#again this doesn't have to be a thread

[trashcanwithsprinkles]

This might be a bit random but would you say you have any thoughts on Neurodivergent readings of Zhongli (more specifically autistic)? I was thinking about it in the latest chapter of JG amd even before then too. as an autistic person myself i feel he reads very heavily as such, especially when talking about his human mask and feeling like he doesn't need to force it as much with childe, and his issues with human expression in smiling etc. but I think it's then an interesting debate between that and the fact that, well, he's just not human. that all comes from a place of being an entirely different species, unevolved and unrelated to human brains and how they think and read social patterns, and I feel we don't really have any way of telling if ZL has any divergent tendencies among dragons right? and even then he's half, too, so that affects things.

anyway sorry for the ramble I was mainly wondering if you had any opinions on the matter, or if you intended the parallels I definitely see while reading your Zhongli! love your work as always <3333

i think i might've commented on this at some point but never directly, so here – i do have thoughts on the matter!

as you mentioned, it's difficult to tell with characters that aren't human, because you can't call something 'neurodivergent' if the bases for their neurotypical-ity are not the ones by which we measure this stuff. so, to me, ALL non-human characters are neurodivergent-coded. they may not be neurodivergent, technically speaking (like how you mentioned, maybe all dragons are just like zl), but to us, they read as such. so, coded. ultimately i do think there is merit in labeling them as neurodivergent because, even if they, again, technically aren't; we are going to run into problems if we attempt to treat them as neurotypical, so we might as well say yeah, neurodivergent. it is also kinda correct anyway – they do diverge from us. that's a fact. it's like saying dogs are colorblind. if all dogs see in the same range, then you can't say your dog in specific is colorblind (unless it actually is but that's beside the point); but compared to us, from our perspective, for what it matters to us and how that will translate into how we treat them then yes! dogs are colorblind! i think i mentioned it once in conjunction with characters like alhaitham. to me, zhongli is neurodivergent-coded, while alhaitham is neurodivergent straight-up. because (as far as we know) he's human, so his brain should, in theory, be like ours.

as for which flavor of neurodivergency zl is coded to have in specific i would agree with you on autism! but then again, i'm not an expert on these things, i don't know the exact ins and outs and the specific characteristics that constitute an autistic character – i just write them the way i perceive them, with the quirks i perceive them to have. not to get preachy but i think that's the better way to write characters in general, since that's how real people work, after all. people with autism aren't born fitting some parameters that will make them autistic – they're born with specific quirks that we then interpret as autism, and even then you don't necessarily get two people having the exact same experience with this. most of these terms are umbrella terms regardless as to how well-defined or how big or small the umbrella is.

so yeah!

[bogkeep]

unpacking update: everything is out of boxes and there's just a little bit left to put away, but due to my inability to locate two (2) decorative figurines i have entered a catatonic state of autistic distress

[marronje]

thoughts on Ochako's hero costume design

her character was clearly intended to be heavily astronaut-inspired. she loves astronomy, her quirk resembles open space, but the only thing that gives me vibes from her hero suit is the HELMET which wasn't even shown very often before they got rid of it entirely

and just imagine if her suit was really after an astronaut's, it'd give so much to her shape language, even more bubbly and round and more Uraraka, we deserve it guys!

but Hori decided that giving her a sexy look (gross, can we talk about sexualizing minors again?) was more important than making the design work better

[antisocialxconstruct]

I don't think I'll be able to do much more with this until the eyes and paw pads arrive BUT we love a progress comparison in this house

[taviokapudding]

My dad and I were chatting before bed when he said "damn shame Republicans hate Democrats too much because you almost saved the United Healthcare ceo"

And I stared at him in confusion until I remembered I convinced Democrats to write the active shooter alert system bill in 2022 & Republicans said no. Since my Twitter is gone, the thread of me @ everyone is gone. And when Trump got re-elected, I removed the video discussing the bill concept for public comments. It fully slipped my mind because I went from pulling teeth & being reluctantly patient to full on cussing, cursing, and hexing the government by the end of 2023.

I hope that Twitter DC staffer is having a good laugh- I bet their bosses are pissed wwwwww

I don't remember the exact wording I wrote to the White House when I cussed out Biden for funding war crimes (2023) & the bill itself (2022) but I did list consequences I foresaw that are happening now, so suck to suck if nobody listened & are on the receiving end of massive hexes

I guess my dad is right, the GOP technically killed Brian Thompson in 2022

[pynkhues]

I have a question about your overall thesis on motherhood and Loustat. You said the line “a wolf congratulated for not killing her pups line” was “definitely about motherhood”. As for your take on the final scene of Louis looking at a painting of a mother and daughter in a scene that’s very much about him coming to terms with his loss, as his daughter’s dress hangs in the background: “The maternal side there I can see, but I don't think it's as absolute as others, just personally.” Am I correct in thinking you believe the show suggests Lestat is more closely aligned with the role of mother than Louis in their family dynamic?

I mean, I'd argue that I don't have a thesis, anon. This isn't Tumblr University, I'm not writing dissertations, and you're certainly not peer reviewing me when you send asks like this that are pretty blatantly trying to goad me into arguing a point you want to rebut.

But no, I'll answer in good faith, and say that I think Claudia's mother is dead and that she has two fathers, and the desire in this fandom to ask 'well, which one is the mother' is just another way of asking a gay couple 'well, which one's the woman?' Neither of them are, and the fact that they don't fit into a heteronormative understanding of what a family is is, I would argue, literally the point of the unholy family.

When I talked about Lestat's line about being a wolf as being about motherhood, that - to me - is about connecting him to his past, and relating him back to his own mother, and I also think from the show's writers perspective, it's about Anne.

Lestat's mother in TVL is the one who relates child birth to Lestat killing the wolves, and it was Lestat killing the wolves that lead to his own death, as it's a part of why Magnus picks him. He is sitting on that stage now watching the death of his child, in the city he died in, in the city his mother did too. It makes sense to me that he would be thinking of his mother, who birthed five dead children, who lost two more through mob execution in the French Revolution, as his own daughter is executed. It makes sense to me that that would relate back to Gabrielle's major, arguably character-defining monologue from TVL where she talks about child birth as an act both violent and entirely isolating, so as to be like killing wolves alone in the woods, and it makes sense to me in that moment that Lestat would relate for the first time not to being the killer, but to being the thing that he hunted. It's death, violence, isolation, loneliness, birth, all things Anne relates to motherhood in TVL.

Which is to say it's thematic, not literal, because Anne - a woman, and the author of this female gothic series - was clearly interested in exploring death and motherhood as a theme, which makes sense as she herself is a mother who experienced the loss of a child. It's not about literally saying that Lestat is 'more closely aligned with the role of mother', it's a scene that - again, to me - feels like it's in conversation with the female gothic components of the books, with Anne, and with a formative experience in Lestat's life as he's on the cusp of experiencing a new one.

Regardless of that though, Lestat is Claudia's maker, but he's also his mother's maker, Louis', Nicki's, Antoinette's - it's not always a parental act. In fact, it's usually not for him, and I don't think it is for Louis who made Madeleine either. There is a blood bond there though between Lestat and Claudia that does not exist between Louis and Claudia. Does that make him her mother? I don't think so, no, but it does add a layer to their specific dynamic that Louis doesn't have with her because, again, he did not make her.

The scene with Louis and the painting and Claudia's dress at the end is a loving act, absolutely, and it's a scene that I adore, but it's also intrinsically tied to the painting of Paul, and the apartment with Armand (which inherently calls upon their fractured dynamic in Paris where Louis existed as Claudia's brother too), which to me, shifts the meaning away from motherhood specifically. Again, I can appreciate that other people read it as being maternal, and obviously I think Louis' her parent, not her brother, but in terms of the visual language of that sequence, I think it's a lot wider than some acknowledge.

So no! You are not correct in your thinking, anon. :-)

[doux-amer]

And look, I know I'm focusing on fun fun fun fun fun, but it helped because uh, the things that have come out about Yoon Suk-yeol's coup attempt are frightening and frankly more insane than you can even imagine.

(Just to keep the record straight, the bit about the DPRK uniforms is complicated because it hasn't been confirmed but hasn't been debunked yet either: x. We'll know for sure once the investigation starts.)

[missallanea-a]

thinking about Maria's resurrection verse again. thinking about her getting to finally live freely on earth again. thinking about her hiding her illness from everyone to keep from worrying them. thinking about her having to realize her family doesn't know she's there. that they've grown older without her. finding herself displaced from everything and everyone she knew. even the stars look different now.

[laugtherhyena]

@i-cant-stop-fandoming-help

Ngl she wouldn't react well at all, like, that's the baby she saw go through a miraculous recovery after being brough to the hospital at the brink of death. She would be absolutely distaught (even worse if she lears how she died), however, Beni is around and with her being a baby/toddler she'd put her focus on taking care of her, a mixture of a coping mechanism and trying to put her mind on something less soul crushing.

There would definitelly be moments where it gets too hard and she starts crying, but at least she has Hamato and Hikaru there to help her through it.

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Walking In Two Worlds & The Everlasting Road

YA sff set in the near future where an opensource augmented reality is commonly used like social media, and there’s also a completely virtual fantasy game version

follows an Anishinaabe girl who who’s the top player in the VR game, and is constantly fighting to keep her place against the misogynist neo-nazi group in second place

as well as her real life, dealing with being a shy and self-conscious teen growing up on the Rez, and her brother having cancer

and a Uyghur boy who’s moved to her community from China after finding acceptance in an online community (even when he doesn’t agree with their more extreme views) - but when he gets to know Bugz, he has to decide who truly deserves his loyalty

great mix of sff and culture, the future while also very real community traumas of the past (and present)

[bittcrsuite]

closed starter for @poetsprophecy ♡ based on this !

"they're getting bold." tyler spoke softly, just in case the kids were listening at the door — a habit of theirs she was trying to correct. "amber asked if i was your girlfriend today. not girl friend. girlfriend. when i said no, she threw a fit. it was ridiculous."

[quietlyblooms-gone]

going insane bc of lore's reply, and it's also made me think about how after the explosion in her lads verse, that " hand of fate " chiyo used to feel throughout her life is suddenly gone. she doesn't feel it trying to guide her anymore. why? bc chiyo isn't struggling against it anymore. her dreams and passion for art are the furthest things from her mind -- the life she thinks she should be leading and the desire to break free from her circumstances are the furthest things from her mind.

she's consumed by grief and her need for answers, so chiyo does what she always does in response to major stressors. she throws herself into her work. she fully commits to hunting wanderers and then to getting into the n109 zone, and that's exactly what fate wants. those actions will lead her to where she needs to be and the people she needs to meet. fate no longer pushes her along because chiyo is already pushing herself plenty and likely will not stop until she figures out what happened to josephine and caleb.

[seaweedstarshine]

—on the topic of psychotic Summers brothers, I only just caught up with six months of X-Men after stopping for six months the topic of Gabriel referring to the tags of my last X-Men post a month ago — but I was happy to see Scott's torture-induced psychosis didn't (definitively) turn out just to be that he'd calculated what others hadn't. Yes, the woman he'd accurately calculated would save him was Dr. Gregor, not Jean, but that doesn't change that he remained unsure if Jean was real (and thought she was alive) while the all-seeing Enigma knew on the contrary that Scott was delusional because Phoenix thus equally (an equivocation which casts further doubt of Scott's fiery visions ever being genuine, as Jean's dying mind had departed Scott well before Mother Righteous sacrificed Jean's dead fragmented self for Dominion, before Scott was tortured) Jean — were so utterly dead that Rachel and Hope had to cancel out death to reverse it. Yet Scott, hyper-vigilant traumatized autistic brain-damaged neurodivergent soldier that he is, seemingly accomplished all these strategic calculations while having a psychotic “break,” which is extremely in character for him—

[kaesaaurelia]

Listen, my boss definitely sucks, but his insistence on making tweaks to letters THAT ALREADY WENT OUT has given me a new appreciation for just getting my writing out there when I think it achieves what I wanted it to, rather than editing it until I'm too sick of it to ever want to look at it again.

[adamsvanrhijn]

another day another thought about how literally all they needed to do to make the maud plotline make sense. before even making it Better. is to simply have her not go to anybody's house other than aurora's