I Don't Want To Detract From A Post So I'll Give My Rant Here.

Me Giving a Pressed Conference: our advocacy for the disabled must include the addict, the imperfect victim, those we despise; the right to autonomy and life cannot devolve into a popularity contest

Reporter I Hate (Not Sexual Tension): Does that include all the attendees of the Bored Ape NFT event who went blind

Me: *Blood streaming from my nostrils and eyes* david, it includes everyone

I would probably have way less diagnoses if the doctors had explained to my parents and properly documented things when I was a baby.

Like, I have some unspecified hip condition, I was born with it. That's all my mom knows. I figure it's bilateral, and that might be why my gait is weird and gods know how many of the other problems I have with my legs, like how one's longer than the other. The TBI I got as a baby was, according to my mom, complicated. All the doctor really bothered with was saying I'd be fine, he didn't tell her a lot of details. Again, gods know how many of my things that could have caused. There was whatever happened when I was five, when a severe allergic reaction (to something I had only been slightly allergic to before and have only been slightly allergic to after) and asthma we hadn't known I had put me in the PICU for days and the hospital for two weeks, then a nebulizer for months and an inhaler for year but never an Epi Pen, which I have questions about now. Apparently I also have something up with my heart.

And we don't have any of this information because the doctors weren't explaining it.

as my own direct immediate list of game grievances i hate that stardew valley expects you to side against a wheelchair user who is upset that he was moved without his consent. i hate that the mass effect trilogy gives you visible scarring as a direct result of choosing mean dialogue and heals it if you're nice. i hate that the vampire the masquerade ttrpg has a monstrous player class that can appear as horrible vampiric monsters or as visibly disabled people and both of these appearances are mechanically the same. i hate that dark souls games have a difficulty level implemented in a way that cannot be adjusted for disability. i hate that i can play as a mermaid or a werewolf or a horse in the sims games but can't use a wheelchair. i hate that the ace attorney games have so much flashing and not all of the games can disable it. i hate that disability is constantly something that happens to teach a lesson, i hate that disability is something that happens as a punishment, i hate that disability is either compensated perfectly with no drawbacks or something that is endlessly sought to be cured. i hate that no character customization will ever include the mobility aids i use, that the player avatars that represent me will never look like me. i am so goddamn annoyed and so goddamn tired.

Kleptomania moment when you steal a thing and right after you go "Fuck! I don't need this! What do I do with this??" And then you argue the logistics of giving it back.

And then you take it home and live with the fact that you stole something you'll never use. Again.

ooh boy love looking up stuff trying to find resources to stop compulsively lying and instead finding so much fucking stigma. I want to get better this sucks just help me get better

"i say the r-slur as reclamation" Ohhh okay then. Goodbye

"Brain damage" only sounds like a harsh and offensive way to describe brain injuries because people constantly use it as an insult. It's a totally neutral descriptor of what it is. I have brain damage. My brain is damaged. It's not ableist to call it that, it's ableist to call people you don't like brain damaged because you think it's an inherently bad thing to be.

Using disabled people to make a point is incredibly shitty btw.

Currently watching a video in driver's ed about texting and driving where they get a bunch of people who text and drive and interview them. They then bring in a disabled woman who's family's car was hit by a texting driver. The people all start crying from guilt and promise to never text while driving again.

Understand the point they were trying to make, but is always better way than this. Disability is not fate worse than death. Disabled people are not for making points. We are people.

Reminder that people who compulsive liars/stealers are not bad people. As a recovering compulsive lier and stealer I had to do that to fucking survive. I lived in a horribly abusive household and needed to steal, lie, amd cheat the game to be able to exist in it. Most of us just need help/ are just like that due to trauma. Stop using us as an insult.

Okay, as a mod of cripplecharacters, I'm about to go off from several different angles. And these aren't even all of my thoughts. I have more. (TW for ableism, mention of prone restraints, caricature characters, and really, really poor writing of disabled characters.)

If she didn't get her information through a collaboration with Autism Speaks then where'd she get it? She claims she did three years of research. Did none of that research include basic stuff about writing disabled characters in general? Also, it takes five seconds to find out that there's an issue with Autism Speaks. It's in the little Wikipedia blurb. She didn't even skim Wikipedia in three years?

Not even come slightly close to the topic of prone restraints (which have a death count,) and definitely not portray is as a good thing twice

Gotten rid of that detail of Music having an accident during Kazoo's relapse. Yeah, that can happen sometimes with some autistics in real life, but the fact that it was portrayed the way it was and by an actress who wasn't autistic-

Similarly, the angry "Brush you hair" scene was... where to even start? No, not by an actress who isn't, at the very least, MSN or semispeaking (or even nonspeaking)

Gotten rid of that inspiration porn Music singing scene at the end.

Significantly rewritten the guy who is... I think he's Zu's love interest?

Actually done something with the kid who seemed to care so deeply for Music.

Explained how said kid managed to acquire twenty thousand dollars to buy Music a service dog over the internet just like that???

Remove Music not doing anything about finding her grandmother dead on the floor??? Or at least acknowledge that the poor girl was probably traumatized from the experience and had no idea what to do or how to help? It's shot almost like she's being selfish and choosing not to help rather than being disabled, terrified, and unable to help.

Not forced Maddie into this movie using their massive power imbalance. Definitely should never have forced a young teenaged girl into a position so bad that she literally broke down sobbing because she didn't want to come across as a caricature, at which point Sia lied to her. Look, Maddie was what, fourteen? And Sia was basically a mother figure and the one responsible for Maddie's success.

Not called stimming tics. Tics come from a very different group of disorders, involuntary stimming behaviours are a completely different thing with different reasons and mechanisms. If she wanted to write Music having tics, she should have given her a tic disorder. Actually, wait, scratch that. She screwed up badly enough with a singularly-disabled character. I don't want to know how much lower she could go by trying to portray a multiple-disabled character.

Not lied about trying to get a nonspeaking actress (because she was quoted long before that as saying she would only make the movie if Maddie was the main role. She wasn't going to try with an autistic actress.) Not acted like firing the fictional autistic actress was a mercy rather than putting some work in and making the set accessible for her.

Like, sure, maybe a hypothetical nonspeaking actress couldn't have been able to handle the dancing. You know what the solution to that is? Either adapt the dancing or get her an autistic stunt double who can do the dancing

Not have Music be significantly less autistic in her head? The stimming and movement abnormalities fade, if not vanish entirely, during the dream sequences. As though the version of Music in her head is less autistic than Music in her body, maybe even not autistic at all. Which is an idea that has blood on its hands

Not tried to portray all of autism rather than just Music, a character who happens to be autistic. What Sia was doing was trying to portray autism as a whole, or maybe even turn the entire idea of autism into a character rather than create a person with autism. Compare this to a (slightly) better example, Wendy from Please Stand By. Dakota Fanning wasn't trying to portray all of autism and her character wasn't written to portray autism as a whole, she was playing Wendy, one particular autistic woman, rather than a caricature.

Given Music literally anything. Why doesn't she have hobbies? Where's her personality? I know nothing about Music as a person and that's because she wasn't written to be a person.

The dead disabled brother plot was unnecessary. As was the HIV plot.

"She can hear two rooms away" she's autistic, not Superman.

The grandmother left absolutely no plan to help Zu care for her H-MSN sister, not even a note in her will like "The neighbour is close with her, he can help." I know she died suddenly but c'mon, she has a grandchild who will need care for the rest of her life, she should have been more cautious as an elderly woman. Her carelessness was setting Zu up for failure and Music up for an even worse time of this massive change in her life.

So yeah, it would make sense that there's some growing pains, Zu has no idea how to interact with her sister and her sister is probably distressed, confused, grieving, and frustrated because her entire world is changing. But rather than treating this as a "Yeah, this would have gone better with a bit of planning and we're both struggling because we're going into this blind," it's portrayed as "Music is the source of all of my problems, she's the worst, she's unreasonable, she's the worst thing that's ever happened to me and I hate her." Why is Music being portrayed as a burden rather than the burden being how ill-prepared the grandmother left all involved parties for this eventuality.

Wasn't Music meant to be HSN? Like, level three autism? Spoken like someone who's never interacted with someone who's HSN before.

Zu is high-key resentful towards Music as though any of this is her fault and she seems so desperately dedicated to either ignoring or despising her sister and the way it's portrayed makes it feel like the audience is supposed to agree with Zu?

Wow, I went off. To keep this from being nine hundred miles longer, she should have just not done that. If she had submitted this plot to cripplecharacters, literally any of us, autistic or not, could have told her not to do this. Did she even talk to someone from the disabled community? You don't even need to be autistic, just disabled, to know that pretty much all of this was a horrific idea.

What SIA Should’ve Done Making Her Movie ‘Music’

Cast an autistic actor for the main character

Consulted with actual autistic people instead of f$&@ing Auti$m $peaks

Did PROPER research

Made the movie accessible to watch - got rid of the whole flashing light thing that could trigger seizures

Used an actual mixed actor instead of doing literal blackface

Started being open to criticism instead of having a flip out at people for calling her out

Not agreed with an interviewer comparing non-verbal people to an actual inanimate object wtf

Feel free to add to this