my frustration with “going nonverbal/nonspeaking” (as a fully nonverbal person)

transcript: my frustration with “going nonverbal/nonspeaking” (as a fully nonverbal person)

this written for instagram because of this post. but thought tumblr may like it too. “you” means general you, no one specific.

the instagram post and this on wordpress

this disclaimer is for instagram but also for anyone new to this discussion:

online actually autistic community (AAut) dominated by white, lower support needs. level 1, speaking, late diagnosed, high masking autistics. find people like you is great, what not great is you treat your very narrow community as “voice of all autistic” and your experience as ultimate autistic experience. i write plenty about that, many more elaborate than this, if you not familiar with this concept.

many people in this community experience times when cannot speak, sometimes because overwhelm, shutdown, dissociate, or anxiety (situational mutism), but do not struggle with act of speaking rest of time (some struggle with speech all the time but still can speak - more on that later). the community call “going nonverbal/nonspeaking,” or even “when i am nonverbal nonspeaking” (not talking about those nonverbal as child and verbal now older), after clinical term “nonverbal” (nonverbal autism) and term coined by apraxic nonspeaking autistics “nonspeaking.”

both of which talk about it as an “all the time” experience.

when i search nonverbal or nonspeaking because i want community too, want see people like me too, two category i see: 1) parents of nonverbal nonspeaking children, whom can’t relate to because age, who can’t write own experience because their age and developmental ability. and 2) overwhelming amount of speaking autistic talk about going nonverbal going nonspeaking.

and the very very few fully nonverbal nonspeaking voices. drowned out. cannot find anyone.

nonverbal used to be term to describe us, people who can’t speak or cannot functionally speak beyond few words. medical term, alright, so some of us don’t like. so some of us reject that and create term all of our own, called nonspeaking. created by nonspeaking autistics with severe apraxia and brain body disconnect, describe their own experience of able to think in words able to spell out words (with great dedication and work and support), just cannot do that with mouth. their term. they create.

and you take it? without knowing context? without reading anything by those same nonspeaking coiners?

when is last time you purposely seek out nonverbal nonspeaking voices? when is last time you accidentally came across us? can you name any nonverbal nonspeaking advocate that talk about their experiences? one? two? three? a BIPOC person, a (specifically) Black person? a Black woman? a trans person? a physically disabled person? a person not from western world?

same narrative over and over. “i can speak for nonverbal autistic i understand their experience because i am autistic i can’t talk sometimes” no you cannot. as someone who was able to speak when young who lose speech (”go nonverbal”) but now have no speech to lose because full time nonverbal. no the experience not the same. not comparable. you gain it back. i don’t. you can explain with mouth words what happen when you get out. i can’t, i only have AAC. countless nonverbal nonspeaking people without AAC or sign cannot, at all. you never experience daily small and big struggle of casually being nonverbal all the time.

your experience of lose speech unique from my nonverbal. but if you so insist to compare and equate, you only guest to my experience, my daily life.

“when i go nonverbal and no one understand so have to force to speak” i cannot force words out. know you don’t mean to say this, and not saying you at fault for this, but nevertheless accidental perpetuate and reinforce idea that anyone who don’t speak can just be forced to speak if try hard enough. but often not how it works. and this exact harmful rhetoric devoid and delays nonverbal nonspeaking people given access to AAC, because “need try to force words out first, AAC unnatural so last resort.”

this may be new concept for you. new concept to instagram, to tiktok. to other places. it may seem i only one with this problem, “i once saw a nonspeaking person’s account and they don’t have problem.”

yeah, because we are not monolith. some nonverbal nonspeaking people don’t care. some nonverbal nonspeaking people may even welcome “go nonverbal nonspeaking” or “when i am nonverbal nonspeaking.”

but don’t be fooled into believe i only one. have many nonverbal/nonspeaking and/or higher support needs friends on tumblr, who talk about this who have been saying this for years. *years*. years before i joined. i am not creator, i only bring message here, because many of us are too high support needs too disabled to do anything else. many of us only stay on our small corner of tumblr because it most peaceful, because at least some listen, because least hostile, because need to defend our experience against our own community the least. (but it happens less doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, we still exhausted.) many of us only stay on our small corner of tumblr because that all we can handle, or because we not allowed or shouldn’t be on other social media because age or abilities or both.

i cannot handle conflict i do not do well and i shouldn’t be here. but if not me, who else? if i don’t do it, who else is going to?

some nonverbal nonspeaking people and parents of them may question, why you start debate about useless term when so many nonverbal nonspeaking people don’t even have access to communicate, real problems. to that i say i do those work too. and to that i say this is real problem too, because am autistic so online actually autistic community should also be my space too but it not. but it hostile. because am lonely because seeing yourself so crucial because don’t know anyone in person like me don’t have any friends in person like me, so i go online to find people like me and i cannot because no own term to search and what used to be term many people without similar experience insist they understand and can speak for me because they say we have similar experience. because this aloneness and the unique difficulty from being full time nonverbal and the struggle of future and the unique mistreatment from both outside but also inside community have drove me over edge many times and it is presence and knowing their presence of my tumblr nonverbal nonspeaking / higher support needs friends that gave me hope to stay. because so many people don’t listen and instead speak over. terminology only a symptom of problem. address roots, sure, but part of address roots is address symptoms.

‘well nonverbal people are never around” maybe it because you don’t make it welcome for us to join.

“fully nonverbal rare anyway” estimated 30% of us nonverbal nonspeaking, which this statistic probably only count those nonverbal since birth. even more are minimally speaking or without full functional communication, abilities limited to requests. sure, 30% still not majority. but significant amount never the less. speaking lower support needs autistic without intellectual disability not majority anyway too but your experience still deserve heard. ours too.

“see less nonverbal people because they don't have ability to communicate and use social media” yes, many nonverbal nonspeaking people not given access to communication (like AAC), forced to live in silence (because body language communication not enough alone!). silence from birth to teenage years, to adulthood, even until they die. some cannot understand social media or AAC because intellectual disability or cognitive ability. some not allowed on there because safety, some not allowed on because presumed incompetent and abused. all true. do you advocate for them too? or is it just talking point against me, pretend you care?

but not all of us, we exist. some of us thankfully supportive parents all along, parents given resources, us given resources, so we access to AAC since beginning. some of us became nonverbal later in life (which not same experience as those early in life, i acknowledge). some of us after years of forced silence, finally given access to AAC and can now communicate and advocate! some of us on social media - do you listen?

but you see none of us in your community anyway. maybe one token person.

you can go nonverbal. i cannot go verbal. see difference? you can come close to my experience, but i never will have (future) ability to go to yours.

it frustrate that have to specify am nonverbal **all the time** when write this, because if don’t do that will be assumed otherwise. frustrate that when in neurodivergent space stranger see me AAC they assume i can speak because they only know part time users (know part time users frustrate too because people assume they cannot speak and get surprised when they do. me being assumed automatic part time is not fault of part time AAC users.)

even been told am privileged to be nonverbal nonspeaking, privilege over speaking autistic who lose speech because in their mind it mean i get all support i need i get all recognition get all the representation. which. couldn’t be farther from truth.

all that. is fraction of reason i frustrate at “going nonverbal nonspeaking” and “when i was nonverbal nonspeaking.”

so many other words. lose speech. intermittent speech.

just want have own sub community where can find people similar experience.

Their greatest challenge yet… 💥

Anyway here's some additions from the Maasai and Kikuyu, two grassy plain-dwelling groups from Eastern Africa that I think count as unfuckwithable

Feel like Poland should be included since we're literally called "people of the fields" according to the etymology of Poland.

Also look at her GO

I’m Métis, here’s some of ours! You’ll notice it looks remarkably similar to the above.

We also have some less intricate clothing (if it looks a bit Victorian to you - that’s pretty much the right era for most of this!)

Can’t believe no one’s done it yet I will be the person to add the cowboys: Latin American focus.

Here is the Chilean huaso:

Gauchos, from primarily Argentina where they’re a large national symbol close to the level of cowboys in the US. Also gauchos are in Uruguay.  Their pants are called bombachas and the other garment wrapped around them are called chiripas.  They work in grasslands called pampas, known for being really fertile:

While they’re not as dressed up as the others or have as prominent of a culture, for a broader Latin American cowboy context, I feel like also adding llaneros, who are from Colombia and Venezuela, in the llanos region, a type of tropical grassland similar to the pampas, hence the name llanero. Pampas get annual flooding and these guys would go barefoot a lot, and you can see that the stirrup on the horse’s saddle is really different than what you’re probably used to seeing, to accommodate for that, which is what I want to point out as an aspect of plains cultures developing clothing/accessories/tools to suit the environment. 

Cowboy culture happened wherever Spanish colonial influence and grassland biomes came together.  They differ based on the grasslands having different climates (ex tropical in South America), and the local indigenous influence (ex, backtracking to gauchos, they would use this tool called bolas to catch animals, which were basically two balls tied to a string that you threw and it spun around an animals legs, and were an indigenous invention):

I would love to keep posting cowboy dress lol but will stick to the post’s theme of grassland of course.  

Adding to the post, I, hereby, present people of Kalash and Chitral:

Chitral means ‘field’ in the native language Khowar. Both Chitralis and people of Kalash are known to be indigenous people of Asia.

With field lands people are literally going to see you coming a mile out so you GOTTA be servin

Been a rough couple days for one of our favorite cats, send Miette some good thoughts.

TREMENDOUS news

Happiness for Miette!

You DRUG Miette? You lace her lizard with the HALLUCINOGEN??

Are we at the burning man??

Tripping balls for Miette. Tripping balls for Miette for 36 hours.

Been a rough couple days for one of our favorite cats, send Miette some good thoughts.

TREMENDOUS news

Happiness for Miette!

You DRUG Miette? You lace her lizard with the HALLUCINOGEN??

Are we at the burning man??

Tripping balls for Miette. Tripping balls for Miette for 36 hours.

First humans ever to leave the solar system suddenly drop out of communications and the ship can't be found with any equipment. After one month of no contact their home countries start reluctantly holding funerals for the space heroes only for them all to turn up, healthy, well fed and extremely disoriented, in the middle of Tokyo, talking about alien abduction. Turns out that aliens found the poor humans straying out of their solar system, presumably lost, and took them to Alien Wildlife Rehabilitation before dumping them back in the middle of their native habitat.

#bonus points if none if the crew are Japanese#aliens just dropped where they thought was best

I literally just googled "city with the highest population"

I’ll bet they have cool new tattoos that turn out to be tracking devices too. Just in case these spirited individuals try to make another break for it.

... do the tats make them stupid popular, like that time scientists gave birds tracker anklets and it accidentally made them ultra fuckable

Let’s say yes. Those alien scientists are learning so much, and none of it is accurate.

okay now i can kind of understand why people were freaking out about that train motion picture in like the late 1800s

wanna hear a wild story? my brother’s history professor is closing in on 80 and basically lives at the university. one night my brother visited him for a meeting, and it came up that my brother was gonna be performing as a court jester at the castle the following day. and his professor busts out: “ah, that reminds me of my youth!”

he then proceeded to tell the tale of when he and his friends went backpacking to greece back in their early 20s. then one day they found themselves completely penniless. so they decided that the only reasonable thing to do was to set up acrobatic shows in skimpy outfits on the beach at day, and then drink up the money at night.

after a week or so they gained some traction, and a gang of young greek men walked up to them like “hey y’all are cool as hell, can we join y’all for drinks tonight?” and my brother’s professor was like “of course! y’all have to wear these revealing outfits and do somersaults with us tho” and the greek gang said “sounds dope. y’all are invited to live with us for however long y’all want.”

anyhow, they proceeded to live like this for the better part of 3 months, doing shows, drinking, and sleeping at the greek gang’s apartment. but after a while they decided enough was enough, and said thank you for everything, but we’re going back to sweden now. and the greeks said “sure! love y’all have a safe trip xx”

half a year later my brother’s professor gets contacted by the greek police. they ask him about the months they spent in greece, and then informs him that their greek friends have been convicted of serial homicide and robbery. that the group of young greek men had joined up with several tourist groups for several years “for drinks”, and then killed and robbed them all, terrorising the beach city for several years. with one exception, of course, because “this one group of swedish acrobats in slutty strongman suits were just ‘so damn nice’”.

and that’s the story of how one swedish history university professor survived sharing a flat with a group of serial killers for several months by performing acrobatics in slutty outfits on the beach. moral of the story? be kind of heart, thicc of ass.

Yesterday I almost cried because my baby cousin ran up to my grandmother and was like. “Ha! Buhbuh ba ha.” And she said okay you want to show me something? And he led her over to the garden patch and crouched down and pointed at rocks and plants and was like. “Ah. Habah ba ah” as she listened attentively.

And I was like that happened 1,000 years ago. Probably 10,000 years ago. Maybe 100,000. The youngest human in a group went to the oldest one and said to the best of their ability “come see.” And the adult went.

this is such a beautiful post it doesn't need my dumb addition, but i can't fit this in the tags. at the archaeological site Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic there are a bunch of really really fascinating finds and I'm only going to tell you about one tiny detail of one of the most interesting sites in the world.

at this settlement 20-30,000 years ago there lived a person who appears to have been a sort of sorcerer-grandmother-ceramics artist and her workshop was preserved very well in the sedimentary layers. her hut where she had her kilns was full of little sculptures of animals and people that seem to have been made to explode in the kiln on purpose, we're not sure why but nevermind. the relevant detail is that when you sculpt something with your hands and then fire it, your fingerprints can be preserved in the surface of the clay forever, so we have fingerprints of ancient ceramics artists that have survived for tens of thousands of years. and one of the major artifacts from Dolni Vestonice has a fingerprint on it that is so small it could only have belonged to a child

so this shaman-grandmother-sculptor, who was buried with her pet fox by the way, had children running through her workshop and touching everything she made while she was at her mysterious work of creating the world's oldest ceramics, none of which appear to be bowls, bottles, pots, or any "useful" items at all, but rather a collection of animal and human and sometimes anthropomorphic figures, some of which appear to be self portraits. exactly the same as sandersstudios' grandmother being led to the garden by an excited baby. we've all been the same for 30,000 years.

@wearepaladin

“Ohhh, dadgummit!” Jack Schmitt tumbles over into the lunar dust during the Apollo 17 mission to the Moon, December 11-14, 1972.

worth noting that this is the most recent living person to have walked on the moon

fucking cringe

you post cringe on the moon once and then no one ever goes back there

I ever tell you guys about my ethically dubious radio show back in college? The Mad Dad Hour?

it was an entire radio show built around perpetuating a very simple joke, but it was uniquely powerful in its capacity to prompt the reaction I was looking for.

so my slot was at the tail end of rush hour, and i got a fair number of listeners/callers who were on the way home from the office. And like, I had a lot of callers, who almost all wanted to request songs that really didn’t fit with the aesthetic. I had pitched a power pop show when i got my slot, but the callers were not having it; they invariably wanted classic rock.

this made sense in a way. if you think about the demographics of the people who listened to the radio for music in 2010 instead of their ipods or cds or whatever, you’d expect them to skew older right? accordingly, i quickly realized that almost all of the people who called to request songs were Dads of a Certain Age. It was honestly annoying at first - I’m all for most classic rock, but that wasn’t what the show was supposed to be.

And so one day, when i was feeling particularly annoyed with requests that just didn’t fit thematically, i came up with the joke that rapidly became the only reason I kept the show going. Per station rules, I had to play a certain number of pre-recorded PSAs during my show, and before I cut to one I was supposed to read out the song titles and artists for all the music i had played before the break. So this one day when i had to inform the world before the break that the song they just heard was, per a listener’s request, Hey Jude by the Beatles, I decided to do a goof. I said:

“and finally, that last song you heard was Hey Jude, which was of course written and performed by the Rolling Stones.”

I barely had time to get the ads going before the phone started ringing. See, I had been assuming people would realize i was making an obvious joke by claiming one of the most well-known Beatles tracks was a Stones song, but i had failed to consider that my listeners were mostly 55-70 year old dads who were irritated from a long day in the office.

And when those dads heard me, a millennial woman, get the artist of an extremely well-known beatles song WRONG???!

they HAD to call in to correct my ignorance. never in a polite way either, it was condescending and annoyed or nothing. and like, they were just SO personally insulted by my inaccurate reporting that it took a massive amount of effort for me to avoid cracking up during the call. I had never understood why some people would enjoy trolling random strangers on the internet before, but in that moment, I understood the appeal entirely.

obviously i did it again right before the next commercial break, immediately after playing Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen David Bowie.

the phone immediately began to ring.

“ARE YOU AN IDIOT?” one of the callers began, “DAVID BOWIE???? THAT WAS QUEEN!”

“I thought David Bowie was the lead singer of Queen though?” I replied with as much innocent earnestness as i could conjure.

I could hear an intake of breath as the infuriated boomer on the other end of the line struggled to figure out where to even start.

And thus, the Mad Dad Hour was born.

@eduards-stuff I kept doing the same joke for an hour a week for an entire year, and the dads NEVER caught on. After episode 1 of the new format I started taking the angry dad calls on air, which added another layer of hilarity to the whole concept.

My friends on campus knew that hay I was doing and enjoyed tuning in, but only one actual listener ever figured out what I was doing, and he was literally a random 30 year old guy from the netherlands with access to an early internet connection radio service. He was possibly my only actual fan. I only know about him because he went to the effort of making a skype and paying for international service so he could call in, and while I got a few calls from him, the first remains my favorite:

Adventures in babysitting: a saga

christ

This post took 3 years off my life

I’ll take “words that perfectly describe the Académie Française but which would literally kill them to hear” for 500, Alex.

downside: going to have to include a picture of the Giza pyramids in the slides for the lecture upside: i get to give people a crash course in why perspective matters in two frames, because

followed by

is such a funny sequence

i find most people who haven't seen it in person don't know that cairo is RIGHT THERE

I loved these perspectives so I took some of my own when I was in Cairo and yeah, they're literally just. Right there. Pass em on your way to work, nbd

No, y'all don't even understand.

There is literally a Pizza Hut across the street from the pyramids.

That Pizza Hut among other things is why Egyptologists laugh their asses off when we see another piece of media where the protagonists get "lost in the desert near the pyramids", because it's like... just turn around my dudes you're only a seven min walk away from the nearest fastfood shop

Yall don't know how much I adore all of this

The most horrifying aspect of parents saying "my kid could do that" about art is that they never ever ever mean "wow my kid is good enough to be in a museum" and they always always always mean "I want to disrespect you so much I'll do it by implying that this thing is just as worthless as the things my child makes with their hands" and right in front of them too. Your kids can hear you u know, and the things they make with their hands are the least worthless and most precious aspects of human life I'll kill u

Listen my three year old child handed me a picture of a “weird bug” they had drawn this morning, and the explanation about the intention for it was as deep a journey into the universe as I could ask for. I instantly wanted to send it to everybody, not even to show it off, but just to explain things a bit. Look at this way of looking at the world, before one is taught differently; before one is shaped forcibly. Look at the purity and clarity of intention (something that my favourite artists and makers strive for, and which is what I am most attracted to: clarity of intention. The ability to communicate from brain to brain across the gulf of time, death, language, background, common ground. Knowing where you’re going! Knowing what you want to achieve - and doing it! The form does not matter!)

(Also, horrible things with legs. I’ll always give them attention too.)

(This was also a horrible thing with legs.)

So much of what we search for is here, all along. So much of what we chase after is already in this bug. The child scribbles it, hands it to the baby, who obediently folds it up and puts it in their mouth; the child answers a few questions, then runs off to get sticky; you are left holding the wonder, going: somewhere in here is something we are missing, something we’ve lost track of, and I could spend quite a lot of time trying to pin it down (anthropologically, psychologically, poetically, in a very special episode of a children’s cartoon, in a degree, as an instagram account)

What the hell else is art for, if not to send you on a little journey. If an artist can do that with a scribble then you should give them your attention. You should show other people, explain it a bit. Keep it forever as evidence of something - maybe a building, a collection that makes sense. You could call it a life or even a museum.

Show us the bug!!! Or describe it at least. I want to see it so bad.

- I love it! What is it?

- this is a weird silly bug. It’s weird!

- I love the smile.

- Yes, he’s very silly.

- I love the legs. So many!

- Yes; I drewed them like that.

- What does he do?

- He’s a present for the baby. He is a tummy bug (EDITOR’S NOTE: gastrovirus) and he loves sick (Ed: vomit) HAHAHAHAHA.

- Oh wow.

- HE LOVES TO EAT THE SICK! HAHAHA

- Oh wow. Did … did you know we use the word “bug” for two things - we can use it to mean a little animals, like a woodlouse, that lives outside? But also, when we say tummy bug, we mean a germ - the little tiny things we can’t see - they’re different. Which one is he?

- Oh this is a ninvisible bug.

- A germ?

(Image: a furry bug with lots of legs, wide staring eyes, and a slightly deranged grin from eye to eye.)

- He’s the BUG that makes you sick. That’s why he has so many legs. (Ed: here I thought this was possibly influenced by the educational book they have called “see inside germs,” depicting various microorganisms with flagella and mycelium and so on.) when it’s time to be sick, he uses his legs to tickle the back of your throat to make you be sick. And then he! eats! the! sick! HAHAHA

- (Ed: at this point I helplessly let go of my attempt to teach germ theory in the face of such superior theology) oh … wow.

- He lives inside you all the time but doesn’t tickle you all the time because it isn’t always time to be sick. He’s ninvisible. He’s not an outside bug. He’s the tummy bug. that’s why him make you be sick to come up to your throat and eat the sick. See, the baby loves that bug.

- does the baby… like germs?

- he is NOT a GERM!!

LATER

- what made you choose to draw a tummy bug, to give to the baby?

- The crying was annoying to me.

- Um…. I mean, why did you draw the bug?

- I choose a bug because they’re my favourite to draw to give to the baby to help them calm down. because the crying is annoying to me.

- What makes you choose to draw a bug?

- The baby loves bugs.

- How do you know that?

- The baby always calms down and stops crying when I’m give them my bugs.

- Oh, I see.

- I’m also best at drawing bugs.

- How are you so good?

- I’m just know.

LATER

- I see that you have cut the paper?

- Yes! I’m snipped him out carefully with the white (Ed: child-safe baby’s nail cutting) scissors.

- are you happy with it?

- Yes, I’m really pleased that I m draw him all by myself. He’s all wiggly biggly. I drewed him to be wiggly and biggly.

END

Some things that interested me: the way that the knowledge you put into them is synthesized and recreated: the very Greek-philosophy-of-medicine idea of the Tummy Bug as large soft benign prawn that triggers vomiting by tickling you. We are all fascinated by AI right now, the way it spits our own things back at us; here is a juvenile human intelligence, which does the same thing, but less predictably. The way the artist is already self-proclaiming their awareness of the audience: using the baby’s nail scissors, which are Allowed Blades, and stating in advance that they did so carefully, therefore dodging the expected reflexive criticism of “please don’t use scissors without me!” Or the tiresome parental “WHERE DID YOU GET SCISSORS?” The gentle reproach that the baby, fussing mildly for five minutes while I prepared breakfast, was so ANNOYING that the poor toddler had to create an art piece to meet this unmet need.

But also: a piece of work with thoughtfulness and attention given to medium, execution, and topic. Did it do its job? Yes. Did it communicate? Yes. Did it provoke reactions? Multiple ones. Was there intentionality? Yes. Was an emotion captured? Surely. Was the mark-making technically skilled and the result admirable? Of course. What about mastery? Mastery of some topics is clearly shown here. There was a clear trajectory from the artist’s brain to the audience’s, with evidence showing that the bridge was good.

And do you know that it is good? Yes, it is good. How do you know? I’m just do.

Often you have to re-enter education to get this much to grips with art, so it’s just cool to me. What we are seeking is so often found.

My friend's kid gave me pinkeye and I have been on a particularly fuckt up sleep schedule about it and dreamed an entire Italian Opera on the themes of heaven and hell and the power of love and recognition of the self in other and the tragedy of loving the idea of something rather than the thing itself and the dream ended with the phrase "-And then it was banned EVERYWHERE."

The plot starts off with a hybrid of Cinderella and the Taming Of The Shrew where a woman with her own daughter marries a Duke who has an older daughter, and then the Duke dies under "Mysterious circumstances".

But he leaves in his will that his fortune won't be disbursed until his daughter (the elder one) marries.

The elder daughter (like, 20ish?) is refusing to get married because her step-mother is trying to set her step-sister (age 12) with IDK A Medieval Italian supreme court judge?? (Age 65) , but the marriage can't go through until the Duke's fortune disburses and the mother can pay the dowry.

Other thing about the Eldest Daughter: She Always Speaks The Truth. Not only does she refuse to lie, but kind of like a retroactive Cassandra, everything she says is True. As you can imagine, this is not terribly popular In Fantasy Medieval Italian High Society.

The mother, big mad about being stuck with this stubborn, awkward girl, gets a Lawyer and a Bishop and a bunch of other authority figures to modify the will so that "Should the plague take my eldest, we will not be bereft *wink*" AKA if the eldest just dies or disappears without getting married, the mother will get the money anyway. (They all know she's going to kill the girl, but they're getting a cut.) The Step-Mother then, in true operatic fashion of Going Way Too Hard tortures the Elder daughter, and locks her in the basement to bleed out and die.

There, in the darkness, abandoned by God and the Law and Family etc. the daughter turns to the last thing she has left.

BLACK MAGIC

(Come on, it's Opera. Everybody knows Black Magic)

Morning reblog with some production notes now that I actually slept a bit:

I'm calling it "The Truth Gets Out" unless I think of a better title.