applying reduce reuse recycle to ocs. dipping them carefully into flowing water and seeing what sloughs off and then collecting all the shed material until theres enough for another guy to be made.

Peculiar how height is considered masculine but when i as a man wear tall shoes or “heels” in the pursuit of this I am cross dressing?

(original post)

SUPREMELY delighted by this. The idea that Susan makes source engine sound effects is extremely good

Another tf2 poster… Yes, I main Medic and yes that is my loadout in the game.

@yeenboybignaturals

Date a man who does the dishes and tends to the hearth. Whose laughter crackles like fire. Who always smells vaguely of smoke and whiskey.

Date a girl who is as fascinated with what’s on your insides as your outsides… On the upside, she’s more than happy to stitch you up if you get injured. Maybe a little too happy.

Sephardi Jewish wedding dress from Morocco, 19th century

Sorry for the spamrygon

Terezi, Caliborn, and Meulin actually are really good disabled representation, but the abled aren’t ready for that conversation. And will, in fact, kill you if you bring this up. Because god forbid disabled people be allowed to enjoy having flawed or complex characters be like them in the same way abled people get to have all the time. Lol.

I’m sorry that these characters can’t serve as inspiration porn for abled people. I’m sorry that they’re not there to serve as PSAs for abled people.

And I’m sorry that disabled people actually tend to like that kind of thing. We tend to like not being reduced to a label that abled people need to be educated about in sob stories with hopeful endings that the disabled person may one day be able to at least fake “normalcy”. We tend to like when our existence isn’t treated as a tool by and for people who don’t understand or empathize with us or our experiences. We tend to like when characters who share traits and experiences with us are treated as people who are capable of being flawed, capable of fucking up, and capable of being bad people. Abled people get to have that all the time- they get to have the glory of reveling in large swathes of characters that share their experiences and are shown to be complicated, shown to be capable of both great good and great evil. Shown to be worthy of the title of “human”.

Every time disabled people get to experience the bare minimum of consideration for abled people in fiction, the abled feel the need to stomp it out. That’s not their fucking call to make- it’s ours. I’m tired of seeing abled people stake a claim in something they won’t even take a moment to understand. I loathe the level of comfortability they express in speaking over people who would have been the effected groups.

This isn’t your territory.

You do not get to be an arbiter.

@touchtone-spiritphone

Caliborn is good representation because his disability isn’t written with hostility. What a lot of abled people don’t understand is that having disabled villains is perfectly fine- awesome, even! Having disabled characters be problematic is also fine! Once again, awesome, even!

The issue with the way people outside of the affected minorities trying to be the arbiters in what is and isn’t good representation… Is that they strip away the nuance from the conversation. And in the process, silence the actual affected groups.

Caliborn isn’t allowed to be labeled as a well written disabled character because he’s a villain. Terezi isn’t allowed to be labeled as a well written blind character because she experiences the “magical disability cure” plot line. Meulin isn’t allowed to be labeled as good deaf representation because she’s a Tumblr joke.

These aren’t actually problems on their own. None of these indicate them being bad representation, because “bad disabled representation” to disabled people implies a different thing than it does to abled people. We don’t care if a disabled character is a villain, or that they cause problems, or if they suck as a person. We don’t even tend to really care if they encapsulate our full experience- because it’s different for everyone, and sometimes that’s not really the point of the story! What we care about is whether or not they were written with hostility. What we care about is if their existence implies a form of violence towards real disabled people.

That list earlier of why those characters can’t be good representation… Those are often actual reasons that are cited.

It leaves out the fact that Caliborn’s learning disability is handled with tact- it’s explained in text, and we see how it affects him- and at one point, we even see through his own eyes. His disability is handled with compassion, and it adds genuine depth to his character. It leaves out that Terezi’s “magical disability cure” arc was, textually, a bad decision made in a moment of weakness. She immediately regretted it. Having spent years being blind and learning how to navigate the world with that in mind made it so that getting her sight back was a sensory nightmare- which is actually incredibly realistic. It leaves out that Meulin’s relationship with her deafness is nothing short of positive. Her deafness isn’t a sob story, she has no regrets or ill feelings about it- learning how to accommodate it has actually brought her a lot of great joy in life. Sign language is something she’s very passionate about. We don’t get that very often.

These are all entirely not hostile. These are objectively good approaches to writing disabled characters. Yes, they’re flawed as people, and yes, their writing does have some hiccups here and there, but they’re incredibly enjoyable characters to actual disabled people because their presence isn’t a punchline, nor is it a PSA, nor is it inspiration porn.

So, yeah, these are good disabled representation. Including Caliborn.