acquired disability is hardly the only kind

I was thinking about Battlestar Galactica and how two of the characters who acquire disabilities are bitter about it and one becomes evil. On FWD/Forward this was said to be a bad thing, and although I do think it's cliched, I guess I don't find the trope as inherently offensive as some people do. I don't think it's unreasonable for a person who acquires a disability to be quite upset about it. It's a very different experience from being born with one.

[Fun fact: The third acquired disability on BSG was actually written in at the last minute as an accommodation for the actor's temporary disability. I really think that inflexible notions of "the way things have to be done" is a huge barrier for PWDs in many different areas--actually, one of the biggest barriers of all--and the fact that the BSG writers don't subscribe to that shit redeems them in my eyes for anything they've done wrong.]

However--why are fictional characters with physical disabilities almost always people with acquired disabilities? Usually paraplegia? Don't quote me on this because I'm too lazy to do an analysis of all the recent TV shows and movies that have included characters with disabilities, but I think I'm right. For example I think Avatar was the most recent big movie that had a character with a disability, and he of course had paraplegia. I think it's usually paraplegia. (Actually, House is an extremely good example--it's probably the most popular TV show with a major disabled character, and he is played not very convincingly by a non-disabled actor, and though he is well-developed he fits the bitter/evil disabled person stereotype in a way that wouldn't be possible if the character had been born disabled).

One obvious reason is casting. As we all know, people with disabilities can't act, so you can only write disabled characters who can be played by nondisabled actors. There are some disabilities where people who have them look physically different. There are also disabilities where people move differently--a person who doesn't have CP probably could play someone with CP, but it would take actual study and work. Which would be terrible.

(I want to start watching Breaking Bad for the sole reason that there is a character with CP. He's played by an actor with CP, which makes it 400 times better, but even if he wasn't, I'd just be so excited to see a character with something besides a spinal cord injury.)

But the other reason, I think, is just that the idea of someone being born with a disability is unrelatable or unattractive to audiences/writers, or threatening, or just inconceivable--which makes me really angry. I'd like to think this isn't true but I think it's not only tremendously rare to have characters who were born with disabilities, it's especially rare to be given anything from those characters' perspectives (this includes telling their friends how they feel, having a relatable emotional outburst, and so on).

I think that:

1. It is hard for normal people to relate to someone with a disability who is not upset about having a disability. It's a lot more logical for someone to be upset about having a disability if they didn't have a disability before. Then the normal people can just be like, "yeah, I can relate, that would suck." Whereas someone who's just never been able to walk very well and is used to it would be impossible to relate to because...HOW CAN YOU BE OKAY WITH NOT BEING GOOD AT WALKING?? THAT'S SOOO TRAGIC!

2. Maybe people who acquire disabilities don't "feel disabled," at least at the beginning of their life with a disability. Maybe normal people can't identify with people who feel disabled, or they don't think of us as real, maybe because we're not good enough at being upset. So if we are portrayed, the focus has to be on our relatives and how upset they are, because watching a non-upset disabled person is just not possible for most people?

What do you think?

the blog schism

so I always feel bad when I post about my dumb attempts to give myself a haircut or something, and/or evidence of Vincent Kartheiser possibly being a baby llama pretending to be a person--however, I never want to post anything on my 5-year-old livejournal, because there's way too much boring/annoying stuff on it, and even though the haircut stuff is not exactly important, I think it's too entertaining to be on the Awful Livejournal, so it has a new home:

[deleted 8/9/10, not doing that tumblr anymore]

in other news, my weird shutdown that started Monday is sort of coming and going. Is that even possible? My head just always seems to be hurting and sometimes I take such a long time to understand anything and can't think anything through. There have been some moments of not-shutdown, though.

I'm going to go to Student Counseling. I just feel stupid because I'm presumably traumatized from going to another country where I didn't talk to anyone? I just feel embarrassed because some people have real problems. But when I really think about it, as long as all the appropriate sensory factors are in place, I haven't really had sleep problems for several years. And now I wake up in the middle of the night on a regular basis, often feeling really freaked out.

Sorry this is navel-gazing. I actually am going to try to be pious/academic and not post on here. And when I do, thanks to the tumblr sublimation, it's always going to be these really serious and in-depth disability-related posts! It's going to be amazing!

Battlestar Galactica Pokemon

Pretty much the most important thing I've ever done.

Infiltrate

This scene makes me think of my fifth-grade teacher:



I don't have much to say, just this. I am in a disability studies class; I don't know what I think so far. The professor has never taught a disability studies class before and I think we're supposed to figure out for ourselves what we want to write a paper on.

I want to write a paper on infiltration. I don't like for people to talk to me in a way that makes me feel like that picture. And I can't do it to someone else, which in some people's minds makes me bad at ABA. I am quiet when I talk to people who are upset. I don't grab them by the shoulders and force them to walk in a less stimmy line. I want to infiltrate services for developmentally disabled people so that for the minutes or hours or days a person is with me, no one makes them feel like that. It's not everything but it's something and it could change something in them.

I'm afraid to talk. A lot of the time if you work with ASD kids, being normal is a qualification. It's obvious in the way they talk--you want to bring in normal kids to show the ASD kids what normal is like. You want to model normal ways of sitting and interacting. By definition, I'm not qualified for a lot of the jobs I want to do. Because it's all about us vs. them. I want to write a paper on us vs. them. Because I can't ever be us, the most I can be is a really good them who everyone looks at as a success story because I try really hard. But do I want to try hard? And do I want to "emerge" from them, so I can yell in their faces too? Not hardly.

the joy of speakerphone

roommate's 10-year-old brother (on speakerphone): Amanda, have you figured out that Laura's a nerd yet?
Amanda: Yeah, I...actually, the other day, she said she wanted to start a band about robots, so yeah.
roommate's 10-year-old brother: Are you serious? That Battlestar Galactica thing? That's kind of a new low, even for her.
Amanda: Yeah, I know, it's really sad. I hope you're nice to Laura when she's home, you know she has a rough time at school.
roommate: Stop talking about me like that to John! He's going to think I'm a loser. I have so many friends, John. I have a lot of friends.
Amanda: No, you don't, you have, like, one and a half friends, and Lee Adama doesn't count.

(I want to adopt this kid, he's magic. Also when Laura was talking to her mom on the phone, her mom said something that Laura thought was really obvious, and Laura said, "I don't live under a rock, Mom. I'm not Patrick Star.")

The tiniest!

okay so I was googling Rekha Sharma from Battlestar Galactica, the most beautiful person who ever lived, and one of the suggested search terms was "rekha sharma hot."

Like...maybe someone was trying to do research to find out if Rekha Sharma was hot or not? Because...they weren't sure.

or maybe there are two people named Rekha Sharma and the person was wanting to make sure Google was understanding they meant the hot one. I don't know.

For the record I was about to go to sleep, like I was half asleep with the lights off, and then I was like "it's time to look at pictures of Rekha Sharma on the Internet!"

After a while I found some sad but charming pictures of a time when RS was sandwiched between some Tall Individuals (who I also love):



RS was not able to make eye contact with them or anything, because she was too little! Despite the fundamental sadness going on in the pictures, they kind of make my heart explode with love and awesomeness. I wish that I had tiny versions of them in a box, like Mulholland Drive. And then I could fall asleep and dream about them!!

Oh look, now all the celebrities are happy:



Thank Goodness. They Are All Friends.

(wait wait, this is my favorite They Are All Friends picture:



Buddies!

For some reason it's very important for me to believe that TV show characters like each other in real life.)

cute

My roommate cried for 15 minutes because the Battlestar Galactica character she had a crush on died.

This will never happen to me!

Homo is home

habitat part two







It just bugs me, I feel like the pictures aren't lined up quite right. But I LOVE my habitat this year. Maybe you can't tell but the bed is pushed all unevenly against the wall so that one side can be my reading/eating/etc. area (with a huge shelf and a pillow to lean on) and the other is for sleeping. It's magic. My roommate and I spent the whole day watching Battlestar, mostly in the habitat. I felt kind of useless. But. I was so happy.

I'm somewhere else

If you were wondering what the title of this blog means, I've been watching Battlestar Galactica, and Gaius gives good Somewhere Else, but I don't have a screencap of him.

Vincent Kartheiser, the blog's patron saint, goes Somewhere Else in Mad Men 2x02:



His character has a normal reason, so it maybe it doesn't count, but he could definitely play a Somewhere Else person in a movie if they needed him to.

If I have to, I am massively good at dropping out behind my eyes. Sometimes I don't mean to. I'm prone to losing time. I used to think I was possibly epileptic. I think I'm just your standard-issue dreamy person, though. I don't really like the idea that ASD people aren't Somewhere Else because I know that I am (sometimes). I think the thing is that people make such a huge deal out of it and think it's the most important thing, when it's probably just a reaction to stress and advanced focusing skills. Going Somewhere Else isn't actually autism. At the same time, it's certainly there.

It's hard for me to explain why I worry about my weight, or why I dye my hair. But it's also hard to explain why I script--but things do go worse when I don't. I need to have qualities. Something needs to be ongoing.

Keep me here.