#just have fun. get horribly autistic. project maybe just a little. see what hurts you in a story! see what hurts others in a story! what is

[frostbite-the-bat]

go through horrors yourself. or learn about some Horrors

project on Character

give Characters story that they went through to friends. do they React in pain? good! make it worse.

then make it worse.

(voice like i am trying to sell something) and HERE'S how i made a server of people cry over spamton g spamton and some furry mask guy,

attention oc people how the fuck do you put your characters through the horrors.

im just looking at this fox and crying i cannot send them through the horrors

[chaotically-cas]

29 Things I Think Allistic People Need To Hear

From an autistic person

Not my usual content but I felt it needed to be said.

Saying “everyone is a little autistic” is really hurtful. Yes, everyone has their struggles but these struggles are far different for autistic people. Saying everyone experiences it is invalidating & harmful.

Being graded on eye contact & standing still is wrong. I’m pretty sure at one point or another we’ve had a project we were graded on & one of the grades was eye contact & not fidgeting. These things are extremely hard for autistic people & they are practically second nature. It’s like holding in a sneeze.

Stim & figget toys in schools. Of course fidget spinner’s & stim cubes can be bought & should be bought by anyone. If you want one, get one. But the way schools are banning them is crazy. They are very necessary for autistic people & it’s so much harder for them when schools ban their use.

QUITTTTT BABYING US!! We aren’t ‘uwu babies’. We are humans. We are perfectly capable of functioning without allistic people’s pity & looking down on us. We are our own people that don’t need a hand to hold in every damn situation. We aren’t cute because of it. 

Listen to autistic people. Everyone is all for advocating for people until that group of people want to advocate for themselves. So shut up & listen once & maybe you can learn something you didn’t know.

Creative writing in class is difficult. You don’t know how many bad grades I’ve gotten on because I can’t think of a good story out of my ass. It’s extremely hard for autistic people. Please give us a prompt it’s more helpful than you know.

Role playing in class. I think we’ve all had to do something where we research a famous person & have to assume their identity. This is again, so hard for autistic people. It’s hard enough for us to be ourselves. Most of us can’t understand these actives enough.

Slurs. Quit saying retard. It’s not an insult. It’s not funny. It’s offensive & every time you use it you’re hurting a disabled person & spreading harmful stereotypes. It’s not just a word. It’s not just a bad word. It’s a slur. Same as the f word or any other slur. Don’t use it.

People talking over us. No I dont mean just in conversations. Although that is another issue. I mean organizations like autism speaks that put words into autistic peoples mouths instead of letting them speak for themselves.

Stop making fun of our special interests. Whether you find anime cringey or think an adult loving Aladdin is childish just stop it. These things being extreme joy to us. They make us happy in a word that we don’t understand. So just leave us alone & let us be happy.

Don’t stare at us if we’re stimming. Especially in public. If you see me flapping my hands. Don’t stare. If you hear me humming quietly, don’t judge. These activities aren’t for your viewing pleasure. They’re for autistic people to regulate & express how they’re feeling.

Normalizing ableism. It’s so normalized. Whether it’s phrased like “suffers from autism” or how regularly ‘retard’ is used in classe; ableism is so often over looked especially by adults. There are no many micro aggressions they are just passed off as us not having a thick enough skin. When in reality it’s really damaging.

People first language. If you ever correct someone by saying “no, they’re a PERSON with autism. Not an autistic person”. Literally shut up. We’re autistic. We’re people. Being autistic doesn’t make us any less human so you don’t need to make it seem like it does. We’re still human no matter our disably. People don’t have to be reminded of this.

Using words like psychopath & sociopath. Calling autistic people these things just because you don’t understand us is disgusting. If you don’t understand these terms don’t use them. Just because we aren’t good at showing empathy in some cases doesn’t make us ‘psychopaths’.

Tone indicators. This is both the over use & not using them that’s an issue. Saying things like “/j /hj /sarcasm /srs /lh” all in one post defeats the whole damn purpose of them. & not using any at all especially when joking around or using sarcasm can lead to a lot of misunderstanding. It’s not that hard to use one or two at the end of a post. /srs

Picky eating. Literally stop making fun of autistic people for not liking a lot of foods or ordering the same thing at every restaurant. A lot of textures & flavors are very bothersome to autistic people. They can cause overstimulation or even panic. Just let us be. So I eat mac & cheese 4 times a week. I didn’t know it effected you so much.

“Ugh you’re so annoying you can’t ever get a joke”. No hearing that is what’s annoying. Tones are hard for us to understand so while most people pick up on it autistic people are more likely to read too much into it or take it seriously. It’s simple to use tone indicators in text or even to say “I’m joking”. It won’t make your joke less funny. It’ll just help us understand more.

Be specific if you want things from us. Don’t just say “hey I need a pencil”. Or “the dishwasher needs put away”. Most likely we’ll just be like, yeah, ok, and? Be specific please. Say things like “can I borrow a pencil?” or “can you undo the dishwasher?”.

Faces seeming to look weird. A lot of us having facial stims that can alter our faces. Whether it’s excessive blinking, eyebrow raising, or face scrunches. Don’t ask us what’s wrong with our face or what we are doing. For me, because of my facial stims & tics my eyes/eyebrows are permanently uneven. Don’t bring it up.

Classroom behavior charts are horrible. Autistic people don’t behave the same as allistic people. Simple as that. What they see as ok behavior, others don’t. & some times they don’t realize these behaviors will get them in trouble.

Police brutality. Especially in black or brown autistic people. It’s so common that people call the police on autistic people stimming in public because they are seen as dangerous. & when these autistic people can’t understand what’s going on or can’t make eye contact they are labeled as more suspicious. Especially black autistic people. Just look at Elijah McLean.

Feeling dumb. Especially in schools or other scholarly conversations. Some autistic people aren’t able to keep up or fully understand everything that’s being said or presented. Which leads to us feeling dumb. Give us time to process or aso questions please.

Feeling robotic. You’ve most likely heard autistic people being compared to robots at one point or another. Whether that’s for the impaired ability to establish empathy or something else it’s an extremely negative & hurtful stereotype. Especially in media.

Saying ‘I forgot’ is a valid excuse. There is so much going on in our heads. So much to process & remember. We forget things. Everyone forgets things. Especially autistic people. Please don’t yell at us for always forgetting to do the dishes. It’s not like we chose to forget.

The harmful effects of the vaccines cause autism jokes. Aside from the whole anti vaxers debate, perpetually the idea that we shouldn’t be vaccinated because it causes autism is disgusting. It’s treating autism like a disease. Like the person who has it isn’t worthy. Or that autism is so chronic it will ruin everything. It’s like people avoiding cheese burgers because it’s rumored they make you ginger. It’s preposterous. 

Yelling at autistic people for struggling to want to learn new concepts/concepts at all. This not only goes for in school but in just normal conversation. It’s hard for autistic people to grasp things they don’t have an interest in learning. So please don’t yell at us for not understanding everything about a band that we don’t care about, we would if we could. It might not seem like a big issue but it happens more than you’d think.

Intrusive thoughts. (Tw: rape mention & violence) Most of the time autistic people experience extreme spells of intrusive thoughts “omg he’s going to rape you image him raping you” or “stab yourself in the side right now” or much worse. & when autistic (and other) people try to talk about it they are labeled crazy or insane. It’s a normal occurrence to have these kinds of thoughts. We don’t want to. But they happen. That’s why they’re called intrusive.

Executive disfunction. This is basically when autistic people are views as lazy but we physically & mentally just can’t. Where tasks as seemingly simple as going to get a glass of water feels like a mountain to autistic people. It’s not that we are lazy. We physically & mentally can’t work up to it.

Class rank & graduation requirements are unfair. Autistic people socialize differently. It’s just a fact. Our brains work differently in classes & outside of it. We could be working our asses off to understand our English class book, but we get an F. Not to mention how most schools require community service hours to graduate. Yes community service is good but it can be very hard for autistic people.

Please feel free to add on but a lot of these are drawn from personal frustrations. Please listen to autistic & other disabled people more. All these also applies to those with ADHD/ADD or any other mental illness where the situations apply. You’re all valid & amazing.

I love you all. 💕

[comfortmarvelimagines]

When You Can’t Find the Quiet

ya can all thank my autistic ass for projecting onto this? i needed to finish this and it’s now almost 1am so i’ll post part 2 tomorrow lmao i know it sucks but like. i don’t have friends who Get It ya know? i figure peter n co. would try super hard to help sooooo 

It was a Bad Brain day from the second you woke up.

It didn’t start off horribly, on the level that made physical touch sting and laughter split your skull in two. That didn’t stop the repetition of your mom’s alarm clock in the next room from feeling like it was chipping away at your bones at 5am, as she got up to go swim laps at the community pool. New York was never quiet, and going back to sleep wasn’t an option, even though it wasn’t your choice to be up at such an ungodly hour. All of a sudden you were hot. Too hot. Suffocating. Throw-off-the-covers-and-stick-your-head-under-the-kitchen-sink kinda hot. And as you stood with your hair dripping, pyjama shirt soaked hours before you even had to think about the hustle of teenagers fighting to get to homeroom, you realised that it was just One of Those Days.

The bathroom in your apartment had an east-facing window. Which may have been an irrelevant fact to most, but on days like today it meant you could crack it open to let the steam out and shower completely in peace. No hard lights, no grating whir of the fan. A brief reprieve of soft light and floating before the world pressed play again. The only other sound besides the stream hitting the tiles were those your mother made, in another room, grabbing files before she left for work. Most days, you wouldn’t be in the same room for more than ten minutes at a time, and that suited you just fine- for the majority of instances, you could act normal, hold eye contact and try to remember what you knew about small talk for long enough to think you were ‘fine’.  Words weren’t gonna happen today, though, and you stood pressed against the bathroom door, listening for the click of the front door signalling that you wouldn’t have to force out a stuttered attempt at speech. Finally, she left and you could finish getting ready. Not stopping to think, you swept the textbooks from last night’s homework into your bag, swung it on your back and ran out the door. You might miss your train, but you’d only be late for homeroom.

You didn’t miss the train, if only for the fact that it was three minutes late and you’d speed-walked the whole way there. The perk of being so focussed on your feet on the concrete was that nothing else existed. Unfortunately, once the adrenaline of making the doors before they closed wore off, everything came back. Hard. That specific kind of warmth that comes from people standing too close. That one flickering light that you couldn’t directly see, but after a few minutes made you want to punch that fucking thing out so it would stop. The awful hot shock of touch when the person next to you fell into your arm as the train slowed to a stop in the tunnel, shuddering down your spine and making you want to crawl out of your skin. The tinny bass of too-loud music through someone’s airpods, someone talking on the phone, everyone breathing and shifting and rustling and the train breaks whining and-

Headphones. Should have headphones. You pulled your backpack around to your front, ripping open the zipper and rifling through the loose papers and the water bottle you forgot to fill before you left. Of course, that wasn’t the only thing you forgot. Fucking great. You haphazardly shoved everything back in your bag and pulled a fidget cube from your pocket, remembering that you’d left it in your hoodie from yesterday. Hands on each side. Thumbs on the switch. Focus. Click left. Click middle. Click right. Click middle. One, two three, four. Over and over and over and over until it was your stop.

You walked through the school gates head down, hoodie up, thumb running over the spinny metal ball of the fidget cube in your pocket, determined to just make it through the day and get back home to the quiet. Unsurprisingly, you were completely unaware of Ned and Peter running up behind you, completely oblivious to how loud they were being. “Hey y/n, how was your weekend? Peter and I were just planning to go see the new Star Wars movie at the cinema next week, do ya wanna come?”

“Yeah y/n it’ll be fun! We can get popcorn and soda and Skittles.”

“If you wanna come, my mom’s booking the tickets this weekend so we can get good seats. It’s gonna be AWES-”

“Shut it, nerds.” MJ was slouched against the peeling paint of her locker, two down from Peter’s. “You’re hurting them”.

At some point, your hands had made their way up to your ears. It wasn’t really Ned and Peter’s fault, but their voices just added an extra layer to the soupy mess of sounds echoing through Midtown Tech. It also didn’t help that the shoving and pushing of kids running through the corridor was prickling your skin, the thickness of your jumper doing little to help at this point. You twitched as someone grabbed the fabric near your elbow, tugging. “I know you don’t want to be touched right now but if you go inside with Peter, it’ll be quieter,” MJ spoke as softly as she could without being completely drowned out by yelling teens. Your eyes flickered over to Peter, the only sign to MJ that you’d processed what she said. Peter, having shoved most of his stuff in his locker and grabbed whatever textbooks he needed, fumbled to try and untangle his earphones.

“Here, try these. I know it’s not your headphones, but it might help if you focus on music so you we can get to the quiet?” You quickly took them from him and jammed them in your ears, plastering your hands back over the top. In all honesty, they didn’t do much and you couldn’t really tell what song was playing, but you were desperate to get any sort of relief from the barrage of input. You were grateful when Peter didn’t try and pull you through the crowd, instead opting to try and create a path for you to follow, and made sure you were seated up the back in a corner well before the bell rang.

The bell.

The bell that was right over your head.

Well shit.

The only way you could describe how it felt, was that every atom in your body was on fire. Out. Out. Get out. You didn’t remember when you started scratching at your arms, only that you needed to stop to open the door. Somewhere, in the back of your mind, you began to question where the door was, where you were, but that thought was abandoned when you realised the room was dark. Quiet. Staggered to your knees, you found the corner and crouched there, waiting for your head to stop spinning.

***

Meanwhile, Peter was back in homeroom, stressed out of his mind. The teacher hadn’t come in until after y/n had ran, and Peter debated whether or not to stay for attendance or try and find you, in case something bad happened.  Eventually deciding on the latter, Peter bolted down the corridor, yelling for someone to tell the teacher to mark him and y/n as here. He had a vague idea of where you could be, but after checking under the back library tables, the unused changeroom out the back of the gym and the photocopying room, he was getting desperate. There were dozens of empty classrooms and homeroom was nearly over. If the sounds of chairs scraping and kids screaming wasn’t going to make things even worse for you on your already super-shitty day, then having a presumably unsympathetic teacher find you huddled at the back of their class, without a verbal excuse, was just plain cruel. He was almost about to head to the nurse and see if there was anyone they could call to come help find you, when he heard a high-pitched sound coming from an empty chem lab storeroom

***

The squeaking of the door as it swung open was enough to set your teeth on edge, and you bit even harder on the finger jammed into your mouth. “Hey, hey y/n, it’s okay, s’just me”

You kept rocking. The door squeaked again, the sliver of light disappearing. Then footsteps. “I know, I know this is rough, but I think I have something that can help.” Peter’s voice still hurt your ears, but not in the mind-numbingly harsh way of before. “Can you maybe stop rocking and take your hood down for a sec? I have something to put over your head, like a mask, it’s gonna make everything go away. I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry but trust me, this’ll work.”

You slowly moved your free hand up, pushing back the fabric and moving it back down to brace on the ground. Peter pulled something out the back pocket of his jeans, the room too dark to make it visually distinguishable, and quickly braced your cheek whilst tugging it over your face. Your breathing hitched; there was a sound, a woman talking, the mask-thing wasn’t down all the way and you could feel it resting on the top of your knuckle, the taste of blood in your mouth…

“Uh, shit, okay, Karen that’s okay I did that, uh, make it quiet? Make it dark? I know Mr Stark put a protocol for this why can’t I remember it, just hold on a sec y/n you’re fine you’ll be fine I got this,” Peter’s frantic rambling was interrupted by his pocket vibrating. Insistently. Knowing the light would hurt your eyes, he tried to shield the screen with his hand, answering the call.

“Want to explain why your mask is on someone else’s head.”

“Uh see you see-”

“At school. When you were just marked as absent. And May just called me, asking if I knew anything about it. Oh, and why those vitals are off-the-fucking CHARTS.”

“I can explain I promise it’s just my friend is- they’re not doin’ too great and I’m trying to help them out”

“Can that explain why you’re whispering”

“Yes, yes it can. You know how my senses are like, dialed to eleven. Like, all the time?” “Mmm”

“Well their’s is just like that. Normally. And sometimes school is too much for them but they can’t communicate properly, and I guess they just, like, run? They, uh, need to get out but they don’t know where to? And so the bell went earlier and they disappeared and I found them in the chem storeroom but it was before the teacher marked attendance so that’s why we’re marked absent-” “Don’t care about that now. Where are they?”

“We’re in the chem storeroom still. I thought maybe I could use my mask to make it quiet to try and help, since you installed those mods- thanks by the way- but Karen won’t stop flashing and talking and I forgot the protocol name and they won’t let me get the mask off and oh shit now their hand’s bleeding Mr Stark please help-” Tony cut him off again. At this point, all attempts at whispering between the two had been abandoned, and you wanted to get out.

“I remotel…”

Silence. Complete, blissful, beautiful, enveloping silence.

You didn’t feel your head hit the linoleum floor.

[sheyffer]

On Bradley (and the rest of this show’s glorified ableism)

Do I have your attention? Good. Because I have things to say.

This is the collective salt built up over the course of most of this entire season, so be warned. This will be long, and most of you aren’t gonna like this - so feel free to skip to the bottom line at the end of the post, I guess.

Without further ado:

So. If you’ve been following me or are a somewhat frequent visitor on the show’s tag(s), you might have noticed I like Bradley. With how much screentime he’s been getting lately, I should be happy, right? Well, I would be, but instead, it just made me feel terrible, week after week. People who’ve talked to me during those times will know. But let me explain.

- Bradley and me

Cheesy title, but what’re you gonna do. See, when MML first came around, I was pretty quick to declare Bradley my favorite character. The first few episodes were great, and I loved what they set Bradley up to be: A kid living in Milo’s shadow, dealing with the rightful bitterness coming out of that. His friendship (or whatever you wanna call it) with Mort and his crush on Melissa had great potential, and knowing these writers, I was expecting some great episodes in these directions. Not that we ever got any, but more on that later.

As the show went on, I noticed something else about Bradley. I know there are a bunch of “(character) is autistic” headcanons out there - and I’m not gonna say anything against those because they’re all valid -, and that Bradley’s also come up in these regards several times. I fully support that headcanon (partly because I’m autistic myself and he’s my favorite character so projection is bound to happen in one way or another), but there’s something specific I’d like to bring up: something I’ll call the switch, for lack of a better word. I will admit that I’m not spending time with other autistic people that often so I can only really speak for myself here... but man. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a (cartoon) character that so obviously has that very same issue (whether the writers intended that or not is another topic; again, see further down). I’m struggling with it a lot myself, as good as on the daily, and seeing actual representation of this in a show makes me feel incredibly validated - because, again, when does any character ever have this?

- A little tangent regarding that “switch”

I should explain what I mean in the first place, of course. Basically, I’ll only care about a topic if it actually affects me in some way, and if it doesn’t, my attention is basically zero. No matter how close we are, I probably won’t even attempt to fake interest when you’re talking about something that has no significance to me, because if I do, people tend to notice quite easily (and I prefer keeping things genuine because me being dishonest would arguably just complicate things further if people realized eventually). Better yet, with the stuff I am interested in, I often end up caring way too much -  so it really is kind of a switch, per se. My emotional investment is either full on or full off, no inbetween. Makes me an awful person to be around when you want to talk about anything beyond the fandoms or characters I’m currently interested in, for the most part, but I’m glad about the people who, for years, have stuck with and supported me anyway :’) Maybe you can see by now how Bradley reminds me of this, but here’s some assorted aspects:

Him failing to somewhat relate to Milo no matter how similar they kind of are in various regards

Him actually being friends with and hanging out with plenty of people he gets along with great (compared to having none whatsoever, as could’ve easily been the case if he really was just a jerk), though he's almost never the one to initiate the conversation unless it's Milo related

Him being straight up rude to those people at times, resulting in everyone getting mad at him (which I can’t really blame them for, but still)

And him in turn being way too emotionally invested in certain topics, see Milo and what Bradley believes to be him stealing the show (and Carla, of course)

Melissa puts it really well in Milo's World when she says Milo is so great because he always cares deeply about other people - Bradley quite literally can't get on that level, so it's no surprise he's this bitter, really. What's he supposed to do? He'll never have it in him to apologize for his salt because there's absolutely no reason to in his eyes. He simply doesn't care if other people are sad or hurt by his words, and not even voluntarily so: He believes he's right and doesn't grasp why people don't get him, which may just be because he's so emotional - and less rational - about it... and when he’s generally the quiet-ish grump who's not too bad but also just never quite the friend that genuinely cares about you as a person because he's just this apathetic, any emotional reaction you get out of him is immediately rendered an uncalled-for outburst. Not saying everyone else is awful to get mad at him, because I can't really blame them at all with how much of a jerk he actually comes off as (and him trying to explain is probably awkward phrasing in the "sorry but I don't actually care about your feelings, no offense" direction that immediately makes people get mad at him again), but don’t paint him as inherently awful. This is likely as hard for him as it is for everyone else, I’ve been there myself... but yeah. So much for that.

- The crossover and its aftermath

Needless to say, I was pretty disappointed by most of the second half of season one when it came to Bradley’s screentime, especially since he’d been such a prominent character early on. So when the crossover came around and he got that plant arm, I was like - great! A physical difference to go along with his mental issues and to give him even more reasons to get a little character arc and a push towards morally darker gray areas! This isn’t something they can ignore anymore, right?

Ha. Sure.

It was bad enough that in those first few episodes after the crossover, he had that arm and it was never brought up by either him or anyone else. And then we did get people acknowledging it exists - but it was either treated as a joke or, worse, something to “get over”.

Where do I even begin.

- Yeah, how about no

It’s bad enough that the writers confirmed they only added the plant arm because “it’s funny” - not because “hey, let’s give our main antagonist kid a visible reason to have an arc” or anything in a remotely decent direction. It’s worse that most of the viewers apparently agree, because I’ve hardly heard a negative comment on the matter over the course of these last few episodes. But seriously - how am I supposed to enjoy this (honestly great amount of) screentime Bradley’s been getting lately when all he’s reduced to is the comedic relief? Make Chad and his supernatural antics the hilarious one for all I care, but don’t use the kid who very clearly has physical (and mental) issues whether you actually headcanon him as having anything specific or not. All I got to see in these last episodes is Bradley rightfully pointing out his arm (Milo’s World, Ride Along Little Doggie), him being legitimately upset (The Mid-Afternoon Snack Club), or him honestly just being in the episode altogether (First Impressions), only to have other - main - characters make fun of, or belittle, or get mad at him and have them be portrayed as “in the right” with not a single ounce of sympathy for Bradley whatsoever. As for First Impressions: I’ve been that (autistic) kid excited for the first day of school but not getting in in time. It’s horrible. (Though I’m willing to let this one slide because it reasonably builds up his strong dislike for Milo)

- On an episode in particular

For what it’s worth, The Mid-Afternoon Snack Club isn’t all bad. Hardly an episode is. But it’s easily the most painful to watch for me, for numerous reasons. And that includes certain fandom reactions I’ve witnessed.

Carla. However hilarious or weird (or both) you or the characters may find this, he clearly doesn’t. Even if the writers only added it as a joke to begin with - I’ve had similar experiences myself. I’ve been in Bradley’s position, and sure, I can’t blame the characters for, initially, belittling him for this stuff. But for the love of all the gods I believe in, don’t just completely ignore the distress he’s going through and change the topic like that (while he’s still in the middle of the breakdown, no less). I expected better at least from Milo or Mort.

Zack’s “character development”. In any other situation, I might have appreciated Zack’s talk about feeling like being in Milo’s shadow. But not only is this literally what Bradley was supposed to be about this whole time - Zack immediately gets reassurance and comfort by the other characters. The best Bradley ever got was rude comments on being uncalled for. Goes right along with:

Only the good guys deserve happiness, apparently. Whenever Murphy’s Law does its thing and someone has an issue with it, Melissa and the others are quick to comment on how it isn’t Milo’s fault and whoever has the issue is clearly just being rude and uncalled for. Whenever Bradley does something mildly unpleasant, the very same characters get mad at him and are portrayed as being in the right. As people have pointed out before, Milo and Bradley aren’t all that fundamentally different - but because Milo is the protagonist (tm) and, in-universe, nice to people and (as I’ve heard) adorable, people treat him well enough, while it’s apparently the right thing to be awful to Bradley, because he’s the antagonist(/comedic relief) and not the nicest person around. (For the record, I like Milo and appreciate how supportive people are of his issues. It’s just the jarring contrast with Bradley’s treatment that bothers me.)

Bradley’s “character development”. It’s been a thing I’ve read about regarding this episode and that’s apparently been getting quite a bit of acknowledgement. And sorry, but what? Randomly making Bradley a nice guy who doesn’t mind being around Milo & Co isn’t “character development”. More likely than anything, it’s “oh no, we have three episodes left and can’t have any relevant-ish character not like Milo before this is over, but we don’t have enough time to even half-ass Bradley’s “arc” so let’s just make him be nice for the sake of this montage”. It’s more of a disservice to the kid than anything, especially when in this season in particular, pretty much nobody was nice to him, ever.

- What I’m getting at (took a while, I know)

I’m basically Bradley, for what it’s worth. Whether he intentionally has to deal with the switch or not, his portrayal is incredibly similar to what I’m like, socially and otherwise. Seeing him treated like this for episodes on end is absolutely horrible for me. And I’m an adult who dares believe they figured out their mind for the most part - what about kids? Actual kids (like me ages ago, who only learned about autism to begin with because of really liking Ferb and finding an autism-related post about him) who can relate to Bradley as much as I do because they’ve been there themselves, only for the Good Guys to treat him like this? Even if you ignore all this semi-projection-based talk about mental disorders, his plant arm is still very real and as much of a handicap as anything. It doesn’t matter that the creators added it (and Carla, and probably Bradley’s other antics) as a joke, there are people out there for whom this is anything but that. They deserve happiness as much as anyone, no matter if they’re not the nicest people around (unless, of course, they have really problematic views, but Bradley is far from entering that territory). If anything, they deserve people at least attempting to understand where they’re coming from - and writers who treat even the protagonist’s foil as more than just a joke.

(Disclaimer: No, I’m not saying nobody should call Bradley out when he’s being rude. Even things like the switch only explain his behavior and don’t completely excuse it - he should have to feel the consequences of his actions as much as anyone. But right now, nobody is making any attempt to help him change for the better; they’re making everything far worse, if anything. An episode of Milo, or Mort, or anyone really, actually being willing to so much as listen to his side of the story... that’s all it takes. And can’t be that hard to pull off, can it?) 

But since I’m already talking about this kind of stuff:

- And Elliot, too

If only Bradley was the only one. I’m not gonna say anything against Elliot being a jerk (World Without Milo did a good job portraying him in that regard), but even he deserves better than this. I’m talking, of course, about Safety First, in which Elliot has something I can only describe as PTSD, complete with a trigger word and everything. I will admit I haven’t seen the episode since it aired (and am not planning on doing so again), but man. It’s obvious enough how much the trigger word aspect was used as a joke, but then apparently we learn that you can just randomly be cured of your trauma in a few effortless minutes. How nice to know for a few people I know.

- The bottom line

I have plenty of issues with MML when it comes to plot, or pacing, or humor (which, maybe, deserve their own posts eventually). But this right here is by far my biggest problem of them all. Sure, it’s a show for kids, and sure, you aren’t supposed to take something with this kinda premise super seriously - but that doesn’t mean there aren’t aspects that should be. Whether the creators are aware of how their characters come across or not, there are parts even they should know not to be this disrespectful about. And maybe I could get over things like Carla on their own, but when so many little aspects are condensed into a single character, it really stops being something I can ignore. Especially when the characters interacting with him display such infuriating Protagonist-Centered Morality, and even more especially when it’s related to issues that could really use some proper representation in the media anyway, particularly in shows for this kind of audience.

I’m not saying this because I don’t care about the show (and could’ve stopped watching it easily if I have so many problems with it), it’s because I do. I know these people can produce fantastic content, P&F is a prime example. The first few episodes of MML are, too. But after that, it all kind of falls apart for me, with some gems here and there. And yet I still care about these characters (certain ones, anyway), and carry the hope that they will at some point get the treatment they deserve. Until then, I’ll be here writing fics to take care of that when the show fails to - you’re free to ask me about them if you’re interested, for that matter. 

Thanks for reading, if you made it this far. Complain about my opinion all you want, I know it’s such a jarring wave of negativity in a fandom that’s hardly used to that - but hey. Someone’s gotta be the Bradley here. In more ways than most people with any relation to MML are comfortable with.

Take it or leave it.