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alpacahat67 · 1 year

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Idia Shroud is Autistic-Coded; Here's Why

Hello! Happy Autism Awareness Month! In celebration, I will be posting a wholeeee load of autistic traits I have found in Idia. This is coming from a person who, while undiagnosed, is most likely autistic.

If you have any additions, please tell me in whatever way is most convenient (comments, reblogs, asks, dms... whatever.) This list will likely be evergrowing as more events, vignettes, and story content are added to TWST. Some of these may be a stretch but ya know.

This is organized by trait for your (and my) convenience. Begins under cut!

*Warning, I am not a medical professional. I'm just autistic and for a while got fixated on autism itself. Which is why I call myself autistic... I've been researching this shit for many years lol

We'll be starting with DSM-5 requirements in order to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Then, we will move to common experiences (things that most autistic people experience, but aren't a tell-tale sign that you're autistic and aren't a requirement for a professional diagnosis.) Finally will be disorders that Idia shows symptoms of that tend to co-occur with ASD.

Numbered list will explain the traits Idia demonstrates. At the end, the diagnostic criteria specified will be stated in parentheses and quotation marks.

A) Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts...

Generally, Idia is seen to have trouble communicating with his peers if not behind a screen or while interacting with something he enjoys (such as talking about anime or playing a board game.) ("Deficits in social-emotional reciprocity, ranging, for example, from abnormal social approach and failure of normal back-and-forth conversation...")

Idia's way of expressing emotion is difficult to pin down. He will go from speaking very quietly (and stuttering usually) in a near-monotone voice with an "emotionless" expression to talking loudly, quickly, and with a HUGE smile on his face. We don't quite get to see how he responds to nonverbal communication or how he portrays it himself (probably because it doesn't come up, or because of live2d restrictions), but we do learn that he hates eye contact I believe in his Birthday Boy vignette when he claims to hate having to laugh and make eye contact with normies (masking right there buddy go to a doctor) ("Deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction, ranging, for example, from poorly integrated verbal and nonverbal communication; to abnormalities in eye contact and body language or deficits in understanding and use of gestures; to a total lack of facial expressions and nonverbal communication.")

This is where it could kinda get stretchy, partially because I for the life of me am having trouble understanding A.3. BUT. Idia is often very blunt, to the point where he's straight up rude, especially in situations where that kind of attitude is... not very helpful. See the Phantom Bride event when he chastises the boys coming to rescue him for looking disheveled after fighting for their lives, which makes them not want to rescue him despite his life being on the line (I think Ace even goes off on him for this lol.) Furthermore, the only people amongst his peers that he will indulge are Azul, Ortho and (unknowingly, and only online) Lilia. The rest he has zero interest in, whether he despises or is scared of them. They're all normies. Finally, it's shown that throughout his life he has had very little if not zero friends in real life aside from Ortho. To be fair, I don't think there were many kids his age back home lol. ("Deficits in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships, ranging, for example, from difficulties adjusting behavior to suit various social contexts; to difficulties in sharing imaginative play or in making friends; to absence of interest in peers.")

Part one of an autism diagnosis down! Idia shows persistent deficits in each social and communication area specified through A.1-A.3. In order to be diagnosed, you also much show two out of four of restricted, repetitive behaviors specified through B.1-B.4 below.

B) Restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities, as manifested by at least two of the following, currently or by history...

Due to live2d restrictions, we never exactly get to see Idia physically stim. (Well, I'd argue we get to see Floyd physically stim with his constant swaying back and forth, but not like they can flap their hands or anything.) This one's a stretch, but his form of verbal stimming could be the little sound effects he makes at times, mostly in book 6 actually. Specifically, his "DA DA DA DAAAAA" after explaining the plot of Star Rogue to the overblot victims in Styx as well as his "BOOM BADA BOOM BOOM BOOM! HAH!" after finishing Ortho in the flashback sequence. Other than that, the only other ideas I'd have for repetitive movements or sounds are headcanons. I don't know if I'd count this one. ("Stereotyped or repetitive motor movements, use of objects, or speech")

This is another one I don't think we ever see in-game. I don't know... the things I could consider part of this criteria would better fit as sensory things~! Again I'm an Idia connoisseur but if you know anything about this please tell me I will update this one. ("Insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, or ritualized patterns of verbal or nonverbal behavior")

Idia is shown to have MULTIPLE very strong interests. Whether this might be a special interest or hyperfixation... it's hard to tell, but I can sure guess. The longest-running interest we see him show to have, originating from way back when Ortho was still alive, is Star Rogue. Because he seems to know nearly everything about the game and has also maintained the interest for a long time, I would consider this a special interest (along with engineering and technomancy, which he's said to have excelled in since a young age.) Idia does talk about certain specific animes and other games he enjoys, but not to the degree of Star Rogue (yes that's my basis here), so I don't know if that's a special interest or just a hyperfixation. It's the same situation with idol groups, particularly Premo (or Fates on the Edge). This isn't even it. That man is fandom trash and I love him. ("Highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus")

Idia is shown on multiple occasions to have sensory issues. To the point where, similarly to his strong interests, I don't know if I know half of it. During the Phantom Bride event and his Union Birthday vignette, Idia complains about his neck feeling cold due to his hair being brushed behind his hair (PB) or up in a ponytail (UB). He also complains about his Phantom Bride suit AND his Birthday Boy suit being "stuffy", but that one could also be a stretch. In the Harveston event, Idia says that he only eats his apples canned or peeled, which I'd chop up to sensory issues once again. (Although, that one could also be under B.2) Idia constantly has his headphones around his neck to listen to music. A bit of a stretch, but they're also noise canceling, so there's a chance he uses them to avoid overstimulation. Finally, Idia states that he doesn't like fish because it's smelly and slimy. I get that Idia raw fish is texture hell. As far as I know, there's no point in which Idia under-reacts to sensory input (e.g. pain) or becomes very invested in it (like staring at a moving wheel.) ("Hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input or unusual interest in sensory aspects of the environment")

And there we have it. Autism diagnosis. Idia demonstrates persistent deficits in all three sections under A and at least two sections under B. BUT WAIT! We still have C-E!

C) Symptoms must be present in the early developmental period (but may not become fully manifest until social demands exceed limited capacities, or may be masked by learned strategies in later life).

Really, the only point in which we see Idia demonstrate autistic traits in early life is his interest in Star Rogue. This is probably just because of how the storyline is. We actually don't know very much about Idia OR Ortho when they were young. However I would argue that Idia does mask because of the multiple times where he immediately just gets upset prior to talking to someone (something he probably hides during conversation). And ofc that one time he complains about talking to normies in his Birthday Boy vignette (? it could've be a voice line.)

D) Symptoms cause clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of current functioning.

Idia's symptoms in fact significantly impair his life. I think that alone is obvious enough. We see it every time that man's on screen.

E) These disturbances are not better explained by intellectual disability (intellectual developmental disorder) or global developmental delay...

Symptoms that Idia experiences could very well be explained by other mental disorders such as social anxiety, but these are not intellectual disabilities. Explaining away ASD for Idia falls into a trap many autistic people do in real life with medical professionals who just can't believe that their patient is autistic for one reason or another; these people will sometimes receive a dozen different diagnoses that all could be better explained by autism spectrum disorder. That's not very cool. Therefore, this does not apply.

Specifically, Idia would likely have ASD co-morbid with social anxiety and most likely clinical depression. (I HAVE done some minor research into Idia and bipolar disorder, but that's a situation for another day and far more of a stretch than ASD ever could be.)

DSM-5 requirements cleared! Next stage, common experiences.

This is another thing I will need help for because it's not like there's scholarly articles on "things a lot of autistic people experience but it's definitely not something a doctor will ask you about." So please share. This is the list that will never stop growing.

Abnormal posture (Crewel gets onto Idia for not standing up straight, he often is portrayed sitting in chairs with his knees to his chest, and he's seen doing "dino hands" or "T-Rex arms" in battle mode on occasion.)

Target of bullying (Many autistic people, especially autistic girls, tend to be bullied more often than their allistic peers. While not always to his face, people do tend to talk bad about Idia behind his back, Ortho even has a 'Don't Talk Shit About My Brother' beam for the bullies lol.)

More tone + social stuff... (Things that the DSM-5 thing didn't quite fit. In book 6 he jokes about torturing the overblots and when everyone's like 'dude wtf' he's like 'what it was a joke dumbass.' Could be written off as just an odd sense of humor, or it could be difficulty reading the room lol.)

A love for lists and organization. (When Idia speaks autonomously in your guest room, he mentions having things exactly where you need them and how it's 'convenience'. He also seems to have a knack for practicality. It's not too much of a stretch to say it ties into a need for organization.) (Idia has every NRC student organized into multiple tier lists on the R-SSR rating system like the in-game cards based on certain factors, such as most social.)

Easily startled. (Self-explanatory. HieEh.)

Preference for connection through interests. (Another reason why he is disconnected from those around him, aside from the whole trauma thing, and calls most other people "normies." They don't "get" his interests, so he has no interest in being friends with them.)

Difficulty with processing time. (Remember when he had apparently been working on Ortho's uhhh starsender gear? For like 12 hours straight?"

Relaxes through interacting with interests (In the vignette I referenced in 7, when Ortho tells him to take a break, he decides to play Star Rogue. Ortho meant to sleep.)

Putting off needs until one can not longer ignore them. (Idia often gets so engrossed in what he's doing that he forgets to do basic self-care tasks like eating.)

Infodumping. (Shown a lot in book 6. Namely with his like 2-3 minute long rant about Star Rogue. The rest, such as him rambling on and on about Styx, seems to be used so the audience knows what the HELL is happening. He does go on rants outside of this book tho.)

Gifted kid (Yeah he was called a "boy genius.")

This is not a complete list by any means, I could go on for DAYS.

On the topic of co-occurring disorders, the two most obvious disorders Idia clearly is dealing with are social anxiety and depression. Both of which are often co-morbid with ASD.

While social anxiety and ASD have a lot of overlap, they aren't the same thing, but often autism can contribute to the development of social anxiety through masking and the general difficulties in socializing that come with autism. Allistic people tend to react negatively in response to an autistic person doing something that the allistic person deems unorthodox. This reaction can often cause a lot of internal turmoil for the autistic person due to rejection-sensitive dysphoria. Furthermore, masking requires a high level of awareness of one's environment as well as the judgment of others. Thus, social anxiety can often develop.

While I don't know how exactly autism might affect depression as it does social anxiety, I do know that depression is VERY common in autistic adults. 5 in 10 adults with ASD have depression, and living in a world built for those who are neurotypical is hard for anyone who is neurodivergent, which definitely does not help. And it sure as hell has to make it worse for Idia of all people.

Additions made by others (tysm!): @hey-haven mentions in a reblog Idia's low empathy towards other people. I recommend heading over to their blog to check out what they said because they do make an amazing point and it's probably far better than anything I could explain (lol). But to paraphrase, they cite specifically Idia making fun of his classmates who just fought for their lives to rescue him during the Phantom Bride event and his attitude towards the overblot victims and their reactions to being essentially kidnapped during book 6, in which he seems to not really "get" why they're so upset. Generally, when it surrounds emotions that aren't his own, he's pretty oblivious. They also bring up his little "whee-hee-hee" laugh! It brings up an observation I've seen of autistic people (seemingly) laughing at "random" or generally inappropriate times because we tend to express laughter in a voiced manner (like laughing out loud because you find something genuinely funny) rather than an unvoiced manner (like the little exhale you do at a funny photo on your phone). Idia laughs a lot, I don't know if it's realistic to connect it to autism or if it's better explained by him just being a weird guy (which I love about him don't get me wrong lol.) Although the study about this was with specifically autistic and non-autistic children though... it's food for thought I guess.

And with that, my essay comes to a close. Again, happy Autism Awareness Month! Share some of your favorite autistic, canon or otherwise, characters and boost autistic creators! And remember to not support Autism Speaks :)

Thank you for listening.

-Alpaca (autistic Idia Shroud enthusiast)

P.S. this post is so long that it's making my PC lag LMAOOOO

#Malleus is autistic too btw #So is Leona but that's because I said so he isn't autistic coded #twst #twisted-wonderland #idia shroud #autistic experiences #autistic pride #autistic headcanon #autism awareness month #idia shroud twst #idia shroud twisted wonderland #idia shroud is my babygirl i love him

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inourtownofhawkins · 1 year

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@eddiesbuttcheeks

Miles,

I know you’ll most likely ignore this message and tell the entire server an edited version of events, since that’s what you did when I DMed you on Twitter, but I don’t care what you do. I have screenshots of fucking EVERYTHING so don’t try to spin this shit.

In the short time I’ve known you, I literally have never seen a fully grown adult demand so much attention from a bunch of strangers on the internet. To the point where if anyone else said anything, it was irrelevant to them. But your word was gospel.

The amount of gaslighting you and your friends did when I said to you PERSONALLY that I felt like I was ignored and unwelcomed was insane. I could recount so many instances of where I was straight up ignored, but your friends said, “so many people talk, messages get lost”. Please, I have literally been in servers with more members and that are more active than yours and nobody’s messages were so blatantly ignored than many people’s in your server.

I would literally just post something in main, but everyone else would be practically having an orgy in the NSFW chat or selfies. Which, by the way, is not a normal way to talk to your friends. You shouldn’t want to fuck every single one of your friends, and you shouldn’t surround yourself with people who literally faun at your feet. That’s not reality.

But on top of those things; your apology you posted before deleting your whole account. You called yourself a victim – a victim of what exactly? This is why I know you have a victim complex because every single person who is genuinely a victim of something would never say “I am a victim; I’m not just acting like it” but then never say what they’re a victim of. If you were genuinely a victim of anything, you would never need to say you're a victim.

You also blame your BPD, which you say is undiagnosed but have brought it up constantly. Either you get diagnosed or you stop talking about a mental illness you think you have from googling your symptoms or other people have lead you to believe you have.

For whatever reason in that apology, you told people to go to you if you’ve hurt them to talk it out. But yet, you ignored my Twitter DM which was an opportunity to talk things out like adults. You knew my Twitter, Discord and Tumblr, you had multiple days to reach out and apologise and talk it out, but instead you told your friends an edited version of what I had said, leaving out key details and made me seem like the bad person when I literally DMed you privately to avoid drama and to hopefully be able to talk it out like actual fucking adults but clearly you never want to do that.

In your newest bio you claim to also have autism, yet I have asked a couple of people who have actually known you and none of them have told me that you’ve mentioned having autism. If you truly have both BPD and autism, you’re not stable enough to even be on the internet with the way you’re acting and reacting to things.

As someone who does have autism but never broadcasts it, I’m fucking ashamed that someone as old as you is acting like a fucking child. Grow the fuck up and stop thinking you’re gods gift when you’re not. You’re giving people with autism a bad name and it’s fucking embarrassing.

The reason why so many people don’t like you is because you’re a selfish, manipulative asshole who puts up the act of being this dude who gets bitches, when in reality all the bitches you get are your just as hypocritical friends.

I don’t give a fuck if your friends hate me and harass me; I can see you for who you truly are while their rose-tinted glasses only get foggier. And I know I’m far from the only person who feels this way.

I would say “I hope you realise how much you’re hurting people” but frankly, you’re a lost cause.

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missmentelle · 3 years

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Why Smart People Believe Stupid Things

If you’ve been paying attention for the last couple of years, you might have noticed that the world has a bit of a misinformation problem.

The problem isn’t just with the recent election conspiracies, either. The last couple of years has brought us the rise (and occasionally fall) of misinformation-based movements like:

Sandy Hook conspiracies

Gamergate

Pizzagate

The MRA/incel/MGTOW movements

anti-vaxxers

flat-earthers

the birther movement

the Illuminati

climate change denial

Spygate

Holocaust denial

COVID-19 denial

5G panic

QAnon

But why do people believe this stuff?

It would be easy - too easy - to say that people fall for this stuff because they’re stupid. We all want to believe that smart people like us are immune from being taken in by deranged conspiracies. But it’s just not that simple. People from all walks of life are going down these rabbit holes - people with degrees and professional careers and rich lives have fallen for these theories, leaving their loved ones baffled. Decades-long relationships have splintered this year, as the number of people flocking to these conspiracies out of nowhere reaches a fever pitch.

So why do smart people start believing some incredibly stupid things? It’s because:

Our brains are built to identify patterns.

Our brains fucking love puzzles and patterns. This is a well-known phenomenon called apophenia, and at one point, it was probably helpful for our survival - the prehistoric human who noticed patterns in things like animal migration, plant life cycles and the movement of the stars was probably a lot more likely to survive than the human who couldn’t figure out how to use natural clues to navigate or find food.

The problem, though, is that we can’t really turn this off. Even when we’re presented with completely random data, we’ll see patterns. We see patterns in everything, even when there’s no pattern there. This is why people see Jesus in a burnt piece of toast or get superstitious about hockey playoffs or insist on always playing at a certain slot machine - our brains look for patterns in the constant barrage of random information in our daily lives, and insist that those patterns are really there, even when they’re completely imagined.

A lot of conspiracy theories have their roots in people making connections between things that aren’t really connected. The belief that “vaccines cause autism” was bolstered by the fact that the first recognizable symptoms of autism happen to appear at roughly the same time that children receive one of their rounds of childhood immunizations - the two things are completely unconnected, but our brains have a hard time letting go of the pattern they see there. Likewise, many people were quick to latch on to the fact that early maps of COVID infections were extremely similar to maps of 5G coverage - the fact that there’s a reasonable explanation for this (major cities are more likely to have both high COVID cases AND 5G networks) doesn’t change the fact that our brains just really, really want to see a connection there.

Our brains love proportionality.

Specifically, our brains like effects to be directly proportional to their causes - in other words, we like it when big events have big causes, and small causes only lead to small events. It’s uncomfortable for us when the reverse is true. And so anytime we feel like a “big” event (celebrity death, global pandemic, your precious child is diagnosed with autism) has a small or unsatisfying cause (car accident, pandemics just sort of happen every few decades, people just get autism sometimes), we sometimes feel the need to start looking around for the bigger, more sinister, “true” cause of that event.

Consider, for instance, the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. In 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot four times by a Turkish member of a known Italian paramilitary secret society who’d recently escaped from prison - on the surface, it seems like the sort of thing conspiracy theorists salivate over, seeing how it was an actual multinational conspiracy. But they never had much interest in the assassination attempt. Why? Because the Pope didn’t die. He recovered from his injuries and went right back to Pope-ing. The event didn’t have a serious outcome, and so people are content with the idea that one extremist carried it out. The death of Princess Diana, however, has been fertile ground for conspiracy theories; even though a woman dying in a car accident is less weird than a man being shot four times by a paid political assassin, her death has attracted more conspiracy theories because it had a bigger outcome. A princess dying in a car accident doesn’t feel big enough. It’s unsatisfying. We want such a monumentous moment in history to have a bigger, more interesting cause.

These theories prey on pre-existing fear and anger.

Are you a terrified new parent who wants the best for their child and feels anxious about having them injected with a substance you don’t totally understand? Congrats, you’re a prime target for the anti-vaccine movement. Are you a young white male who doesn’t like seeing more and more games aimed at women and minorities, and is worried that “your” gaming culture is being stolen from you? You might have been very interested in something called Gamergate. Are you a right-wing white person who worries that “your” country and way of life is being stolen by immigrants, non-Christians and coastal liberals? You’re going to love the “all left-wingers are Satantic pedo baby-eaters” messaging of QAnon.

Misinformation and conspiracy theories are often aimed strategically at the anxieties and fears that people are already experiencing. No one likes being told that their fears are insane or irrational; it’s not hard to see why people gravitate towards communities that say “yes, you were right all along, and everyone who told you that you were nuts to be worried about this is just a dumb sheep. We believe you, and we have evidence that you were right along, right here.” Fear is a powerful motivator, and you can make people believe and do some pretty extreme things if you just keep telling them “yes, that thing you’re afraid of is true, but also it’s way worse than you could have ever imagined.”

Real information is often complicated, hard to understand, and inherently unsatisfying.

The information that comes from the scientific community is often very frustrating for a layperson; we want science to have hard-and-fast answers, but it doesn’t. The closest you get to a straight answer is often “it depends” or “we don’t know, but we think X might be likely”. Understanding the results of a scientific study with any confidence requires knowing about sampling practices, error types, effect sizes, confidence intervals and publishing biases. Even asking a simple question like “is X bad for my child” will usually get you a complicated, uncertain answer - in most cases, it really just depends. Not understanding complex topics makes people afraid - it makes it hard to trust that they’re being given the right information, and that they’re making the right choices.

Conspiracy theories and misinformation, on the other hand, are often simple, and they are certain. Vaccines bad. Natural things good. 5G bad. Organic food good. The reason girls won’t date you isn’t a complex combination of your social skills, hygiene, appearance, projected values, personal circumstances, degree of extroversion, luck and life phase - girls won’t date you because feminism is bad, and if we got rid of feminism you’d have a girlfriend. The reason Donald Trump was an unpopular president wasn’t a complex combination of his public bigotry, lack of decorum, lack of qualifications, open incompetence, nepotism, corruption, loss of soft power, refusal to uphold the basic responsibilities of his position or his constant lying - they hated him because he was fighting a secret sex cult and they’re all in it.

Instead of making you feel stupid because you’re overwhelmed with complex information, expert opinions and uncertain advice, conspiracy theories make you feel smart - smarter, in fact, than everyone who doesn’t believe in them. And that’s a powerful thing for people living in a credential-heavy world.

Many conspiracy theories are unfalsifiable.

It is very difficult to prove a negative. If I tell you, for instance, that there’s no such thing as a purple swan, it would be very difficult for me to actually prove that to you - I could spend the rest of my life photographing swans and looking for swans and talking to people who know a lot about swans, and yet the slim possibility would still exist that there was a purple swan out there somewhere that I just hadn’t found yet. That’s why, in most circumstances, the burden of proof lies with the person making the extraordinary claim - if you tell me that purple swans exist, we should continue to assume that they don’t until you actually produce a purple swan.

Conspiracy theories, however, are built so that it’s nearly impossible to “prove” them wrong. Is there any proof that the world’s top-ranking politicians and celebrities are all in a giant child sex trafficking cult? No. But can you prove that they aren’t in a child sex-trafficking cult? No, not really. Even if I, again, spent the rest of my life investigating celebrities and following celebrities and talking to people who know celebrities, I still couldn’t definitely prove that this cult doesn’t exist - there’s always a chance that the specific celebrities I’ve investigated just aren’t in the cult (but other ones are!) or that they’re hiding evidence of the cult even better than we think. Lack of evidence for a conspiracy theory is always treated as more evidence for the theory - we can’t find anything because this goes even higher up than we think! They’re even more sophisticated at hiding this than we thought! People deeply entrenched in these theories don’t even realize that they are stuck in a circular loop where everything seems to prove their theory right - they just see a mountain of “evidence” for their side.

Our brains are very attached to information that we “learned” by ourselves.

Learning accurate information is not a particularly interactive or exciting experience. An expert or reliable source just presents the information to you in its entirety, you read or watch the information, and that’s the end of it. You can look for more information or look for clarification of something, but it’s a one-way street - the information is just laid out for you, you take what you need, end of story.

Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, almost never show their hand all at once. They drop little breadcrumbs of information that slowly lead you where they want you to go. This is why conspiracy theorists are forever telling you to “do your research” - they know that if they tell you everything at once, you won’t believe them. Instead, they want you to indoctrinate yourself slowly over time, by taking the little hints they give you and running off to find or invent evidence that matches that clue. If I tell you that celebrities often wear symbols that identify them as part of a cult and that you should “do your research” about it, you can absolutely find evidence that substantiates my claim - there are literally millions of photos of celebrities out there, and anyone who looks hard enough is guaranteed to find common shapes, poses and themes that might just mean something (they don’t - eyes and triangles are incredibly common design elements, and if I took enough pictures of you, I could also “prove” that you also clearly display symbols that signal you’re in the cult).

The fact that you “found” the evidence on your own, however, makes it more meaningful to you. We trust ourselves, and we trust that the patterns we uncover by ourselves are true. It doesn’t feel like you’re being fed misinformation - it feels like you’ve discovered an important truth that “they” didn’t want you to find, and you’ll hang onto that for dear life.

Older people have not learned to be media-literate in a digital world.

Fifty years ago, not just anyone could access popular media. All of this stuff had a huge barrier to entry - if you wanted to be on TV or be in the papers or have a radio show, you had to be a professional affiliated with a major media brand. Consumers didn’t have easy access to niche communities or alternative information - your sources of information were basically your local paper, the nightly news, and your morning radio show, and they all more or less agreed on the same set of facts. For decades, if it looked official and it appeared in print, you could probably trust that it was true.

Of course, we live in a very different world today - today, any asshole can accumulate an audience of millions, even if they have no credentials and nothing they say is actually true (like “The Food Babe”, a blogger with no credentials in medicine, nutrition, health sciences, biology or chemistry who peddles health misinformation to the 3 million people who visit her blog every month). It’s very tough for older people (and some younger people) to get their heads around the fact that it’s very easy to create an “official-looking” news source, and that they can’t necessarily trust everything they find on the internet. When you combine that with a tendency toward “clickbait headlines” that often misrepresent the information in the article, you have a generation struggling to determine who they can trust in a media landscape that doesn’t at all resemble the media landscape they once knew.

These beliefs become a part of someone’s identity.

A person doesn’t tell you that they believe in anti-vaxx information - they tell you that they ARE an anti-vaxxer. Likewise, people will tell you that they ARE a flat-earther, a birther, or a Gamergater. By design, these beliefs are not meant to be something you have a casual relationship with, like your opinion of pizza toppings or how much you trust local weather forecasts - they are meant to form a core part of your identity.

And once something becomes a core part of your identity, trying to make you stop believing it becomes almost impossible. Once we’ve formed an initial impression of something, facts just don’t change our minds. If you identify as an antivaxxer and I present evidence that disproves your beliefs, in your mind, I’m not correcting inaccurate information - I am launching a very personal attack against a core part of who you are. In fact, the more evidence I present, the more you will burrow down into your antivaxx beliefs, more confident than ever that you are right. Admitting that you are wrong about something that is important to you is painful, and your brain would prefer to simply deflect conflicting information rather than subject you to that pain.

We can see this at work with something called the confirmation bias. Simply put, once we believe something, our brains hold on to all evidence that that belief is true, and ignore evidence that it’s false. If I show you 100 articles that disprove your pet theory and 3 articles that confirm it, you’ll cling to those 3 articles and forget about the rest. Even if I show you nothing but articles that disprove your theory, you’ll likely go through them and pick out any ambiguous or conflicting information as evidence for “your side”, even if the conclusion of the article shows that you are wrong - our brains simply care about feeling right more than they care about what is actually true.

There is a strong community aspect to these theories.

There is no one quite as supportive or as understanding as a conspiracy theorist - provided, of course, that you believe in the same conspiracy theories that they do. People who start looking into these conspiracy theories are told that they aren’t crazy, and that their fears are totally valid. They’re told that the people in their lives who doubted them were just brainwashed sheep, but that they’ve finally found a community of people who get where they’re coming from. Whenever they report back to the group with the “evidence” they’ve found or the new elaborations on the conspiracy theory that they’ve been thinking of (“what if it’s even worse than we thought??”), they are given praise for their valuable contributions. These conspiracy groups often become important parts of people’s social networks - they can spend hours every day talking with like-minded people from these communities and sharing their ideas.

Of course, the flipside of this is that anyone who starts to doubt or move away from the conspiracy immediately loses that community and social support. People who have broken away from antivaxx and QAnon often say that the hardest part of leaving was losing the community and friendships they’d built - not necessarily giving up on the theory itself. Many people are rejected by their real-life friends and family once they start to get entrenched in conspiracy theories; the friendships they build online in the course of researching these theories often become the only social supports they have left, and losing those supports means having no one to turn to at all. This is by design - the threat of losing your community has kept people trapped in abusive religious sects and cults for as long as those things have existed.

#missmentelle #askmissmentelle #conspiracy theories #cults #psychology #science #neuroscience

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freematthewrushin · 4 years

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#FREEMATTHEWRUSHIN CALL TO ACTION : please share share share

**THANK YOU TO ALL FOR YOUR CONTINUED LOVE, SUPPORT AND PRAYERS AS WE FIGHT TO BRING MATTHEW HOME THIS INJUSTICE. I DONT WANT MATTHEW TO DIE IN PRISON.**

Matthew Rushin was sentenced to 50 years for a non fatal car accident. His autism was never taken into consideration. No drugs or alcohol involved just his words used against him. The VBPD turned a car accident into a crime so each officer can get promoted. How disgusting! This was racial profiling! This was illegitimate legal lynching!

Matthew Rushin's guilt was decided the moment the Virginia Beach Police stepped on to the scene of the January 4, 2019 accident. None of the 17 Virginia Beach officers followed their own standard operating procedures to transport an injured and mentally confused and distressed person for evaluation.

They did not exhibit any understanding of autism in their interpretations of Matthews comments and actions. Instead, they took advantage of his vulnerability as they handcuffed him, questioned him for nearly 4 hours at the scene, lied to him about evidence, isolated him from his family, charged him with 2nd degree murder with a claim that the accident was an intentional attempt to kill himself by deliberately driving head on into another car.

The facts don’t support this, including the totality of the victim and witness statements, Matthew’s behavior and statements, and the forensic evidence.

It took less than 6 hours for Matthew’s freedom, his reputation, his future to be stolen by Virginia Beach Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice System.

Please ask Governor Northam, to refuse to allow the “system” to steal any more days from Matthew. Ask Governor Northam to grant Matthew an Absolute Pardon and do whatever it takes to free him today!

Matthew turns 22 on August 4th, 2020.

*******************************************************************************************

These are critical points:

1. Matthew was not taken for medical (and mental health evaluation) the evening of the crash. He has lost consciousness, had a prior serious brain injury, was banged up around the face and bleeding, was not making sense - yet, instead of taking him for evaluation and care, the police handcuffed and interrogated him for nearly 4 hours at the scene, then more at the police station (with lies and manipulation). He still has not had the physical evaluation he should have had that day - despite the fact that he has a cyst on his pituitary gland that was due evaluation the month he was jailed (19 months ago), AND he is having severe headaches, dizziness and temporary blindness.

2. Virginia Beach Police Department has a CIT (Crisis Intervention Team) program that is supposed to divert people with mental illness or in mental health crises to treatment rather than the criminal system. Not only did they not activate that team despite his history of PTSD, anxiety and his symptoms at the scene AND the fact that they were going to charge him with attempted 2nd degree murder on the basis of a suicide attempt (unfounded!), the woman how did much of the interrogation - which included lies about the evidence they had, and pretending that she was his friend - is a trainer for their CIT program. Further, suicidology must be determined by psychologist or psychiatrist. It was not - and wouldn't have been. They were able to maintain that charge, because after 7 months of jail, when Matthew was told that if he signed the plea deal, he could go home - that was his understanding - he signed it. From that point forward, the prosecutor, judge and press referred to the "fact" that he admitted he deliberately ran into the other car because he was trying to kill himself.

Officer Hosang only has 12 hours of Autism training, it takes psychologists years undergraduate education, graduate education and a whole lot of certification to even be able to practice. Officer Hosang told Matthew as heard in the interrogation, she hopes to arrest and charge him. What CIT does that? Is that descalating the issue? Um.. no way!

3. Mental health services have not been provided. Medication for anxiety was provided after months, but not counseling/treatment. Matthew has not had the required neurology follow up for his conditions identified prior to his incarceration.

4. Matthew and his family have not been able to talk face to face for 19 months, let alone hug. This 20 year old autistic man who had just been in a very serious car accident and who was clearly physically impacted was not allowed the comfort of his family. His dad was at the scene for hours waiting to be allowed to see his son. He wasn't even told when they took Matthew away from the scene. Mr. Rushin found out 45 minutes later.

5. Matthew was ripped from his life on the basis of an unsubstantiated claim, denied his rights, taken advantage of and taken straight to prison for a charge that never should have been made. Yet when there is overwhelming evidence of all of the wrongdoing, he remains in prison. That is totally unbalanced. He was judged guilty on sight. But it is taking months to free him. This is so wrong.

________________________________________________________________________________

(1) Mark R. Herring: Attorney General

EMAIL: [email protected]

CALL: (804)786-2071

(2) Kelly Thomasson: Secretary of the Commonwealth

EMAIL: [email protected]

CALL: (804) 786-2441

Fax: 804-786-7441

(3) Brian Moran: Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Secretary

CALL: Office: 804-786-5351

EMAIL: [email protected]

(4) Tonya D. Chapman: Chair of the Virginia Parole Board

EMAIL: [email protected]

CALL: 804-674-3081

(5) Virginia Governor Ralph Northam

CALL: 1 (804) 786-2211

EMAIL: [email protected]

(6) [email protected]

(1) PETITION LINK: (DO NOT DONATE TO THE PETITION, ONLY SHARE)

https://www.change.org/p/ralph-s-northam-matthew-rushin-autistic-college-student-odu?recruiter=295142305&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_abi&utm_term=psf_combo_share_abi&recruited_&fbclid=IwAR0k8rkuCWrURYz3pq7v8mXkd3rGwkfsidB8alqhxLiUn4mF-y7zXlUq0y8

(2) GOFUNDME FOR LEGAL AND EXPERT FEES (ZERO THE TIP FEE: DO NOT ADD A TIP): we still need financial assistance! We appreciate everyone ❤️

https://www.gofundme.com/f/SAVING-MATTHEW-RUSHIN

(3 PAYPAL:

https://www.paypal.me/Dance4Matthew

#black autistic lives matter #black disabled lives matter #blacklivesmatter #actually autistic #freematthewrushin #autistic #autism #adhd #tbi #disability #help others #boost #signal boost

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emakenz · 3 years

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was talking abt symptoms of autism to my parents and my dad put his head in his hands saying he wish the internet didnt exist and that i should go to a library. bitch. you stupid slut. i am expressing my emotions and thoughts just like you have encouraged me to do then you fucking insult me? right to jail. go to big meanie jail. i am sending you to prison.

i was saying how i present a lot of the symptoms (such as social impairment, lack of understanding in social cues, RSD, not understanding social standards and therefore not abiding by what i "ought to do" //like shaving my legs bc im a girl. hell no. hate the feeling, and im not cis, and im not your fucking doll on display//, sensory issues, difficulty processing shit, hyperfixations, etc etc) and he goes and fucking. pretty much SHAMES me for it. not outright saying it, but definitely implying that im just trying to get attention or be special or that im a hypochondriac. im sorry, but last i checked, IM the one whos taken CLASSES. AT SCHOOL. about similar shit. and you have the nerve to blame THE INTERNET for me spitting straight fire. burn in my wrath you dumb whore. im SORRY for EXPRESSING MYSELF and RAMBLING ABOUT THINGS IM INTERESTED IN. god forbid i fucking talk about anything that goes against YOUR VIEWS. you always say that you "dont push your beliefs on others" and that others "shouldnt push their beliefs on you" but yet you stand there and belittle MY BELIEFS when im the one that actually RESEARCHED what IM TALKING ABOUT. what do you know. you only have "experience" (living in a small town full of closed minded hillbillies that strut their problematic asses through life. THATS NOT EXPERIENCE. YOUVE ONLY LIVED IN ONE FUCKING CITY YOUR WHOLE LIFE. YOU DONT LEAVE, YOURE ALWAYS AT HOME OR AT WORK. YOU DONT INTERACT WITH PEOPLE DIFFERENT THAN YOU. YOU DONT KNOW JACK SHIT ABOUT EXPERIENCE AS YOU HAVENT FUCKING LIVED OR LEARNED.). you always compare yourself to others, saying how youre laid back and lenient and the most easy going dad in town, yet when i compare literally anything saying that something is better than this (like i can say i believe that so and so is better than whatstheirface) and if it goes against your opinion, you fucking go on and on about how youre right and im wrong because im just a kid that hasnt lived. bitch you havent lived and youre 45. get over yourself you white cishet privileged motherfucker. your only "discrimination" is being poor, but that comes with living as a LOW LIFE THAT DOESNT TRY TO BETTER THEIRSELF OR TAKE AN OPPORTUNITY WHEN YOU SEE ONE. ive lived in the same broken down trailer since before i was born, ive only went to one school up until high school, (one school for elementary and middle school then the high school, thats it), i havent had a job or done anything with any impact to society so therefore im worthless in your eyes? you provided this for my life. im not going to be your doll, your pet, your servant or what have you. im a fucking person, an individual with my OWN "experience" and views and beliefs. im not following your rules, the rules that have no reason to exist other than it displeases you if i dont follow them. i try to educate myself, i research, i interact with different kinds of people, and while i may not have firsthand "experience" with much, at least i fucking try to not be ignorant. youre so willingly ignorant, you dont care about the facts, you dont trust anything or anyone. youre so skeptical of every little thing. but somehow your beliefs are the definite reality? that you hold the truth? youre so skeptical you dont even trust your own views, you claim to be open minded, then turn around and claim to be closed minded and that your views cant be changed unless proven otherwise, yet even when your view is proven against being true, you still dont believe it. you dont have the confidence in yourself to hold yourself accountable by your own words. youre an ignorant, close minded, hypocritical asshole. i love you, but DAMN you make me mad. everyone has flaws but.. damn. problematic king behavior over here, get him the crown of dumbassery. goddamn.

hes apologized and explained that he tries to be mindful and how much he has to hold his tongue and that hes being polite to me compared to others and how he wont change etc etc. thats not an apology thats a half hearted explanation of why you act that way and that you dont really feel the need to actually try. you say its hard for you to talk to me bc im so "political" and take things literally and personally (the last two are true, but if im to be officially diagnosed with autism, im throwing that in his face. ill give HIM and explanation of why I dont fit his eyes.), im not even political im just honest. if i notice you saying or doing something thats genuinely Wrong, im going to say something, i dont want to be the judgemental "millenial" (im gen z, not that it matters really) but i also dont want to just stand by without saying something. you say im so "politically correct" and it hurts me that you feel so passionate about your fragile mindset that you feel the need to call me out on my "argumentative attitude". im just trying to spread awareness, go ahead, call the pharmacist a slur, say it to their face, you coward. you wont. because you know that its wrong. if you have the balls to say it, i hope someone actually tells you off and gives you the same treatment. you couldnt handle it. being "discriminated" against, while in reality, you were the discriminater. dont fucking dish it out if you cant handle it. be mindful, respectful, and educate yourself. check yourself before you wreck yourself. or someone will come to wreck you themself to teach you a lesson.

very big vent here im tired. ignore this lmfao. everythings fine im just a petty bitch.

#vent #you can reblog this if you want. vent out your own frustrations.#you can talk about and compare our situations. i know im not the only one dealing with this.#im not gonna be that guy and lash out (even though they encourage me to).#just know if youre going through smthn similar. youre not alone #im here for yall lololol

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dolleduptrash · 3 years

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//Rant

It seems like now that I realized I’m most likely autistic (like I’m 99% sure, but I haven’t had the chance to be diagnosed yet) I’ve started noticing things about myself and how they connect to autism. Realizing behaviors that are common within the community, reactions and limits, things I had blamed myself for being difficult with.

I think it’s also made me realize how NT people don’t always take how you feel into consideration. A lot of the time they’re just focused on things being socially acceptable and “normal”.

I recently got a job as a caretaker for my special needs cousin, who’s highly dependent on whoever is caring for her. I’ve also been watching her brother, who is autistic as well.

It’s not exactly hard, just periods of being busy, but I do admit I have time to sit and play on my phone. I think because of this, my family isn’t viewing the job as something difficult. I guess normally it wouldn’t be.

I haven’t told many people about my discovery regarding my health, but I did confide in my aunt in hopes that she would understand since her son is autistic.

At the time I didn’t know it wasn’t the best to call myself “high-functioning”, so I did that, because in the eyes of society that’s what matters, I’m able to do what most expect, although they don’t seem to realize the effort it takes me, they just see the outcome of things going wrong.

Anyways, as soon as I used the term high functioning, my aunt immediately seemed to brush me off, saying “oh well if you are, like you said, you’re high functioning.” I know she didn’t mean it in a negative way, I’m sure she meant for it to be a positive, but it just feels invalidating.

I hate the idea that since I can conform to most of society’s expectations, that means I’m not valid for what I do struggle with. One of those things is routine and change. I don’t handle sudden change well, whether it’s something complicated or as simple as my day plans being changed. Working for family has perks and wiggle room, but my family isn’t seeming to understand that I need a heads up for when I’m working. They tell me the day before, if that, and I can’t get enough time to prepare myself to go work the next day.

I wish I could have a weekly schedule, and I know they’re capable, but I’m scared of asking because they’ll see me as being picky or annoying. I don’t turn down any requests to watch the kids, all I need is time to acknowledge that I’m doing so…

After quitting a stressful job and being technically unemployed for over a year, having an official job feels like I’m trapped. I have to commit, especially because it’s family. So I feel stuck. But I want the job, I need the money, I need the stability. So I hate that I feel bad about things being figured out. I was doing so well with my mental health, my depression was being handled thanks to new medication, I was reviving my hobbies and my interests. I was proud for no bad days, relatively speaking.

Today my family had decided to plan my day without actually asking or involving me in the decisions. I knew I was to work today, and yesterday I learned it was at 8:15 until around maybe 2-3. That was fine, I wish I knew the time sooner, but I had energy ready for the task. Then as I’m working, my uncle calls and asks what time I need to be home to take care of my mamaw (who recently moved in and also needs full time care, which my grandma is accounting for). I was confused because nobody mentioned to me anything about taking over caring for my mamaw for the day. Then he asks what time I’m going to be back over to watch the kids…?! I expressed my confusion and how I had no idea. I talked to my aunt and then my grandma trying to figure out how it was decided I was doing these things, even though nobody checked in with me.

After some consideration, I don’t have to care for my mamaw as my grandparents don’t have time to go to their event and still get back in time for me to come back and watch the kids… which I’m left feeling guilty for although it’s not anything I can control. I am coming back to watch the kids around 7 though, for an extra hour or two.

Even though it’s been figured out and things aren’t going to be confusing, I’m upset. An upset I haven’t felt in a while thanks to staying away from employment and other stressful things. I was doing so well, and I hate that this is what caused my slip up. I feel inadequate. How am I not able to handle such a simple job? When even I know it’s simple?

I can’t even express how the decisions and actions affect me, as I don’t want to feel invalidated, with my aunts dismissal of my possible autism, and my grandma’s straight up disbelief. I mean, she didn’t even try to be supportive. She said “so what, you think you have this now?” (In a condescending tone) When I showed her a decent sized list of symptoms and signs that I showed which aligned with autism and adhd. She said it in a disappointed way. I think she sees me as my mom, who is happy to claim any problem she can pass with, and she enjoys attention from it, even if it’s proven she doesn’t have that issue. (By doctors and stuff, but I don’t know, I try not to judge and just stay out of all of that). But that’s the exact reason I gave her such a list of things on why I believed this. Since then I’ve done more research and self reflection in order to feel more confident in my discovery and to figure out if it was possible. I even have my psychiatrist helping me find somewhere to do testing, which already has proved to be difficult.

Anyways, yeah the only family I’ve told hasn’t reacted in a way that makes me feel safe to talk about limits and problems.

I just feel stuck. I feel so good about myself, my identity, now that I’ve realized why I am the way I am. I’ve accepted it and I genuinely love who I am and how I react to things, I understand it. I just hate that I don’t get the outside world to match that same acceptance and the help that I need. I’ve done a lot recently to accommodate the things I experience, and it’s helped a lot, but the ones that aren’t exactly my choice… those happen to be the ones that always mess things up. And I’m frustrated. This post doesn’t have a satisfactory ending or a true purpose other than me venting, so I apologize if you expected something more productive.. If you actually did read all of this (sorry lol) I hope you have a good day, and I hope I have a good day tomorrow, even if I don’t today.

#autism #autistic adult #undiagnosed autism #rant post #personal vent

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sunflowerseraph · 3 years

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The issue I have with your post about NT not using the term hyperfixating is that an NT person could actually be an ND person but not know/ be aware of it due to not being diagnosed (yet).

So they may be hyperfixating and not even realize that is a symptom of something else.

So many people have talked about how they didn’t know they had ADHD or were on the autism spectrum until they were older and this could be a sign of that.

Just saying.

I understand why you would be annoyed by NT using it as a catch all term for really liking something, but there could be alot of undiagnosed or misdiagnosed NDs using it as well.

The post specifically is talking about people who ARE for sure. Neurotypical people. Not undiagnosed ND people. If someone really does experience hyperfixation then yeah! They're not NT! But if they claim to experience ONLY "hyperfixation" or what they THINK is a hyperfixation and NO other traits of neurodivergency,then they are in fact an nt person with a strong interest or just mis using the word. An NT person doesn't hyperfixate the same way an ND person. They may have an intense interest!! But it doesn't mean they're completely ND! Just saying you hyperfixate and not having any other ND traits doesn't make u ND. Hyperfixating is not the criteria for being ND???? That's the whole point??

Like. Ok lemme word this again. Say you're an NT person. You have an intense interest in something. But you do not experience sensory issues or you don't stim or anything like that. You reached all your cognitive mile stones at a "normal" rate,and you've never had the same struggles or problems as a ND person. You're fuckin NT dude. You aren't hyperfixated on it.

Actual ND people are often ridiculed and bullied for being ND. For Infodumping for hours straight and then being told they're annoying for it. Or for not understanding tone. Or being demonized for low empathy and not having the right inflection to their own tone. For "butting" into conversations with their own personal experiences because it's a way to relate to someone in our brains. It's not the same. If you only "hyperfixate" that's not criteria for being ND. There's a lot of overlap and such,but that's not even the fuckin point. The point is Hyperfixation,Special interests,Infodumping,all very important terms to actually neurodivergent people, are being cutesified,and turned into meaningless words. By NT people specifically. Not undiagnosed ND people. By ACTUALLY neurotypical people.

Take it this way. It's like walking up to me,a disabled nd person. And going Hey! I'm disabled too even though I'm able bodied because sometimes my feet hurt when I walk for a long time. Let's assume you do not have any underlying conditions,you've been checked by doctors,told your body is in perfect fuckin condition. Never had a complication. But you're still calling yourself disabled because you experienced pain ONCE after walking for a long time. And then you take ME. Someone with a history of back pain,nerve damage,dislocated hips,x-rays of my back and hip and lower back being misaligned,something that I've had since birth,that pinches my nerves and makes it hard for me to even get up out of bed some days because I have chronic pain. It's not hard to see who's ACTUALLY in pain BECAUSE of their disability.

You're using terms that are not correct for something youre experiencing. I didn't know I was nd/on the spectrum for a long time even though I experienced tell tale traits of neurodivergency my entire life. I only found out because I gained access to psychology classes and other nd people and shit like that. Just seeing the word hyperfixation online being used to describe some Big Interest takes away from the fact that these are terms FOR ND PEOPLE. Not for NT people who experience one thing.

Also not to mention you can't just fucking Cherry pick the "good" traits of the ND experience. I'm not going to demonize being ND but it's not all cute stimming and hyperfixating on frogs and cute things. It's not an "easy" way of living and it really is fucking ableist to pretend it is.

#im probably not wording this right.#im really tired and im in a lot of fucking pain rn #so like come back and bitch abt me ''gatekeeping'' terms when a texture doesnt send you spiraling into a breakdown or #when the electricity in a plug across the room is so grating on your senses that it makes u feel sick. jesus fuckin christ.#long post #ask.txt #anon.txt #ok to rb ig

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flameontheotherside · 3 years

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Life As An Intuitive AND Mentally Ill

I come from a family of intuitives and most of us are well-rounded or are seen normal. I think out of all of us, it's just me and my mother deal with mental illness.

Life is easy at first.

As a kid growing up, I dealt with a learning disability. Back then girls weren't diagnosed with things like autism. But I saw and spoke to dead animals and dead people. They looked like you and I and when I heard them it was like a thought that wasn't mine. It didn't bother me and when I told my mother of these things she wouldn't disbelieve me. She would casually tell me who I was talking to or seeing and we'd move on. I would get feelings about things that would happen enough to not call it all just coincidence and I believe in coincidences, and science so imagine the struggle.

I begun getting bullied.

This happened when I was 8. I wasn't really effected or bothered by it until we moved from CT. I was socially awkward and when I learned what I saw and heard wasn't real, I didn't want it to happen anymore. I was being bullied for so many reasons, I didn't want to further my reputation as a circus act.

So my abilities became dormant for a few short years.

I began having mood swings but I was mostly depressed. My intuition made me anxious. Mostly about finding some guy who I knew didn't live out of the country but within it and not living in Florida. I at first thought I had to go back to Connecticut but I felt it was wrong. It had to be south. I aimed south even though I wanted to go back to CT so very bad. Started with NJ and all the way across to Southern California by the time I was 20.

Every once in a while I would see things and they happened. I couldn't find answers that made any sense to me. So again I got so scared and it would go away for another while. I was in high school when I started looking into esoteric and tarot cards to find out what was happening to me.

I gave up esoterics and took antidepressants.

Deep in my heart I believed in my experiences. However I made myself think it was all hallucinations and saw a dr. I was eventually put on trazadone, zoloft, Prozac and Depakote. My experiences still happened. I knew that it was over between me and Erik but I didn't want to believe he died. I rather have thought maybe the link was finally cut so that I could be happy but I was just as miserable and the meds helped as a bandaid for bipolar type 2 symptoms.

From time to time I'd notice that feeling of needing to find Erik was gone since his death. It felt nice. I didn't feel nervous or hurried to plow through online communities. I was a member of so many clubs and forums. I didn't feel the need to return to them either. Slowly I deleted my profiles and tried to keep with the appesrence of "growing up".

Without my meds, I'm not intuitive.

Reading through my journals, I noticed where I reported or recalled supernatural things happening, it was only while I was medicated. Actually just almost a year ago, I was without my meds for about a month and I reported here also that I can see a huge difference. I have no concentration, I can't sit still or think straight so even work was very difficult. By now I've been on nearly 20 different medications at varying doses. It was strange to feel "normal" not hearing my guides from not being medicated but feel like I'm insane being off it at the same time. If that makes any sense.

Not being on my meds is a special kind of hell;

I can't control my body with the involuntary jerking and dropping things (I'm already clumsy), memory goes to shit, I studder, I get extremely tired, forget how to speak English and failing to remember everyday words. I talk very slow and even if I was excited, you couldn't tell. Can't tolerate light and any kind of scraping sound and more sensitive to smells.

Here, we got all kinds of oils and incense to burn because I need plant-based smells like flowers and kinds of wood. I like fruits and laundry scents but they aren't my favorite. I don't like candles that smell like food because I'm a stoner and that's just wrong. That's a different kind of hell and self punishment.

For many of us who are intuitive and dealing with mental health issues...

Its very hard. I have to learn not to overanalyze or try so hard to understand what doesn't have a scientific explanation. I mean, I still can't understand how a random object flew across me in my room straight to my door. I can't explain how I can see or sense the future and it happens. I can easily say they are hallucinations but they came true. So calling them all coincidental hallucinations sounds more ridiculous than it already sounds.

I have to balance what I feel in my heart with my head and moreover I really need to feel my heart more and stop trying to logic every single thing and have faith!

To a degree I may be mentally ill but I know exactly what the fuck I see, I don't bullshit. I realize that people will use my illnesses against me. Well Jesus was prosecuted by his own people. Not claiming to be Jesus but just saying. Who wants to be Jesus anyway? That's way too much work. I ain't got to time for that, I need to keep my nails and hair good. Lol 😆😆 Getting in the hot sun, get awkward tans and skin cancer, no thank you!

My flowery ass is inside enjoying the a/c and my weed

--Thank you very much!

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whyisshebloodthirsty · 5 years

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Mun Speaks

This rant can’t wait because I’m extremely pissed off!

Welcome to...

Writing characters with Depression/Autism and Anxiety

Depression

So I’ve suffered from depression for a WHILE, and I’ve also seen a lot of people make characters who’s main trait is that they’re depressed. That’s a big no no.

I’m going to use myself as an example here. Yes, I have depression, but I don’t let that be my main attribute. Aside from that I’m also an author and an artist. And it enrages me to no end when people make their OCs depressed and all they do is mope around, cut themselves and just constantly claim they want to die.

That’s not how it is all the time-- Sure, depressed people have episodes. I literally just got out of a depressive episode.

But you need to know how a person acts outside of the worse episodes, for me it’s mainly just a feeling of, well, nothing. I described it to my therapist as a moral grey that has times when it gets dark and times when it gets light, but usually it’s just the same dull shade.

THIS ALSO MEANS; Do not make your character depressed for the shits and giggles of it, cause that’s just cheap and actually pretty offensive.

Autism

(Information supplied by someone that works with autism as a career so this is a bit longer.)

The common mistake is to use autism as a defining character trait, instead of as a consideration when building other traits.There's the characters who always have a panic attack or don't realise what's going on or just act dumb because you feel like you need to make them 'autistic enough.’

And then there's the characters who are just normal, but quirky people. They're a bit weird, and autism fits their idiosyncrasies, but you don't immediately look at any post by the character and go 'aww poor autism dumbass babu'

Building an entire character around the symptoms of autism just highlights and exaggerates everything people see as being wrong with it. Autism is not the continually crippling thing everyone seems to think it is.

Can I also add that autism is not just symptoms? Like, even if you're going to build an entire character just on being autistic and having nothing else about them at all (don't do that), then they also need to spend time alone, be really invested in a certain topic and spend hours delving into it and talking about it. They should stim now and then, even if it's not obvious.

They should have weird and often far too forward approaches to people they like, and they should absolutely be aware that they're not really normal. Probably have an internal struggle a lot of the time. 'I really want this person to like me but if I keep texting them will it get annoying? When is the okay amount of talking about something before they get bored? Am I standing correctly? Am I making enough eye contact?' They're constantly running checks on themselves to correct things, so even if they spend 100% of the time oblivious to any social cues, they at least a have book-learned understanding of social cues, and they go through those. Probably awkwardly and robotically, but no autistic person I have ever met is ballsy enough to just straight up be clueless all the time and expect to be liked.

Anxiety

I also have anxiety, which is pretty fun! (sarcasm). I’ve had it since I was... 12? God I can’t even remember it’s felt like 30 years.

My anxiety got to the point where I began to hear voices in my head, but yet again I didn’t let that be the main attribute about myself and use it to make other people like me.

My anxiety manifested itself in many ways, I would always be like, ‘If I open this door will everyone stare at me/Will they make fun of me/Are they talking about me/Am I supposed to be here/Do I belong here/Why do they all hate me?’

Sure, it makes life a living hell, still does, but I cope with it! Whenever I get off the train to walk to college, I often hold my breath when I think I’m breathing too much, which is really stupid but it helps me calm my nerves.

I have panic attacks when I hear too many voices and I have to block out all sound or else I’ll be decreased into a sobbing mess, and afterwards I can’t really function.

Anxiety isn’t just about being scared to talk to someone.. God it’s just, so, so much more than that. I really suggest researching into it because it can offer you a lot more information than I have.

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Feel free to add onto this, but I wrote this due to a bit of misrepresentation I’ve seen when it comes to quite a few OCs/Characters.

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golden-witch · 6 years

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Rosa, Rosa, why are you such an idiot?

Hey! I wrote up a long character analysis of Rosa for fun. I hope you enjoy it.

[Read the full post under read more]

The narration mentions in Episode 2 that Rosa still feels like a child because she can’t accept and overcome her trauma which makes her an incapable mother. The banquet scene during the Tea Party has always been one of my favorite scenes in Umineko for its more somber aspects, something both the manga and the anime neglect in order to focus more on the horror themes. I’ll link it here because it’s the most important point of consideration when analyzing Rosa’s character. It certainly leaves an impression of what her childhood was like.

Some people were surprised to learn that Krauss and Eva were full fledged adults when they abused Rosa. If Eva and Krauss are in their 50’s and Rosa is In her early 30’s, that puts about a 20 year age difference between them! This isn't a case of sibling rivalry such as Eva vs. Krauss-- this is the abuse of a child by her adult siblings. We don't know the exact numbers, but we can assume Rosa is closer in age to the cousins than her eldest brother and sister. They suggest this several times in the story when Battler notes her odd position in the family. Rosa is treated as neither an adult nor child and is continuously forced out of conversations with her siblings. (Think of the scene in episode 2 where Kyrie manipulates Rosa to leave the room by gently reminding her that she's left Maria outside.) She acts submissively towards them and follows their guidance. This is likely why 12 year old Battler got the impression that she was “sweet”.

There's also the issue of her parents, who we can assume were neglectful if not equally abusive. I would imagine Kinzo would want as little to do with her as possible; he would have little incentive to raise her as she was a girl and because he was already committed to Beatrice II (who grew up alongside her). Rosa’s relationship with her mother is suggested to be strained (when Rosa talks about running away from home because she did badly on an exam), and I think-- as is the case with the other adults-- that she doesn’t remember the woman fondly.

The way Rosa behaves supports my impression that she grew up in a household where she was undervalued. It’s reasonable to assume she threw herself at the first man who treated her with the slightest bit of compassion and who offered her an opportunity to leave Rokkenjima. His character ended up being flimsy, but someone of Rosa’s background wouldn’t be able to notice the warning signs of abandonment. Rosa believes he left because of her pregnancy, but you could make the argument that he purposefully conned her and dumped her once he had the money Kinzo lent him. Having never been wanted before, Rosa would accept his behavior to feel desirable.

The relationship Rosa had with Maria’s father is one of two romantic relationships mentioned in the story, the other being her fling with the married man in Maria’s book (classy). I don’t know how accurately I can say this reflects all of her romantic endeavors, but we do know that Maria never makes note of any men who might have come in and out of her life. It seems that Rosa doesn’t bring her lovers home out of fear they will leave her due to Maria (as she believes her ex did), so I think the relationships were very shallow. Bringing a boyfriend or girlfriend home with her would have been a step in deepening their bond, but Rosa pushes them away perhaps out of fear they will one day leave her (#abandonment issues). She is in favor of short-term romances with a low level of commitment. This is why I can’t stand when people try to argue that the scene of Rosa in bed with her lover in episode 4 is just “Ange’s fabrication”! Everything about Rosa screams that was the truth of the situation.

“So Rosa sacrifices her time to have passionate one-night stands with guys she doesn’t even care about?” Sort of-- she feeds off of the attention they give her. It’s not very important who her lovers are so long as they acknowledge her as her family did not. She craves the external validation she was denied in childhood. There’s also something to be said about sex as a means of claiming adulthood. I can totally see why someone so insecure of their maturity would go so far.

I could talk a lot about what I make of Rosa’s relationship with other adults. If you want to discuss that further, totally send me an ask, but I’d like to dedicate the later half of the analysis to Maria. This is where I have to give a major content warning for discussions of violent child abuse.

The story alludes strongly to the idea that Maria is most likely on the autism spectrum. I don’t know if it’s canon, but after hearing from autistic fans that Maria resembles their experiences, I feel comfortable saying that she’s neurodivergent. It’s not my place and not within the scope of this essay to make claims about Maria’s mental health, but we should take into account how her behavior affects her relationship with her mother. Nothing Maria does is “abnormal” for a child (I would argue there are no abnormal children); Rambler once answered an ask about a “what if” scenario where Maria was neurotypical and gave the answer that it probably wouldn’t matter in terms of Rosa abusing her. Rosa vents her anger towards Maria. It doesn’t matter if she is a “problem child” or not.

Maria is continuously said to be different from her peers, and differences breed scorn. Rosa wants Maria to be “normally” behaved so she will be acknowledged as a good parent and an adult. Kids are seen as reflections of their parents, and she sees Maria as a threat to her reputation-- especially in front of her siblings, who openly mock her. Ironically, Rosa plays into this expectation; she was considered incompetent as a child and incompetent as an adult. She wants to defy that expectation so badly that she ends up beating her child. It’s a cycle she puts no effort into breaking. For that she should be seen as a deplorable character and an abuser. I believe Ryukishi wanted it to be obvious that Rosa is a neglectful and irresponsible, sometimes violent mother.

Let’s break down their relationship.

Rosa-- at her heart-- cares about Maria’s wellbeing. She acknowledges she should have been a more accepting mother and recognizes that her actions were wrong-- Most notably in episode 8 in the Golden Land. Unfortunately, she is only able to consider mending her relationship with Maria in retrospect since she is, of course, at that point dead. I believe this indicates that she had the capacity to change her behavior, and it a better universe, she would be able to become a good parent. This is all hypothetical, though there is enough in the story to hint that this was a strong possibility had Sayo not given up on the family. If only someone had intervened successfully…

Ryu also wants us to consider that Rosa is protective of Maria against outside threats. He refers to her as both a mother bear and a mother wolf who will bear fangs when her child is in danger. The story supports this in episode 2 when Rosa fights to protect her daughter from the goats. On the contrary, it is suggested that Rosa’s abuse of Maria stems from how others interpret Maria’s behavior. I don’t really understand how Rosa can both be “protective” of Maria and brutal towards her daughter depending on external threats. I think this is supposed to be further evidence (intentional or not) that Rosa is unbalanced and acts inconsistently.

It was exceedingly difficult for Rosa to manage raising a child. Her polarizing behavior was what led Maria to come up with the “white witch/black witch” concept since a child couldn’t make sense of something so complex. Rosa explains during episode 2 that she often spoiled Maria, and this is seen in episode 4 when she takes Maria out for dessert at a restaurant she can’t afford. This is exemplary of Rosa’s genuine feelings of affection for Maria which she is at a loss for ways to convey. A girl who grew up rich and neglected may see objects as a means to soothe wounds. Her lingering guilt causes her to feed into Maria’s material wants without considering her emotional needs. She overcompensates with gifts. Maria would cry and demand presents, and Rosa would either buy into it to satisfy her or beat her into submission. Neither of these are good parenting!

The reason why CPS is notified about Rosa’s behavior has to do with parental neglect; Rosa left Maria by herself for too long for too many times. We know from Maria’s diary that Rosa was often absent and used the excuse that she was working late into the night and for days at a time, and we know of one instance where Rosa lied and instead went on vacation. However, we can’t say that Rosa was always on vacation when she left Maria alone. I personally believe that Rosa would engage in some unhealthy working habits to offset the cost of her frivolous lifestyle.

More headcanons that I have are that these bursts in irregular behavior for Rosa happened clustered together. Basically, Rosa would irresponsibly work for multiple days straight and then impulsively abandon her daughter to go on vacations in a predictable pattern. I believe Rosa suffers from bipolar II-- the sort of self-sabotaging behavior she engages in is evidence. She wants her business to succeed, but risks its stability. She wants to be a good mother, but she abuses Maria. Her sudden fits of rage and violent mood swings could be connected to this because it's a common symptom for those with mood disorders. I don't think it's out of the question to say that she was suffering from a manic episode during the period Maria writes about in her journal. This isn't to say that people with bipolar II are abusers, I'm just suggesting some of her behavior can be explained this way. This comes from my own experiences and observations, so please don’t take my word for it. I’m just offering up an interpretation.

Anyway, if you want to hear more about Rosa as an abuser, and why she’s responsible for her actions, check it out here!

#my posts #analysis #Rosa Ushiromiya #umineko #Umineko no Naku Koro ni

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burningcollectionsandwich · 6 years

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could john doe be autistic? telltale batman theory

A couple of months ago, I was looking at random batman stuff when I came across “batman: the telltale series” and “batman: the enemy within”, and let me tell you, its probably one of the best games ive seen since undertale and even corpse party (corpse party is and will remain my favourite game though… unless I change my mind). I loved the story and the characters, but one of them stood out to me, and that was John Doe. Now let me be clear, I do not, and I repeat NOT class John Doe as the joker at all (unless you choose the choices in order to make him the joker), no I class John as ‘the joker, if he got rehabilitated’ or just simply as John Doe. And me being the type of person who automatically likes anything that has to do with the joker because I find his personality and the overall character incredibly interesting, when I finished watching all the john scenes (im not even kidding, I spent days watching every scene I can find with John in it), even though he doesn’t act like the joker, I loved his personality. One day when I was watching it, I noticed some key things that stood out in Johns personality, which are kind of similar to………………….and then it clicked in my brain. Could John Doe from the batman telltale series, be autistic? Now I know “John Doe” has traits or all the symptoms of antisocial personality disorder and possibly schizophrenia, but I could not help but find other symptoms to Asperger’s syndrome/autism, though this is only with john doe, not with the original joker (trust me I tried looking but he’s just the definition of antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy). I did some research and watched the batman telltale series repeatedly, and here’s the evidence I collected. Behavioural symptoms: • Often verbalizes internal thoughts that most would keep private – this isn’t shown quite often in season 1, however in season 2, John does say/shout out his thoughts depending on the situation. For example, (in season 2 episode 3) when he was asking Bruce about dating advice, and Bruce pretended to be Harley, John yelled “why won’t you love me?!” in front of everyone at a café. Another example is (in season 2 episode 1) when John yells at the man who shh’ed him in church by saying “you shh me again, you’ll be mourning the loss of your teeth!”, he did calm down and stated “that outburst, its antisocial I know”. He also yells “at least he went out with a bang right?” when talking to Tiffany about her dead father, At his funeral. Another scene is (in season 2 episode 2) when Bruce starts the car for John after struggling with it for a few minutes and he says “you are literally my hero Bruce. –I mean wow”. another quote is “Bruce is strong and smart, and handsome, I mean, super handsome, its nuts you guys, and-… where was I going with this?”. on the vigilante ending (season 2 episode 5), when first meeting Alfred, he states “wow. The Alfred. I’ve been taken polaroid photos of Bruce for years and you’re in the background in at least a third of them”. • Appears to lack empathy – this is very clear in both season 1 and season 2, John will attack/kill or steal anything from anyone without feeling empathy towards anyone, apart from Harley and sometimes Bruce, and will laugh when seeing violence himself. Many examples of John not showing empathy to anyone is: laughing at Victor Zsasz when he’s murdering someone (season 1 episode 4), laughing when Bruce defends him from Willy by knocking him out (season 2 episode 2), laughing when Harley threatens one of Bruce’s workers (season 2 episode 2), laughing when Bruce/Batman beats up Bane (season 2 episode 4), laughing when exploding the Gotham bridge with a lot of people still on it (season 2 episode 4). On the villain ending (season 2 episode 5), he has no empathy for the people he and Harley kill with the virus. On the vigilante ending (season 2 episode 5), he stabs 3 people while injuring tiffany with a joker-rang through the hand, he also throws joker-rangs at a lot of agents, which impale them, he also shows no empathy to bane when he either hits him with his car or drops a smock deck on him. • Has a difficult time interacting with peers – this is mostly shown in season 2. (in season 2 episode 2) When Bruce is inspecting John’s house or ha ha-ciesta and he looks at the beer bottles, John explains that in order to talk to Bane, he has to give him his favourite bottle of beer so Bane doesn’t tear his head off, even stating “he’s scarier than anyone I met in Arkham”. He also says to Bruce that he has a hard time talking to Harley as it is indicated in a previous statement that she loses interest quickly when talking to John, though this could be the fault of Harley, not John. John also despises the riddler because he always interrupted him when he was telling a joke “making him look like an idiot, in front of Harley and the other guys”, riddler even calling john a “white faced prick” (season 2 episode 3), though this can be seen as just a normal rivalry and not a difficult time interacting with people. • Talks excessively, especially about one specific topic – John talks a lot, and I mean a lot in season 1 and 2. He does switch topics in conversation depending on the situation but most of the time, he is either talking a lot about Harley or a lot about Bruce. The Harley topic is clear in nearly every episode of season 2, and Harley even stated to Bruce when John went to get her a slushy “he thinks the world of you” (season 2 episode 2), indicating that he talks about Bruce to the pact a lot. John does talk about Batman to but not as often. He mostly talks about how he’s best friends with Bruce, constantly saying “we’re two threads in the same stitch”. • Frequently has one-sided conversations – John shows this (in season 2 episode 4) when Bruce finds him surrounded by corpses he had murdered, and when Bruce disagrees with John on if he should trust John or not, John will yell “you’re supposed to be on my side!”. He will also say “it’s been hard knowing that you haven’t been straight with me, Bruce”, even though John has his own secrets that he hasn’t shared with Bruce, and Bruce knows this. He also says “You steered me wrong, at every turn” to Bruce when Harley abandons him (season 2 episode 4). On the villain ending (season 2 episode 5), john blames Bruce entirely for making him become the joker after Bruce didn’t believe him about the murdered agents. On the vigilante ending (season 2 episode 5), john claims “I believed in you, batman. like I never believed in anything, and it was all a lie!”, and when batman wants Waller to leave Gotham, john goes against that idea shouting “this is so very disappointing. You’re a hypocrite! Your letting her off the hook, because of what? Because she has a badge?!”, john also believes that Bruce/batman is becoming or is very similar to Waller near the end of the episode. • Is unable to understand societal norms – this is shown in season 2 on many scenes. The main examples of this are: John talking very loudly and saying inappropriate comments in church (season 2 episode 1), and John believing that girls like men who are desperate (season 2 episode 3). Another scene is when he takes selfies during a funeral (season 2 episode 1). He also does a pinkie swear with Bruce in the middle of a pub, even though he is an adult (season 2 episode 2). John also believes that his green hair is ‘natural’ due to him not remembering his hair colour before it turned green (season 2 episode 3). • Does not understand the concept of personal space – this is not very shown as John keeps his distance when he’s around people, but the times that this has happened is when he randomly hugs Bruce after Bruce chooses to believe him about the murdered agents (season 2 episode 4) or when he takes selfies with someone, he raps his arm around their shoulders and takes a photo (as seen in multiple photos on his wall, he even does it too batman). Sometimes when john is speaking to someone, he would sometimes inch closer to them but that is not much of an issue, until he leans his head forward while he’s talking, which causes the person he talking to, to move back slightly. Other times include: grabbing Bruce’s arm in the church (in season 2 episode 1), grabbing batman by the shoulders after john gave him the laptop and/or teaching john how to throw a batarang (in season 2 episode 3), punching Bruce (multiple times in different episodes), and even carrying batman in the vigilante ending (season 2 episode 5), when interrogating Waller, he gets really close to her face in order to make her talk, which still doesn’t work. • Flat tone / speaking style that lacks pitch – john’s voice has a bit of a lack of pitch when he’s speaking to anyone, though this could change depending on what mood he’s in. multiple times in the game, it shows that john sometimes mimics another person’s voice, in season 1 episode 4: he puts on a high pitched voice (presumably a woman’s voice) saying “ahh ohh someone save my baby”, he also put on a deep voice (presumably mimicking Harvey dents voice) saying “I’m going to find your drugs”. In season 2: he puts on a deep voice (presumably mimicking batman) saying “just get it john” (episode 2), also in the vigilante ending (episode 5), he puts on a deep voice again (mimicking child Bruce) saying “no Alfred, I am the knight”. John also alters his voice when he’s being sarcastic, for example (in season 2 episode 4) when john is upset with Bruce and says in a weird voice “just manipulate her john/just be yourself john”, or he’s in an awkward moment for example (in season 2 episode 3) if you take too long to take the laptop of john, he pulls a confused face and says “you did want this didn’t you?, I’ll just leave this rrrriiiigggghhhhttttt here” while putting the laptop in batman’s hand, then finishing the sentence with a very high pitched “K”. Physical symptoms: • Unusual body postures, gestures and facial expressions – John has rather bad posture when sitting and/or standing, as his back is always hunched. For facial expressions, the main facial expressions that John portrays is the very wide and toothy smile/grin, a frown, a shocked face, and one that’s I’ve been noticing a lot, the confused/thinking face (the best scene to see this facial expression clearly is when John says to Bruce that he thinks he’s fallen in love, and Bruce asks “are you in love with me?”, John pulls that face soon after the comment (season 2 episode 4)). On the villain ending (season 2 episode 5), whenever he’s been insulted or when he first walks into Wayne enterprises, he always smirks, which hasn’t been seen in the previous chapters before. • may perform repetitive movements, such as hand or finger flapping, or rocking back and forth – mainly during season 2, when John is either happy and excited/grateful, he will always interlock his hands while crouching a little bit. He does clap in season 1 and in season 2 but this only happens when he’s presumably excited (he does this when he first meets Batman (season 1 episode 5), he does this when Harley comes back and says she’s going to be the new management instead of Bane (season 2 episode 3), and he does this again when he is in the elevator going to the secret lab (season 2 episode 4), he also claps his hands when he first meets Alfred in the vigilante ending (season 2 episode 5)). Another repetitive movement that John does, mainly while talking, is finger pointing, this can be seen whenever John is talking to anyone, but mainly towards Bruce and sometimes Harley. In the vigilante ending (season 2 episode 5), john repeated puts his hands/fists/knuckles on his hips, though this could be john thinking that he’s a super hero. • Apparent insensitivity to pain – many examples of this are shown in season 2: John gets shoved by Catwoman and is knocked on the floor, He doesn’t react (season 2 episode 3). John gets a black eye from Harley, we are not sure what his reaction was there but he doesn’t seem fazed by it when Bruce arrives (season 2 episode 4). He gets punched in the face by Bruce and he doesn’t react (season 2 episode 4). He gets slapped in the face by Bruce and he doesn’t really react, though seeming a little surprised (season 2 episode 4). He gets tazor-ed by Tiffany, he does fall to the floor but soon after he just stands back up coughing and laughing (season 2 episode 2). In the vigilante ending (season 2 episode 5): he gets picked up by his neck and thrown to the floor by bane and he laughs (while saying “ow, god”), he gets shot in the shoulder by the agency (he does show pain as he crouches on the floor while bleeding, but minutes later, he stands up and laughs), he gets punched, electrocuted and gets his face hit off a railing multiple time and he just laughs, he also gets a batarang through the hand and a couple of minutes after either getting head butted or electrocuted, he just sits there as if it’s not in his hand (which is pinned to the table). On the villain ending (season 2 episode 5): he gets stabbed multiple times and he laughs, he gets kicked and punched repeatedly and he laughs, true he does go into cardiac arrest but when he gets out of it he just lies there giggling and talking to Bruce. • Poor handwriting skills – this is only seen a couple of times, but johns hand writing is the kind of writing that looks messy, but readable. For example, (in season 2 episode 1) when Bruce opened the card john gave to him, john wrote his name into the card, and the writing looks a little bit messy. His writing is also shown (in season 2 episode 5) on the villain ending on the various cards, the side of a van and on the tombstones, still messy but readable. Cognitive symptoms: • Lack of social skills – though this may be caused by an unknown amount of time locked in Arkham asylum, John has a notorious lack of social skills, though in this case he does talk to a lot of people, he just doesn’t know how. The main examples are all the things he says when he’s in the church (season 2 episode 1), and when he tries to convince Harley that he is the only man to do the job, which lead to him getting a time out by Harley (season 2 episode 3). • May have one or a few very select interests that one is extremely knowledgeable about – even though being a rather smart character, John knows a lot of information about different things, but the main things he is extremely knowledgeable about is the Vikki Vale’s drugs, Bruce (even detecting that he’s Batman) saying “you forget, I know you. The real you. Always hiding behind some kind of mask. Playboy, business man, criminal….bat. you can’t fool a friend, someone who really takes the time to look” (season 2 episode 4), and Harley, stating “let me talk to her, I know her better than anyone” (season 2 episode 4). • may engage in violent outbursts, self-injurious behaviours, tantrums or meltdowns – this is very clear in season 1 and 2. For violent outbursts: John beats up 2 guys knocking them out (season 1 episode 4), he cuts Zsasz’s face with a knife (season 1 episode 4), he hits Bane/Mr Freeze with a batarang/gun/sharp pole (season 2 episode 4), he hits an officer over the head with a crowbar (season 2 episode 3), he tries to punch Bruce when he disagrees with him (season 2 episode 4), he murdered a bunch of cops/agents (season 2 episode 4), he explodes the bridge (season 2 episode 4). On the vigilante ending (season 2 episode 5), john snaps and ends up stabbed three agents to death. For self-injurious: if in an angry mood, John will repeatedly hit his head off any hard surface (the church chair (season 2 episode 1) or the elevator wall (season 2 episode 2)). For tantrums or meltdowns: the bridge scene and the fun house scene can be seen as a meltdown but more of an outburst of violence, he lashes out at a man in church after Bruce rejects his offer (stating his has a hard time dealing with rejection (season 2 episode 2)), etc. • Inappropriate laughing or giggling – this is shown a lot in season 1 and season 2. When John is talking (apart from some situations), he will automatically start laughing or giggling, but he has stated (in season 2 episode 4) that he laughs when he’s nervous, though we are not sure if this is a lie or not. All throughout the villain ending (season 2 episode 5), he is constantly laughing. On the vigilante ending (season 2 episode 5), he also randomly laughs or giggles when he’s talking to someone or himself. • No real fears of danger – this is shown in season 1 and mostly in season 2. In season 1: he cuts Zsasz’s face even though he knows he has outbursts of violence (episode 4), John is unfazed when there is a riot going on in front of him in Arkham asylum while workers and patients are getting killed all around him (episode 5). He randomly drinks a drink when he’s threatened by a cop with a gun pointed at him (episode 5). In season 2: he starts laughing when he’s threatened by Willy with a knife pointed at him (episode 2), he doesn’t seem fazed when Tiffany points a tazor gun at him or when he gets shot with the tazor gun for that matter (episode 2), he runs into the lower floor of Riddler’s hide out (out of curiosity) even while knowing the place is a death trap (episode 3), he jumps onto a roof ledge just to stand with Batman (episode 3), he stands there smiling when the secret lab was about to insinuate them (episode 4), he looks around the corner when a machine gun was firing at them (episode 4), he hits Bane/Mr Freeze (possibly the strongest people out of the pact) with a gun/pole/batarang when Bane/Mr Freeze tries to kill Bruce (episode 4), he blows up the bridge even though he is still on it (episode 4), he leans and falls off the ledge of the bridge backwards (episode 4). On the villain ending (episode 5), john is unfazed by Bruce/batman threatening him, or when he fights him. On the vigilante ending (episode 5), john (and batman) fight bane who was the strongest in the pact. • may “day dream” or “zone out” when overstimulated – the best example to show of this symptom is on the villain ending (season 2 episode 5), when john asks batman what he thinks Harley would do if she found out about him giving the map to Jim Gordon, whatever batman answers with, john turns around and seems to zone out asking “what do you think that means, Dr Leland?” and answers with “uhh it makes me feel uncomfortable when you put it that way Dr Leland”. Psychosocial Symptoms: • Social isolation – he was in Arkham asylum for an unknown period of time (Dr Leland stated “John has been with us for quite some time”) (season 1 episode 4) • Lowered self-confidence – during the interrogation scene (in season 2 episode 3), John says that he did try to stick up for Bruce (“internally”) but said “I’m sorry, I’m not as strong as you” • Difficulties with social interactions – as stated before, John struggles to start a conversation with the likes of Bane and Harley (though this could be the fault of Bane and Harley) • Depression – after being punched and left by Harley, John enters a stage of depression while drinking an unknown amount of alcohol (from what I can see, I would say that he drank at least six bottles of beer), he also shouts comments like “I don’t want to do this anymore, not for you, not for her, certainly not for Gotham. I don’t care!”, “I’m John Doe, the lonely hearts club”, “you’ve got some real nerve you know that, buddy. Remember at the café (just be yourself John/just manipulate her John), then I stuck my neck out for you, way out! Bane nearly ripped my head off. And for what? Her flew the cope, and I have nothing. You steered me wrong, at every turn” and “I don’t want to find her. My heart can take another kicking. I don’t ever want to see her again, she ruined me, I-I can’t.” (season 2 episode 4) • Moodiness – John does have a lot of mood swings and outbursts of anger as stated in the previous symptoms, this mainly happens when someone rejects him or disagrees with him. • Troubled romantic relationships – in the villain ending (season 2 episode 5), john and Harley’s relationship seems to be a pretty stable one, until Harley finds out that john gave away the map or john stops Harley from killing Bruce, then she proceeds to try and strangle john while saying “I’ll kill you”. John also runs away leaving Harley behind with Bruce (batman) and Selina (cat woman), while Harley says “I’ll kill him” again. • Lowered self-esteem – (in season 2 episode 3), when Bruce asks why john has green hair, john aggressively said “I don’t know what’s with your black hair?” and then states “I’m sorry buddy I’m a little sensitive about my style”. Harley also states (in season 2 episode 4) “keep it with ya brucie, I can’t afford any more mishaps” while looking at john, who looks down with a sad looking face. • Feelings of being “unlike” his or her peers – in the vigilante ending (season 2 episode 5), john believes that he’s a hero above all else, apart from batman (at times). For example, when Waller says “think whatever you want, you will never be a hero”, john becomes extremely angry and shouts back “How. Dare. You. Your worse than me! That makes me the hero! And this is what hero’s do to Gotham!” The symptoms I don’t think he has is: behavioural symptoms: • Lack of interpersonal relationship skills and instincts • Inability to express one’s own feelings • May not make eye contact or may stare at others • Not pick up on social cues and may lack inborn social skills, such as being able to read others' body language, start or maintain a conversation, and take turns talking • Have a formal style of speaking that is advanced for his or her age. For example, the child may use the word "beckon" instead of "call" or the word "return" instead of "come back." • may be extremely literal or have difficulty understanding the nuances of language, despite having a good vocabulary physical symptoms: • Heightened sensitivity and overstimulation to loud noises, bright lights, unusual textures, or strong tastes • Poor coordination • Clumsiness • Poor fine motor skills • Difficulties using gross motor skills Cognitive symptoms: • Difficulties with changes or upsets in routine • Difficulties picking up on the subtle changes in tone, pitch, and voice that accompany regular conversation • May be unable to understand sarcasm or jokes • Poor organizational skills • difficulty making friends of the same age, children with AS may feel more comfortable with adults or much younger children psychological symptoms: • Difficulty making and keeping friends • Challenges in finding and maintaining steady employment • Anxiety • Tendency toward shyness

Of course I am not a doctor, I can’t diagnose this, but there was a lot of evidence so I decided to check it out, and no I’m not saying that john is autistic just because I’m autistic, that’s just weird and very very low. If anyone finds anymore evidence or any other symptoms, let me know and I will add/edit it. (also, I am not too sure if some of these symptoms are in the correct categories (cognitive, behavioural, etc) if they are, please do not hesitate to tell me and I will correct it). This post is not making fun of autism or any mental disorders, this is just a theory that I created to see if it was correct or not (I would never make fun of any mental disorder) comment down below if you agree or disagree with me my laugh sounds really similar to johns/jokers laugh and I don't know whether to find that amusing or worrying Well that’s it from me bye

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singingwordwright · 6 years

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Physical intimacy and disparate portrayals of it

This post was inspired by some discussion over on @lemonoclefox 's blog about the whole ongoing issue with the way Malec's physicality is handled. I didn't want to word-vomit all over their post, but I have been writing on the subject in recent weeks and I wanted to check in now that we've got another episode, and also because the post-ep analysis for 3x02 got really ugly in some corners of the fandom.

It made me start questioning my approach to the subject and asking myself whether I'd done enough to be positive in my breakdown of Malec, to make it clear how much GOOD I find in the Malec relationship, or do I focus too much on what needs improvement?

It's totally possible that I do; I tend to assume anyone who follows me already knows how much I love them and how wonderful I think they are, so it just goes without saying. But my words aren't only read by the people who follow me or know how I feel about Malec, and that is something I need to be more mindful of.

It's probably the same for many of us. I think there is a natural human tendency when there's a lot of something good to overlook that and focus on what needs improvement.

I also think in online communities today there is a tendency to not discuss things in good faith, to immediately assume the worst of people whose points we disagree with and to reflexively polarize farther than we might have otherwise gone. So if someone finds a flaw in something you don't, or if they express their position badly, or whatever, not only are they wholly, unequivocally wrong, but they're a terrible person for thinking that.

It's just ugly and we really should all be doing better, myself absolutely included.

This gets long from here on out, so I'm going to put it under a cut:

I’ve been mulling over and meta’ing on this issue for over a year now. My thoughts and feelings on it have evolved a number of times—as they should. And my inability to put into words the issue I’m seeing has become something of a personal hobgoblin; I haven’t been saying it right and I have a desperate need to say it right.

Part of that is because my brain tends to latch onto things mathematically, almost obsessively so. To point where I actually suspect that, had I been born 15 or 20 years later, I might have fallen somewhere on the autism spectrum. I seize hold of patterns and trends very early in their development and can’t let go of them. If I can quantify something, it feels more real, more concrete. It makes it easier for me to try to communicate what I’m seeing, because surely if I point out the pattern I’m picking up, everyone else will too, right?

Well, no. Because there’s a lot about a subject like this that can’t be quantified, and attempting to do so leaves you at risk of missing the forest for the trees. I really haven’t done myself any favors in this regard, firing off my metas without first making a concerted effort to step back from that instinct and try to look at the whole picture instead of just the patterns I was perceiving and a few examples that make them clear to me.

So I feel like I’m blindfolded and batting at a piñata. I keep swinging glancing blows at the point I’m trying to make, which concerns the work that remains to be done in the way Malec is filmed and packaged by the showrunners and whoever is behind such decisions. My gut tells me there’s an important issue here that needs addressing, or at least conscious awareness and monitoring, but I never entirely succeed in expressing it.

Breaking Down The Concepts:

(Here I go with that mathematical thinking already)

I think for the sake of clarity, there are three facets or elements of the Malec’s intimacy which need to be delineated. Because the conflating and muddying of these concepts under the umbrella term “intimacy” is what is leading to a lot of the polarized claims that are floating around, such as the idea that Malec act like roommates or don’t display any intimacy, both of which are total nonsense.

The three elements are:

Emotional intimacy

Casual intimacy (i.e. non-sexual touching, displays of physical comfort with each other)

Sexual intimacy (or the suggestion thereof)

Now, these elements of the Malec relationship are not all equal, nor should they be treated as such.

The breakdown of how much weight you put on one versus the others is, of course, a personal, subjective thing. For myself—and keeping in mind this is a TV show and the majority of the relationship development is going to and should happen in ways that can visually be demonstrated on-screen—I’d rate emotional intimacy at and non-sexual physical intimacy much higher than sexual intimacy. However, particularly because this is a new relationship, I also feel like it’s a relationship at a stage where things tend to be more weighed on the physical side than it would be for a more established relationship. There’s a reason for that, one which I will get into later.

However, YMMV

Now, I would hope we can all agree that Malec has emotional intimacy down in spades.

If you don’t agree, I’m sorry, but we’re clearly not watching the same show and maybe you should page back out of this meta.

Seriously, they’re killing that particular game, in a way that is groundbreaking for television. It’s beautiful and breathtaking and so, so very important. That’s crucial to acknowledge, because it’s getting overlooked in a lot of the more hyperbolic discourse on this subject (and conversely, some people are focusing on it to the exclusion of the other, valid issues which are being raised.)

Physical Intimacy—non-sexual vs. sexual

The issue of physical intimacy specifically is two-pronged. One half of it is about the casual, intimacy-establishing touches that one tends to see in a new relationship. The other half of it is about the handling of Malec as a sexually-involved couple.

Those aren’t the same thing, though they can and should overlap to some extent. The problem is a lot of people have been conflating those two issues. It’s easy to do, but they are separate.

So, discussions have been boiling down to arguments that basically go:

Person A: “Malec are getting short-changed, they never touch!” Person B: “Nuh-uh, they touched each other’s faces last episode! You just want to see them bone on screen!”

Both sides are right and wrong, and they’re both arguing different things. Person A is talking about sexual intimacy, Person B is talking about non-sexual physical intimacy.

There is a problem (or at least a potential one) with the way sexual intimacy is being demonstrated for Malec, particularly when compared/contrasted with other (heterosexual) couples on the show. So Person A has a valid point, it’s just getting lost in hyperbole.

Person B also has a valid point. It took a while to get there, but now the show is doing very well with regard to non-sexual moments of physical intimacy (at least as long as those moments are kept rated-G). But Person B is also engaging in that lack of good-faith thinking and missing the point Person A is trying to make because they’re too busy assuming the worst of Person A’s motives.

It’s all really messy. I’ve made that error myself a time or two, and now I’m making an effort to keep these issues more distinct in my head, and to define them clearly for the purposes of this meta.

Where it gets even messier is the overlap between the two forms of physical intimacy.

Because if, as Person A is claiming, the show is short-changing Malec in terms of sexual intimacy, the probable cause for that a homophobic inclination to regard LGBT content as more illicit by default than het content. That then can bleed over into restricting what kind of non-sexual physical intimacy they showcase.

It’s a double standard. It’s like the issue with male versus female orgasms in movies. A movie that shows (non-explicitly) a man receiving oral sex and having an orgasm might get a PG-13 rating, but a movie that shows a woman receiving oral sex and having a orgasm gets rated NC-17. The situation is the same, but for some reason it’s perceived as dirtier in the latter case.

So, if the default assumption is that a touch or situation that would be rated PG for a het couple is rated R for a queer couple, then the tendency is going to be to restrict your queer couple to touches that would be strictly rated G if they happened between a het couple. Instead of, for example, hugs and nuzzling, you get hand-holding and bro-pats. And while hand-holding and bro-pats are terrific and valid, the lack of hugs and nuzzling eventually becomes rather pointed. It’s a symptom of a problem.

So it’s not reasonable to point to the plethora of rated G touching and declare that those touches mean the show doesn’t have a problem with the way it regards and portrays queer sexuality.

But it’s also not reasonable to point to the absence of PG or PG-13 touching and claim that the lack thereof invalidates the beauty of all the rated G touching. Nor is it reasonable to claim that it means Malec act like roommates instead of a romantically-involved couple.

What’s my stake in this:

I came into this fandom from the world of LGBT-romance publishing. And back when that genre was first really getting off the ground with small presses and self-published authors releasing (lbr mostly m/m) queer romance novels, a lot of the books had content warnings for scenes of gay male sexuality. Content warnings that no one would ever have thought of slapping on the cover of a het romance novel. It was extremely glaring and made it very clear that many people considered queer sex more controversial than straight sex.

It was a convention that was challenged, rightfully so. It was challenged often and with great feeling, especially as the genre became populated less with straight women writing about gay sex because it was hot and fun, and more by queer people looking for representation and reflections of themselves.

We challenged the idea that queer sex needed warnings, as though it were dangerous or offensive, especially in books that should be normalizing the existence of queer characters and their sex lives.

So that notion, that queer sex is more illicit than straight sex, that our culture feels compelled to handle it differently, is a conversation I’m very used to having. (It’s possible maybe I’m so used to having it that I’m on alert for it even when I shouldn’t be.)

It was a conversation this fandom started having after 2x07 aired.

Another part of my interest in this issue is that I’m a storyteller; always have been, always will be. My first instinct is always going to be to analyze the way a story is being told and assess what it working and what isn’t.

I’m extremely attuned to minor immersive details (see the things I wrote above about how my brain functions.) As a storyteller, I believe those are the things that really sell something on a human level in a show about the supernatural.

*puts on my “I studied a lot of biology/A&P at one point in my checkered past” hat*

See, there’s a biological reason why new couples in the “honeymoon” phase of a relationship tend to be very touchy-feely. It’s called oxytocin, which is sometimes referred to as the “love hormone.” It’s a hormone that plays a part in emotional bonding. It causes uterine contractions in childbirth; people with uteruses are flooded with it upon giving birth. It triggers the let-down reflex when a nursing person’s milk starts flowing. It’s the reason why infants tend not to thrive when they’re not touched much. A surge of it is released when someone has an orgasm, and is theorized to be the reason why people sometimes make emotional declarations during and after sex that it turns out they don’t mean the next day.

But smaller amounts of it are released upon just about any physical contact, particularly skin-to-skin contact. A backrub. A caress. Hugging. Cuddling. Those touches tend to be really important aspects to building a new relationship. They generate the hormone that really does a lot to cement pair-bonding. (That’s not universal, of course; some people are very touch-averse and bond in other ways, but we have no evidence that Magnus and Alec have that sort of aversion, though that would be an interesting concept to explore in fanon or fic at some point.)

So the scarcity of physical intimacy beyond the most chaste and restrained of touching can (and maybe does) strain the realism or immersion of the way Malec is shown.

On a more personal, subjective note, literally the only time I can ever see my own experience with romantic relationships reflected in the way relationships are shown on television is when a couple is explored during the “honeymoon” phase, where Malec is now. I’m asexual, but not aromantic. And the one time I don’t feel largely touch-averse is during the bonding phase of a new relationship. So it’s really quite important to me, loving Malec as I do, that this aspect of their relationship resonate.

I know that the “lack of good-faith discourse” thing has us all assuming that prurience is what drives anyone’s interest in any discussion that touches upon Malec’s physicality, but that’s not really the case, at least not for me. It matters personally on multiple levels to me, and a desire to see Malec have sex isn’t even on the list.

With that out of the way, let’s move into the show itself.

The 2x07 Debacle and the questions it raised:

In the wake of 2x07, I really felt like I was the only person who was not throwing a huge fit over the lack of a sex scene. I wasn’t thrilled with the way the episode had gone, but it was another case where the fandom was losing its mind and being way too hyperbolic, enough so that I just recoiled from it, and I wanted everyone to calm the fuck down. (see also my rant about how the fandom’s reaction to 2x07 led us to a place where Cassandra Clare felt comfortable stating that Alec raped Magnus.)

The reason I wasn’t really furious about not getting a sex scene in 2x07 was because I felt like the show hadn’t really put in the legwork to establish Malec emotionally yet. As I mentioned above, I place more weight on emotional intimacy, and that was where I felt the story needed to be for them at that time.

Along with all my other guessing and hypothesizing about why things played out the way they did, I meta’ed at length about the timing of the season, and the fact that there really wasn’t a good place later in the season 2 narrative to put an episode where Malec made that decision to have sex and had that moment. Because any point in the story arc where Malec had the downtime to consider it, they were dealing with things like Magnus’s trauma in the wake of 2x12.

The whole season needed to be structured better, because 2x07 was just ham-handed. They had to address whether or not Malec were a sexually active couple before the sex question became an elephant in the room, detracting from all the other stuff that was going on in the narrative. 2x07 was the last time they would have breathing room to address the issue, but it was just so clumsily executed, and Ben Bray was so obviously a terrible director to choose for that episode because his discomfort with Malec and their sexuality couldn’t have been more obvious in the way it was filmed.

Why didn’t they just...wait until somewhere in the span of 2x16-2x18 for Malec to have sex? After all, according to my timeline, 2x18 happens around three weeks after 2x07. Less than four weeks after Malec’s first date. It would have been the perfect time in their relationship to raise the sex question, instead of rushing to squeeze it in before everything went to hell at the end of season 2a.

But then it becomes a question of where would they work in the “Alec choosing obedience to the Clave/Clave paternalism over honesty” plotline. Because that is a critically important plotline for Malec. That discussion needed to happen. And if it happened earlier in season 2, Malec perhaps wouldn’t have been well-established enough emotionally to withstand it and the break-up would have been much uglier. IDK I’d have to go through and pick apart their whole arc to figure out a good place for that issue to arise that would allow for pushing back the sex decision, but it’s not really germane right now.

My point is, imagine if in 2x07, Magnus had said he didn’t want to rush things...so they had stopped? The question of sex had been addressed, they decided to wait, and then they kept dating and took it slow.

Golly, wouldn’t that have been a lovely approach?

Anyway, after 2x07, I was willing to wait and hope, instead of immediately condemning the show for the disparate handling of straight vs. queer sexuality. There just wasn’t enough evidence at the time to declare it a problem, or so I felt.

Despite my faith, throughout season 2B, I started to get a little worried. The time for Malec to be making big displays of passion wasn’t right because of where the story was and the impact it was having on the characters emotionally.

Regardless of sexuality, however, Malec absolutely were not touching and kissing each other in a way that felt true (to me, of course, YMMV) for couple at that stage of their relationship. The scarcity of those touchy-feely, oxytocin-generating, relationship-building-block moments between Malec really kept snagging at my brain. (please refer to the “What’s My Stake In this” section above.)

Part of it is because I felt like the 2x07 conversation was still very much “on hold.” The jury was still out, and I was waiting and viewing with caution to see if my hope and faith would be validated when the show made good on the promise of Malec. I was hyper-aware of how they were being portrayed in all physical regards, both sexual and casual.

Did 2x18 Fix Anything?

Anyway, 2x18 almost supported my faith, that wait-and-hope approach I took after 2x07. But it made me even more wary in a way that I had a lot of trouble putting into words for a very long time.

2x18 concerned me because it sort of felt like checkboxes were being ticked. Like the showrunners were saying, “we’re giving the fans what they want, and once we’ve done that, our job is done and they have no reason to complain that Malec is being given short-shrift.”

And it just...really doesn’t work that way. It’s not a one-and-done thing; it’s an ongoing process. So the question became: was 2x18 the sign of a lesson learned, or was it simply throwing the people who were unhappy with 2x07 a bone so they’d shut up and go away? And were we, as a fandom, going to allow the showrunners to be complacent on their handling of this subject?

I could be totally wrong. I’m as susceptible as anyone to the tendency to assume the worst motives. It could be I have baggage lingering from fandoms where the showrunners were much less responsive to the fans, but I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.

At what point does “viewing with caution” become “hysterical overreaction?”

The jury is still out on that, too.

So in the wake of 2x20, I was honestly on high alert. Because it was just so glaring to me, the disparity between the way the Clace kisses in 2x19 and 2x20 were filmed, and the way Malec’s kiss at the end of 2x20 was filmed. The lighting, the camera angles and distance, the lingering and so forth. Clace were filmed as though the camera couldn’t get close enough, couldn’t draw the audience in enough, and Malec were filmed as though they wanted to get as far away from that moment as they could as quickly as possible.

So, I wrote a meta at the time about it and did a truly terrible job of expressing the point I was trying to make. I was using the kisses as a stand-in for the disparate handling of queer sexuality versus straight sexuality, but I got absorbed in the fact that I had the ability to visually demonstrate the point I was making. I went into super-detail-oriented, hyper-analytical mode. I thought I could illustrate my point in terms of inches of distance between bodies, in terms of camera angles used and lumens of lighting and feet of distance from the camera to the couple. I frankly lost sight of how-to-nuance. As I said before, I missed the forest for the trees and I don’t feel like I really succeeded in posing the question I was trying to pose.

The question I wanted (and failed) to ask was this:

Is Shadowhunters going to be one of those shows where the queer pairing is only perceived as “okay” (by whoever makes the decision of what is or isn’t acceptable on the show) as long as they’re the “safe” gays who don’t remind us too often or too obviously that they have icky gay sex?

In other words, were the Shadowhunters showrunners going to be like the authors and publishers that felt queer sexuality needed special warnings and careful handling in a way that straight sexuality doesn’t?

Moving into Season Three

I think there’s a tendency to get a little perplexed here with how much progress the show should have made. Some people say it’s only been 5 episodes since 2x18; therefore we don’t have enough evidence to say whether or not 2x18 is proof of a lesson learned or just a big but ultimately meaningless gesture.

They’re right; five episodes really isn’t very much and certainly a more laid-back outlook is completely valid.

But the showrunners had an entire hiatus to mull this over, and three of those five episodes were written after that hiatus. In fact, IIRC, two writing/production hiatuses passed between the airing (and resultant backlash) of 2x07 and the beginning of season three.

(see what I’m doing here? I’ve again lapsed into mathematical thinking without even intending to do so. I’m counting days and breaking things down into subjective vs. objective time passed like it’s some damn relativity exercise.)

My point is, it’s not unreasonable to say the showrunners have had enough time to internalize those lessons and if they’re not demonstrating that they’ve done so, then that’s an indication of a problem, or a potential problem.

That’s a valid approach, as well.

So, again, this is totally an issue of YMMV.

If people choose to not worry about it now, that’s great, as long as they recognize the validity of the people who do.

And if people choose to express concern about it, that’s also great as long as they don’t attempt to invalidate the things that the show is doing right and well with regard to how Malec is being portrayed.

There has been tremendous improvement on one side of the two-pronged issue of physical intimacy, I will say that. The show has gotten much better about Malec having those sort of intimate, casual touches that you see in the early stages of a new relationship. I’m rather quite satisfied on that front.

But there’s maybe not as much improvement as there could be. They’re still keeping moments of physical contact rated-G when maybe it would really be okay for them to be rated-PG. That begs the question of how much of that is being done because two men touching feels more risque by default than it would if they were a man and woman.

Honestly, in 3x03 after Maryse left, would it have been so hard for Magnus to slip his arm around Alec’s waist and give him a squeeze before wandering off the clear the table? The face caress was lovely, but the shoulder pat was sort of weak.

That’s totally nitpicky, I know. I’m using it as an example, not saying it’s something that actually bothers me. Because earlier in the episode we had that lovely bit of Magnus caressing Alec’s arm and holding his hands in front of Izzy, so I don’t care.

There’s definitely been improvement, but there’s still room for more, that’s all I’m saying.

But that’s the problem with this whole discussion, isn’t it? The second you say “X is an issue” someone will pipe up with “but Y negates that claim” and then the discussion misses the emerging trends and patterns and just becomes about one-upping whoever you disagree with on some isolated detail divorced from the issue as a whole.

An exception to a pattern does not negate the existence of the pattern.

The other half of the two-pronged issue of physical intimacy is the way Malec’s sexuality is treated and whether it’s being handled with kid gloves in a way that straight sexuality is not.

And in that regard, there are signs give me cause for concern (again, YMMV.)

Here’s an example to compare and contrast:

Clary walks into Jace’s room in her underwear; they’re both mostly naked, she straddles him and they roll around on the bed making out.

Alec walks into Magnus’s room in his underwear; they’re both mostly clothed, Alec sniffs his shampoo and they don’t even touch, even though they’re home alone together in a moment where touching would be entirely appropriate

Please note: that’s not to discount or attempt to invalidate how lovely the Malec scene we got in the episode is. It really was sweet and delightful and many wonderful things.

And there is also differing context that means that these are two very different scenes establishing two very different things; namely that Clace are in a very dangerous place in a relationship that actually lacks a lot of emotional intimacy, and Malec are in a very comfortable place in a relationship with tons of emotional intimacy.

But the point remains that there is a very clear disparity between the way the two relationships are portrayed in terms of sexual or sexually-suggestive moments.

There simply IS.

Let’s hypothesize for a moment that the context had been identical. Malec are in a good place, Clace are in a good place. Malec are enjoying a relaxed morning moment having just woken up together, getting ready for the day. Clace are doing the same.

How do you think the Clace scene would have played out in that context? I mean, really? Would they have been mostly dressed? Would they have not touched at all? Would the suggestion that they had showered together have been limited to a small smile after one character told the other that they liked taking showers?

No, of course not. If the context had been identical, Clace would have been far more sexually suggestive. They would have been mostly naked; one of them would have probably still been wet and dripping, wrapped in a towel. There would have been kisses and making out.

Now, it’s easy to look at that one example and say it doesn’t count because it’s only one example, but the problem is, there is a clear and traceable pattern of this happening. Collectively, when you take the Malec moments into consideration, the times when they are allowed to be physically demonstrative with each other (particularly moments where it would be entirely appropriate for them to be rated PG or even PG-13) are extremely limited, particularly in comparison to het moments of similar context.

This goes beyond moments of actual touching. It also goes into moments where even the suggestion that they are a sexually involved couple is entirely appropriate. With a very limited number of exceptions, those moments are conspicuously absent for Malec.

Let’s consider the Clace training scene in 3x01. There is moment when Jace thrusts his sword between her legs. Wow. That is REALLY not subtle phallic imagery there.

(The etymology of the word “vagina” is literally “sheath or scabbard.” The phallic implications of sword imagery are extremely well-established. Hell, I remember when I was in high school, doing a play where my character was supposed to hand a male character a sword and I was supposed to make it as suggestive as possible because this was the symbol of him becoming a man and when he refuses it, I was to let it swing down and droop like a penis going flaccid. This is not a new idea.)

So, raise your hand if you think Malec’s training scene would ever have such a blatant shot of one of them is actually symbolically penetrating the other. Anyone? Anyone?

And I wouldn’t want it to, because honestly that shot was really quite crass and tacky and sort of objectifying of Clary, but the fact that such a moment made it past the censors for a het couple when you know for an absolute fact that it would never have done so with a queer couple is extremely telling.

And that isn’t to say that what we do get with Malec isn’t lovely, because it very much is, it SO is, and that needs to be appreciated and valued and praised.

It also isn’t to say that I personally need or even want Malec portrayed the way Clace are; they’re unique and special and wonderful and that’s a very good thing.

It’s still early days to declare that the showrunners learned nothing from the 2x07/2x18 debacle. But I still feel like I’m in “wait and see” mode and at some point you have to decide that you’re done waiting and seeing and declare it a problem.

Regardless of where you draw that line, the fact still is that show scrubs the suggestion of sexuality from Malec’s moments the way it doesn’t with Clace’s (or with a lot of other straight pairings we’ve seen.)

This happens to the extent of short-changing Malec on casually intimate touches to some degree, as though even those may be too suggestive.

The show sanitizes Malec. As though Malec is dirty and needs sanitizing. As though even just a Malec kiss needs to be kept artificially chaste in a way that a Clace kiss wouldn’t.

The issue isn’t just how Malec is portrayed, it’s the disparity in how they’re portrayed versus how a heterosexual couple would be portrayed in a similar context.

And if this pattern continues, then yes, it’s a very. big. problem indeed.

For now, I continue to wait and see.

#shadowhunters #malec #meta #discourse #long post #physicality discourse

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freematthewrushin · 4 years

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TODAY IS MATTHEW ‘S BIRTHDAY: CALL TO ACTION: ASK THE GOVERNOR & STAFF FOR AN ABSOLUTE PARDON

Matthew is a black, autistic twenty-one year old male who was a model citizen. He beat all kinds of odds against him: black, autistic, ADHD, anxiety, a traumatic brain injury(TBI) in 2017 that left him comatose for several days, and which required rehabilitation in order for him to re-learn life functions, including walking and talking. A pituitary cyst was discovered during evaluation and treatment for the TBI. The single car accident which resulted in the TBI has left him with PTSD. Despite all of these challenges, Matthew graduated with honors from high school, was employed and was an engineering student at ODU. He participated in numerous volunteer activities. He is a gifted pianist, plays the viola beautifully, and he composes music and writes poems.

Matthew was sentenced to 50 years for a non fatal car accident. No drugs or alcohol involved...just words. He repeated words from an angry man which is called Echolalia. Those words were used to turn a car accident into a crime. Autism & prior accident never taken into consideration.

The facts don’t support this, including the totality of the victim and witness statements, Matthew’s behavior and statements, and the forensic evidence.

It took less than 6 hours for Matthew’s freedom, his reputation, his future to be stolen by Virginia Beach Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice System.

Matthew turns 22 on August 4th, 2020.

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These are critical points:

________________________________________________________________________________

(1) Mark R. Herring: Attorney General

EMAIL: [email protected]

CALL: (804)786-2071

(2) Kelly Thomasson: Secretary of the Commonwealth

EMAIL: [email protected]

CALL: (804) 786-2441

Fax: 804-786-7441

(3) Brian Moran: Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Secretary

CALL: Office: 804-786-5351

EMAIL: [email protected]

(4) Tonya D. Chapman: Chair of the Virginia Parole Board

EMAIL: [email protected]

CALL: 804-674-3081

(5) Virginia Governor Ralph Northam

CALL: 1 (804) 786-2211

EMAIL: [email protected]

(6) [email protected]

(1) PETITION LINK: (DO NOT DONATE TO THE PETITION, ONLY SHARE)

(2) GOFUNDME FOR LEGAL AND EXPERT FEES (ZERO THE TIP FEE: DO NOT ADD A TIP): we still need financial assistance! We appreciate everyone ❤️

https://www.gofundme.com/f/SAVING-MATTHEW-RUSHIN

(3 PAYPAL:

https://www.paypal.me/Dance4Matthew

#freematthewrushin #happy birthday Matthew Rushin #defund the police #black autistic lives matter #black disabled lives matter #blacklivesmatter #disability #autism #autistic #actually autistic #signal boost #boost #help others #adhd #tbi

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whydoyouhaterapevictims · 7 years

Text

On abusive interactions

Last night, tumblr used clownyprincess was approached via DM by Carmen/courteousmingler. The conversation opened with Carmen asking clownyprincess to “walk [her] through” how to commit suicide and went downhill from there. Carmen has since made several posts about this, and posted some decontextualized screencaps from their conversation.

Carmen’s version of what happened between her and clownyprincess seems to be that clownyprincess was “sent after” her by catandkitty (untrue; catandkitty and clownyprincess are barely acquainted, and clownyprincess was wholly acting on her own during this exchange) in order to gaslight her by calling her motives into question. This is not what gaslighting is. When someone has lied consistently - and provably - as Carmen does when she says that no one ever called catandkitty or myself rapists, and that she never “invalidated” catandkitty’s abuse, and that catandkitty and myself ONLY brought up our abuse in “the chronological middle” of a discussion where asexual rape survivors were sharing their stories, and that catandkitty tagged posts about her abuse with “aces” and “asexual” specifically to create an association between all asexuals and her own sexual abuse, and that she never discusses the sexual abuse of people who have not given her permission to do so... it is not gaslighting to not trust them when they claim to have intimate knowledge of other peoples’ motivations, as Carmen does when she says that catandkitty “wants asexuals to be raped”, or that I have a “passionate love” of rape. When someone says they support rape survivors, but spends the majority of their online time calling rape and CSA survivors “rape worshipers”, “pedophile worshipers”, “pro rape”, saying that their “love” of rape is “masturbatory”, etc, it is not gaslighting to question the degree to which they actually support all rape survivors. These are questions that I hope would occur to anyone who observed someone acting in way so contradictory to their stated intentions.

It IS gaslighting to consistently lie to someone, over and over again, and then berate them for not believing you automatically. Which is not to say that courteousmingler gaslights people - I don’t think you can call any singular, one-off interaction with a person gaslighting; gaslighting by necessity takes place over a series of interactions, that is how it works - but having been in an abusive relationship that included gaslighting, it’s noticeable to me that Carmen frames people simply trusting their own immediate perceptions over what she tells them to believe as “gaslighting”.

After talking to clownyprincess about her interaction with Carmen, we decided that it would make sense for me to post the screencaps of their conversation, as well as a statement from clownyprincess, here. The caps are below the cut. I received them from clownyprincess via e-mail last night, and am only posting them this evening because I had a lot to do today and couldn’t post them earlier.

PLEASE note that this chat contains heavy trigger warnings for suicidal ideation, discussions of rape and abuse, and honestly, serious emotional manipulation. I am not kidding. I find these screencaps deeply upsetting, even triggering. Take care.

There’s a lot I could say about this interaction and I may say it later. The way Carmen lies (claiming that catandkitty tagged posts about her own abuse with “aces”, for example, which is provably untrue) and then repeates the lie over and over and then demands that clownyprincess tell her where she’s lied and then immediately changes the subject - the way she opens with a request that clownyprincess go over suicide with her in explicit detail - the way she starts out questioning and becomes increasingly aggressive and verbally abusive (going from “it’s been really scary lately” and “I’m having a bad day” to “RAPE WORSHIPER! RAPE WORSHIPER! RAPE WORSHIPER!” in very short order) - the CONSTANT, constant, attempts to define catandkitty’s thoughts and intentions, followed by a complete meltdown when clownyprincess said that she felt she understood Carmen’s thoughts and intentions - the accusation that catandkitty and clownyprincess want to rape asexual people. All of that is here. What’s also immediately obvious is that Carmen has a specific sort of arguing style - I observed it from her in the DM interaction we had on my old blog; other people have commented on this as well. She messages you repeatedly, VERY quickly, often shifting the subject slightly from one message to the next, so that it’s hard to get your bearings, and you end up responding belatedly to some point she made earlier. When you do this, she berates you harshly for lying or changing the subject. Recently, she has claimed that this is a symptom of autism, and that therefor if any other disabled people find it hard to follow her particular chat style, they are being ableist, because her disability, I guess, trumps theirs.

However, I want to close this out with a statement from clownyprincess, that she sent me along with these screencaps. I’ll preface this by saying that clownyprincess and I have been mutuals for many, many years now; our internet friendship dates back to livejournal days, and during that time, I have seen her get triggered and angry, but I have never seen her be dishonest about her feelings and motivations. If there is one person I trust on this hellsite to be a straight shooter, it is clownyprincess. She and I have very different styles of engagement in this sort of thing, but I understand where her anger here comes from, and I have a lot of respect for her relentless honesty in confronting online harassment and abuse.

Anyway, here is what she had to say:

first of all, I am well aware that I lost my self-control whilst DMing with carmen yesterday and that nothing productive could come of it. I have worked hard to gain a great deal of self-control I didn't have over the last few years and having it stripped away like that left me shaken. the entire interaction has left me feeling hollow and ill.

carmen knew exactly which buttons to push in order to trigger me and elicit an hysterical reaction, because later she can use those against the person she attacked. the aftermath of knowing a manipulative liar managed to suck me into the vortex of her awfulness is stark and ugly. fuck you, carmen, you're a fucking black hole.

I have watched carmen harass an innocent woman, using the most violent and vile language about her, for months. carmen writing this post is what led to our confrontation (http://courteousmingler.tumblr.com/post/160416266640/catandkitty-wants-asexuals-to-be-raped-this-is-a)

carmen maliciously and savagely attempts to rewrite history, casting catandkitty in an incredibly ugly role of a rape advocate and apologist and which I knew could also be extremely triggering for her target. the following in particular horrified me: "catandkitty ran a campaign trying to associate asexuals who say “no” to sex, to violent abusers who withhold sex. because associating these two groups with each other can make the rape of asexuals more socially acceptable."

it is such a heinous, depraved thing to say, especially as it is absolutely untrue. seeing such a malicious lie said about someone who is themselves a rape survivor infuriated and disgusted me. it was so blatantly evil. I sent carmen an ask saying simply "you are an evil fucking monster". though some may say I started it, I stress again that what prompted my reaction was an evil fucking lie.

she then responded by DMing me with a request to help her commit suicide, as seen in the screencaps. this was deliberate, I have no doubt. it is such a vile, violent thing to say to someone and she knew exactly what she was doing, evidenced in her own words "I know". she attempted to manipulate me by trying to get sympathy and when that didn't work, she doubled down on the same awful, repeated statement about catandkitty. frankly, the whole thing was triggering for me.

having someone deluge me with endless messages all basically just repeating themselves and all with the same disgusting, UNTRUE message about a traumatised woman who was only speaking the truth drove me right over the edge. so many people have explained so many times in so many ways, the only possible reason that occurs to me that carmen maintains her insistence that catandkitty's motives were what she claims is pure vindictiveness. having someone repeat the same HORRIBLE lie like that, over and over, someone intentionally using the most distressing and awful language possible, knowing full well the impact it would have, was awful. I couldn't believe she could lie like that, like she doesn't give a fuck about the actual impacts this is having on a real person. I yelled at her because I wanted her to know that no matter how many times she told the same lie, I would not believe her.

the messages were flying back and forth constantly and by the time I was able to reply to one thing she'd said, another couple of her messages had come through, disrupting the continuity of the messages. her efforts to trigger me reached their peak when she told me that I was trying to make rape easier so I could rape someone. with the sexual violence I've experienced in my past, I just went numb. I realised I was arguing with someone who has no soul and no heart. I played cool and blocked her. good riddance to a toxic hellhole.

I'm not proud I lost my shit with carmen, but that's because it's what she wanted. from the second she sent her first message she knew what angles to play. asking me to help her commit suicide was a seriously abusive and violent thing to do and I am still shaken by it. she wanted to distress me as much as possible, knowing she could then manipulate the conversation to further blind her sycophants and cast herself as persecuted.

I will call an abuser an abuser. carmen has lied and lied and lied about catandkitty and has obsessively stalked catandkitty for seven months now, which is a type of abuse. carmen uses catandkitty's abuse history against her in order to further traumatise her. that is abuse. and when someone is screaming the same stomach-churning lie calling a rape victim a "rape worshipper", you bet I will double down and tell that abusive person they are a liar, that I know they're lying, that they're not fooling me for one second. and there is no damn good reason for these vile lies, except that that piece of shit enjoys it. if someone is gonna stand their ground and maintain the same obvious lie, expressing it in the most violent language they can find, I will definitely draw my own conclusions about their agenda.

oh and catandkitty did NOT send me. another blatant lie, carmen. I acted on my own accord.

#courteousmingler #rape tw #abuse tw #stalking tw #harassment tw

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