"Fucking answer me, Deku!"

"Don't call me that."

Foreshadowing for a later scene from my Blood Born AU , apologies again for the bad quality photography

Pose ref is this

I don’t know who you are but I’m gonna show y’all all the thanks I can

Reblog to send every single person who has read one of your stories a forehead kiss