Disclaimers: The show and all of its characters were created by Vince Gilligan. I don’t make money from this post or any others on my Medium. When possible, I cite/link to any real lines from the show that I’ve quoted. My notes are bracketed to set them apart from the fan fiction scenes. Fic titles are bolded.
Spoilers: entire show
Trigger warnings: murder; drugs; overdose death; ableist and homophobic language; abuse/trauma bonds
S1E1 or prologue: Walt remembers Freud’s personality theories
Walter White would never willingly hurt anyone in his life. One day, though, some students stole his briefcase and threw it up onto the roof. It was just…
CN: spoilers for Sarah J. Maas’ entire A Court of Thorns and Roses series; sexual assault/abuse; ableist and sexist tropes
In Sarah J. Maas’ New Adult fantasy series A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACoTaR), Rhysand should have made a great villain, but the series swerves to rehab him into a dreamboat romantic hero instead. Series like ACoTaR are immersive. Afterward, all the plot holes and problematic tropes seem obvious to me. I loved Rhys when I thought he was a major antagonist. Yes, this series is full of cliches, regardless, but fun to read. Still, Rhys seemed like the…
CN: spoilers; medical details in fiction; discussion of ableism
I recently read A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer. It’s a 2019, YA, Beauty and the Beast retelling with a protagonist who has cerebral palsy, and it was the $1.99 deal of the day on Kindle. I have cerebral palsy myself, and I love fairy tales and retellings. So, I was very curious to read this.
I love the premise and liked this book overall. It reverses the traditional Beauty and the Beast story. Instead of turning from a beast back into a human, Rhen is a handsome…
Trigger/content warnings: slavery; prison; abuse/torture; racial oppression; spoilers for Get Out and The Water Dancer
(Note: All my Medium essays are available for anyone to read online for free. This means I don’t make any money from Medium. So, I wanted to explore this idea on my Medium, rather than on Book Riot or another paying outlet. As with some essays that I wrote in college, I’m writing from a literary criticism perspective, not informed by my personal identity or experience. I Tweeted about this idea on November 20, 2019 and still can’t find anything online about it.)
TW: COVID-19; ableism; racism; antsemitism; hate crimes; spoilers
I notice ableism, racism, sexism, and other intersecting forms of oppression in books constantly. The lockdown and other precautions last longer for me as a disabled person than for many non-disabled people. This means that I’m reading and writing a lot — especially catching up on classics and literature about pandemics and quarantines.
Part 1 of my analysis of ableism in philosophy and culture, from January 2020, is here.
Part 2 is a short description of utilitarianism, often used to devalue disabled lives.
Racism in Tolstoy
TW: discussion of ableism, racism, and LGBT-misia
Note: a compilation of some of my Tweets on Glee from 2018 and 2019
I loved my high school chorus and theater. I was the target audience for Glee, and I wanted to love it.
But I was constantly horrified by the tokenism and stereotypes! Basically, the show pigeonholed its one-dimensional, comedic characters as “the disabled kid, the black kid, or the Asian kid.” The ableism! The auto-tuned, top 40, karaoke songs!
When Glee was still airing, I saw an exploitative, cloying news article about a wheelchair-using student. The tone of the article…
TW: ableism, antisemitism, racism, fatmisia, LGBTmisia, abuse
Note: I’ve compiled and added to a lot of my Tweets about J. K. Rowling and Harry Potter/the Wizarding World. When JKR says that trans women aren’t women or are a threat to cis women, this is false and extremely harmful. There’s even a world of difference between true acceptance and condescending statements like these:
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1207646162813100033
Calling someone by their correct gender, pronouns, and name is basic human decency. It’s not an especially nice or conditional deed for allies to do for LGBTQIA people. Like I said, it’s the bare minimum of respect…
(Content note: COVID-19 pandemic; immigration; spoilers for the anti-war novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller)
Lately, during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, I often think of the medieval tradition of “Ubi sunt?” poetry. “Ubi sunt” is Latin for “Where are (they?)” It’s a rhetorical question, used to lament the passage of time and the inevitability of death, loss, and change. It’s related to an elegy.
The Poetry Foundation explains: “By posing a series of questions about the fate of the strong, beautiful, or virtuous, these poems meditate on the transitory nature of life and the inevitability of death.” I first learned…
TW suicide, drugs, abuse, ableism, racism
Here on my blog…
Content/trigger warnings: discussion of ableism & racism; one link marked as discussing child abuse
Back in February 2019, Amanda Leduc interviewed me (as part of a diverse group of disabled people) as part of her research for her book Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space.
It was fun, and I really appreciate that she quoted and cited me so much in her book. I wrote about it here on my blog in February.
I wanted to wait until after I’d read Amanda’s book before posting this. For a nonfiction book like Disfigured, authors do a lot of research…
