The 35th Precinct

Oh, story time:

Fandom is great. I have been in fandom for a long, long time, and I have written fic for most of that time. I freely admit that a lot of my fic is wish-fulfillment/self-insert stuff with disabled characters who get to be loved/desired/the hero/whatever. It’s fun and passes the time, and some people enjoy it and write that they learned about disability or had disabled people humanized.

Most people who don’t like OCs just roll their eyes and move on, but I have gotten so much nastiness whenever the story strays into the romantic or sexual. It’s not realistic that Character X would desire disabled!OC because Reasons That Are Totally Not Ableist. But Character X would fuck the gelatinous space blob or the alien with no discernible sex organs or their brother or their mirror selves. But not disabled people. That’s just a stretch too far.

The worst rageout I ever got came when I paired John Kennex, an amputee cop from Almost Human, with an OFC with CP. Mind you, at this point they were just two disabled people who met in the hallway of his building. No fucking, no pining, no lust, just two disabled people keeping each other midnight company because they didn’t want to be alone. Oh, my Lord, what abomination had I wrought? Having John make friends and possibly admire the beauty of a disabled woman was just like someone boning their AA sponsor. It was horrible. It was a recipe for disaster.

When I took issue with the gross assumption that disabled people were too psychologically damaged to get into a relationship with each other and pointed out that even if they were, it was their right to do so, just like the numberless able couples in fic, how the wrath did flow. I was called an ableist piece of shit(ableist because I failed to see the similarities between John and a drug addict), scum, an asshole. The torrent of invective was so bad that I did what I have never done before or since and deleted the review, though I saved a copy to a locked blog post.

Few things have made me angrier. My silly fantasies were being held to a higher standard of verisimilitude than those of able people. I was being told that it was actively dangerous for a character to be interested or involved with people with my disability and discouraged from pursuing it because it made people uncomfortable. And when I protested, I was berated because I had not shown the proper deference to physically-able opinion on the love and fucking proclivities of two fictional physically-disabled people.

Able people are allowed to indulge in fantasies without boundaries, but disabled people have to stay within “realistic” parameters, which to the abled mind means nothing more than chaste pining and noble suffering.



Also story time:

A Tumblr acquaintance and I were talking about Karl Urban and his current nasty habit of canceling cons with very little notice. Earlier this week, he canceled a date at Fedcon in Germany…and promptly signed on for Wizard World Philly the same weekend. Fedcon fans were understandably hurt and angry, and the acquaintance was one of those disappointed. She’s been torqued since it happened, and I can’t blame her. I know how badly it sucks to look forward to a happy meeting, only to have it ripped away after weeks or months of imagining how it will go. He’s canceled three times on cons I planned to attend for him, and I sulked every time. It’s human, and disappointment rarely presents us at our best. So I can’t fault the pique.

But after days of her stewing and petty meme-posting calling him a dick and not a man for canceling on Fedcon because the studio called him in to begin filming in Philadelphia, I finally stuck my oar in the water and suggested that he had no choice but to cancel because work comes first, and that maybe he took the Philly con dates because a huge chunk of the LOTR cast was going to be there and he saw a chance to make dosh, meet fans, hang with friends and fulfill his professional commitments.

Nope. Somehow taking that con after professional obligations made him bail on Fedcon was an insult to the fans who had paid hundreds or thousands of dollars to see him. He should have nobly declined the opportunity presented by Wizard World Philly and the chance to see his friends and make some side bank in deference to those fans in Germany who wouldn’t have seen him anyway because work beckoned.

When I pointed out that he had to work, she claimed that was a lie. Was he shooting in Philadelphia at the time in question? Well, yes, but he was still a filthy, heartless liar because he’d told Fedcon he’d be shooting then. Did she not tell me herself as a film student that most films shot Monday through Friday, which meant that theoretically, he would be available Saturday and Sunday? Well, yes, but that only proved that he could’ve made Germany if he really wanted to. If he truly gave a fuck about his fans, he should’ve left immediately after shooting on Friday, taken a nine-hour flight to Germany, gone without sleep if need be because hey, that’s what actors do, spent a handful of hours at the con on Saturday, and then gone right back to Philadelphia.

While I boggled at the sheer selfishness of this crackpot scenario, I tried to tell her that such a schedule was predicated on nothing going wrong, and it was also incredibly cruel. Did she really want to meet someone who hadn’t slept? And then I uttered what I suspect were the fatal words. “He had to WORK. You’re acting like he went to Aruba just to piss on you.”

And then it came. This young woman, with whom I had been on cordial terms, and who had previously used my experience with Karl as part of her appreciation video, exploded. She told me that my fondness for him had clouded my judgment, and that furthermore, the experience I so cherished, that has cheered me on bad days, was a front. Karl was an actor. Was I really so naive to think he actually cared? Actors at cons don’t care. They just want the money. I could live in my Karl Urban fantasy world, but she was “done with me.” And that was that. Blocked.

The implication was, of course, that Karl had behaved as kindly as he had during our meeting and done the things he had, not because he was a good man who wanted me to have a good experience and make my day brighter, but because he pitied me, and I, in my starry-eyed, addled, pathetic crippledom, had construed it as something deeper.

For him, there was nothing deeper. It was a con encounter and photo op. The end. And that’s all it should be for him, really. But for me, it was something deeper and sweeter, because it was a rare moment of being treated with the same consideration as everybody else. I was a person to him, not a burden. I needed and cherished that, and hold it sacred.

But nope. It couldn’t be left to me. I had pissed this person off my disagreeing, so I had to pay. She had to make sure I didn’t dare matter to anyone. So she did her level best to sully what I held so dear. Because she could, and because that would teach me to know my place.

The best part? Even though she made sure to hammer home the fact that he was an actor who didn’t give a fuck, she’s still chasing him to cons in hopes of her own experience. Because it will be different with her, you see. He will actually mean what he does and says to her, because she actually matters.

She’s actually human.

So, yeah, able people get mad because they don’t see us as human, with the same hopes, needs, and dreams as them, but as some lesser being that they suffer to let live among them on their charitable forbearance, and if we transgress those boundaries in any way, then we are forgetting our place and need to be returned to it by whatever means necessary.

I'm watching a walkthrough of the new God of War game. It's going to break my heart, isn't it?

The ass-shaking in which I intended to engage if Karl Urban never appeared at Wizard World Philadelphia will have to wait, as he is now slated to appear on Saturday and Sunday. Like I said last entry, though, I don't blame him for seizing the chance to make a con appearance and see old friends instead of twiddling his thumbs in his hotel room in somber deference the fans he had to disappoint at Fedcon. I'd do the same in his shoes, and so, I wager, would most of the sanctimonious asswipes frothing about his prima donna cruelty. I hope he has an amazing time.

Yesterday was our first experience driving through large hail. I am in no hurry to repeat it. I thought the windshield was going to crack, and even though the stones were relatively small, it sounded like someone was lobbing bowling balls at the roof. It only lasted twenty seconds or so, but it was incredibly unsettling, and I was beyond surprised to find no discernible damage to the car when we got out to check.

I've seldom been so relieved. If I had had to confess to my mother that her precious car had taken hail damage mere months after she sold it to us, I would have never heard the end of it.

I rented Karl Urban's latest flick, Hangman, from Amazon today. After the scathing reviews that attacked everything from the acting to the writing to the shape of Karl Urban's nose(no, really), I was expecting a noxious mess of tired cliches, wooden acting, and trite writing.

Well, it was all of those things, and yet, it wasn't as bad as most reviews insist. We live in an age of hyperbolic exaggeration, where nothing is simply serviceable or mediocre. It's either the WORST EVER, OMG, or THE BEST EVER, ALL THE AWARDS. If you doubt this, just look at the paroxysmic histrionics from both sides of The Last Jedi fandom. Those who hate it swear that Rian Johnson is a soulless apostate who has murdered their childhoods by assassinating the character of Luke Skywalker, and who has shat, shat, I tell you on the holy Star Wars legacy. Those who love it, by contrast, declare it might be one of the best Star Wars movies in the canon, and extol the progressive virtues of its casting and storytelling. There is no middle ground, no place for enjoyment without veneration or disappointment sans vitriol.

Hangman is no The Last Jedi. It's a piddling potboiler with a bland, hackneyed script and dialogue that sounds like it was written by a fifteen-year-old trying his hand at the deft psychological thriller, armed with only every season of NYPD Blue, Blue Bloods, and Serpico as his guideline. Poor Karl spends most of his time brooding over his secret manpain(which later becomes integral to the case and film)and bellowing, "Police! Freeze!" in the dark, and Al Pacino drawls his way through scenes with all the verve and conviction of a sedated three-toed sloth. They're both saddled with the unappealing task of carrying Brittany Snow, whose character is utterly superfluous except for the fact that the director needed her to invade Det. Ruiney's privacy, root through the file on his wife's murder, and thereby reveal the linchpin for the final act and provide Ruiney with the impetus to embark on a vengeance quest. Ostensibly a journalist(one nominated for a Pulitzer, as she tells any character who will listen), she performs no actual journalism and needs to be rescued from the killer in the end because of course she does.

And the killer? A nobody they pull out of their ass in the final twenty minutes. None of their previous sleuthing so much as hints at his identity, and his motive is so weak as to be embarrassing, as though the writer just went, "Well, time to wrap this up. Let me go to my handy bag of angst cliches and use the first one I find. Ah! This will do! Yes! Al Pacino's character will be a cop who serves an eviction notice on a single father, who in his despair will hang himself in front of his son, who will, naturally, turn into a psychotic killer. Genius! I can smell the Oscar now."

Best scene: Even a sloppily-polished turd like this one is capable of a grace note, and it provides one in the form of Karl Urban as the doting, hopeful husband with a bouquet of hand-picked tulips. He and his wife have been having trouble, you see, but she's called him up and invited him to come home and try to work things out. Filled with love and hope, he rushes home and goes around the back to pick her some tulips, her favorite, before he goes inside. But alas, when he goes inside, he finds her dead, with her short torn open and a huge gash in her chest. It's a standard manpain special, but to watch Karl's face as he goes from the giddy hope of reconciliation with a bunch of fresh-picked tulips in his hand to the horrified realization of what has happened is an unexpected gift. Whatever his professional flaws, he has an exquisite talent for displaying so much emotion with subtle shifts in expression, and he projects a sense of sweetness and vulnerability that few actors ever manage so consistently. Plus, I'm a sucker for small, hopeful romantic gestures performed by characters with their hearts in their hands. My heart melted and broke and the thought of him eagerly picking tulips behind the house in anticipation of making his wife love him again, innocently unaware of what was awaiting him in the house.

Worst scene: While Al Pacino's death ranks up there with Marion Cotillard's in The Dark Knight Rises for hammy unbelievability, Brittany Snow's "stirring", courageous, pro-cop speech in the backseat of the car after the three of them get out of the hospital is mortifying and makes me want to cram my knuckles into my mouth and crawl under the couch to escape the lethal miasma of masturbatory hokum. It's so bad that when she finally lapses into wet-eyed noble silence, Al Pacino just says, "Okay," and starts the car, and Karl looks like he wants to crawl out the passenger window and return the check he took for this job. I'm sure it sounded great on paper, but it fell flat on screen and should've been cut. No, most people don't realize the sacrifices that good cops make, don't understand or care that each of them grapples with their private demons, but to have that speech delivered by that character, whose great trauma was...getting a small scar after being attacked by a cartel member beggars belief. She's sitting in the car with a guy who fought the bogeys in the dark for thirty-six years and a guy who came home to find his wife butchered on the bedroom floor, and they're supposed to be moved and impressed by her retelling of the time some guy pulled a knife on her? You've got to be joking. It's one of the clumsiest, lamest, most insulting speeches I've heard, and it added absolutely nothing.

A dumb, dumb movie, but I've seen worse.

One thousand three hundred and ninety-seven words.



According to Tumblr culture, this picture merits a trigger warning.

One thousand and forty-one words since last update.

I lost nearly a foot of hair today. I'm not sure it's the most attractive cut for my face, but it's so much neater, and now I won't look like a homeless waif when I meet His Urbanness.

I also got the car checked and tuned up today. It is ready for our latest odyssey. All hail car, for it is mighty.

I might've lost hair today, but I found this:



It's so adorable, but do all men just stop maturing at twelve?

I also found this, which is hardly so innocent:



Just...you'll see it. Holy GODDAMN. It's like a garden hose.

In forty-two days, I will be face to face with this man. Send help.

Three thousand five hundred and twenty-nine words since last update.



No! Stop that! He's a Disney creature.

Dear Mr. Urban,

Let me preface everything that follows by saying that on the main, my life is fairly ordinary. I pay bills and watch too much TV and read too few books, and I keep my mind busy by writing silly stories no one reads. Most of the time, I like my life, and while I can't say I wouldn't change it, I can say that I wouldn't give it up. It's mine, for better or worse.

I have moderate spastic quadriplegic Cerebral Palsy. That means I move through the world with a set of wheels under my ass and possess all the grace of a drunken marmoset on an ice floe. I list and lean and flop, and I couldn't stand up if my life depended on it. Heaven knows I tried when I was younger, prodded on by desperate parents in denial and enterprising doctors with visions of miracles in their heads. But it simply wasn't meant to be, and never mind the surgeries and the therapies and the well-meant prayers. I can't say I've made peace with it; there are days I still rail and seethe and argue with God, but I've learned to live with it.

It also means there are days when I don't want to do this anymore, don't want to wake up and fight my body just to make it out of bed and to the bathroom. I don't want to be stared at or prayed over or used as an object lesson in How Much Worse It Could Be. I don't want to be ignored by cashiers and waiters and other people at the grocery store who pretend not to see me, or given dirty looks because I'm slow. I don't want to hear the ticket taker at the movies surreptitiously whispering to my partner that they admire him for taking me out in public. I don't want to be told I should be grateful for my blessings by people who merrily proceed to metaphorically piss in my face with their head-patting condescension, or that the hardships in my life don't matter because I was put here by God to punish my parents and make them better people. I don't want to eat dirt and be told not to mind the taste because it's the best the likes of me deserves.

On these days--and there are ever-increasing numbers of them as I grow older; it's easier to believe the best of people when you are sixteen and filled with the optimism of the future than it is when you are thirty-six and twenty years into the realization that the wheelchair is forever--it's so very tempting to give up, to simply get into bed one night and not get out again. If I quit, then this can be over. No more exhaustion or loneliness or shame, no more wasted energy or disappointment, no more hurt, no more living with the knowledge that I don't belong. I could just stop, and even if there were nothing at the end of the dark, it would be better than this.

So I want to thank you for John Kennex. I know it was a role that required personal sacrifice for you, but I'm glad you took it. I needed him. I know he wasn't a perfect analogue for my disability, but he was disabled, and he was there for the world to see, not as an object of pity or a walking educational tool for rubbernecking clods with more curiosity than tact or a karma totem for people who needed to feel better about themselves, but as a man just trying to get by. He was grumpy and angry and confused. He was everything I've ever felt about being disabled, about being so very different. He was also smart and driven and decent under all the curmudgeonly pissiness. He was real. He was human, allowed to be flawed in more ways than his missing leg, and I can't tell you how much it meant to see him there, living his fictional life on the screen. I will miss him, but I will be forever grateful for the brief time I had him. He helped me keep my head above water, helped me make the decision to keep putting my wobbly feet on the floor every morning and trying to see the good in the world.

I'd also like to thank you for Bones McCoy. I know DeForrest Kelley lived in his skin first, and I will always adore him, but your Bones reminds me of a dedicated orthopedic surgeon I had as a child who tried so very hard to make my limitations easier to bear, and who never forgot that I was a scared little girl in a very scary, painful situation. He went on to head a children's hospital, and I went on to high school and university, where I met my partner. He didn't "cure" me, but he made my life better, and whenever I see your Bones, I catch a glimpse of him.

So thank you. Thank you for wearing their skins for a while. Thank you for the long hours and the time away from your family. It would be melodramatic to claim you saved my life, but you've certainly made it better, brighter, and more bearable on the bad days, and there are no words to express my gratitude for that.

I hope to tell you this myself one day at a con. If our paths should cross, please be patient with my palsied hands and fumbling mouth. If they never do, then I wish you well and look forward to your future projects and hope that all the blessings you have unknowingly given to the world are returned tenfold.

Sincerely,

Shannon Lowe

P.S. That surfing video you posted to Youtube never fails to cheer me up.

He wears whumped well. He also reflects my mood today.