This Was Never Meant to Be Comfortable

A Bed Jail Broadcast About See

Content Warning / Content Notes:
This piece discusses sexual violence (including incest), war, reproductive coercion, eugenics, ableism, bodily autonomy violations, religious extremism, abuse, and trauma. These topics are named plainly and discussed directly.

See did not look away. Neither will I.

Welcome Back to the Cryptid’s Den

This is The Crippled Cryptid.

On today’s menu: Bed Jail Broadcasts.

This is the part of the week where we talk about what we’ve been watching. Usually from bed. Sometimes from the couch.

It 100% depends on the vibe.

Sometimes because my body forced a ceasefire.
Sometimes because rest is not a punishment. It’s a privilege I’ve learned to take without guilt.

Bed Jail™ gets a bad rap.

Yes, there are days it’s survival mode.
Pain days. Migraine days. Days where my nervous system is throwing furniture.

But there are also days where bed is my favorite place in the world.

Luna pressed against my legs.
M&M within arm’s reach.
A show queued up. Snacks nearby.
The outside world on pause.

These aren’t formal reviews necessarily.
There will be feelings. Tangents. Vibes. Sometimes cuss words.
Sometimes media analysis, sometimes just: this made my heart feel less alone.
Sometimes out for blood, calling for justice because my favorite character has been wronged.

If you’re also watching life from under a blanket right now, you’re in good company.
Pull up a pillow. Stay a while.

Before We Jump In

This was a show M&M and I watched at the beginning of the year, during my six-day heart monitor test.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking.

What the fuck, Sky? Why would you do that to yourself while you’re supposed to be laying low?

The answer is simple. We didn’t know this show was going to ruin us emotionally.

I told you we watched it. I didn’t tell you what it did to me.

I needed to sit with this. I tried to write it at least twenty times. Every version came out harsher. This is the amalgamation. The version that survived.

It isn’t pretty. It isn’t kind. And it isn’t supposed to make you comfortable.

Because I don’t think See is supposed to be comfortable.

I think it’s supposed to make you question everything.
Feel everything.

It did.

Before You Watch See

See is not speculative comfort fiction.

It is violent, relentless, and frequently cruel on purpose. A bold choice for Bed Jail™ with a heart monitor.

This show depicts:

• Sexual violence as policy
• Children used as leverage and weapons
• Eugenics framed as religion
• Reproductive coercion
• Ableism embedded in survival narratives
• War without heroics or mercy

Before you ask how this made it to television, don’t.

I believe this is something people need to see. Stories that make us uncomfortable often do so because they are telling the truth.

If you’re uncomfortable, maybe you should be.
That’s how some things change.

Blind characters are not protected from harm, nor mythologized as morally superior. Sight is not salvation. No one is safe. No one is clean.

If you are watching for hope, this may not be your story.
If you are watching for honesty about power, bodies, and survival, this one will meet you where you live.

Spoilers follow.

This Was Never Meant to Be Comfortable

I did not come out of See entertained.
I came out marked.

Scarred.

This is not a show that wants your approval. It wants your endurance.

From the first moments, the world is hostile not just to bodies, but to the idea of safety itself. Violence is constant. Faith is weaponized. Power is enforced through pain, reproduction, and spectacle.

From a craft perspective, See is meticulously constructed. The sound design, physical choreography, and blocking make the violence feel unavoidable rather than gratuitous. That is part of why it lands so hard.

War is not heroic.
It is logistical.
It is hungry.
It eats people whole.

Watching See felt less like consumption and more like exposure. As a disabled viewer, I recognized the landscape immediately: a world where bodies are controlled, valued, or discarded based on utility. A world where survival is mistaken for virtue.

I am used to being infantilized.
Told what I cannot do because my mobility is bad.

Because my health is questionable.
Told what is unrealistic for someone like me.

So, watching a world of “disabled” people live, breathe, work, fight, and exist without apology felt liberating in a way I don’t have language for.

It also made me curious. About the disease that took sight. About what we are never told, even five hundred years in the future.

That withholding felt intentional.

This was never meant to be palatable.

War Does Not Care Who Deserves It

See is a war story first.

Bodies are resources.
Children are leverage.
Reproduction is strategy.

Baba Voss is not a gentle father dropped into a cruel world. He is a weapon shaped by it. His love is ferocious, but it is also violent, territorial, and conditioned by endless war.

That matters.

Disabled people are often fed stories where survival requires moral purity. See rejects that lie. Survival costs something. Sometimes everything.

From the first episode, Baba is asked to sacrifice his wife and newborn children to Witchfinders. Not because of proof. Not because of truth. Because it is convenient.

This is the math.
These are the stakes.

And he burns the world down instead.

Sexual Violence Is About Power

Reader note:
The following sections discuss sexual violence, incest, and reproductive abuse in detail. If you need to skip ahead, please do. You will not miss the core argument by protecting yourself. Mental health is always put first here.

We need to talk about the rape.
Not around it.
Not euphemistically.

Sexual violence in See is policy. It is authority. It is never about desire.

Sibeth Kane is a monster. And See does something deeply uncomfortable and deeply necessary: it does not erase her victimhood.

She is abused.
Coerced.
Used as a vessel.

And none of that absolves her.

Being harmed does not make someone good. Being evil does not make someone immune to harm.

That is accuracy, not forgiveness.

As a disabled person, this landed hard. Bodily autonomy is rarely absolute for us. Our pain is negotiated. Our consent is conditional.

See understands that.

Ableism Without Euphemism

Blindness in See is not metaphor. It is lived reality.

People adapt. They build language, systems, and culture. And they are still oppressed when power demands it.

The arrival of sight is not salvation.
It is escalation.

Sight becomes justification. Divine right. Superiority.

Jerlamarel is not a savior.

And he is not a god.

He is a eugenicist with a god complex. He uses blind women as wombs. Discards them when they are no longer useful. Values sons over daughters. Treats bodies as infrastructure.

Disabled viewers know this story.

We live it.

Faith, Control, and the Body

Religion in See is not comfort. It, too, is infrastructure.

Doctrine decides who breeds. Who rules. Who is punished.

Sibeth exploits the system, but she did not invent it. She is both product and perpetrator.

People want clean villains. See offers systems instead.

Justice for Baba Voss

They killed Baba Voss.

I understand what the narrative wanted. I reject it anyway.

He survived stabbings, explosions, exile, betrayals, and wars that should have erased him. What kills him is narrative convenience dressed up as sacrifice.

Justice for Baba Voss.
He deserved better than a noble death after a lifetime of being asked to bleed quietly.

Sibeth Kane Is the Abuser

Let me be clear. Crystal clear.

Sibeth Kane is not the victim of See.
She is the perpetrator.

Complexity does not absolve abuse. Context does not neutralize harm.

She rapes her nephew. She murders civilians. She practices eugenics. She throws away children who do not validate her belief in her own superiority.

The show does not ask us to absolve her.

Neither do I.

Tamacti Jun, Kofun, and Unfinished Choices

Tamacti Jun living felt earned. Not clean. Earned.

He was a character that I started off hating. One that I couldn’t wait to see come to justice- instead he became justice. After a lifetime of being under the thumb of Sibeth Kane, I could see why he would do her bidding so easily. She was constantly threatening his wife and children, and yet, when she was faced with losing her power and her kingdom… she drowned them all anyways.

Kofun’s desire to blind himself was powerful and unsettling. I understood the impulse. I also believe disability representation should not require self-destruction to prove belonging. He had more value as someone that was sighted, and understood both sides, rather than someone who chose to blind themselves and live amongst the people, just to prove that he could rule Pennsa.

Haniwa frustrated me to the end. Sighted supremacy wrapped in good intentions is still supremacy. She learned absolutely nothing, and in the end I saw more of Jerlamarel in her than Baba Voss. And that is not a good thing.

Do I respect her for seeking out the sighted, and wanting to learn more? Yes. Because knowledge is power. But she should have learned more from her father while he was alive because the only marginalized group that you can join at any point in time, no matter how young or how old you are, is the disabled community.

Without her eyes- she would be nothing- just like Jerlamarel when he was blinded.

Why I Still Don’t Like Maghra

This is my opinion.
You don’t have to share it.

From where I’m standing, Maghra was weak.

Her secrecy caused harm. Her silence created openings Sibeth exploited. Intent does not erase consequence.

If she had been honest, there would have been less death. The Alkenny would not have been wiped out. Twice. Her children would not have been so easily manipulated.

Baba was hurt.
Harlan was hurt.
Her children were hurt.
Wolffe was hurt.

That matters.

I Survived This Story

I did not love See because it was kind.
I loved it because it was honest.

This was not a show I watched.
This was a show I endured.

And when it ended, I was still here.

That matters.

For My Fellow Disabled Readers

I am not speaking for all disabled viewers here. I am speaking from my body, my history, and my nervous system.

If this hurt, that response was rational.

If you flinched, your nervous system was doing its job.
If you stayed, that was not consent.
If you left, that was not weakness.

Some things hurt because they are accurate.

You are allowed to be angry.
You are allowed to be exhausted.
You are allowed to say, this was too much and this was real.

You are still here.

That matters.

That’s today’s Bed Jail Broadcast.
Watched from under blankets.
With commentary provided by pain, comfort, and whatever snack was within reach.

If you’re resting more than you planned, you’re not doing it wrong.
Rest is not a failure state.

Stay warm. Stay gentle with yourself.
And if you can, pet the dog.

You don’t have to earn your place here.

-Sky
© The Crippled Cryptid
Disability. Honesty. A little chaos.

(Maybe a little dog fur.)

🔗 https://linktr.ee/skylanarissa
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If you want to support the long, unglamorous work of survival and mobility:
💜 https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-skys-journey-to-health-and-mobility