#but its not like i can put a bandaid on something internal lmao

[mamoritxi]

down to 16 drafts and with that i will be gaming a little more, since i am feeling a little down.

[foolgobi65]

lol i didnt want to hijack @oldshrewsburyian 's excellent posts about jodhaa/akbar in a campus AU so im just making a post of my own

basically i straight up despise business dept snakes so while i do think she's correct that jalal would be a good match for that dept i think i'd either put him in the econ or pol sci departments, maybe even international relations? pol sci and IR especially appeal to me as extremely problematic academic spaces where its possible for professors to flit between the academy and the private/public sphere with relative ease. i think of jalal as some rising star in these departments, maybe even developmental economics where he can feel like he's doing good work but when you look deeper these solutions he's advocating are bandaids at best or predatory schemes to force privatization in exchange for debt-relief. (i also think that the pol sci dept at my school is the rotting abscess of our humanities/social science community to theres that too.) the other thing he could be involved in is security either national or global which is also a dicey field lol. i pull more from the movie where he's less ruthless and more naive i think, so i see him as just born into a "political" family, maybe even something where his parents were very important but had to leave so he's still brought up in exile. he doesnt really go "back" but instead devotes himself to being an academic focused on the region trying to figure out how to "pull people out of poverty" via global investment or w/e. he's charming, good looking, charismatic, so he's on a lot of boards and does global talks despite being relatively early career in comparison to peers -- not to mention his family privilege that could give him some name recognition!

maybe they're both new hires, though jalal has a guaranteed tenure path while jodhaa is on a precarious 3 year contract after which she can apply for a permanent job that she may or may not get (the ridiculous and exploitative structure at my university rip.) jodhaa can be either a specialist in premodern devotional literature (a professor i love works on braj basha and punjabi so im kind of pulling from her lol) or she can be one of those super cool interdisciplinary scholars whose home is in the rlg dept. either way she'd obviously be teaching broader survey courses as well as her upper level seminars. they meet at one of those ridiculous mixers for new hires and jodhaa who has a much more radical analytic than jalal expects to hate him on sight but realizes that he's charming. stupid and probably dangerous bc of it, but charming nontheless. jalal is just smitten on sight which is hilarious bc everyone is expecting him to marry a similarly powerful, intelligent, worldly woman and instead he's head over heels with this grumpy academic who works with texts and rails against the neoliberal academy on twitter where her profile pic is her brother's cat. (my professor is way too nice to be grumpy but she's a textualist who is radical on twitter its great and i love her sm lol)

jodhaa and jalal can be kind of cross appointed to south asian studies as well and maybe in their second year on staff they have to jointly teach the intro course for that? idk how plausible that is, but i could see jalal thinking it's a great opportunity to meet and inspire new students so he asks for it, and jodhaa as a prof that's gotten rave reviews from her year of teaching is volunteered to do it with him. there's friction ofc but slowly they learn more about each other, their backgrounds and where they're coming from. there's a blowout at the very end of the summer (which they mostly pass together, each working on their manuscripts and convincing the other to take breaks from working at the local cafe in order to walk to the local park) and jodhaa begins her application process for a tenure track position bc her 3 years are up. they basically don't talk for a hot minute and throughout this time jalal does A LOT of reading until, over time, he comes to his revelations about how ridiculous and bootlicking his discipline is and finally sheds the shackles of the Man and starts cyberbullying people on twitter. its great!

i agree that jalal has a cat which for a while is probably his greatest appeal to jodhaa who for a hot minute thinks that he's everything wrong with academia lmao. maham anga could be the crotchety head of the south asian studies dept (powerful but not necessarily either of their direct boss bc their primary appointments are with other depts.) jalal's dad is a politician who died in exile, his mom an international philanthropist/socialite? jodhaa comes from a middle class bookish family in india, her cousin-brother sujamal is either a lawyer or a trade union activist (or both) which is how she comes by her politics. sujamal is an honorable passionate person and i didnt want them to be royalty and i didnt want him to be part of the army so this is my next best solution lol. i really dont know how the plot really comes into play, but i do love academia aus lmao!

[gothicmisa]

drama L & ocd

thank you @matsvda​ for helping me with these (big fat heart emoji)

trigger warning for this post: as context for the ocd headcanons i’ll be talking a little bit about a @51161121​‘s childhood headcanon for L which includes childhood neglect, eventual abandonment, and hospital trauma. further down the line, tw for unsanitary behaviors, ocd compulsions & intrusive thoughts, skin picking and hairpulling (dermatillomania and trichotillomania), and magical thinking i.e “if i avoid doing this, then i will have good luck/bad luck” (same vein as like. “reblog this post or x will happen” kind of thinking)

the childhood headcanons wrt L’s mom and his homelessness are credited to @51161121 lmao it’s their headcanon im just living in it--

L's mom was rlly neglectful and not. a good mom. she eventually abandons him in their trailer home when he's six years old and leaves him a little cash but that's it.

he ends up living on the streets. he doesn't wear socks or shoes bc they overstimulate him and he Hates Them, and because of this he accidentally steps in shattered glass. the infection is so bad he ends up in the hospital. L Hates The Hospital To This Day bc he fought the staff so much they put him in a CHILD RESTRAINT SLEEPING BAG

i think this experience could have lead to like. (L's internal thought process) "i never want to go to the hospital ever again."--> "i will never get sick or hurt again." --> "to keep myself from getting sick or hurt i will  do things to avoid getting sick" --> germaphobia --> contamination ocd compulsions.

i think also, relating to how disgusting his childhood home would have been, he might feel a need to keep things a certain way (with watari's assistance) bc like the idea of living like that again makes him crawl the walls so. neatness compulsions and feeling like everything needs to be his definition of  "right" even though they might not make sense to other people i.e: he doesn’t make the bed because its fine all rumpled up, but if you put your shoes in the wrong place he gets >:(

a list of L's compulsions and other germaphobia-related eccentricities

doesn't like brushing his hair with a brush because he hates that dead hair and skin remain on the brush from the last time someone brushed their hair with it

toothbrush has to have a protective little cover on the head of it or its contaminated and he will get sick if he uses it 

all of the doors in countermeasures can be opened hands-free if he chooses

the lighting is also hands-free; he controls the dimness and brightness from his computer

he doesn't clean his keyboard because "my hands are always clean" so it's probably actually due to be cleaned but if watari cleans it L will throw a fit

we already knew this but he can't stand wearing filthy clothes. he changes his shirt approximately three times a day but usually more than that. pants he can handle wearing for a little longer. he won't wear socks. 

he wears a sick mask every time he goes out of the hotel.

he compulsively washes and sanitizes his hands. he scrubs at his hands with scentless exfoliants every time he washes them. on top of the excessive washing, he is constantly using hand sanitizer. the smell of normal hand sanitizer repulses him and reminds him of the disinfectant smell of a hospital so he uses candy apple scented hand sanitizer. it's green. although if he's really anxious about washing his hands that day, he'll rinse his hands in hydrogen peroxide and lemon juice. awful

because of the hand washing and the sanitizing and the exfoliating and the Rinsing With Chemicals and Acid compulsions, his hands have extremely dry skin. (L's internal monologue) dry skin = dead skin. dead skin is unsanitary. i have to pick my skin now

because of the dry skin and the skin picking on his hands, they tend to be raw and hurt all the time. he hates bandaids because they leave a sticky residue and that overstimulates him (and it also makes dirt stick and collect on his hands and he'd literally rather die than let that happen) but he DOES love the neosporin that has the pain relief additives. he goes through a tube of it per week. its clean.

to combat the washing and picking, watari will insist on putting lotion on L's hands and then making him wear cotton gloves. L resists at first until he realizes this is Genius-- 1, he doesn't have to wash his hands if he never touches anything with his bare skin and 2, putting on lotion and then putting on the gloves is a little bad sensory-wise, but it ensures that his skin gets rehydrated and moisturized which means no more pain and no more picking

the only compromise L makes with the cotton gloves is that it has to be a fresh pair every time. he will not wear the same gloves once he's used them once. 

he believes in luck and his intrusive thoughts make him. do things that will apparently "bring him good luck" or "avoid giving him bad luck" but these are private thoughts of his so no one can rlly. prove to him they don't work or argue with him (magical thinking)

L is autistic and counts his steps whether or not he’s enacting compulsions. he loves the number 7 because it’s lucky and often just recites 1234567 in his head, but it turns into a compulsion when he gets anxious. “if i dont count out loud RIGHT now something bad is going to happen to me/my brothers/watari”

of course, once L starts. interacting w people that don't just stay in one building all the time, germs and stuff naturally will be present when these ppl come in to work w him. L makes watari spray them w disinfectant.

if he Does get sick, he would rather die than admit it, because if he admits he got sick he thinks he will be forced to go to the hospital. watari has explained to him a thousand times that he would never force L to go to the hospital over a flu, cold, or stomach virus, but L doesn't believe him.

L also resists taking medicine when he isn't feeling well because "how long have these been sitting in the bottle with the safety seal removed? they've been exposed to the air. that's disgusting". a lil headcanon of mine about his childhood would be that his mom never restocked the medicine cabinet so everything was always expired. L will refuse to take medicine until it expires and then joyfully throw them out.

L's compulsion to pick his hands turned into a compulsion to pick his face and whoops! now he has dermatillomania and trichotillomania. 

he has a special face washing routine. he uses special products for his skin type (he has an oily T-zone but his cheeks are dry) and if he doesn't do this routine every morning and night, he picks his face. and his eyebrows. watari knows if L is failing to practice self care re:hygiene because L will have no eyebrows and red welts on his face from picking.  

L: am i stacking my food right now because i think its neat (autism) or because i have to (ocd)? we will never know