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senrath posted:Demigod and demitasse are the only other two words I can think of that use demi, though I'm sure there are others that I'm not aware of.  ).Alien Arcana posted:Yeah, this is what I was trying to get at. It's kinda like "trans" vs. "transgender," I think.  re: update: I definitely like the way Rin and Emi bounce off each other(and Hisao) a lot more than I liked the neverending Shizune/Misha parade in act one. They're just a couple of goofballs. 
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Jun 22, 2021 04:44
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The updates at the bottom of the last page, gently caress. I knew I miscounted the posts 
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Jun 22, 2021 05:06
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Gah!  (I think it's the twin pigtails. They kind of weird me out on anyone over pre-school age.)
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Jun 22, 2021 05:54
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Haifisch posted:Terminology choices for anything queer adjacent could take up an entire book, but this one in particular is an amusing example to me. IME "trans" is mostly just used because it's shorter(although I'm sure there are people who have Opinions about it). "Transgender" was an effort by the community to find something less medicalizing and more inclusive than 'transexual'(which has the implications that a)binary trans people are the only options, b) everyone wants medical transition to get to as close to a "normal" cis body as possible, neither of which are true(and the mindset behind b) has unfortunate implications for intersex people. it's intersectionality all the way down!)). And after a couple decades, it's caught on. Thanks for the correction. I'm no expert on the subject, I just saw an analogy and ran with it Antistar01 posted:(I think it's the twin pigtails. They kind of weird me out on anyone over pre-school age.) The overlapping images are doing weird things to the proportions of her facial features, which are already a bit out-of-whack just due to the game's art style. (Also the blurred character on a normal background makes it look like one of those "ghost" photographs.)
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Jun 22, 2021 06:04
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 Running 101 Stretching before running is... Controversial. While it may be useful for sprinters (which Emi seems to be), there's actually a good body of evidence pointing towards the fact that static stretches (the "classic" hold-this-position ones) aren't really that useful in that they don't improve running times, while instead increasing the chance of injury. It would be better to do some dynamic stretches, which means limbering up by moving around, shaking your limbs, moving your joints, and so on. Stretching, however, is good for recovery after a run, because it helps prevent the muscles stiffening up. (This is also why you should move around while you catch your breath, like Emi said: if you run and then stop suddenly your muscles have a good chance of seizing up -- that's why you see runners walking around after a marathon, for instance.) Hisao did four laps of the track: that's a mile of running (each lap is 400 metres, a little bit less than a quarter mile), which is not bad at all for someone who's supposedly extremely out of shape. It would be interesting to know what his time was. I really like running, can you tell? Mikl fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 22, 2021 12:54
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"I sit down and half-heartedly chip away at my homework for a while, feeling like a vulture picking at a particularly unsavory carcass. It knows this is what it eats, but it's not sure that it shouldn't be ordering takeout instead." It's not the world's best analogy, but the reluctant vulture is a fantastic mental image.
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Jun 22, 2021 14:02
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Mikl posted:
Seriously. A mile for an out-of-shape dude with Arhythmia seems excessive. I can barely walk a half mile these days because of my own issues. I maxxed out at an 8:48 mile in elementary school and I gotta tell you; it was agonizing. Speaking of which; I have my own contributions to disability talk. I will share them later.
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Jun 22, 2021 15:37
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 Interviews with Monster Girls, Episode 1: "Tetsuo Takahashi Wants an Interview" (Pt. 2)  We jump a little bit further ahead. Somebody is yelling at Hikari; apparently she left something at home and she’s trying to mooch it off someone else instead.   Takahashi is introduced to Himari, Hikari’s younger twin and responsible sibling. Unlike Hikari, she’s polite to Takahashi, collected, and kinda stiff, but she seems pretty used to putting up with Hikari’s nonsense. Himari stalks off after giving Hikari her book (“don’t draw in it”) while Hikari brags about how great her sister is.  Takahashi starts to ask her whether her sister is also a demi-human, stops halfway through the last word, and replaces it with demi. That’s how you handle it. We notice it if you use an outdated word, then replace it with something more appropriate. We don’t mind. Don’t worry about it, and just try to remember it in the future. She says Himari isn’t, and that’s the end of that conversation.  Takahashi takes advantage of the lull in the conversation to ask her for an interview, having his words and preparing for disappointment.  Hikari goes “yeah  ”… … And he does a genuine double take. All she wants is permission to hang out in the biology prep room whenever she wants, and he agrees before she darts off to class. Fun fact: while this is hardly universal, lots of disabled people are actually happy to tell you all about their disabilities as long as you ask respectfully about it and then listen to what they say.  Wipe cut to our friendly neighborhood dullahan.  Meet Machi Kyouko, one of our supporting protagonists and the character that cleaves closest to the standard image of disability as something that one struggles with. Unlike the other three demis we’ve met so far, her condition is immediately visible and her accommodations pop out; she has to rest her head on a pillow turn it with her hands to meet people’s eyes. The conversation seems to be going fine, with her and her classmates bonding over living near each other…  … But the moment her nature comes up (she can’t take the bus because losing her head on there could be dangerous), the conversation grinds to a halt.  The other two abruptly change topics and start talking cat videos. They don’t cut her out of the conversation entirely, which is something that happens, but she reads the message that they’d rather not think about it loud and clear. People… Just don’t like talking about other people’s disabilities. They don’t know how to handle it, they get caught up in what would or wouldn’t be rude to say and end up talking about something else, even if the person in question wants to talk about their disability. At least they don’t stop talking to her entirely, which is something I’ve also seen happen. But it could definitely go better.  Takahashi starts another infodump as the camera pans to the next classroom, where [name has yet to be revealed] is picking up her books. Apparently, most demis come about as a result of random mutations and their conditions are not hereditary, so the one twin being a demi and the other not is more common than the other way around. Not… Gonna open up that can of dynamite-encrusted worms now. Maybe later.  He says that, even though he knows this and plenty of other facts about demis, he doesn’t know anything about how they live, how they interact with others, or even what they value. When he talked about interviews earlier, he’s not joking; he’s out to gather subjective information, to find out how they live from them directly and treat that as important. This point of view is rare. Information gathering on disabled people almost always focuses on collecting statistics and performing trials instead of performing surveys or interviews, anything that involves directly asking us about our wants and needs. When I did accessibility research for this thread (I’m still open to suggestions, by the way), I found very little from a user’s perspective; just about everything asserted principles and talked about general facts instead of how individuals might interact with the technology that’s supposed to be there to help them. It’s immensely refreshing to see somebody take the road less traveled here.  It turns out that narration was basically Takahashi typing up an introduction to his paper while Hikari enjoys the cool air. Fun fact: many, if not most, Japanese schools don’t have air conditioning. The biology prep room, though, has to be shaded and kept cool so the samples they keep there won’t go off, so it’s a lot cooler than the rest of the school. Turns out that vampire weakness to sunlight? They are extremely heat sensitive and overheat easy, so Hikari’s just like  out of the sun. She mentions that she COULD try and get accommodations in class, but she doesn’t want to inconvenience the people around her, which is… Very understandable. The issue of when, where, and how to ask for them is one way too complicated for me to cover here in a paragraph, but I can’t blame her for going  about something that doesn’t seem to debilitate her. After some banter, they get the interview proper started. Takahashi kicks it off with a series of questions about qualities traditionally assigned to vampires.  She likes the taste of garlic and thinks crosses are terribly unfashionable…  … Is pretty sure that a stake through the heart will kill her (Takahashi’s like “yeah me too”)…  … And explains the blood dependency thing as a nutrient imbalance. Apparently they get anemic really easily, which is connected to their low tolerance for heat, but as long as they put a little effort into eating carefully they’ll get along just fine. … At least, she THINKS that, until he points out that she keeps unfavorably comparing the taste and texture of those foods to blood. It turns out vampires get a blood pack ration from the government, and she’d legitimately never considered how big a role that blood plays in her feeling free to eat what she wants. After some back and forth, they conclude that vampires who go without the blood ration are roughly equivalent to vegetarians and both are awesome. He asks her about drinking blood next and she’s like “oh yeah ” Remember the yuki-onna? Hikari gets up in her personal space a lot; she likes how she runs a lot colder than most people.  We get an uncomfortably erotically-charged imagination sequence about Hikari biting her neck, complete with lighting, costumes, and violin music…  … And then smash cut back to her deadpanning “I do think about it  ”. She never acts on it, though, because she’s aware of how colossal a dick move doing that would be. At this point Takahashi kind of crosses the line. He points out the obvious erotic connotations of what she just described… To a teenager, who he then asks to break down her romantic preferences and how they relate to that impulse. Hikari gets flustered and confirms that it might have something to do with her sexuality, but doesn’t really commit; she just doesn’t know yet. As she says herself, she’s never fallen in love, so she can’t hope to compare the two.  After breaking the tension by having Hikari accuse Takahashi of being “ah, it’s so good to be young  ” and him go “yeah pretty much”, the anime lets them back off and cool down… … Just in time for the bell to ring.   But as she walks away, she turns back…  … Nips his neck…  … And laughs at his  reaction.… I’m honestly not sure what to make of this scene. It’s worth making clear, as you never really know with anime: we aren’t in that kind of territory here. This never goes anywhere creepy. But speaking as someone who’s established themselves as a stickler for interview ethics, this whole scene is kind of fraught. I don’t even know where to begin. At least Hikari seems more caught offguard then actually indignant or intimidated.  Back to Kyouko. She’s busily going  as her classmates walk by… … When Hikari busts in and asks if anything’s wrong.   Nice touch here; when Kyouko tries to lie about how she’s feeling, she looks at Hikari for a second, gasps, and grabs her head off her pillow and rapidly rotates it to simulate shaking her head.  Hikari blows it off.  She starts openly – and frankly – empathizing with Kyouko about how hard it must be to get her head around safely, to the shock of her classmates.  Kyouko is delighted.  Hikari introduces herself as a vampire and they commiserate about their respective difficulties.  Eventually, a classmate walks over to see what they’re talking so animatedly about…  … And the sound of conversation cuts out as the camera shows the three of them talking and laughing. I like how the anime has demis finding each other and forming friendships, because in my experience, we do find each other. Looking back at both my high school and college friends, it’s kind of startling just how many of them turned out to be disabled in some way, and that lines up with what I hear from other disabled folks, too. I mean, in this anime they have to come together enough to form a social unit in order to get the story to work, but that’s a comfortable echo of something real.  As the two finally pack up to leave (the other girl left, apparently), Kyouko and Hikari agree to college other by their first names, which is a much bigger deal in Japan. Kyouko asks Hikari why she never sees her during class breaks.    Sometime later, Takahashi gets a jump scare. It’s a headless Kyouko, bearing a note for him. He tries to awkwardly socially interact with her body before he realizes it’s pointless…  … While pointedly ignoring Hikari and Kyouko’s head hiding just behind the door frame.  The note is from Kyouko, thanking him at length for getting her body to the nurse’s office. She also says Hikari told her about the interviews and expresses an interest in swinging by to participate sometime. The two belatedly realized that, if he doesn’t know they’re there (he totally doesn’t guys, for real  ), he can’t respond to the letter…  Only for him to open Kyouko’s hand and put a short response in it. She flushes at the contact.  He leans around the doorway to let them know, and we learn that when Kyouko gets startled, her flame thing flares and lets out a very  supernatural groan. Her body beats a hasty retreat, and the two girls run away laughing while Takahashi reverts to the “ah, young people ” expression he had earlier. Response secured (it says “come by anytime”), the two result to celebrate by buying something on the way home…  … And the camera pans up, and ends the episode.  And that’s a wrap! So, conclusions? I’ve talked before about how uncommon it is to think of disabled people as a minority group with elements in common instead of a series of sad one-offs. From the perspective of someone involved in the disability rights movement, it’s abundantly clear that this anime is one giant metaphor for disabled life: disability as an identity, the importance of government assistance, accommodations, us finding each other, there’s so much there. So why is this interpretation so unusual? Quackles posted:Perhaps the reason people don't recognize this anime in the context of disability is that it's portrayed as a thing that just, like, the characters have and roll with, and not, like, a primary impediment to the characters' well-being? Yep. Looking back at the counterarguments on that reddit thread I mentioned earlier, many of them boil down to “these themes are not overt, and therefore they don’t apply”. The disability lens feels wrong to these people because the only frame of reference they have is disability as a life-defining affliction; the neutral approach we’ve been exploring this thread isn’t on their radar. It’s kind of disappointing that something so thoroughly rooted in that experience fails to make that experience clear to people interacting with it. … But then, Interviews with Monster Girls never claimed to be a work of activism. I can wish it wore its heart on its sleeve more, but it doesn’t have the history or thrust of KS, so I’m not inclined to judge it. It’s a sweet, watchable anime that just happens to line up with the purposes of this thread, which makes it useful lens to look at things through. Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 04:33 on Jun 25, 2021 |
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Jun 22, 2021 16:59
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ChrisBTY posted:Seriously. A mile for an out-of-shape dude with Arhythmia seems excessive. I can barely walk a half mile these days because of my own issues. I maxxed out at an 8:48 mile in elementary school and I gotta tell you; it was agonizing. Depends on how frequently it occurs and how it presents itself. Some people are more or less fine right up until they trigger it somehow (chemicals, exercise, certain types of stress/anxiety, etc.), and some people go from being perfectly able to suddenly being unable to walk more than ten feet without getting winded. I'm lucky that my condition is extremely mild and not life threatening, but even then I've had some really scary experiences while I was figuring out what my triggers are and how to deal with my heart when poo poo started to hit the fan.
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Jun 22, 2021 19:04
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Antistar01 posted:Gah! DeviantArt search "twintails": 24k results Pixiv search ("twintails": 139k results It's an anime aesthetic. Don't know why it's popular, as opposed to single-ponytail.
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Jun 22, 2021 21:26
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Cobalt-60 posted:DeviantArt search "twintails": 24k results handlebars
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Jun 22, 2021 21:40
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Cobalt-60 posted:DeviantArt search "twintails": 24k results I tend to think of it as a shorthand for "young/young-looking", though that's mainly because the only people I can recall seeing with a twintail in real life are babies/toddlers.
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Jun 22, 2021 22:36
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Gosh dangit OP, you're gonna get me to watch this anime again at this rate, i just know it.
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Jun 22, 2021 23:08
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Redditors, like many many many very online people, are allergic to reading a fiction in any manner other than the most literal possible read. It's extremely frustrating and no surprise they were unwilling to even countenance a read that is, horror of horrors, social allegory.Falconier111 posted:He says that, even though he knows this and plenty of other facts about demis, he doesn’t know anything about how they live, how they interact with others, or even what they value. When he talked about interviews earlier, he’s not joking; he’s out to gather subjective information, to find out how they live from them directly and treat that as important. This point of view is rare. Information gathering on disabled people almost always focuses on collecting statistics and performing trials instead of performing surveys or interviews, anything that involves directly asking us about our wants and needs. When I did accessibility research for this thread (I’m still open to suggestions, by the way), I found very little from a user’s perspective; just about everything asserted principles and talked about general facts instead of how individuals might interact with the technology that’s supposed to be there to help them. It’s immensely refreshing to see somebody take the road less traveled here. This is a hell of a thing to hear and I'm very surprised (though not to the point of disbelief, to be clear). Like coming from an anthropology & sociology background, that seems like a lot of low-hanging fruit, to have largely unpublished cultures existing inside the US.
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Jun 23, 2021 00:26
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Alright I guess it's time to share my story and my perspective. I don't know how much it will illuminate anything but I guess it can't hurt. Let me tell you about invisible disabilities and imposter syndrome. I have a battery of physical, psychological and neurological hinderances. I have Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis, a rare type of arthritis that occurs at birth and can be extremely debilitating. Luckily mine went into remission when I was 9 or so. This doesn't mean I'm free and clear. JRA can cause physical deformity. I got out lucky but my knuckles are perpetually puffy, I have trouble with dexterity and a lot of pain performing repetitive motions (typing is tolerable but writing is agony). I have a lot of physical discomfort even on my good days and my physical capabilities are significantly compromised due to chronic pain in my lower back/waist area. Sleep is difficult because I toss and turn a lot. My bed frequently looks like a FEMA site after I wake up. I have been led to understand that this might not be normal. I have ASD/ADHD. I struggle with attentiveness, organization and social skills. Every tiny facet of life feels like it has to be micromanaged to the point where I simple don't have the energy to do it all. I am extremely forgetful because my brain would rather focus on anything else other than the thing I'm supposed to be doing and if a task has multiple steps I will trip over the order and forget something or do something in the wrong order. Society and I apparently have very different rules on how social interaction is supposed to happen. I have been led to understand that this might not be normal. See I was born with both of these afflictions. It's normal for me. I have little frame of reference for what the difference between me and you actually is. The biggest example I can offer is that as my senior year of high school was coming to close I was starting to panic. I was going to have to get a job soon but I didn't understand how people could do what they do. I went to the grocery store to do a little shopping. after 30-45 minutes my back was screaming. But the cashier had been there for hours. How on earth was I supposed to endure this horrible pain for hours on end? How are they doing it? Am I a wimp? This is awful. I disclose this concern to my mom who comes to realize that I am suffering from pain other people don't have. When the rheumatologist said 'remission' we thought 'that's it, all normal now'. It wasn't. I had been suffering for years and not even knowing it. What I am is not typical. It is not normal. But we can't actively perceive the pain of others. I can only take other people's word for it that standing in place for 5 minutes isn't torture. As a consequence, I can't wholly reconcile the notion that my body is disabled and I feel like an imposter. The same goes for my brain. After I graduated college we had to face the issue of the work force again but I just couldn't do it. The world, it was too big, too confusing. It was asking me to do things that made no sense to me. I felt completely out of sync with reality. I was working with an agency who attempted to secure employment for the disabled. Neuropsych evals were something they offered. I requested one. They came back with Non-Verbal Learning Disorder (which would later be folded into ASD). It was something of a stomach punch to realize that all the problems I was having and all the problems I had had growing up were actually a symptom of having a very different brain than most people. The diagnosis read like my instruction manual. I was 25 when this happened. I had spent the first 25 years of my life thinking I was 'normal'. Because all this poo poo has always been normal to me. I barely have a clue how neurotypical people think, I've never had the opportunity to think that way. So as a consquence I keep having to ask my professionals 'Are you SURE I'm autistic' and later 'Are you SURE I have ADHD'. Because I feel like an imposter. I've had my 'normal' called a disability. But how can it be a disability if I'm normal? And that's what it is. Part of it is I spent so much of my formative years being completely clueless about just what the hell my deal is. I struggled with a lot of things but my teachers thought, and I thought, that I just wasn't properly applying myself, not that this was some impossible ladder my brain wasn't letting me climb. Even today I wonder if I could have done better. I'm on social security now, out of the work force. Was never able to really contribute and to this day I think 'am I just full of poo poo? I know every test says 'no I am not' but...am though?' Because you don't stop thinking that you're normal just because some tests tell you otherwise. Not completely anyway. And of course; if you can't see your own disabilities, what does everybody else see? ChrisBTY fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Jun 23, 2021 |
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Jun 23, 2021 00:26
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Falconier111 posted:Update 16: Don’t Panic That right there is an entire mood. I can't count the number of times I've bitterly wished for some sort of visible injury instead of having an invisible disease.
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Jun 23, 2021 01:10
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ChrisBTY posted:They came back with Non-Verbal Learning Disorder (which would later be folded into ASD). Source? I was diagnosed with NVLD as a kid and would like to see if I'm actually autistic. Also am I the only Neurodivergent person that thrived in post-secondary?
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Jun 23, 2021 02:09
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ChrisBTY posted:I have Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis Okay, so, this reminds me, and while it's more illness than disability, strictly speaking, it also has to do with invisible disorders, also sexism. Forgive me in advance for any overly brusque phrasing, but remembering this tends to get me a little heated. So, my mother came down with rheumatoid arthritis when I was in junior high, mostly due to stress at work. Now, it's a manageable illness when treated, but my mother went without proper treatment for something like two years, entirely due to her being a woman. Because when she first went in complaining of joint pain, of fatigue, etc., the doctors (male, of course), asked her questions like how often she socialized and how she was feeling, because, of course, she was an overweight single mother approaching middle age, so she must just be lonely and looking for attention from the handsome doctor man. Because of that, she was bounced around the medical system for months on end, dealing with pointless test after pointless test as her actual descriptions of symptoms were ignored by men who thought they knew better. She literally had to research her own disease and demand to be sent to a specialist, who, being a qualified professional rather than a part-time golfer who sometimes pretends to practice medicine, immediately recognized the RA and set her up with medication. Of course, by that point, significant permanent damage had been done, and my mother still suffers from a number of long-term effects, as well as constant pain, despite the arthritis itself having gone into remission. Because medical professionals simply don't listen to women the way they do men.
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Jun 23, 2021 02:22
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EclecticTastes posted:Because medical professionals simply don't listen to women the way they do men. The same applies to fat people versus thin, POC versus white people, basically every axis of marginalisation you can think of seems to provoke this kind of mistreatment from the medical system (and let's not even get started on when multiple apply). I've heard so many horror stories about this over the years, it's utterly appalling. I wish I had any kind of insight into what could be done about it.
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Jun 23, 2021 02:45
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Violet_Sky posted:Source? I was diagnosed with NVLD as a kid and would like to see if I'm actually autistic. Also am I the only Neurodivergent person that thrived in post-secondary? Unfortunately this was from a neuropsych eval 15 years ago. The reading they gave me was great but unfortunately it appears to have disappeared from the internet. Also; now I have a conundrum. When I had the eval done, the doctor described NVLD as being on the autistic spectrum (same as Aspergers). When I had a neuropsych assessment done last year right as Covid hit (because medical records from the evaluation were not in the health center I go to for some reason) the assessor diagnosed me with ASD and said that at this point the NVLD diagnosis had been rolled up into ASD. But a cursory glance online doesn't seem to indicate that to be the case. So now I'm slightly confused myself but further investigation is giving me a headache. So my apologies Sky but I can not give you a clear answer on the subject.
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Jun 23, 2021 03:26
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Alien Arcana posted:Thanks for the correction. I'm no expert on the subject, I just saw an analogy and ran with it Tulip posted:This is a hell of a thing to hear and I'm very surprised (though not to the point of disbelief, to be clear). Like coming from an anthropology & sociology background, that seems like a lot of low-hanging fruit, to have largely unpublished cultures existing inside the US. -Trans people go through a lot of gatekeeping to access basic things like medical transition(this includes things like hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgeries), legal name changes, and gender marker changes. How much gatekeeping there is varies heavily by location, even within the US. I'm talking stuff like "spend a year openly living as your gender before you're given access to the medical treatments that help you pass(hope you don't get hatecrimed in the meantime)", "spend a bunch of time and money having a therapist certify that you are Totally Definitely Trans by whatever arbitrary criteria they have", and "print your name change notice in a honest-to-gently caress newspaper for 2 weeks before you have your court hearing(PS this notice will have your full name, address, and maybe even email, hope nobody uses that info to hate crime you)". (I've had the good fortune of only having to deal with the newspaper notice bit) There is no good reason for any of this other than historically-rooted transphobia and assumptions that if you don't have this gatekeeping, people will  make a mistake they regret later. Also all of this gets even worse for people who are nonbinary, or trans people who are binary but don't want to be the 50s sitcom stereotype of their gender.-It's only relatively recently that people started actually considering autism as a diagnosis for AFAB(assigned female at birth) people as much as they do for AMAB(assigned male a birth) people. There's a lot of reasons why, but one big one is that AFAB autistic people tend to get socialized in a way that a)helps mask the signs, b)leads them to interests and behaviors that are socially acceptable even if they're more intense than a neurotypical person's(how many people bat an eye at a girl who's really into makeup? how many people assume there's something wrong with a quiet girl they way they would with a quiet boy?). I'm 99% sure this is why it took me until high school to be diagnosed as autistic(asperger's syndrome at the time, although this diagnosis has since been deprecated and I'd need to make an entire other post when I'm not at work to talk about that) despite looking back and it being screamingly obvious that it was autism the entire time, while the alternative diagnoses they tried(and that never stuck) didn't fit at all. There's also a lot of nasty and not-grounded-in-reality stuff that's been floating around in the background, like the idea that autism is "extreme male brain"(the implications of that for autism in general and why the "bad parts" of autism are considered "male brain" could take up yet another long "Haifisch picks apart gender and how society treats autistic people" post). -Autistic adults might as well be invisible to broader society. Discussion of autism, support and accomodations, research, etc all have a terrible habit of focusing exclusively on kids. The internet has helped make us more visible, but that doesn't directly translate to better understanding and support. -Is it cheating to make Autism Speaks its own point? (for the unaware: eugenics, supports abusive "therapies", portrays autism as a horrible thing and the parents/caretakers of autistic people as victims of it.) -The primary-colored puzzle pieces associated with autism are Very Bad. Childish, portrays us as something that needs to be "solved". In recent years people have come up with a variety of better symbols such as the rainbow infinity sign, and I hope they catch on. -Talking about autism in terms of low/high functioning is all based around how much of a problem we are for other people. Autism is a spectrum, but this has more to do with how it manifests differently in different people and within the community people prefer stuff like this to putting people in "you're a burden on other people and we can't correct your behavior to be 'normal'" vs "you can live independently and act close enough to 'normal'" buckets. -Studies about autism are often based on extremely bad assumptions about why autistic people do the things they do. They also tend to never, y'know, ask the autistic people in question about their reasoning/motives. When I get home I'm going to dig up one or two that were going around twitter a few months ago and that were both just staggeringly awful. Half-remembered lowlights include judging autistic children negatively for not racing to pick up something a researcher intentionally dropped in front of them. -Not entirely related to the point, but my mind drifted there while typing: You know the pseudoscience about vaccines causing autism? The fact that it's easily-debunked bullshit aside, you know how few not-autistic people I've seen go "you know, it's pretty hosed up to imply that you'd rather have a dead-by-preventable-disease child than an autistic child"? Yeah. (preemptive permission for Falconier to throw this in the OP if they want to)
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Jun 23, 2021 03:36
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Tulip posted:Redditors, like many many many very online people, are allergic to reading a fiction in any manner other than the most literal possible read. It's extremely frustrating and no surprise they were unwilling to even countenance a read that is, horror of horrors, social allegory. First of all, I actually worded that really badly (I’ll fix it in post). I think it’s less that the training takes a distant approach and more accurate to say it thoroughly others the people it’s supposed to be supporting. It’s crystal clear that most of the courses and guides I have access to were written by people people who don’t need accessibility measures for people who don’t need accessibility measures. The third person is ubiquitous and the second person usually shows up when referring to you implementing something. Examples from the client side (which are rare) always show up in the second person; otherwise they deal with their target audience as a faceless mass or talk principles without even mentioning people. This style of casual othering is really common in corporate training around accessibility and disability. As for your point… We are ignored. The fact that there’s an entire disability rights movement with millions of members and allies across the globe never seems to register in broader society. I think the biggest part of this (when it comes to training and such) comes down to the scientific establishment, which right now strongly favors the medical interpretation of disability over the social one; some are coming around, but most experimental scientists operate on the same quietly ableist principles they always have. I can’t get TOO mad at the coursewriters because to some extent, their hands are tied: the vast majority of studies take ableist or exclusionary positions and that’s what they have to use. Tons of other factors, too (we’re assumed not to need a voice because we’re infantilizated, our specific needs get subsumed into general medical or legal concerns, certain organizations like Autism Speaks have a vested interest in controlling the narrative and act to do so), but that’s the big one here I think. Fakeedit: see everything Haifisch just said /\/\/\/\ EclecticTastes posted:Okay, so, this reminds me, and while it's more illness than disability, strictly speaking, it also has to do with invisible disorders, also sexism. Forgive me in advance for any overly brusque phrasing, but remembering this tends to get me a little heated. So, my mother came down with rheumatoid arthritis when I was in junior high, mostly due to stress at work. Now, it's a manageable illness when treated, but my mother went without proper treatment for something like two years, entirely due to her being a woman. Because when she first went in complaining of joint pain, of fatigue, etc., the doctors (male, of course), asked her questions like how often she socialized and how she was feeling, because, of course, she was an overweight single mother approaching middle age, so she must just be lonely and looking for attention from the handsome doctor man. Because of that, she was bounced around the medical system for months on end, dealing with pointless test after pointless test as her actual descriptions of symptoms were ignored by men who thought they knew better. My sister is short, slender, and not particularly hardy. She’s also freakishly resistant to most anesthetics. When she went in for (minor) surgery a few years back, she told this to her anesthesiologist. He told her a higher dose would be too dangerous, used too small a dose, and she woke up during surgery. Next time she came in, she got the same anesthesiologist. She told him point blank what he did wrong, and he ignored her, administered a similar dose of another anesthesic, and she woke up during surgery. She actually had bully the hospital until they let her switch to a female anesthesiologist who listened to her and gave her the correct dosage, the one the last doctor thought would be dangerous. She woke up just fine after a successful surgery. Violet_Sky posted:Source? I was diagnosed with NVLD as a kid and would like to see if I'm actually autistic. Also am I the only Neurodivergent person that thrived in post-secondary? As far as I can tell, NVLD is kind of a fuzzy diagnosis; some kids definitely share those symptoms, but they aren’t sure how to categorize it. The diagnostic criteria overlap with ASD a lot, so the diagnoses overlap Also, there are plenty of neurodivergent success stories. I work with several. They just happen to have less to complain about in the thread
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Jun 23, 2021 04:03
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Haifisch posted:-Autistic adults might as well be invisible to broader society. Discussion of autism, support and accomodations, research, etc all have a terrible habit of focusing exclusively on kids. The internet has helped make us more visible, but that doesn't directly translate to better understanding and support. Replace this with Cerebral Palsy or any other disability that gets diagnosed in childhood and its the same. To be fair there has been a better effort to understand adults with Cerebral Palsy in recent years but they usually focus on white cis men. (What a surprise.)
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Jun 23, 2021 04:26
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Haifisch posted:And I wasn't kidding about it taking up an entire book - you could probably fill a chapter just on the history and continued arguments about GLB vs LGBT vs LGBTQ vs LGBTQIA+ vs QUILTBAG vs GSM vs just saying 'queer' vs a billion other things. There's always BLT+ as a comedy option. 🍞 This is a joke, I don't recommend anyone actually use this
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Jun 23, 2021 04:43
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And to add to all of that, the attitude of non-neurodiverse people toward treatment for mental health disorders is bad enough that people have made comics comparing it to how people treat those with illnesses or chronic physical disabilities. If someone has, say, had a severe leg injury and is going to physical therapy to start recovering the use of the injured leg(s), I don't think anybody's going to hear "I had my first PT session today" and reply "Great, because I just signed you up for this weekend's big soccer match." Everybody knows healing doesn't work that way. But if I tell someone that I've just had my first session with a new mental health therapist, they seem to think "Wonderful! Now your mental health issues will no longer be a burden on me." They don't say it in quite that way, but when I inevitably show symptoms of mental illness, they'll say things like "You should be seeing a therapist." Or, if they know about it already and haven't forgotten, they might say "Sounds like your therapist isn't helping you very much." Or "Do you need to call your therapist and set up more appointments?" The therapist doesn't magically make all of my mental health problems go away. They help me find ways that, when I have the ability to implement them, can make life more bearable for me. That doesn't always translate to the appearance of normality to the people around me. I've learned just as many strategies to deal with patching up broken relationships as I have to deal with the problems before they get to be too much, and I've had much more opportunity to practice the former. It takes a lot of time and effort, and regular sessions, to see even small improvements. And "Take a chill pill" is a good way to make sure I never want to talk to you again. Yes, there are medications that manage a lot of the symptoms for some people. Every one I've tried has either nearly killed me or not had the chance because I caught the problems early enough to stop taking them. And even those can only do so much to control some of what's wrong. Not to say that there's none of that with physical symptoms. When I lost the ability to focus my eyesight for several months while increasingly specific specialists tried to figure out what might be the problem (it was the third time it happened to me, and the first two were not related to a change in my eyes), I had to make arrangements to work without driving on highways more than absolutely necessary. The day that I finally got an answer, my manager said "Great! Your driving arrangements are revoked immediately and I look forward to seeing you on-site again." I could only hang up the phone, staring at the unfilled prescription in my hand and wondering whether he expected it to turn into a magic carpet that could fly me to work until I could get it filled, weeks later. I eventually paid for a $5000 surgery out of pocket because no insurance would cover it, and the problem would just escalate forever if I kept trying to correct it with eyeglasses. And all of this over blurriness that, if I REALLY had to, I could drive with, as long as I didn't need to read any unexpected signs or react to small obstacles. I know impostor syndrome very, very well. I still believe that everything I've ever done wrong is something I could have done better and just didn't, and that anyone who doesn't know about the parts of my past I keep hidden isn't judging the real me, no matter how truthful the things they say may be. Everything could have been perfect, in retrospect. And to this day, they still hold me to standards they don't explain because they feel they don't need to, or that they don't explain enough because they think I should be able to figure out the rest. The last therapist I spoke to, who supposedly specialized in transgender therapy, refused to even talk about transgender until I saw an Autism specialist and ordered at least one dress online to try on at home. Comparing the inside of my head to the outside of everyone else's is destroying me, but it's all I have and pretty much all I ever will have.
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Jun 23, 2021 05:00
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I struggle with feeling like I have fake Autism and fake Depression. It's not my fault I appear happy/neurotypical passing most days.
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Jun 23, 2021 05:14
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ChrisBTY posted:Unfortunately this was from a neuropsych eval 15 years ago. The reading they gave me was great but unfortunately it appears to have disappeared from the internet. Out of interest, what did these assessments/diagnostic tests look like? I often get the feeling that the test I underwent for rear end (and ADHD) is very different from what Americans undergo. Violet_Sky posted:Source? I was diagnosed with NVLD as a kid and would like to see if I'm actually autistic. Also am I the only Neurodivergent person that thrived in post-secondary? You're not. A lot of autistic people make it through tertiary education, probably even the majority. I know a bunch of people who are autistic and have big problems in college or university though. Or they had to drop out, like I did. Most of them were not diagnosed before they became adults, or were diagnosed at a young age and never received any assistance or help. Dance Officer fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Jun 23, 2021 |
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Jun 23, 2021 05:40
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Oh man, the stories I could tell about my own autism. Permission to share freely, btw. So from a very young age, I had trouble recognizing people by face, which led to a lot of confusion and one of my parents' friends nearly getting arrested when he came to pick me up. I can pretty much treat those stories as humorous anecdotes now, but back then, like ChrisBTY said, I pretty much considered all that normal and wondered how other people were so good at this difficult thing. It wasn't until I moved to Taiwan in third grade that I was actually formally diagnosed with face blindness, which was actually quite the relief now that I understood it better. Now, face blindness is apparently one potential symptom of autism, but probably because of me being DFAB this was never really taken into consideration. Although I later learned when I was an adult that one of my childhood doctors had suggested I might have ADHD but told my mother that getting me formally diagnosed would only cause me trouble. (I'm pretty sure I'm autistic, not ADHD though. Yes, I still never got a formal diagnosis, but it's not like you need one to be autistic and autism pretty much covers all my symptoms.) And while he might have been right, my mom also never did anything to accommodate me about it either until I actually spoke up about it in college and explained that I was pretty sure I was autistic, which she kind-of accepted. I say kind-of because once during a dinner with my family one of my relatives said right in my hearing that he was glad my cousin's kid wasn't autistic. (She was still a baby so I don't even know how you'd tell.) Naturally I spoke up in opposition asking what was wrong with a kid being autistic and immediately got shot down by my family, which was when I figured out just how conditional their support was. Of course this was after they'd constantly gotten on my case for not listening to the surrounding conversation so I really don't know what they expected out of me there. The most severe case of ableism I've experienced so far was probably with one of my landlords. I'd told her I had face blindness since we were working in the same general area and didn't want her to think I was rude for not recognizing her, and apparently she looked it up, figured out that it had connections to autism, and decided that I'd been explicitly lying to her to mask my autism. Or rather that my mom had been lying to her, since after she learned that she literally stopped treating me as a person and started talking through my mom about everything and talking about me like I wasn't even there. I moved out immediately after that pretty much so at least I didn't have to put up with that for much longer.
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Jun 23, 2021 06:58
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Just want to point out that this thread is an absolute treasure.
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Jun 23, 2021 15:04
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Glad to see the conversations and information come around, very important and one of the best parts of this LP.Falconier111 posted:
Wanna draw attention here, because it does feel that way to me when Hisao engages with Emi the most-a consistent lack of personal agency. Which is a big deal for those who are ND, but I can't imagine it is any less of a concern for those with physical disabilities. He's aware of that, at least...which makes me feel better. A certain degree of agency and personal decision making loss is expected with Hisao's condition, but that usually is fine from professionals who have experience and know what they are doing, and know how to talk to someone who has these concerns. This being a school, that's probably more laid back? That this is also very 'animu' in terms of "guy is here, girl is here, girl insists, guy goes along with it without even reasonable fuss" is something to point out as well, but at least I feel like Hisao snark means he has a sense of humor about it. That, and he literally chose to go see Emi at the end, which helps way more.
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Jun 23, 2021 16:28
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Funktor posted:Just want to point out that this thread is an absolute treasure. Psycho Lawnmower posted:Glad to see the conversations and information come around, very important and one of the best parts of this LP. Remember to vote 5 But seriously, this thread is doing better than I imagined and I think it really is opening minds. That’s everything an activist could ask for  e: holy poo poo you did, the thread just went gold  Violet_Sky posted:I struggle with feeling like I have fake Autism and fake Depression. It's not my fault I appear happy/neurotypical passing most days. I know this is like telling somebody with anxiety to just relax, but imposter syndrome is a thing and not struggling as much as others legitimately are doesn’t un-autism you. Like… A lot of the stories in this thread break my loving heart and I desperately wish there was something I do to help them. But there isn’t, at least not without a time machine and/or taking away their privacy and agency, and we get enough of that as it is. All I can do is offer support and understanding for everyone here, whatever they’re dealing with, however intense it is. Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Jun 23, 2021 |
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Jun 23, 2021 18:22
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Dance Officer posted:Out of interest, what did these assessments/diagnostic tests look like? I often get the feeling that the test I underwent for rear end (and ADHD) is very different from what Americans undergo. Ok here's what I can remember: 1) The psychiatrist talked with both me and my mother. 2) There were simple puzzles. But the pieces didn't interlock and they were in the shape of the object. (the elephant puzzle was an elephant rather than a picture of an elephant). 3) There was a face blindness/memory test. He would show me a picture of somebody. Then show me a picture of somebody else. I had to tell him if the picture was a repeat. 4) There was a section of 'two identical pictures but something is missing from the second picture' (Cue Jenna Fischer meme) 5) There was a list of color words. The list had colored text. The color of the text didn't match the name of the color (Like the word 'red' would be in yellow etc). I had read the list as fast as I could. 6) Then I had to reread the list but naming off the colors of the text rather than the words. 7) There was a test where I had to list off as many words as I could starting with the letter 'A' in 60 seconds (I don't quite remember this being part of the psych eval, but I remember it being part of the psych assessment and I think it was part of this as well). 8) I had to write a paragraph arguing for or against the death penalty. This might be half of what happened. As far as my education went. Grades K-6: I exceled because of advanced verbal development. I seemed to be gifted, at least at first. Things started to slip a little around 5th grade. Forgot my homework a lot though. And was messy af. Grades 7-8: Cratered. Middle school was loving rough. Almost failed science. Grades 9-12: Rallied. Slightly. Still really struggled with math and science classes. Would try to get extra help in math. Teachers would be like 'you clearly understand the material, what is going on with your test scores?' (The answer was 'when you give me a problem with 10 steps I will gently caress one of them up because I'm mentally disorganized'). Graduated with a 77 average. Middle of my class. College: Excelled. Deans list every semester (except the first because of one bad class) until I graduated. A combination of being able to minimize the number of science/math classes I took* and not having to deal with getting stressed out from high school social bullshit anymore. Also I had less of a course load because I graduated in 5 years due to scheduling/beaurocratic gaffs. *A scary thought: due to scheduling issues I had to take a health and human anatomy course. It was a required course for the nursing students at the college, of which there were many. It was a dreaded course. When I heard the course's rep I tried to bail on it only to find there was no good replacement course. I wound up passing with a B-. My mom works with a lot of nurses. A lot of whom lamented that it took them multiple tries to pass. ChrisBTY fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Jun 23, 2021 |
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Jun 23, 2021 18:29
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Update 19: Second Day’s the Worst Katawa Shoujo OST – Afternoon Track practice is just ending as I arrive at the track. The sun's beginning to dip low in the sky. Has it really gotten that late already?   EMI: "What are you doing down here, Hisao? Come to spy on me, have you?" I give a shrug. To be honest, I'm not sure why I'm down here.  HISAO: "I didn't have anything better to do." I figure that's about right. At the moment, Emi's the only person I can think of who I could visit. EMI: "So I'm your last resort, am I? Nobody cool around, so I'll just go see Emi, is that what you thought?" She actually looks angry. A chance for some teasing of my own presents itself. HISAO: "Actually, yeah, I guess you are." Emi pouts, widening her eyes to give the maximum amount of puppy-dog resemblance. HISAO: "Kidding! I was kidding!"  EMI: "So you are down here to stalk me!" Wait, what? HISAO: "That's not what I meant! Why would I stalk you anyway? It's not like you require stalking. If you're not asleep or in class, you're down here, right?" Emi laughs at this comment. EMI: "Well, you're not all wrong, I suppose - but you forgot about eating. I do that too, you know." I nod, conceding the point. EMI: "Plus I hang out with Rin sometimes too... so really I might take some effort to stalk." HISAO: "What do you two do together anyway? You don't seem to have a lot in common." She puts her hands on her hips and assumes a superior air. EMI: "That's what you think. I've got all sorts of hidden hobbies, you know." HISAO: "Oh really? Like what?" Emi puts her head to one side, as if she's trying to remember what it is she does in her free time. EMI: "Well, Rin and I go out shopping sometimes." I guess that makes sense. Emi's a girl, after all. But Rin? HISAO: "Rin comes with you?" EMI: "We usually swing by the art supply store. Plus she likes this music store that sells all kinds of weird sounding stuff. She says it helps focus her." That makes a little more sense. HISAO: "I see. Any other hidden hobbies?" Emi wags a finger at me. EMI: "Now now, why would I go and reveal all my dark secrets to you? We hardly know one another!" Somehow I think that's all that Emi has in the way of hobbies. Still, I don't think my question's been answered. HISAO: "Even if you do have a few hobbies, I still don't see why you hang out with Rin so much. I mean, she's kind of weird, isn't she?" This comment causes Emi to laugh loudly. EMI: "Ha! That's the understatement of the year!" HISAO: "So why? I mean, you're a lot better at conversation and stuff, so I figure you'd hang out with a lot of people, but I think I've only ever seen you with Rin." Emi seems unusually defensive. EMI: "Hey, I hang out with plenty of people that aren't Rin! You just don't see me doing it because I'm not in your classes." HISAO: "Okay, but that still doesn't explain why you hang out with Rin." I'm not even sure why I want to know this. I guess it is because lunch was so strange. Emi shrugs, looking for a moment very Rin-ish. (Silence)  EMI: "It's because we have similar outlooks." If you were to ask me the least likely answer to my question, that would be it. HISAO: "What do you mean?" EMI: “It’s like…” Katawa Shoujo OST - Standing Tall (Emi's Theme) EMI: “Okay, Rin paints and stuff, right?" HISAO: "Yes..." I'm not sure where this is going. EMI: "Well, I run." HISAO: "And?" EMI: "And... that's why we're similar." HISAO: "... You lost me." Emi frowns, as if trying to figure out her answer. EMI: "Well, maybe it's that we do things for the same reasons." HISAO: "Huh?" EMI: "You know, we follow our passions." HISAO: "So you're passionate about running and Rin's passionate about art, is that it?" EMI: "Well, sort of. Let me think... Well, Rin explained it to me once, but I don't know how much of it I followed." Not surprising. I think any explanation from Rin would probably confuse anyone.  EMI: "She says we both chase after an extreme. Like, she's always trying to find a new way to show a particular feeling or something. And I run because of the feeling I get from it. And since we don't allow ourselves to be slowed down by anything, we make a connection based on that." HISAO: "What do you mean “slowed down by anything?”" Emi looks surprised and points to her legs. EMI: "You know, because I'm a runner. And Rin's a painter even without arms. So we respect each other's determination. And that's why we hang out. I think." Well, I'm not sure that made any sense to me...but from Emi's sheepish expression, she's not sure about it either. EMI: "Honestly, it's not something I think about much. We just get along - I think that's really all that matters." I suppose she's got a point there. Another question strikes me, and since I've got nothing better to do, I ask it. HISAO: "So what got you so into running, anyway?" EMI: "Oh, I've been running since I was really little! My dad was a runner, and so as soon as I could walk, he started teaching me how to run.”  EMI: “It was our father/daughter thing, you know?” (Silence)  EMI: “Our own mutual hobby." A shadow crosses her face, and I'm shocked to see her looking... sad. Did something happen between them? EMI: "Man, I don't have a lot of time left. Sorry, but I've got to get a few more laps in before I go see the nurse!" She races off around the track, hair streaming in the wind. It seems to me she's going a lot faster than she was this morning. As she rounds the track, I catch a glimpse of her face. It's much the same as it was this morning, but her eyes seem to have taken on a harder edge. I guess she’s right.  I don't really know much about her. I watch her run for a little while, and then stand up to head back to my room. EMI: "Hey!" She spots me leaving and waves to catch my attention. EMI: "Don't forget! Same time tomorrow morning, got it?" HISAO: "Got it." I head back to my room. Homework beckons.  I can't sleep. My body's tired, but my mind is kept awake, staring at the ceiling in the hollow darkness of my room. I grasp desperately for a thread of thought, hoping that I can run my brain into the ground. All I can think of is how I can't think of anything. This is not productive at all. I wonder if this is a side effect of my medication, though it seems odd for it to take so long to show up. Then again, maybe I'm just not as used to my new surroundings as I'd like to think. I don't know, but for whatever reason, I'm awake and I shouldn't be. This is ridiculous. Ignoring my body's stiffness, I get out of bed and look at my clock. Four in the morning. Last time I checked it was only one, so maybe I slept a little. I don't know. I throw on some clothes and head out of my room. A walk might do me some good.  I'm surprised at how chill the air is compared to the relative warmth of the day. I can almost see my breath as I wander the campus, waiting for the sun to come up or for me to fall asleep. At this point, either option works for me. I find myself at the track - where for the first time, Emi's not out running. I suppose that makes sense; it's too early, even for her. The bleacher seats are cold, but at this point I welcome the sensation. The sun is starting to show its face over the horizon, and I know with an awful certainty that I'll get no more sleep tonight. The sun's steadily strengthening rays start to warm me up, and I watch the dew on the ground begin to steam slightly. My mind calms down, a little. Someone's shaking me. EMI: "Hey, wake up!" HISAO: "Huh? Where? Wha?" I guess I fell asleep after all. Katawa Shoujo OST - Raindrops and Puddles  EMI: "What are you doing out here? You're going to catch a cold or something!" I rub my eyes and am confronted by Emi, who bends over me with a worried expression. I'm still a little groggy, so my response comes out in a mumble. HISAO: "Couldn't sleep. Watched the sun come up." EMI: "Sounds like something Rin would say." I shrug, feeling the stiffness that comes with sleeping on a bench for a few hours. HISAO: "Is it? I wouldn't know." Emi grins a little at my (somewhat cranky) response. EMI: "So, couldn't sleep, eh? Obviously we need to run you harder today!" Even though I've only known her for about a week, this seems a very Emi-ish response to the problem. HISAO: "Hey, my body was plenty exhausted after yesterday! My mind was just racing, that's all." EMI: "I don't see the difference. If you run hard enough, your brain will get tired too." I'm seriously questioning the wisdom of doing this first thing in the morning. I don't know if my grades will be able to handle me tiring my brain out like that. Emi pulls me up from the bleachers with surprising strength for someone her size. EMI: "Now come on, Hisao! We've got work to do!" I don't actually know if I'm up to this today, to be honest. I mean I obviously didn't get much sleep... and what sleep I got was on the bleachers! HISAO: "I don't know...should I really be running?" Emi glares at me. Good heavens. EMI: "What are you talking about? Of course you should be running! How else do you expect to work out the kinks? You've been sleeping on the bleachers, for heaven's sake! The best way to get that soreness out is to run around a little. Now stop hiding in the bleachers and get down here!" There's no arguing that. I'm pretty sure she'd kill me if I didn't do as she said. I get to my feet and hop down to the track. The sun is warming things up rather nicely, I think. Emi and I begin to stretch out, and I find myself once again hard pressed not to stare. If this is how I have to wake up every day, I might be able to get used to this.  EMI: "You know Hisao, it's not polite to stare." HISAO: "I wasn't staring! I swear!" Emi raises an eyebrow and considers me for a minute, as if evaluating my response. There's a brief moment where I'm afraid for my life.  But then she smiles and laughs, shaking her head slowly. EMI: "Honestly, you didn't have to deny it so strenuously." In response, I clap my hands together and go for a change of subject. HISAO: "So! That's enough stretching, right?" Emi gives a casual shrug. EMI: "Do you feel stretched? That's really how you tell." Well, I do feel up to the run, if that's what she means. HISAO: "Yeah, I feel ready to go." (Silence) EMI: "Same as yesterday, okay? We'll just run for a mile at a steady pace. Don't worry about going really fast, just worry about keeping the pace, got it?" HISAO: "You're the boss." Katawa Shoujo OST – Hokabi Emi grins again, and we take off around the track. ... ... I think I'm going to die. We're not even done with the first lap, and my legs are on fire. My breath is coming in ragged gasps. I can feel sweat pouring down my brow, and we've only just now rounded the second turn. EMI: "Come on, Hisao! You've got three more laps to go!" I can't do this... I can't do this. I can't do this! I think I might hurl. Somehow we're on the second lap. Emi's not even sweating. How can she do this so effortlessly? For some reason I'm still moving. She's like a machine. Third lap. What happened to the second? EMI: "Almost there, Hisao!" Liar! We've got another two! Nothing to be done. HISAO: "I... ca... can't... do... this." Emi whirls around and begins running backwards. Her face is a mask of anger that surprises me.  EMI: "Never say that! If you say that, you'll have already lost. Keep moving! If you're alive, you can keep moving, dammit!" Whoa, language. We're on the fourth lap now. She really seems to want me to keep going. Legs move. Move. Move. They feel so sluggish. I'm in mud, or molasses, or tar. I can't go on. I'll go on. EMI: "Final stretch, Hisao! Give it all you've got!" I pump my legs as fast as they'll go. They keep refusing to obey my commands. Somehow, I keep moving. Somehow, I finish. EMI: "That's it, Hisao! I knew you had it in you!" The anger Emi showed a lap ago is gone, replaced with pride. She's positively radiant, like she just won the gold medal or something. I stagger to a stop and fall to my hands and knees, gasping for air. My heart is pounding far harder than it has in a long time. (Sudden Silence) I don't think it's done this since...  Oh God.  Please slow down, heart. Just slow down. Stop racing. I cough, and for some reason, feel a grin crossing my face. So this is how I die, huh? Trying to stay healthy? How ironic. I'm all ready to give up right there. But then, I feel my heart slow down. Two hands grab under my arms and tug upwards.  I look up and see Emi standing over me, with a mixture of delight and worry. EMI: "On your feet! Come on, you'll never catch your breath that way." Somehow, I manage to stand. I try to raise my arms above my head, but they feel like lead. I start to walk around the track while Emi keeps close to me, like she's afraid I'll fall over or something. She may not be far off. I feel terrible, and say so. Emi laughs. EMI: "But you finished, didn't you? You said you couldn't, but you did. Isn't that worth it?" I'm not sure, and I don't really have the breath to say so. But that small grin I felt on my face earlier hasn't left. So what if my heart's weak? I still survived this morning. Maybe I'll survive tomorrow, too. As soon as it becomes apparent that I'm not going to suddenly keel over, Emi takes off on her sprints. I don't know how the hell she can manage to sprint after running a mile, but I guess she's in much better shape than me. Once again, as I walk around the track, I can't help watching Emi sprint. It's weird, but she's like a different person when she's pushing herself. Last time I noticed her eyes, but this time it's her mouth that catches my attention. She's not wearing her normal grin. She's still smiling, but there's a tightness to it.  It's almost grim, like she's fighting a losing battle but doesn't care. She seems to be running harder, like she did yesterday. Sweat has started to pour down her face, but she keeps going. Her mouth finally opens as she can no longer get enough air through her nose. As she passes me once more, legs pumping, arms swinging in time, and her lips slightly parted... She looks beautiful. Katawa Shoujo OST - School Days After we've both taken some laps around the track to cool down, Emi changes back to her usual self. The transformation I saw in her is gone. EMI: "Not bad today, Hisao." There's almost admiration in her voice. HISAO: "What do you mean? I would have stopped if you hadn't yelled at me." Emi colors a little, seemingly embarrassed about her outburst.  EMI: "Sorry about that, I just... can't stand to see people give up. Especially about something like this. Saying “I can't go on” is silly when you're obviously going on while you're saying it. That's what this is all about." HISAO: "What, saying silly things?" Emi sticks her tongue out at me. EMI: "Idiot. I mean showing that you're alive." Showing I'm alive, huh? I didn't know it had to be so painful. But it does feel pretty good, despite that. EMI: "Besides, this is one of the hardest days." HISAO: "What do you mean?"  EMI: "Whenever you start a workout, it's difficult the first day, really hard the second day, and then the third day is easier. You'll still get days that are really hard, but they'll pop up less and less." HISAO: "So this will eventually get really easy, huh?" EMI: "Yeah, of course. But then you have to increase the difficulty, or you'll never get ahead. You'll just get complacent, and you'll lose the sense of accomplishment." HISAO: "So I'll have to run more than just four laps, huh?" EMI: "Yep! But not for a while - you'll have to be careful, you know." A thought strikes Emi, and her face lights up. EMI: "Got it!" HISAO: "Got what?" EMI: "You can come with me to see the nurse! That way you won't fall over dead or anything!" How charming. HISAO: "Um... when?" EMI: "Right now, of course! You'll need a shower and everything, right? We don't have much time, then!" Grabbing my hand, she's off, pulling me along with her. Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Sep 2, 2021 |
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Jun 23, 2021 19:43
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I feel like Emi might be a little too pushy. And some serious fiveshadowing on her dad. ChrisBTY fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Jun 23, 2021 |
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Jun 23, 2021 20:05
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ChrisBTY posted:I feel like Emi might be a little too pushy. Yeah, I have to agree. It's the agency thing I mentioned before.
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Jun 23, 2021 22:53
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Violet_Sky posted:I struggle with feeling like I have fake Autism and fake Depression. It's not my fault I appear happy/neurotypical passing most days. High five Fake Austism/Fake Depression (not true) buddies! Let's be friends! (I don't actually think I've ever had the chance to talk to another NVLD diagnosee before). Edit: DAMMIT! I'm trying to play along and got the loving Kenji ending because I wasn't using a guide and I guess I said the wrong Rin answer or something... ChrisBTY fucked around with this message at 03:28 on Jun 24, 2021 |
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Jun 23, 2021 23:08
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ChrisBTY posted:
Holy poo poo this is almost my experience.  Did you learn to read super early too? I did around age 3.
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Jun 24, 2021 03:43
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Violet_Sky posted:Holy poo poo this is almost my experience. I can't say for certain. I am reasonably sure it was a good deal before Kindergarten though and I started Kindergarten a little before age 5. I wish that the article on NVLD I was pointed to 15 years ago was still available online because it explained exactly what happened. Basically in the early grades the only things that really matter are verbal skills. You can sorta fake the rest. If you talk well that young you will come off as gifted. The further up the grades go, the harder it is to do that. And on top of that english stops being just about words and starts being about themes and the like. If you don't naturalize information well you will struggle more and more. Then once you hit puberty the social aspects of school, which you're already struggling with in all likelihood, become even more demanding, more confusing and more stressful. So if you have, say, untreated NVLD through high school you will likely end up an underachieving headcase with issues with anxiety and depression because you were told you were special young and couldn't live up to it. and by 'you' I mean 'me'. That was the gist of the article but I sorta improvised at the end
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Jun 24, 2021 03:56
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ChrisBTY posted:I can't say for certain. I am reasonably sure it was a good deal before Kindergarten though and I started Kindergarten a little before age 5. I'm thankful I was treated early but I still have anxiety and depression and my relationships fizzle out. My physical disabilities are pretty severe as well. I'm not good relationship material. 
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Jun 24, 2021 04:57
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Violet_Sky posted:I'm thankful I was treated early but I still have anxiety and depression and my relationships fizzle out. My physical disabilities are pretty severe as well. I'm not good relationship material. Hard mood. I've lamented my own struggles with relationships in E/N and the related discord plenty. I'll not repeat them here.
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Jun 24, 2021 05:39
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