Disability in Object Shows

Teardrop absolutely deserved better treatment in that regard (no biased statement intended). I was a little disappointed when Eggy was immediately made friendly with her after pushing her on a very personal topic for no good reason, and to her evident discomfort. I don't think it's wrong to show characters reconciling, but it seems like object shows in general have a poor habit of accelerating this process such that it seems like characters who are experiencing (even mild or unintentional) ableist behavior from others have some kind of obligation to forgive and trust them with immediacy. Questionable implications aside, it would simply be more interesting to make apology and reconciliation a slower, more deliberately-written process.

I can agree wholeheartedly with Charlotte being one of the most interesting examples of disability in object shows. I only wish there were more viewers who really processed the complexity involved. J-:

I can think of several Inanimate Insanity characters who are or can be considered disabled, but I fear that that might veer into more critical territory than is desirable. I might go after someone else re: that one. :-X

ok, now to talk about actually POSITIVE rep in ii! i'm kinda tired of typing so i probably won't give TOO much of an essay here, but i think cabby is an excellently, excellently written character and the one that i'd PERSONALLY argue is the most accurate to the real world experience of having DID. which is extremely funny considering she's the only one of these 3 who isn't literally textually plural, she just has memory loss issues. but to me the way those issues interact with her overall arc is really compelling, and it really hit home seeing her accept that, yes, her overreliance on notes and organization WAS actively making her memory worse, but at the same time that didn't mean she had to give up on her accessibility tools to heal. again i won't keep getting into it but i really love cabby's character and i'm very happy with how her arc ended up, even if it had some rocky points along the way :b

suitcase is the other one i'll throw in here as a mention. i personally read her as having some form of schizophrenia, but regardless she definitely experiences psychosis in one form or another. i adore everything about how her arc is handled, the depiction of visual and auditory hallucinations, the paranoia, etc etc. she's so great and i really can't wait to see more of her in ii2 ep 15!! i've been waiting so many years for it to be followed up on but more than anything i just want to see her be happy...


sorry for splitting my response into 3 separate posts i just had a lot to say on this topic. also to be clear anyone here is free to disagree with me, especially wrt soap i guarantee other people with ocd would probably feel way more negative to her writing. i just tend to latch onto any characters i can read as disabled in one way or another i think, esp in ways that are relatable to me :U

now the OTHER system-coded character i have much more qualms with, and its nuts bc ive never seen anyone talk about this wrt his writing, is paper. season 1 paper is so obviously written from the most 12 year old perspective of how multiple personalities work, its kind of hilarious to me if anything. its VERY explicit though that "evil paper" is a result of the trauma from idiotic island, takes control of paper's body in the way alters do, and is brought to the front by reminders of trauma, AND that paper doesn't remember the times when he isn't in the front (even though all of these things are played exclusively as jokes). obviously evil paper is the most on the nose "evil violent alter" stereotype ever too but i feel like that almost goes unstated XD

again though, the writers were like 12-14 year olds at this point so i really dont blame them for any of this. the biggest thing that DOES bother me though is the fact that the arc ends with paper just facing off with evil paper in headspace and "defeating him," thereby curing his DID forever and then its never brought up again. i feel like its such a detriment to paper's character that the writers continue to do things with him in non-canon bonus stuff and just not bring up anything about this arc that was like the most significant and interesting thing about his character!!

and yeah like i get WHY they're avoiding mentioning it, if there's one thing that singlets know about writing positive system rep it's that "evil alters" are a horrible and harmful trope. my controversial opinion #2 though is that i feel like people lean way too far in the other direction a lot of the time, and are afraid to write any potentially plural-coded characters at all in case it might fall into that trope or something. the reality of DID is that sometimes alters actually are harmful and want to hurt people! almost always though that means hurt the body rather than others, and it never means that they're Evil Demented Psychopaths or whatever.

all of this is to say that i hope if they ever do bring paper back, they at LEAST make a mention of this as events that happened. they don't have to bring back evil paper as a character, in fact its probably best if they didn't ngl, but just give me SOMETHING that implies he didn't solve all of his problems by killing his evil trauma personification with a piano in headspace. have him mention being in therapy or something idfk

I suppose I have my go-ahead. :-P I'll go in order of addition to the series.

Cabby is canonically disabled, experiencing a form of memory loss that necessitates the files she keeps. I'm sure most people here are aware of the controversy that this reveal and its immediate treatment caused when S3E14 came out. We find out that Cabby's files, previously presented as being of ambiguously nefarious purpose, are actually the aid that she uses to retain information. Immediately, Bot becomes upset with her for keeping a file on them that is outdated (containing information about Bow), to the extent of deliberately lying to Cabby to try and obfuscate the file's usefulness. This is resolved by Cabby discarding her file and rolling over it. This is not only questionable, but confusing. The episode could have retained the obvious original intentions of her files, that being that they were kept for some personal motive, or could have revealed that the files are an aid of hers without immediately presenting the aid as less important than the feelings of an abled person; either situation would have proved inoffensive. Instead, we got this.

When this happened, the episode's writer (Justin Chapman) publicly apologized for the episode's contents, and tried to explain what he had in mind. Personally, I have no criticisms of the apology itself, but you can and should make what you will of it individually.

I haven't watched a new episode of Inanimate Insanity since S3E14, but have taken a good look at the transcripts of III's two-part finale while using the Wiki, and Cabby has some dialogue that enters questionable territory in S3E19 (link to transcript). While arguing with Springy, she explains that despite the prejudice she experienced by other characters, she still tried to "listen to others and connect with them." I'm obviously missing the tone-of-voice and visuals which with this is delivered, so do feel free to correct me, but it reads as though there's supposed to be a kind of moral righteousness in Cabby's refusal to stand up for herself. I think the idea that allowing others to treat you with ableism is at all righteous is misplaced.

I'm not sure whether or not nonstandard limbs necessarily count as a disability, but in the case of Cabby, her wheels seem to function as such in at least one case. In S3E10, Cabby struggles to physically navigate the obstacle course that MePhone has created. Goo, who lacks limbs, struggles with the same challenge because the material that his body is composed of sticks him a pole, but that may be even more a stretch to call a "disability."

The rest of the characters that I have in mind are either older as a whole, or haven't received dedicated screen time in several years. Thus, I don't intend for the following thoughts to serve as a judgement of any writers' present attitudes, prejudices, degree of knowledge, etc.; it's just all I have to work with regarding them.

Soap was stated to have OCD during an AMA with Taylor Grodin in 2017. His (and the implied other writers') thoughts on her are well-intentioned, but in the end, the fact of her character is that she is unfortunately stereotypical. I think a specific tendency shared by all four writers who have worked on II is visible here, but I'll save that for the end. I appreciate what they've added tried to add to her character since her debut, and can see where it seeks to address the problems specific to her (ex. giving her an interest in gaming stops her sole hobby from being "cleaning").

This is exactly what I make of Tissues, too. It's unfortunate that he's also a character who has seem little improved treatment from II's writers. The table read of FFFE1 (2020) is somewhat different from the final episode, particularly in Tissues' interactions with Fan. I'm not sure how to describe what I make of it, but it's worth listening to on your own.

While a potentially very odd detail, following the release of III S3E14, a Twitter user made a thread about ableism in II that mentioned Tissues being based on a real person. Adam Katz blocked the user who made it, and claimed that it was because this was misinformation, and Tissues was not based on a real person. I'm not sure what to make of that, because this statement (that Tissues is based on a real person) was corroborated by Taylor several times. I'm having trouble getting my hands on a Tumblr post where he mentions it, but there is this YouTube video (2013) where it's said. I'm not exactly sure if Adam doesn't remember that this happened, was just denying that it did, or if it really is a weird old fabrication. In any case, it's another part of Tissues' strange and often disappointing treatment, even in the present day.

Yin-Yang and Paper have both received criticism on the grounds that they resemble stereotypical depictions of DID and OSDD. I'm not well-informed enough about either disorder to make specific calls here, so I won't. I will add of Yin-Yang that the use of a specific spiritual symbol as a character who is intended to resemble a very simplified understanding of it may be inherently distasteful, but again, this is a "may" that waits for somebody more knowledgeable. It also has little to do with disability by itself past an intersection of concept and depiction ("two are one" can be depicted in a character several ways, and the depiction chosen by II's writers ostensibly resembles DID/OSDD).

Bomb may have gotten the least recent attention of all these characters. He has a stutter associated with kinds of speech disorders, which sometimes "is the joke," specifically when it ostensibly inconveniences other characters by prolonging the amount of time it takes him to complete sentences. He's been inconsistently depicted with crossed eyes and/or a comparably low level of intelligence. This is a somewhat offensive combination of characteristics that appears to be a general riff on different forms of developmental and intellectual disability. On one hand, I appreciate that they no longer want to depict these characteristics as jokes, much less a general stereotype as Bomb was in general, but on the other, it's unfortunate that his entire character has been essentially discarded when it's still possible to present him in some more innocuous ways.

This is not specific to any one character, but like many other object shows, Inanimate Insanity has several armless characters. Any jokes or other strange moments centered around a character's lack of arms seem to have disappeared as the series has progressed, to me demonstrating a logical understanding not just that these are a tired occurrence in object shows, but that they may be tasteless. I can't complain about that.