#ableism talk

You are not well read, you are not "pro-autists" you are overtly ableist in a genuinely malicious capacity. I'm deeply sorry to anyone else who is neurodivergent and seen the mess floating around right now.

Lots of people been adding "delusional" to the list of ableist phrases that are used too lightly, like intrusive thoughts or like "haha I'm so ocd"

But delusional. It is a word outside of schizophrenia and the entire mental health field. It's. It's grammatically correct to say someone is delusional because they have poor taste in characters because it means, "based on or having faulty judgement"

It's like saying people can't say intrusive at all anymore unless referring to genuine intrusive thoughts. Like, no, the word has other meanings

oh and Travis has confirmed that he has ADHD and he's also been having trouble with PTSD recently after the birth of his daughter (he detailed it in the latest episode of Interrobang)

I knew he had ADHD and he’s also mentioned he has NPD (self-dxed, which actually gives me a lot of trust in him because he must have done a lot of research on different stuff to come to that conclusion and be confident enough to share it with thousands of people). I didn’t know about the more recent ptsd though, I’ll probably listen to that episode. I appreciate how he also has the problem I have where people can’t tell if he’s sincere or not

and now that you mention it I feel like justin has mentioned his anxiety before and I just entirely forgot about it because it’s been awhile since I listened to whatever it was where he said it

to be entirely honest I’d be surprised if griffin is neurotypical just with his entire personality and way of interacting with the world but it’s not my place to diagnose strangers over the internet, and even if he (or anyone else) is ND lateral oppression and internalized ableism both still exist, so I’d still rather know that they’re firmly Cool

i dont think theyre Good words but a thing that i do, that i have seen other neurodevelopmentally disabled people do, is say “i want to express how i feel but i dont know how to do it without being ableist” 

and i see people make lists like “these are words you can substitute for ‘stupid’ and ‘crazy’” when the only words that carry the same actual meaning are Also Ableist

i think there are contexts where using the words is appropriate- if i want to express “my dad thinks that people who make spelling or grammar errors are stupid” saying, idk, unintelligent or ignorant doesnt actually make the opinion less ableist

basically i feel like if youre describing ableist concepts the only real reason to refrain from using ableist language is to avoid triggering someone, and i can respect that but also tagging is already kind of exhausting for me so unless someone comes to me specifically like “hey merc can you please tag this word for me” im not gonna do it (also if you want to do this you can, this is me giving permission)

decent redemption on the grimlock front, still has its flaws, still could have been more about grimlock than the scavengers. didn’t address misfire almost hitting him. grimlock choosing to stay with misfire was kinda... cliche? typical heartwarming disabled story? logically he WOULD choose misfire, fort max and imprisonment has got to scare him more, but it was portrayed as an “awww he loves misfire” moment, which is not cool given what happened in issue 45

i don’t like the way it was just kinda dropped in there that they lock grimlock in his room, even if it was to say that they wouldn’t be doing it anymore. it’d be better if there was a “we can’t lock him up anymore” moment, but it’s barely given any attention. i would have preferred it if grimlock had said he didn’t want locks on the outside of his room.

i would have liked to see grimlock resent them at least a little, or be a little more aggressive about how he wants to be treated (like i said, have him say he doesn’t want to be locked up, then misfire agrees, that would have been much better than misfire coming to that conclusion seemingly out of nowhere or at least off-panel). it makes sense he might feel grateful for being taken in like that, or maybe he has fond memories of bonding with misfire that we just didn’t see. but still! they mistreated him, that should be addressed more than it was. for now i’m gonna headcanon that his rampages were about him being angry at them. like when misfire almost hit him, immediately after that he’s tearing through the ship. that’s a good headcanon.

and of course the whole thing wouldn’t have worked if they hadn’t asked him where HE wanted to go, but they did, so points there. it was done really well too! max telling misfire if he really cares he’d want what was best for grimlock, misfire realizing he’s right, that’s an important part. it’s important that misfire was made to think about what was best for grimlock. and it’s equally as important that someone (SPINISTER!!!! BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!) pointed out that grimlock should be the one who decides what that is, and that just because he has trouble speaking doesn’t mean he can’t(/shouldn’t be allowed to) think for himself. i would have had him indicate what he wanted without speaking though. speech is too often used as a milestone of “getting better”, or a measure of how ~normal~ someone is. but there are plenty of ways to communicate without it. i’d have loved if grimlock never spoke again, that would have been cool.

ok, non-grimlock stuff..... i liked that red alert told max not to kill grimlock, i like that rung is telling him to be less violent, i like that literally no one is on max’s side here, even if demus did deserve it. if he’s gonna be an enforcer he’s gonna have to learn to tone it down. but i also like that he’s not nearly as pre-emptively violent as i had feared. there were times he could have shot the scavengers but didn’t. i think he just executed demus because he was mad at demus for being complete filth. still not a smart move, i would have kept him alive on the chance that he knew a way to reverse the domestication process, but i don’t rly care he was murdered in cold blood anymore

i liked the resolution with krok, i love that his goal was helping people, even if he was willing to sacrifice grimlock to do it. and then of course realizing that that was wrong... i like krok now. the mental illness speech was good, it felt forced but whatever lol. the backstory on his squad was great, the click mystery was great, i love that it’s explicitly a comfort thing for him. i love that the similarity to a detonator was used. that’s great

the autopedia vandalism - fulcrum of chinnex, won a medal for bravery. brilliant. combined with misfire’s entry it makes me wonder what we can tell about crankcase and spinister from theirs.

grimlock was drawing on the wall when max showed up. cute

spinister helping max save the roboids..... also cute! spinister is a precious darling whom i love

i love that rung is still in contact with max and red!!! i love rung he is a good therapist and is good for them and he is very serious about his job of helping people. i love him

at my work there’s free candy given out to employees and both days i’ve worked so far there have been jokes about how we’re all going to get diabetes, or how one (thin) employee wants to make everyone else fat so she’ll be “prettier”

and like... there’s a lot of ingrained stuff that i have to struggle with too especially with how i view characters, like when you make a character fat people make certain assumptions about them? and it’s frustrating, how the only fat ace attorney character i can think of who isn’t made the butt of weight-related jokes is the guy who impersonates mask demasque in aai and is only ever shown dead... (actually i just remembered there aren’t explicit jokes about the amanos in-game but they’re depicted as corrupt and selfish so. idk. also lance amano’s tag has lots of antifat jokes iirc so)

i don’t really know where i’m going with this post and i know there are bigger issues that fat people face than ace attorney making fun of us + there are bigger issues that other people face for other reasons, too