Hi There! Can You Give Any Advice On How To Write Someone Becoming Disabled Through A Traumatic Injury?

My Takes

Consider these

People with personality disorders are not inherently abusive. Yeah, even people with NPD and ASPD (why do I have to say that?) There is no such thing a narcissistic abuse. People with ASPD are not serial killers. They are people, stop putting them down for no reason. People with personality disorders are welcome here. All of them.

Armchair diagnosing is bad. I don't care how shit someone is, if you call them a narcissist, a psychopath, a sociopath, a compulsive/pathological liar, or literally any other disorder that they haven't been professionally diagnosed with, you're a dick. You can't know what's going on in their head. You are not their doctor and are not qualified to diagnose them. And it's just a dick move to diagnose Casey Anthony as someone with a heavily-stigmatized symptom THAT I ALSO HAVE HAD

Stop. Tagging. Your. Writing. With. Disability. Tags. The PTSD tag is nearly unusable because everyone tags their fics as PTSD. Stop it. That space is not for you. It's for us.

People with intellectual, developmental, cognitive, whatever disability deserve to be heard.

As do semispeaking and nonspeaking autistics.

Yes, we do need to listen to caretakers, they're how some people communicate. No one is invalid because they're a caretaker, they're invalid when they're an ableist caretaker.

If the autism "cure" were to exist right now, it would mean eugenics. I don't give a shit if you want it, it would mean eugenics. Society is way too anti-autism for us to trust non-autistics with a cure. I won't get into my rant about the concept of a cure unless asked, it doesn't matter. What does matter is that if that cure is created, it will be forced on people, even those who vehemently oppose it, so it can't exist yet without putting people in danger.

Autism Speaks is shit. So is National Autistic Society. So is the Autism Society. ASAN is on thin fucking ice.

Stop tagging political posts with NPD, ASPD, compulsive liar, or no empathy. You're being ableist and armchair diagnosing. And putting that shit on our feeds.

ABA is bad. Yes, always. All of it. I lost a friend to ABA and I will not budge on this. All pro-ABA people will be blocked, I do not give a shit.

I do not care about syscourse. I am not a system and am not qualified to have an opinion on it.

If you point out typos, grammar mistakes, or whatever when the other person hasn't explicitly said it's okay, stop. You're being ableist.

Stop using TBI as an insult. Yes, I was dropped on my head (okay, I fell, but still,) as a baby. Fuck you too.

This is a safe place for systems and I'm firmly anti-Split.

Autistic and intellectually disabled people are allowed to transition, be queer, get tattoos, drink, have sex, whatever, should they so want.

Mental age is bullshit. He doesn't have the mind of a two-year-old, he has the mind of an adult with IDD.

The posts of disabled people are not an excuse for you to trauma-dump. I don't care what your ex did, that person with NPD wasn't talking about them and it's a dick move to bring that up on their unrelated post.

People should not have to work to live. No one. Ever. Period.

Healthcare should be free

Caretakers need to stop killing their disabled charges

Autism Mommies (TM) are shitty people.

Don't even get me started on Fathering Autism (bitch, you aren't fathering autism, you're fathering ABBY)

Disabled people deserve dignity and privacy. All of them. Yes, even those ones. We're still people. You don't need to know how we go to the toilet.

Fiction does not determine morality and sending people anon hate telling them to kill themselves is a shitty thing.

Telling people to kill themselves in general is a shitty thing. What are you gonna do if they actually do it and you get arrested for manslaughter?

Trans kids deserve to transition, intersex kids deserve to not be mutilated and forced onto HRT when they can't or don't consent, children can and will be queer

Actual sex education needs to be standard

Label policing LGBT+ identities is bad

Devotees and "transableds" are not allowed here

Children and disabled people deserve to exist in public, even if you don't like us

Stop. Saying. Retard. Stop using autistic as an insult. Stop it and go to hell.

I'm pro-choice and I know you don't actually care about fetuses with Down Syndrome, you're just trying to guilt me.

I will reblog with more takes as they occur to me

And, most importantly, listen to ALL disabled voices. All of them. Every single one. We stand together or we don't stand a chance.

Comic by howbabycomic.com. Perfect for people with chronic illnesses and disabilities

i hope people don’t confused kleptomania with shoplifting. people with kleptomania tend to steal things that don’t have much use to them- shop lifters steal things like bags and clothing items.

when I was a kid, I use to steal pens from my classmates and keeping them at home, not using them at all. i once stole a girl in my classes pocket notebook, which i kept in my junk drawer and didn’t even look at. i felt bad after stealing these things. and I never planned to, it just happened.

so for all those shop lifters that brag about what they stole on tumblr, shame on you. i have seen some of those shop lifters say, “oh, I have kleptomania and I can’t help it”, you don’t have kleptomania.

Hi. This isn’t about writing necessarily, but i still want to see what you think of it. :( I just recently gave somebody a free character design as part of an event and the character i’d made was using mobility aids (a cane and a prosthetic leg). I noticed later the owner saying the character wouldn’t need a prosthetic or cane because they’d decided already that the character would have disability negating magic. I am able-bodied. I don’t know this person closely. Is it wrong of me to feel bad? Should i speak up even if it’s not my business and they can do whatever they want with the design?

Hello,

No, it's not wrong of you to feel bad or be upset, that's a shabby thing to do and I would be upset. Maybe direct message them about the change and try to talk it out with them, explain how you feel, maybe explain why magic that negates disability is a bad thing? Don't accuse them, just ask them and talk to them.

But no, you aren't wrong in not liking the change, you are very much justified in that.

Mod Aaron

"Fun" little things I did as a pyromaniac growing up (with possibly a hint of pyrophilia)

-staring into every candle flame ever especially the tealights around the house

-staring directly into every fireplace, the automatic one my grandparents had, the fake one at Tim Hortons, the display fire at a lobby in what was probably an airport

-staring and watching the flames of campfires and bonfires, watching with a smile as marshmallows caught fire, paper and cardboard turned to ash, the wood for kindle cracked and popped as it turned to charcoal even watching while my eyes watered from the smoak

- playing with lighters once I taught myself how to use them and got over the hot sting of the metal on my thumb when it's been recently lit. Flicking it over and over till the sparks turn to a steady flame and doing it again when the flame dies out

- burned my hair clippings in my friends garage after she did my hair during high school

- burned old school papers I no longer needed

- accidentally burned a while in a plastic bag full of garbage and created a burnt mess in my room after trying to burn some receipts over the garbage so the ashes would fall into the bag but instead the stuff in the bag caught fire and yeah wasn't fun cleaning up

- stole from my mom's tealight stash and burned candle after candle

- left a candle burning too long and got wax everywhere

- enjoyed standing in the candle isle in stores and wishing I could have them all except the scented ones

- got happy when places my mom took me too had some sort of flame like a candle in the corner even if it was scented (cuz it was usually mild and okay enough for my sensory issues to handle, like lavender or vanilla)

- got sad or bored when other people blew out birthday candles

- waited for cars to catch fire while driving past a crash scene. They never did

- related way too hard to the meme with the girl and the burning house behind her

- thought burnt down buildings were aesthetically pleasing

- loved every fire scene in media especially loving stuff with explosions

- staring at YouTube videos for days about people burning stuff, blowing stuff up, watching lava, worked with hot metal etc

- got fixated on the tv whenever the fireplace channel was on

- got way to into science class when fire was involved and asked the teachers assistant to demonstrate again so I could sit with her and watch tirth up paper turn to ash

- proceeding to poke said ashes

- always trying to touch something after its been burned

- sometimes enjoying the smell of burnt food like popcorn or pancakes

- trying to see how long I could hold something that was on fire

- daydreamed about fire eating esp after mark and Ethan did it for unus anus that one time

- proceed to ask my mom for sparklers after my friends mom stood us on the back deck and and gave us all a bunch of sparklers to hold and watch fizzle for my friends birthday. Never got sparklers

- daydreamed about lighting the matches I had given my mom after finding them near our back yard. At least I was responsible and didn't let my little siblings have them when I found them.

- related far too deeply to this girl in a book of misfits who lit matches and put them out on her arm just to feel something.

- again with a girl who did something similar with a lighter on her thighs in some show my mom watched.

- loved every character ever with fire powers

- wished I was a firebender like Zuko and being afraid of the fact that I related to azula just as much as I did Zuko. But also thinking azuka was badass until I realized we're both just mentally ill.

- demanding fire resistance even if I didn't play a teifling in dnd

- dragons.

- saved and still save up things like leaves from my house plants just so I can burn them later

- purposefully trying anything to do with fire in my witchcraft, whatever involves fire and burning stuff I wanted to do

- made several attempts to start a fire without any idea how to make one

- tried lighting a fire in our firepit during winter, did not last

And much more

Pyromania is not just burning down a building one day, not just waking up one day and deciding to start fires on people's property or blow stuff up and become a terror and a menace.

Pyromania is much much more than staring at flames as a kid because its visually stimulating, and more than just being drawn to the fire element.

It's impulses, it's intrusive thoughts, it's the small things for satisfaction, it builds up, it typically starts during childhood development because we're all fucking mentally ill and likely very traumatized.

It's not quirky or cool, it gets scary.

It kept me from doing worse things, it saved me when my brain chemistry was so unbalanced I would have done a lot of regrettable things, it terrorises my mind with constant "what if x burned or you burned x" thoughts

And so on

It's never been a thing to take lightly

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.

Yeah, Cass is a completely different issue. Young Justice seems to have a racism issue (and a quarter billion other issues,) and how they changed Cassandra's storyline is a good example of that. Excellent points

(Cass will also get her own post, by the way)

I love the Young Justice Barbara Gordon

[Plain text: I love the Young Justice Barbara Gordon.]

(Keep in mind that I am not paraplegic, just a nerd)

I was never the biggest fan of the original Killing Joke storyline (and I will fight people on this,) but I think Young Justice managed to turn it into a plot that wasn't actually bad. In fact, they did a lot of things really well.

The original storyline, The Killing Joke, gave Barbara Gordon waist-down paralysis after the Joker shot her. The problem with that is that he shot her in the stomach at an extremely close range, the muzzle of the gun literally pressed to the middle of her stomach. At that close a range, depending on the gun and bullet, he probably shattered half of her spinal cord, if not more. The thing about shatter injuries to the spinal cord is that they cause more complications in upper-body mobility than other spinal injuries. If a significant portion of her spinal cord was shattered, Barbara wouldn't be as good as she is at fighting. The damage would cause problems in the rest of her body. And then, of course, everyone is grieving for her and so sad that she'll never walk again and have to retire and I'm pretty sure Batman does something drastic? And that's... really not a plot non-disabled writers should go for.

However, in Young Justice, it's completely different. Barbara saw Cassandra Cain, who was unidentifiable but very small so obviously a young child, going after Joker with a sword, so she chose to get between the child and her target to prevent Cass from doing something that could never be taken back. She took the slash, which hit her lower back, just above her tailbone, so that it didn't go to Joker's neck. And the other characters handled it well. Nightwing was a bit panicked, of course, but that's because Barabara had a severe injury that was life-threatening. Batman, knowing that Nightwing had called for a medical evacuation and that he was handling first aid, took the sword from a terrified Cassandra ever so gently, and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. Cassandra was horrified, of course, but it was because she'd just hurt someone who wasn't her target severely, not because Barbara was now disabled. And then Barbara tells her that she didn't do it to save Joker, she did it to save Cass. And Cass is horrified and probably hates herself in the moment, sure, but that memory later becomes something that strengthens her. Cass gets kidnapped in that episode and remembering that during her captivity helps her. It's a memory of the woman who would later become her older sister and one of her best friends. She knows that Barbara, the woman who has done so much for her, will help her. She won't rest until Cassandra is safe, even if it means coming after her herself.

I also really like how the plot handled this. Number one, we don't know off the bat why Barb is paralyzed, it doesn't come up until it's relevant, she's just paralyzed. And when it does come up, it's not a tragedy, it's Barbara risking her life to save the soul of a child who didn't understand the moral consequences of what she was about to do. She chose to do that and she would do it again. That's a really interesting way of subverting the exhausted "disabled by an accident" trope, because yes, it was an accident on Cass's part, but Barbara knew she was probably going to get badly hurt. It's similar to a character running into a burning building to save someone else. They accept the potential consequences because they couldn't live with themselves if they didn't help. She took the risk, she knew what could happen, which is so much better than her having no choice and being shot. It's far less tired an idea and a very interesting spin that I quite like.

Going back to the injury, let's get in-depth about that. I mentioned how a shatter would impact her upper body, too. But the way she was injured in Young Justice, which was probably severing the connection between two very low vertebrae or possibly cutting a vertebra itself if Cass put enough force behind it, makes sense. It wouldn't have as much a major impact on her upper body, so it makes sense that she can throw the person who snuck up on her like it's easy. Barbara can be an excellent hand-to-hand fighter and it's not unexplainable. We don't see her exercising in her chair, likely because she has the wrong chair for both exercising and her disability (she has a hospital-type wheelchair instead of a lightweight chair, which is, I think, just poor research,) but she clearly still does because she's still extremely good.

Also, I like how there's no cure plot. The show might still be ongoing so I don't know if that'll last, but for now, she hasn't been cured and shows no desire to be. The comics would occasionally have her paralysis cured and thank the gods they didn't go with that, even with a character (we won't get into the absolute disaster of Violet Harper here) who could, in theory, heal her, and I love that. For some reason writers are afraid of keeping their disabled characters disabled, so I'm surprised and glad they didn't take the easy out.

Finally, I love that Oracle is still able to do field work with special equipment. Does she go onto the actual field herself? No, not really. But she uses small drones and other things to help out, such as the tiny drone that gave Cass a lock pick or her hacking into systems to protect her allies from security measures. Babs doesn't need to stop being a superhero because she's disabled but also doesn't suddenly use a mech or something, she just finds ways to work with her new circumstances to keep doing what she wants to do, just in a different way. She's still a massive threat to her enemies, just in a different way, utilizing talents she already had (Barbara is extremely intelligent and very creative) to continue to help people.

TL;DR, I really, really like how Young Justice handled Barbara Gordon. If we must have more characters disabled in accidents, this is a very good way to do that.

We love people with low and no empathy here!

Talking about a discourse that doesn't even exist on Tumblr

On Tumblr, us higher support needs nonverbal/nonspeaking people often had 2 possible scenarios to deal with:

1. People ignore us and our opinion because our writing isn't "proper" English, and they make fun of us or comment on our writing style.

2. People think we're faking because our writing is good.

I couldn't care less about scenario number 2. And luckily I'm not affected by scenario number 1.

But what happens now is that somebody tries to discuss a Twitter discourse that simply doesn't exist here on Tumblr: Nonverbal/nonspeaking people with severe or profound autism and/or severe or profound intellectual disability who use FC to run their blogs.

This isn't happening.

Nobody on here (except maybe 1 person, but even there I'm not sure) has profound autism. Severe yes, there are some. But we don't use FC to run our blogs. Nobody on here (except maybe 1 person) has a profound ID. Severe yeah, maybe. But most people with ID are mild or moderate. And none of them use FC to run their blog.

So what happens now is scenario number 3:

3. People (or rather 1 online troll) think that what we write is facilitated and not our own words.

Especially those of us who have severe autism and/or ID. This is worse than scenario number 1 or 2. Especially because there's no way to disprove it. The better our grammar, the higher the probability that somebody else wrote our posts; at least to this online troll.

So whenever you encounter someone who says that what we write is facilitated and/or written by someone else: Don't believe them. Yes, sometimes people write something for us, but we can always check if we agree with what's been written.

I've heard of the FC problem where caregivers wrote something for the nonverbal/nonspeaking person, and it always was about how great FC was, etc. I think this was on Twitter and on individual blogs somewhere on the internet. But this isn't happening on Tumblr. Nobody with severe autism and/or severe or profound ID uses FC to run their blog on Tumblr.

It's basically "Yelling into the void".

Edit:

Since this post reached people who aren't aware of what was going on lately:

FC is short for Facilitated Communication. It's a method for people who can't speak and struggle greatly with other communication methods, such as writing, signing, or using an AAC device.

There's nothing wrong with people helping someone to run their blog; I, too, sometimes need help to run my blog. There's also nothing wrong with people writing posts or messages for someone. This post was only to inform others that nobody on Tumblr uses FC full time to run their blog. Because this is what this troll believes. She basically complains about something that's not the case.

Okay.

People with low empathy are great.

Not despite it, or because of it, y'all are good ppl because you are people.

Ppl with lower empathy can be friendly, loving, caretakers.