#like this can so clearly apply to non autistic people just because you want to be alone does NOT make you autistic LOL

[lamictallesbian]

I can’t stand my roommate 😭

[janmisali]

what do you think of tone indicators in general?

unfortunately my thoughts on tone indicators are somewhat nuanced. fortunately, this is tumblr not twitter, so I can just write out my full thoughts in one post and be as verbose about it as feels necessary.

speaking as an autistic person (and I know there are other autistic people who don't hold this same view, this is just my perspective), I think as an accessibility tool, the extended set tone indicators in current popular use is fundamentally misguided.

the oldest ones, /s for sarcasm and /j for jokes, make sense. their notation isn't the most intuitive thing ("does /s mean sarcastic or serious?") but it's not too difficult to explain what they mean. I've had to spend my whole life learning by brute force what different tones of voice mean and what they change about how I'm supposed to interpret something, so I already know what "read this in a sarcastic voice" and "read this as a joke" are supposed to mean. my existing skills can be translated into the new form without too much effort.

the same thing applies to emoji and emoticons. I know what facial expressions mean, because I had to learn what they mean. figuring out if :) is sincere or not from context is a skill I've already needed to develop. it doesn't come naturally for me, but it's something I already at least somewhat know how to do.

most of the tone indicators in current use uh. don't work like this.

tone indicators like /ref or /nbh don't correspond to specific tones of voice. I don't have a "I'm making a reference" voice or a "I'm not talking about a person who's here" voice that I can picture the sentence being read in. these do not indicate tones, they're purely disambiguators. they clarify what something means without necessarily changing how it would be read out loud.

and on paper, that's fine, right? like, it's theoretically a good thing to take an otherwise ambiguous statement and add something to it that clarifies what you meant by it. the problem is that these non-tone tone indicators are not even remotely self-explanatory. it's up to me, the person who is being clarified to, to know what all these acronyms are supposed to mean, and how they change the way I'm supposed to interpret what something means.

it's, quite literally, a newly-invented second set of social cues that I'm expected to learn separately from the set that I've already spent my whole life figuring out, and it works completely differently.

sure, these rules are (in principle) less arbitrary than the rules of facial expressions and tones of voice and how long you're supposed to wait before it's your turn to speak, but they're also fully artificial and recently invented, which means they're currently in a constant state of flux. tone indicators go in and out of fashion all the time, and the "comprehensive lists" are never helpful.

in theory, I appreciate the idea of people going out of their way to clarify what they mean by potentially ambiguous things they post online. if it worked, that would be a really nice thing to do.

however, sometimes I imagine what the internet would be like without them. what if instead of using /s, the expectation was that if you're sarcastic online there's no guarantee that strangers reading your post will know what you meant? what if instead of inventing more and more acronyms to cover every possible potentially confusing situation, we just... expected one another to speak less ambiguously in the first place?

so, I on paper like the idea of tone indicators. I think it's good that some people are trying to be considerate by being extra clear about what they mean by things. but if tone indicators didn't exist, and people who wanted to be considerate in this way instead just made a point of phrasing things more clearly to begin with, I think that would be vastly preferable to even the most well-implemented tone indicator system.

also /pos sucks because there's something deeply and profoundly wrong for an abbreviation that means "I don't mean this as an insult, don't worry" to be spelled the same way as an acronym that's an insult

[orkbutch]

ok ok, i know this isnt a wicked blog but its time for me to say my thoughts on the Wicked movie trailer.

I'm not stoked. I'm not much of a musical version lover already, but two things really rubbed me wrong, and I believe they apply to the musical as much as the book in their importance within the Themes.

Elphaba being played by Erivo and being black is cool. Erivo is a great singer, and her hair looks sick, and Elphie's hair is important. However, that casting choice being combined with a white Fiyero (who is Not White in the book, and very much experiences colonialist racism) and with no prosthetic effort to make Elphaba Not Beautiful (which is a Significant Element of Her Experience And Character), spoils any truly transgressive or progressive bite to that casting decision.

The only of the core mains thats not white is the character that is green. Interesting. The character who is extremely belittled for her appearance because she has a deformity, and because she's unattractive by conventional standards (esp because of her hawkish nose and strong chin), is a beautiful woman. Interesting!

Something about this just rubs me wrong. I think the musical has always made me skeptical in this area because its core adaption decisions were always bent toward stripping Wicked of much of its commentary on racism. In the book Fiyero is Vinkan, clearly coded Native American, and Winkie is a slur. They made the slur the name for the Vinkans in the musical. If I recall correctly, Quadlings aren't even mentioned in the musical. But Fiyero in the musical... I don't even know Why they keep him being a foriegn prince because he isnt written like hes foriegn from Gillikin at all. His ethnicity seems totally flattened, a slur that indicates no cultural or experiencial distinction from Gillikin.

I think that may have happened because Animals were already considered an allegory for racism, and they wanted to make that allegory cleaner and easier to condense into a musical plot. Thats my theory. However, that is a misreading. The Animals are not a perfectly singular allegory, and I think you could argue several inspirations, but the most apt interpretation for sure is that the Animals are an allegory for people with disabilities and neurodivergence, as Elphaba's experience is.

The Animals are not merely culturally different or isolated. They are not falsely believed to be different from the Gillikins or the Munchkinlanders or Vinkans. They ARE different, not because they aren't people but because their basic needs are different, and are not adapted to by society. They have hooves, and different skeletons, and different senses, and different mouths that can't necessarily make the kind of speech humans use.

This is important because Elphaba uniquely relates to the Animals, and its because Elphaba has a deformity and is super autistic. This is the other thing that always rubbed me wrong about the musical: it always implied that the only thing that made Elphaba "ugly" to people was her green skin. Thats... weak shit!!! In the book, Elphaba is Not beautiful. She is hatchet faced. She is tall and androgynous and looks weird. And this is IMPORTANT, because it makes Elphaba a genuinely transgressive character!! Her experience is layered! She is green but also breaks gender rules, is awkward, is self hating, is rude, ect. ect. It strengthens her empathy she feels toward Animals, because she feels so othered from society that she feels non-human, alienated.

The book also handles Elphaba's attractiveness much better; it does a great job of depicting someone who is not beautiful but is nevertheless Hot, which Elphaba is. When Glinda looks at her for the first time and thinks that shes beautiful, she is not looking past Elphaba's skin and she does no make over. She puts Elphaba in an orange hat as a joke, and sees how it matches her skin and suits her, and it makes Glinda realise that the green of Elphaba's skin can be beautiful to her. And that changes how Glinda sees Elphaba; Elphaba does not change.

okay im just complaining about the musical now. But idk, I wish that they'd used this opportunity to do better by Fiyero, make the themes a bit better... and just... put some light prosthetics on Erivo. Just make her look a little uglier! A little more hatchety. Its not like it'd be out of place, Ariana Grande as Glinda looks spooky as fuck. Why does she look like that. I like it bc I like Glinda looking intense and spooky but it IS weird

[headspace-hotel]

Thinking of your post on the problems of veganism as a movement vs veganism as a lifestyle choice/one technique amongst many, that also applys super well to my issues with degrowth (And anticonsumerism as well) as a movement vs degrowth as one technique amongst many for dealing with the hydra-crisis of overproduction/resource overuse/destroying people and places for resources.

Like, in particular as an autistic person the continual recurring insistence that we need to just "change our desires" creeps me out. As someone who's difficulties were dismissed as just "having a bad attitude" and who's interests were so often dismissed as a waste of time instead of preparing for a job in the "real world" IDK if they truly understand the full horrifying implications of that line of thought.

So here's the thing with the concept of "overconsumption"

I had to do this whole project on overconsumption in my Anthropology class where I compared my consumption habits to those of someone 2 generations older, the prof clearly had in mind that we would discover a particular result that I did not end up finding.

I had to watch this documentary called "Affluenza" which was all about how Americans consume too much and they shop and buy things for fun and it's killing the planet, and it kept making these statements like "The average american does X..." and "X" would be something insane that I've never dreamed of doing.

Now I technically grew up below the poverty line, we were always financially insecure and struggling to pay bills and there was never any extra money lying around.

But my upbringing felt average, even privileged. We had a house instead of a trailer on cinder blocks, we had food and clothes. Compared to the upbringing of my mom and virtually everyone she knew growing up, we lived in fabulous luxury.

And the "overconsumption" lesson was bizarre to me because it brought up things like "going shopping for fun once a week" and "owning 20+ pairs of shoes" as if they were normal. I wear my clothes until they're unwearable and shop for clothes like once a year, and my mom has half as many clothes as I do. She feels guilty buying anything for herself and HATES shopping.

It feels like the dominant resources on living an eco friendly lifestyle presume that we have far more agency in what we buy and use than we actually do, instead of being stuck with the cheapest or closest available thing, and that our lives are full of extraneous, non-essential "consumption."

That class brought up the idea of "conspicuous consumption" a lot, or buying things to obtain social status instead of for their concrete utility. The way "conspicuous consumption" was addressed in the class was not very immediately relatable to me—I never had the option of buying clothes just to appear "with it" socially. My parents couldn't buy an extra car to fit the aesthetic of the American dream—we had enough trouble keeping the one we had running. The "conspicuous consumption" that class addressed was just not available to me.

However, I don't think conspicuous consumption is endemic to stable members of a certain socioeconomic status, because consumption is partially driven by the trauma of poverty. People who grew up poor will buy you more Christmas gifts than you can store or use, because they want to spare you the shame they experienced. Their brains are molded around the trauma of not having enough, and giving you enough is their way of keeping you safe.

Conspicuous consumption as a habit is pushed on you if your ancestors were shaped by this trauma. It is a misrepresentation to think of it as driven by pride, because your ability to perform the behaviors and mimic the appearances of a higher socioeconomic status has a concrete effect on how people treat you.

I know J.D. Vance is a nutjob now and Hillbilly Elegy was...not great (I'm more appalachian than you bitch, and I'm not even appalachian!) but the one thing that book got incredibly right was the idea of "social capital" and the way access to financial security and wealth gives you social capital. This is the main thing the current understanding of "conspicuous consumption" gets wrong—the need to escape the appearance and behaviors of poverty is seen as vain and self-indulgent, when it's a survival mechanism and it's something you're expected to engage in to gain opportunities and respect.

Poverty is humiliating. People with money never think about the fact that they have money. They think of themselves as average, if they think of themselves in terms of socioeconomic status at all. Being poor ends up embedded in the grooves and folds of your brain.

I remember when I was about 12, I gave my friend an informal tour of our house the first time she came over, showing her every room. I realized later that this wasn't exactly a normal behavior—I had done it because my mom did the same thing when she brought her friend over, and my mom had done it because it was a way of saying look, I survived. Look, I have a place to live to call my own, isn't this nice?

At its worst, anti-consumerism just reinforces the myth that your consumption is purely a matter of personal choice. And unfortunately when the conversation is ruled by the privileged, this idea will appear substantiated—because rich people can choose the aesthetics of poverty without concretely affecting the way the world treats them. A rich person can choose to live in a "tiny house" but they will never be "trailer trash."

Anti-consumerism revolves around ideas that are almost irreparably tainted by the mythology of an unequal society. Rich people possess and control the aesthetic of restraint and frugality, allowing them to playact living a Simple Life where they live in a tiny minimalist cottage and eat Healthy Vegan Oat Gruel, while McDonalds is the emblem of American excess. It is poor people's behaviors and habits that exemplify excess and greed.

Anti-consumerism isn't going to change anything until it openly confronts the fact that poverty is traumatic and consumption patterns often arise from poverty survival mechanisms.

[dis-aster9255]

Hi hi hello this is gonna be both a mix of like actual character analysis and a few headcanons cause these characters haven't left my head for two months.

But yeah I'm gonna be applying the idea that Steven, Marc, and Jake are all autistic and it's not just Steven. (based on what I know and my own experiences) :D

(Warning: it's long.)

Steven:

Okay so Steven is the one with the most visible evidence because i believe he's the only one who doesn't try to mask

He either does not care what people think of him or straight up doesn't notice that he's acting differently than "normal"

When he's confused he'll just straight up ask like with Dylan ("are you asking me out??")

The hyperfixation/special interest in ancient egypt. He's learning ancient egyptian and hieroglyphics he's SERIOUS

He works at a museum specifically because of that as well

Taking literally any chance he can to talk about it even if the people he's talking to clearly don't care (ex. Donna)

He got so excited when Layla knew what he was talking about like come on

Also ROUTINE

Every evening he adds the tape on his door, replaces the sand, and puts the ankle restraint on before going to sleep

Ik that's supposed to be because of Marc but it's a routine and it's clearly always done the same every night.

Calls his mother every day even if she doesn't answer (we know why but :( )

Also the necklace. It's barely visible but it is there every day

The way he stands:

Need i say more? I don't but I will

Seriously though I'm pretty sure whenever he's fronting he's like never standing still

Either like this or messing with whatever is in his hands

The rubix cube. He can finish that thing without looking at this point its not a puzzle it's a fidget object.

Now for some not fun things

He gets overwhelmed at least twice in the show

Once after he finds out everything with his mom and once with Layla

The one with Layla I understand completely, stressful situation along with two people yelling at you is the worst thing and I know the exact feeling.

Either way both times he was constantly repeating the same word over and over again while basically folding in on himself to avoid whatever was happening around him.

On a lighter note Steven expresses his genuine excitement openly

He was dead but he was still so happy he finally was able to meet someone who knows what he's talking about in ep 5

Idk how to transiton to Marc but HERE WE GO

Marc:

Okay so while I was doing this I realized I related to Marc a lot damn

Anyways Marc masks the majority of the time

Like all the time I don't think he ever hasn't even around Layla

His voice is so monotone and the way he expresses the changes in emotion is by getting either louder or quieter instead of anything else

That entire scene with Mogart and the sarcophagus. There is not way he wasn't forcing every aspect of that interaction

Holding out his hand until Mogart finally shook it because "this is how normal interactions start right???"

When he's asked why he wants to see the sarcophagus he has no idea how to respond and gives the most non-answer ever. Everyone thinks it's weird but he doesn't notice, it worked so whatever

Episode 5

We all know Marc hides his emotions

It's obvious

But what if he's hiding them because they're too much for him to handle, or he just straight up doesn't understand them

He runs from problems cause he doesn't want to confront his feelings

He ran from Layla because the issue with Khonshu was too much to deal with instead of having one conversation about it

He ran from his mother's shiva cause it was too many conflicting emotions

And when Steven was reliving the worst memory of his life he ran again (idk if it's like actually canon or not but I believe that while Steven was going through the memory he could hear the whole thing echoing through the hallways)

He also seems like the type to not show emotion on his face unless it's a strong one, but that's just what I think I've not no actual evidence for this

Anyways like with Steven he also gets overwhelmed a few times in the series

And he does what not many people are willing to talk about and gets aggressive when that happens yayyyyy /lhj

Seriously though in the scene in ep 5 when he doesn't want to confront his mother's abuse again

Yelling and hitting himself repeatedly same man same

In ep 2 when Steven is yelling at him through the mirror he breaks it so he can get some silence and then gets tormented by Khonshu which rude, asshole

Aggression can seem like the easiest way to deal with things so I get it, it happened quite a few times in this show

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

He also gets hyperfixations he just doesn't exactly have the time to indulge himself

The movie

Idk how much we should trust therapist Harrow in certain things but he made a note to mention that Marc has watched that movie a LOT

He loved that movie as a kid

He doesn't have much of a routine besides putting everything back the way it was before Steven can wake up but I think he deserves one

Jake:

This is gonna be short he had four minutes of screen time and two of those minutes have not actually been confirmed

But yeah he seems like he'd also not care about masking

Though I think if he gets too overwhelmed (which would probably take a lot for it to happen) he'd just end up retreating

Or if it's just someone being annoying he'd deal with them himself (maybe just a good punch in the face no big deal right guys /hj)

Kinda a mix of what both Steven and Marc do it just depends on the situation

Also this is just a thought but I think he'd be the type to be constantly forcing expressions cause he does not have the energy to explain himself verbally

Like yeah he expresses things visually but he over exaggerates them to get the point across if that makes sense

Anyways that's all I have

Kinda went on a rant but I hope it makes sense

I'd be happy to hear anybody else's opinions as well :)

[velvetvexations]

ferris anon here, incoming long ask: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3rZkGnICFI&t=143s

[Warning: This comment is long, but hopefully, it's as informative as it is critical of the video. I do not intend to be antagonistic, but I am very critical.]

This video is frustrating in soooo many ways. I see all the best intent in this video and I generally agree with the overall outlook that trans women are frequently portrayed poorly in anime (including Re:Zero) and treated poorly by both the Japanese otaku crowd and the non-Japanese transphobic fetishist crowd, but you've hit some stumbles here I think are necessary to touch on. Let me explain by starting with a disclaimer for context:

I'm not Japanese, but I am a professional translator, I've lived in Japan for a major portion of my life, I specialize in Asian studies (and have a background in studying Japanese history and religion, both in Japan and in the US), I'm a trans woman, and I have the pleasure of being friends with individuals in the Japanese queer community. I'm also a fan of Japanese media, definitely anime, and I really enjoy Re:Zero (especially the novels). In fact, I find the series exceptionally well-written and Ferris' character exceptional as well.

I'll start with the center question first and branch from there.

1) Schrodinger's Trans.

It's definitely complicated. Ferris "identifies" themself as a "boy" often in public. The author clearly identifies Ferris as a "boy" in all canon material. But just as you quoted from the first EX novel, Ferris displays signs of gender dysphoria. They call themself a "bishoujo" in the mirror every day when they wake up, and in fact (surprised you failed to mention this), they even specify that they are relieved and grateful for their mother's genes specifically because they don't grow facial or body hair and their face and body curves are feminine. If that wasn't enough, they hid the "boy" secret from their other best friend (the prince) for years, right up to a reveal scene in the novel itself. That friend thought Ferris was a girl for years and Ferris explicitely admits this was less a prank and more a selfish indulgence. By all accounts, that's what most medical experts would call "gender dysphoria" and I think it's fine to leave it at that. Is Ferris trans, though? Not all trans people have gender dysphoria, but are all gender dysphoric people trans? ...I suppose you can argue that they are, but I've read plenty a personal experience from gender dysphoric cis people who disagree, so... I can't say with certainty and I don't think anyone should assert so, as this video does. My own personal conclusion and assumptions are my own, but I see Ferris' character more as a gender bend concept taken to its logical conclusion by an author who intuitively understands gender dysphoria, but knows nothing about trans people. I don't think anyone should be jumping to apply real world medical diagnoses (like dysphoria) on fictional characters written by blissfully ignorant authors who live in a completely different culture. I see people do this with, for instance, characters they think are autistic, and that's fine and dandy to interpret your own rep when actual rep is lacking in media (god knows it's lacking), but... we gotta step back a bit and be more self aware that this is not an interpretation to hold over others' heads.

2) Ferris' name.

You got this one explicitely wrong. "Ferris" and "Felix" are not clever differences in romanizations from the Japanese novels. They're entirely different names in the Japanese novels. "Ferris" is フェリス ("ferisu") and "Felix" is フェリックス ("ferikkusu"). Spelling and pronunciation are completely different. And while "Felix" is definitely a "dead name", the reason Ferris changed their name is because not only is the name too masculine, but it was also the name given to them by their absolute garbage existence of a father, who Ferris wants nothing to do with anymore. I won't spoil what happens in the EX novel, but Ferris' vow regarding their name is explicitely intended to reject their father's namesake and adapt their beloved late mother's sensibilities.

3) Japan and "duty". "Propaganda" is a strong word and considering I've been a part of Japan (attending school and working) for so much of my life and I've retroactively studied the culture and history in a formal academic setting for nearly as long, I think a bit of a non-Western-enlightenment-centric lesson is in order here. Japan is a country that generally prides itself on 和 ("wa", harmony, peace). And as the saying goes, "With 理 ("ri", reason, duty) comes 令 ("rei", order), and with 令 comes 和." It's based on old Chinese/Confucius philosophy and Japan's history is ripe with strife and conflict permeated by periods of 和 seen as golden ages in the history books tailored to school kids and the general public. Unsurprisingly, much like the Western idealism in individuality that has been used to justify systemic racism, abuse of power, class wars, etc., Japan's cultural/societal use of 理 has been used to justify wars, power, and definitely the oppression of minorities, including LGBTQ+ people. But in the West, our individualism is also seen by minorities as essential to our identities, history, and cause. It is inseperable from our cultural identities, whether we like it or not. Japan's 理 is the same. I don't know a single queer person in Japan (friend group, extended friend group, academic essays, literature, or otherwise) who doesn't value 理 to the same diverse, yet core extent that Westerners value individualism. I think anyone who has been split between Japan and the US all their life as I have can probably sympathize with the internal conflict between our two cultural identities. You're so damningly aware of how the orderly needs of others impedes on your personal needs and vice versa and these two things are hard to reconcile with each other because they're dynamically opposed, yet both are extremely valuable to you.

Ultimately, on that last point, I'm just hitting back at the "it's propaganda" aspect of "duty" as cited by the author of the video. Hand-waving Re:Zero's author as having fallen victim to or [potentially] propagating "duty" propaganda as an excuse is extremely over-simplifying the issue with Ferris as a written subject and Japanese culture as a whole.

I do think your heart was in the right place and I'm fine with treating the video as a personal approach to a complicated topic, but as a trans woman who is on the fence regarding Ferris' canon "transness" (hence why I've been using they/them pronouns), I would rather approach this from the angle that the author inadvertently created a character who trans people can sympathize with, but didn't intend the character to be trans. Which means this isn't really a debate about whether Ferris is trans, but rather a debate about how much value we place on an author's words, contextually and paratextually, and how that affects our experience of and engagement with the work. Essentializing bigots for "not accepting" Ferris as trans and "misgendering" the character only serves to act as a self-righteous interpretation of a work we have no agency over. Also, it's fiction. If misgendering angers you, use that energy on people deliberately misgendering and fetishizing real people who deserve and need that basic consideration. I love Ferris with all my heart regardless of their canon gender, but they are an exemplatory case study in a vast sea of problematic queer rep in media.

--------

P.S. - I do find it weird that Ferris' gender comes up as a topic of debate within Re:Zero's queer-friendly spaces, but no one talks about Crusch? Crusch was just as explicitely demonstrated in the same EX novel to have rejected their womanhood. We don't get the same first-person camera lens or inner monologue as Ferris, but we don't need it because Crusch is more brash and open about it. The only reason they dawn a dress on special occasions like they did in the main story and anime is due to [spoilers] in that EX novel (for better or worse). Either way, Crusch is said to be the most manly Duke/Duchess in their family's history and Crusch says that is intentional. It's very clear that Crusch and Ferris are intended to be two opposite sides of the same coin. I may have personally critiques about how the author treats their gender, but their dynamic together is absolutely fantastic and I will die on that ship--er, hill.

thank you, I've never seen the show but this is a very, very good comment

[littlebabytimmybird]

gonna be an unpopular opinion but the way fans treat tim is really indicative of how society views autistic people. tim is HIGHLY autistic coded, from his extreme interests to his social awkwardness.

in early comics with him in them, tim is actually a pretty good representation of autism. he is shown to have a strong interest in batman and robin/nightwing, he doesn't realize when he's upsetting people, and he often goes about things in a blunt, clumsy way. even the way he speaks fluctuates between being incredibly articulate to incredibly childlike. he seems simultaneously innocent and all-knowing, childish and an old soul. all of this is common in level 1 autism spectrum disorder. tim is clearly gifted but he isn't a super-genius, he's just a talented and dedicated kid. although he didn't have to work the hardest of all the robins in general by any means, he did have to work the hardest to become a robin, as he lacked any training before that and came from a privileged background where he had been somewhat coddled by his families wealth. even jason had fighting experience, tim did not.

another aspect of tim's character that is a good representation is his empathy. there is a theory of empathy that says there are 3 types, emotional empathy, "I feel as you feel", cognitive empathy, "I understand how you feel", and compassion, "i want you to feel better" like many autistic people, tim is somewhat lacking in the second category but has an abundance in the third. he talks openly about the death of jason in front of bruce dick and alfred without realizing it could upset them and is shocked when they react with anger. he often gets himself in trouble by saying things that come across as rude or blunt without meaning to. however, he is incredibly compassionate and deeply cares for the people around him, showing that he is very capable of empathy.

a major autistic trait tim embodies is what psychiatry calls an "uneven profile". uneven profiles are when someone is very skilled in some areas but behind in others. tim is a clear example of an uneven profile because he is highly intelligent and learns practical skills like fighting quickly, but he is lacking in non-practical skills. he has a black-and-white way of thinking about good and evil that is more commonly seen in young children than in teenagers. he idolizes batman and nightwing and it takes him years to learn that they have flaws like any human. a large part of tim's journey is learning to overcome this style of thinking but it is still a clear developmental delay in the beginning.

overall, tim is a compassionate, warm, and intelligent, yet flawed character. he is a sweet and clever kid with a big heart (sometimes too big).

so why is it that in fanon, tim is portrayed as a cold, calculating, all-intelligent super genius with no autonomy? disregarding the fact that it is an insult to his character, it is also an insult to autistic people in general, especially when people claim they headcanon him as autistic but use the fanon version of him.

there are 3 main ways that autistic people are viewed in fandoms:

The Artificial Intelligence. the artificial intelligence autistic stereotype pins us as robots, capable of great feats of intelligence but incapable of emotion. this is the most neutral of the stereotypes, as we are not seen as human and therefore not stigmatized as humans.

The Man Child. despite its name, the man-child autistic stereotype can apply to any age or gender. the man-child autistic's primary trait is being annoying. they are likely savants, but they use their skills to be obnoxiously pedantic. they are unreasonable and demand everything be to their specifications at all times. sheldon cooper from the big bang theory fits into this category.

The Woobie. these woobified autistic characters will always be found wearing oversized clothes and having shutdowns but NEVER meltdowns. they cry often and need to be held and comforted by friends and family who serve as caretakers to the 'helpless baby autistic.'

and when the people who claim to like him write about him, tim is never held responsible for his actions, he never takes others into account, he is a tech genius and he has questionable morals, or doesn't seem to have a moral code at all. he has a troubling coffee addiction and lacks sleep at all times but, like any good supercomputer, he can go out and patrol just fine despite it. he is a machine, running on air and spite.

it is mostly tim's haters who portray him in the second way. that's when you get a tim who is selfish and snobbish, mostly towards poor innocent damian wayne who has never done anything wrong in his life.

sometimes, tim is written so he can't take care of himself. when he does have emotions, they're all sad ones. he cries himself to sleep, and dick or bruce or even jason for some reason have to come and comfort him. they force him to stop drinking so much coffee and to go to bed at a reasonable hour even as an adult.

now, don't get me wrong. there are some autistic people, quite a few actually, who do need to be taken care of as adults. hell, I'll probably be one of them to some degree. but even with someone who will never be able to live alone, autonomy is the most important thing to remember. people should always be allowed to make their own decisions as much as they are capable of. and tim in fanon has almost no autonomy. it is, plainly speaking, a huge fucking insult to the disabled community.

When the first and third stereotypes are mixed, you get a cruel mockery of an uneven profile. similar to the manchild trope, this is a tim who needs everything his way, but this time it's all given in to by those around him.

so, in conclusion: in early comics tim was an excellent accidental portrayal of low support needs ASD, but fanon took away all his positive autistic traits and turned him into a shallow stereotype of an autistic person and a mockery of all his actual autistic traits. even the seemingly harmless coffee-lover headcanon feeds into the horrific stereotypical treatment of his character.

[anendoandfriendo]

CN // very vent-y, extremely flashback-y, started in response to something but it kind of dovetailed into its own thing and we're Kind Of In Pain and trying to avoid The Bloodlust(TM) right now and tbqh with you all -- we are Failing

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We're so, so glad things are changing socially for the better but like...there are still places out there that are fucking horrible.

Where we used to live, we just assumed nobody knew what Villain!Deku was when MHA was a big thing because somehow our brain equated bigotry = isolated in general? And we kinda embarassed ourselves a little because of that lol? (We say as we also scream "it's THEIR fucking fault for living in [REDACTED], they should not have lived there if they wanted us to assume the did know!")

Which is our bad for sure. But this was not even a small town/city, it was/is just socially regressive town/city (that we are trying not to have flashbacks about now).

And the reason we somehow jumped to this is because of the number of people who like. Asked "what is the boys toy? Oh no, my kid is a BOY so no pink for him," and uhhh, needless to say, the best way we could play this game at the time was to (because we worked as a cashier at McDonalds back then) put in an order for the opposite toy because Everyone There Was A Shithead, and that was the only power we could exert. Was to piss them off even a little and let them fester for the rest of their life knowing they will NEVER be able to get their hands on us for that. :D

Or that time where we were the only non-manager in the restaurant, and everyone liked us, and we did good at our job, so as soon as one of our abusers even implied Autistic people are broken for being Autistic we had five to seven people who are managers immediately at the next window kicking them out for making us cry....but that has the prerequisite of eugenicists existing and literal years of pain from seclusion room and psychiatry survivorship and never being believed until the very moment we were back from university for breaks. x-x;;

And what prompted us to move out from [REDACTED] is that our headmate Silva has...stated some things that we do not want to describe here. We will leave it at "very clearly stating that if he wanted power for any reason it would be to punish everyone who lived there," and what happened then is time stood VERY still for a moment as he realized what he said. And then he decided to move out rather than be a potential danger to literally everyone there.

And like! We do not want "help" here, because "help" to us would literally be allowing us to like. Murder our stepmother. Bash the person's head in who implied autism is broken. Knife the person who was our ABA therapist. That's not good! And with the away the current prison therapy industry is now we would absolutely be locked up for expressing this to someone who is "professional" even if we go through a painstaking rigorous set of selves-checks to make sure we do not physically harm people. We think we might literally be causing physical harm to ourselves, actually, because we cannot and will never trust a "therapist" (fuck you, there is no such thing actually) until applied behavior analysis is abolished and we can get reparations for what we have survived HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA GOOD FUCKING LUCK TO US ON THAT ONE LMAOOOOOO

So like. Things are so much better out there but we cant help being kind of "doom and gloom" when we think about all of the bullshit we have gone through and seen others deal with (and none of that being the worst of it even) and we will probably never actually see a world in which our pain is widely acknowledged in the way we want it acknowledged, nor see our existence be acknowledged in the way we want it acknowledged.

Like. We can see why there are some people who just. WDK. Want to burn everything down into ashes and never look back we guess, even if we know that isn't quite an option at this point. If that makes sense.

God, we're sorry y'all we're just frustrated because we will see someone be Happy about something or there will be Joy that The World Is Changing and something in our brain just fundamentally rejects that because when we're like this, it all feels likea fucking farce unless someone is on their knees apologizing to us for ??????? fucking existing????? and not knowing about the wrongs in the world they had nothing to do with????

[spencers-renaissance]

Trees and Seas Have Flown Away, I Call it Loving You

Summary: Derek says something hurtful, but it happens to lead to just about the best thing that's ever happened to Spencer.

Tags: hurt/comfort, fluff, angst, making up, bullying, angst with a happy ending, autistic spencer, coming out, getting together

Pairing: Morgan x Reid

Word Count: 3.2k

Masterlist // Read on AO3

Spencer is having one hell of a morning. He’d slept late, a significantly rare occurrence for him, and the metro had been delayed and diverted, leaving him to walk a decent chunk of his journey into work. To top it all off, he’d left his pencil case at home, leaving him stuck with cheap office supplies on a paperwork day. 

He hates days like these, when his mood is so seriously affected by events beyond his control, and he knows he’s just going to continue to fester in his own self-prescribed misery if he doesn’t take some drastic steps to change the way he’s feeling. 

After a moment of staring into space as he considers his options, he decides on a few deep breaths to try and calm himself down. Surveying the mess on his desk after opening his eyes, he tackles that next, sorting through case files that can be filed away and organising the notes he’s currently working on as well as rearranging his personal items to stop them taking up so much room. Already feeling better, he takes a few sips of water and some painkillers for the headache he can feel coming on, and locks eyes on the break room. His mid-morning coffee is due.

Elle and Derek are chatting at the counter when he pushes the door open, and he smiles at both of them. He’s still getting used to being around Elle. She’s so confident and intimidating that he’s not really sure if she likes him that much, and it definitely doesn’t help that she reminds him of the girls he used to go to school with, the ones who found it amusing to laugh at the much younger autistic boy, hiding his stuff and calling him names, standing by and laughing when the older boys would beat him up. 

He tries very hard with her, though. Maybe this would be a good opportunity to build more rapport, he thinks, so he listens in while he refills the coffee machine’s water. It’s definitely got nothing to do with how much he wants to climb Derek Morgan like a tree.

Derek looks over and catches him up in that thoughtful sort of way that always gets Spencer’s stomach fluttering. “Elle’s just telling me about the hot date she had on Saturday,” he winks, nudging her in the side. “He seems like a catch.” He sips innocently at his coffee and Spencer realises belatedly that he’s being sarcastic and watches for Elle’s response. God, he wishes conversations weren’t so damn convoluted.

“Oh, fuck off, Morgan,” she says, rolling her eyes. “You’re just jealous because I got laid and how long’s it been for you? Months?”

It’s Derek’s turn to roll his eyes, looking over at Spencer in a way that has him flushing pink. “Come on, Greenaway,” he laughs, “you know full well I’m not exactly lacking in that department.”

Elle gives him a dubious look, before raising her eyebrows and sipping her coffee. “Whatever you say,” she says in a patronising tone - the kind that reminds Spencer of an adult indulging a fantastical child. Derek laughs again, tapping lightly on the underside of her mug and causing it to spill over her hand a little. Spencer envies how easy it is for other people to elicit such a beautiful sound from Derek’s mouth; the few times he’s intentionally made Derek laugh he’d felt like he won a trophy, the sort he’d frame in a cabinet and show off to visitors, giving them a tour of the limited map of Spencer’s victories with a proud smile on his face.

He watches the exchange a little awkwardly, not knowing how to respond to these two very dominant personalities discussing an area he’s not overly familiar with. Unfortunately, they don’t ignore him forever and Elle looks over at him, her intense, fiery gaze already stirring up nerves in his stomach. “Anyway, what about you, Reid, when was your last hot date?” she teases, and he cannot for the life of him figure out if it’s friendly or malicious. 

He flounders for only a second, cheeks heating up steadily, before Derek interjects. “Oh come on, Elle,” Derek scoffs. “Not sure Reid’s whole ‘twink aesthetic’ thing is quite what women are after, is it, pretty boy?” 

Instantly, humiliation bleeds into his veins. His stomach swirls and he feels dizzy, completely out of his depth as his face reddens even further and he starts to sweat. The playful nudge that digs into his side doesn’t do anything to bring him out of the protective trance his mind’s gone into. “I--” he tries, but he’s cut off by Elle clearly growing bored of the conversation and pushing off the counter-top to leave. 

She turns around for a moment as she heads towards the door, walks backwards a few steps as she delivers the final, devastating blow. “Hey, you never know, Reid,” she grins, “maybe the whole virgin genius thing will win them over instead.” She chuckles to herself as she leaves the room, door swinging closed behind her softly, leaving Derek and himself standing there in a vacuum.

Today of all days. It’s been a long time since the last time such a crushing level of humiliation was burning inside him, but he remembers the emotion like muscle memory. His body knows exactly what to do as his gut swirls and his head spins, sweat beading on his skin as though the very little self-esteem he had left is leaking steadily: the stopper that had been keeping the small amounts of confidence he had inside him degraded and dissolved by his coworker’s careless words, nothing there anymore to stop it leaking out of him. 

It’s not new. But the sting is so much more visceral when it’s shocked into him by two people he considered friends and one person he was hopelessly, desperately in love with. It feels exactly like high school and university did: the toleration of his presence for intellectual reasons, for everything Spencer had to offer, but ultimately the social rejection of him as a human being when it actually came down to it. He was useful to the team for as much as he could give them. And that was it. 

Derek takes a sip from his mug as Elle leaves, but he doesn’t notice Spencer’s completely frozen state until he tries to move on to another topic. “Spencer?” he asks, obviously concerned at his non-response and completely oblivious to his inner turmoil. “What’s wrong?”

He can’t find the words to respond, but he does manage to meet Derek’s eyes and he just stares at him for a few seconds before he shakes his head and looks away again. Derek’s clearly confused, but that only makes it worse. Is he overreacting? Or is Derek just truly that oblivious to the cruelty in his words, to his feelings? 

Feeling the tears burning in his eyes and adamantly refusing to cry in the middle of the breakroom, he turns around and hurries to the bathroom without saying a word. 

⭐️

He barricades himself into a stall and sits on the closed toilet seat as tears steadily spill down his cheeks. This is exactly the reason he hasn’t told a soul at the FBI -- how would a group of alpha personalities who were likely the most popular kids in high school, likely would have bullied him if they’d attended the same school, that he was gay? 

The humiliation stings more coming from Derek. Such negative association with his sexuality had proved himself right: this was a secret he needed to keep quiet. It just hurt so badly that the man he loved seemed so dismissive, so rude about something so integral to his being, and the allusions the entire exchange had to previous traumas had him struggling for breath through the steady stream of tears. 

It takes him a few minutes but he eventually manages to calm himself down. He splashes some cool water onto his heated skin and tries his hardest to breathe deeply, even though it feels almost impossible at first. Usually when he gets worked up and has a meltdown or a panic attack he’s able to talk himself out of it after he’s calmed down a little; able to rationalise and apply logic to the situation, which tends to illuminate either an overreaction or a clear path through the problem.

That coping mechanism is not applicable, though - Derek and Elle truly hurt his feelings and there’s no way around that. Instead, he just tries to push it to the edge of his mind. He thinks through the quantum physics problem he’d started at breakfast, and the logical progression through the formulas and rational reasoning he has to use brings his heart rate down and he feels at least a little calmer, even if the twisted knot of dread and grief and pain still sits heavy in his stomach. 

He’s just solved the physics problem in his head when the door swings open and he can hear Derek’s signature tread on the bathroom floor. “Spencer?” he calls quietly, pausing as the door closes behind him for just a second before making his way to the end stall. “I know you’re in there.”

“I am in here,” Spencer confirms, resenting how weak and watery his voice sounds. 

Derek sighs heavily. “I didn’t get it until I talked to JJ,” he admits, speaking through the door. “I was confused why you suddenly acted so strange so I asked her what she thought was up. I thought it was all friendly banter. To be honest, I didn’t even realise what I’d said until I was explaining it to her. But you gotta understand, pretty boy, I never meant to hurt you. I’m so sorry.”

Spencer squeezes his eyes shut, but the tears still escape anyway, spilling down his tears in an expression of silent grief as he listens to Derek. He takes a deep breath in through his nose and swipes the tears away from his cheek with his fingertips before unlocking the door, revealing the most apologetic expression he’s ever seen. It doesn’t make him feel much better. He still meant what he said.

He smiles weakly. “Don’t worry about it,” he says, and his voice sounds so vulnerable, it’s giving him away. 

Derek’s expression doesn’t ease at Spencer’s forgiveness, he doesn’t smile and consider the issue done and dusted, he frowns harder, eyes desperate. “No, don’t dismiss it,” he says. “I hurt you, and that was wrong. I shouldn’t have said what I said, and Elle shouldn’t have either, okay, kid? I’m really sorry.”

“I know, but I’m used to it,” Spencer says, trying for a light tone and missing the mark by an embarrassing amount. 

“Well you shouldn’t be,” Derek frowns. “If you’re so used to it, though, then why did this affect you so much? I’ve never seen you lose your cool like that.” He looks genuinely confused, and combined with the sorrow smothered across his features, it’s a pitiful sight. 

“Don’t push, Morgan,” he warns, looking back down at his hands. His back hurts from his awkward, hunched position on the cold porcelain of the toilet. 

“Seriously, Spencer, I--” Derek looks completely bewildered, caught off guard by the way he clearly expected this conversation going and the road it’s actually taken. 

“I’m gay, alright?” Spencer interjects, loudly. He looks up fiercely into Derek’s eyes as he says it, but the fight quickly drains out of him and he looks down at his hands again, tensing automatically in fear of his reaction. 

Derek doesn’t say anything though, so when Spencer eventually looks up again, he finds a strange expression on his face. Not mild disgust or confusion or awkwardness, but relief and fear and frustration. 

“Spencer, I--” He cuts himself off as he shuffles his feet and looks away, but Spencer doesn’t miss the mournful tone as he realises the true impact of his words, how they must have hurt him. “You’re gay? That’s… why my comment was so hurtful, I’m so sorry. I never wanted to imply any kind of homophobia, I mean… I’m bisexual,” he admits, the same fear Spencer had felt swirling in his stomach written on Derek’s features. 

“You are?” Spencer replies, surprise colouring his tone. He feels a surge of hope rise in his chest and he forces himself to tamper it. Just because Derek likes men absolutely does not mean he likes men like Spencer. In his experience those kinds of people tend to be fairly rare. He stands up from his uncomfortable seat, meeting Derek’s eyes properly for the first time since he entered the toilets.

What he means to do is give him a hug, or maybe have some sort of conversation on a more equal playing field. He does not mean to kiss him. 

But when all of a sudden Derek’s lips are on his and Derek’s hands are cradling his cheek and waist so gently, surely it would be rude not to kiss him back. So he does. Far too passionately for a public bathroom in an FBI building, by all accounts.

They break away eventually, and Derek immediately panics. Spencer can see it rise in his eyes and body language, so before he can say anything he pulls him into the stall properly, shutting the door behind them and kisses him again, more gently this time. It’s the most confident thing he thinks he’s ever done, and he’s damn proud of himself because he does not want to go another day without Derek kissing him as tenderly as he is right now, without his hands roaming up and down his sides, without the careful brush of his fingers against the side of his head as he pushes a strand of hair back behind his ear as they pull away again. 

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that, pretty boy,” Derek whispers, and Spencer can feel the gentle brush of his breath against his lips.

He’s lost for words again, but in a completely different way from just minutes before, and he absolutely cannot believe this is happening. Today of all days. 

“Me too,” Spencer confesses, smiling slightly as he allows himself to convey the vulnerability he’s feeling on his face instead of building up a wall in front of it as he usually would. It doesn’t take long for reality to set in though. “But we are in an FBI building and we could definitely lose our jobs for this.”

“Right,” Derek acknowledges, looking up as he puts a bit more space between them, as much as the tiny stall allows. “Later, though, we could maybe do this… not in a government building?” 

Spencer’s always wondered how it feels to be on the receiving end of Derek’s romantic charm and charisma, and it’s rather overwhelming. Derek’s smiling cheekily as he interlocks their hands and waits for an answer and Spencer’s finding it a little hard to breathe again.

“Like… a date?” Spencer squeaks, face flushing again -- though admittedly in a much more pleasant manner -- as he prays he hasn’t got the wrong idea.

“Yes,” Derek smiles, “like a date.” He pauses and takes a breath, grinning wider for just a second before he suppresses it slightly and looks back at Spencer. “How about… I swing by your place at 7 and we head to that new Italian place you’ve been talking about?”

“Really?” Spencer asks, face open and vulnerable and honest. He hopes to God that he’s not being mocked right now. It’s happened before. He’s not sure Derek really understands the amount of trust he’s placing in him, the burden that might bring. 

“Yes, really,” Derek chuckles, bringing a hand up to rest at the side of his face again as he thumbs gently over his cheekbone. “I’m gonna wine you and dine you, baby, just you wait and see.”

Spencer knows he won’t be able to speak without squeaking embarrassingly again, so he just nods emphatically and beams at Derek. 

“I’ll see you at 7, then, pretty boy,” he winks, pressing a brief kiss to his lips. “I’ll be counting down the hours.”

⭐️

Taking care to exit the toilets separately, they return to their desks, filling out the paperwork left over from their most recent case. Spencer is certain that more than one coworker picks up on their shy, knowing looks, shared over the top of coffee mugs and cheap printer paper,  but he can’t find it in himself to care. The very thing he’d craved for almost three years, since he first stepped foot in the bullpen and was introduced to Derek Morgan, was within his clutches and he was going to hold on to it no matter what it cost him.

Things feel different almost immediately: ‘pretty boy’ is infinitely more affectionate, the previously platonic touches are lingering and meaningful, Derek’s completely unnecessary paperwork consults seem more affirming and reassuring than ever. The idea that he could possibly spend the rest of his life with Derek Morgan’s hands on him, his passionate kiss on his lips, his compliments and nicknames warming him from the inside out, feels almost dizzying. He knows he’s smiling stupidly, he also knows that JJ and Elle are smiling knowingly, but he just doesn’t care.

He drives himself home and dresses in his smartest suit as soon as he gets back, even though Derek isn’t due for another 30 minutes. For reasons he refuses to acknowledge, he tidies his apartment while he waits and then takes a seat on his sofa, tapping his foot in anxious anticipation. By the time he hears a knock on his door, his heart’s in his mouth and his stomach is fluttering wildly, but that all fades to irrelevancy when he locks eyes with Derek.

“Dr Reid,” he says calmly, smile providing a soft kind of light to his face and Spencer wishes he never had to look away. He passes him a beautiful bouquet of flowers, and Spencer knows enough to recognise it’s a curated bunch, not a hasty supermarket buy but a thoughtful, purposeful trip to the florist. 

“Wow,” Spencer says, and he absolutely tries to fight down the emotion rising in his throat but he isn’t quite successful. He takes the offered bouquet and examines them in closer detail, tracing an index-finger along the petal of a yellow daffodil. “New beginnings,” he whispers as tears spring to his eyes. He stares at it a little longer before looking up to meet Derek’s softened, deep brown eyes. He’s still in disbelief that someone would go to the lengths of researching the language of flowers for him, knowing it was something that he liked. “Thank you.”

“New beginnings,” Derek repeats, taking another step closer, “love me, desire, wisdom, and affection returned.” He lifts a hand to rest on Spencer’s cheek again and looks deep into his eyes for just a moment, conveying all he needs to with one look, and leans in to kiss him.

⭐️

Aaaaand this is the conclusion to my 12 Fic Challenge! Thank you to everyone who supported my fics through this journey, I can’t believe all the amazing things it’s led to and I’m so happy that this is the fic to end it. I’m so excited for what’s next in store, so stay tuned! <3

@strippersenseii @criminalmindsvibez

[dana-chan-the-control-brain]

Not sure I follow in comparing Zim to a dog here, or equating "patience" with a "proper" version of behavior adjustment therapy? I dunno if you realize this, but the whole situation just looks like a really shitty surface-level portrayal of ABA, and the fact that it's played like a joke with little to no nuance or care taken into the seriousness behind it is just kind of yikes to autistic people out there. Like a serious yikes, and the trigger warning just gives the implication that you think there is a "proper" way to do ABA and you condone it and that's even more yikes, frankly.

??????

I’m autistic?

And so is my sister. 

I don’t know what ABA is. And I had to ask someone else what it even was before attempting to respond to his. 

And maybe I’m misinformed on this? I have a feeling I am. Because I don’t follow a lot of the autistic community as a whole due to personal reasons which will become clear as you read my response. 

I was using the textbook example of behavioral conditioning in my example and dogs are used in that. As it is in most scientific studies as well. Like I’m sure you’ve seen something like this in every textbook explaining how conditioning works:

I was talking about Irkens and Conditioning. 

Dogs, Rats, Cats and Monkies are always used in these examples. 

I’m sure anyone who’s taken a college course on Psychology has heard of the Bell experiment at least once. 

I wasn’t trying to equate people who are on the autism spectrum are “lesser” than those who aren’t. I’d be a pretty horrible hypocrite if that was the case. 

I was just using the Dog example because it was the easiest one I could think of when it comes to conditioning responses. 

it’s not a jab at autistic individuals because EVERYONE is subject to this type of conditioning for example the lunch bell at school, the end of period bell We’re conditioned to take that as signs when we can eat and when to move on to our next class.

Some parents reward children for good behavior/grades in school the saw way one would reward a dog with a treat for performing a trick we taught them.

This is why I was using the Dog example. 

The implication I was just saying is that if you’re an asshole, don’t use mental disorders as an excuse to be an asshole your whole life. (Which is what I was saying about Zim.) 

And as far as PROPER Behavioral Adjustment therapy goes... It does exist... I’m taking it to help me with my depression. I have to retrain my brain because literally, everything in life is a “downer” for me.

It’s literally called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Which isn’t the same as Applied Behavior Analysis.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy was what I was thinking of when I answered that ask, but I could have been more clear.  

My brain needs to stop equating the mundane day to day living with “work” and “suffering” because that’s how my brain developed around my depression. 

I have to train my brain to not view “mundane” as “work” so that I can actually DO things, and not have a break down every time I need to do chores or the dishes or something as simple as taking a shower. My personal hygiene is so bad because I feel that taking care of myself is a chore and that if something is “not fun” my brain just won’t do it and I can literally fall into a brain rot and bad thinking patterns and it will affect my depression in a major way for not keeping up with minor things. 

I have met too many people on the autism spectrum who have bullied me in school and use their disorder as an excuse for not taking responsibility due to a lack of control that they experience over their life.

This has happened to me since Middle school and it happens to me online too.

That was all that I was trying to say and maybe my words came across in a bad way. 

Also, I compare Zim to animals all the time because he is an alien and I like to draw upon animal influences for his behavior in my work. I compare Zim to a dog, a cat, a bug, a lizard, a cat again, a guinea pig, and a variety of every other animal under the sun. Just because he’s non-human and I want to convey that better and give Irkens a more distinct identity rather than just “haha... green man go brr” like it is in the show. 

Not due to me thinking Zim is autistic. 

That has nothing to do with the former.

I’m sorry if I did not explain my words more clearly. Hopefully, that cleared things up. 

[kaijuposting]

I've gotten a few replies to this people who apparently missed where a major point of this post was to say, "being x-ist to people can really come back to bite you in the butt when you realize that you fall into the category you were x-ist to them about."

Yes, even if they're bad people.

Like the guy who considers himself progressive but mocks his political enemies for being "autistic," only to later on realize that he's autistic.

Like the gal who considers herself a feminist, but mocks any woman for her weight whenever that woman is one of the "bad" people, then gains weight.

Autistic Guy spent so long shaming people he didn't like for being autistic that "autism is bad" is now firmly entrenched in his mind. And now that he knows he's autistic, he can't stop from feeling that this makes him bad.

Former Skinny Gal likewise reinforced the belief that fat = bad every time she made a mean comment about someone's weight. Now that she's fat, she feels worthless, ugly, etc. Because that's the narrative she cultivated for herself about fat people.

"But Ethan was just a normal guy!" No, Ethan was privileged, and he clearly never had to unpack his privilege, much less examine the prejudices that came with it.

"But they wanted to kill him!" And the GOP wants to kill me but you'd never catch me throwing ableist slurs at them.

"Ethan never had time to think any of this through!" Both games take place over a period of 24 hours, during which Ethan spent a lot of time meandering around. Also, literal years passed between RE7 and RE8. He had time.

"But he was in the situation and you're looking at it from the outside!" I'm applying the same knowledge, observational skills, and critical thinking I apply to real life situations and environments.

"But the stuff you're talking about never could have happened because that's just not who Ethan is!" That was literally the whole point of the original post. Good job missing it.

"So you're saying Ethan should've just given the Bakers, the lords, and Miranda a hug and a kiss?" No, I'm saying that I think it would've been cool if Ethan had realized that he could influence the mold in a way that would've totally pulled the rug out from under Miranda. Would've really been freaking awesome if he'd realized he could weaponize it. Because I am Cranky from my own Trauma, and I enjoy a little "seizing and using your abuser's own weapons against them" as a treat. I'm not saying that this should have happened. I'm just saying that I, Personally, would have enjoyed it.

Also I'm Cranky at the mold getting treated like a villain, when it was literally just vibing there until Miranda started fucking around with it. The mold is just a natural organism that didn't do anything wrong. Hell, it might even be a keystone species in the region. That memory absorption thing it does? Possibly a way of learning more about its environment so it can keep said environment in balance.

Now, destroying the bioengineered, non-native mold in Louisiana? Yes, that makes sense. Destroying the native organism in its native habitat? That's literally ecocide, and that will always bug the hell out of me.

Thinking thoughts about Ethan Winters

Been trying to dissect the character of Ethan Winters to try and figure out what makes him tick, and y'know what-

The vibe I'm getting is the kind of guy who's just hostile to everything that feels weird to him because he's afraid it's going to ruin his image as a Normal Guy. I feel like a reason this scares him is because he knows it's all he has going for him.

He's not particularly charming. He's not especially clever. He's likely spent his life coasting by on being a conventionally attractive cis white guy.

The kind of vibe I'm getting is similar to Betty Draper from Mad Men - going through the motions of a life that doesn't actually bring him any joy because he's internalized that this is just what you have to do.

In both RE7 and RE8, Ethan kills a bunch of people while believing that he and they have absolutely nothing in common. In Ethan's mind, he's normal, but these other people are all just monsters, and that's that. He sees no point in considering why they're like this and how they feel about their circumstances. Eveline is, I think, the most outstanding example of this. She's literally just a neglected, traumatized kid, acting out in a way that neglected, traumatized kids can do (albeit with a capacity to cause harm amplified by virtue of having a biology that other kids don't). Ethan never once registers the utter tragedy of Eveline, and he directs his anger toward the traumatized child, not at the adults who traumatized her.

In RE8, Ethan kills the four lords, whom he also regards as nothing more than revolting monsters that he has nothing in common with. He is, after all, just a Normal Guy. Not a Mutant Freak. He could never. Right?

And well, that's when Ethan discovers that he isn't just a Normal Guy (at least, in his reckoning of what constitutes a Normal Guy.) He's been a megamycete mutant for awhile now. He doesn't really and truly process this, he doesn't really think about what it means; he just soldiers on in his quest. And then he dies.

Diagetically, this is explained as the consequence of Ethan being critically injured and exhausted. It's implied that he might have even survived if he hadn't decided to fight Miranda. But one could argue that thematically, Ethan's death is ultimately caused by his own lack of imagination. He can't imagine how he could possibly go on living as a mutant freak. The narrative he's been telling himself for years, that mutant freaks deserve to die because they are mutant freaks, is probably gnawing at him from his subconscious. Evaline's cruel taunts could be interpreted as reflections of what Ethan himself already believes - one could argue that she's just throwing back the hatred that he's been unknowingly exposing her to for years.

Now of course, since Miranda walled off the village with mold, it's not as if Ethan could've gone to Chris Redfield for help... right? Well, I mean, it sure never seems to have crossed Ethan's mind that he could've just asked the mold to Stop Being In The Way Please and let Redfield and Pals inside.

The thing about the mold is, it's not inherently antagonistic or malicious; it's only as antagonistic and malicious as the people who influence it. So far, we've seen it under the influence of a troubled child and a parent who thinks her precious little girl is entitled to have the whole world. There's no reason to think that Ethan couldn't influence it, if he wanted to.

But for Ethan to recognize this and try to use that information to his advantage, he would have to question many of his assumptions about the monstrous and would have to go off his Normal Guy script. "Become Benevolent Mold Wizard" is a thing that Ethan can't even conceive of, because he's confined himself to a very tiny box that he refuses to leave for fear of what other people would think.

One could argue that what really killed Ethan Winters was a fear-driven refusal to question the meaning and value of "normal." The uncritical fear and hatred he directed toward anything outside of his own perception of normality turned into self-hatred when he finally realized that he himself wasn't normal. And if everyone else was worthy of death by simple virtue of being a "freak," then so, too, was he.

In a sense, I feel like Ethan Winters was always an extremely doomed man. If nothing weird had ever happened to him, he'd have likely gone on acting out the motions of a "normal" life, always afraid of what might happen if he didn't live up to expectations but never really understanding why he never felt any genuine emotional fulfillment. This likely would have led to a midlife crisis where he desperately tried to fill the aching void with all the things society and capitalism tell men that they should find fulfilling. He'd have likely lived as long as anyone with his particular forms of privilege might, but unless he reached a place where he was willing to question his beliefs and fears it would likely have been a very hollow existence.

In conclusion, fuck capitalism and embrace the fungus; the life you save might be your own.

[ecto-american]

I was doing some research for a fanfiction, and remembered this line from Reality Trip, which got my criminal justice self all excited because of the implications. So have some analysis from a rambling autistic with a criminal justice degree.

“Daniel Fenton, in accordance with the Federal Anti-Ecto Control Act, Article 1, Section 1, Sub-section A, you're under arrest.”

Y'all, this is kinda wack? It means, on some level, there has been a federal judgment within the world of Danny Phantom that not only acknowledges that ghosts exist, but has an entire fucking act describing specifically the course of action in a sense. Lots of acts will kind of be this vague overarching thing with various random acts thrown into it, but the name along with the article one, section one subsection a dealio implies that this entire act focuses on ghosts. I say act and not law btw, because those terms are not necessarily synonyms.

Not only does this confirm that there are acts (at least one anyway) in Danny Phantom that specifically talk about ghosts, but kind of really and truly cements that the Guys in White are actually a federal government agency, rather than them simply acting as one but really being a private company of sorts or being some local state government program.

And with laws about ghosts, it means that legally, the government had to define what exactly a ghost is as well as their rights and lack of rights, and that they legally acknowledge, as a nation, that ghosts exists. While, of course, we don’t really ever get to see this act, and as far as I know, it’s literally Never talked about again, this scene means that this act applies to Danny. For a quick refresher, this happens after Danny is exposed, and so this act still applies to Danny despite him being outted as a half ghost. A scary sidenote is before this scene and line of dialogue, the agents told Danny that he was coming in for questioning and experiments.

So what might it possibly say? If there are any acts that we can potentially base what this act possibly would say, I would probably guess it’d be similar to the acts used for minorities within the United States. And I say these kinds of acts because they’re specifically acts that discriminate towards a group, and that have used various reasons to justify how they are not human, citizens or have any legal rights. If the agents’ lines were correct, these acts probably gave them justification for doing inhumanly cruel things to Danny.

Of course, Danny could be arrest for something totally different and not for some anti-ghost reasons. At this point in time, he’s still kind of half-loved, half-hated publicly as people are shown to still believe that he stole during the events of Control Freaks and the mayor incident of Public Enemies, but if he was under arrest for any of those crimes, the agents would have said that. And I refuse to believe this is an oversight of the writers, because they would have found any nitpicky thing and made it a funny situation where the agents went on and on and on about this endless list of crimes that the ghost boy has committed until Danny roundhouse kicked somebody. And no, it’s likely not because the Guys in White are only interested in Ghost Crimes. As federal officials, which they are confirmed to be, they would have arrested him for everything and have to basically fistfight the other government agencies investigating his Non Ghost Crimes.

So what exactly is he under arrest for? No clue obviously, and it’s hard to really even guess. Article 1, Section 1, Sub-section A for most acts are basically describing what the act’s going to be before it moves on to detail that. I think this is an oversight of the DP writers, lord knows we get enough of them, but it could also potentially highlight the Dumb factor of the Guys in White that we would see them sometimes exhibit, where instead of properly referencing the piece of legislation he’s under arrest for, they just blurt out the first section of that law.

And who wrote this act? It could be anybody, of course. Anybody within politics. It also begs the question as to exactly when this act was written and when it was put into effect. I’d wager it heavily depends on when the Guys in White came into effect, as they are clearly acting under these laws. Which begs the question: how many pieces of anti-ghost legislation are there? Who’s writing them? There’s potential that there are literally lawyers who are literally experts in ghost law. Keep in mind that in the beginning of the series, there was a lot of skepticism that ghosts even exist.

This honestly leads me to propose a new headcanon: The Guys in White are a very new government organization that spawned after the events of Public Enemies. To preface this and clarify, in order, the Guys in White appear in only five episodes: Million Dollar Ghost, Double Cross My Heart, Reality Trip, Eye for an Eye, and Livin’ Large.

Evidence to support this theory:

They only show up four episodes later in their first appearance in Million Dollar Ghost. Public Enemies seems to also be the first episode in the series that shows a massive onslaught of ghost attacks. I would guess that this is the ghostly event that probably spawned the act in question, which may have called for the organization of the Guys in White. Prior to this, ghosts were basically shown that they’re unconfirmed to exist on a public level. Even Jack, our lovable and excitable ghost hunter who’s been doing this since his college years admits in Mystery Meat that he’s never seen a ghost until that point. Jazz mentions that Harriet Chin in Bitter Reunions lost her job for writing an article about ghosts because she was laughed for writing about something that was more for “the national enquirer”, a conspiracy theory newspaper that nobody really takes seriously.

Why are they there during the events of Million Dollar Ghost anyway? If they’re a new organization, they may need that money or are cashing in on the publicity of the event to spread their name, or they’re just starting out and have no real clue where else to go. Only two of them even showed up anyway. The only other groups there are very small ghost hunting groups: literally two young adults on scooters, another set of young adults with a tiger fueled by anxiety and a van, and FentonWorks. And while they, out of all of them, clearly have the most advanced technology, they’re about on the same skill level as the other ghost hunters (getting captured and tricked and such just as easily). Danny even was just as “haha” about them as he was the other hunters who had showed up.

Their technology in Million Dollar ghost is nothing in comparison to the literal jetpacks and planes and four wheelers and armor they get several episodes later. Their funding increased when they proved ghosts exist and more ghostly events happened, and they likely proved their competence in some way. Especially when we see that they have been catching other ghosts (like Skulker in Double Cross My Heart and Lydia in Reality Trip) and gathering important information on ghostly artifacts (Reality Trip).

It would explain why they don’t really show up that often in the series, especially during major ghost events where they really should be there, such as the ghost king invasion of Reign Storm. They may have not secured the funding or manpower to really do anything just yet. Note that Reign Storm happened in between Million Dollar Ghost and Double Cross My Heart, which is almost a 20 episode gap. Their skills, knowledge, ability, technology and apparent funding jumped massively between these episodes, and it kind of stays about the same consistency for the rest of the show.

They really only seem to have one department, and they have really low employee numbers for a government agency. There’s no talk or implications or having multiple departments or anything, such as research or technology. Even during the SWAT invasion during Reality Trip, there’s only like twenty or so agents there. In Livin’ Large, there’s only about seven there, and two are the Agent K and O that we know. They play a lot of roles, from researching, questioning, gathering information, tracking down criminals, getting information from the Fenton’s lab, technology things in FentonWorks, etc. Of course, this is a staple for many law enforcement jobs where you have many tasks, but they seem to be playing the role of detective, computer analysis, and police officer at minimum given the wide variety of things we see them do. As somebody who’s worked in three situations where the company/program was very new, it’s incredibly common for a new company that’s still finding it’s groundings to have a very blurred job line. Or they’re heavily underfunded, but look at the goddamn jetpacks they get, look me in the eye and tell me they’re underfunded.

The lack of basic ghost information. In Livin’ Large, they want to destroy the Ghost Zone. It’s apparently very obvious that you Can’t Do That, but the Guys in White seem oblivious. While you can argue that they’re just fucking dumb, it may be more reasonable to assume that they simply just don’t know.

There’s no dialogue (that I can find) prior to Million Dollar Ghost to suggest they exist. There’s also no dialogue from Vlad, who would have known and been wary of such an organization had it been around for years, to suggest that they’ve been around a while. Jack, who also is open about how much he admires them, would have likely said something to. But I am willing to chalk this entire part up to simply poor writing.

“But Danny knew who the Guys in White were when they showed up in Million Dollar Ghost!” Yeah. He also knew who the other people were, and I heavily doubt that they’d be as big of a deal or name as the Official government branch. It’s very likely that they all introduced themselves when they showed up.

[heraldofzaun]

This is a post I’ve been thinking about making for quite some time, especially due to looking at how my own personal depiction of Viktor differs from what seems to be the general fandom interpretation - especially after the LoR cards released and gave us a few canonical acolytes.

I won’t beat around the bush here: this is going to be about why I personally believe that associating the Glorious Evolution specifically with headcanons about Viktor or his acolytes being trans, or Viktor performing gender-affirming surgeries, or things in a similar vein is a poor decision, and why I don’t include this interpretation in my writings. This isn’t meant to discourage people from writing Viktor or his acolytes as trans, of course - my Viktor is agender, although he’s not aware of it, and it would be absurd to say that his followers have to be cis - but I think it’s important to look at the implications that come from writing Viktor as explicitly someone who helps people relieve and manage their dysphoria through his work with the GE.

Firstly, no matter how you spin it: Viktor’s idea of the Glorious Evolution has always been painted in a negative light. I’ve done my work to portray it as idealistically as possible, but at the end of the day his goals have always been about removing (at the very least, negative) emotions from himself, as well as mechanizing himself and others.

“Desiring both to revolutionize his field and to eliminate the jealous human emotions which festered inside him, he engineered parts to replace and improve his own body... He saw himself as the patron and pioneer of Valoran's future, a future in which man would renounce his flesh in favor of superior hextech augmentations.” (Original lore.)

“He saw human involvement in any part of a process as a grossly inefficient aberration - a view that put him at odds with a great many of his fellow students and professors, who saw the very things Viktor sought to remove as the source of human ingenuity and creativity.” (New lore.)

“Jayce reported the incident [of Viktor creating a device that allowed someone to “effectively control” another person]  to the college masters, and Viktor was censured for violating basic human dignity - though, in his eyes, his work would have saved many lives. He was expelled from the college, and retreated to his old laboratory in Zaun, disgusted by the narrow-minded perceptions of Piltover's inhabitants. Alone in the depths, Viktor sank into a deep depression, enduring a traumatic period of introspection for many weeks. He wrestled with the ethical dilemma he now faced, finding that, once again, human emotion and weakness had stood in his way. He had been trying to help, to enhance people beyond their natural capabilities to avoid error and save lives. Revelation came when he realized that he too had succumbed to such emotions, allowing his naive belief that good intentions could overcome ingrained prejudice to blind him to human failings. Viktor knew he could not expect others to follow where he did not go first, so, in secret, he operated on himself to remove those parts of his flesh and psyche that relied upon or were inhibited by emotion.” (New lore.)

This, when combined with how Viktor has also always been intended as a more villainous character - his visual design language, voice lines, and how he leans into the “evil Russian scientist” stereotype all confirm that - mean that from an out-of-universe standpoint, we’re meant to see his ideas as wrong and misguided. Multiple other champions have lines specifically about how he’s wrong - Ekko calls him “everything wrong with Zaun”, Camille (who is morally grey at best, and a cold-blooded killer at worst) calls his work “quaint”, implying that it doesn’t go far enough for her liking, and Heimerdinger makes the point that without humans, no one will be left to appreciate Viktor’s work. It doesn’t matter if Viktor has good intentions - the narrative tells us time and time again that his path leads to a very dark place, especially in new lore where he’s comfortable with violating free will for the sake of preventing death.

It seems obvious to me that a character who auto-amputates as a way to cope with overwhelming emotions, who decides that emotions themselves are a burden, who is repeatedly described as having an obsession with the Glorious Evolution regardless of lore, who is described as who you go to when you’re desperate in new lore... is clearly someone whose surgeries (at least of himself, where they are implied to be unnecessary - again, auto-amputation) and end goals are supposed to be read as a violation of human nature and dignity. Here we pivot to talking about trans issues in specific.

I’m of the firm belief that it’s not a good idea to associate gender-affirming surgeries, HRT, or any other thing used for transitioning with a character whose surgeries are supposed to be read as a violation of the human form. This plays directly into the anti-trans idea that transitioning is, well, a violation of the human form. It is not a good idea to write the man who cuts off his own limbs to poorly cope with his emotions as a patron of trans rights. It’s drawing a direct parallel between Viktor’s auto-amputations, which we are supposed to read as not only a very bad thing and the product of obsession, but arguably self-harm, with life-saving medical care.

(There’s also the issue that some people seem to assume that transhumanism is, in any way, inherently related to being trans - but that’s a whole other topic that I don’t feel very qualified to write on. I consider myself someone interested in transhumanist concepts, when applied appropriately (i.e. not ending up in eugenicist territory), but I am far from an expert on transhumanist thought. I think it’s enough to say that no, they’re not related. They’re just two things with the same prefix. Please don’t confuse the two.)

In my opinion, Viktor should not be seen as someone whose work is a direct benefit to trans individuals. (Again, not to say that Viktor can’t have followers who are trans. But please, please consider before making him the person that they go to for help with transitioning. The man doesn’t even have a medical degree, and his canonical work is described as being all about function over form. He’s not the surgeon you want.) I don’t think that Viktor’s gender identity, whatever it may be, should be associated with his obsession with the Glorious Evolution - or at the least, it shouldn’t be portrayed as a positive association. (In the sense of Viktor using the GE/his own surgeries as a positive affirmation of his gender... I’m struggling to precisely define this at the moment, apologies.) The GE is, textually, an unhealthy coping mechanism.

(There’s maybe something to be said for a Viktor who has disassociated himself so far from humanity that he no longer considers gender applicable to himself... but please, be careful if you write this. I’m speaking as someone who’s agender: I’m tired of my identity being used as shorthand for someone or something becoming or being nonhuman. I’m tired of people treating Blitzcrank being reskinned as a they/them pronoun user as something revolutionary, if they themselves don’t use those pronouns or aren’t nonbinary. I’m not going to pretend that I’m the arbiter of what people can and can’t write, but I’m tired of seeing myself - as an autistic and agender person - represented solely by unfeeling aliens and machines and whatever else, and being told that it’s good, actually, because any representation is good representation. I’d like for people to be more mindful in what they write and promote, but I think that this is becoming a tangent.)

I guess it comes time for me to defend my own depiction, then, since as I’ve mentioned above I do write Viktor as agender. I admit that I want to see aspects of myself in the characters that I like, but I also strive to be aware of the implications that these aspects may have. My Viktor’s gender identity has absolutely nothing to do with his idea of the Glorious Evolution - he has no dysphoria that he attempts to relieve through his surgeries, he does not see roboticization as a way to move past the gender binary... he doesn’t even realize that he’s not a cis man, because he hasn’t had the time or tools to introspect on that aspect of himself. (He’d be rather confused if you told him that people generally tend to feel as if they’re a certain gender - he’s just... himself.) I’ve written him in this way to try to make it clear that he has always felt this way about himself - that the GE has nothing to do with it - and that it has no influence on his actions as the Machine Herald.

There isn’t really a good way to wrap this up. Again, I am not saying that Viktor or his acolytes shouldn’t be written as trans, nor trying to stop people from writing that - only that their transness shouldn’t be directly associated with his idea of the Glorious Evolution. I think that we need to be mindful of what kinds of tropes that our depictions can fall into, and in this case a non-mindful depiction of Viktor as trans can seen as equating being trans to what’s easily read as self-harm/a violation of human nature. I doubt that anyone genuinely intends this association, but it can be made regardless, and so I prefer to keep the two concepts wholly separate in my depiction.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading. I’m willing to answer any questions that arise from this.

[seblaine-rph]

Calling out an M/s rp

Now for my callout posts against @devilskeyhq, warning others of their problematic behavior and educating the admin team so that they can learn to be better admins to their players. Remember while reading this that I have spoken with almost a dozen people about this at this point and they all say the same things, with screenshot evidence to prove it:

First things first, the tea. For those that don't want to read this whole thing, I'll summarize. DevilsKeyHQ is an M/s rp that allows non consensual activity in character and refuses to add a warning that people can see before they apply that lets them know. They were told that they were triggering their players that expected to be in a safe, sane, and consensual group but were subjected to mass rape and their response was to publicly humiliate everyone that had complained and allow their other players to rant about how wrong it was to complain and how upset everyone was to have to alter the group in order to keep everyone safe. 

They bully people with autism both ic and ooc by treating their inquiries and commentary as stupid and using microaggressions to humiliate them and make them feel invalid. 

They're stalking @thedaltonsanctuary because it's a real D/s roleplay that two of their previous players have had since 2017 and there's a real concerning level of paranoia being thrown out in order to slander them; the moment that TDS started to take off, they decided there wasn't room in the tags for two groups and they kicked them out of DK without warning or anything happening other than TDS getting a bunch of apps, and started trying to bully the group and the players completely out of the roleplay community. There are still players in DK that are too afraid to leave right away because they don't want to be stalked, harassed, and bullied because of the fact that they were made to feel uncomfortable and unsafe. Some of them plan on leaving roleplay entirely as soon as it’s safe to leave DK without being noticed or being obvious about not agreeing with the admins. 

My opinion on the matter is that two people very unfortunately chose to "give themselves a break" from admining their own groups and got to know people in a group that is headed by very toxic admins and a couple of toxic players as well. They were kind enough to try to take care of other people, even though they didn't have to and knew that they were probably going to get kicked out for telling the admins that people weren't comfortable. They were warned by the friends that had been in the group that they were almost definitely going to be either bullied out or immediately removed. The admins didn't like that there was someone else that was more knowledgeable on D/s and they didn't like that there was someone who was looking out for the safety of the whole group instead of putting the admins and their friends first. And the real tipping point was watching another roleplay flourish-- by the same people that had already proven themselves to be more knowledgeable and better at being admins. Now they're trying to slander this group in an attempt to become the only smut group in the tags and it's honestly so very middle school and everything I'm about to go through disgusts me to my core.

Before I begin, I’d like to remind everyone that none of this would have happened if people weren’t triggered by M/s content dominating what was supposed to be a D/s rp without any warning about the content. I’d also like to remind everyone that when this problem was brought to the admin team, it was as easy as accepting that they may have done something wrong and deciding to either end all M/s activity (which some people seemed to not want) or label their main with a warning so that nobody else was triggered by that surprised. If you’re looking for a TLDR on how this should have been handled, that’s it right there. There is no reason at all for any of what I’m about to say to have happened. 

I'll start with the easiest thing to explain; the bullying of people with autism. I'll explain quickly here that people that are neurotypical do not think in the same ways that people who aren't. This causes an uncomfortable rift in communication that when not addressed properly, can become bullying. @disabilityrph is going to be posting a guide very soon on how to spot and avoid bullying people because of their autism, as has definitely happened in this case. So I won’t go into too much detail, but I will give you an example.

EXAMPLE: If you as an admin write out an event post explaining what it going on in the roleplay, there is never an example in which it is okay to passive aggressively dictate the thought that any question given is a stupid question.

HOW THAT WORKS: If someone asks, "Will this be involved?" the proper reply is never going to be, "Why would that be involved? It doesn't make sense that it would be." Just because you find the answer to the question obvious, does not mean that everyone does, especially someone with autism. The proper reply is a simple answer; yes or no, and if you feel like it might be necessary you can add why that is the answer. As an admin, you never want to make any one feel humiliated for asking a question in order to fully understand your group. There is never a stupid question. All questions are valid. You have to remember that not everyone thinks in the same way that you do, some people will have questions that you didn’t consider. Some people will read what you wrote and have questions that you think the answers to are obvious, but clearly they’re not if someone is asking! Nobody should ever get a sarcastic or passive aggressive answer from an admin. 

After speaking with multiple autistic players within the grpc, as well as players within DevilsKey itself, I have been told that this happens a lot. They will ask questions ooc and people will reply as if they are stupid for asking. When they bring up thoughts in character that other people don't agree with, they get treated like they're stupid again. I've been shown screenshots of this happening to people in DevilsKeyHQ with my own eyes. This is a damned shame.

The next topic is the fact that their roleplay is obviously a Master/slave roleplay because of the fact that a large group of people were raped by the NPCs that the admins have created. I saw that there was ooc warning that a punishment was coming, but the simple fact is that nobody would ever expect rape to be involved in a D/s punishment. Nobody would expect anything that left lasting damage, because punishments are not meant to be traumatic in D/s. A punishment is meant to better a person, they should walk away feeling as though they have learned a lesson and worked through anything that they had to feel bad for. If there is any power play that is being used to traumatize people or make them do literally anything at all that is against their will, that is M/s and not D/s. The distinction is important because people use D/s as a means of therapy, to get over their trauma. Someone who was raped, for example, might become a submissive so that they can work through their trauma under the guidance of a Dominant and if that Dominant chose to rape them as a punishment because they weren't fitting their role well enough? That would be abuse, that is not D/s. BDSM holds RACK and the concept of safe, sane, and consensual above all else.

Asking for that distinction to be made clearly is completely within a person's rights here on Tumblr. It's a smart thing to do, and any admin that cared at all about creating a safe space for their group would never do anything like that. They would take their problematic behavior into account and properly label the main Tumblr blog for their roleplay. I read through it, it does not at all sound like the roleplay that I have screenshots of in my inbox. You do not rape someone anally for hours and hours against their will in a roleplay where the words "safe, sane, and consensual" are written on the main. That's just common sense and decency.

The players that were kicked out are not the only ones that I have spoken with and they are not the only ones that were uncomfortable. They're also not the only people that will be leaving the group because of this. 

The sequence of events for how this roleplay came to my attention are as follows:

Two roleplayers were writing with multiple members of DevilsKey and chose to join the group at the request of their friends. They created characters that had family connections to their friends, and wrote their bios with their friends, and their friends had all been in the group for months at that point. This was not a calculated plan, this was an attempt to roleplay in the roleplay community. They joined the ooc discord server before their apps were accepted in order to get a better understanding of the roleplay, but all of the roleplay was hidden and nothing that was shown gave them any indication that it was an M/s rp. These two players brought in original characters and immediately made various connections with other players within the roleplay. They were more active than the admin's own characters, if you ask for my opinion on it. That proves that they were interested in making connections with DevilsKey, they put the effort in to make them.

Then the punishment was warned. I read this warning. Nowhere did it say anything that would in any way warn about the content of the punishments. It is specifically stated that they are focusing on D/s so it should be a normal D/s punishment. Instead, when the plot dropped, a large group of characters were stripped and dragged to cells where they were denied food and tortured for an entire week. These characters were raped and humiliated, abused and broken in ways that defy every covenant of the D/s and BDSM handbook.

From day one, people were triggered. I have screenshots of DMs that go back that far. But the player that was being complained to was also told not to go to the admins for the first few days, because the people who were upset were afraid that the admins would bully them and kick them out for "complaining." Days were spent with these people being triggered by the rape that was being forced in front of their eyes. They stayed in the group for the same reason that anyone stays in an abusive relationship; you can't let go of the "good things." They had spent months in this group, getting to know these players ooc and developing their muses ic. They were attached, especially considering the lack of groups in the tags and the lack of involvement in the grpc.

But enough became enough eventually. When people started to realize that they were triggered and that they were not feeling any better, they weren't sleeping, they didn't want to eat, and the punishment was coming to a close but they were beginning to realize that even though the plot was about to be over, it wasn't over. Their characters all had lasting damage, some just mental but most physical as well. The damage was done. Even if they managed to drag their characters out of the depressing hole they were in, they had to fear this happening again. They didn't sign up for an M/s rp. They didn't sign up for rape. They didn't sign up for trauma. So they hadn't expected it. And nobody gets to decide that a person’s feelings aren’t valid because it took them time to be comfortable having them relayed. 

The player that is suddenly being accused of being "far too close to his Dominant character" went to the admin as a fellow admin. He explained that he had previous admin experience, so he understood their position. He explained that he had real world experience in the D/s community, so he understood what he was talking about based on his own experience and that of the community he spends time in every day, and had a serious concern for the wellbeing of the writers in the group. He told them that he didn't want to start trouble, that he wanted everyone to remain calm and that he didn't want anyone to be anxious. When he got busy and had to table the conversation for real life, he even told the admin that he wasn't silent because of them. He was very gentle. He explained the difference between M/s and D/s and he explained why it is important to properly label groups. He was asked a series of questions that made it look like his concern was being taken seriously, and then it was completely not taken seriously in the group chat.

The reason players had asked one person to go to the admins was because they were too afraid to, they were intimidated and they did not want to deal with any negative blowback they'd get for being upset. The admins proved their concern to be founded when they not only posted about everything that had been said in the ooc, they allowed other players to basically humiliate the people who complained by saying they didn't agree, so nobody could be upset, and in fact they were the ones who were greatly upset and the people who complained should feel guilty about it because now it changes the whole entire plot of the entire group for them and they don't get to finish adding more traumatic plots to the event. One of the admins even joined in to talk about how mad they were that people weren't comfortable enough with them to talk to them? And explained that they had admin issues in the past too, but despite how anyone might be feeling or what makes them most comfortable... it's a slight against the admins and they've been hurt.  

I don't think I need to explain why that is wrong. No admin should allow their players to speak like that in the ooc chat. No admin should air that much dirt in public either; it would have sufficed to say, "After further consideration, we have decided that there might be a few issues with this plot drop and we are here to let you know that it's being dropped. The past still happened, but no further punishments will be doled out and we are considering a new way of dealing with punishment plots in the further." As an admin, it is your job to keep your players safe, and you really dropped the ball there. Not only did you let your players publicly humiliate people, leaving more than one of your players going to bed crying and thinking that they were going to wake up to the entire group hating them and/or their role being removed, but one of the admins added to it themselves and made people feel like now they really couldn't go to the admins. Who would go to someone who does not keep them safe? Who airs their complaints so everyone can boo at them on a public forum? Who shames and guilts them for being anxious? Especially when their concerns weren't really addressed and they were told they were wrong? The plot was ended, but it was made clear that it wasn't because the admins wanted to continue in a way that was safe for all of their players or to find a way to stay in D/s territory and out of M/s non con.

Both players that were removed stepped in the ooc chat to say that it would be better to be mindful of everyone's feelings, and that it wasn't really kind to invalidate all of the people that had complained. It was explained that if things had been properly labeled, this wouldn't have been an issue, because anyone who doesn't want to associate with non consensual activity would avoid it. Many players chimed in to agree with both sentiments.

That situation was taken care of in a poor way, but it was handled and it was ended. The players that were removed were not triggered or affected by M/s material. One of them was upset about the fact that their character was only punished once, in fact, while all of the admin's own characters had been punished three or four times and kept being pulled up to either get hurt or hurt other people. By force. In a D/s rp, let me remind you. But the fact that the players weren't kicked out then proves that this had nothing to do with their removal. It would be pretty shitty if it did, because for an admin to kick someone out for telling them that they had players triggered for days and feeling upset and then turn around and scream and wonder why nobody wants to bring any of their concerns to them is a level of denial I'm not ready to accept myself. Both players continued to plot ooc and they continued to write with multiple people. They were still talking to everyone that had been triggered, keeping tabs on them, making sure they felt alright. The admins were not doing anything to make sure their players were alright, despite knowing that they weren't.

Before they joined DevilsKeyHQ, both players had been talking to several other roleplayers about their previous Tumblr roleplays. They started a sfw au roleplay group a few months ago and had been talking to friends about previous group plots and new ideas to see if they wanted to work together to either bring an old group back to life or start a new one. TheDaltonSanctuary was open years ago and has not changed since it was originally opened, aside from the addition of a second admin. Multiple people from DevilsKeyHQ had been in TDS previously, when it opened the first time. That particular admin has at least 30 groups between discord and Tumblr. The one that their friends chose-- and I have screenshots of this too-- to encourage them to open was TDS. They opened for acceptances on the 18th. They joined DevilsKeyHQ on the 24th. The fact that the admins of DK want to try to say that TDS is in any way a copy of them or a threat to them when they are two entirely different roleplays and TDS was made years and years ago is all the proof that I need that the admins of DK are just petty, immature, and can’t handle not feeling as though they are the only and best option; but of course, there’s plenty of proof of that, in my opinion.

There have been allegations that they stole NPS from DevilsKey, but a quick look at the main proves that to be false. There are no OC NPC characters in TDS. It was also stated in the ooc discord server after they were removed from DK that the admins were upset and angry because one of the players had brought their OC Sterling twin to their own rp. Anyone is allowed to birth a muse and then decide that they like them so much that they want to see them in an au setting. The character that the other player brought to DK was an OC from his own group and he said so multiple times and nobody accused him of stealing from his own group? But the admins believe they own an OC because it was born in their group. 

Their official announcement for why these two were removed stated that they had:

taken an OC from DK to TDS and therefore they needed to be removed in order to "keep DK's plot safe" (but DK is completely unusable for an actual D/s rp)

clearly only joined DK to try to poach players for TDS (though they never once said a word about their rps to anyone, and wouldn't even say which plots were still active, which were groups, or which were 1x1s when talking ooc about what they've written before)

and finally for their "little outburst in the ooc group chat" in which they said that it wasn't kind to invalidate people who had been courageous enough to finally (after days of being unable to) asked for the admins to be informed that they were triggered

It's already been stated that TheDaltonSanctuary and DevilsKeyHQ have two entirely different plots. TDS is a safe environment where there is BDSM info in the ooc server and characters are placed in a sort of rehab and recreational environment that is geared towards mental health, education, and finding and maintaining a healthy claim. DevilsKeyHQ is one of those sex island groups, there have been thousands in the tags where the plot is always the same; people are taken to a sex island and have to live by M/s rules or they'll be punished with penetrative rape via multiple orifices.

With no reason to get rid of the players that knew more than they did, looked out better for their players, and now were thriving in a real D/s group... the admins kicked them out and made stuff up. If they were being removed for asking that the admins consider the safety of their players, it would have happened when it happened. If they were being removed for stealing from DK to put things in TDS, they would have kicked them out back then too-- because it was known that they had TDS for a long time before. They were only kicked out of the group when TDS started to gain traction and one of the admins brought their OC in and one of the players that had applied to TDS before the admins joined DK brought an OC from DK too. So it's clear that jealousy has fueled this entire debacle and it was so easy to solve.

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, ch. 37

I was running late to work this morning, so I didn't have time to queue this chapter. Instead of uploading it super late in the day (7pm EDT), I made a judgement call to pull the copy that I emailed my lovely sister @parisconstantine to proof - which she approved - but that means there is no break.

08/10/2020 Edit: Added a break! and links.

Once Conor had sufficiently transformed me into a fuzzy purple burrito, I glanced around my quarters with a weak smile.  Sure enough, Antoine and my sister put a fierce limit on my welcome-back ‘party’. I saw only them, Conor, Sam, and Derek. Knowing that Simon and Noah were likely watching and listening remotely, it was the perfect amount of people for me to handle at the moment.

Antoine returned my smile gently as he handed me a server of tea. “No caffeine and no alcohol until you finish your medications,” he explained somewhat apologetically. His shrug suddenly turned into a wince as he backed away, one hand flying to his temple with a hiss.  After taking a step forward, he shook his head energetically and blinked a few times. “I need to calibrate this more,” he muttered.

Tyche tsked at him. “That’s what you get for deciding to be your own guinea pig,” she replied airily before tilting her head toward me. “He’s working on a project to help the autistic population on the ship.  It’s… in the experimental stages. He should explain, though.”

“It’s going to be marv,” Conor gushed quietly.

I glanced at Antoine. “So, what’s the project?  I’m all ears.”

He chuckled somewhat ruefully. “It actually will fall partially under your purview if I am able to work out the – bugs?” When I nodded, he continued. “During the sabotage attempt on the ship, Conor and I were needed to retrieve Derek and escort him to Level One.  There was simply no other way for him to arrive without being overwhelmed by so many people in close proximity. Since then, it occurred to me: What if there was a way for Derek to travel around the ship, even during such times that the corridors are crowded, without need for an escort?  It would give him much more autonomy than he has had in the past.”

“The idea came from your Council pendant, partially – when we headed to Level One, your pendant gave off a low tone, in theory a proximity alert to let everyone know to let you through.  However, it did not work, and we now know that was due to not everyone being able to hear it in all the panic, yes? We do have a way to hear things over exterior noises, though.” He tapped his temple. “The translators.  Even in the loudest room on the ship, for example, you would still be able to perfectly hear the translation of Derek’s sign language provided you were looking at him.”  I nodded, but was honestly still confused.

“The ultimate goal of the project is to combine the technology we already have, and give Derek – and all autistics on the ship – the ability to interact on their own terms,” Antoine explained, crouching down. “Using the datasets and our translators, the first aim is audio and visual dampening.  No more too-loud noises, no more unpleasant lights or colors. They will be able to adjust both the audio input from the translators and hopefully visual input, right from their dataset. Secondly, proximity alerts – but mostly not for them. Instead, anyone who approaches too closely will receive an alert to their dataset first, and then a loud alarm transmitted directly to their translator.” He tapped his temple again.  “I thought it was only fair that I be the test subject for the alarm, and I’m working on calibrating it. When I backed away from you after delivering your tea, I backed too closely to Sam, who agreed to be my co-tester.”

“That’s brilliant,” I breathed, wide-eyed. “But you said the proximity alerts are ‘mostly’ not for Sam.  So he still receives some of it?”

Antoine looked over his shoulder at Sam, who was in the process of a beautiful and intricate piece of knotwork. “Sam?  When do you receive an alert?”

“If I’m not paying attention and I’m about to walk into someone.  It’s just a chime, though,” he answered nonchalantly, not looking up from what he was doing.

“So really, it’s only to keep you from accidentally touching someone if you don’t want to?” I asked.

“Yep. Works good.  I didn’t walk into anyone today.”

“And the software can tell the difference?”

The question was directed at Antoine, but Derek was the one who answered. <Locational sensors in the corridors tell us who is the one moving and causing the proximity.>

“So, the people who need the software the most are not being punished?”

<Of course not, Wisdom.  I don’t want a screech in my head because someone almost bumped into me.>

“I just wanted to make sure,” I chuckled, letting the silly nickname go unremarked. “Antoine, really.  This is brilliant. And it’s going to help a lot of people, not just those on the spectrum.  There are a lot of people on the ship who have PTSD-related touch issues. Or just flat out inherent aversions.”

He nodded. “Correct.  Grey was able to corroborate in their data that the autistic-spectrum population on the ship has the most stringent requirements and need, however, so that is where the focus is. If I can calibrate it to work for them, everything else is just a matter of adjustment.”

“Okay, okay,” Tyche shifted next to me and gathered our attention. “As proud as I am of this project, especially how far it has come in such a short time, there are a few other things we need to talk about if you’re good with it, Soph?”

“Depends on what it is,” I hesitated.

“Timeline for getting you back to work,” she clarified. “It’s going to be a slow hand-off, and don’t even think of trying to take on more than you’re ready for or I will sedate you myself.”  She arched an eyebrow at me and I just held my hands up in defeat. “Your primary focus is going to selecting a new assistant. I’ve been helping Simon, but there is only so much I can do to help and still be able to manage staffing.  Right now, each of the department heads is handling as much of that as they can, but they still need me for day-to-day questions like who is currently available.”

I groaned. “Can’t you just find one for me?”

“No, I can’t. I don’t have time, like I said. Simon refuses to, because he is the one who originally hired Arantxa.”

“If I have to select them myself, I want a list vetted by Xiomara and Derek.” I glanced over. “Derek, is that okay with you? Dig up all the dirt you can on every single person Xiomara okays?”

<All the dirt?>

“I want to know if they don’t bathe regularly, do they kick pets, did they not thank a vendor, everything.”

<I can do that> he confirmed with a pretty vicious amount of glee.

“Good,” I nodded, turning back to my sister. “I’m not leaving anything to chance. I know none of us want to admit it, but Arantxa had one thing dead to rights – I am entirely too trusting.  Derek and Xiomara? Not so much. I’ll make the final call, but I’m going into this with eyes wide open. No more surprises. Hell, I don’t care if I even like the person.  If they can do the job and I can trust them, I can make it work.”

“Sophie, come on – “

“No, Conor.  I almost died, and the entire Ark almost paid the price for mine and Simon’s poor judgement. This may be an extreme reaction, looking at it from the outside, but the people on this ship need to know that I’m not making the same mistakes again.”

“But they just watched you stand in the Council Chamber and talk about the best of humanity.  Now, you’re going to move forward with suspicion?” This time, it was my sister.

“I also, quite clearly, said that one of our best traits is that we learn from our mistakes. I can believe in the best of people without being stupid about it, and they need to see that.  It doesn’t just mean trusting blindly – it can also mean seeing something in a person no one likes, or who everyone underestimates, or who no one thought could do the job. We also persevere, which is exactly what I’m going to do,” I finished quietly.

As Conor squeezed my shoulder, Tyche nodded in reluctant acceptance. “Okay, in that case, we need to make a list of what you are looking for in a new assistant. And you can’t put 'not a Baconist' on that list, because it pretty much guarantees everyone who applies will secretly be one, no matter what Miys says.” She shot me a look. “So, seriously.  You need to have criteria to weed out who we even pass on to Xio and Derek.”

I hummed in thought, leaning my head back against Conor’s arm.  “Well, there’s the obvious stuff – organized, at least somewhat familiar with who handles what on the Ark, moderate computer skills.  They can’t be shy, either. In fact, I would prefer someone stubborn: I have a hard-enough time saying ‘no’ to people, so I need someone who can put their foot down both on my behalf and to me. Willingness to learn is also non-negotiable.”

My sister nodded, transcribing all this to her datapad and flicking a copy over to Antoine and Derek. “Okay, and what are the absolute deal-breakers?”

“Mindless conformity, in any direction,” I responded immediately.  “I’ve known too many people who were so counter-culture that they though they were open-minded, but they were just narrow-minded in the opposite direction. At the same time, discrimination is absolutely not to be tolerated – there are only so many of us left, and we need to get the fuck along.  Don’t get me wrong, if they disagree with me, that’s fine, but they have to be able to listen and consider other viewpoints.  What I’m talking about is people who make judgement calls based on things that people can’t help or change, and refuse to listen to any opinion counter to their own.”

“Like Xiomara,” Tyche ventured hesitantly.

I shook my head vigorously. “Xio has her faults, but even when she realizes she doesn’t understand, she relents and goes with the flow.  She at least leaves herself open to the possibility of understanding later. Something like that wouldn’t be a complete no-go. But the situation with Maverick and eating? If the person is the type who would flat out ignore my request, they can’t be my administrator.  I have to fight enough uphill battles with the Council, I cannot waste time fighting with my administrator.”  I took a deep breath. “Beyond that, hero-worshipers, victim-blamers, and victim-worshipers are right out.”

“Victim-worshipers?” Conor asked in confusion. “What are those?”

Before Tyche or I could answer, Antoine let out a loud groan. “Sometimes they are the worst types of people, my friend. You know what victim-blaming is, correct?” Conor nodded, leaning forward out of curiosity. Antoine continued, “Victim-worshipers are the complete opposite. They create this idealized, innocent, unrealistic ideal of a person who has been a victim of actions taken against them.  Using Sophia as an example, these people would construct their entire idea of Sophia around her being a victim first, even before being human, or female, much less her being competent at her job.  Instead, she is A Victim, and everything else about her supports her ‘victimness’. She isn’t a person to them anymore.”

Tyche nodded in agreement and continued where her partner had left off. “Depending on the person they are attaching themselves to, yeah – victim worshipers can sometimes be worse than victim blamers. At least the people who blame a victim grant the person a sense of agency, acknowledging that they are a person who can make decisions.  They’re still scum, don’t get me wrong, but they wouldn’t take away the fact that Sophia is a person, who is capable of decisions. Victim blamers try to eliminate their own ability to decide and put that burden on the person who was attacked – victim worshippers don’t even let us decide what we wear each day.”

Conor started snapping his fingers, looking around as he grasped at something. “The whore-thing… about women… what is it? I’ve heard about this. Dammit, what is it….”

Derek clapped to get our attention before explaining. <Madonna-Whore complex> he supplied helpfully.

“YES!” Conor shouted, pointing at him. “Thank you, Derek. That!  So ‘blamers’ are on the ‘whore’ end, and ‘worshipers’ are on the ‘Madonna’ end, and the focus of their judgement can’t win, right?”

Tyche, Antoine, and I gaped at Conor in astonishment. Slowly, Antoine began to nod. “Yes.  That’s what we were trying to explain…”

“Dumb lug my ass,” Tyche muttered, glancing at me.

Conor just squeezed my shoulder again, showing he wasn’t offended. “In that case, I completely agree. Sophie isn’t a hero, or a victim, she’s just… Sophie.  She shouldn’t have to work with someone who can’t understand or appreciate that there are much more important things about her than what happened on Level One.”

“Like what?” I asked, teasing.

“Like the fact that, if you recover properly, you can cook like a fiend again, which I am looking forward to.” His stomach grumbled to punctuate the comment, instantly breaking any tension in the room.

This is exactly the housewarming I needed, I mused as I giggled at Conor’s never-ending hunger.

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[hollenius]

re neurodivergent headcanons in Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul, I think the first time (a year or so ago) I read something where someone online suggested Chuck was somewhere on the autism spectrum (high functioning/Aspergers), I laughed it off as a ridiculous suggestion, because he didn’t “fit” many of the stereotypical traits seen in other fictional characters or in the popular conception of the topic…but in retrospect, I think that came more from my misunderstanding of the “spectrum” part of it than anything else. It’s definitely a plausible/possible diagnosis comorbid with the anxiety disorder(s) he canonically has.

·         We know Chuck’s a good actor (e.g. his ability to fool Jimmy in “Klick”) and is able to mimic and slip into different sorts of social behaviors (e.g. his ability to social climb from a working class or lower-middle-class family to the world of white shoe law firms), so he’s probably capable of using masking in most public settings. This is apparently a more common trait in autistic women, but men do it as well, if less frequently.

·         Studies asking about the long-term effects of masking seem to imply it takes a physical/emotional/mental toll on the person using it, which might explain why, by the time we see him in BCS, the stress of acting “normal” in meetings and the like, when compounded with the worsening of his anxiety problems, leaves him curled up under a space blanket for hours or even days afterward. Trying to compensate for multiple issues at once is probably even more taxing.

·         He seems prone to getting overwhelmed by things and either shutting down or lashing out in reaction. The most extreme form of the former is when he goes catatonic for hours/days in response to being tazed or put in the CAT scan machine; the most extreme form of the latter is probably him completely losing it and shouting/crying/having to be physically restrained by the hospital staff because he’s so upset about being surrounded by lights/hooked up to an EKG/being recommended for a CAT scan.

·         Contrary to stereotypes, Chuck is decent at reading people (or at least he’s extremely good at reading his brother and knowing how he behaves) and he interacts well with people within a work context, but he doesn’t seem to have any friends outside of it, or much in the way of a social life–the other lawyers hold him in awe as a sort of glorified animate law encyclopedia, rather than someone they would want to hang out with or chat with informally. (Though Chuck doesn’t come across as the sort who would be interested in chit chat with coworkers anyway...) Being totally housebound and cut off from the outside world is upsetting to Chuck primarily because it interferes with his work as a lawyer–we never get the sense that he’s upset about it having any effect on his interpersonal relationships, because he doesn’t seem to have any. This is probably why losing Rebecca hit him so hard. He’s got almost nobody else, besides Jimmy and Howard, and he’s really not emotionally open and unguarded with anyone.

·         He’s got problems dealing with his emotions in general. Even when he’s trying to do his little pain/emotion/medication journal as part of his psychiatric treatment towards the end of season 3, he seems to struggle with articulating his emotional state–he’s just got “average” written down for most of the incidents he’s logged, but he’s not able to write down what his emotion is after he’s unable to sleep after insulting/lying to Jimmy to drive him away for the final time, and he seems to abandon writing in the journal after that & rapidly deteriorates psychologically. From what we see of him in the show, he seems to alternate between being extremely repressed and completely exploding and freaking out.

·         Some people have no interest in having or wanting friends, but I don’t think Chuck’s one of them. He seems pretty lonely. He remarks to Jimmy at one point in season 1 that he doesn’t really mind him hanging around to work on the Sandpiper case in his house because he’s glad for the company, which makes his systematic driving away of Jimmy and the few other people in his life all the sadder. The whole root of Chuck’s jealousy of Jimmy in the first place is that people like Jimmy, and they don’t like him. He makes attempts at being friendly, but struggles to do it on anything deeper than a surface level. (Of course, a lot of Jimmy’s friendliness and charm tends to be pretty shallow too, but I don’t know that Chuck really appreciates that or can tell the difference–all he sees are the results.)

·         He’s tone-deaf with jokes–he famously botches the attempt at a lawyer joke to his wife in the opening flashback in “Rebecca”, but he also makes an awkward attempt at humor when talking to Kim in a present-day scene later in that same episode (“the early bird gets the worm, which is good if you like worms”), which leads to some uncomfortable forced laughter from her. Some people are just serious by nature, but they probably wouldn’t bother trying to make jokes in the first place if that were the case. The fact that Chuck keeps trying to make jokes and failing suggests that there might be some impairment in that area. He sees Jimmy do it, and he sees it work for him, but can’t really manage it himself. (He seems to do ok with deadpan sarcasm though–that comment about young people loving local print journalism is probably my favorite Chuck quote.)

·         He’s very verbal and articulate, but his speech patterns can be a bit odd. He can be indirect and overly formal, which may or may not be an overcompensation for the more stereotypical autistic behavior of being too direct in speech as to be insensitive. He usually winds up still coming off as elitist and assholish anyway, though he may not be intending this/aware of this. When he’s nervous or upset, he tends to devolve into talking at people rather than to them, such as when he starts rambling on about probable cause and assorted legal precedents to the police officers who show up at his house in “Alpine Shepherd Boy”, without noticing that they aren’t even standing at the door anymore. He’s got a lot of information rattling around in his head, which he throws out as a defense, but not always in a way that is helpful; I don’t think talking about Latin translations of the Hippocratic Oath to the doctors sedating him without his consent before sending him in for a CAT scan is doing him any good (NB: the actual Hippocratic Oath is in Greek anyway, and the phrase Primum non nocere dates from a later period, so either Chuck has no idea what he’s talking about, he’s conflating two related things, or he’s freaking out enough that he doesn’t really care at this point).

·         He seems to ignore other people when they’re talking to him altogether if something sets him off or distracts him–when Howard tells him about Kim quitting HHM and teaming up with Jimmy, Chuck immediately tunes him out, to the point where Howard has to ask him if he’s still listening. Chuck says he is, but then walks off in the middle of Howard talking because he’s still distracted by what he said before, sending a confused/concerned Howard following after him. This is at its most extreme when he goes into his rant in “Chicanery” and is totally oblivious to both Galley pleading with him to stop and everybody else in the room staring at him in growing horror/disbelief until he’s far past the point of no return.

·         I’m actually sort of curious about Chuck’s abilities in court prior to the visible deterioration of his mental health, because although he clearly knows a lot about the law, his personality is a bit off-putting. I don’t know if he just sort of brute-forced his way through things because of his knowledge of obscure case law, because based on what I know from the lawyers I’m friends with, there are all sorts of subjective factors that can come into play in a court setting. The sort of things that would drive someone like Chuck nuts, like jurors who deliberately choose to ignore evidence because they’ve decided in advance that they don’t want to convict someone of a crime. (To be fair, this would also drive me completely insane, because I have a really hard time at my own job dealing with people who think the rules shouldn’t apply to them for various reasons.)

·         Chuck has an EXTREMELY black and white view of the world, and a sort of obsession with the authority of law and the importance of following the rules. He’s got really strong perfectionist tendencies within himself. I think a lot of why he gravitates toward the law is that he seems to find all the rules and procedures comforting, in a way--there’s a uniformity to the way the legal world works, and a framework in which everything proceeds--constraints which are equally binding on all participants.

·         Maybe he just knows a ton about the law because he’s a lawyer, but it might also fall into the case of it being a special interest, since his knowledge of obscure case law seems to be regarded as extensive and superlative even by other lawyers. (He reads FEC and ISO reports for fun!)

·         There’s something slightly elliptical about his thinking, and he doesn’t seem to realize that other people aren’t following his thought patterns. (He repeats his “One after Magna Carta!” justification for knowing the Mesa Verde address to Kim and Jimmy  in season 2 as well as to the officials from the Bar in season 3, which seems to suggest that he thinks it is a very obvious and logical connection that other people should grasp, though I’m not sure that it actually is outside of his head.)

·         I’m not entirely sure where the line between nervous tics and stimming is drawn, but he’s got a lot of little fidgety behaviors that come out especially when he’s stressed, especially scratching or shaking or wringing his hands. (The script to “Chicanery” indicates that he’s nearly drawing blood from digging into his hands while on his big rant, but it’s not visible onscreen because we’ve got that wonderful/agonizing slow zoom onto his face instead.) It's not clear if it predates the EHS or not. Sometimes there’s a clear tie in his behavior to perceived pain from electricity, but sometimes there’s not--sometimes it seems to result from him trying to distract himself from the electricity instead, like when he’s trying to stand outside the house for two minutes in “Bingo”. Sometimes he does it while he’s standing around in his house, thinking about something else, like while rehearsing arguments against Jimmy before he heads in to court in “Chicanery”.

·         There’s a pretty strong preference for routine/predictability & distress when it’s altered. (Most people probably would not get so suspicious if a single newspaper wasn’t delivered one day, for example. If it was repeated or frequent or a pattern, yes, but not for a single paper.) His control issues are brought up pretty frequently in fandom discussions; maybe he’s a jerk, maybe he’s just not able to function well in unpredictable situations, maybe it’s a little of both (e.g. Chuck being really bothered by Ernie bringing him the wrong kind of apples, then saying that it didn’t really bother him that much...but then telling Ernie to write it down so that he would get the right apple the next time, indicating that he actually WAS bothered by it)

·         It’s possible his perceived sensitivity to electricity grew out of an existing natural sensitivity or aversion to extremes in light or sound or anything else, but this is pure conjecture because we get so few flashback scenes. (Speaking only from personal experience, I don’t think I’m hurt by electricity, but I can hear lights when they’re turned on, and get uncomfortable/anxious under certain types of light, like fluorescents in big box stores when out shopping, so maybe someone who’s more sensitive to sensory things in general might be more prone to developing a sort of learned distress out of that.)

All of this is very inconclusive! But it’s totally plausible as a reading of the character.