#This is another point towards the fact that this man has autism

[frenchgremlim1808]

So Hiya guys today is my shin's birthday so happy birthday to the most doomed by the narrative guys in existence. Also it's international autism day so like I drew this.

these boys are alll on the spectrum (at least autism)

[localcanadiancreature62]

Oh no i gave the shapes angst lolll. Behold,the Shape Human Swap au aka the An Eye for a Hand au. Lore under cut. Also this au is partially inspired by @starmilkman's In Your Shoes au with Bill's personality and Ford's appearance. Have some silly doodles and design refs.

Description: The Pines are all Euclidean shape demons while Bill and Steve are humans.

Ford Caesar - Ford is a square demon who's complex revolves around being a "freak" rather than being a "monster". His trigger words are "you're a freak/you're broken" rather than "you're a monster". He's a square on purpose,because the word "square" is another word for a boring,nerdy person which perfectly describes canon Ford. He wants to cause the Freakpocalypse,a dream world where no one is ridiculed or doubted for being weird. Ford tortures people but only to break them and thus make them broken like him. One notable example is when some poor soul made the mistake of calling him weird,he ended up breaking that person's spine. Ford's abnormality is his strange mind rather than his eye. His mind gave him visions of other worlds,omniscient knowledge,and various other abilities. Ford often has thoughts of the third dimension,so much to the point that his parents had brain surgery performed on him to make them go away. But they didn't go away,in fact they got worse over time. Filbrick and Caryn often told Ford that he had a strange imagination and that he was crazy for claiming that he saw the third dimension within his thoughts. But he WASN'T crazy and he felt misunderstood for no one ever knowing how he felt about his third dimension thoughts. Not even his brother Stan understood him. Ford's genius and ego is a pretty big deal to him,so to see Bill take his own smarts for granted greatly pissed him off which is why they didn't have a good impression of the other. He poses as a wise and knowledgeable master towards Bill and his pawns rather than a muse,which is why Bill calls him "Master" instead of "Muse". Ford acts as unstable as he does because he has fully accepted being "broken" and thus he acts like how a broken man should. The Freakpocalypse is living proof of the fact that Ford accepting that he's broken and that he will never be normal. Shape Ford is evil neurodivergent coded ngl with the abnormal mind thing and the fact that he wants other people to suffer with disabilities like he did,he's the result of an autistic/adhd person snapping (the autism allegory was NOT intentional. it just happened. i just realized that midway into making his backstory pfft).

Billiam "Bill" Cypress - He's more insane and chaotic than canon Ford,as he often injects a bajillion things into anomalies for fun or vivisects them once he gets ahold of them. Bill is a genius but since he's still a mischievous and chaotic lil shit,he doesn't really take his gift seriously. It's a miracle that Scalene and Euclid favor him over Steve despite his behavior. Bill's abnormality is his closed eye since birth,he only has one eye because of this which is why Steve often calls him "Cyclops" to mirror Stan calling Ford "Sixer" in canon. Bill is Will and Tad's Great Uncle Bill who came from the portal,he's also the Author of the Journals which has a closed eye on it.

Tad Cypress and William "Will" Cypress - Tad is a wild but friendly goth boy who's into scary,macabre stuff while Will is a perfectionistic and irritable preppy jerk who loves the rules (to mirror their canon personalities of being a law obsessed control freak and king of horror respectively). Tad is the mystery solver while Will is the sidekick as Tad is into the weird stuff since he's also a nerd along with his gothic disposition as Will hates getting dirty/wounded or doing any unpredictable dirty work. Tad wants to grow up faster because he wants his gothic interests to be taken seriously rather than just be seen as a "phase" while Will wants to enjoy childhood a bit more so that he can have fun in his perfect and predictable life (Will: Growing up is unpredictable. What if i end up like those rowdy punk leather jacket wearing delinquents? What if i grow horrible facial hair?. What if?- *starts hyperventilating*). Also it's pretty funny how Tad is the mystery solver yet he acts like canon Mabel while Will is the sidekick yet he acts like canon Dipper. And yes they still sound EXACTLY the same as canon,with Will having the Adrian graye voice while Tad has the regular human Tad strange voice.

Bill and Ford didn't have a good first impression on one another despite still going through with the deal otherwise. Because Bill immediately tried to vivisect Ford soon after they made the deal while Ford got pissed over Bill never taking his own genius seriously. So yeahhhh meet ugly lolll.

However despite their horrible meet ugly,they still managed to form a great partnership/friendship/relationship with one another. Ford found comfort in knowing someone that FINALLY understands him while Bill is just glad to have a friend that isn't Steve.

Steve Cypress - He's Tad and Will's Grunkle Steve and the guy who keeps selling weird magic stuff to people at the Mystery Shack (the magic stuff is a parallel to og Steve's interdimensional stuff selling). He's known as Mr. Mystery and he often goes around the Shack advertising his strange knick knacks. He is pretty cheery and fun in comparison to his insane older twin Bill but even the nicest people have their secrets.. (Steve is not what he seems~).

Names - Ford Caesar,Billiam "Bill" Cypress,Steve Cypress,Stan Caesar,Mabel Caesar,Dipper Caesar,William "Will" Cypress,and Tad Cypress. Also Octavius Ballman and Amaris Shapiro (8 ball and Amorphous shape but as bratty children instead of humanoid monsters).

The main difference between canon Bill and shape Ford is that Ford never killed his family. He along with Stan and the twins were the remaining survivors in the Euclidean Massacre (let's say that Filbrick Caryn Shermie and the twins' parents aren't.. there anymore :]). Stan and Ford are very close since they've only had each other throughout the years,although Ford doesn't actually treat Stan as his brother and he's more like a favorite lackey to him. The twins are ALSO lackeys to Ford,as the kids and his brother are part of the Henchmaniacs. The Henchmaniacs swap with the rest of the zodiac wheel members.

Wendy = Pyronica. Soos = Kryptos. 8 Ball = Gideon. Amorphous Shape = Pacifica. Hectorgon = Robbie. The Oracle/Jheselbraum the Unswerving = Fidds. The Oracle and Bill are friends in this au,hilariously enough considering that Jhesel canonically hates his ass to the point of her quitting as a Henchmaniac. Fidds is the Wise Hermit,the sagely but slightly insane former Henchmaniac/former lackey of Ford with no eyes (no eyes instead of seven eyes) who ends up helping Bill get the metal plate in his head by surgically putting it inside of him.

The Oracle has 5 birthmarks around her eyes in order to mirror her seven eyes in canon.

Bill and Steve have the same middle name,this is how i managed to make the whole identity theft thing work. Billiam "Bill" Stephen Cypress and Milan Stephen "Steve" Cypress. They're both called Steve,but Billiam prefers "Bill" more in order to be differentiated from his weird brother. They're also called the Steve twins. Also also,Bill and Steve have the same hair style and nose,plus Steve often covers his eye with an eyepatch in order to mimic his brother's closed eye abnormality aka pass off his covered eye as his twin's permanently closed eye by telling people that his other eye is permanently closed and gross which is why he often covers it.

Ford yells "STEPHEEEEN" in the death scene,since Steve often prefers to be called Stephen as a full name as he's been pretending to be his brother who's also called Stephen for years.

The Shape Pines' surname is Caesar as in Caesar Cipher,in order to mirror canon Bill's surname.

[the-force-awakens]

with it officially being disability pride month, I wanna talk about my favorite disabled headcanon, which is for the one and only, my most beloved Poe Dameron. Buckle up, because this is a long post.

I actually have a few different disability headcanons, most of which hold up to canon/are extrapolated from canon, so we'll keep that in mind as we go through. I expect this to have about...four parts total. Let's go!

Hard of Hearing

I think a good case can be made that Poe is hard of hearing, with a few instances that could point to this fact, primarily the very beginning of the Rise of Skywalker. Even though Chewie is sitting right beside Poe, Poe does not understand what Chewie has said, because his head is turned (at no other point does Poe have any problem understanding Chewbacca, so we know it is not a linguistics issue)

It's only when he turns towards Chewie and Chewie repeats what he said that Poe understands what was said. There's also the frankly adorable moment in The Last Jedi that's extremely easy to miss, because it's a far away shot and we just barely catch what Poe says:

BB-8 is beeping so fast trying to catch Poe up that Poe has to request that he slow down so Poe can understand him. Other possible evidence of him being HoH (beyond the comical amount of explosions he's constantly caught in) is that there are several shots where we see Poe carefully watching the lips of the person he's speaking to as they're talking, as if that might help him keep up.

And (I don't have a gif of this lmao I'm not giffing him getting hurt) when Poe gets shot in tros, @/dameronalone pointed out it could be evidence he didn't hear the approaching stormtroopers when he turned to look the other way. @/hermitmoss has also pointed to his line at the start of tfa while being snarky at Kylo as further possible evidence, about how it's hard to understand Ren with the voice modulator.

Essential Hand Tremor

Another fact pointed out to me by @/hermitmoss (thanks Braigwen) is that when Poe goes to cover Leia's hand with his own in the Last Jedi, we see that his hand is shaking:

I later noticed that this isn't the only time that we see Poe do this, we see it again in the Rise of Skywalker, where he cannot keep his blaster steady as Rey approaches the serpent at all.

These are the only two circumstances I can find of his hands trembling in the movies, though, and we know from plenty of other scenes that Poe ordinarily can keep a blaster extremely steady:

Autism & ADHD

Okay this one I don't consider to be a headcanon, lmfao. I genuinely believe that Poe was intentionally coded as autistic/ADHD by Oscar Isaac.

Oscar playing/coding Poe as something that is never explicitly confirmed by Disney is far from new: Poe is coded as a bisexual (or pansexual) man, because that's how Oscar Isaac saw Poe and chose to play him, and even if we weren't gifted with it being made explicit, it's still there in his performance.

If you happen to be a fan of Oscar Isaac, or just a Marvel and Star Wars fan both, you'll know he starred in the Disney+ series Moon Knight last year as the Moon Knight system (Steven Grant, Marc Spector, and Jake Lockley).

Shortly after the first episode premiered, Oscar Isaac revealed in an interview that while trying to figure out who Steven was as a person, he came up with the idea that the system be on the Autism Spectrum, and approached Marvel to see if he could include it into his performances, and it was green-lit.

The Lunar system is the best intentional autistic representation I've ever seen, there are so many things they do that are so minor that I doubt most people would ever consider to include, but they are things that me and my friends do.

And there's an overlap in how Oscar plays the various autistic habits and traits of the Lunar system in how he portrays Poe. Most notably, Poe and Marc have extremely similar meltdowns:

There's plenty more overlap (Poe does the same anxious stim Steven does, of rubbing the inside of his index finger with his thumb) but there's so much there I'm not sure where all to begin. I have gone more in depth on the various autistic traits Poe shows throughout the films in this gifset here, though.

I'll go ahead and include some of the moments we see him stimming, that I have evidence of:

(he also does this same hand thing when he starts to leave BB-8 and promises to come back.)

We also see him fidgeting anxiously with his hands during the briefing in the last jedi:

Poe also has a habit of running his tongue along his bottom lip while he's stressed or thinking something through. Here's three examples from across the trilogy (there are plenty more):

We're leaning a little closer into ADHD territory now. I don't really know how to explain why I think Poe is ADHD, to be quite honest, besides the fact that he just radiates ADHD energy to me and I heavily relate. This is a man who cannot stay still, and frequently talks with his hands:

But there's also the fact that Poe oftentimes has a tendency to not be able to fully see the potential of negative outcomes to his decisions - he sees point a to point b, and sometimes becomes laser focused on that. It's something I understand perfectly, because it's hard for me to pull away from something I've already fully committed to doing, and it's even more difficult sometimes for me to truly understand what (and what kind of) consequences my actions will have.

Other evidence of him being extremely autistic (and adhd) is just....that he makes autistic expressions?

Like this...is an autistic expression, I've seen my best friend make this exact fucking face before, I don't know how else to explain it.

Misc Thoughts

Aside from the above, it's pretty much canon that Poe has anxiety and depression — at the very least, Poe Dameron: Free Fall by Alex Segura certainly does not shy away from the suggestion, and is one of the most implicit portrayals we have of it outside the films — it is a series of catastrophizing his circumstances that leads Poe to joining Zorii for a little while as a teenager, following a joyride that ended in a crash that Poe explicitly wishes he had not survived.

The movies themselves also points to Poe having PTSD, partially through the writing but mostly due to the nuanced and thoughtful performance Oscar Isaac gives as Poe (that goes....woefully underappreciated, seriously he adds so much depth to every single scene as Poe, including the thread of anxiety in Poe's voice when Rey mentions Ren's ship is over Kijimi, or constantly looking out to make sure they're not being followed in tros).

(Good expanded material follows through on this, such as Poe's reluctance to discuss anything about what happened aboard the Finalizer in the Poe Dameron: Flight Log, and becoming irate at the thought of having to. He's an extremely traumatized man, and he certainly doesn't deserve to be thrown out of an airlock jfc and he isn't as arrogant as the fascist regime he is fighting, tbh he's not arrogant at all).

Conclusion

I believe that sums up the majority of my Poe is disabled thoughts, or at least the ones that I think holds up very well within the canon framework. He's extremely disabled and - in the case of being neurodivergent - this is critical to understanding him as a character, especially considering his arc ends up being focused on interdependence.

I wish all fellow disabled folk a happy pride month, and I wish all very ableds a very "please do not be ableist on this post". You will be blocked otherwise.

[stardew-obsessed-ora]

How would Morris treat an autistic partner?

:OOO!! Hey there Anon! Thank you so much for asking! As someone autistic I've been waiting for the opportunity to write something like this! You've absolutely got the gears in my brain working.

Note - I'm going to be basing these primarily on mine and some friends experiences with Autism. These may not align with everyone, and that's alright.

Word count: 1,013 TWs/CWs: Small mention of gagging!

　˖　✵⭒Morris with an Autistic S/O

❅◞◟　˖⋆　✯　⋆˖　◞◟❅

For starters, this man would do absolutely amazingly with a neurodivergent partner. I'm partially saying this because I think he has a touch of neurodivergence himself, but also because he seems like he'd be willing to be accommodating once he's sat down and talked to about some of your issues. He'd be confused at first, but he'd realize the two of you have more of a common ground than he first assumed.

He'd do a significant bit of research once being told you're autistic. He doesn't want to seem ignorant, and he wants to better understand how to accommodate for your needs. Of course, he'd probably just ask you upfront since he understands everyone's different with different needs and whatnot.

For starters, he completely understand getting so interested in something it's all you talk about. He'd be more than willing to hear about your fixations and interests. In fact, he'd be the type of man to buy you things pertaining to some niche topic you brought up then be like "oh. I just happened to remember you liked this character! Consider it a lucky surprise?" He also enjoys casually bringing up things related to your interest and watching you go off about it.

If you're not a fan of large crowds, that's cool. He enjoys large gatherings, especially since they're good for business! But he can absolutely understand how easy it is to become burnt out by them. He can recall countless times at Joja Block Parties in which he had to step away due to the commotion. He'd be sure to keep track of short-cuts in busier parts of Zuzu City so that you don't have to deal with tons of people.

Loud noises absolutely overwhelm him, even if he doesn't want to admit it. It's a weak point of his. He much prefers the quieter things in life, and being somewhere too loud and boisterous can offset his thoughts, leaving him all disoriented and disgruntled. He completely understands having to walk away from somewhere due to it being too loud and will absolutely surprise you with noise cancelling headphones.

One thing I feel he'd have some difficulty getting used to is if you're clingy. I've mentioned this in a prior post, but he reminds me of a cat in terms of how he warms up to others. It'd take some time for him to get used to you wanting to be against him or wanting to cuddle him or anything like that. But once he's warmed up to your physical advances, he'd be more than happy to allow you to lounge against him while he does his work/while he reads. He'd also be more than happy to hold you against him while he does things, or carry you around if he's able to.

Once he's used to being physically affectionate with you, he'd be so down to laying on top of you if you like that sort of thing. Free weighted plush!

If you don't like affection? That's perfectly fine with him. He's more than capable of being affectionate in other ways, as his main love language pertains moreso toward gift-giving and quality time. Plus, it's hard for him to warm up to physical affection as well, he understands.

He is the world's loudest advocate for parallel play. He would love doing productive while you're doing something else and hearing your input/giving his own input on what you're doing. He finds it one of the nicest ways of bonding with you. Silent acknowledgement of one anothers presence...

He would 100000% understand not liking touching certain textures. Just looking at store-bought slime brings shivers up and down his spine and makes him break into a sweat. Hell, he couldn't even stock those towelettes Joja stocked back when he was a mere grunt due to how horrible they felt to him. He'd take careful note of what you do and don't like touching and then be sure to buy gifts and things that fall under positive textures for you only.

One thing I think would also confuse him would be food aversions. He's never experienced issues with any sort of food. He's had a few dislikes, but he isn't particularly picky. (Not to mention he's been desensitized by microwaveable joja meals) He doesn't quite understand the whole unable to eat something due to the texture thing, nor does he understand gagging due to the scent of something. But he'd try his best to accommodate to you. He'd start carrying your comfort foods in his home, and he'd try to eat food that set off your aversions away from you. That way, you both would be able to eat together and he'd still be able to eat what he wants.

He doesn't get stimming at first but he'll try his best to accommodate for your needs. Joja sells stim toys! Look at that cute clicky worm thing! He can get plenty! Once they end up breaking after barely any use, he buys ones from actually refutable brands. One benefit in you stimming is him realizing just how relaxing it is to sit down and do similar.

He can find himself getting a little easily irritated over things being said poorly, but once you explain to him that its hard for you to control your tone or the way you phrase things, he starts asking for clarification when he's confused.

He can be very passive aggressive or sarcastic toward others. But toward you, he'll keep himself and his mouth in check. Especially if you don't pick up on either well.

Schedule changes do not happen with this man. You never have to worry about being put off track unless it's something out of his hands. He is always on time, no sooner, no later. This man adores daily routines too, and knowing you like predictability leaves him the ability to continue following his usual routine without much issue. If and when he can't stick to the usual, however, he tries to give a heads up.

If and when you go mute, he entirely understands and tries not to force you to talk. Though, I imagine the first time it happened he was absolutely startled. He was worried he did something and that he was being given silent treatment. Or that something had happened to you. Once you explained it to him later, however, he understood. If you're able to, he often hands you a board to write with. If you're not able to, he just sits with you and does whatever you want to, or just does his work and lets you lean against him.

If he notices you're overwhelmed he does everything he can to take you out of the situation, even if you end up dejected over the fact he left for the sake of you. If the two of you are at a company wide party and you start to get noticeably burnt out he'll find an excuse to leave. If you two are at a restaurant or something and you're starting to get more jittery he'll ask if you'd like to make your meals take out and head out. If ever you voice you're worried you're ruining your outings together due to this, he'll cup your face with his hand (if you like physical touch) and reassure you otherwise.

He loves you to bits ultimately, and he wants the absolute best for you. He'd probably check in constantly to make sure you're alright.

[ceedaryaps]

Bridgerton Season 3 Spoilers!!!!!!!

So I finally had a day off and could wacth season 3 of Bridgerton and oh.my.god. AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.So three things before I get into the meat of it. First of all, I sincerely hope that Violet and Lady Danburys brother get a chance to connect more MAMA VIOLET DESERVES LOVE TOO! Seecond the fact that Anthony cannottt keep his hands off Kate is so hilarious to me like get awf that lady and let her breathe. And third Francesa being a subtle autism rep is so amazing to me, as an autizzy person myself seeing someone with the same mannerisms as me within a romance setting is so refreshing like it truly puts joy in my heart. And also the sign language in the first episode???? love itttttt, they truly perfected diversity without shoehorning it.

Now to the meattttttt of it.

Now friends to lovers has never personally been my thing and in terms of each bridgerton show im gonna rank this leason my second least favorite but thats NOT to say I dont like it I very much enjoyed this season but i do have my critiques.

1

While I get a giggle out of Pen's sisters I cannot stand her family as a whole, for the simple fact that they treat her as if no one would EVER want her just because she plus sized and has "odd interest" in their words, it infuriated me how her mother wanted Pen to say yes not because she was happy for her but because she truly thought this would be Pen's only chance. Despite my disliking her family it was a good plot point for her to finally decide to make a change and put herself out there. I feel like in her previous two seaons for her she didnt put herself out there because, as weve seen, she has a huge lack of confidence that it was more than likely the work of her mothers and her sisters doing. I also loveeee the wardrobe change from bright gaudy colors and patterns to more Bridgerton esqe colors in her wardrobe. The wardrobe in Bridgerton has always amazed me but putting Pen in that light blue was amazinggg she was gorgeous and glowing. Even her sisters were eating this season like props to wardrobe and makeup bc they ate. Im so worried to see whats going to happen when Collin eventually finds out shes lady whistle down like omgggg.

2

I don't hate Eloise and Cressida NOW HEAR ME OUT OKAY. Cressida is still not a good person at all but I'm so glad we got to see more of her character bc it definitely shed light into why she acts that way. It would be completely ignorant to sit there and believe that the pressures of the ton to be perfect and find husbands quickly and avoid scandal WOULDNT make the girls get a little nasty with each other. The pressure from her parents specifically made me go "Oh girl I think id get nasty too if those were my folks." In no way does it excuse her treatment of Pen tho!! I also liked that it was Cressida who clocked Eloise's tea about her pointing fingers immediately at her when Pen got exsposed. Not to mention when the girlies came to Cressida for tea SISTA DID NOT FOLD!!!! She politely said naur and kept it pushing. Like I understand Cressida was neverrr the nicest and was a gossip but if Eloise decided to hang around her then she shoulda had faith in the girl. Like Eloise I love you but doooo betterrrr. Don't get me wrong at all yall Eloise is my fav but I'm glad people are clocking her for her shittt. I hope Cressida and Elosie stay friends but they constantly build off of each other to be better bc I loved how Eloise made her dislike of Cressida's treatment towards Pen known.

2.5

This is so unrelated but i love bennedict BAD hes sooooo idk yall I need him.

3

COLLIN BRIDGERTON IM HERE TO CLOCK YOUR TEA.

Imma be real I might be bitter bc I feel like Pen shoulda made that man grovel. After what he said about her to his friends in the previous season he should have been on his hands and knees BEGGING for her forgiveness she let him off too easy. Also I don't really appreciate that it took another man giving Pen attention for his stupid ass to finally be like "Oh shed kinda bad actually." I ALSO don't like how when he described how he liked Pen as a friend it wasn't because of her actual qualities it was how she made HIM feel. "You're always here to listen to me and give me a new perspective!" Sir you could have just said she was very insightful, you enjoy her company SOMETHING other than a service she has done for you. That why Im glad he was suffering so bad every time he saw them together he was SICK to his stomach and I'm here for it.

All in all I cant wait to see how things go down next bc I think everyine is gonna reap what they sow Pen, Collin, Eloise EVERYONE. bc the sneak peak looked crazyyyyyy.

Anyways the next thing I should post will be the Finnal Gambit the last book in the trilogy of the hawthorn legacy series.

See yall later!

[bitetherabbit]

loooong vent post cw for sh towards the end. im so tired, man been having some rough days and i just need to write it out instead of following through on other ideas

i literally don't know what to do i can't keep living like this anymore i feel so trapped and i don't know where to begin to help myself, im an adult but i feel like a fucking child especially when im regressed or even when my anxiety takes over and stops me from doing necessary things like make phone calls or make appointments, i don't like going outside alone or driving elsewhere because i don't want to be seen, (gender dysphoria, having to mask to interact with people). i stay inside this shithole of a house that i've been trying to clean up and make livable but it's a lot of stuff that doesn't belong to me so i can't just get rid of it, i can only sit in my bedroom and rot (can't afford to move out.) at least i was out of the house when i was working, but i had to quit my job recently because that specific company was sooo toxic and i couldn't take it anymore (story for another day), and now i get instantly stressed and anxious any time i try to job search and so i give up, and i can't just go out and get a basic 8hr standing around job because my body is in regular pain all the time now, moreso after having covid twice my joint pain has gotten noticeably worse (another thing i need to call a dr about and deal with but i haven't) and also now that i'm aware of the fact that i mask severely around others, mask behaviour, mask health, and have learned more about autism and had a fucking revelation about myself it's like my symptoms of everything is worse like the dam broke and there's nothing holding it back anymore, like i've forgotten how to be a person around others and how to talk to people, because my body and mind are so burnt out all over and it's probably been holding back all this shit my whole life including the trauma. like, what don't i remember from when i was a toddler??? because when im regressed that's the age i feel. what happened back then??? and i know some might say i shouldn't be complaining when there are solutions right there, call your doctor, find a therapist, apply to jobs, but at this point i'm so stuck and everything is overwhelming i just can't do it by myself i can't i can't i need someone to take care of me i need someone to help me do it. there's so much shit i don't know where to begin!!! and i don't know what set it off, but i've been feeling like a fucking child for 3 days now and i don't have anyone to talk to about it (my family asked me if i was "tired" and did i get enough sleep) because i don't want to bother them with it since they have their own problems too going on right now, mental health issues are a lovely generational thing in my family, and im struggling because i know they all love me to the moon but sometimes they can be so toxic to each other and i just take it all in and absorb it.

and i've been trying so so hard to learn more and educate myself on trauma and neurodivergence and i'm trying to break the cycle of passing your own trauma on to your children (good thing i don't want kids...) and everything i learn i see happening in my family and it explains why they behave this way. and this is the side of my family that doesn't include the narcissistic parent i don't speak to anymore! (another story for another day)

so lately i'm like, "huh maybe my trauma isn't just from this one asshole parent. looks like it's wayy worse on this side of my family than i realized", now that i'm an adult and can understand better. and while it's not behavior generally directed towards me like the narcissistic parenting was, this shit is like, they haven't sorted their shit out and so their trauma is traumatizing me (the kid/grandkid) as a result. because i'm close to my family. I love them. and it fucking hurts to see them react to each other when they're stressed, and then react unhealthily to me in other situations because of their lack of ability to self regulate.

and i just want to fucking rip my head off!!! my brain has been thinking about c*tting up my legs and i FUCKING HATE IT i don't want to do that i don't want to i don't want to it doesn't help anything and you only feel worse after!!! it's been a little over 2 years and im holding strong. don't give in now.

breathe

i can't blame them for not trying to heal and better themselves if i can't even contact a therapist to do the same for myself, right? i can only do so much on my own, but i feel like i have made some progress, even though some days are still so fucking hard. i've been researching and becoming aware of things, learning techniques to help myself. if i don't actively do the work then am i any better than them?

i can see now the reasons for their behavior and idk it allows me to forgive them? but is that the right thing to do if their behavior keeps continuing? is someone at fault for their toxic behavior if it stems from being untreated/undiagnosed and traumatized their whole life?

see these are questions for a therapist.

i feel worn out now, but less wound up, after writing. it really does help to release feelings this way. a thought for another time but it's like i can yell as much as i want to in writing and it feels so good. (i feel like i've lost my voice, my self, due to trauma. will write more about that at some point.)

[maggicktouched]

Verses;; Daniel Molloy;; In Another Life (book!verse)

Name: Daniel Adrian Molloy Physical Age: 32 Actual Age: 70 FC:  Hair Color: Blonde Eye Color: Violet Species: Vampire Creator: The Vampire Armand Sexuality: Pansexual Gender: Male, leaning more toward nonbinary the older he gets Pronouns: He/him, They/them, honestly you could call him an it and he wouldn’t care. Personality: Stubborn, obsessive, sarcastic, curious, nonviolent, observant, passionate Diagnoses: C-PTSD, Autism

History:

Daniel was born on February 15th, 1953 to Diana and Kenneth Molloy. His mother was a secretary at a school, and his father worked in construction. Both were highly religious, and what Daniel remembers most about his childhood is long boring church services. Church was about the only place they got along. His father was always distant, he almost never spoke, and his mother was perpetually unhappy. It was not a wholly unpleasant childhood, in fact it felt pretty normal in the late fifties and into the sixties.

When he was fifteen, he was caught kissing another boy from his school under the bleachers during a football game. His parents kicked him out. So did the school. He hitch hiked his way across the country to California to move in with his estranged aunt, who the family had disowned for a similar reason. She got him enrolled in a local school and Dan got his high school diploma, but he never quite fit in. He’d thought California would be different from rural Ohio, but somehow he never fit anywhere. Friends never quite stuck. He’d find out he’d been the butt of a joke far too late to stop it. He was withdrawn. Quiet like his father, and that terrified him.

He moved out at eighteen to pursue a career in journalism. He rented a shitty apartment in LA and did odd jobs to support himself until he got hired on by a paper.

When he was twenty-three he met a man named Louis de Pointe du Lac who claimed to be a vampire. He hadn’t thought about the supernatural since he was ten, but he needed a good story. And what a tale it was. One that shifted the axis of his entire world in a matter of hours. One that changed the entire course of his life. This wasn’t the supernatural of the painted god his mother had prayed to, it was real and tangible, and he was obsessed. He travels to New Orleans with what little money he has left in a desperate attempt to find Lestat. 

He finds Armand instead. Or rather, Armand finds him.

It’s terrifying. It’s thrilling. It’s intoxicating. It’s everything he’s ever wanted and it’s the monster under his bed all rolled into one. He runs for four long years of his life, tirelessly pursued by a monster with an angel’s face. Then one day the chase is done. Fear and frustration take on other shapes: love and addiction. He’d always been a heavy drinker, just like his mother, but this was something entirely different and wholly out of his control. But beyond it there is genuine love... and a deep exhaustion. 

The cohabitation is never easy. Not when they are slumming in the apartments of Armand’s victims or in the lavish halls of the night Island. He craves the attention, he longs for the blood, and yet he often feels crushed by it. He had never been especially close to anyone. His life had been spent lingering on the outskirts, and Armand couldn’t seem to get close enough to sate himself. It was strange, flattering, off-putting, intoxicating, and it was all heightened by each new wrinkle on his face and the looming threat of his own mortality.

When he can’t stand it anymore, he starts to run. No amount of drinking or smoking or sex or drugs can fill the gaping hole made by his leaving. Only Armand was big enough for that. 

He was on death’s door when Armand turned him, and the Queen of the Damned rose up and was defeated. He doesn’t know which one of them did the pulling away. Maybe Armand hated what he had become and shut him out of his heart. Maybe Daniel himself closed himself off. It happened too fast. One day he left, and he simply never went back, even when his breaking heart begged him to.

Left to his own devices he struggles with his own vampirism. He has no taste for killing. The world had already been too bright, too loud, too much for him to take most of the time as a mortal, but as a vampire it was so much worse. What should have been beauty was an endless torment. Until one day it was too much. He couldn’t stomach the real world. He became infatuated with creating his own worlds. Quiet, miniaturized cities that he loomed over and tended to like a loving god. Ideal places where things were as they should be---where he didn’t crave the life blood of everything he passed and where thoughts were close to him. As much as he could he lived in those worlds.

He’d been living under Marius’ roof for three months before he even properly realized it. His tolerance for the ancient vampire waned quickly, but he likely would have wasted away to nothingness or walked into the sunlight without him. They existed, for the most part, in silence. Marius would remind him to eat, Daniel would occasionally, in a fit of excitement and glee, usher Marius into the room to show him a new addition to his tiny towns, and then they’d return to pretending one another didn’t exist. Or, at least, that’s what Daniel did.

He stayed for two years, gradually coming to terms with his new life and learning to cope with its challenges. He mastered his more desperate, violent impulses and in doing so relieved himself of the guilt of killing. 

Now Daniel is a wanderer. He’s very interested in the other beings out there---things that aren’t vampires. He reads and researches and travels at his leisure. 

For the most part, for the first time in his life, he is content, and yet he is deeply lonely.

Canon Divergencies: Daniel never has a romantic relationship with Marius, Daniel has an actual backstory, Daniel is autistic, blood sharing is not the vampire version of sex (see this post for more information on how I feel about that and why), I generally play him after the events of the books and I’m not extremely familiar with any of the novels past TVA. I have a vague idea of what happens, however, and I’m willing to discuss plot points within them or engage with later characters.

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

Radical Trans Activism

So I guess we are here now. I’ve discussed this topic ad nauseum but here I am again. First and foremost let me say that I have no hate at all towards actual trans people. More over, I think it’s the case that the actual amount is much lower than people want to believe. Mostly because there is this weird peer pressure that Radical Trans Activists and “allies” put off for the sake of “supporting the cause” as it were. 

Though, let me start at the beginning.  Dr. John Money. The man who invented Gender. Now many of you might know who this man is but many more do not. But the facts about him no matter the information you know does not change. I will link 2 videos. And while I don’t care about this people speaking on this i’ve watch both videos and checked it against information I already know. So like these people or hate them take a listen because it’s important to the next part.  Video One

Video Two

A third Video just to make my point.

Video Three

The take away if you are too lazy or arrogant to watch.  -Dr. John Money is the godfather of the term gender, as well as other terms like gender fluid, transgenderism, and gender identity. In the pursuit of proving his concepts he made twin brothers, one of which he had his family raise as a girl (after a botched circumcision), perform sex acts on one another, after stripping, and often inspect one another's genitals. And would frequently take pictures of these acts. The boy raised as a girl eventually found out what had happened and never felt like a girl. He transitioned back in his early teens. Both twins killed themselves within a few years of on another later in adulthood.-

So long story short, when you talk about gender, gender identity, gender fluidity, etc, you are preaching the teaching of a sick, monstrous pedophile that subjected CHILDREN and brothers no less to preform sex acts on one another all the while taking pictures of this. Oh but we should totally separate the study from the person having done it right? No. His study didn’t actually accomplish anything at all. What it did however was make 2 people commit suicide. And probably thousands more by proxy of the fact his research is still used today. Some of it is even taught in schools. His goal was to prove that nurture was enough to outweigh nature. Except that’s not how the real world works at all. 

The brains of women and men fundamentally function different. It’s not about superiority or inferiority, it’s just about the fact that it exists. Different just means different. That’s it. However let’s look back a little shall we. Transgenderism, prior to Money gaining prominence, was referred to as Transexual. It was considered *and still is by doctors that know what they are talking about* a mental health disorder. The reason being? Several tests were run only to find that the brain chemistry of transexual people resembled that of the opposite sex that they were. Causing what we formally know as body dysphoria. Today known as gender dysphoria. However, a few years back, and you can check, the CDC and the WHO decided that they wished to make being trans more acceptable. How did they decide to do this? Easy answer? They removed it from their books as a mental illness. Not because it stopped being one, but because they felt like if it’s labeled as a mental illness people would stigmatise it. Which conceptually is really stupid for 2 reasons.  1. Because it removes the ability of the person whom has that conditions ability to get the care they need with insurance. (Which for a lot of people it actually did. Many had their insurance pause their transition treatments, including their mental healthcare.) 2. A mental illness does not change strictly because it is labeled differently. If we all of a sudden decided that Autism should be “more accepted” and remove it from the list of WHO and CDC mental illnesses, then what would have changed? Aside from the care they recieve being almost outright removed, nothing would change at all. They still have autism. 

So in short, we’ve hurt people by letting this go on unchecked. But never fear. John Moneys lackeys had a solution to that. Take his ideology to the next possible extreme. Remove the need of being dysphoric at all, and remove the need to be diagnosed, and just say that anyone can be what they say they are. Ok if that’s the case I’m the new king of france. No joke. What’s stopping me? And before you say, “that’s not even the same thi-” Yes actually it is. According to these people i can be ANYTHING i want to be. Meaning that my ginger ass can start identifying as a leprechaun and start demanding gold from reserves. “Well that’s not a real thing”, i might here you say. Well news flash, neither was gender until a pedophile created it.  So what’s stopping me? Oh right. Nothing is stopping me because people are referring to themselves as, DemonSelf, and DemiKin, and Ze and Xur. Which I personally take offense to that last one because this is Xur and his a good wiggly boy. You are not. 

Sorry. I got side tracked. Back to the topic at hand. Gender as a term was not really accepted as a concept until Money’s research started gaining traction. Not because it was good research but because people didn’t know the results of or methods of his research. As we only recently saw their outcome in the last few years. Two boys whom had their lives and psyches destroy by a lunatic pedo. Which unironically, has been latched onto by groomers and pedophiles today.  Now, with all of that said let’s look at modern transgenderism shall we. Look at youtube. Look at Tiktok. Look at Instagram. Look at FB. You can pretty much see it everywhere. “I’m trans and you will refer to me as XX pronouns.” And often in these same profiles, *though not all* you will also see somewhere that they also list a plethora of mental health conditions. Most frequently Autism. Ya know that group of people we talked about a little earlier. A group that is actually rather vulnerable to peer pressure and excess suggestion. It’s not a coincidence. Fact is, not super long back, there was a mass of people in the UK and Europe in general, that were between the ages of 16-25 whom detransitioned in mass. And you might be thinking. Ok but why was this not covered? Why don’t I see more people talking about detransitioning? Why is it that all I see is that it’s cool, safe, and there are zero risks at all? (It was also the case that 60%-70% were on the autism spectrum, and 30% or more had internalized homophobia. And perceived that they could not love the same sex as much as a person of the opposite sex. I’ll touch on this last part again later).

The reason is simple really. Self aggrandizing and profit. Fact is Neo progressivism is a very useful idiot when it comes to mindless activism. You tell them what to believe. They believe it. Then they will march for that cause no matter what. They will even get violent. And funnier still they will even hurt friends and family members who don’t bow to their new cult like ideology. And more often than not they don’t think on it at all. They just take it in from “trusted sources” or the “priests” of their cult whom are famous people who claim to be as woke as they are. Then just point in the right direction and they will do whatever you want them to. It’s actually brilliant. Fact is these activists have done everything they can to suppress detransitioning stories and communities. Google suppresses results to any stories talking about it for the most part and reddit has deleted at least 3 separate communities of people who fell into that camp. Meaning that when you look for questions such as, “Is this safe”, “can i transition back”, “what can i expect”, or “are blockers ok to take”. 95% of the material you will find will flat out say,  “Everything will be ok. Nothing to worry about. Hell take off market blockers while you are at it because what do parents know. Nothing at all. That’s right. You’re a minor but you totally understand what these life changing drugs are going to do to you long term. You know what go fuck adults while you’re at it. You are old enough to decide that for yourself. Adults except us are stupid. It’s not like we have any financial motivations or anything.”

And there I said it. Transgender people are the new toys of pharmaceutical companies and plastic surgeons. Hell there is a TikTok plastic surgeon that revels in the fact she gets to remove the breasts of 14 year old girls. Some of whom later down the line ended up asking if they would grow back because they were not informed. They were not OLD ENOUGH to be informed. And that is their life now. Which means that even supposing hormone treatments didn’t make it so they could not have kids, they will never know the kinship a mother gets from breast feeding their kid(s) if they ever have them. And I will hear some of you say, “Oh well kids and teens are not having these treatments without the proper measures taken. Except as I just explained. They are. And that’s not also bringing in drag kids to this discussion which is a very disgusting new fad in which grown men get to fling their junk around children. But I guess as long as it’s little boys it’s fine right?

But let me explain for a moment to make you fully understand what I’ve seen happen. I’ve been in discord servers, Privated reddit communities, and other communal places online where I have seen a topic thrown around. It’s called “Eggs”. Now radical trans activists love this term. It means that a person whom is either gay or lesbian isn’t even actually gay or lesbian. They are a trans person just waiting to hatch. Now people will lie and say this isn’t real but I’ve seen it enough to know that’s bullshit. They will slowly but surely take a person whom is gay or lesbian and try to socially transition them into believing they are trans and not gay. Honestly? That sounds like conversion therapy to me. More over that sounds like homophobia to me. Why? Because we have sunken down to saying that a gay man is a bigot if he doesn’t want to have sex with a pre-op trans man. And calling a lesbian bigot if she doesn’t want to sleep with a pre-op trans woman. 

I’m sorry but what world are we living in now? A world where we are telling women whom like FEMALES because sexuality is about sex, Not “gender”, “You are going to fuck that dick, and suck it, because it’s a woman cock. Why don’t you like that female penis you bigot?” Maybe because women whom are lesbians don’t like dick. Maybe because you have no RIGHT to dictate whom a person sleeps with in the privacy of their personal lives. (SO LONG AS THEY ARE OF LEGAL AGE). And yet here we are. Reinforcing gender stereotypes that we sought to break down for over 20 years now. Used to, if you were a girl and you wanted to wear jeans all the time and baggy shirts, you’d just be called a tomboy. If you were a guy who wanted to wear pretty stuff, you’d be called girly or femboy. And now people are trying to make those terms out like they are slurs. But actually, it’s kind of simple. Being trans somehow has become the new norm. And we are giving hormones to children. If your 3 year old boy plays with ONE DOLL, well according to these types, it’s actually a 3 year old girl. Because children TOTALLY don’t imitate those around them at all to learn. *eyeroll*. 

Fact of that matter is more and more people are calling themselves trans and having zero idea what it actually means at all. Being trans used to be, you go to a doctor. You get diagnosed over a several month or several year span of time, and then they would have you socially transition while still having you come in and check on you. Then once you hit the age of between 18-20 they’d make sure that hormonal and surgical methods were the right direction to go. Now however, with the rise of TikTok and other social media that targets kids, we have people telling kids and teens where to get off the book hormones. Where to possibly go for off the books surgeries. If you cared about the healthcare of these people at all. You’d have them see a proper psychologist. One who will not affirm them. Why? Because any REAL psychologist that’s not some neo progressive moron, knows that in order to ascertain what a person is feeling and why, they need to be a road block to them. Why? Because while kids can be smart they are also extremely impressionable. And extremely vulnerable. That’s WHY we have a legal age of consent. 

Let me switch gears for a second though. Hormones. Be they blockers or sex change hormones. They will affect you. And it will not be all sunshine and rainbows. Fact is one of the things many supposedly trans youths don’t understand. When you start on hormones you don’t just stop one day. You are more or less on them for life. What’s more, blockers are not just, “sure yeah you can block puberty (a process refined over decades by the human body to develop properly) and everything will just magically go back to normal after you stop if you really are not trans. Yeah any one that tells you that is either lying to you or trying to sell you something. What all do blockers do?

Mess with bone density 

Hinder brain development

Lowers immune health

Stops growth of sex organs (more on this in a moment)

Changes growth rate of your hair

Often stunts growth

Changes development rate of muscles

Can lead to deficiencies in internal health later down the line

Now about that stops the growth of sex organs. As a male you are actually screwing yourself over as many types of transition surgeries will use the existing penis and invert it into a makeshift vagina. Though I don’t believe this is the only method they use. But in the cases of both men and women you will end up with minimal development of your sex organs. And most people will read this and say, “great that’s what i want.” Except how do you know? What if you are not actually trans. What if before surgery you decide it’s not for you. What if you break down and see your body and hate if after taking blockers? Guess what? Depending on how long you take them for, (expressly for the purpose of blocking puberty outright which is a much bigger dose than average use cases) you might end up as a guy who’s 5′3″ with a micro penis because you took blockers from 12 to 19. Or you might be a girl who’s 4′5″ with low immune health and no curves at all. Which could lead to dysphoria later in life if you can’t learn to love your body. 

Thing is, hormone blockers taken in the amount used to block puberty outright doesn’t just magically become ok. Your body does not just magic puberty all over again if you decide that you were wrong. Hell it might be the case that after everything is said and done that you want kids later in life. Well if you take blockers you might not ever be able to have kids. Hell that risk is far higher if you take cross sex hormones. And that’s the other rough part. Testosterone as a cross sex hormone. Your body gets bigger in a lot of instances yes but it’s worse than that. You will start growing hair more or less everywhere (except your head because you likely WILL go bald). That girl you saw in class with the beard she has to shave every day because of a hormone imbalance? Yeah that will be you if you make the decision too early. And that’s if you’re lucky. Because you can also grow excessive hair on your back, arms, feet and ass. Your WHOLE ass. And not just peach fuzz either. Like a fucking safari. And that’s for the girls. Let’s talk boys now. Reduced bone density, smaller muscle mass. hair may or may not fall out over time. Again lower immune health is a likelihood. And you can start to develop breasts. Which sure sounds fun until a day comes where you might decide you are not a girl anymore but it’s too late. You’ve started developing breasts, you’re voice will likely never drop down at all, you will be smaller than your peers, and my guess is that in the shallow world we live in assuming you didn’t have bottom surgery, you will end up with a micro penis or never develop over 2-3 in. And while a lot of people says size does not matter, some people are a bit shallow and that will only last so far as you not meeting their physical needs. Not everyone mind you. But my point stands. (Mind you all of this is not including the frequent surgeries you might need to go through. On top of possible medical problems resulting from the transition long term. And yes both of those are very real likelihoods.)

Last point. If you are actually trans, or believe you are, please talk to a psychologist. Specifically one that rebukes you. If they fast track surgery or hormones find a new doctor. A by the books psychologist will not just rebuke you but take you through a lengthy process in which they try to find what it is you feel and why. Could be peer pressure. Could be parental pressure. Could even be your desire to be accepted. Gender as an aside. Just be you. If you are a boy and play with dolls then be a boy and play with dolls. If you are a girl who likes to go muddin and get rowdy with the boys then do it. And if people tell you that you have to change yourself physically to do those things then ignore them. They don’t care about you. And proof of that is in the fact that if you were to transition and then detransition then you would be black listed by these same people as a bigot and transphobe and even a traitor. They don’t care about you. The acivists care about the narrative and carrying it out no matter what. Even when it causes death and pain. And the doctors out there are not going to say no. Some fear for their jobs and others just want you to give them money. And guess what? If you are gullible enough to go through with all of it, then that’s your fault. But the people that convinced you are equally to blame. As are the doctors that let it happen in the first place. If you are trans and going through all the right steps than awesome. But if you are younger and come across this please take this as a warning. There are adults that do mean you harm. And they WILL do that harm so long as it accomplishes what they want. Always keep that in mind. And if you doubt me, ask the people around you how they would feel if you were not trans. How they would feel if you went back to how you used to be. If they start pushing you to transition again or say they liked you better the other way then they were only in it for their own personal satisfaction. 

My only point here. Please be diligent. Please be careful. Do not ruin your body when you don’t need to. Be patient, and see a good doctor. If you are trans and you stick to that through years of therapy then guess what? You’re trans. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But even if that is the case you’ll have a rough road ahead of you. I wish you the best. For everyone else who will find out later they are not trans. Live your life to the fullest. And don’t let others control how you feel. Just seek to fully understand how you feel. 

[thedreadvampy]

Additionally

Being able to eloquently express what an issue is =/= usefully engaging with that issue

other than the class thing (which wasn't explicit in the conversation I had on Friday - the person I was talking to was like "why does this person act so rigid and unaware of other people's needs? is it ADHD? autism? trauma?" and I was sitting there mentally screaming IT'S BECAUSE THEY GREW UP RICH STEPHANIE. VERY OBVIOUSLY THAT.) the other gripe I'm stewing in from the conversations I've had recently is another really common one in anarchist circles (and one that super heavily crosses over with the class one) which isssss

hey man

it's great that you can clearly and specifically explain why you are acting the way you are, how it connects to your mental health, what you need and how you're feeling

that's grand

other people maybe can't though? and the fact that they're not expressing it as clearly as you doesn't mean that it's less real or potent????

like this is an issue I see a lot in interactions where one person is having a meltdown. and the other person is upset but still able to think and talk clearly. or where one person has spent a lot of time dissecting their needs and the other doesn't really know how to express theirs.

lpeople talk a big game about radical inclusion and anti-ableism and so on but ultimately. it often comes down to who can say the best words to express their need, not who needs things more.

and also. and this is a specific vaguepost about a specific handful of people but also kind of a wider issue. even if both of you can understand why something is the way it is, it doesn't mean you've fixed it or engaged with it or the job's done.

"I'm uncomfortable with how X behaves towards me." "Well X is aware of the issue and we've talked about it and it's because they have XY and Z issues with regulating their behaviour and it's just how they are." Okay???? I'm still uncomfortable????? They're still behaving inappropriately????? Something else needs to happen????? like we need to not be around each other, or set up a way to mitigate the discomfort, or someone needs to alert them when they're acting that way, or something. But over and over again in multiple social circles instead you get "well we've talked about it and uncovered the root of the issue." But this isn't an intellectual exercise! We need to also engage with the issue!

like idk not to sound like a reactionary but for real I have so many friends who pay themselves on the back for being so trauma-informed and consent-driven and mental-health-aware but whose attempts to actually engage with any access clash or conflict of needs begin and end with Explaining It. and sometimes that looks a lot like explaining away really shitty or dangerous behaviour with "they can't help it because X"

and sometimes that's true! Like I sometimes get so overwhelmed and exhausted by being around people that I snap and get really vile and malicious and angry. I don't want to be like that but when it hits I can't prevent it, I can only mitigate it.

but I can mitigate it and I'm responsible for mitigating it. That usually includes explaining it, but explaining it isn't the point. Like I have explained it to people in order to explain that "if I walk away suddenly or go very quiet or make an excuse to go to another room, that's because if I continue the interaction I'm going to be a bitch, and it's not because of anything you're doing wrong but I need you to leave me alone". and the explanation is important but so's the strategy. If I just say "sometimes I will be a bitch because I'm overwhelmed," I'm not dealing with the problem, I'm describing it. which can be somewhat helpful for the other person to draw their own conclusions and understand that it isn't about them. but in and of itself it doesn't fix much.

explaining or describing or talking about problems is important. and especially when you're struggling to express what the problem actually is, let alone why, it's a really vital step to get you to a place where you can come up with a solution and engage with the problem head on.

but often there's this kind of fetishisation of the Explaining The Problem phase, like that's the whole of the thing. and that leads to both these problems - a) that instead of coming up with strategies to fix the thing you just repeatedly talk about what it is, and b) that, because you think Explaining A Problem and Dealing With A Problem are the same thing, you respond as if the person who can most eloquently and convincingly describe why they act how they act has Dealt With Their Behaviour, and the person who can't make clear unambiguous sense of how they feel, how they act and what they need Isn't Offering Solutions. so the person who can explain themself is off the hook, and the person who can't is the problem.

so uhhhh you kind of tend to end up in a state where people who are eloquent and clear about their mental state (a thing that's hard to do when you're on psychological crisis) are able to excuse their bad behaviour, and their needs tend to take precedence over the needs of, say, Mad people or people in crisis or people with more messy and complicated problems, who are less able to clearly state their case.

and this obviously also ties into the class dynamics I mentioned above. when middle-class people are more able to assert ourselves and more confident in our knowledge and experience (and specifically in our communication abilities! this is a big thing with middle class people in general and people from an academic background in specific!) we are going to find it much easier to get priority in a space where Clearly Enunciating Your Feelings is the defining factor of how you're treated.

and that's pretty fucked I think 🤔

I had a conversation on Friday night that's really got me mad about some stuff but I have tried to gently bring this kind of thing up directly and it never goes well but I am gonna vent it here for when I start feeling like I'm going insane/being a bitch.

this is anarchist infighting babes xoxoxo

Why are people who grew up rich Like That?

Now I to some degree include myself in the category of People Who Grew Up Rich. I had some shit in my youth but one struggle I never had was being a child in a financially precarious home. I never worried about going hungry. I never was at any risk of homelessness. Have I been homeless, hungry and otherwise precarious since then? Yes, but I have a baseline of knowing what security feels like, and I have a network of people who do have money to fall back on. And I have the confidence and education and class-specific social knowledge that comes with that so even if I'm poor I'm still middle class socially.

Both based on observation and statistics, I think it's pretty clear that economic precarity in childhood is one of the most potent single things that impact your lifelong wellbeing. Being precarious as an adult is traumatic and miserable and awful but it isn't the same as having precarity as your baseline state.

However there's a certain ahhhhhh subset of Anarchists From Upper Middle Class Backgrounds who might recognise that intellectually but who act. As if being from a wealthy background is irrelevant to their current life. And it's not.

Like ok this is where I get bitchy. But moving in anarchist and activity circles see how there's often people who seem to be counting up traumas and operations they face specifically as a reason why you should listen to them? and they often seem to count "childhood trauma" and "childhood trauma and precarity" as the same single point? like "oh you had a bad childhood I had a bad childhood we've both been there."

but no! no we haven't both been there! they're not the same experience! childhood poverty is its own enormous and far-reaching trauma, and it not only doesn't lessen the impact of traumas that can happen to anyone (eg CSA, DV, parental addiction, loss of a loved one), it lessens the space people have to deal with those traumas, both emotionally and practically.

And that's not to say If You're Middle Class You Have No Problems because obviously you do. like. I didn't deal with financial precarity in my childhood and adolescence but I did deal with a lot of instability, violence and abuse throughout. and that's significant and worth giving space to. but like many of my friends were dealing with similar stuff at a similar age AND with the far-reaching trauma of poverty (and other systemic traumas like racism and xenophobia)

and like it's not productive or helpful imo to start the Who Suffered Most competition interpersonally. trauma-as-currency is a plague.

buuuut. with the types of person I'm thinking about THEY'LL be the ones implicitly or explicitly bringing it up, either in a "you have to be nice to me bc I've experienced XYZ" way or, even more obnoxiously, an "I own and know the most about X bc I experienced XYZ". Like this sense of ownership and this idea that your experience of X is everyone's experience of X seems to me to most often come from usually white but always upper middle class activists, who are maybe poor now but were very financially stable growing up.

It gives you. A certain confidence. Growing up rich or well-off. And that can be really useful - definitely sometimes the people most able to just bulldoze through beaurocracy and Get It Done in confronting authority are these folks bc a gift and a curse of being raised in classes higher up the ladder is a lessened fear of authority, an assumption of your own rights and knowledge, and a certain self-assurance. even if you're also a neurotic mess personally, idk how to describe it but I'm positive you've seen it - an upper class upbringing brings with it a type of confidence that's almost entirely separate from who you are as a person, it's like an aura, it's baked into you like your accent. it's a specific texture of entitlement and self-assurance and it can be REALLY USEFUL but it can also be. really really really damaging.

When you grow up rich, however bad shit is at home or in your life, you are taught to understand certain things as your right - you expect to be worth listening to (at least by anyone not more powerful than you), you expect to know what you're talking about, and you expect your life to be valued by others (if not by everyone or by yourself, but by strangers).

You can shake it consciously, and it can be knocked around and come into conflict with other trauma, but it sticks with you when you're born into power - when you're raised rich (or white, or a man, or not overtly disabled). It follows you through poverty and trauma - it's baked in early on. and that's not in and of itself a bad thing, it's just a Thing - class affects your behaviour and self-image, like most systemic social constructs. And again it doesn't mean your struggles are less real - your trauma is still traumatic, your anxiety and self-esteem are still fucked up - but it does affect power dynamics.

People who are raised rich are more sure of ourselves, and almost always more immediately able to assert ourselves, our ideas and our wants than we would be if we had grown up poor. And we kind of need to be aware of that because otherwise what happens a lot of the time is a domination of space, and a dismissal of other people's knowledge and experiences because they're less assertive about them than us.

and I'm so fucking sick of it because what it super often looks like is a combination of people going "I have to get what I want because praxis because radical self-care because I'm saaaaaad. You can't tell me no or tell me off because I'm struggling" and going "We have to do what I want because I'm right. Because I have the most knowledge and experience of this thing and I know you've experienced it too but you're wrong about what you experienced."

like (and here's where I've got SURE gone bitchy) there's this really common Type of anarchist who's super involved and super activisty and also their trauma is always the biggest trauma. their ideas are always the only ideas. anything they did that hurt others was justified by their mental illness or stress or lack of knowledge and anything others did that hurt them was twice as bad because of the fact they're So Marginalised. they need people to go easy out of their comfort zone to help them because things are So Hard but they can't offer help that's inconvenient to them because things are So Hard. They're in charge of every protest and they decide who's allowed to protest because they're allowed to Protect Their Boundaries. When someone crosses their unspoken boundaries it is unforgivable but when they repeatedly willfully ignore other people's boundaries it's because they weren't clearly stated enough.

and the thing I'm saying is. the thing I have noticed about this specific type of Anarchist Guy. is in my experience they're literally always from a wealthy background. they may be utterly fucked for cash and homeless now, and that's a real experience they have every right to be scared and vulnerable about and speak to, but they have always had a childhood and adolescence where money wasn't a concern.

poverty is always a traumatic and marginalising experience. but you don't forget the assurance and entitlement you learn if you're raised rich. becoming poor isn't the same as being raised poor. the default assumptions of what's possible and your own importance are different.

and a) I think we need to be really mindful and self-aware about the types of confidence and self-assurance that we might have got from childhood and adolescent privilege, even if we don't have it now. and also b) I fucking hate when people are That Guy and I have like 6 That Guys in my social circle right now and it drives me insane bc it's utterly impossible to get through to them about it bc ppl end up in such denial of the ways being financially stable as a child produces privilege over those who don't.

like I am thinking of a friend (private school, Oxbridge, academia, family own their home, clearly bad but financially well off childhood) who explicitly and repeatedly believes themselves to have meaningfully the same background (or maybe Worse Trauma) as people who were financially supporting their families from 14, people who spent their childhoods seriously housing insecure and spreading food out across the month, and people who grew up in social housing with a disabled single parent. IT'S NOT THE SAME.

I know it's not the same, and while we're both posh I'm WAY less posh than this friend, but that matters a LOT less than that I'm way MORE posh than any of the other people I mentioned and that does affect things! I don't have the experience of precarity! My mum was a very frugal and money-conscious parent but we had the money, even if we weren't spending it, in a crisis it was there! We were never going to become homeless as a family. We were never going to starve. If things were unsurvivable as they were - ceiling falls in, black mould, boiler broken - we could fix it! Our experiences of childhood instability, mine and this friend's, are of relational emotional and physical lack of safety - people around us cause us harm or can't be trusted or need looking after. But the other friends have that plus the emotional, physical and existential lack of safety that is poverty. That's not the same! It's not at all the same background!

and sometimes it's like. the flipside to class reductionism is class erasure. They think we're from the same background as the people who grew up poor bc we're white, we're queer, we're neurodivergent, we're trauma survivors, we're afab, we're whatever else. but stuff like poverty, lack of educational opportunity, social exclusion on the basis of class - those things just don't register. They're unknown knowns - they're the stuff that we take for granted, we tend to assume everyone who's like us in terms of race, gender and ability was basically financially stable in childhood, finished school and went to university, is treated as we're treated by police and authorities, etc.

Writ large, what this looks like is politicians claiming that £82k a year is basically poverty and genuinely making policy on the belief that when people say they're poor it means "can't afford to do everything I want" not "can't afford to live"

But writ small, what this means is that often the loudest voices leading communities of people who've Been Through It - the people who get their way - are people who think that their experience as raised-rich is exactly the same as the experience of the raised-poor. At worst we get Common People cosplayers who you never find out actually have a trust fund and an allowance but even before that. like.

Anarchist spaces, both organising and social spaces, are full of people who are legit struggling, who say at the good words and think all the good things, but who are fundamentally so entirely blind to the power that a middle class upbringing (particularly but not exclusively a white middle class upbringing) has given them that they just plough right through other people bc they assume they're on an even keel. The assumptions we make about people's confidence and assertion based on what's normal for us often takes a really familiar shape where one person's needs consistently take precedence over anyone else's.

and like. All of us deserve to have our needs met. Your needs aren't less important because you're middle class, or white, or straight, or cis, or male, or whatever else. The problem is when it's always one person's needs and never the people around them.

when somebody who's used to having a safety net falls down, people who are used to having to buckle down and do the impossible bc nobody else will pick them up, will pick them up. when somebody else falls down, people who are used to having a safety net see that picking them up is impossible and don't because they haven't got the experience of Having To Do The Impossible. when somebody who's comfortable asserting their needs assumes that all needs are vocally asserted, people who are used to subsuming their needs, not talking about them and dealing with them solo do not get their needs met. and when this carries on consistently across multiple relationships and multiple years, we got a problem.

And specifically part of the problem I think in anarchist circles is that born-wealthy anarchists are a lot more likely to be heavily socialising with born-poor friends, whereas if you buy into the class system you are likely to mostly hang out with other people who ARE actually from a similar economic background and so ARE likely to assert themselves in the same way you assert yourself.

This is why it's so important to not leave abolitionist relationships with power structures at rejecting or refusing them. As much as we should abolish class, racial, gender etc hierarchies, we have to engage with the world as it is. We can't just divest ourselves of hierarchies by wanting to - we have to actually engage and keep engaging with the ways that hierarchy continues to exist inside us. However poor I am, I still was raised middle class. However antiracist I am, I am still white. However aware of gender I am, I am still cis. That's going to affect the relationships I have with people who have different experiences.

but too many middle class anarchists imk talk a big game about class solidarity but ultimately consider themselves working class by choice. but you can't choose how you're raised. and ignoring the privilege of financial stability in childhood leaves you with enormous blind spots on how you treat others and how you recreate those power dynamics.

doesn't mean middle class people can't or shouldn't be anarchists. lots of us are. but for the love of fuck we need to make sure we're aware of the huge and lasting impact that different childhood economic experiences have on who we are as adults. even if we're down and out now, socially we remain middle class. and that gives us power beyond how we're seen - it's a power in how we act and how comfortable we are asserting ourselves over others.

and I'm so fucking sick of seeing it tbh. and I'm so sick of how shitty it makes a lot of friend group dynamics where a few culturally middle class people dominate every decision and take precedence in every discussion of need.

[felinedetached]

Fandom Ableism in the MCYT Community

[Edited 14 June 2021]

One thing I’ve noticed about the MCYT (Dream SMP, specifically) community on both Tumblr and Twitter is that when informed of things that are ableist, or harmful to ND people, a lot of people ignore the post/tweet, derail it or actively fight against it.

“I’m ND so I can’t be ableist” is a common statement, which is blatantly untrue. Even I’ve used ableist terms and phrases before, without realising they were harmful. So as a neurodivergent person, with autism, BPD, depression/anxiety, dyslexia, psychosis & brain damage*: here’s some common ableist things both CCs and fandom say almost constantly**.

*note that not every neurodivergent person will agree with me on these, but these are commonly ableist things people have previously talked about online, and/or have been discussed between me and other neurodivergent friends. No minority can ever speak for the entire group.

**note that a lot of these are common outside the MCYT community as well, and that some of these are just considered societally acceptable. This isn’t okay, but it explains why a lot of people don’t recognise jokes or comments like these are wrong, and it means that it’s not a direct moral failing of people that they don’t immediately or directly recognise these comments as wrong.

Now, let’s get into the things you might not have realised are potentially ableist:

1. Use of “Psychopath/Psycho/Sociopath/Schizo” and other demeaning terms for people with mental illnesses as insults, or to describe characters who are considered villainous. Psychopath/Psycho/Sociopath are already terms that people with ASPD dislike using, even not as an insult, but using these terms to describe people or characters who you disagree with or see as villainous only contributes to the villainisation of people with ASPD and other mental illnesses. Using c!Dream as an example: Dream as a character is not confirmed to have any of these mental illnesses. He is, however, commonly labeled as psychotic/psychopathic, incapable of any kind of compassion.

He is also a character that fandom largely insists that nobody is allowed to sympathise with. This is a huge issue, and has hurt a lot of people, especially people with low empathy, or mental illnesses that cause them to relate to some of c!Dream’s actions (e.g. pulling away from all his friends, desperately grasping at straws to gain control of situations etc). Insisting that these characters are characters it’s impossible to sympathise with, all while calling them psychotic/psychopathic/sociopathic, is extremely harmful, and I hope this post draws attention to that.

Here’s another post that talks about that.

2. Use of the term “freak”, in general. As an insult, “freak” has been typically used to insult neurodivergent people, people with visible physical disabilities (ex. “freakshow”, and the term was reportedly created with the intent of insulting people with physical disabilities), or people who display any kind of abnormal/atypical social behaviour/physical aspects — people who are usually ND people who lack a diagnosis or people with physical disabilities. Recent usage has come to mean “people who do things that hurt other people”, but this is harmful as well; using words like “freak” or “weirdo” which mean “socially atypical behaviour” to refer to people who are actually doing things that hurt other people conflates the two, and often has a side effect of hurting disabled people who see it.

3. Calling ND ccs like Technoblade monotone/emotionless. While the term “monotone” isn’t ableist in and of itself, the fact that it’s being used against a neurodivergent man who emotes in a different way to neurotypical people rubs a lot of ND people the wrong way. I’ve partially discussed this here, in a tweet responding to a person who said that c!Technoblade, quote, “has no human capabilities like emotion for example”. This, however, is not something contained to c!Technoblade — one of the most common jokes in this fandom is how rare it is to hear emotion in Technoblade’s voice.

The issue with that is that neurodivergent people almost universally agree that Technoblade emotes perfectly fine, and, in fact, emotes more freely and clearly than a lot of others do. Hence, calling him monotone perpetuates the idea of ND people as emotionless/less able to be hurt/less expressive, which often hurts us. It also contributes to the dehumanisation of ND people — related to how ND symptoms are most often seen in robots or monsters in shows — and is generally extremely harmful, on top of being untrue.

4. Related to point 3: the infantilisation of ND ccs like Tubbo and Dream, usually paired with assigning “caretakers” of their friends, like Tommy and George. This is about the posts that spread like “omg, Tommy helps Tubbo with his dyslexia, that’s so cute” or “omg George is so patient with Dream, I could never sit through that” on videos of Dream vocally stimming because of his ADHD. This is another post that talks about this, but I wanted to talk more about why this is harmful here.

4a) With Tubbo’s dyslexia, from someone with dyslexia, it isn’t harmful to correct his spelling and move on. Personally, I think this is helpful — others will think it’s condescending, because not all ND people are the same — but as the above linked post mentions, this is not what Tubbo’s twitch chat does. This is not what the comments say. It’s all things about how it’s “so cute” that Tubbo can’t spell, how Tommy/Ranboo are “so patient” with correcting him. This is rooted in the need to constantly watch over ND people while acting like we can't live our lives without someone having us under constant vigilance. It feels like savior-complex ableism, like people are trying so hard to not be ableist that they spin back around to hurting us instead. And it feels like we are being treated like children. Like we are lesser than, and need to be monitored/watched over.

4b) Similarly to what people do with Tubbo, the comments on posts about Dream’s vocal stimming are often full of people calling George “patient” for “dealing with it”, or claiming they “wouldn’t be able to handle it”. This is inherently ableist. They’re praising George for basic human decency towards ND people, and claiming in the same breath that they wouldn’t be able to do that themselves. And then there’s these.

These comments infantilise Dream — claiming he “wouldn’t be able to stop/calm down” without George’s help, implying he’d “spiral out of control” or claiming “everyone is now my child”. It’s all related to the infantilisation of ND people, and the belief that without help/a caretaker we cannot take care of ourselves.

5. The way people treat ccs who likely have undiagnosed neurodivergencies, like Wilbur. Wilbur has openly admitted on stream before that his parents considered getting him an autism diagnosis. He also openly admits on stream that he has habits he doesn’t understand why he does, and hyperfixates on things for months at a time and doesn’t know why. Posts like this have gone around Tumblr, in which Wilbur displays blatantly ND traits.

And fandom generally calls him weird for expressing those traits. This video where he talks about eating sand because he likes the texture? That’s an ND trait. This video where he talks about his irrational hatred for anteaters? While mostly a joke, irrational hatred of something when you can’t explain/understand/articulate why is also a common ND trait. He spends 20 minutes during a Philza stream info-dumping about self-sustaining ecosystems (sharing the photo, because I think it’s really cool) and fandom begins calling them “Wilbur’s weird jars”. It’s demeaning to people who infodump, and as a ND person who hyperfixates and infodumps it’s really upsetting to see. It’s also upsetting to see other ND traits being called “weird” or “freaky” & made out to be soley some funny joke for NT people to laugh at us about.

Additionally: It’s strange to me that people think it’s okay to make fun of ND traits just because they know that or perceive that the person they’re making fun of is NT. It’s still making fun of ND traits. It’s still insulting ND people. It’s still ableist as hell. Why is it okay just because the person is NT?

6. Implying that c!Ranboo’s enderwalking is inherently violent. Ranboo has shown us time and time again that the enderwalk state isn’t a violent state. That the enderwalk state isn’t a seperate version of c!Ranboo that does horrific things. Why, then, is it so common to imply that Ranboo would be violent and hurt people why he’s enderwalking?

It comes back to the perception of c!Ranboo as a character with “two halves”, or as a character with DID. Ranboo has made it clear that his character does not have DID, but this headcanon about his character persists, and it persists in a way that is directly harmful to people with DID — and to people who dissociate or sleepwalk. We do not commit horrific acts while we dissociate, while we’re sleepwalking, because the majority of the time we’re just checked out, our body is on autopilot. Insinuating that we do is harmful. Insinuating that Ranboo has “another half” that’s inherently violent or evil is harmful to people with DID. I’m not going to ask you to stop writing these headcanons etc, but please consider the effect you have on people before you do.

7. Related to point 6: the perception of c!Ranboo as “soft” and “cute” and/or perfectly moral because of his canonical anxiety. This is really harmful, and comes once again from the infantilisation of disorders like anxiety and depression. Ranboo has made clear time and time again that his character isn’t moral, and in fact is extremely inconsistent. He’s portrayed his character as inconsistent, as someone who hurts his friends unintentionally and often due to his want to please everyone, and yet he’s constantly seen as “soft/pure/the only moral one” because of his anxiety causing to have repeated and consistent spirals on-screen. These spirals are not healthy. They don’t indicate his “perfect morals” or make him more moral than anyone else on the SMP. Please stop infantilising people with anxiety, it’s really hurtful.

8. Implying that c!Technoblade is inherently a violent person because of his voices. I’ll admit here: my hallucinations are visual. I do not get auditory hallucinations, and I cannot speak for people who do. But many people have spoken out about this, and discussed how talking about Technoblade as an inherently violent character because of his voices is harmful, and a stereotype of people with schizophrenia.

Technoblade’s character is, in and of itself, inherently a stereotype (despite the fact that his chat are more likely to be a supernatural entity than a symptom of a disorder such as schizophrenia) in that the idea of “hearing voices that encourage violence” is a stereotype of people with schizophrenia. As an actual symptom, is a very uncommon one. More common auditory hallucinations for people with schizophrenia or psychosis are, reportedly, whispers or unrelated conversation. One of my friends hears screaming.

But the issue is with the implication that c!Technoblade is “driven to violence” by the voices. Canonically, he has dealt with the “bloodlust” of chat by grinding withers. He’s perfectly capable of being peaceful, even with “voices pushing for violence”, and he’s perfectly capable of being violent without the “voices” influence. It’s the connotations and the history that fandom has in demonising and villainising c!Technoblade for even having the “voices” in the first place, and acting having them makes him inherently violent and unstable. There’s precedent for that already in society, and it’s not okay to perpetuate it.

[Edit: as of 22/05/2021, I do experience auditory hallucinations, and I can confirm that I am not any more violent, and the voices I hear don’t push me to violence. The clearest one just said ‘click’ in my ear.]

9. Jokes about brain damage and the use of “brainrot” as a term. I made a post about how common jokes about brain damage are here, and I would like to reiterate bits of it.

Jokes like these are really really normalized in modern society. I’m sure a lot of you didn’t even register it as wrong, and that isn’t a moral failing! It’s a norm in society, and that means the majority of people arent going to register it as something hurtful, because it’s said so often. But it does still hurt. The idea of using a disability as an insult is really harmful and it feels dehumanizing, like our disability makes us lesser, something that should be laughed at.

“Brainrot” as a term originated in Skyrim, as a disease that literally rotted your brain. However, as a term, it has very similar connotations to “brain damaged” and has been used in similarly joking and insulting ways. It’s something that feels really off to me and other neurodivergent people to see used by neurotypical people. It even sometimes feels uncomfortable when used by neurodivergent people, even if it’s used in positive ways. I know quite a few people who have removed it from their vocab completely because of the connotations, and I have personally done the same. Once again, I am just asking you to please consider your words before you use them.

10. Calling c!Wilbur during his Pogtopia Arc “Vilbur”. Yes, he was a villain. Yes, he hurt people. But c!Wilbur during the Pogtopia Arc only has one major difference from c!Wilbur during the L’Manburg Arc: a visible depiction of mental illness, specifically paranoia and psychosis. Treating him as a seperate person and calling that seperate person “Vilbur” comes across as extremely hurtful, and contributes to the villainisation of mentally ill people. His mental illness does not excuse him from hurting people, but calling c!Wilbur “Vilbur” upsets a lot of us, because wether or not it’s intended, it feels reductive, hurtful, and insulting.

If you got to the end of this post, thank you so much for reading. I hope that this helped you recognise things that you might not have known were ableist, and that you consider what I’ve said here. I also know that I haven’t addressed everything ableist that’s spread through the MCYT fandom community, so if you’re ND and have something you’d like to add, please feel free.

[my-darling-boy]

Genuinely asking, isn't self-diagnose with a condition kind of dangerous? Because legitimizing self-diagnosing opens a door to many malicious people who would want to exploit the fact they can self-diagnose? And in turn, make the space of autistic people worse?

Was going to skip this, but I’m writing a LONG response because I’m VERY exhausted with the amount of misinformation I see on this “self dx is dangerous” take, so buckle up and allow me to info dump.

Recently, authentic_autism_advocacy, an Instagram account run by a supposed medically diagnosed autistic woman was discovered to be a non-autistic woman, Connie Manning, posing as a medically diagnosed autistic person to spread hate and anti-self diagnosing speech. In reality, she is a neurotypical mother who regularly uses her autistic son for clout; she also turned out to have a hand behind CalmWear, a brand of sensory compression products designed for disabled people. Not only had she been spewing hatred towards other autistic people, she had been accusing well known AFAB autistic tiktokers like beckspectrum of faking being autistic and threatening self diagnosed autistics and saying they are a danger to the community, and engaging in other incredibly discriminating behaviour. Yes, she herself was a neurotypical person posing as a medically diagnosed autistic to perpetuate hateful rhetoric about self diagnosed people and used her voice to speak OVER autistic folk for financial gain and exploitation of autistic people, including her own son. If you want to read this roller coaster of a story, an autistic person wrote an entire article on it with tons of screenshots and sources.

So let me make one thing clear to you.

The purpose of actually, genuinely self diagnosing is not done to attract attention or to parade around and exploit other autistic people. Self diagnosed autistic individuals have recognised due to difficult life circumstances, financial hardship, bigotry and stigma within the medical/legal world, being a minor, lack of insurance, lack of proper access to safe care facilities, being denied assessment due to incompetent or biased practitioners, and/or any other obstacle that they may temporarily or permanently be barred from diagnosis. Self diagnosis does NOT instantly mean a person is posing for clout, nor does it indicate a person is trying to wring money from assistance services or exploit other autistics. And nts who use self diagnose with intentions of harming the community? That’s NOT self diagnosis, that’s abuse of something meant to aid people blocked from medical care or financial means to that care. All we can do for autistic people, no matter who we perceive them to be, is treat them the same way we would any other autistic person. Because the moment you start deciding by your own book who deserves respect and who doesn’t, you’ll be on a slippery slope to locking out thousands of autistic people from the community. If it’s discovered a person like Connie is literally abusing the system of self dx to intentionally mislead the community, by all means, we must hold them accountable. But you cannot simply go about granting and revoking access from people just because someone lacks a diagnosis or doesn’t fit your idea of what being autistic looks like, especially if it’s based on stereotypes.

Moral of the story? Isn’t it ironic how anti-self dx people will 100% believe a user who claims to be medically diagnosed but shows no “written proof” of it, yet always demand written proof from a self dx person? It’s almost like even anti-self dx people can’t tell the difference between someone who is medically diagnosed autistic and someone who isn’t. Well, that’s because they can’t. While there might be common traits, autism has no set model, it is a spectrum, no autistic person is alike; Policing self diagnosed people about their self diagnosis isn’t a form of protecting the community. It’s a form of gatekeeping. If you find yourself granting instant acceptance, without asking for proof, to a person insisting they are medically diagnosed like this neurotyical mother, but then prohibit self dx people from entry entirely on the grounds of not showing proof of medical assessment, you are upholding a double standard. This is why policing autistic people’s diagnosis, self or not, is inherently useless.

So here’s the thing... instead of asking people to stop self diagnosing, what you should instead be asking yourself is, “Why do people self diagnose? What kind of medical system could possibly be in place where people feel they need to resort to self diagnosis rather than get an actual diagnosis?”

Well, it’s mainly common knowledge among most of the autistic community that diagnosis is NOT easy to come by.

One of the main reasons why people cannot get a diagnosis is due to financial/insurance reasons. It’s reasonable to estimate that by the end of 2020 almost 30 million Americans alone were without health insurance. I’ve heard costs out of pocket for an autism diagnosis are between $500-$6000. If a person or a family cannot afford health insurance—which by the way on average is around $5,400 a year for a single person and $13,800 for a family here—where are they supposed to pull out $6,000 to get screened?

You might be asking, “Well aren’t insurances supposed to cover disability?” Sure, there are options for disability care through health insurance—not even going to get into that—but like a lot of things in the US, this is a severely flawed system. A lot of private health insurance will stop or limit coverage for an autism diagnosis or assistance services once a person reaches 18 to 21 years old. In most states, coverage has a higher chance of being denied to autistic adults coming with the added age cap or ONLY covering ABA, an abusive, manipulative “therapy” used to force social compliance and trait suppression on autistic people. The fact that ABA, a conversion therapy, is covered, but little else, shows exactly what insurance companies think of autistic people: they’ll only cover us if we want to learn to be “normal”. This can leave many undiagnosed autistic adults who cannot afford analysis, insurance, or safe assistance services with nowhere to turn. If I was not on my parents’ insurance, there is NO WAY I would EVER be able to afford a diagnosis. I don’t have $2,000 lying around. The MONEY ALONE would prohibit me from getting a diagnosis, no matter how many autistic traits I presented.

When I was going through this system years ago to start a diagnosis, I was shocked to find no therapist within three hours of me was accepting adult patients. “Up to 18 only” their websites would say. And in the event I had found one (1) that accepted me as a then 20 year old with X insurance, and that person refused me diagnosis, I would be out of options unless I planned a 5 hour drive which may have also led me to another biased screener. A person seeking self financed assessment can waste thousands of dollars therapist hopping.

People will say, “Well I live in X place, and where I come from, it’s covered!” Well the reality is that everyone in the world does not live where you live. It’s not realistic to assume everyone is in the same position as you or your family to afford care or access the same resources as you. When you say, “Just go out and get a diagnosis! It’s not that hard!”, understand you are speaking from your personal vantage point where screening may be easily accessed or easily covered/is free OR you have no personal knowledge of what that process is like yourself.

The second thing that bars a ton of people from being diagnosed is the fact that when autism was first discovered, its research was HEAVILY centered on white, cis, heterosexual men. The idea that autistic people are ONLY cis, white, heterosexual men carries on to this day. If you are an outlier to this stereotype, your chances of being misdiagnosed with something else or refused diagnosis skyrocket because so-called “professionals” don’t know how to observe traits in any other person besides a cis, white, heterosexual man, and refuse/fail to recognise the endless ways in which a person can be autistic. ALL the time I hear how AFAB people will go in to get screened only to find out their screener does not believe AFAB people can be autistic, because yes, sexism and anti-lgbtq+ ideas play a huge role in the incredibly outdated diagnostic process, because autism is still believed to be an “AMAB only” thing. People report going into a therapists office and being asked questions like, “Do you like going outside? Do you like having friends?” and being told that if you agree with either of these, you cannot be autistic because criteria at some places is so backwards, you can’t even say you enjoy conversation without failing the test. Other things commonly heard during the analysis are screeners telling someone they are too smart/articulate to be autistic, gas lighting them by saying they are mistaking their symptoms for something else/making them up, telling a person they seem normal, dismissing clear autistic traits by saying they’re unique “superpowers”, or intentionally misdiagnosing a person as ADHD INSTEAD of autistic. People on social media have also pointed out what influences racism has on the diagnostic process as well and how lack of research and understanding of autistic POC contributes to under-diagnosis and stigma has only contributed to refusal of care and under-representation of POC in the disabled community, as one autistic Black woman points out on Instagram, “I found excellent articles that support and validate my feelings and experiences, but I could find no research on autistic Black people.” Additionally, because research has primarily been done on young men, this means anyone who is not a cis man and is over the age of 18 and is seeking a diagnosis has a much higher chance of not receiving one because screeners don’t understand how autistic traits may present differently in adults, especially since adults are very likely to mask. Some autism screeners are so against autism they have told clients they would only diagnosis a person autistic if it was their last resort to avoid “placing a burden on their shoulders”. These reasons are largely responsible for why autism is incredibly mis/under-diagnosed. This ask would be the length of a novel if I included every single type of discrimination and mistreatment during the evaluation process alone, but understand it can be incredibly biased, sexist, transphobic, racist, or just flat out ableist. And guess what? Though this process can take as little as a month to get sorted, that is rare. The assessment SHOULD be very short. But a lot of autistic people have reported their diagnosis took more than 2-4 years because of having to waste time, energy, and money hopping from therapist to therapist looking for someone to take them seriously, as many autistic people compiled on the actuallyautistictiktoks page on Instagram point out.

The last thing I want to touch on is this idea that people have that self diagnosing is dangerous. “What if someone self diagnoses and they take advantage of services that are meant for autistic people?” ...The Big Things you think I am going to take advantage of as a self diagnosed autistic person, like scholarship money for instance or SSDI, I do not have legal access to without a formal diagnosis. I cannot waltz into a law firm and ask for a $5,000 scholarship for autistic people without a diagnosis, because they WILL NOT give it to me!

Let me tell you some of things I’ve “cruelly taken advantage of” as a self diagnosed autistic person. I bought glasses with blue light protection, because screen and fluorescent lighting at work and even natural blue toned light from the sky lowers my threshold for some sensory input like noise and social interaction; wearing them to work everyday has improved my sensory thresholds incredibly. I’ve talked to my manager and told him I’m autistic and that I have a hard time understanding vague direction and may need to step away briefly on occasion to tend to a shutdown before a meltdown comes on at work; he had no problem with this. I use subtitles; sometimes I have trouble processing audio or reading facial expressions and tone, and being able to see the words displayed on the screen gives me a significantly better understanding of what I watch. All my life, I have been having meltdowns which I had mistaken for mental breakdowns or panic attacks and having access to resources that walked me through preventative methods and tips on what to do if I have one has been ENORMOUSLY helpful to me. All my life, I was trying to deal with them thinking they were something else; becoming aware of this and accepting that they are in fact autistic meltdowns has helped me not only go through them, but has helped me redirect stims which at their worst previously had me hitting and clawing my arms, slapping my face, and even hitting my head. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to wait 4 years for a diagnosis to use resources I could be using to make my life more accessible right now!

People will say, “Oh well yeah, I don’t mean You are one of Those Types of self diagnosed autistic people, you clearly sound/look autistic, I’m talking about other people.” The thing is, there is no broad “sounding/looking autistic”, that’s stereotyping, and you can’t demand everyone who interacts with you show you their Autistic Card, because again, not everyone is able to be diagnosed, especially given the mistreatment and stigma present towards autistic people in the medical field! And what made you ask for their diagnosis? Because they “don’t seem autistic” to you? Why didn’t you ask for their diagnosis? Because they “seemed autistic” to you? By denying anyone who doesn’t have a diagnosis resources they may very well need, you are denying assistance to thousands of people who are without means to be diagnosed. And I am SO tired of seeing comments online on self diagnosis posts that “people don’t know what they’re taking about” as if they know us personally, like are you me? Are you my doctor I’ve consulted? Did you watch me academically research and consult with other autistic people about being autistic for over 3 years? I’m tired of “well, one time a self diagnosed person laughed at my actually autistic diagnosed friend...so all self dx people are evil” because there is ZERO correlation between a person being self assessed and their behavior towards a non self assessed person. The fact both those arguments are in use whenever self dx comes up is yet another form of gatekeeping.

Self diagnosing autism is not begging for attention or Evil Criminal Money Funneling Schemes. It is a result of a deeply flawed medical and insurance system that has failed to give proper attention and care to those who need it, it is a result of resources not made available, of safe support systems not there for kids and adults alike. You want to talk about what’s truly dangerous? How the hate group Autism Speaks has been parading itself around since 2005 as an advocacy group for autistic people and has been misusing millions of dollars worth of donation money and promoting stigma and hatred around autistic people; no autistic members are present on their board. How Sia and her new film Music was nominated for 2 Golden Globes despite it replacing the original autistic actor with a neurotypical actor, using offensive stereotypes, and using the main autistic character as a prop, and featured an extremely dangerous bodily restraint scene on an autistic person having a meltdown in public and featured very insensitive content due to Sia’s lack of consulting with autistic people to make the film (spoilers in that article).

Instead of policing autistic people, whether they fit your idea of what an autistic person is or not, redirect your efforts and your energy to dismantling systems and holding others accountable for perpetuating harmful stereotypes about autistic people that are legitimately dangerous on such a scale that they have created insurmountable damage to the autistic community. But I guarantee you, worrying over whether your classmate is “faking it” will not do any justice to the decades worth of discrimination autistic people face still today.

I understand. You care about the community, you don’t want autistic people to be exploited or taken advantage of. I don’t want to be exploited and taken advantage of as an autistic person, and I don’t want that for others! But I also understand that when we self proclaim ourselves as judges of random autistic strangers on the internet or start accusing people of faking or demanding to see medical paperwork from people when the basis of our suspicions is “this person doesn’t look like my stereotyped view on how I think an autistic person should act”, THAT is when you really run into trouble. Because if you are allowed to deny self dx people entrance into the autistic community, what’s stopping you from thinking you have the power to deny ANYONE entrance into that community?

And there is power in self diagnosis for many autistic people. When the evaluation system is literally rigged to set you up for failure and put you through unnecessary hardship, self dx is a self affirming, empowering tool to take back control from a process designed to gaslight and crush you. The evaluation process was NOT formulated by an autistic person, nor was it made to be inclusive of all autistic people. Until the evaluation system in place for autistic people is safe, accessible, and free to ALL, you have EVERY right to self diagnose.

[celeste-clearwater-06]

Hello! I was wondering if you could please write something about how the Fellowship (+ Thorin?) Would help a s/o who's Disabled and Chronically ill. Like she has a lot of symptoms like chronic pain, chronic fatigue, difficulty sleeping, difficulty breathing at times, difficulty walking at times, higher sensitivity to the cold, difficulty talking at times, and anxiety, depression and executive dysfunction?

I've been really struggling with my chronic illnesses lately, namely my Autism, Anxiety, Sleep Apnea, a really bad Overbite, Raynaud's Syndrome, Asthma, etc, so I'd really appreciate an Imagine like this. I have a really weird disorder where one of my legs is longer than the other, and it's been causing me a lot of pain and difficulty walking lately, and people have been bullying me for it a lot too, so I could really use a Comfort Imagine right now. Thanks so much hun!!

It's no problem! I'm glad I can provide some comfort!! For each character, I'll use a specific struggling area, to make it a bit easier!! I hope I got these accurate enough, and of there are any mistakes, feel free to point them out!! You are strong, beautiful and so, so amazing!! Keep being you!! ❤❤

Help (The Fellowship// Thorin x Fem!Reader)

Aragorn (Autism)

Aragorn has known you for a long time, so helping with your autism is not new for him

He's particularly experienced in reading your emotions and meeting your needs, whether it's helping you out of stressful situations or calming you down, he's there 🥺

If there are large and boisterous gatherings in Rivendell, its almost guaranteed that you can become over-stimulated quickly, and Aragorn immediately senses this (spidey senses õoõ)

He's fast to find your hand and give it a gentle squeeze of reassurance

If that doesn't seem to help, he'll instantly stop what he's doing and take you out of the room

If you're someone who prefers lots of space and little physical contact, he is 100% respectful of this and asks if you'll let him touch or hug you (very much gentleman 😌)

If ever you're confronted by someone of importance, Aragorn is right by your side to ease some of the tension

Sometimes there are things you find difficult to say or get out of your system

The king seems to know exactly what it is and will help you out by saying it or asking you simple questions that you can easily answer

And he always reminds you, no matter WHAT

YOU ARE NOT STUPID 😤😡

You may struggle with some parts of your life, but every day, he's constantly telling you that you're very intelligent and kind

His patience is unending and he'll never let you think down on yourself

Overall, Aragorn is always someone and reminding you that it's all going to be okay ❤❤

Legolas (Anxiety)

Most nights, Legolas keeps watch (since elves don't require much sleep) and notices that you jolt awake out of the random

Now, most of the Fellowship notices that you're usually awake and ready to go before anyone else

But Legolas is really the one to address you first

You were a bit nervous to explain, since you didn't want to worry him or the great of the fellowship, amount the other disadvantages you have

He gently encouraged you, and finally, you explained to him your sleep apnea

Yeah, he was very concerned

I mean, his blue eyes widened with terror when you told him that you could basically die in your sleep if you weren't attentive enough 🙃

Legolas, from now on, sleeps directly next to you, or keeps extra careful watch over you at night

Because he could NEVER see his precious mortal friend become injured... Or worse 🥺🥺❤

The other members had noticed a change in his behaviors towards you as well...

Gimli teased him whenever he caught Legolas giving you some extra lembas bread or offered to carry you 👉👈

You really tried to assure Legolas that it wasn't a big deal when you were awake, since you're aware of your breathing situation

But still 😤

Legolas will always bring you comfort and take great care of you, and that will NEVER CHANGE

Because he loves you very much ❤🦋

Frodo (Anxiety)

Frodo is familiar with the feeling of great anxiety, seeing he had a stress-free life while living in the Shire and suddenly was forced to carry a piece of jewelry all the way to giant ass volcano

It's easy for you two to comfort each other and seek refuge in thoughts and feelings ❤

He's not super comfortable with the thought of you having a panic attack though...

Only because he's never had one

It starts to give him a panic attack whenever you have one around him the first time 😳-

Any time you begin to breathe heavy or hyperventilate, halfling boy is hot at your heels, rubbing your back and reminding you to breathe gently

(So many hugs, if you're up for it)

After you calm down, he's constantly checking on you, asking if you need anything etc.

Really, he just wants to know if he can help 🥺

And even with the weight and stress of carrying the ring, Frodo manages to cheer you up somehow

Samwise (Asthma)

Sam has never had to deal with asthma once in his life

He's very nervous when the subject is brought, afraid it might trigger something inside of you 🥺👉👈

But you just chuckle, assure him that it's alright, and you have ways of keeping it under control

And now, he wants to know everything about it, just to have the awareness in case something happens

Sam just wants to protect you forever, and this was a great way for him to start

He constantly reminds Aragorn that you'll need breathing breaks and will convince Gandalf to let you ride on his horse

He'll scold Pip and Merry if they are trying to drag you around and be silly, because as he says

"You'll rouse him/her/them up! We can't have Y/N gettin injured!" 🤨😠

Sam is MOM

As always, he's very kind and always makes sure your needs are met ❤🥺

Pippin and Merry (Raynaud's Syndrome)

Very confused halfings 🤔

Also extremely concerned!

You were eating one of the lesser pleasurable nights

It was cold and rainy, and a fire couldn't be started, not to mention the quiet arguments of Aragorn and Gandalf in the nearby woods

And Pip's eyes widened when he saw the tips of your petite fingers begin to pale upon hearing Aragorn mention Orcs

"What's wrong with your hands?!" He squeaked, pointing towards your now white-colored fingertips

You hadn't even noticed, nor felt, considering they were numb anyways

Merry looked over his cousin's shoulder and his eyes also widened, not with fright, but wonder

They were both fascinated with your condition, convinced that you were casting some spell Gandalf showed you

Although you reassured them it was just an extremely frustrating inconvenience that you had, among other things

So from then on, the disastrobus duo did their best to keep you out of the cold (and stressful situations!!)

As a distraction, the pair will tell you great stories of the shire, doing little dances and skits that always cheer you up 🥴

Sometimes, they can be a little rambunctious though...

Merry will pick up on this fact quickly, and nudge Pippin to get him to calm down

Even though it may not feel the best

They find your syndrome absolutely fascinating!! 🤔🤔

All in all, these two are always up for keeping your beautiful smile on your face and your spirits high!! ❤🌺

Boromir (Depression)

Throughout the journey, Boromir has always found an easy way to make you smile

After all, he himself has a fascinating way of brightening anyone's spirits

Yours included ❤

Boromir may not have great stories from The Shire, like Pip and Merry, but he sure has a lot of positive things to say

He'll often suggest sparring with the two troublemaking halflings, just so you can see him goof up and get knocked over 🥺

If the nights become cold and weary, he'll give you a warm hug or a nudge on the shoulder

And a few words of helpful encouragement along the lines of;

"Don't fret Y/N. You have more strength than you'll ever know."

"Let our spirits never dampen! We've come this far!" 😊

He's also an incredible listener

Boromir wants to hear what you have to say if you ever need to rant or get something off of your chest

And don't think for a second that he would ever judge you 😤

Son of Gondor sees past all of your insecurities and knows you for your beautiful, amazing self ❤❤

Gimli (Walking disadvantages)

As you travel across great plains and mountains, your limp doesn't go unnoticed by Gimli

It may take him a while to open up about it, since he's afraid he might offend you in some way

And once he asks you, you inform him that it's a difficulty that unfortunately cannot be changed any time soon

And where you come from, lots of people tease and bully you about it

He did NOT handle it well 😳

"wHAT BLUBBERING DULL-MINDED PIGNUTS-" 🤬

Although this Dwarf is short and a bit slow at times

He's fascinatingly strong 😳

And so, he makes it his duty to be your designated carrier 🥺

At first, your a tad skeptical...

I mean, he's only around 4 feet tall...

BUT HAVE YOU SEEN HIM THROW THAT HUGE AX AROUND?!

Gimli will happily carry you great distances when you need a break, and even longer

(Sometimes it's just to show off around the others-)

"Gimli, are you sure you don't want a break?"

"Aye lass! The strength of Dwarves is unending!" 😌

*struggling to breathe*

11/10, fantastic dwarf, will never let you down!!

Thorin (Executive Dysfunction)

Another Dwarf??

Absolutely

Thorin himself has trouble keeping composure with his time management (and sense of direction 🙄)

This means that he'll have an undying amount of patience for you and you only

There's just something about you that he fond of, and it fills in that little sassy, brooding place in his heart

Can also relate to you whenever you grow frustrated at the setback of your journey or lack of sleep

Is 100% willing to help you find your lost belongings (and once again, ONLY YOU)

Thorin will literally make the whole traveling party stop so that you can put something in your bag and make sure that you put it somewhere you'll remember

Always happy to give you extra gentle reminders of keeping your pack closed

The company is utterly SHOCKED with how he treats you

I mean, this man has always been extremely stubborn and hard headed

But when you show up, it's another person he can easily relate and share frustrations with

Also a master at organization?!? 🤔

The one thing he could do successfully was organizing the damn journey and traveling company, so ofc he's gonna be good at that 😂

Yeah, Thorin definitely has a soft spot for you

King under the mountain will never run out of patience and kindness for you 😌💙

Sorry these took so long!! I hope you like them!! ❤❤

[mikaze-discord]

Quartet Night: Love letters

Annnnnd these are the love letters written for Quartet Night!!!

Please enjoy under the cut~

REIJI KOTOBUKI

From Anon:

I've always been drawn to characters with complex (and fairly dark) personalities, so liking Rei-chan was honestly inevitable for me.

He looks like a very bright and cheerful character at first, which he is, but sometimes that part of him is a little misleading because, in actuality, he's a character that holds a lot of negative feelings about himself due to a past that he can't seem to move on from. He holds a lot of those feelings to himself because he doesn't want to burden anyone else with them. He's a reliable, cunning, and ultimately selfless character that chooses to shoulder a lot on his own out of his infinite care for others, and perhaps a secret sense of atonement, all hidden behind his bright demeanor and goofy smile, and it's endlessly interesting to me.

Besides the duality of his personality, he has a lot of other endearing quirks to love about him. He loves his mom a lot and is a mama's boy. His old-man jargon and catchphrases never fail to amuse (I still can't get over the way he says "my girl"). His obsession with anything even remotely British is something my APH England phase can relate to. His style of music brings a lot of pleasant feelings of nostalgia for me, and his pretty voice suits them a lot. And most of all he's just a very good boy overall. I rate 99999 out of 10 would love and support him and also maybe pay for his therapy because god knows he needs it. Happy anniversary!!

From another anon: 

Would you like to hear a story? You do? Very well then, may this story be one you enjoy.

What do I like about Reiji kotobuki? A Lot of things actually!

Well, I've always really liked Reiji as a character as he seemed to be one of the more interesting characters to me, due to how complex he is with his backstory and general just personality.

I have always really enjoyed how Reiji just solves problems too? Like he is just such an outgoing person who deserves all the support!!!

Like the best word I can use for Reiji is just, unique. Everything about him is just so Reiji. From the way he talks, to his nicknames or even his texting style. Like have you seen how many people use emoticons when texting as Reiji? It's just so him.

I like his way of thinking too! I feel like some of the interactions in the games are just so interesting, just seeing Reiji’s point of view. How he deals with a sort of survivor’s guilt and all of that.

Personally, some of my most memorable roleplaying moments were watching a Reiji rper in action, like just seeing them interact and flow so seamlessly with the other characters was just so fascinating to wee baby rper me. Such a large part of playing Reiji is just how you flow with the people around you and comedic timing. I have so many funny moments where Reiji was just interacting with people and it was just so inspirational (?) like I couldn't stop the smile on my face. I had learnt alot from them. I still consider them my roleplaying senpai almost! I don't talk to them anymore but I really had an amazing time just seeing their spin on the character.

I don't find him to be a romantic partner towards me nor do I see any of the characters in that light, but I've always found Reiji as such a personal character. Not even just towards me, like even with other utapri stans. The most relatable character always seems to be Reiji.

I've always been pretty similar in many aspects to him and I often find myself relating to him in numerous ways like his vibe is just relatable! I have often found myself trying to make other people laugh and have fun that many times I'm spreading myself thin and feel unappreciated...Reiji really helped with that.

This is where i start getting into the really personal stuff LOL feel free to skip if you dont wanna hear the angsty backstory.

I had really come to love Reiji when I had just...hit a low. I had a group of friends who I enjoyed hanging out with and just talking to, but they weren't very good friends per say. I often had to schedule every activity we did and I spent days and nights trying to think of concepts that might be fun. They took it for granted.. I had spent 4 months trying to make a game for them, and they had constantly pushed back times that we would play it. Using excuses to not play it, without telling me out right what they did not like or even why. The site I used was later taken down without notice and thus I had lost all my progress. Later, they had mentioned how they would like to play it except that later ended up being two years later. I really wish I could've solved things with that friend group like Quartet Night did but that didn't happen. That is when I started seeing things Reiji’s way? Not to say that it was the same or similar scenario to Reiji but I had just associated it with him.

RANMARU KUROSAKI

From Anon:

Ran is such a fun character! He sounds like a "rough outside, soft inside" kind of character, but his roughness is more like an integral part of him and it's through it that he shows he cares rather than setting it aside. That's what made me want to rp him. I also like how he is such a strong guy who's always determined to do his best in everything he does despite so much having gone wrong in his past. And it's very satisfying to see him form bonds and start to trust people.

From @mikaze-san:

Originally, my favourite Utapri boy was Ai, and it had been the robot boy for several years upon entering the fandom. In fact, it only switched to Ranmaru sometime late last year but regardless, I would still die for this man. Part of the reason why I switched is because I’ve always been a fan of Suzuki Tatsuhisa and I have a huge bias towards any man who wears nail polish without fearing being “feminine” because fuck gender roles.

As someone who studies fashion, I think Ranmaru is very coordinated and confident when it comes to portraying himself that way. He knows he’s not very good at expressing his emotions and utilises his passion for rock and playing the bass to portray those feelings through his songs. It’s also incredibly inspiring to know that he bounces back from pretty much anything considering his backstory and the stuff he deals with in the game/anime.

But my main reason for loving Ranmaru so much stems from the fact that I admire him a lot and want to be more like him. For a long time last year, I got to roleplay as Ranmaru in a few Utapri groups and through those experiences, I gained a better understanding and appreciation of the characters that I wrote for. In some weird way, by highlighting his flaws, character progression and how he dealt with different emotions, I ended up providing insight into how I dealt with similar issues by looking at them from a 3rd person perspective.

I used to be very shy and was very shut off from friends and family, and due to this I’ve always admired people in my life or fictional characters that are so confident in being who they are. Ranmaru particularly struck that chord in me because his bluntness knows no end. He’s very opinionated and doesn’t fear confrontation, in most cases being the one to provoke it. He speaks his mind openly without being overly anxious of the consequences. This is something that I feel is especially relevant today with being your authentic/unapologetic self is such a trend.

It’s something I’ve also noticed with having met people in or outside of this fandom, the notion of idolising a fictional character containing traits that we want to see in ourselves. Which made me think about a lot of my favourite kinds of characters which at the end of the day all boil down to sharing one similar trait: Being a bitch.

And in Utapri, Ranmaru embodies that. So naturally it’s very easy for me to idolise him.

(Tldr: I like his bitchy attitude.)

AI MIKAZE 

From Arashi:

It's hard to put into words why I love Ai Mikaze, perhaps it's because I'm subconsciously drawn to him, maybe it's because his hair and eyes are my favorite color, maybe it's because his voice is that of an angels, there are many reasons why I love him. I couldn't tell you a definite, "These one or two reasons are the entire reason I love him", but I'll try to sum it up.

I grew to love him by admiring his personality, his smile, his determination to reach his goals, everything about him made me happy. He's strict and a little scary at times, but when he sees people caring for him, he becomes happy and in a way, sentimental. He's not sure how to explain the way he feels, but he tries. I think I admire how he holds all the little things precious to his heart as he learns about them, and he wants to understand how to care for others and how they care for them in return. Even after six years, he still remains the most dear to me. I think that he now has a sentimental value to me, because even if I 'loved' another character more for a while, I will always come back to Ai. Ai deserves the world, and I'd give it to him if I could. He'll always be special to me, and I think that he very much deserves that.

From Maronda: 

My love for Ai started after I found Shining Live by chance and started to play. At first I wasn't particularly attached to any of the characters and decided to go back and watch the anime to maybe remember some context other than who Starish was. When I got to the episode focused on Ai and his "secret" I was absolutely thrown off by it all. I ended up feeling like I had so many questions and I knew that the anime would give me little to no answers, so I frequently turned to rambling on the internet about it. Eventually, this fixation on weird things about him seemed to turn into a clear fondness for him, and friends made me realize just how much I liked him. Knowing the cold and often strange aspects of his personality was due to something out of his control was something I resonated with as someone on the autism spectrum. He reminded me of some of the ways I used to think and behave.

I also began to notice other things I loved about him. Things like how soothing I found his voice, the pleasant shade of light blue in his hair and eyes, how ridiculously pretty he is... but the best things are the endearing parts of his personality. Though he's somewhat harsh, he's still entirely genuine. His curiosity is absolutely precious and his occasional awkwardness in expressing emotion or understanding the emotions of others made me empathize with him. And if you look at the Ai in Shining Live and compare it to the Ai in the anime and games... he really has changed a lot and grown as a person. He now seems so much gentler and understanding, and he clearly values the friendships he has now too! I think he's a wonderful character and ever since friends of mine encouraged me to selfship I've essentially been in love with him, but it also makes me happy to see other people appreciate him for other reasons as well. He's just so lovable!

CAMUS

From @uta-no-fakku-sama:

At the very beginning of my UtaPri interest, Camus never really caught my attention. That is until he became my first My Only Prince UR. I’ve come to appreciate him a lot more ever since, and now he’s become my favorite QUARTET NIGHT member! Along the way, I learned more about him and realized he’s one of the more complicated characters to understand. Nonetheless, I absolutely adore him. I tend to tease and make fun of him a lot, but deep down I truly do like him a whole bunch!

From @/waddamaloooon on twt: 

A little Camus appreciation post

(alternatively known as; how this guy managed to harshly take my heart and step on it like the gumin I am.)

Hello, this is Suikamaru, here to share a tiny story of why I, and eventually you, love Camus Rondo Cryzard.

At first glance, his looks appealed to me, but not his behavior (and ironically enough, his voice) so I didn't bat an eye on him. I've always been on a neutral leaning to dislike opinion on Camus, which is quite understandable because have you SEEN the way he acts. Unfathomable.

…..To a Young Suikamaru, that is.

I've grown, so naturally I've changed preferences regarding characters, ikemen, and who to stan and who to avoid like the plague. I will lie if I said that I expected to like that blonde confectionery devouring machine at any point of my life.

But it did happen so who are we fooling here.

It dawned on me that Camus is the type of character that you cannot appreciate unless you go in depth into his lore, backstory, and see him for who he really is. Because then everything else will make sense. And that never happened in my case until I started roleplaying as him.

I realized that he's not just a two faced, sweet toothed mean man. He's a perfectionist, someone who's always been raised since his childhood days to be nothing less than complete, who has locked on his heart and emotions to devote himself completely to the purpose given to him. He has the looks and brains for what though? He should be a little stupid honestly.

But his intelligence gave him the complexity that he just needed for his characteristics. Because as aforementioned, he's not someone to easily like or fall in love with. And I think that's quite rare in characters, and very much appreciated due to the fact it gives the fans a chance to not actually stay on a flat level of knowledge regarding their favorite characters.

I've slowly started to see myself in some aspects of him, which was the number one factor of liking him. Then came the Maeno magic when I realized Camus shares the same VA as another character that I love as well. (Hamelin, from SinoAlice.) From then, everything went downhill.

In a good way. I think..

Well, that is all from me, please read about this handsome man and appreciate his hard work both as an individual and as an idol. There is SO much to him that's p much overlooked and I'm getting broke from spending my money on his living expenses rent free in my head. Take him off my head.

[www-artforoddballs]

Headcannon for Levi-

Autism Update!

The man meets a human with Autism and is like

"...huh"

So he asks Lucifer to get him tested, and Lucifer is like "Okay sure"

And the results come back that he is, indeed, autistic.

This former angel, this demon, who by human standards is an ancient being of yore...

He gets diagnosed with Autism. High-functioning Autism, but he's autistic regardless.

And it all makes sense.

Boy suddenly feels way less alone in the world because he knows there are other people out there who hyperfocus on things they love just like him, who can't socialize or easily relate to other people just like him.

I also feel like after having this revelation, his brothers would ease up a bit on the teasing.

Brothers react (quickest acceptance to slowest)

MAMMON:

-Surprisingly (other than Luci and Satan, because...c'mon, Satan loves knowledge and Luci is a Responsible Big Brother *tm*) Mammon is the first to learn more about autism. He may not be the smartest of the brothers, but (in my opinion) is probably the one that's most in touch with his feelings and his empathy, despite still having that selfish streak.

-He wants to know more about Autism so he can understand Levi better and help make his brother more comfortable during their interactions.

-He'd also start stealing things from Levi less, because he now knows that there's another level to that memorabilia from anime and games for Levi than just stuff he likes.

-Will 100% buy Levi a stim toy when he gets some extra cash but shhHHHHH it's not from the tsundere crow man

-Probably comes around to fully understanding everything the quickest, despite both Luci and Satan reading up on it n stuff.

LUCIFER:

-This one is tricky, because he understands what autism is from a logical standpoint, but he still has a bit of trouble really understanding how it effects Levi

-Will also get a stim toy for his brother, probably like an infinity cube or something

-Still not really getting it until Levi has a meltdown

-Lucifer has dealt with Levi's meltdowns before, but moreso in a "my brother who is the avatar of envy is just throwing a fit" way instead of a "my brother who is having a meltdown as a cry for help needs me" way

-Instantly goes to Levi with probably either a handheld game or one of his stim toys

-Uses nonverbal ways for his brother to communicate with him so he'll know how to help him through this

-Will 100% get his brother noise canceling headphones and also take rigorous notes on what is ok with Levi and what isn't when it comes to stimulus

BEEL:

-Autism??? What's that???

-Poor boy is a bit dense at times but we still love him

-Supportive but not really sure of what to do or what to say or how to react

-If Levi had a meltdown around him though you'd best be certain that he'll be the first to scoop his brother up and REMOVE HIM FROM WHATEVER SITUATION IS CAUSING HIM HARM

-Gradually starts to understand more and more about the condition

-After all, his brother is still his brother. This label doesn't change anything, Levi has always been autistic, this label just helps people better understand him

-Will be the first to deck someone if they make fun of Levi for his autism. Doesn't even care if he gets in trouble later, you don't make fun of anyone, especially his family, for something they can't control.

-8/10, overall good bro

SATAN:

-OK I know I put Beel higher than him and this is why

-Satan read up on what Autism is, yes.

-But the man is still TECHNICALLY the youngest. He is the only member of the family who was never an Angel, as he was born from Lucifer's wrath toward everything when Lilith "died", which was when Lucifer ceased to be an angel completely. Everyone else was an angel at some point, so even though Belphie is the "youngest" because he has the weakest power, Satan is far younger than everyone else when it comes to actual age. Okay? Okay.

-ANYWAYS IGNORE MY RANT

-As the youngest (and I am technically correct here on him being the youngest ok bye-) and because he was literally born from nothing but wrath and hatred, the man is still learning on all the other emotions. And this is a canonical fact, anyways.

-So like his brother-father, Luci, Satan understands what Autism is, but he also doesn't understand what it is at the same time.

-He read up on it, that's good enough for him.

-He still cares about Levi, and just like everyone else (even though I only listed it for Beel) he knows that this label doesn't change who Levi is at all

-Gradually he starts getting a better grasp on everything. Will 100% be next in line to deck someone if they make fun of Levi for being autistic.

-They both like TSL so it would be an activity where he could really relate to his big brother and learn more about how his brain works so he would be better equipped to help him and how to best be there for him and relate to him in the future.

BELPHIE:

-Belphie is kind of a jerk toward everyone except Beel. But it is clear that he loves his family in his own weird way (even Lucifer, but he'll kill you if you even think of revealing this fact to Luci).

-Doesn't really get it, but the man isn't as self-absorbed as Asmo, which is one main reason I think he'd come around to it quicker than the lustful demon.

-Does want to understand it, but is also asleep like 70% of the time, so when anybody tries explaining it to him he ends up falling asleep.

-Eventually will probably get an audio book about the subject so if he falls asleep he can just resume from wherever he remembers it leaving off.

-Understands how Beel acts and reacts to situations where Levi is having a meltdown or is getting overwhelmed by noises or amounts of people and attention, so this does for sure help him better understand and accept the condition. Because Levi is still Levi, ultimately.

-Will probably let Levi rant to him about his favorite things. It would make Levi happy and seeing his brother happy would make him happy, even if he ends up falling asleep during Levi infodumping onto him.

ASMO:

-Man is self-absorbed.

-Not that he doesn't wanna get it, but he was barely paying attention when the results were shared with everybody because he was looking at a makeup tutorial on DevilGram.

-Like a month later he's pulled aside because he did something to really upset Levi, like bugging him repeatedly to take pictures for the gram with him and forcing him to livestream, and he's like

-"Yeah but I always do that?...he had a meltdown? What's a meltdown?"

-Will actually look up what a meltdown is after this

-Probably feels terrible but still doesn't really get it.

-"Why should I have to change myself for him?"

-Because you shouldn't be consciously making anyone uncomfortable, autistic or not, ASMO.

-Probably takes the two of them getting into a big fight and Levi to actually start crying for him to snap to his senses

-Will actually take time to do research and try to understand it better

-Still doesn't really fully get it, but he's doing his best to do this for his big bro

-6/10

[zosonils-art]

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: Gen

Relationship: Ferb Fletcher & Phineas Flynn

Characters: Ferb Fletcher, Phineas Flynn, Perry the Platypus (Phineas and Ferb), Linda Flynn-Fletcher

Additional Tags: Autistic Ferb, Autistic Phineas, autistic phineas is more implied and could also be taken as adhd but he has both anyway so, Autistic Meltdown, Autism, Sensory Overload, Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Illustrations, Canon Continuation, Fix-It of Sorts, i think????? i don't frequent this goddamn website i don't know, Brotherly Love, Crying, some of the crying is me

Summary: A stressful day pushes Ferb past his breaking point, and Phineas feels that he has a responsibility to set things right. Takes place immediately after Ready For The Bettys. Was supposed to be a simple continuation fic but got wildly out of hand. Ph*n*rb shippers fuck off this isn't for you.

---

as you’ve probably figured out if you’re following my main, i recently wrote my first fic since i was about 13! it’s available on ao3 at the link above, but you can also read it on tumblr by clicking the readmore on this post! i put a lot of effort into this and it took a lot of courage to post, so feedback is greatly appreciated!

"Mom! Guess what Ferb did!"

Phineas bursts into the kitchen energetically, still buzzing with adrenaline from the day's adventure. Ferb follows a step or two behind. Linda turns her attention from the freshly baked pie in her hands to her sons, although Phineas is too beside himself with excitement to consider whether or not she's paying attention. "He made a secret tunnel, and a spy headquarters, and a villain's lair, and a hover jet shaped like Perry- tell her, Ferb!"

Ferb doesn't match Phineas' enthusiasm. In fact, at the moment, he's sick to death of it. He prepares to launch into the explanation he's been trying all day to give. "Actually, I-"

"Wait a second," Linda interrupts, eyeing the boys with suspicion. "Why are you two soaking wet?"

The interruption is just too much for Ferb. He doesn't even process the question, just lets out a harsh shout of frustration. Phineas recoils - Ferb almost never shouts. "I give UP!" Ferb yells, his voice shaking on the last syllable, and before either of his surprised family members can respond, he turns around and storms off, his destination betrayed by the distinct clunking rhythm of stairs being stomped on too hard and the sound of a door slamming upstairs.

For a moment, the kitchen is silent. Linda recovers before Phineas does, her eyes narrowing in disapproval. "Young man, that is not how we talk to each other in this house!" she calls, setting the pie tin and her oven mitts down on the kitchen counter and following Ferb's path to his room. Before she can make it to the doorway, though, her progress is halted.

"Mom, wait!" Phineas pleads. He's finally caught onto what's been going on all day, and although he's still only half processed it, he knows he doesn't want Ferb to be in trouble for it. He frantically tugs on Linda's arm to draw her attention. Once he's sure that she's stopped, he withdraws his hand (he's still wet, after all, he doesn't want to make her uncomfortable), but sidesteps around her to put his tiny body firmly between her and the doorway to the living room. "Mom, please don't be mad at Ferb, it- it's not his fault! I'm sure he didn't mean anything by it, he's just..." Phineas' voice trails off briefly, but he forces it back into action, complete with the most serious expression he can manage. "If you're gonna be mad at either of us, it should be me, okay?"

At first, Linda returns Phineas' gaze with suspicion, then her face softens with realisation. She crouches down to her son's eye level, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Phineas, did something else happen today?" she asks, the anger gone from her voice.

Phineas hesitates, dropping eye contact again. He's almost certain about the cause of Ferb's outburst, and he can't help but mentally beat himself up for it to a degree. "Well, Ferb's been trying to tell me something all day, but he kept getting interrupted by our spy mission, and I guess it must have been really frustrating because he hates being interrupted but I didn't realise and-" he pauses to breathe, and shudders as he inhales as if on the verge of tears - "and I should have asked at some point but I just kept getting distracted and I didn't even realise how upset it was making him but-"

"Phineas," Linda says gently, and he gladly accepts the invitation to cut his rambling short. His breathing is shaky, but he doesn't cry just yet, even though his emotional state has nosedived in barely a minute. After giving him a moment to snap back into focus, Linda continues. "Phineas, honey, it sounds like this has just been a misunderstanding. On my end, too," she adds, regretting having snapped at Ferb earlier. Phineas nods with a nondescript mumble of agreement. Although he still obviously isn't looking, Linda gives him a reassuring smile anyway, accompanied by a gentle squeeze of his shoulder. "Thank you for telling the truth, sweetheart," she praises him.

"Mmh," Phineas mumbles, tugging at his shirt collar. He tends to fiddle with his shirt when he's nervous or overexcited. It doesn't hold a candle to bouncing his leg or flapping his hands, as far as stimming goes, but it's a lot easier to do while someone is touching you. "I just should've realised what was up earlier, then he probably wouldn't have freaked out..."

He finally glances up again, and the look his mom is giving him tells him that he should drop the argument, so he stops. Linda ruffles his hair affectionately, leaning forward to reach all the way behind Phineas' oddly-shaped head, and flinches at the unpleasant reminder of how waterlogged he still is. She stands up, flicking her hand dry. "I'm sure he knows you didn't mean to hurt his feelings," she reassures Phineas. "Why don't you dry yourself off and then go talk to him? Which reminds me," Linda motions towards the puddles tracked all over the kitchen floor, "why are you two so wet?"

"Oh, we fell in Isabella's pool," Phineas answers matter-of-factly. He isn't quite back to his usual blindingly sunny disposition, but the panicky tremble in his voice has at least disappeared.

Linda smiles, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. "Well, that I believe," she says. She'd tactfully decided not to comment on whatever that secret spy headquarters spiel was that Phineas had been getting worked up over, but she suspects his latest imaginary game took the boys to Isabella's backyard and ended up having some real-life consequences. "Oh, hi, Perry," she adds, as the platypus in question waddles into the kitchen.

Perry responds with his familiar chatter. Phineas leans down to pet Perry on the head. "At least you've had a stress-free day, huh," he says, then leaves for the bathroom. Perry stares at him blankly.

---

Ferb is having a meltdown.

He knows what this is, of course. He reads every textbook and blog post on the subject he can find, just in case it helps him make some more sense of himself. If he misses one, Phineas will no doubt have found and memorised it himself for the same reason, and will gladly rattle off anything new. Knowing why there's a raging storm beating at the inside of his head, however, is entirely different from quelling it. By the time he reaches his bedroom, he's trembling so violently that he can barely stand. He stumbles to his bed, pushing his hands down into the mattress to keep himself on his feet.

It's like feeling every feeling from every second of the day all in the same moment, and it hurts. So much is happening in his head that he can't even isolate a single thought, let alone process what it means. Is he angry? That'd make sense, sure, but his mental state isn't exactly conducive to deductive reasoning at the moment. Is he sad? Scared? Something else entirely?? He can't tell what emotion or mixture thereof it is, only that it's hurting his head, and he wants to get it out but he doesn't know how. He's struggling to breathe now, his arms shaking with the effort of keeping his body supported, and as he draws in a desperate shuddering breath Ferb feels something wet in his eye and then on his face, and he remembers that his entire body is wet and he hates it. It's cold, and his hair is sticking to his face and uncomfortably close to his eyes, and his clothes cling to his body oppressively and he wants to tear them off and stop feeling everything. Instead of doing that, he forces himself to breathe in again and looks around the room frantically, hoping to find something other than absolutely everything to concentrate on.

His eyes land on Phineas' bed, and although his vision is blurring as the panicky tears pour down his face, he recognises the shape instantly. Is he mad at Phineas? Should he be? He should be, right? If Phineas had just stopped to listen to him for once, he wouldn't be here with the world ending inside his brain. Another violent wave of emotion sends a shock through his whole body, and Ferb is still in no state to identify it, but he gets the message. He doesn't want to be angry. Not at Phineas. In fact, he doesn't want to feel anything he's feeling at the moment. Not the turbulent assault of everything inside his head, not the hammering rhythm of his heart trying to beat its way out of his chest, not every tiny thing that touches his skin or the light from outside that still feels blinding through the curtains or the muffled sounds of conversation downstairs that he doesn't have room in his brain to translate into anything but more noise.

Sensory overload is another term Ferb knows, and it's another one that doesn't really help to know in the moment. The feeling of anxiety that's been growing in his chest since that morning finally becomes too much for his body to handle, and he collapses on his bed, weakly gripping the blanket for support. Burying his face in his covers blocks out most of the sunlight, at least, but it doesn't significantly improve his mood. He shivers, partly from cold thanks to still being uncomfortably wet, partly from the sobs making his whole body convulse. (When did those start? He doesn't remember.) He uses the last of his physical strength to pull himself fully onto his bed and curl into himself, trying desperately to calm himself down.

...

It's not working. Why isn't it working?? It's as if every effort to steady his breathing just makes him cry harder, every attempt at a calming thought being shattered into a thousand anxious ones by the merciless torrent of everything whirling around in his mind. Ferb is suddenly hyper-aware of how empty the room around him is, and it makes him feel helpless. It's the first feeling he's managed to connect a name to with absolute certainty this whole time, and it's terrifying.

If he was making any noise before in his attempts to control his breathing, he's stopped now. No sound escapes him as he lies in place, too preoccupied with the overwhelming barrage of thoughts in his brain to move. More than anything, Ferb wants his brain to just shut off. Everything in his mind blends into a horrible white noise that won't stop, threatening to drown him in static.

Through the raging mental cyclone, he just barely hears the knock at the door.

Phineas waits a moment before entering his room. He wants to make sure Ferb has time to process that he's here. A few seconds pass, then he opens the door slowly so that it doesn't make any sound. A stab of guilt hits him when he sees Ferb curled up on his bed, visibly distressed. He's facing the opposite wall, but the way he shudders as he breathes makes it obvious that he's crying. Phineas feels his heart sink. He'd really hoped it wouldn't be this bad.

"Hey," he says softly. Ferb grips himself tighter. Just a minute ago, Phineas would have been the last person he wanted to see, but now his desperation for comfort outweighs any lingering hints of animosity. He doesn't object to his brother's presence, so Phineas gently closes the door and walks over to his side of the room. He sits on the bed, watching Ferb to see if he reacts negatively to the shift in weight distribution, and tenses up slightly at how damp the blanket is. Of course, Ferb wouldn't have stopped to dry off on his way up here. A closer look confirms that while a lot of the water on his body has run off and soaked into his bed, Ferb is still almost as wet as he was when he arrived home. Phineas frowns - that can't be comfortable, and it's probably making him feel even worse. "Are you okay?" he asks.

Ferb curls into himself even more instead of asking. The question is so frustratingly rhetorical that he almost reconsiders the possibility of being angry, but the idea still scares him, so the feeling passes. Fortunately, Phineas understands the unspoken 'obviously not' with no further input, and continues to talk. "I'm really sorry about today," he begins. "I know you don't like being interrupted, and I should've realised that it was making you feel bad but I just wasn't paying enough attention and- and I'm sorry, because it's kinda my fault you got so upset," he apologises, not realising that he's holding back tears until he stops to breathe. He wills himself not to cry. He's here to try and make Ferb feel better, not guilt him into forgiveness.

It takes a second or two for Ferb to process what Phineas is saying. It's a struggle to drag the words through the confusing whirlwind of everything still rampaging through his head. Eventually, after a great deal of mental effort, he shakes his head in response. Perhaps he was angry before, he still can't tell, but he definitely isn't now. He can't manage anything beyond the simple gesture, but it's not the first time he's been utterly uncommunicative, so Phineas understands the meaning as well as he needs to: it's not your fault.

"Th-thanks," he stutters, although Ferb's acceptance does little to settle the crushing feeling of responsibility. "Next time you can speak I'll let you tell me whatever it is you needed to, okay? I promise." He smiles a little. "No more secret agent business to interrupt you."

The last sentence sure prompts a reaction from Ferb - he rolls over so that his face is entirely buried in the blanket and makes a frustrated noise without opening his mouth, his body shaking with some mixture of anger and physical strain. Phineas inhales sharply and recoils, no more prepared for an audible outburst from Ferb than the first time. "Hey, what's wrong?" he asks, already speed-testing possible answers in his head. "Did you not have fun today? Of- of course you didn't, that's why you're upset, but I thought you did a great job on the spy mission! It was really cool." He's trying to be reassuring, but Ferb just shakes harder, seemingly becoming more aggravated rather than less.

Phineas tilts his head in confusion. "Ferb? Ferb, it's okay, I-I'm sorry. Did... did it not go the way you planned?" he guesses, searching increasingly frantically for any change in Ferb's body language. "Hmm... oh, were you not finished building it yet?" He thinks back to Ferb's numerous attempts at speaking to him throughout the day, hoping that he'll find some clue that makes everything fall into place - and something clicks in his brain. He deflates a little at how painfully obvious the realisation seems in retrospect, with a soft "Oh." Sighing at his own ignorance, he directs his voice to Ferb again as he says, "You didn't actually build all that, did you?"

Ferb sits up slowly and turns to Phineas with his signature deadpan glare, the silent, biting sarcasm undermined significantly by the tears still falling from his eyes. Phineas hums concernedly. "Is that what you were trying to tell me?" he asks. Ferb gets partway through rolling his eyes before giving up and returning to the fetal position.

Phineas sighs sadly. He hates seeing his brother cry. There's nothing he wants to do more than pull him into the tightest hug he can manage, but he knows Ferb won't appreciate being touched in this state, so he opts to fiddle with his shirt again to keep his hands busy. "Who do you think did build that stuff?" he asks. Ferb doesn't care. On any other day, a secret spy lair being hidden under his house would be cause for immeasurable excitement, but after the day's events he's thoroughly sick of thinking about the subject. Phineas picks up on Ferb's antipathy towards the question and, sensing that it might be a sore topic for some time, decides not to bring it up again for a while. He'll satisfy his curiosity sometime when it doesn't come at the expense of Ferb's comfort.

An uncomfortable silence falls over the boys. It's broken when Ferb suddenly sniffles loud enough to make Phineas jump, sits up again, and halfheartedly tries to wipe the tears from his face. "Oh geez, hold on," Phineas says, leaning over to rummage through his short pockets. He eventually pulls out a wad of tissues, somehow unaffected by the earlier impromptu dive into Isabella's pool. He offers them with a gentle "here you go" to Ferb, who takes a few silently and scrubs at his eyes.

While he still doesn't feel good by any stretch of the definition, Ferb at least doesn't feel completely awful anymore. What was once a violent hurricane in his mind has receded enough that he can focus on the world around him without breaking down, at least for the time being, and he's left feeling just drained. He balls up his handful of tissues and tosses them at the bin under his desk. The ball makes it to Phineas' leg before unceremoniously bouncing to a stop. Phineas picks it up and throws it the rest of the way to the trash, standing up to do so.

Rather than sit down again, he kneels down and pulls out one of the drawers conveniently built into the bed. Ferb watches inquisitively, still too out of it to immediately catch onto what's happening. Phineas rummages a little before finally pulling out a pair of pyjamas, suggesting, "You should dry off and change your clothes." He pauses to think. "Can you make it downstairs to the bathroom by yourself?" he asks. At any other time, it would be a silly question, but Ferb is always exhausted after a meltdown. The visible effort it's taking him just to stay upright isn't lost on Phineas. Ferb ponders the question, then gives a tentative nod. He's definitely shaky, but he really wants to change into something dry.

"Great!" Phineas smiles encouragingly. "Should I bring the usual stuff to the living room? Your bed's probably not gonna feel comfortable until it dries out." Ferb glances down at the unmistakable damp silhouette of where he had been lying earlier and nods again, more confidently. He slowly gets to his feet, first pushing against his bed for support, then grasping the hand Phineas offers him. He lets go once he's certain he's regained his balance, and only then does Phineas hand him his pyjamas. "I'll come meet you downstairs, okay?" Phineas says. Then, pulling at the bottom of his shirt, which is still a bit soggy despite his best efforts to towel it off, he adds, "I should probably change into something dry as well."

---

Ferb rubs his eyes as he comes out of the bathroom, his drenched clothes swapped out for his much more comfortable pyjamas. He's stopped crying, it seems, but he's still feeling sensitive enough that the light from outside bothers him. He's relieved to discover that it's much darker in the living room - Phineas must have been here already. The curtains are drawn so that the lamp on the end table is the only light source in the room, softly illuminating its surroundings with a pleasant warm glow. He doesn't have the energy to analyse the entire room, even in these far more bearable conditions, but his attention is drawn to his favourite weighted blanket folded neatly on the couch. He sits down and drags the blanket over him, struggling a bit with the weight, but relaxing once he feels its reassuring pressure on his legs.

It's as he's settling into his position on the couch that Phineas enters with an "Oh, there you are, Ferb!". Perry is firmly but comfortably wedged under one of his arms, like a fuzzy teal football or loaf of bread, and seems altogether unbothered by his position. Ferb gasps quietly at the sight of Perry, his eyes brightening momentarily, and reaches out for him with various soft noises of urgency. Phineas wastes no time in setting Perry down next to Ferb, and the platypus reacts with a gentle, almost soothing chatter. Ferb instinctively mimicks the sound under his breath, and Perry responds with a nearly identical noise. Ferb echoes it again, slightly louder this time, and his face lights up with a weak smile, the first one he's managed all day.

Taking this as a sign of progress, Phineas sighs with relief as he sits on the sofa. He makes sure to maintain a respectful distance from Ferb, who's running a hand through Perry's fur as they echo the same low growling noise back at each other. (It pains Phineas not to join in, but he senses the two have gotten themselves into a groove that would be rude to interrupt.) Ferb's smile fades almost as soon as it appears, but he seems much more relaxed after the change in clothes and scenery. His hair is sticking up in every direction from being towelled dry, and Phineas stifles a laugh at how silly it looks. The back-and-forth chattering eventually dies down, and it's only then that Phineas continues. "Mom's gonna make you some tea, and she says if you aren't feeling better by dinner you can eat in here if you want," he says. Ferb turns to him and raises a thumbs-up briefly before returning his hand and focus to Perry.

Phineas quietly watches his brother for a moment before speaking again. "Do you want me to stay?" he asks. Exactly how sociable Ferb is while he's coming out of a meltdown varies. He almost invariably needs some time on his own to mentally reset, but sometimes it helps if someone he trusts is there to reassure him for a while first. In Phineas' experience, asking is always the best way to tell.

Ferb hesitates for a second, then surprises both of them with his answer, which is to turn and collapse into Phineas' lap with one arm hooked over his legs in a sort of pseudo-hug. Phineas tenses up, not sure how to react. He cautiously puts an arm around Ferb, in a comforting gesture that doesn't fully subject him to the overwhelming sensory experience of a true hug. Ferb doesn't fight it, just repositions himself so that he's lying down with Phineas as a makeshift pillow and sinks further into the gentle embrace. Phineas laughs softly. "Okay, I guess you do."

This is nice, Ferb thinks. Definitely an improvement over violently sobbing alone in his room. Perry must be feeling relaxed too, because he climbs onto Ferb's stomach, circles a few times, lets out one more chatter, then flops down and goes to sleep, purring gently. Phineas giggles at the platypus' behaviour, and Ferb's shoulders shake in silent laughter - his blanket absorbs enough of the sensation that it just tickles. Watching Perry doze off reminds him that he's still exhausted, despite the positive change in environment, and his attempt to stifle a yawn fails. He's still on high alert, and he knows he won't be sleeping for longer than a few minutes until the emotional clutter completely drains from his mind. With that said, both the blanket and Perry weighing down on him make for a pretty cosy combination, and he finds himself fighting to keep his eyes open. Maybe just a moment of rest will be good for him.

Before he knows it, his eyes are closed, and he's powerless to prevent himself from drifting off. Phineas accepts his new career as a pillow without comment, simply adjusting his right hand so that both his arms are positioned protectively around his brother. Being trapped in place for the time being doesn't worry him. Ferb won't mind being stirred awake when their mom arrives with his tea, and until then Phineas can easily occupy himself with thoughts of what to do tomorrow. Besides, he can subject himself to a few minutes of quiet if that's what Ferb needs. What kind of a brother would he be if he couldn't, right?

Ferb half-consciously brings a hand to Phineas' wrist, as if it'll float off if he isn't holding on. He can feel his brain shutting down, and he welcomes the change. The last thing he's aware of before his consciousness finally leaves him in peace for a moment is the sound of Phineas' voice, promising him, "You're gonna be okay."

[double--cross-d]

As is fair exchange, I feel like I should make my own current Wick headcannon page for @plummyplums (holy crap they did accidentally delete their old blog)

In general

All died around the same time frame

They get more decayed depending on how pissed they are (no way out appearances anyone?)

Mary and John were highly abusive, there was nothing supernatural, But the priest didn't help. Mary was killed by the Ghost Tom immediately after she buried Caleb alive, but he left the body in the charred house so no one knew.

Every ghost is part of the Tom Protection Squad™️

The order of the shelf items were the order they died.

Twin general

Both had autism, Tim is higher functioning than Tom

Both were 10

Both died on the same night.

Their father kicked them out into the woods when they were 8 for a year. After he died their mom finally let them back inside, but was still neglectful of them

Due to how cold the woods got at night, the two got in the habit of cuddling each other in order to stay warm, it was purely platonic, don't worry.

This carried to inside because their mom never got them any blankets (though Caleb gave them several of his)

Lillian and Caleb thought it was fucked up how their parents treated the two and did everything they could to help

Tim

Died in the house fire, attempting to keep the already dead corpse of Tom company.

Stims usually include whittling and basically any woodwork.

Can and will stab a man for his brother.

Was the younger twin, but always threated people by saying he was the older twin.

The first one who took a liking to Sam, whenever they found something, he'd be the one to take it back to the shed.

Is surprisingly the less violent twin, but not by much.

Mom fully convinced him that he was a demon, believes that he never died in the fire, just managed to fall asleep in the flames

His face is coved in bandages under the mask due to it being heavily burned.

Tom

Died from polio before the fire started in his twin's arms.

The rattle is a big comfort object. The only person allowed to handle it is Tim. Sam's position on the matter is... questionable at best.

Nonverbal to the point that's he's practically mute.

When Sam's They/It ass came along, Tom was full on estatic that there weren't limitations on pronouns. He decided that he was one of those He/They's we keep hearing about

He was terrified that his mom was right about him being a demon. The first thing he did when he woke up after dying was jump of the bridge because, 'oh shit I am a demon', which did nothing but break more bones.

Tim quickly assured them that he was the only demon of the family, not Tom

The leg brace helps him walk better than not.

The more violent twin. You're human? You look at him? You hurt Tim? You fucking die, no questions asked.

Really likes being carried. Sam is the only one tall enough to do this, though Benny and Tim have both tried.

Caleb

Died by being buried alive by his mother, thinking that he had died in the fire.

Full on feral.

Seriously, he can't even talk that well, if he even can.

Doesn't even know the concept of gender, only hunt.

Has killed 3 moose and will kill another.

When he's not digging he's either killing something, chasing something on all fours, or chilling with Sam.

Oh yeah, Sam's his favorite person. You can tell from the fact that he not only uses them as a pillow, but they can hold him without their wrists being depleted.

He still chews on their legs

Was the one behind the camp being 'vacated'. He literally ate everyone there and fell asleep just as morning hit.

When he was alive he has ADHD, but was hella good at masking because his twin brother's got treated awfully for acting like your average autistic child.

His stims were running around, chewing on things, and crocheting.

No one questioned the fact that he liked to crochet, as it was productive and really good. He usually just did blankets but occasionally made clothes and toys for Lillian

Due to the fact he made so many blankets his bed was just a mound of blanket and they were often gifted to the rest of the family, especially the twins.

Had anorexia. Rarely ate, and mostly gave the food to the twins (out of both concern and I'm not eating this)

This is part of the reason that, in death, he will eat anything that he can get his hands on

Was bone thin when Benny got him and Lillian out of the fire and he had suffered several nasty burns, that's how his mom thought he died.

Lillian

Died by dropping her plush in the well and going after it

Loves bunnies so much

Tried her best to help her twin brothers, which mainly included sneaking food out to them

Really scared of her father, even though he died when she was 4.

Thought that Tom fell down the well before her

Enjoys giving hugs

Really Likes when Sam does her hair

Benny

Died from hypothermia in his sleep.

A less abusive apparition of his mother when awake. Caring towards his siblings, but highly cautious around the twins.

Had issues referring to Sam correctly, until they gave him the advice, 'Just refer to me like I'm a swarm of bees'

It actually worked

Dyslexic

Almost always sleeping because he died in his sleep

Sam

Fell on an axe at the beginning of hour 5 and didn't notice they were dying of blood loss until they blacked out, only to wake up on the bus and see their name.

Another abusive dad! This one actually was murdered by Tim somehow and nobody noticed but Sam.

Was actually rescued at 5 AM by the police, but, again, bled to death

A They/It Nonbinary, none of the kids but Benny had any issue referring to them by correct pronouns, and even then, Benny had a lot of help.

The Weaver kids just adopted them as an older sibling. They had no say in the matter.

When Duncan and co. Got out of jail and continued their shitty ways, they full on killed them all, even the next to be player

Loves their new family, even if they're all a little dead.

Surprised that Caleb was the one to get most attached, but then remembered that he killed a moose that was about to attack them, gave them some of the flesh to eat, and then just fell asleep on them.

Was in a house fire a few weeks before the game took place. Half of their face and their right hand are heavily burned.

Looks blind, but is only blind in one eye. The other doesn't fair much better though.

Despite getting top surgery, they're still aiming for confusion among the victims

Autism, and doesn't really speak too much because frequent nonverbal episodes