Igenlode Wordsmith

I hadn't come across spoon theory before (already, I see, like most things on the modern Internet, the subject of complaints about appropriation, trivialization, and who is more victimised than whom...)

It does echo in a way what I feel, which I've been categorising to myself as an endless litany of "but I'm so tired"... but where 'tired' doesn't represent lack of sleep or physical aches, but of constant, dragging effort to do anything at all difficult, where 'difficult' is almost invariably emotional rather than objectively hard. It's somewhat like what I've always thought of as 'push', of which one only has so much before becoming completely dispirited.

But it isn't that I can't. It isn't that I don't have the energy. It isn't even, in most cases, that it's a matter of doing something which I find actively daunting or frightening (like going to complain about things, or dealing with angry people). It really does feel from my perspective like laziness and lack of self-discipline, because I know perfectly well that if I had someone standing over me to disapprove then I *would* do these things; things as simple as answering emails, which, once I start, I indeed tend to do at some length, or as complex as finding and fixing bugs in a program, or as necessary as washing-up or mending clothes.( Read more... )

I was reading capriuni's post on a potential disability version of the Bechdel Test, and wondering how my own fiction would apply in that context.

It made me think of a story I roughed-out over ten years ago and recently rediscovered in its raw form. I'm not sure how this would fit the CapriUni Test: it certainly fails the Bechdel Test as there are only three named characters and only one of them is female. I think it fails because both the protagonists are 'disabled' in some way, and this is the cause of their problems...

( The Worm )

It's not exactly a sexist story, in that the female partner is older, stronger and wiser than the male, and ultimately 'comes out top' when he transgresses (however little she likes it). But it undoubtedly fails the Bechtel test, in that the woman talks about very little but 'relationships' (and in fact defines herself by her reproductive role!) and certainly doesn't converse with any other female characters on any other subject.

I'm not sure how it falls on the CapriUni test. The 'monster' here is quite happy with her monstrousness, and in fact sacrifices the possibility of a 'human' relationship in order to perpetuate her monster role. On the other hand the plot definitely revolves around the problems caused by the characters' various 'disabilities', and in particular this disastrous intersection of them. Curing one or the other disability would definitely resolve the conflict!