#and this obviously is not limited to people with siblings with physical disabilities

[eve-is-a-terf]

i'll die on this hill: it is NOT ableist for glass children to be resentful of their disabled sibling. you're not a bad person, you're not a bigot.

#eve's posts #glass child #glass child syndrome #ableism #especially when they or your family weaponizes their diagnosis #and this obviously is not limited to people with siblings with physical disabilities #tbh people whose siblings have adhd or autism or other neurodivergencies aren't talked about enough

[disabled-dragoon]

hellow, quick question if I could yoink a little of your time good person.

So I am developing a game that centers around a main character who uses mobility aids. I have worked with my team to develop some game mechanics that I want to make sure are not going to end up being offensive in some way or a misrepresentation of disabled people. I am physically disabled myself but ive always been too scared to actually use mobility aids and nobody else on the development team uses mobility aids. So as the same person I am, I have gone on to tumblr (the obviously best choice for this matter) looking for opinions from people who use mobility aids. You do not have to awnser if you do not feel comfortable, or if you know of a better place to get insight on this matter that would be greatly appreciated.

So the main character is an ambulatory wheelchair user. And uses forearm crutches when not in a wheelchair. They have the super power to control metals which they use to create mobility aids for themselves on the go. One of their moves is to covert one of their crutches into a sword temporarily to attack enemys. They will also have a dash feature while using a wheelchair chair. The last main feature would be the main character having to use a wheelchair when their health gets too low.

thank you so much for any feedback that you are willing to provide I appreciate it very much!

Thanks again,

Your favorite disabled anon sibling

Oh this sounds so interesting!!! I hope it goes well for you!

I don't think I can give you a lot of advice, unfortunately, especially regarding crutches (I've used them briefly before but it's been a while), but I do have some thoughts on the concept as a whole!

So first thoughts:

Love the sword idea. I'm curious as to how the crutches turn into a sword (I'm imagining either a handheld sword, or a long sword), but I love it. That sounds amazing.

Wheelchairs can be used as a small bit of extra storage, like a little bag on the back or a basket on the bottom. It's kind like a separate storage system/storage expansion. Like in RDR2 where you can store things on the horse, but can't access said storage unless you're on/next to it.

Storage on wheelchairs is still a bit limited due to weight restrictions etc. (depending on how realistic you want to get, although I suppose that could be counteracted with the metal powers). Also, it's a bit limited when using forearm crutches in terms of being able to carry things.

Does the character travel across a world? Encounter different environments? Consider how the aids would be affected in different areas i.e. crutches don't work well on ice/slippery surfaces, wheels are slightly better but lose traction easily. Some wheelchairs don't do brilliantly in windy areas and sometimes struggle on grass and sand (unless designed for that environment).

Love the metal powers, that sounds so cool! I think, if possible, it would be interesting to see if they can upgrade/change their aids as/if their power grows over the game. I.e learning how to make different upgrades, like sand tires and ice ferrules (crutch feet).

Some people like to customise their aids to make them more personal, and crutches and wheelchairs aren't suited to every situation so it would be interesting to see how/if they could use their metal powers in this way.

What do they do when there isn't much metal, or do their aids sort of act like a personal supply? What if it breaks?

Do they have the option to use a wheelchair even when their health is not low?

Is their power affected in any way by their health and vice versa? Does it rely on their energy and/or stamina?

Because of their metal powers, can they disassemble their aids when not in use i.e. could they deconstruct/fold the crutches away when in the wheelchair and vice versa. I think that would be pretty cool. Give a whole new meaning to travel aids, and could make storage easier.

And some posts for consideration:

What wheelchair users want: Some good notes on this post. Basically being like "we also want unrealistic wheelchairs. Fast and the Furious wheelchairs. Mad Max wheelchairs." I love the dash function in the wheelchair, and if you were looking for other ideas this could be good to consider.

Accessible Wordbuilding: Some good advice on how to make a world more accessible for a disabled character.

Personally I think @cripplecharacters is an excellent blog to check out if you want more insight into writing mobility aid users, and disabled characters in general.

Writing Wheelchairs: This is a really good post (with examples!) about different types of wheelchairs, for different purposes and environments.

Crutch Pose References: A video showing different pose references for forearm crutch users.

Crutch Pose References 2 Sitting Edition: A video showing more crutch poses, sitting down this time.

Character Example: If you're looking for examples of cool characters who use wheelchairs and forearm crutches together, can I direct your attention to Charlie Webber/Sun-Spider, a Spiderman with EDS!

--

If anyone else has anything to say on this please just add on.

Ahh this sounds so cool! I really hope it works out for you!! Good luck!

#disabled characters #disability representation #wheelchair #forearm crutches #crutches #video games #video game design #help and advice #disability community #disabled gamers #disability #mobility aids #ask box

[bulgariansumo]

Thoughts on The Scarlet Ibis by James Hurst because it’s haunting me and it’s hard to find people talking about it in-depth.

I dunno where I’m going with this, but cw for child neglect, BIG cw for treatment of people with disabilities, death mention, and obviously, spoilers. Also the story itself is horribly depressing.

Brief rundown of the story

The narrator (who is only referred to as Brother) recounts his brother’s life. Brother is excited to get a little brother until it’s found out that he has severe health problems and won’t be able to be the kind of outgoing brother he wants him to be. The little brother, nicknamed Doodle, manages to survive longer than expected, and over the years, clings to Brother, who is annoyed by and deeply ashamed of him. This leads to various cruelties, but it also leads to Brother teaching him how to walk by his sixth birthday. That goes well, bolstering Brother to teach him how to run, swim, and do things other boys his age would typically be able to do, all before Doodle goes to school next year. 

Doodle gets sick for a long time, throwing off their schedule, but when he’s better, Brother tries to make up for it by pushing him hard. The Sunday before their deadline, a scarlet ibis, not native to the area, dies in the family’s yard. Doodle is very upset by this and gives it a grave. That afternoon, he and Brother go to practice again, but it’s clear that he won’t reach his goal. The two get caught in the rain and Brother, angry that Doodle didn’t meet his goals, purposefully walks too fast. Doodle falls down and calls out for Brother not to leave him, but Brother instead runs away. After a while, he realizes Doodle didn’t follow him, and goes back only to find him dead.

Thoughts

Man, this story sucks. From a technical standpoint, it’s very well written; there’s a reason this story is often picked to teach middle schoolers imagery and symbolism. But geez, did it have to be like that?

Older siblings can be mean. I get it. A 6 to 13-year-old in the 1910s isn’t going to be the most sensitive to his brother’s health issues. The circumstances here, though, push it far beyond petty sibling behavior into something horrific. The first thing Brother does is try to smother him to death with a pillow. He makes him touch his own coffin and threatens to leave him there if he doesn’t. Ultimately, he leaves him to his death.

No matter how Brother treats him, Doodle still goes along with it. He’s not even trying to learn how to walk or run for his own sake. Doodle is always hesitant at first about learning these things, and at one point, he asks Brother why it’s such a big deal for him to. Brother tries to scare him with the idea of being different from the other boys, but Doodle still doesn’t mind that. Yet he still does what Brother wants because he’s doing it for his sake.

What must it have felt like for Doodle to know his body’s limitations, to know that Brother knows them, and still be made to feel ashamed for not being enough?

During the coffin incident, it comes up that Doodle is absolutely terrified at the idea of Brother leaving him alone, to the point where he begs him not to even after Brother comes back for him. This is echoed right before he dies.

Brother and Doodle do get along at some points, but when I read the story again over the weekend (it’s worse than I remembered), I noticed there was a pattern to it. Brother got along best with Doodle when he meets his expectations of a “normal boy.” Their relationship greatly improves after Doodle is able to walk. Doodle also proves himself to be a brilliant storyteller, to the point where Brother has to admit to himself that he’s the better of the two. 

Doodle’s perceived intelligence saved his life as a baby. The news that Doodle might be physically and mentally disabled is what spurred Brother trying to smother him with a pillow. Before he could, Doodle smiled at him. It wasn’t the smile itself that prevented him from going through with it, but the fact that he took it as a sign of Doodle being neurotypical. If he didn’t smile, or it turned out later on that he wasn’t neurotypical, would he have been murdered? 

Brother and Doodle’s parents and aunt don’t come up as much over the course of the story. Something that stuck out to me on my recent readthrough is that Narrator Brother mentions that when Doodle started talking, he talked so much that everyone tuned him out. This is also around the time when his mother made him pull Doodle around on a wagon. The family also laughs at Doodle when he’s trying to bury the scarlet ibis (because the shovel was too big for him.) 

These moments can be read a couple different ways. Maybe the mother just wanted Brother to spend time with his brother, or maybe she wanted both kids out of her hair for a little while. The latter isn’t necessarily evil, but that combined with no one paying attention to Doodle’s words makes me wonder if there was some neglect going on. Maybe the reason he clung to Brother so hard is because he’s the only one (forced) to give him the time of day. A little cruelty was better than being ignored.

Then there’s the scarlet ibis incident. The scarlet ibis ends up being directly compared to Doodle when he dies. Having been confronted with his own death earlier in the story (the coffin incident) and having his health get worse because of Brother’s shenanigans, I wonder if he saw himself in it. Or maybe he’s just a little kid who felt really bad watching something die. Either’s likely, but this story is tragic enough, so we might as well have a 6-year-old grappling with the concept of death while his family laughs at him from the window, all right before his own death.

I don’t know how to feel about Brother. It’s easy to feel disgusted some of his more horrific actions, but he was just a kid at the time, and from his narration, he seems to recognize some of the error of his ways. It’s tragic that he’s stuck living with the guilt of his little brother’s death, from such a young age too. It’s hard to say how much blame should be placed on the adults in his life. Could they have known what was going on? Would Doodle or Brother have told them? Is there a point where they could’ve stepped in? Still, I can’t help but think of Doodle’s perspective, let down so hard by the people he trusted most. He deserved so much better.

Anyway, I hate this story!

#the scarlet ibis #text post

[writedisaster]

        Fairy tale verse Lip is... prematurely messed up, physically speaking.

        Under the effects of the curse, they’ve collected a lot of wear and tear on their joints, ligaments, bones etc. Similar to a typical high-level dancer in mid or late career, but, well, worse, given that they had no nights off for seven years, even when injured.

        Lip has an iron pain tolerance.  They’ve needed it.  Even so, there are bad days and less bad days.  On the less bad days, Lip still dances- honestly, physical pain aside, I think it would hurt them more to stop dancing- but for the most part, they stay away from the super punishing / impressive things (like pointe, sick jumps, being the base in lifts, etc). They’re still notable for their grace, elegance, and poise even in simple dances, but they’re not showing off.

        ... except for when they are.  Lip’s pain tolerance lets them function mostly normally, but it also lets them push themself way further than they should sometimes.  Lip tries to accept their limits and honor their pain, but it’s frustrating, not being able to perform at the level they know they can reach.  Especially at gatherings, they have a tendency to get carried away and pull stunts that their body can’t really withstand anymore. When they do, they pay for it.  Increased pain, fatigue, etc- if they really overexert themself, it’s pretty common for them to end up barely able to get out of bed the next day.

      Lip does their best to keep all this hidden.  The pain tolerance helps.  Most days they can still put a brave face on it, still laugh and charm and glide their way through whatever.  They don’t mind if people make other negative assumptions about them based on what signs do show through.  If they spend a lot of time off their feet, they’re just lazy. If they seem more short-tempered after a long day of walking or riding, they’re just a bitch.  More than being seen as weak or fragile, what they hate the most about their condition (and what they want to hide the most) is the feeling of being failed by their own body.  Especially since they see their body as one of their greatest assets.

        The curse itself is common knowledge, but so is the fact it was broken.  With magic being... well, magic... most people sort of expect any ill effects to be wiped away when the curse was broken.  But that was seven years of Lip and their siblings’ lives.  There’s no way back.  That being said, your character would very probably know about the curse, and if they’re particularly attentive, they may be able to guess from Lip’s behavior that they’re still in pain.

        Obviously, their siblings are similarly disabled, having been through the same curse. Lip definitely isn’t the only one who tries to hide it (though I need to percolate some more thoughts on how exactly the others handle living with this).  But I think Lip is the only one who still dances.

#internalized ableism /// #lip / verse: fairy tale #find limits past the limits; jump in front of trains all day | ABT: lip #//mainverse lip's feet are like. normal ballerina levels of messed up. fairytale verse lip's feet... they don't want you to see their feet.

[trilobiter]

Worried about my brother, worried about my dad. Going to vent a little bit.

I've written a little about my brother before, but for context he is autistic and has an intellectual disability. These have obviously been the case for his whole life (he's going to be 34 this year), but in recent years he's also developed a gluten intolerance. For a guy who loves pasta as much as he does, this is a blow.

Now, this brother lives in my hometown, close to our youngest brother and our dad, while I live too far away to have a direct hand in things most of the time. But this week, he informed me and the younger brother by text that he had gotten in a fight with our dad after sending him a profanity-laden text message blaming him (dad) for his gluten intolerance. He then "ran away from home" by taking an Uber to a water park about an hour away, spending the day there and then Ubering right back home.

We tried to remind him that, as a grown man, he was allowed to go to the water park whenever he wanted to, and that it was OK if he wanted to put a little distance between himself and some one he was upset with. But he insisted on characterizing this excursion as "running away" and insisting that it would make dad "worried sick."

I should point out that while our dad is not a perfect person, one of his best qualities as a parent has been going consistently above and beyond expectations to ensure this brother of mine has the ability to live as independently and comfortably as he possibly can. There is no greater ally to my brother in all the world, and all he did in this case was tell him he didn't like being cussed out and blamed for something that wasn't his fault.

The next day, my text messages were again blowing up, as my brother was again telling us (as well as his ample support team) about how devastated he was that he'd totally and permanently ruined his relationship with our dad, who was "too much of a coward" to call the police the previous day and report him missing. I felt compelled to remind him that he was a grown man and had told people where he was going, so he was in no sense missing. But I knew this wouldn't settle things, because he was zeroed in on this fantasy that he is a little kid who can run away from his dad's house, even though he lives in an apartment that he can walk in and out of at any damn time he pleases.

Most of the time, he's a kind, gentle person to be around. He's never hurt anybody physically that I'm aware of. It's just that every once in a while, he throws these temper tantrums, and he's run this kind of runaway scenario many times before. I doubt very much he could ever permanently damage his relationship with dad, but he has burned bridges with neighbors and prospective employers by unleashing vile streams of invective in text or email form. He's recently started to see meaningful doors close because he couldn't be talked out of sending very nasty words in a moment of passion.

What worries me is that dad is getting old. He's in great shape and I am hopeful he'll be around for many more years, but he can't keep taking care of my brother forever, and these occasional explosions are taking more and more of a toll on him. We're all just hoping at this point that my brother will truly learn to moderate his behavior by the time he's in his 40s or 50s, or whenever it is he truly cannot count on my dad any longer to connect him with support personnel, or manage his trust, or any of the other ways he maintains him. At that point it will fall to us siblings to pick up the slack, and we'll do our best, but we have other priorities and we can hardly be a father to him.

My sister and I both got married in the last couple of years, and she's got kids of her own now. I know that our brother is frustrated because he knows that his options are limited, and I've heard him express the desire to live a life more like we have. I wish I could help him appreciate what he has and understand how important it is that he take care of it.

#trilobiter #personal

[random-thought-depository]

Idea for a story I should write someday: a story kind of like the Babylon 5 episode Believers, but it’s obliquely referencing the continuity of consciousness arguments about uploading and teleportation.

The story’s equivalent of Shon is an alien from an intelligent species for whom unconsciousness is naturally super-rare; they don’t sleep, and they have a highly redundant nervous system that makes them very resistant to being “knocked out” by blunt force trauma or drugs. As a result, this species has developed philosophical arguments that a continuous stream of consciousness is constitutive of identity, and hence to lose consciousness is to die, and if somebody loses consciousness and then wakes up later that person has died and a new person who happens to have their memories has awakened in their body. This perspective is intuitive to them, in the same way “if somebody creates a perfect copy of you and then immediately kills the original you, you have died” is intuitive to us, and it’s the view of multiple mainstream religions and philosophies on their world. Their equivalents of the words awake and alive are more-or-less synonyms, their word for being born roughly translates as “awaken,” and their word for death roughly translates as “the cessation of movement and thought” (maybe they classify sessile organisms like plants and fungi as not alive, in the same way we classify viruses as not alive?).

Obviously, one consequence of this is that most surgeries in their society are done with local anesthetic, with the patient being carefully kept awake (”alive”) the whole time. But in this case a child of this species has an illness or injury that will definitely kill them (in the uncontroversial sense of the concept) if it isn’t remedied with an operation that definitely will result in a period of unconsciousness. And the story centers on a human doctor trying to convince the child and their parents that what they’re proposing will save the child’s life instead of just killing them and replacing them with a different person.

The take a third option happy ending would be that the doctor manages to find a way to do the operation while keeping the child conscious the whole time, but I think I prefer something a bit more bittersweet. So I’m thinking maybe they try something like that, and it works in the sense that the child physically survives and is fine, but it fails in that the child loses consciousness for a few minutes during the operation so the parents see them as having died.

Oh, they don’t filicide their own child like in the B5 episode or anything like that. They don’t think they’re an abomination or anything like that. They just think their child has died and been replaced with something like an identical twin. While unconsciousness is very rare among them, there have been cases throughout their history, and their culture has developed procedures for it. When a person dies and a new person awakens in their body, the new person is given a name (different from that of the original inhabitant of their body) and their equivalent of a baptism. The family of body’s previous inhabitant may adopt them. If they’re married, the spouse of their body’s previous inhabitant may marry them. They may adopt the children of their body’s previous inhabitant. They inherent the personal property of their body’s previous inhabitant, but they are not responsible for any debts and crimes of the previous inhabitant of their body, which are considered to belong to the dead person. The “dead” inhabitant of their body is given a funeral, with a small effigy of wood or wax buried or burned as a corpse would be. The “dead” inhabitant of their body is then given the same daily prayers for the dead as other dead immediate family members.

So, before the operation the child prepares for the possibility that they might lose consciousness by writing a letter to the inheritor of their body saying something like “Please don’t feel bad about inheriting my body, you didn’t ask for this, it isn’t your fault.” After the operation the child is given a new name and their equivalent of a new baptism and adopted into the family, as a foundling would be, and is introduced to their sibling as a new member of the family who happens to look like the dead sibling. The child inherits the personal property of the “dead” child, in this case a few toys and video games and the like. The parents arrange for their “new” child’s education to continue where the “dead” child’s left off, as they share the same memories (when they go back to their school - which is a small “neighborhood” school run by and for the community of their species on the space station the story takes place on - they are introduced to their classmates as a new student). The “new” child participates in the funeral of the “dead” child and before every evening meal participates in the daily prayers for the dead, in which the “dead” child is mentioned by name as other dead immediate family members are. The “new” child will celebrate their birthday on the anniversary of the operation, and the day of the operation will be counted as the day of their birth (“awakening”). Basically, the parents are as nice about the whole thing as they can be, but they really believe that they’ve lost a child and gained a new one (through no fault of the new child!), and they and the rest of their immediate community act accordingly.

Some time later the human doctors gets invited to participate in some sort of ceremony for the “new” child, formal acknowledgment of them having finished memorizing some sacred scripture in their school or something like that. They give the human doctor the role in the ceremony that the midwife who assisted in the child’s birth would normally have.

---------------

Some peripheral notes for this concept:

In the setting of this story, humans are a relatively minor race; Earth is an unusually densely populated world, but on the periphery of known space and relatively backward, humans only developed a high-tech civilization recently and haven’t spread out much and are a small percentage of known space’s population. The human doctor is one of the few humans on a trade hub space station, or at least one of the few humans who’s part of the official staff; most of the humans there are part of the station’s working/lower class, a mix of low-level maintenance and dock workers, small-time shopkeepers, entertainers and service workers of various sorts, homeless people, and petty criminals (with a fair amount of fluidity between those classes).

Sleep is a weird thing humans do in this setting; it’s unique to humans (and other Earth animals), other intelligent species don’t need it or do it. However, most intelligent species don’t have the “unconsciousness = death” belief, because while most intelligent species don’t sleep they are more familiar with unconsciousness as a semi-normal thing from people passing out drunk, getting knocked out in a brawl, etc.. Maybe there’s even one or two intelligent species who don’t sleep regularly but can hibernate in periods of resource scarcity like bears or go into torpor if the temperature gets too low (common alien words for human sleep might translate to things like “micro-hibernation” and “false thermocoma”). It’s just this one species for whom unconsciousness is naturally super-rare so their culture developed in a context where it was some extraordinary, freakish, even eldritch-seeming thing.

In this context, the human doctor experiences some of the limitations of humans as something a lot like a disability. She can’t regularly work the 20+ hour shifts that are normal for her colleagues, because she needs to sleep. She needs more time off than most of her colleagues, because normal alien schedules are made around the assumption of effectively having an extra eight hours every day to get stuff done. Because the aliens are active 24 hours, most intelligent species have much better night vision than humans, so to save on energy and burned out light bulb equivalents the common area and default lighting on the space station is what a human experiences as semi-darkness. She wears basically night vision goggles most of the time to be able to easily work in what the aliens consider normal indoor lighting conditions. A lot of the alien tools and furniture are the wrong size and shape for her, and she gets a friend in the station’s machine shop to recut and otherwise modify a lot of the medical tools for her. Humans are relatively unusual in the wider galaxy and kind of funny looking even by the standards of a relatively cosmopolitan multi-species society (the more typical body plans for an intelligent species are “six-limbed quadruped with four legs and two arms” and “kind of like a theropod dinosaur”), so common alien furniture is really not built for her (the human sitting posture is super-weird and freaky by alien standards, they tend to get uncomfortable just looking at it), and she gets kind of a lot of people (especially children) staring at her and wanting to touch various parts of her and so on, but it’s mostly benign curiosity. She’s uncomfortably aware that she’s a “diversity hire” (the alien polity that runs the station likes to hire members of their various allied and subject races to give them a sense of inclusion) and that a lot of people kind of resent having to do all these accommodations for her instead of just hiring a normal person.

The family of the sick child actually have a kind of parallel experience. Their world is even more marginal and peripheral than Earth and they’re a small minority in the galactic population, and the space station was built by and primarily for beings smaller than them so they have to deal with a lot of uncomfortably small tools and furniture and spaces or stick to special areas and facilities for bigger beings. This is a universe where big alien theory is true, so they’re actually more-or-less average size for an intelligent species, but the most numerous races are around human size so around human size is what gets treated as normal size for a person to be. Note: around human size with quadrupedal or theropod-like body plans translates to the human doctor has to stoop to fit inside a lot of small corridors built for beings substantially shorter than humans, but thankfully the station is designed for a cosmopolitan crowd so at least the bigger public spaces are sized to be accessible to beings up to approximately the size of large sauropod dinosaurs (and the water-filled sections for water/ocean-dwellers are designed to be accessible to even bigger beings).

---------------

Rough draft/outline for some lines in a conversation that would happen in this story:

Human doctor: I sleep every day. Well, almost every day, anyway. <Laughs a little, then turns serious> Do you think I die every time I go to sleep? Do you think the version of me you talked to yesterday is dead, and I’m... What, the latest in a line of thousands of doppelganger-clones of [her name]?

Alien parent: I... <uncomfortable pause> My partner holds it as a matter of faith that is works differently for Humans, because the Makers would not be so cruel as to create a race that is born in the morning, lives one day, dies that night, passes their body on to a new person who continues their errands and then dies in turn the next night. But I’m a rationalist, and... <uncomfortable pause and squirming> ... If you really look at nature, you see a multitude of horrors. The buzzer-fly’s young tear it apart from inside and eat its corpse. Nature is amoral. I can believe nature would create such a thing as an intelligent race that lives one day. I... Honestly, I try to not think about it much, to preserve my sanity.

Human doctor: I slept last night. I don’t feel like I died. I feel like I’m the same person I was yesterday.

Alien parent: Suppose this question had an objective and testable answer, and it was that I was right. Suppose I could show you I was right, as I could show my ancestors the Red Thirst with a microscope and say “See, it is not a curse, it is a thing like a tiny plant, that gets inside you and grows inside you like a strangling vine.” What would you do? How would you react to knowing that you have hours to live, that you were born this morning and will die tonight and are but one in a long chain of inhabitants of your body who lived only one day, and your whole race is like that?”

Human doctor: <thinks about it for a moment> “I think I’d find some way to tell myself that it wasn’t true, that you were wrong, and then I wouldn’t think about it much, to preserve my sanity.”

Alien parent: “For what it’s worth, I really hope it doesn’t actually work like that. But I’m not willing to gamble my child’s life on ‘I really hope it doesn’t actually work like that.’”

-----------------

On that note: at some point the parents see the human doctor while she’s dozing at work and it’s intensely disturbing and creepy to them. An unconscious person is disturbing to them in the same way fantasy undead would be disturbing to humans: they’re simultaneously dead and alive in a way that seems unnatural in the sense people use when they use that term to refer to something horrible. I think I might have some fun describing human sleep in a way that channels a Lovecraft protagonist: “Alive, yet not alive. Clearly dead, but stirred by inward motion.”

It’s more logical when you remember that their language uses a lot of the same or similar words for life and consciousness and for death and unconsciousness. Like, yes, she is indeed [alive/awake] but not [alive/awake], clearly [unawake] but moving a little, those are totally factual observations, I’m just translating the emotional charge they’d have for these people.

One of these poor people would probably have a breakdown when they see their own child in that state on the operating table. :(

On a lighter note, there’d be comic relief potential in this too:

Alien child: “Are they dead?”

Alien parent: “Kind of, but it’s not as big a problem for them as it is for us.”

And also tragicomedy potential: at one point the alien child asks the human doctor what death is like, saying she should know since she dies every day.

Tangential note: I’m thinking the alien child’s race is hermaphroditic, in which case it’d be appropriate to use gender-neutral pronouns for them ... and they probably wouldn’t have a concept of gender (except insofar as they might have learned that some other species have such concepts), so it would make sense for them to use gender-neutral language when they talk about humans among themselves too; their language wouldn’t have gendered pronouns except maybe specifically as a device adopted for being polite to certain aliens when you talk to them. Not sure how I’d handle pronouns for hermaphroditic aliens in a story.

-----------------

Other character concepts for this story:

When it comes to having to deal with a station built by and for beings that have rather different bodies than you, the human doctor is lucky compared to her colleague and best friend, a giant whale-like being who does most of their work through teleoperation while sitting in basically a giant swimming pool.

This person’s homeworld is a cold planet almost entirely covered by ocean; only a few almost totally barren tiny islands rise above an otherwise uninterrupted sea so deep it drowns all but the very highest mountain peaks (with so little land, multicellular life on this world has never left the sea). Their species (which is hermaphroditic, hence the choice of pronoun) is very much like the filter-feeding whales of Earth. Evolution of their intelligence probably was driven more by social selection than intrinsic stimulation of their watery world; they live their life by The Game, a complex and ever-shifting web of relationships that determines social status, access to resources, and mating opportunities, and that contributes to their survival. They are highly intelligent (their brain probably weighs more than you do!), and they might have tentacles or a manipulatory tongue or something, but before known space society found them and offered them access to space travel their watery world offered them little opportunity to develop technology. It’s unknown how long they’ve been sapient, but their oral history includes accounts of an asteroid impact that happened several million years ago.

This character thinks most of their people are good-natured but provincial. They’re good folks, but once you’ve gotten through the latest permutations of The Game and last year’s migrations and the plan for next year’s migrations and what the krill tastes like in various places these days the conversation tends to just kind of drift there like a sea-plant. They remember the 74th year of their life; the most interesting thing that happened that year was their pod passed close to an island. Why, on Earth, that was the year humans sent their first crewed expedition to Mars! They left their world to find a more interesting life.

They can use their powerful sonar to “see” inside their patients and still swear by this vs. the more advanced high-tech instruments.

--

The case of the sick child ends up involving a lawyer. He’s a member of another minor species of known space society, an arboreal intelligent species that originally inhabited the forests of a humid world. The evolution of intelligence in his species was driven mostly by social and sexual selection, like the whale people but moreso. His species is highly intelligent, but mostly uninterested in physical problems; in their original society most of their intelligence was focused on socialization, mating strategies, and art (the art was part of the socialization and mating strategies). When wider known space society found them, they were living as hunter-gatherers with a rich artistic tradition but a Stone Age level of technology. Examination of their world’s fossil record indicated that they had existed at that level for over a hundred million years. However, once integrated into a high-tech interstellar society, they became very successful as artists, lawyers, politicians, and business people, and can be found in those professions in numbers greatly disproportionate to their percentage of known space’s population. He is colorful and beautiful, like a peacock, and for the same reason.

#story ideas #my writing #infohazard warning #if you're susceptible to random disturbing ideas #spoilers I guess #when I actually get around to writing this

[janiedean]

I was just wondering what do you think about posts that excuse Cersei's behaviour because she's mentally ill, or that if you critique its because your ableist and hate mentally ill people? Or some variation/combination of the two? Like it just bugs me in general when people automatically excuse and even justify horrible, violent and abusive behaviour just because someone's mentally ill, particularly as someone whose been on the receiving end of that behaviour from mentally ill people.

... I think I’ve made my opinion clear, but very briefly and hoping that I don’t unleash the kraken:

c.’s issues could have been solved if someone had sent her to a child psychologist before the age of then in modern au. period. because someone who grows up not having a shred of regret over having thrown a supposed friend in a well when they were twelve over a menial thing either should have had a completely different upbringing or should have gotten therapy. which doesn’t exist in westeros, but anyway, when discussing c’s issues that’s the crux of the matter;

c’s issues also hurt other people and I’m not talking about j., I’m talking about everyone around her or mostly, and the point is that the moment someone’s issues also mean hurting others... your freedom ends where others’s starts. assuming that her MH issues mean that she’s justified in behaving the way she does means that having MH issues is a free out of jail card for hurting others, which... it’s not;

spoilers: all three lannister siblings have mental health issues. same as like, 90% of the characters in these books. I’m 99% sure that the only two POV characters who doesn’t have issues that would require immediate therapy are davos (and he’s lost four kids, he has his problems) and asha, probably, and asha is just... very functional but it’s a miracle she came out like that considering her background. everyone else has issues over issues to different degrees, so... at this point disliking anyone in these books with this reasoning would mean hating mentally illy people while at the same time 85% of the characters you like most likely also have mental health issues and I’m talking just that, because I mean... if someone likes bran and not doran or viceversa I’m not going to assume that they’re ableist since both characters are disabled and both can’t walk, but most likely it’s just a personality preference, so saying that if you don’t like c. it’s because you hate mentally ill people or are ableist to me is ridiculous because like... I don’t like c. and my top five has three pov characters who have obviously mental health issues up the wazoo and one who most likely had plenty (and two out of those five also have become physically disabled as well during the series), I have gone to therapy for a damned long time myself and I hate mentally ill people now just because I don’t like a character who has MH issues? sorry but that’s like... ridiculous. you’re allowed to not like some characters because their personality is not your thing regardless of the issues they have;

also: again, c.’s issues hurt other people. those other people have no obligation to stick by if they feel like it’s detrimental to their health, same as no one has an obligation to stick by someone who is detrimental to their MH or well-being and also has no intention of changing/is aware of that. like, I can get behind wanting to support someone you love whose behavior hurts you who has realized it and is getting help/is actively trying to get better, but if that person doesn’t care or isn’t aware then no one has an obligation to stick by if it hurts them, so assuming that people who don’t like c. or whoever else or that characters in the books should stick by c. because of her issues if it hurts them is imvho not a thing people should even bring up because it implies that people have an obligation to excuse actions that are hurtful when the person who commits them has no interest in getting better, so... nah;

also there’s critique and critique and disliking a disabled character doesn’t automatically make you ableist same as disliking a woman doesn’t make you a misogynist, but like, going outside cersei: people can dislike tyrion just because they don’t gaf about him or because they don’t like the character or because they don’t find his personality that charming, but the moment the criticism turns into calling him a monster or joking about his height or basically sounding like tywin when he talks about tyrion then it’s definitely ableism and to be quite honest when it comes to tumblr there’s a lot more ableist critique thrown at tyrion than at cersei, because the ten of us who dislike her openly do it because she’s terrible while recognizing that she has issues which explain why she’s like that but don’t justify what she does at pretty much almost any point ever, the army of people who meta about tyrion as if he’s these books’s ultimate villain when 90% it’s because he could be in the way of their ship or say that he has male privilege over c. who therefore couldn’t have abused him (YES I had to read that with mine own eyes) and the likes most likely should check their priorities because that’s not hating him bc he’s a character you don’t like, that reeks of ableism 101 and of having skimmed his chapters (also tyrion has MH issues up the wazoo too but I don’t see people on here mentioning it). same way, one thing is disliking cat because she’s not your type of character, another is the fact that this entire fandom seems to have decided that blaming catelyn for every horrid thing that happened in these books that would not have happened had she just stayed home with the kids which imvho shows exactly the level of not-so-hidden misogyny rampant around here/directed at her specifically. but I don’t think that everyone who hates cat is misogynist or does it because of misogyny, I just think that a lot of fandom bias against her is... very misogynistic;

to sum up the above thing, considering that c. is also straight up written as a negative character and grrm has said time and time again that it’s her point in the narrative, assuming that someone would dislike her just because she’s MH is pretty much fried air as we say here because given what she’s pulled up until now, I think that she has enough of a CV that people have more than enough reasons to dislike her without bringing her mental health into account. because her issues might explain why she’s like that, but they don’t justify for shit anything she does, and if that’s valid for knowing why theon was the way he was in wf but doesn’t justify him killing the miller’s kids, knowing why jaime pushed bran but doesn’t justify it, knowing why sandor doesn’t disobey ethically horrid orders but doesn’t mean he hasn’t done pretty fucked up shit etc., then it’s also valid for c. and I really would like for characters to be judged evenly, thanks.

also: everyone has their limits when it comes to understanding/explaining where a person committing wrong actions comes from. if people can relate to c. and/or see themselves in her issues and have compassion for her, that’s their prerogative and I won’t go bitch at them for it same as I appreciate if people don’t bitch at me for having compassion for theon or sandor or jaime or whoever else. but at the same time assuming that everyone has your standards is ridiculous. for me c. was irredeemable after she basically went and laughed about the red wedding/thought she was so much better than cat because cat went insane after seeing robb die because to me people finding the red wedding funny or hilarious or well-deserved is the ultimate thing that will make me stop caring about them. if for someone jaime having pushed bran out of the window is irredeemable as long as they don’t come to me complaining about why I don’t think it is, it’s their prerogative.

but assuming that all of us need to find c. redeemable or understandable or relatable because people who like her do is ridiculous because you can’t expect anyone to relate to your favorites just because you do, and calling out the social justice card is ridiculous because fictional preferences are what they are and you can’t force yourself to like someone you despise just because they belong to X category - I wouldn’t tell people they have to like jaime because he has ptsd nor I’d expect them to be automatically ableist if they don’t gaf about jaime either way and don’t make jokes about him losing his guts with his hand or about how he’s the stupidest lannister, I’d expect people wouldn’t tell me I have to like c. because she has MH issues or whatnot. because there’s plenty of reasons to dislike c. and none of them have to do with her MH and most of her have to do with her abusive behavior.

also, last thing: the one time I actually met someone who was a self-proclaimed ‘I empathize with cersei on a personal level’ person, after three days in which they were an asshole to everyone in the group we were, the moment I called her out on it after she had been even more of an asshole when someone else tried to discuss it reasonably, I got backhanded in the face twice for it. now, I handled it and tbqh I didn’t mind it half as much as I could have because I didn’t gaf about this person and barely knew them. I also know that this person had issues (and later went to therapy so good for them), but as much as I could sympathize with her issues, forgive me if I don’t really think I want to see again someone who barely knew me and saw fit to hit me in the face twice. now, am I ableist for that? I really don’t think so. it’s the exact same principle. someone else might have had another reaction to it, but I’m not obliged to give them a second chance since they hurt me first and no one would say I’m ableist for it. it’s the exact same argument just brought to fictional level. one thing is disliking a character because of their issues only (ie theon and the castration jokes), another is disliking them because you think they’re boring and/or they’re not your kind of character.

and people need to realize that their favorite character can’t be everyone’s favorite character statistically. like. none of our faves are automatically everyone’s faves and that’s fine because that’s how the world works. *shrug*

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #mental health cw #anti-cersei #anti-cersei lannister #janie rants #*shrug* #Anonymous #ask post

[cowboyguts-moved]

Ok i’ve GOT to know 14 and 15 because josh...you have a torment hard-on unlike anyone else i have ever seen...why do you always have one OC who’s like a fucking orphan with a peg leg and almost starved to death as an infant or another one who ended up in the hospital and lost all of their money because their small time drug dealer turned out to be working for the colombian cartel and robbed them blind. josh why

ok tumblr wont let me post all of it but gimme a sec and ill edit this ask

edit:

HHSHDJDKXNXJDJZNSJ WHAT'S FUCKIN LIFE WITHOUT PERILOUS DANGER and inborn trauma and tragedy... i do it to purge myself of my own problems and to give me incentive for research and discovering different walks of life than my own ... you almost hit the nail on the head with lewis though which is the answer to

14. The roughest backstory I’ve given an OC

Lewis was made because the head of this cult wanted lewis to be born... kinda like symbolism for jesus's birth. i don't know all the lore for this cult yet but they're a small commune north of a small town in northern California. They have their own isolated community of two hundred people give or take. Lewis' mom was a teenage runaway and lewis' dad was a simple farm hand in a cruel family who treated him poorly because of mental disability and they had to have lewis because it was ordered of them and there was sorta no way out of it...they had a boy and for some reason the birth of this kid didnt feel right and he didnt feel like... divine enough to be used for ritual practice and the ultimate mission of these cults leaders... which would inevitably be a sacrifice of the boy. haha (: and so theyre like ...try again. so now Lewis was born with a fraternal sister but they only cared about Lewis...his real name is Aloysius for petes sake, he's named after a saint. Lewis isnt particularly singled out as he grows up like he doesn't know he's being especially watched because of some bullshit prophecy that was most definitely made up and no theres no angelic godly energy running through him everyone is just a bunch of freaks. Lewis grows up not knowing his siblings are his biologically because the commune is about group-raising. everyone is a sibling every adult is a parent. he doesn't know his mom is His mom but she watches him extra close and lewis gets an idea that this one women may be his Mom mom even though he doesnt have a strong concept of what that even means. Lewis is abused and neglected like other kids, him more severely by a man called Father Gabriel..we despise him ha ha. he's the most vile evil character i will ever make. Lewis's life is fine, not fine... because he's being raised in a cult... but fine in his eyes because he gets schooling in the small community school, he gets recreation activities..this is where he learns to paint, he does labor a lot but he does love when he gets to garden and pet the animals in their barn, he sings in the church choir. the hardest part about it are his visits with Father Gabriel that occur whenever father wants them to at whatever time of day and the neglect from the Brothers of the church as well. this starts when he's about 7 or 8

he's treated especially poorly and corporal punishment and solitary confinement and withholding of basic needs is a big thing. etc etc. this is a religious cult obviously so that sort of biblical fear is instilled in him. uhhh then for whatever reason i have to iron out the kids are allowed to go to private schools close by, probably as not to seem like a closed off and suspicious cult that draws attention. lewis meets chris at his school (: hehe. lewis still has to go back to the commune every weekend though and thats especially hell because things get worse when he's in middle school. uhh when high school comes around hes actually plucked out of the school system and is going back to living full time in the commune and being homeschooled except he and 5 children are selected to go on a Retreat with father gabriel and two of the Brothers..the retreat is actually just living in an abandoned home in the middle of Nebraska and its one big sacrificial ritual thats lasts a year and the kids are of course neglected, made to do odd rituals, are humiliated. uhh basically its Horror Movie stuff... i wanted it to feel like a horror movie that lewis is trying to escape from. theres no light in the house. they only use candles and daylight. theres limited food. hardly any outside time. the ultimate goal is that they'll eventually get very malnourished and then theyll be sacrificed... a little girl doesnt make it. Lewis is upset because he learned to love her as a sister. he can feel himself getting closer to death.... he has deep lacerations on his leg from abuse and theyre not getting treated and his tissue is dying and his leg is getting gangrene. he escapes one night through the corn field and he tells a man he sees in town to call the police and then flees. he realizes his leg is dying! he by chance meets a doctor! lewis has no money for amputation so he offers something Else and this disgusting doctor accepts!!! lewis is sent off with a bad wooden prosthetic and not enough healing time in bed and no physical therapy and his own supply of pain meds that will soon run out! lewis prostitutes for money and pain meds in mystic overhang!! he gets with very repulsive men that mistreat him! when lewis is touched he gets very pliable and limp as a coping mechanism! he stops the meds and withdrawals! thank you

15. The least painful backstory I’ve given an OC

My least painful backstory HHHSHDHSHS IS TANNER. jesus tanner grew up with a very...here or there father. he's not great at all. he's not the worst. but being around him feels kinda empty and they don't talk about much besides tanner in hockey and other common interests like that. his parents are divorced, he feels lost with his passions and where he's going in life. it all feels a bit aimless and he feels like he's on the Precipice of something bad or losing something he holds dear. like friends and memories and his girlfriend amiyah. his brother is really mean like pretty much abusive..he's 14 and he's narcissist asshole with a fucked up head and he makes his life hell and he's honestly a little frightening. sometimes his mom is unaware of the important things going on in tanners life and she's a bit harebrained and unfairly self absorbed but she is a good lady and he loves her. also we arent sure yet if this is canon material but he gets amiyah pregnant and she miscarries 3 months in SO...yeah there u have it.

#abuse #child abuse #child neglect #child torture #lewis #tanner

[ladysqueakinpip]

every. single. one. of those OC questions, and the ones that you have to have a specific OC pick whoever you want, but make sure a couple of them are Darrvi and Taffel and Abbe and I think you have a fairy lady? or a dryad lady? or both? do them too, for whatever ones you want

i’m going to talk about so many ocs. 

1. Do any of your OCs have a speech impediment?

heykel talks with a stutter! i’m not sure if this counts as an impediment but amytis’ voice is naturally very quiet so she has a hard time contributing to large conversations or arguments not because she doesn’t want to say anything but because people never hear what she says haha. 

2. Do any of your OCs have a physical disability?

hmmm well my side fantroll syddie (who i hardly ever talk about r i p) has bowed legs from a trauma injury. she has to wear leg braces to talk. again, i’m not sure if this counts as a disability but since elian’s epileptic & not medicated he has to be careful going up and down stairs or swimming/bathing and it does put a limit on the types of activities he can do in the day.  

3. What is your OCs favorite band if they have one?

okay well since u said darrvi first here he comes. darrvi would like music similar to john mayer and jason mraz. he probably knows a couple underground bands but they’re like. pop underground. they’re not really underground just sorta underground. it’s also a little known darrvi-fact that he enjoys listening to ke$ha music. 

4. Does your OC have anything they take pride in? (like an award or collection?)

and taffel is next. is it bad to say i feel like he likes his stupid ripped up jeans? the ones he literally just cuts with a chainsaw? he probably likes that dumb varsity jacket i’m always drawing him in. so i guess the answer is a couple clothing items but he’s not a very materialistic person. other than the jeans and jacket i feel like he’s really proud of his physical fitness. he works really hard to keep it up lol. 

5. Does your OC have a favorite film?

abbe’s favorite film…. uh…. hard to say since they don’t actually have movies in EG? abbe strikes me as the type of person who would like those cheesy family-oriented hallmark movies. he marathons the christmas movies in december. 

6. How tall is your OC?

i’m assuming by “fairy lady” you mean maya! i haven’t made official heights for them yet but judging from my character reference sheet she’s near 5′9″ or 5′10″! 

7. Does your OC have any celebrity crushes?

by dryad-lady do you mean lia merson? if so i don’t think she does! she was made for @pidgenerd ‘s story and i don’t think there’s an easy way to spread news in her world like we have in ours with TV/phones/radio/internet and all that media. i doubt lia really knows much about the world outside of her small tree community lol. besides, even if she had time for celebrities, she’s got a crush on @topazpearl ‘s kurama anyway *u*

8. Do you ship any 2 of your OCs?

um….. ya. a lot. elianXanneliese, abbeXrosalie, rolandXjeannine, irenaXdwayne the rock johnson, darrvitaffel, heykeltaffel, bodrumamytis, akhettalekah, whatever the heck is going on between fidias/paatni, and even though heykel/amytis blackrom is literal filth i still like the idea of it bye. 

those are just the ships with ONLY my characters lol come back later for more swaggie shipping. 

9. How would you describe your OCs fashion taste?

i’m gonna go back to maya on this because i really love her and i don’t talk about her a lot. maya likes dresses! bright colors and intricate, detailed patterns. this is a good example. also this. i feel like everything she wears could be described as a maxi dress or a sun dress. 

10. Does your OC have any special talents?

u wanted more darrvi and taffel??? i’ll give you more darrvi and taffel. darrvi’s a decent baker? he sticks to making pies and cupcakes. i bet darrvi’s super secret talent is being able to find really good albums/movies/games in those giant “discount” bins you see at walmart. he goes to the clearance section or to thrift stores and gets really nice pairs of pants for $3. taffel on the other hand is a sculptor. he’s made a couple trinkets for leaena. he likes to work with clay and wood the most i bet he always has dirt under his nails. or splinters in his hands. his super secret talent is bumping up against vending machines and being able to knock a soda or a bag of chips out for free. he’s the guy who checks the slot to see if someone left a soda there and he always finds one. 

11. Is your OC really bad at something?

darrvi is really bad at styling his hair. it just floofs up and poofs all over the place and he’s sick of it but he’s given up. he seems like he’s bad at making a decision and sticking with it good grief i feel like half of his life problems stem from the fact that he just doesn’t know what he wants. 

taffel is really bad at cooking oh my gosh. no wonder darrvi can bake he had to learn for the both of them. i think taffel’s issue is that he’s that person who thinks “oh yea i can multitask i’ve got this” and before he knows it dinner is burnt, the laundry’s been sitting out for 2 hours, he didn’t vacuum up that mess in the living room and he forgot to call leaena back. 

12. Does your OC have both of their parents?

maya’s dad died before EG starts. i’m sure her mother is still around but after her dad died she just left home and the rest of her family for something bigger. 

lia does have both her parents but her dad is out working & traveling a lot since he’s a merchant. she lingers around her tree home with her mom and waits for dad to bring them treats and money from his travels. 

13. Does your OC know their parents?

I HAVE TO KEEP ANSWERING THESE FOR LIA AND MAYA BECAUSE TROLLS DON’T HAVE ANY PARENTS RIP!!! but yes! they both know both of their parents. 

14. Does your OC have any siblings?

maya has a lot of siblings! i’m thinking her family might have five children total, though i haven’t decided entirely on the birth order + genders of her siblings. i was thinking 2 older brothers and 2 younger sisters? this could change don’t hold me to it. 

lia doesn’t have any other siblings. :’( it’s very sad and lonely but when your mother is a dryad and your father is a human obviously things aren’t going to work out perfectly. 

15. Do any of your OCs have pets?

my oc kate has a pet canary! i’ve been toying with the idea of giving elian a service dog. his brother roland has some horses. 

i don’t think trolls really have pets? so i guess none of my trolls have pets.

16. Do you have any nonhuman OCs?

no one from EG is a human and none of my trolls are humans haha. lia merson’s a dryad…. talise is some weird otter-anthro furry…. i think my only human ocs are my fankids? and faige and kaleb.

17. Do you have any OCs you haven’t posted about?

i have a couple of new dryads in the works for lia’s world, actually! but i don’t know anything about them i just wanted to draw more tree girls so i did. 

i’ve also been thinking up a couple phoenix ocs from another part of the EG map but there’s not much happening with them. 

18. How would you describe your OCs nature in one word?

watch me do darrvi and taffel again because i’m predictable. i think darrvi’s word would be “hopeful”? he wants the best for himself and for the people he loves so he comes up with elaborate schemes to make everything work out haha. he wants to believe that there’s some goodness in a world that’s so dark and violent. he gets let down a lot but somehow he’s muscled through. 

i think taffel’s word is “self-centered”, but in more than one way. i mean he is pretty selfish and a lot of his actions are thoughtless and only benefit himself but i think that’s because he has a hard time connecting & understanding other people on an emotional level? so he ends up having this little world that’s just his and he doesn’t consider the impact of his actions on other people until after he’s done something. 

19. Who is your youngest OC?

paseri! she’s only 11. 

20. Who is your oldest OC?

i guess technically bodrum is the oldest since he’s like 200+ years old but um. we don’t talk about that and physically/mentally/emotionally he’s around 15 so uh. yea. otherwise i think my oldest is elian’s doctor/irena’s dad? he’s somewhere in his 50s-60s. 

21. What race is your OC?

since most of my ocs aren’t human i don’t think i can answer this one? no one’s technically white/black/asian/etc. heck, maya is blue. all my fankids are just white. kaleb’s white. faige is biracial but i haven’t decided if her mom is black and her dad is white or if her dad is black and her mom is white. 

22. Would your OC like you?

of course they like me everyone likes me -shot- 

#Anonymous #oc stuff #lets T-A-L-K-A-B-O-U-T about ocs #THIS TOOK SO LONG KDJALKJLDAJKLS but i enjoyed it thanks #if u read thru all that u deserve to know every spoiler in EG bye

[skythegardener]

50 questions about Sky

No one asked, but here it is. Check under the cut:

Name: Sky Sweet(Viva Pinata Universe)

1. What does their bedroom look like?

>Plain. They have a king sized bed. The room was painted in a forest-y scene. They have a bathroom thats clean and a closet of clothes(they prefer their heart shirt and jeans). 

2. Do they have any daily rituals?

>They wake up, go downstairs and have coffee or tea(or nothing. depends). Care for any pinatas or animals or people needing care at the time in their house before showering, brushing their teeth, and getting ready for their day.

3.Do they exercise, and if so, what do they do? How often?

>Never, unless to keep up appearances. Their inhuman strength is just a natural extension of their less-than-human-ness

4.What would they do if they needed to make dinner but the kitchen was busy?

>Sky’s kitchen is never busy, and they don’t need to eat. But if for some reason they needed to cook for someone and the kitchen is busy, they’ll force themselves in there

5.Cleanliness habits (personal, workspace, etc.)

>Extreme hypocritical cleanliness. Bathes at least twice daily, makes sure there’s nothing dirty in their house. But habitually leaves dirty clothes in their laundry room to forget about. Don’t talk about the dishes. If they’re out working they don’t care as much.

6.Eating habits and sample daily menu

>They don’t eat if they don’t have to or want to. They don’t mind drinking stuff, but food? Eh. They eat if it suits them or if they need to seem More Human

7.Favorite way to waste time and feelings surrounding wasting time?

>Wastes time exploring and studying the land. They have numerous unreadable journals going on about life and plants and everything on Pinata Island. As well they may waste time in the…. Company of others or starting fights if they’re in a sour mood. Maybe drown sorrows at a bar or in the middle of the forest. They don’t mind themselves or others wasting time.

8. Favorite indulgence and feelings surrounding indulging?

>Ahem. Again, the company of others. They find it enjoyable and encourage others to enjoy their life how they see fit. 

9. Makeup?

>Doesn’t know how to use it in human form. Used to be your basic emo in feline form.

10. Neuroses? Do they recognize them as such?

>Some residual depression and PSTD. Not as bad as it once was, but sometimes it flares up.

11. Intellectual pursuits?

>As much as possible. Eternity is boring and long, why not learn stuff while you’re waiting for the end of existence?

12. Favorite book genre?

>None. Reads whatever

13. Sexual Orientation? And, regardless of own orientation, thoughts on sexual orientation in general?

>Pansexual! Just fine with anyone being anything.

14. Physical abnormalities? (Both visible and not, including injuries/disabilities, long-term illnesses, food-intolerances, etc.)

>Able to shapeshift, obviously. If they chose to they have ‘vitiligo scars’ and they have sharp teeth in their human form. As well as a tail. Their hair ‘naturally’ grows in blue, but they may claim that they dye it to avoid scrutiny. Their eyes are cat like, and in times of high emotion or weakness they may lose control of their shapeshifting and gain feline/demonic traits.

15. Biggest and smallest short term goal?

>Biggest: Hatch the Dragonache eggs they have. Leo needs siblings! Smallest: fix that fucking fence those pinatas keep breaking

16. Biggest and smallest long term goal?

>Biggest: continue exploring and gaining information on the island as well as maintain their garden. Smallest: Maybe find a relationship? Who knows. They’re fine with their current situation,

17. Preferred mode of dress and rituals surrounding dress

>Simple, but they don’t mind dressing up. As gender neutral as possible, usually ends up masculine leaning. They like their paw boots, their gloves, mask, jeans, and heart shirt. They’ll wear a lot of things though.

18. Favorite beverage?

> Coffee, Tea, or Alcohol. All of which are residual habits.

19. What do they think about before falling asleep at night?

>If they can fall asleep, they’re probably thinking about their original universe, past ‘lives’, what to do tomorrow.

20. Childhood illnesses? Any interesting stories behind them?

>Was never a child in the VP universe.

21. Turn-ons? Turn-offs?

>Sky prefers to share those with partners. 

22. Given a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and nothing to do, what would happen?

>Sky might jot down things in one of their original languages, sketch things they remember, or just ask for something to do. 

23. How organized are they? How does this organization/disorganization manifest in their everyday life?

>As organized as possible! They carry around the same things, obsessively straighten things or move things to the right spot, and might spend time fixing something they already fixed in order to feel some control.

24. Is there one subject of study that they excel at? Or do they even care about intellectual pursuits at all?

>Not particularly. At least not human subjects. Magic is a great skill of theirs, but they limit it to their “calming” magic so it specifically works on pinatas and animals.

25. How do they see themselves 5 years from today?

>back home maybe, or still on Pinata Island living a life and studying.

26. Do they have any plans for the future? Any contingency plans if things don't workout?

>Not particularly. Eternity is a long time.

27. What is their biggest regret?

>Oof. On pinata island? Probably getting into a fight with someone and permanently hurting them. Or hurting them beyond their sort of idea of how it’s okay to hurt them. Original world? Dying.

28. Who do they see as their best friend? Their worst enemy?

>On the island, they get along well with Petula and Leafos and their family. Costalot and Sky would brawl if they ever crossed paths probably. 

29. Reaction to sudden extrapersonal disaster (eg The house is on fire! What do they do?)

>Unless it results in the hurt or death of say a person/animal or the permanent death of a pinata, they don’t mind. Things can be replaced! People, animals, and pinata? Not so much.

30. Reaction to sudden intrapersonal disaster (eg close family member suddenly dies)

>Sky’s for sure gonna blame themself if at all applicable. They’ll grieve and move on eventually though. They always do.

31. Most prized possession?

>None, materials don’t matter. But they would like to keep these interesting packets of seemingly infinite grass, sand, and snow. They’re neat!

32. Thoughts on material possessions in general?

>Mortals seem to care about them, so they try to remember how to care about it for them. Really doesn’t matter to them though.

33. Concept of home and family?

>Searching desperately for a permanent one, but they know that’s impossible. They’ve got Sherbet in their universe though, thats all that matters.

34. Thoughts on privacy? (Are they a private person, or are they prone to 'TMI?)

>Doesn’t care about privacy much at all. They’ll tell people who ask that they’re supernatural and a shapeshifter and immortal and whatever, but they likely won’t admit to being a demon. If someone smart might put 2 and 2 together they’ll avoid telling about anything unnatural about themselves at all. 

35. What activities do they enjoy, but consider to be a waste of time?

>None, they don’t find wasting time an issue.

36. What makes them feel guilty?

>Unnecessary cruelty or being unable to help or save someone. Fighting does not count as an unnecessary cruelty though. Bloody noses and broken bones can be fun and consensual sometimes.

37. Are they more analytical or more emotional in their decision-making?

>Both. If it’s something very important, they’ll think it over. Most of the time they’re emotional, preferring the spur of the moment decisions to help or maybe beat the crap out of someone. 

38. Would they consider themselves a Type A or Type B personality?

>Type B? I dunno :/

39. What recharges them when they're feeling drained?

>Sleep, going out, exploring. Who knows

40. Would you say that they have a superiority-complex? Inferiority-complex? Neither?

>Superiority complex. Vainest mfer. Really trying to stop being so high and mighty but… not always successful.

41. How misanthropic are they?

>Eh. They find seculusion the easiest but sometimes you must go out on the town to just fuck around with people. It’s fun!

42. Hobbies?

>Studying stuff!

43. How far did they get in formal education? What are their views on formal education vs self-education?

>A highschool equivalent in their original world, none on the island. 

44. Religion?

>Yes. All of them. In their world, there was no real wrong answer! These uncertain universes scare them some though, they really rely on hope?!

45. Superstitions or views on the occult?

>Yes! All of it also. Listen…. Their original world is Wild. Also magic does exist on the island.

46. Do they express their thoughts through words or deeds?

>Both, but prefers action

47. If they were to fall in love, who (or what) is their ideal?

>Anyone. As long as they’re willing to put up with Sky. But they have a tendency to fall for those who are scary looking and could probably beat them up because who doesn’t like a little danger?

48. How do they express love?

>All sorts of ways! Keen on physical affection and gifts. Good luck getting those three words out of them though

49. If this person were to get into a fist fight, what is their fighting style like?

>Professional, but extremely unethically brutal. Sure it’s above the belt, but They Did Just Purposefully Break Your Nose. And kick you really hard in the side.

50. Is this person afraid of dying? Why or why not?

>Done it a lot. Already technically dead. Bring it on baby!

#50 q #i dont remember where i found this sorry #sky

[gaiatheorist]

Daddy Issues.

The idea here was to write about ‘something else’, to clear my tangled mind of all of the hugely impactive peripheral issues floating in my atmosphere right now. It’s not going to work, and no quantity of “That is in the past.” or “I broke that cycle.” can blase-away the fact that a deeply dysfunctional development skewed my life into what it is now.

They and them, and this and that caused me to develop into what I am, an unemployed, 41 year old she-ish thing sitting typing into a knackered old Chromebook, with loads of keys missing, mainly on the left side, so I have to keep correcting typos, where I think I’ve hit the key with my dead hand, and it turns out I haven’t. That’s a literal observation, but also a fitting metaphor, a damaged person, using an unfit for purpose tool, to the best of their limited ability, in a tenacious-draining attempt to just keep functioning.

It’s not the ponies, and the foreign holidays, and the ‘stuff’, of course there’s a niggle that my eldest half-sister was given a house, and my younger one is undertaking her second degree at Oxford, interspersed with exotic holidays, when I’ve never even held a passport. I chose this path, I willingly elected to remove myself from their lives, I can’t resent them their indulgences, because I was the one who opted out of those spheres.  

There was no real drama to me ‘running away from home’ at the age of 18, no screaming rows and flouncing out, I’d been spending increasingly longer periods of time at the boyfriend’s house, one night in October 1995, I just didn’t ever go back home. He’d given me a Yale key, and told me the combination of outside-lights-on that mean his ex-girlfriend was there, and I ought to walk another lap around the block until she was gone. That’s a weird thing to remember, that if the outside light was left on, his ex was there to walk the dogs, and I was to stay out of sight, like dirty laundry. I was his rebound from her, they’d separated, after 11 years, in the July or August, I met him in the August, and I’d fully moved in by the October. For a few months, I was a shadow-thing, second-best, in hindsight, he might have held out hopes for a reconciliation with his ex, familiar ground and such, he always did prefer the easy option. I’m not easy.     

It wasn’t as ‘planned’ as the time I was going to leave sixth form, and take a job in a pharmacy in town, renting a room from a friend’s boyfriend. It wasn’t as dramatic as the time I was going to leave and live in my boyfriend’s grandma’s spare room, in the house where the gas and electric meters kept running out. My mother physically attacked me that time, screaming at me that I wasn’t taking THAT because she’d paid for it, dragging my clothes out of the bin-liners I was cramming them into, and tearing out a fair-sized chunk of my hair, when I just continued stuffing things back into bags. I needed to be out of there, for both of us, for all of us, we’ve since acknowledged that our respective ‘escapes’ from our fathers and families were more similar than either of us wanted to admit. We’re more different than we are similar, but, in a way, I also ‘jumped into bed with the first man that would have me.’ 

Her father was a monster. He was a paedophile, and he’s the grain of sand at the core of my oyster of not-telling, and not-asking-for-help. Why ask for help when there isn’t any, why change situations to protect others, when that takes away all of your own protection? I broke that cycle, I ‘saved’ my half sister and female cousins. Yes, I destroyed the family, but a family based on secrets and lies is worse than a fractured one. (Weird side-thought, I’m the only one of my siblings and cousins with a male child, I might have protected those girls, too, he’s dead, he died during his prison term, but his wife is still alive. If I hadn’t spoken out when I did there are at least five girl-children that might have been placed in his bed.) 

Her out-of-the-frying-pan was more obviously abusive. My father, not quite a monster, was violently unstable, and emotionally controlling. Bruises and scars fade in time, but the memories of emotional and psychological abuse are always there, temporal trip-wires, ready for the next trigger. My father, and her father, are the reasons I’ll never work in certain industries. Un-pretty-ing myself is a defensive mechanism, protecting me from some predators, and reducing the risk of being accused of being a try-hard slut, who will never be pretty, even under three inches of make-up. I’m content in combats and a ponytail, I don’t feel any need to paint myself pretty, but part of that links back to my father constantly berating and belittling any early attempts at femininity in me. I am clumsy, not graceful, and I’m never going to be a classic beauty, I accept these facts, but my non-binary, middle-ground ‘aesthetic’ rules out most customer-facing work. Cheers, Dad. 

Years of very hard work have enabled me to mostly disable my flinch-reflex. I’m one of the dead-behind-the-eyes types of abused children, rather than one of the hides-under-a-table types. My mother and father were both physically violent to my brother and I, so we learned the dead-response, our parents wanted the gratification of a reaction, and the two of us were already so emotionally messed up that denying the reaction was the only power-play we had. We would probably have had a lot less beatings and broken-things if we’d rolled over and showed our bellies, but we turned into resistant rock-children, unresponsive to the battering and berating, to frustrate our parents. Cheers, Dad, I can now stand face-to-face with violent and aggressive individuals, and keep my body language and tone of voice neutral. 

My father was unreliable, and unpredictable. When we still lived with him, there was no indication whether he would pick up his mandolin, and sing a nonsense-song with us, or backhand-slap us for no apparent reason. There were giddy-good times, but they were always tinged with the trepidation that we might do something bad, and set him off into a rage. We were never the reason for his rage, he was just mentally unstable, but that existence, coupled with the Catholic upbringing, caused behavioural shifts in my brother and I. He’s more ‘outward’, more hedonistic, more careless, he is more settled now, but for quite a long time, he lived a what’s-the-worst-that-can-happen sort of life, dangerous behaviours and risk-taking. I’m the other end of the spectrum, everything I ever do has to be risk-assessed to the nth degree, I’m incredibly self-limiting, and that probably has impacted on my mental health. (Piss off, well-meaning articles about the importance of an active social life, my Daddy Issues have really screwed up all of my human interaction.) 

Not wanting to ‘set off’ my father, and being hip-deep in the slurry of Catholic guilt complexes, I became a timid, invisible thing, so worried about being ‘caught’ and punished, constantly on-edge. That constant, all-encompassing paranoia tips your ‘normal’ anxiety response, being on-guard all the time for what other people might do to you doesn’t leave much energy spare for ‘yourself’. I never really built a sense of identity as a child, my adolescence was spent raising my half-sister, because I’d had the temerity to do away with my mother’s free childminders, so there wasn’t much time for exploration and development. I frustrate people-trying-to-help, when they ask me what I ‘enjoy’ doing, what I do ‘for myself’, because I can’t answer. Outside of a very strictly limited range of activities, I don’t know what makes me ‘happy.’ (I’ve just looked at Facebook, my younger half-sister is in Thailand, I’m sure she knows what makes her happy.)  Thanks, Dad, for having so much ego of your own that I skipped that step entirely, and became a different kind of doormat to my mother. That malleable need-to-please suits some people, but it never really sat easily with me. The little girls who grow up being told how nice and pretty they are seem to continue to seek that affirmation as women, it was something I’d never had, so I’ve never ‘missed’ it as such. I know I’m not ‘ugly’ or ‘stupid’, or any of the other things he called me, but that ‘cutting off’ behaviour is hard-wired, I don’t seek meaningful bonds with people because they might turn out to treat me like he did, and I piss people off with my ‘get the first one in’ self-deprecation. (Bored of telling professionals “I’m being facetious.” when I mock my disability and such.) 

My mother left him. I don’t know how many attempts she had made previously, but there were a lot of blood-and-snot-and-dufflecoats-over-pyjamas midnight car trips to stay with friends of hers for a few days. Children normalise events, ‘most’ people would be traumatised by those escape-flights, I suppose we were, until they became our ‘normal.’  I was seven, and my brother five, when we started having to sit very quietly in the waiting room of the solicitors. We looked at houses, and there was very little said about Dad not moving with us. She moved back to the village where her parents lived, and, for a little while, we were a single-parent-family, with Dad not paying the maintenance money on time, and either turning up, or not, to take my brother and I to his house at weekends. When he did bother to turn up, there were arguments, there never seemed to be any food in at his house, and he’d just bugger off and do his own thing all weekend, leaving my brother and I in the house. He started to lock us in after someone complained about us running feral, and he started to unplug the phone from the wall when we’d phone our mother to say he’d locked us in again. The overnight access stopped, there were more rows about the maintenance money, and we ended up going to the ‘Education Office’ for school uniforms, coats, and shoes, you could tell the other children in similar predicaments, because there were only two kinds of coat available, the better-off kids used to yell “Edjo!” at us. The lesson I learned from that was that people, in general, are untrustworthy. So I don’t trust people. There is always food in my house when I have my son here, and most of it isn’t the horrible cheap-tasting freezer-shop rubbish my mother used to buy, for convenience, because she worked long shifts, and because she was a genuinely awful cook. 

The single-parent-family thing lasted a couple of years. Mum-got-a-boyfriend before Dad-met-a-lady, with hindsight, they both reverted to pattern, she found a violent alcoholic, and he latched onto a quiet mouse of a thing, who wouldn’t say shit if she had a mouth full of it. My brother and I didn’t like the new man, we were already both damaged enough not to want to ‘bond’ with this stranger in double-denim who had moved into ‘our’ space. Our ‘normal’ wasn’t his ‘normal’, we had been raised in chaos and squalor, he had been raised by a mother with very exacting standards of behaviour and housekeeping. From the familiar, disordered squalor of living with a mother who vacuumed the downstairs carpets once a week, and was so lax with the laundry that we grew out of anything at the bottom of the laundry basket before it was washed, to new rules. Stupid rules, like slippers indoors, and dishes put away as soon as they were washed and dried. Those rules made no sense to us, because we’d never known them. We didn’t like him, and then he started hitting our Mum. He battered her, we’d been there before, we’d phone the police, and chase him out of the house, and lock the doors. (Back then, the police wouldn’t ‘interfere with a domestic’, but if they had a drunk and disorderly causing a public disturbance outside, they had to do something, my brother and I were street-smart.)   

She didn’t learn, one of the many reasons I don’t really have a relationship with her. We, her children, would try to protect her, because she wouldn’t protect herself. She always took him back. 

He battered my mother, he attacked my brother more than once, but never laid a hand on me. I like to play fierce on that one, to pretend he sensed the fire in me, but I suspect he just knew how the police would view him assaulting a young girl/woman. 

I couldn’t live there, with that, I made sporadic attempts to get out before I eventually did, and inherited a new ‘father’, whilst creating another.  Too fast, too young, too much, “I want to give you babies” was a line from a Pulp song we’d puppy-love say to each other. His reaction when I showed him the pregnancy test was the reason I only ever bore one. (Fairly certain that a student who passed through the school I used to work in was his daughter, though. That’s a different story.) 

I gained a functional-patriarchal father-in-law. Christ, we’ve butted heads over the years, we’re both obtuse. I’m stronger, and faster, and taller, and leaner than all of his various daughters, step-daughters, and daughters-in-law, he didn’t understand me, he didn’t try to, he tried to feed me cake, to make me soft, and compliant. Not my style.  He had some very rigid ideas of what females should, and should not do, we ‘should’ work in shops, or be nurses, and wear nice blouses, we ‘should not’ be capable of independent thought, or ever challenge the authority of a superior testicularly endowed person. You can imagine how that worked out, along with the “Here, lass, you can’t lift that, I’ll get it!”, and such. That was his way, and he was set in it, there was no point in me trying to change him, but my son has seen me tense and clenched-of-jaw enough times to know what I object to. 

My son. I made a child, and, in doing so, made my ex into a father, apparently ahead of his schedule, but my reproductive system is very badly damaged, I didn’t know if I’d ever conceive and carry again, so I took that one chance. I’ve reflected back frequently, over the last couple of days, since Fathers Day, about how the ex ‘parented’ our son. He didn’t. That was ‘my’ job, because he’d been raised to think so. Aside from the biological fact that I breast-fed the tit-limpet for a year and a day, and that my body was slowly recovering from childbirth, I can’t see a biological distinction to validate the weird division of everything. (I’ll gloss over the fact that I had such massive post-natal depression that I was hallucinating, and shaved my head, but continued zombie-ing on, with a forced smile, because ‘at least he is not ginger!’)  The ex “couldn’t” change nappies, because the wipes, the bags, and the nappy-tapes were “meant for women’s hands.” Obviously, he couldn’t breast-feed, but he didn’t pick up the midnight-screaming ‘grub’ either, he never learned the subtle differences in ‘hungry’, ‘wet’, ‘soiled’, and ‘attention, please’ cries, they were all just an elbow in my ribs until I made them stop, with my weird woman-magic. 

He didn’t like to handle ‘the grub’, he said he felt that the baby was too small, too fragile, for his man-hands. I may as well have existed in the 1950s, where children were strapped to the woman until school-age. (There’s a ‘Dinosaurs’ aside, the boy didn’t call him ‘Dad’ for years, we were ‘Mum’, and ‘My Mum.’) He was a Saturday-Dad, except Saturdays were band-days, I worked on Sundays, so, after Sunday lunch at the in-laws, he’d take the small one to the park in town, where he said he “Felt like one of those Dads with weekend access.”, hmm, I wonder how you could change that? As the boy grew, nothing much changed, I was responsible for him, and the house, and the ex. The ex was ‘emotionally absent’, some computer game, some TV show, some band practice, he never taught the child to ride a bike, or lace a pair of boots, because he was always ‘busy’, or ‘tired’. I have taught the boy many, many things, but it hurt my heart a little to have to ask the ex to show him how to shave, that’s something I couldn’t teach him. 

I have had some incredibly bad examples of fathering, and I married a man who didn’t fancy getting involved with the process. Fathers Day is awkward for me, because I can’t join in on the love-fest. I have Daddy Issues.