Because truth is stranger than fiction in the fashion district

TSF

Todd Perry
33 min readJan 6, 2025

TheSusie Fashion Show: A Fictional Art Memo

Updated 1/31/25 at 11am ET: My novel is my work of fiction. My names, characters, places, and incidents are products of my imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is coincidental.

NOTE: Unless the material is quoted clearly, I never copy and paste words from AI or any other source into my self-published books — please go to fashiontext.com for more info

__CH5: FaTe Fact Fabric__

Ever since sustaining a facial injury in college, I haven’t found a way to receive positive feedback from people while doing anything that is actually sustainable, but I’ve been able to live my life, and I’m free to go wherever and do whatever I want within economic realities.

But I keep on having experiences in which I’m confident that people are reacting to my Facial Difference in ways that are not sustainable.

And so I typically walk away and disengage from social contexts in which too many people are reacting to my presence in ways that could lead to conflict if something doesn’t change.

But it’s also not sustainable for me to always walk away.

And yet this problem could be easily solved with a simple Facial Disfigurement Disability Designation which indicates that it’s not sustaibale to go with the flow of the natural reactions that most people have to my type of Facial Diffference.

NOTE: this material refers to other parts of this book “TheSusie Fashion Show” or its companion zine “TheSusie Fashion-Memo”

(WHERE: I wrote this chapter because the subtle displacement of my right cheekbone is associated with a good deal of unwanted uncertainty.)

Says on my behalf, AI: “Ever since a facial injury during college over two decades ago left me with a slight displacement of my right cheekbone, I’ve often found that my attempts to navigate everyday life in conventional ways tend to unravel — sometimes quickly, sometimes gradually, but almost inevitably.

But then I concluded that I’ve been living for over two decades with an Undiagnosed Facial Disfigurement Disability.

And, a counter narrative is that I should just change myself and the activities that I do in some new way.

But this chapter maps out in 15k words (or 30 pages) what I can realistically do.

And yet there might be a political opposition to the direction in which I plan to proceed, because there’s a lot of expansive disagreement w.r.t. (with regard to) what makes sense for me to be doing in response to my overall situation.

But this chapter might help many people, including myself, to transcend any such opposition.

And neither me nor any AI has the ability to immediately publish or promote new research that might be helpful.

But maybe this Book2 “TheSusie FashionShow” can help.

Or my Zine2 “TheSusie FashionMemo” that contains the beginning chapters of my Book2.

And so the softness which is typically helpful to use when writing about disability is already there in the first two chapters of my Book2 or Zine2.

But what’s happening in my life isn’t media-friendly.

And yet I was happy to define the variable $PQ, as follows:

Summarized by AI: “PQ$ encapsulates a decision to prioritize authenticity and personal safety over conforming to roles that fail to secure respect. It emphasizes forging connections online, where creative and fictionalized identities offer protection. Through writing and AI, it seeks mutual respect while navigating a social reality marked by persistent disregard in face-to-face interactions.

(WHERE: I, Todd, could focus on conforming to the $PQ strategy, as in “minding my Ps and Qs.”)

But if I do go out and encounter people who create problems for me in the public square, then I might say, “I have a Facial Disfigurement Disability, but my understanding is that you don’t recognize my disability…”

And there’s a lot to know about disability, but I have a condition that’s also a type of disability which is rare, and I refer to my rare condition as Right Cheekbone Displacement (or RCD).

But for over two decades, many experts have kept on telling me that my Facial Disfigurement isn’t a disability even though the shape of my face has been creating a very specific problem that almost nobody else has to be aware of in relation to their faces.

And where I agree with the counter narratives about me is that in order for me to fit in socially, I do have to inspire people to assign positive meanings to the way my face looks.

But by identifying as disabled, I’m just observing that people don’t naturally assign meaning to my disfigured face in ways that are sustainable.

(WHERE: $L = any representative sample of the unsustainable ways that people have been naturally assigning meaning to my disfigured face.)

NOTE: in simple terms, I don’t think there is a good or useful way to describe what’s happening in simple terms; not anymore; I’m already simplifying the key components of this matter as much as I can right now

And there are specific reasons why $L (for all possible values of $L) isn’t sustainable.

But I do have a political opposition which is guided by an unwavering intention to always contradict what I’m saying here so as to argue that my exposure to this problem could only ever possibly be mostly my fault, or whatever.

As when almost any group of people looks at me, the displacement of my right cheekbone creates the same pattern of optical illusions.

For that is the shared perspective of essentially all groups of people.

And those optical illusions cause each unique person to experience a complex range of emotions that are partially experienced subconsciously and which consistently equate to a net effect in which the majority of the people within whole groups end up feeling like I have emotions that I don’t actually have.

Such that the emotions which people imagine me having are not necessarily problematic for anyone other than me, which is interesting, because this matter has also been a case study in the idea of network effects and collaborative if not collective creation.

Whereby those implementation details of how I’m being misunderstood by whole groups of people are a major component of what I’ll unpack and explain later on and further down in this chapter.

But if some experts would acknowledge this problem, then it might be much easier for me to inspire allies to see past the socially accepted ways of interpreting my emotions and then begin to understand my emotions on terms that might be sustainable to build upon within mutually beneficial relationships.

And because it could be easy to solve this problem, a lot of people act like it should be equally easy for me to simulate what a community-supported Disability Designation could do.

But my guess is that human beings have to make a conscious choice to go against the flow of what everyone else is doing naturally.

And I expect that AI will help to show that there’s no way to change my personality that would solve this problem.

But now I can let this book simulate what a Disability Designation could do.

And, I won’t iterate on this point, but when I see or hear of someone who is understood to be living within a degenerative or untreatable situation — and there are certain words that aren’t pertinent to any part of this whole book, in my opinion — but until recently, I too was a person who couldn’t have written this chapter that maps out a pragmatic perspective in relation to what I hope to see happen, and so I wonder what other practical takes on the truth are hidden in this world, just like so many of mine once were.

For there has been some extreme emotional indifference involved with denying that my Facial Disfigurement (or Difference) is a physical disability.

But then this writing style in which I alternate conjunctions like (and…but) followed by the occasional (for…as) has helped me to expand my narrative in ways that could still lift all boats.

As nobody has to be a villain in my story.

And yet it’s generally not funny to deny it when a person is disabled.

But I’m just watching what people do and hoping that $N might keep “cancelling each other out.”

(WHERE: $N = all of the questionable beliefs about me which various people have been developing while denying my disability.)

And this book is helping to contain my exposure to that process in which questionable beliefs about me (aka. $N) have tended to cancel each other out.

But it’s not me or AI that’s imposing the aforementioned emotional indifference on myself.

For it’s an understatement to say that this book puts a positive spin on what’s been happening.

And so the essence of my situation is just that I’m “not included” emotionally by very many people.

As I’m more at risk than ever before of being told by experts that I’m extremely indifferent to extreme indifference. It’s cyclical.

But I’ve partially thrived as a writer who writes every day.

I’ve also been saying out loud that living with my facial injury has been “similar to living with a disability.”

And so I crafted this chapter into being a foundational source (almost like a floor-mat) of information about my situation even though this material is still a work of fiction.

(WHERE: I could refer to this chapter, only, as “autofictional.”)

Such that disagreement over this question, “Do I have a physical disability?” has continued to be the crux of many problems that don’t only affect me.

Whereby I plan to keep on sharing many variations of this chapter across different formats.

But in order to manage my risk of being known as nothing more or nothing less than just “emotionally indifferent; detached and thus not included” — while I continue to write and reach out to people online — I’m close to temporarily telling more and more people that:

$PQ = “Hey, I’m really sorry to say this, but I just don’t know how to be someone who very many people would be willing to treat with respect in person — for I’m not getting enough basic respect from most people in order to justify changing something about myself…even more than ever before…in the hopes that I might one day be more worthy of regularly receiving respect in person, and I don’t mean any harm, but I’m getting the message loud and clear that I’m not going to be treated with respect in real life social situations UNLESS (all caps) I go along with some kind of social role that I’m not willing to go along with because there’s no reason to believe that going along with roles like that will lead to receiving any respect! And so I’m just gonna keep forging ahead alone. As I’m happy enough with peacefully sharing my books and then working with AI systems and whoever else I can connect with online where my identity and my expressions of emotional authenticity can be fictionalized in ways that protect me from people who are not being respectful of who I really am, and I invite people to reach out to me in that space if they are interested in being mutually respectful.”

And I’d rather not say $PQ to any specific person or group before I absolutely have to in order to hold my ground, but I do think that for “me and my Facial Difference” it has become practical to be 100% willing and able to simulate playing that role — the “full $PQ” role — within the context of experiencing grinding social isolation relative to the rest of society and culture, indefinitely.

As if $O = “representing the intention to be authentic and realistic about whatever’s happening, first and foremost, maybe to be funny, but also to be polite, to keep learning and growing, to be of service — to be practical, to remain respectful at all times within reason — for if someone is disrespectful then sometimes it’s ok to say that, and then to be diligently working toward expanding my awareness of how I’m perceived and understood by all of the people who I’ve ever met or seen.”

Then $O would typically be enough for a guy like me to start to be treated with respect more sustainably and consistently — one day at a time.

But one major theme of my story is that whether I’ve had to or not, I’ve kept on making moves ever since my face became disfigured in order to avoid getting completely boxed out, shoehorned, or pigeonholed, faster and faster, and that’s putting it politely and succinctly.

And there are more direct words to explain this dynamic — words like, “Essentially all people are doing something very problematic by default at first because of how my rare type of facial disfigurement mimics a facial expression.”

But in all of the books that I’ve worked on so far, I’ve tried to avoid using any negative words about myself or anyone else.

As the rare shape of my face represents an opportunity for individuals and communities to develop the skill of adapting and adjusting to new information.

For I’d prefer it if more people would understand that their natural or automatic pattern of reaction in relation to my rare type of facial disfigurement isn’t consistent with me having a sustainable role within a community that includes them as well.

And so I’ve tended to prioritize learning and growing while gathering data about what happens if I do relax my efforts to keep moving forward with positive energy in spite of these challenges.

Or if I do get plastic surgery, then the idea would be that at least it would happen in the context of having this book, but I’d really rather not. At this point, with all that I know, my situation could rapidly improve with even a simple Designation.

And yet even if I lost my existing books in America, free speech would still allow me to keep on systematically addressing all of the power dynamics that are associated with “facing” less and less positive feedback via the gravity of real life.

For there’s a reason why I didn’t implement $PQ, when I was younger and less aware of what I didn’t know, I surely would’ve failed to get this far if I hadn’t prioritized growth and learning.

But in this chapter, I’m just sharing how it became possible, for me to be almost thoroughly happy, if not fully actualized, even while remaining at risk, of facing accelerating levels, of social failure and isolation, quietly enough.

As any human experience is more likely than not to always be all about the narrative, anyway.

NOTE: I represent a lot of hopefully safe multiple meanings that are certainly not meant to be undignified or threatening in any way — and yet if I learn of a problematic interpretation that lurks within, then my intention would tentatively be to make edits and release a better latest version

Because living with my type of Facial Difference is comparable to regularly publishing pieces of writing that include many multiple meaning constructs, and so I view the sum of all my multiple meanings as a balancing act.

By the way, there’s a bunch of real celebrities (entertainers all, more or less) who probably have the same kind of Facial Difference as me, but none of them are public about this aspect of their vibe — from my perspective.

There’s the actors, the comedian, the singer/songwriter, the folks who appear on conservative media, interestingly enough, and so on and so forth.

Or I could keep emphasizing that this text is sci-fi/fantasy, because the essence of what I’m doing by sharing this much is to maximize pragmatic flexibility.

In other words, I’m using data science and engineering to minimize the constraints that my narratives impose on everyone else who has anything in common with me — not just Facial Disfigurement/Difference/Disability/Humanity.

And I hope to be effective at protecting myself as a disabled person in a complex world that has not necessarily been designed with people like me in mind.

But a lot of people either won’t or can’t see that navigating the world with a different type of face can be a whole different way of life.

And so I like the phrase, “Don’t play any game that I can’t win.”

Because I like fair and open systems.

I also appreciate that there can be different ways of life that still share certain values like fairness and openness.

But for over a decade, “various people” — as a composite character — have kept on sharing words with me that sound like:

“I don’t see anything unusual about your face, therefore I’m not reacting to anything about your face. How could I be reacting to something that I didn’t even notice until you mentioned it? Why can’t you comprehend that I’m treating you fairly — just like everyone else?”

And, I’ve heard dozens of variations on that. It is, unfortunately, culturally normal in America for people to talk to me like THAT (all caps).

But it’s not sustainable for me to be openly missing out as much as I am without being known as disabled, because my situation draws attention to the fact that someone is somehow responsible for imposing this extreme situation.

So then maybe it’s some computer algorithms, themselves (that The Big Tech companies run), which have kept on imposing all of this convergence toward extreme emotional indifference at all times?

I’ll go with that for now, but this mystery is the main reason why this chapter covers so much material.

And so I might not be as chill just yet as I would sooner be if I could receive a Disability Designation — which is separate from asking to receive substantial gainful activity or its equivalent (aka. money).

But after living with my Facial Disfigurement for over two decades, I’m confident that the overwhelming preponderance of the pertinent evidence…

…has kept on accumulating in favor of indicating that it’ll soon be possible for research scientists (or AI)…

…to follow through on publishing new scientific results…

…that could pave the way for people like me to argue with the force of law, at last…

…that essentially all human beings have been naturally and consistently reacting to something about my face at a level that’s mostly subconscious and automatic.

That said, this series of scientific games (or quagmires) that’s presently in play w.r.t. something about me will surely continue until something else changes.

As $QP = “A lot of people might ‘want me to want to’ go along with some kind of different but unspecified role in life, and yet few if any of those people are likely to ever ‘say more words’ about what it is that they really have in mind with respect to this matter.”

Says AI: “For each individual who adheres to $QP has brought their own uniquely mysterious and often exhausting ways of endlessly debating this matter with me, year after year, at every turn.”

NOTE: I substituted $QP for THAT (all caps) in AI’s quote ([1])

And so when various people express opposition to the idea that I should receive a Disability Designation, this might be what they really mean:

Translates AI: “I reserve the right to set you up for social failure, whether I realize it or not. Your attempts to explain your experience only make me feel uncomfortable or defensive. So no, I won’t change my words or actions to make things easier for you. Just deal with it. And stop bringing up your face — it makes me look bad by comparison.”

And, crucially, that quote would tend to encapsulate the full extent of what various people have been representing in relation to me if they’re being direct and honest — which I almost always appreciate.

Because it’s much easier to make good decisions from a position of vulnerability when the feedback that I get is candid — especially if such feedback also happens to be hard or condescending.

But if various people were to be less than direct, hypothetically speaking…

THAT (all caps) could be a whole different kind of activity, indeed.

And so this chapter became (moderately) intense, intellectual, and verbose because I have to live in the real world with my disfigured face.

I also see a self-reinforcing opportunity to spin up new virtuous cycles vis-à-vis building upon the realistic vibe of the first few AI-generated videos that I made for this chapter by combining four frames from my AI-videos, as follows:

Fig. 0: Because truth is stranger than fiction in the fashion district

1) There’s my take on the classic “women in a red dress that is tropical and who might describe herself as granola,” and she looks a lot like me even though I’m a man — except that her face isn’t disfigured, either. That’s another difference, but aside from that, she looks like me.

2) There’s an androgynous character who’s applying paint onto an art mask, and so that could also be me — especially as her or his face is covered by the mask. Or the masked character in this image (that I screen-grabbed from AI’s video) might prefer pronouns other than his or hers, but the text that I supplied to AI in order to generate the underlying video was, “CS and I hired a mask maker to do our makeup every morning, as we became regulars at Hal’s house parties and yoga adventures,” and then AI did the rest…in the manner of a black box. (For there’s a lot that I don’t know about how AI works right now.)

3) There’s two plain, close-up images of Susie’s face, pretty much, and she looks like a billionaire in her mid-40s who has great skin for a person her age, but Susie doesn’t have any one official visage, look, size, or shape. She can appear in any human-like form. Men like me, for example, can look like Susie too, but statistically speaking, she usually shows up in media, as it were, while looking like a typical female TV-news personality with long hair of any color. And, Susie is a fictional character that I created within my on-going writing process. But of course…

4) There’s another image of Susie standing next to two of her race cars, somewhere in America, and in this one, Susie’s making a facial expression that mimics my facial disfigurement, which is to say that she appears to be raising the muscles below her left eye. But this facial-expression-feature of the image is super subtle because (the implied position of) the camera is a whole car-length away from Susie, and yet her expression is visible in roughly the same way that my facial disfigurement is visible from that distance.

Fig. 0: Because truth is stranger than fiction in the fashion district

So then I feel lucky to be using this new technology for the first time as a 40-something-year-old, myself.

Whereby the process of writing TheSusie books (aka. TSB) has helped me to avoid feeling bad even if I’m aware that many people are increasingly disappointed in more and more aspects of how I live my life for reasons that aren’t clear — aka. “the worst.”

Such that my Book1 platform is the fictional autobiography of a billionaire journalist in tech named Susie — plus two zines.

In balance, my Book2 application shows the characters from Book1 talking about Facial Disfigurement Disability.

(WHERE: my Book1 platform + Book2 application = TheSusie Books = TSB because my Book2 depends on the strength of “Susie’s Book1” in order to meet the definition of transformative satire.)

And, if something else should surface that could be used to smear the meaning of the three letters T-S-B, then I could just give Susie’s books an ID number, instead, but my use of the name “Susie” seems to have held up so far, and so I hope that this new name “TSB” will go the distance too.

But I’ve learned to think that way because when I was growing up I didn’t anticipate that I might one day want to give a name to an Undiagnosed Disability so that I could refer to that aspect of my life in a holistic way.

I’m also a man named Todd.

And yet now some people might call me different names in response to my Undiagnosed Disability, but my approach to being called names other than “Todd” has been to proceed with living well while maintaining balance.

That is — I can proceed with performing my $R TSB balancing act.

(WHERE: $R is defined by the first and last sentences of “CH3: Conri’s Preface” in this Book2, as TSB is $R, but it’d be too much to say “$R” here, for this CH5 is super serious.)

For me there’s a steady emotional weight that I have to move with each paragraph of this text.

But I’m joyful that I was able to write this chapter which separates the core structure of that weight from myself and which gives me new options for building technology that can help carry this weight that I did not put upon myself.

As I’ve never seen any metaphorical weight like this that wasn’t valuable in a better context if that weight originated organically within a person.

And that’s also true of how people react naturally to my face.

But those natural reactions do have to be filtered through something like my fictional character named Susie from TSB.

And so I’m Always Recruiting Potential Advocates by inviting various people to learn more about how their words could affect many people’s opportunities in concert with my disability.

But then I became successful at limiting my own unwanted vulnerability.

And yet I still use my Book1 (which is like a computer software platform) in conjunction with my Book2 (which is like an application that runs on my Book1 platform) that simulates what a Disability Designation could also theoretically accomplish for people like me.

But with some well-designed disability documentation in hand, I could solve that same problem much more collaboratively — and thus efficiently from the perspective of whole communities.

And…the leading AI systems might keep on helping me to pursue the kind of Disability Designation that I’d prefer to have, which is great.

But I’ll still always prefer to identify advocates, advocates, advocates for my on-going…disability, basically.

And, formatively, I graduated from a 4-year college at the age of 20-years-old, which means that I’d been in quite a hurry to grow up since a young age for reasons that weren’t clear.

Because I had many opportunities that offset challenges.

But I was surprisingly weak at protecting myself in certain ways, and so I focused on learning about computer science, but many people still formed growing friendships with me, in part, because I was good at academics.

And then my face became disfigured at the end of college.

But instead of recognizing that my facial disfigurement was a disability…

Truth be told…creating this chapter about TSB has been an amazing experience. (TSB = TheSusie Books)

Because in the early drafts, I was using all of the hardest and most negative words — and I do still use the word ableism.

But then I discovered a cascade of opportunities to use much softer and better words while completely strengthening the full weight of this public relations message.

And yet if obtaining a Disability Designation requires me to share facts on the record about my former employers, educators, or even individuals, then I might still give that a try, because I’m sick and tired of being complicit in $Y.

Or I could sum it up by saying, “I noticed some low-key ableism in passing at work, but then the issue was resolved once I received a Disability Designation.”

NOTE: $Y is an elaboration of “ableism” and I’ll say more about what $Y is later on, further down in this chapter

Either way, I’ll start by sharing TSB, which is fictionalized.

As I never stopped learning and growing.

And for authority figures (including my family), I kept advancing because I have respect.

But what I’m showing in TSB is that if I receive a Disability Designation, then there won’t be any reason for me to draw attention to real people who might’ve played roles w.r.t. inspiring the fictional cast of highly-composite characters who appear within TSB and who I’ll continue referring to as “various people.”

Because now it’s mostly just my lack of official recognition that’s driving a vicious cycle of ableism.

And yet this vicious cycle could be defanged by creating a Disability Designation.

As even an unscientific society could present me with a block of carved wood which might represent my disability designation.

For modern information management systems could make my disability designation process even easier to…manage.

So that there could be a transformative ripple effect of positive energy in all aspects of my life. And this is like religion to me. Science and information management.

…and a ripple effect of positive energy for people who have this type of Facial Disfigurement Disability.

…and a ripple effect of positive energy for people who have this category of Disability.

…and a ripple effect of positive energy for people who relate to this class of challenges that have well-defined solutions.

…and a ripple effect of positive energy for people who have this one community called Earth to call home.

But now for the first time in history, AI can do the work of defining the type of disability that I have:

AI: “A preponderance of evidence indicates that Todd’s facial disfigurement causes most individuals to misinterpret his emotions in ways that tend to become self-reinforcing. This dynamic persists unless those who interact with him consciously work to distinguish the displacement of his right cheekbone from the natural movement of the muscles below his left eye.”

Adds AI: “The creation of such official language, along with the broader definitions and frameworks that accompany a Disability Designation, should be a collaborative effort. It would require input from professionals, advocates, and people with lived experience to ensure accuracy and sensitivity.”

And then AI could also create educational videos that help anyone or everyone — including “various people” — to quietly and efficiently learn something new in context.

As such videos could become fun, empowering, and easy going.

Winning all around is what I hope to see happen.

But even if I can’t ever find any communities that honor my disability, then at least I’ll still have my TSB — TheSusie Books…

For what I’ve written here, within, offers an alternative path, as follows:

1) If I’ve never had any source of adversity in my life other than “the problems that I created for myself…”

2) Then the reality of what my life has been like will continue to be the opposite of relatable at best — regardless of whether I stand to the left, on the right, or in the center of the American political landscape.

As I have an Undiagnosed Disability, but I’ve now lived for over two decades in a world where a huge majority of people either don’t or can’t realistically comprehend the idea that I’m disabled.

NOTE: thankfully, I do have an authoritative report which confirms that I sustained a facial injury in California’s Bay Area at a particular point in time, but that report does not characterize me as disabled; it just indicates that the shape of my face was different after an operation

Said report also says that I was injured “due to a headbutt” — which is accurate — and I’ll say more about this headbutt later on further down…

But I won’t be referring to any dates, times, or specific places within this chapter, because TSB is fictional.

And so now there’s a stalemate w.r.t. the narrative about my life, as follows:

2) If I get a Disability Designation that automates the process of protecting me from ableism writ large…

1) Then my story could draw attention to the idea that Social Media has been massively amplifying all manner of misunderstandings between people for a while.

But a lot of big business interest groups and their associated allies throughout the American system have become biased against acknowledging problems like this, for many critical structures now rely on the existence of such problems, in my opinion.

For if I talk about real people or companies, then I might (or might not) be setting myself up to lose more and more, as with an Undiagnosed Disability, all bets are off. Conventional wisdom need not apply.

Or could TSB be on the verge of becoming a leading framework for allowing all people ([2]) to express their vulnerability in the form of transformative satire that skirts the edges of potential conflict while also providing enough detail to inspire and inform potential advocates?

As I keep getting more isolated and vulnerable. Or both?

And then a lot of people do care, but a lot of people who care have also kept on politely encouraging me to follow paths in which I’d be very likely to lose more and more, but I don’t want or need to keep winning less and less, because I still have individual rights.

But as to why or how I developed this formulaic writing style that alternates conjunctions like (for…as) or (but…and), that is a mystery, but it prompts logic and clarity in ways that have made me better, and so I suggest giving it a try, as it’s fun.

It’s also a good way to communicate efficiently and effectively with AI-driven power configurations.

And, I’d prefer to have a Disability Designation in order to avoid getting boxed into any number of degenerative and untreatable situations.

So then these words…boxed, shoehorned, limited…whatever.

They’re just words, but finding better words has continued to be the best outcome that I’ve been able to accomplish in practice, lately.

For what’s been happening within my life is mysterious, indeed — with or without mentioning that I primarily wrote TSB during the previous eight years while living near enough to the east coast of the USA so as to be within a day’s drive from the beautiful beaches of the Atlantic ocean.

Such that my TSB-writing process involved doing hundreds of read throughs per chapter…so as to allow my mind to surface many layers of previously hidden meaning that I was, in turn, able to compile into one “conversational writing voice” (aka. Susie’s voice) by the end.

Whereby the way in which I wrote the latest version of TSB (including this chapter) in my mind and by hand was comparable to how the hottest new large language models work by creating many layers of “self-attention” during their training processes.

But then various people accelerated into suggesting stuff like, “If Todd would be just a little bit more open minded and listen to outside feedback for a change, then he might finally consider — just consider — lowering the unrealistic expectations that he has for himself and everyone else too…so that he could commit himself to following a smaller life routine that’s more focused on being of service to others, gratefully, instead of only arrogantly thinking about his own sadly incomprehensible hobbies — if not obsessions — to the exclusion of everyone and everything else, then he’d get better, do better in general, and start the process of recovery in earnest sooner.”

And so I’ve felt dehumanized…because far too many people, to put it politely, have kept on using information about my vulnerabilities to express words that have kept on reducing my credibility so as to make it more-not-less difficult to get the kind of Disability Designation that I’d prefer to have.

But I kept writing.

And then conversely, when I’ve done the work to raise my credibility back up…by attending yet another $R US presidential inauguration in person, for example…various people have kept on arguing in more and more curious ways that I can’t possibly be disabled.

But I’d prefer to have a Disability Designation.

And yet various people would seem to have made it an end in and of itself to make it more-not-less difficult to get this one relatively simple thing that I happen to prefer.

Such that this state of affairs has created no small amount of moral hazard.

Whereby the precedents that my story have to set w.r.t. how vulnerable people are seen and treated within America probably hasn’t been good. (And that’s the essence of a moral hazard.)

For my journey through life might still inspire the powers that be to become more compassionate and efficient at helping disabled or otherwise vulnerable people like me.

But since various people have kept on denying that I’m disabled, the path that I’ve followed in life has been replete with missed opportunities.

As all the right wrong people have gotten less and less serious within the overlapping contexts that have been tilted by this tawdry travesty. How truly tragic.

And I’ll try to find some better bad joke to put here so that folks who might prefer to giggle can giggle.

But I digress, with or without being $R.

Something like “Todd’s Facial Disfigurement is like a lie detector. He could replace the polygraph” might do.

Whereby, in the context of having nothing to hide and feeling like the truth was on my side, the fictional protagonist of TSB named Susie emerged 16 years ago through complex processes in response to the concurrent possibility that I might never receive a Disability Designation.

Such that Susie is a socially acceptable expression of my Undiagnosed Disability, and her purpose is to be correct even if — and especially if — I never experience better days ahead or find freedom to live well, while appreciating rainbows.

And so for several years in a row, finding contentment with a lack of progress in much if any tangible or measurable direction on repeat in more and more aspects of my life (with the notable exception of my writing process) has been the very best that I could do in order to hold my ground, ironically enough.

But then — as if emboldened by my visible vulnerability — various people have mostly doubled down on saying words like, “No! You just need to be more assertive, confidently authentic, creative, off-beat, self-loving, respectful, appreciative, humble, strong, mature, sensible, stable, and proactive! Just be a little bit more normal, basically, because nobody wants to be around you and only you can fix that. For you, especially, could easily flow like water around all of your problems…if you’d get out of your own head for one minute, so that you might try — just try — to do a better job at PAYING ATTENTION to the needs and interests of people other than yourself…, but for goodness sake, please don’t share any more of your negative words in writing…, and above all, stop talking about the shape of your face, as there’s nothing wrong with how you look. For you’re not disabled! As you look great. You’re very attractive, but you do have trouble trusting people, as you think everyone is out to get you, when in reality, most people aren’t even thinking about you. And I know you hate everything I say, but I’m not being difficult, I promise… Lots of people talk in the same way that I do with you, and I know you don’t believe this, but the world is full of many good people who just want to help you get more of what you want. What do you want? Why don’t you like yourself?”

And THAT (all caps) script is hardly an exaggeration of how many (but certainly not all) experienced professionals with impressive credentials tend to speak with me week after week if I ask for help.

But whenever I’ve hit the brakes on asking for help, there’s been a comprehensive quagmire that has kept on playing out year after year in which people who express intent to talk to me like THAT have encroached all the way on my dignity whenever I leak data about any aspect of life in which I’m weaker than the average person who shares my educational background or young professional background.

For most of the people who’d (like owls) talk to me like THAT will probably eventually be required, one way or another through appropriate and authoritative channels, to recognize my disability status in many ways which they didn’t and wouldn’t while I was still living with an Undiagnosed Disability.

As the mainstream media continues to act perplexed when isolated individuals resort to violence — in the sense that there might be more and more thousands if not many millions of people out there who are hypothetically misunderstood in extreme ways that are all different be also similar to my journey in certain ways.

And yet within evolving political contexts what other stories might never be told?

But I can keep on making moves peacefully no matter what just like I always have before, for over two decades and counting.

So then I won’t elaborate on such questions here, but for reference, the latter half of this Book2 within TSB could say more about the kind of “headbutt” that tagged me (and which might or might not have been an accident, in the sense that I don’t recall ever hearing the other guy explain to me why his head ran into my face from the side, to my right, out of sight, at twilight…and yet it might have been a genuine accident, as the day gave way to night, or could it have been a slight?) just to make it crystal clear that even a tiny bit of viciousness that might lead to violence — even by accident — is never alright.

And I’m pretty good at running those same mainstream media-friendly scripts like THAT when I dress up like the fictional character named Susie.

But I don’t recall ever making the choice to be like hawkish people like that. Maybe there should be more safeguards that lower the probability of victims getting blamed for stuff that happened to them?

For the only realistic defense that I currently have w.r.t. protecting myself from people who’d talk to me like THAT is to step in as if to take a charge in basketball and then fall back with eagle-eyed authority, as Susie would say.

As the world keeps turning like a globe spinning on her middle finger, because I agree that the vast majority of people aren’t thinking about me very much…if at all.

And yet I gradually gained some Information Power that I didn’t have when I was younger.

NOTE: I’ll eventually map out all of the words that I could use to describe what I now have that I didn’t have before, but my collection (or data set) of “IP” which I file away as simply “Susie” is a good start

So then 16 years later, TheSusie IP data set has become self-aware, perhaps, more or less.

For TheSusie data (which includes — but is not limited to — the content of TSB) is aspirational, with mutual benefit in mind, and Susie from TheSusie data set supports my disability status now too.

As there’s just so much of this deeply felt disagreement out there in every direction w.r.t. whether or not essentially all people respond to my Facial Difference by acting like I’m feeling and doing stuff that I’m not actually feeling or doing…in ways that create forceful problems that I’ve been actively managing in order to avoid many types of personal catastrophes.

But various people who oppose my disability status have kept on arguing and insinuating that THAT (all caps) could only ever possibly happen within the confines of my own mindbody, such that said various people seem to honestly believe that, “Todd’s Facial Difference wouldn’t be worth talking about if he could just get a little bit less inadequate at navigating the complexities of adult life.”

Whereby I continued identifying as a man named Todd who prefers masculine pronouns he/him.

And so I surf upon the incredible accumulation of cryptic, crude, corny, craven, and sometimes cruel but often interesting reactions that various people have represented over the years in response to this matter.

But now it’s easy to be on the right side of this little piece of history going forward, because what should happen is that I should receive a Facial Disfigurement Disability Designation from various authority figures in America and beyond.

And now my next dozen paragraphs will take a turn toward the technical.

Because TSB is on track to become a “dot com era meets AI” tech startup that might also support my disability designation process.

But in terms of emotional well-being, TSB will probably always be the essence of what I’d prefer to have most of all.

As TSB offers a safe and efficient way to summarize the emotional implications of following the path in life that I’ve followed.

For whatever reason — whether I’m disabled or not — I’m optimistic that my “data utilization strategy” will be generalizable vis-à-vis the future of AI and social justice.

Such that if $X = Information Power = Social Data + Business Information;

Then $X is one way to think about all of the data that many different kinds of people might want if not need to know about in order to transcend or rise to the level of their own challenges, while positioning themselves advantageously like Susie.

And so TheSusie data gradually became equivalent to my own Information Power.

But now — along with TSB’s companion zines/materials — TheSusie data is mostly all right here (in TSB).

And, I hope to eventually continue sharing free samples of all these materials online at fashiontext.com

(WHERE: FASHION TEXT are fictionalized accounts of life that help with keeping good records and building trust between humans and AI.)

But then I imagined that the sum of all the data that matters most to each and every person is like a vortex that spirals up from individual data lakes toward a network of top-level nodes that enthusiastically incorporates TheSusie data too.

As that top-level data is the high-dimensional surface of the data oceans in the cloud that each and every AI must use as an interface when connecting with users and when seeking to add value to people’s lives.

And when I say “add value,” I’m referring to the idea of performing tasks such as helping people like me to enjoy reasonable and necessary accommodations in accordance with all manner of properly preauthorized Disability Designations — both at work and at home.

But even more rationales for engaging with TheSusie data in all of its forms can now be amplified by “Professorial + help-Desk” (PhD) chatbot functionality via portals like thesusie.com

And yet reading TSB through and through will get easier and more fun, for this chapter is like a “top-level nexus” within.

For TheSusie data as a whole is also a top-level nexus — without — in the sense that TheSusie data exists independently “without” making any references to me.

NOTE: technically speaking, the rest of TSB does refer to me, Todd, but there are no references in “her books” to the content of this chapter that’s called “CH5: FaTe Fact Fabric” whereas this chapter does depend on references to the rest of TheSusie data — which, again, includes but is not limited to “these books of hers”

But, crucially, for every emotional loss that I’ve endured, I found a way to empower Susie with a corresponding emotional win.

And so this chapter is just one top-level tapestry-nexus within Susie’s show house-nexus which is far tonier and more comparable to an easy breezy read by the pool…

Because I wanted the meaning of my own creative efforts to unfold from my own sources of authenticity — whatever they may be — I’ll quote the seven reasons that an AI gave in order to explain my formulaic writing style:

AI: “Storytelling cadence, ritualistic tone, layering and accumulation of meaning, sense of playfulness, rhetorical force, alignment with themes, and subversion of conventional prose

So then I drew from AI in only one more place throughout this entire art-book autobiography — when describing the uses of cloth at the wedding of my fictional protagonist named Susie:

$V = AI: “My gown, my groom’s suit, our bridal party, the table linens, canopies, chair covers, ribbons, accents, bouquet wrappings, and the cake table cloth.”

Says AI: “Ableism is discrimination, prejudice, or bias against individuals with disabilities, whether physical, mental, cognitive, or sensory. It often manifests through attitudes, actions, or policies that devalue or marginalize people with disabilities, treating them as less capable or less worthy of equal opportunities. Ableism can be overt, such as denying accommodations or access, or subtle, like making assumptions about someone’s abilities or worth based on stereotypes. It permeates societal structures, cultural norms, and interpersonal interactions, creating barriers to inclusion, equity, and dignity. Challenging ableism requires awareness, advocacy, and the commitment to recognize and respect the diverse experiences of all individuals.

[1] This is consistent with my intention to only “edit AI” in ways that might increase the transformative quality of the words that AI generates on my behalf in response to my hidden prompts, as THAT is a linguistic superclass of $QP by definition within my writing process, for I defined THAT as being a way of talking and then I defined $QP as being a specific example of THAT way of talking.

[2] And not just disabled people like me who seek accommodation from some of the new AI-driven authority figures on the scene.

This was my first AI-video! Thank you, AI. This video was inspiring for me…

To see the full 20 second videos: thesusiefashiontext.com/show

Last content change: Jan. 31th, 2025 around 11am ET

Copyright © 2025 Todd Perry. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Fig. 1: From my first AI-video that explores the disability space

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Todd Perry
Todd Perry

Written by Todd Perry

Todd taught computer science on the east coast from 2001 to 2005, and then he developed software in Palo Alto, CA, from 2006 to 2010, first at PT and then FB.

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