beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

I was making up rpg characters
again
and realised once more my character choices basically boil down to
but what if
not disabled?

... *sigh*

( Read more... )

I was thinking about werewolves (still)
and a lot of stories concentrate on them 'learning control'
but way way fewer break down why they might be having issues in the first place.

Which varies of course, since Our Werewolves Are Different, sometimes even from episode to episode.

But I'm thinking of Buffy style werewolves where they get a wolf face (sometimes) and lose their words and have claw hands and like major sensory sensitivity.

And everyone runs away from them. And they follow.

But like, in Sunnydale, running when you don't know why is probably a survival skill?

Like, pack is running and screaming, oh shit, better join in.

So there can be room for miscommunication there.

And it's incredibly frustrating when you lose your words. And frightening. I mean it has been ages since I got so overwhelm I couldn't sort out what I was seeing and hearing, but it's a thing that happens, and then it's just... ball of misery time until brain catches up. And imagine if all your senses just got way more acute? And how you prioritise them changes too, smell jumps the queue and you don't have practice or vocabulary for that unless you're, like, really into candles or perfume or gardens, maybe. But just like, boom, whole sensory channel through of new and urgent. And to lose conversations because there's too much input, that's, like, the most isolating experience. Everyone around you is being a fully interactive human, you're just... wishing the damn refrigerator would shut up and the coffee machine stop Doing That and maybe there would be turn taking around here? Or less football and more... contrast, between near and far noise. Or just, anything that might make words make sense again. But no. You get random snippets like a radio lost between channels, and maybe if lucky retain enough words to decode them.

And if you can't read neither? Isolation and random input, and then humans will human at you, and you have lost all the channels that would tell you why.

I mean body language is very species specific so either werewolves get a new upload of what body should be doing or they're, like, waaaay confused, about their new configuration or their old one or both.

Full shift wolves probably have weird body language.

I mean even dog body language is weirdly human inflected, like we gave them an accent. And sometimes anxiety.

So I've been navigating my shifting language filters for A While now, but imagine you go from neurotypical to sensory overload nonverbal in one overwhelming moment.

New wolves would have zero strategy for that. They wouldn't be likely to have a framework to understand where the problem is at. They're just all the way up to meltdown and it's completely new to them.



Which is obviously not an excuse for biting people, but it do seem like a reasons.



Like if you're a human shaped human with words and culture and understanding of social interactions, you have so many options. Even without words there are interaction scripts that work pretty good. I order second drinks at the pub by take empty to bar and point, that works for me. But a werewolf? Probably is not having a 'same again' problem, and is unlikely to be seen as one side of a social script even if they try to start one.

Whatever their problem is, their ability to communicate it is pretty much down to Howl or Grrr.
It is difficult to be diplomatic like that.

And this is a new wolf, not a working partner with training in communication while dog. They've probably not got a backup plan for this contingency. They're just bumped right back to Feel Bad Make Big Noise.

And whatever variety of Bad they are feeling, there are very few possibilities where that's going to solve it for them.



So like, framing it as a question of Control makes some sense, everyone has to do their half. But it makes it all the werewolf's problem? And it's a crappy toolkit. They can do Control and try real hard to act like a human, but that doesn't actually address any of their not human problems?

So I guess I want to social model werewolf issues.

Like, obviously they should not bite people, but people should maybe work on understanding why the wolf felt that was an option? Because everyone is having a bad day here and the one with the words and more options could do some helping.



I know I've harped on this one before, with the full transformation fics, like when waking up as a puppy. Fic treats them as puppy, but they just lost speech and fine motor skills, they need adapted interfaces and some communication software. Said that a bunch.

But werewolves might be in the same corner?



Obviously sometimes they just have bitey teeth and language skills both at once. That's probably easier. Different set of problems there.

But there's still some stuff they are dealing with where the people around them could work on lowering the bar, rather than expecting them to straighten up.




So that's been bothering me.

I have watched through The Parting Of The Ways
and now I have Feelings.

Not entirely positive ones, about the episodes.

But all the regeneration Feelings.


The basic problem is I don't agree Rose did the right thing. ( Read more... )

The Doctor was fantastic.



So the whole episode was great and full of payoff and feelings, and then lost me for like a paragraph, just, like, the crucial one it thinks it was building up to.



I don't like Rose. It makes me feel petty, but I don't. So then when she does a thing and it somehow beyond all logic works out great for her, I get... meh. Or mildly grr. Eh.



I do like Jack. All the fun with costumes on the Game Station.
But I had to take a minute after the episode to like stitch it back in to the rest of his story and keep going until a bit where he could get hugs.
Leaving him behind was very big feelings, and not nice ones.
Remember when we thought it was on accident and they'd meet up real soon and everything would be okay again?
*sigh*



So: big episodes, big feelings.



Plus I once wrote an essay on this episode, which got a good grade in a unit that more or less saved my degree when they reorganised, so now I'm just... I used to do more and be better at it and assume the future was a long albeit slow and grinding progress towards improvement. I would get my degree and I would write for Doctor Who and all this being disabled bit would be a bit of a setback, is all.

... I got my degree in 2013 and the future did not look like I thought.

And I can hear Rose's speech and look at my life and just... the boring life she dismisses isn't one I have even if I try my hardest. Go to work every day, like that's easy? And yet still I feel like there's a lot of world needs saving, and I'm not doing my part to save it.

And my part was going to be writing, cause you reach a lot of people that way.

So all there is to do is pick up and try again
but
it's a very big set of feelings first.



So that's today.

You know what bugs me?
... it's nearly five in the morning and I haven't slept, many things bug me...

but I was watching Legends of tomorrow
the episode in season one in the asylum
in the 1950s
and they explicitly say it's a bad era to be black, or queer, or a woman
but they don't say word one about mental health.

( Read more... )




Now the sky is making interesting loud noises.

So, sleep maybe for later.

Eh, internet forever.

Basically, the wheelchair thing :

So, right from the first episode, the wheelchair and the way it was portrayed bothered me.
And having seen the whole season I can now say the really stupid part is that the parts that bothered me were completely unnecessary.

( Read more... )


The Flash needs some depictions of disability that are neutral background and not a sign of deception, creepiness, or intent to harm others.

I mean, that's... that's pretty important.

But season 1 was worse than it needed to be even to keep the exact same story, in really foolish ways.

I read a thing about immortality and relationships with mortals.
It mentioned Doctor Who but not Highlander, so it missed quite a lot of the references I would make.
But what bothered me was their contention that, because half the relationship is immortal and in many cases measurably more powerful in many respects, the relationship is inherently unequal.
They reckoned that, because of this inequality, the immortals should just not date mortals.
This is bothering me in a niggly yet persistent way, and it's kind of on disability grounds.

In Highlander one of the most memorable relationships was between Methos, the world's oldest man, and Alexa, a terminally ill human.
( Read more... )






But the second part of the idea, that the Doctor (among other educated immortals) is so much smarter than humans that he shouldn't date humans... oh, that bothers me. ( Read more... )


This isn't just me saying of course I'd date the Doctor, or of course the Doctor would date me.
Though if he did then my English degree probably wouldn't be a large part of the appeal, since his criteria so far seem to involve being brave, curious, and likely to wander off. He likes it when his friends make their own plans and tell him where he's going wrong. Sure he does things behind their back or with lying for their own good sometimes, but by consistently choosing to associate with people who consider his advice more of a general guideline than the word of god he is not in fact showing a preference for people to prop up his feeling of power. He is instead valuing them for their free will and intrepid spirit, even if they've got far less of a toolkit for understanding this universe they're all exploring together.

Which seems fair enough to me.



It's like superhero teams where everyone has a different power, and the ones that can fly carry the ones that can't, but don't look down on them in any but the literal sense. Or teams where some of them have twice or more the IQ of the others, but still respect their opinions and acknowledge they're the bosses of themselves. Or like mixed ability sports teams, where some of them are wheelchair users and others can get equipment up steps. People can get along together without differences being especially relevant. Why should mixed abilities mean not associating? Even romantically? Can't see an angle where that's not ablist.



... the bit of the post about how it's always guys on TV 'having to' go date a younger woman when the last relationship ages out, whereas the much scarcer immortal women usually do the pining away forever bit, that's an imbalance that needs fixing. But see also: Highlander (the Raven): Amanda. We didn't get gender parity in Immortality, but we did get some ladies who knew how to live. But then either way up is clearly feeding on ugly cultural threads about a woman's obligation to stay young and attract men forever, so there's some work needs doing on that.


This might just be me defending my preferences for fictional really old guys, but I think saying that age or intelligence in and of themselves create a power imbalance that means the more powerful should just never date is really problematic in what it says about what the younger can freely choose and cope with.


(Plus in a culture with as much power imbalance between genders and races as historically Earth has had, it kind of rules out... heterosexuality? And anything but being perfectly matching in every power-related dimension, which is kind of all of them. But that's an argue beyond the scope of tonight.)

I am reading a 'turned into a dog' story.
Fuzzy amusement seemed like the thing for the day.
But I find myself getting wound up instead.

Everyone is treating him like a dog.
He's even getting wound up that everyone is treating him like a dog.
Even the one person who can translate for him is treating him like a dog.

This is Avengers fic, so Thor has the Allspeak and it should be simples, but thus far he's only used it to confirm this dog is in fact their team mate.
But then the story doesn't do anything with the others reacting.

They are in a house with a JARVIS. JARVIS could certainly open doors, but could also learn consistent vocalisations or body language and act as another translator, plus would have no particular preconceptions about how to treat a dog. JARVIS should be the most awesome assistant a newly disabled person could wish for. Well, JARVIS plus some bots to do the lifting parts.

Because I keep reading it as new disability. He has lost speech and hands and a lot of mobility, plus his senses have gone different, like color blind and new priorities. These are all components with available assistive tech. Stark should be building switches and arranging interfaces that let him keep doing as much of his usual as possible. And, granted, building weapon systems that can be operated by a puppy might be considered somewhere between insane and a bit of a problem should any other dogs access them, but biometric locks are no biggie around that much high tech. And even if they don't feel like doing the serious stuff, can you imagine new puppy Avengers trying to use the Wii? They would totally try. If Avengers games night are hilarious, add being dog shaped and you have whole new levels of amusing.

But no, the dog dude is getting incredibly bored because everyone treats him like a dog.

How does that even make sense?

At the very least, set up some audio books, make big buttons on an e reader, either prop it where he can read it or set it to speaking or just get JARVIS to read stuff out. It's not hard. No hands does not mean no working.

... and I'm not criticising the story, someone wants to write a story about snuggling up with the team in fur form, that's fine, that's their thing.

But I apparently cannot unwind to the story's level.

I just... It's not even just this. So often one of these magic things happens, like when Spike was a ghost, and I just get so frustrated, because disability doesn't mean stopping.
Even though I know the writer clearly wouldn't have thought of it in terms of disability.

Once you do though, apparently it needs an off switch.

So there's a longish article about Channel 4's newest dating show, which is about people with disabilities going on dates. I don't know why people would want to watch that, but I feel that way about pretty much anything that doesn't feature aliens or spaceships or vampires or ghosts or at the very least swords.

The weirdest bit though was it said Channel 4 claims "70% of people would not consider having sex with someone with a physical disability."
BZUH?

That... surely that can't be right?
(Like, since when do 7 out of 10 people agree about ANYthing?)

I mean, they're ruling out Daniel Jackson and Cameron Mitchell, just for starters. Granted, only in some timelines, but seriously, if you've got the tiniest chance of dating either of them, is an accident really going to put you off? Two of the most beautiful guys in creation?
If so, I do not understand at all.

And then there's the thing, how do you define physical disability?
( Read more... )

I don't know. Actually this topic is making me feel creepy. ( Read more... ) this channel 4 phrasing makes the only aspect of importance the disability.

Maybe that's why they got the 70% answer. Like, if the only thing about a person someone they asked could visualise was their disability, it's a really specialised audience who find that of itself attractive.
Oh dear, depressing, possibility of 70% of people only seeing the disability even when presented with an actual relevant person.

( Read more... )

But still. Every physical disability ever, and 70% say no way?
I seriously cannot understand that.

I read Ablism in RPG Gameplay and I wish to disagree with it. It talks about the interesting area of roleplay games character creation mechanics and ablism. Many RPGs have a points based character creation system where disadvantages are worth minus points, advantages are worth plus points, and you have a set amount of points available for a finished character. But the linked article doesn't, far as I can see, sit down and define ablism for you, so when it says "This is where the ableism is so thick you shouldn’t be able ignore it." you are left to spot it for yourself. So I tried to logic what their working definition was, and got puzzled.
( Read more... )

So is the disadvantages/advantages system ablist? Really, really no.

Unless you play it that way.

Says in the paper today one in five adults has a disability.
... I don't think one in five adult TV characters has a disability.

Torchwood is being interesting in several often under-represented areas.

So the other night I was thinking about Stuff (while trying to get to sleep, as per usual), specifically my preference in characters. I always like the simply human characters, the ones with skills hard learned rather than powers simply granted, the regular people. Watchers not Slayers.

So I was thinking, how come I'm a fan of the only genres where you'll find any other kind of hero?

And then I was, like, *facepalm*, because -

I like the stories where the world is full of people who are more powerful, faster, stronger, able to read minds or move things without touching them or whatever - and some regular person who can't do any of that is sitting in the middle trying to cope.

I like disability stories.

Oh I'd already noticed I tend to read the classic setups in terms of disability. Ghosts are clearly profoundly physically disabled (and I got all wound up when they didn't get Spike any assistive technology and just ignored him a lot). Werewolves controlling it with herbs and chanting are pretty much controlling a mental health issue with meds and meditation (no, I'm not saying mental health = werewolves, just werewolves = tiny subset of mental health). Vampires have a whole addiction metaphor going on as well as their obvious physical limitations (daylight, etc, adding up to greater restriction than most people have to cope with... although I did go through a not-goin-out-in-daylight phase once).

But the other thing, the regular people in a world where they're trying to cope with people having powers - it's like disability without any of the day to day junk. It sees coping without a superpower as a tale of heroic deeds, without getting all condescending about 'aren't you brave, dealing with all that!' about the routine stuff. It's dealing with a world where everyone important can do things that you can't, yet there's so many people with your ability set you're still normal, still part of a community that simply values the skills you do have.

You don't get that so much on a level playing field, with stories of humans in a human world, but humans in science fiction, fantasy, comics? You get that *all the time*. And I'd rather read about how a team copes with some members not being able to fly (easily, routinely, copes without even mentioning it) than I would about how some mundane world team copes with someone in a wheelchair (partly because it's always such a Thing, to even have a character in a wheelchair - like that godawful episode of DS9 where her mere presence made the whole episode plot).

It's not that I don't also want to read about people in wheelchairs kicking arse - I read Birds of Prey, Oracle rules. It's just I looked at my usual story preferences - regular people coping with more-than-regular problems - and suddenly I saw the disability thing.

And like I said, *facepalm*, because now I'm feeling all obvious.



Of course the thing where I then also like characters who take those human skills and hone them through practice to superhuman levels, or learn esoteric arts, or simply turn science into gadgeteering and magic wand things that way... That's not so much about that. That's just damn cool on it's own. Because they work and they study and they get good at stuff and anyone could do that, given the time and resources. (And I just noticed another reason I don't so much like Harry Potter - only getting to go to magic school if you've already got magic takes away the whole thing I like best about the idea of magic school. Study magic = become magic, not have to be it to start with!)

It's why I like immortals, like Highlander, without thinking about it as being the same as superpowers. I mean, it clearly is - no more worrying about the physical stuff FTW - but really, every cool thing they can do? It's just time and study, or as Duncan says trial and error. Lots of error.

I could do that.