#my hyperfixation triggered and I almost didn’t post this :’)

[mumms-the-word]

tbh i'm actually kind of pissed at larian. regardless of if it's sticking it to hasbro or not, they're leaving the game in a potentially awful state and not delivering on promises they made, like the upper city. You also have SWEN talking about shit that could have been like ketheric's recruitment and what not, which stirs the pot even more and makes me angry. Like stop talking about it. we're already upset enough.

These are all very valid critiques, anon! I have many thoughts but I’ll put everything under the cut since I got a little long-winded because I’m passionate about video games in general.

I do play a bit of Devil’s Advocate here but please note I am not attacking you personally or trying to direct any hate towards anybody at all! This ask honestly gave me space to vent some thoughts I’ve had for months about this game. I did my best to offer nuanced perspectives and acknowledge my own biases. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, including their own disappointments and praises for Larian, Swen, the actors, and all involved in the making/maintaining (or lack thereof) of BG3.

TLDR: We shouldn’t put Larian on a pedestal as the Best Studio Ever, but we don’t have to grab our pitchforks and say they’re the worst studio ever either. If BG3 is a disappointment it might be because Larian flew a little too close to the sun trying to squeeze 80% of a functional D&D experience into a digital video game package, when (in my opinion) those two game genres are almost inherently designed to not mesh well, disappointing one fan while satisfying another.

———

Point #1, Idk how much Larian is sticking it to Hasbro but Hasbro IS a greedy corporation who has no idea how to make video games and I very highly suspect they’ve been making demands of Larian’s team that are impossible to meet without destroying the work ethic (and health/mental health/financial stability, etc) of Larian’s team. Hasbro just sees dollar signs. Larian isn’t necessarily as interested in milking BG3 for all it’s worth.

If they were, we’d be paying for Upper City in a DLC, and we’re not. Instead they’re choosing to pivot to a fresh new project that isn’t beholden to Hasbro or the demands of WOTC. Does it feel like they’re abandoning the game? Yeah, kinda. But if Swen says that his team looked visibly relieved to move on to something new, that gives me warning bells. Not against Swen, but about the crunch standard of games industries as a whole and possibly against Hasbro or WOTC. I’d much rather his team take care of their very human selves than grind themselves to ultimate burnout working on a game that is functionally complete, if buggy in places and not satisfying for some players because they didn’t get the content they wanted.

There is no perfect game, after all.

And honestly I’d say the same of any AAA studio too. I am consistently frustrated with game studios firing whole departments for the sake of retaining profits and treating their employees like content robots. Games should not be made at the expense of anyone’s physical or mental health, but unfortunately that’s The Industry Standard. (And personally I think Larian or at least Swen is uncomfortable with that.)

(Also I think people forget that making a game the size of BG3 requires the talents and hard work of hundreds of people. Larian was working with, what, 400 people? And that was after they hired like 250+ to even rise to the challenge of making BG3. Who are we even pointing the finger at for all these issues? Swen? He’s one man.)

Should they have promised something they couldn’t deliver? No. But also, I have no idea what issues led them to cutting the content, either. What’s done is done.

BG3 will be an obsolete game in a year or soon anyway, not because Larian isn’t working on it anymore, but because the games industry is just So. Freaking. Big. and pumps out thousands of games a year. Like, I hate to say it, but people are already dropping BG3 for other games like Dragon’s Dogma 2 because DD2 is shiny, new, and has a bonkers character creator.

And there’s nothing wrong with that! We’re not built to play (or work on) a narrative-focused game for 5-7 years, regardless of what any die-hard Destiny fan tells you (note: multiplayers without narrative get a pass purely because the focus isn’t on the narrative, but on collaborative play).

If a game is no longer fun to play, move on and find something that scratches your itch. Go back and play old games! There are so many things out there to explore. I have a To Be Played pile literally right now, a backlog of games I haven’t tried out yet. I’m sure many others do too.

Point #2 (and here I could be wrong, if I’m not already wrong in my opinions above), but they’re not entirely abandoning the game like…at the drop of a hat. They’re still promising at least a handful of hotfixes and at least one more patch with new evil epilogue endings (among other things).

Does that get us Upper City? Likely not. Does that add enough content to give Wyll a more well-rounded storyline, elevate all the romances to Astarion levels of cutscenes and dialogue, and finish Karlach’s questline with an actual solution for her heart? Also likely not. Is it precious to be mad about these losses? No! Be mad!! Wyll deserves justice!!!

I’d love to explore Upper City. I’m a huge advocate for Wyll getting more/better representation. If I could save Karlach without throwing her into Avernus I would in a HEARTBEAT. But these things aren’t in the game, and they likely won’t be. Larian made decisions to meet a (self-imposed? Hasbro imposed? Industry-relevant?) deadline that are ultimately disappointing. We can absolutely acknowledge that we’re disappointed.

But I don’t necessarily think Larian is just being lazy about these decisions, though. At the end of the day we have no idea what contracts Larian is under, what hell the developers have been through, either from the game industry, Hasbro, rabid fans, or excessively cruel critics, or what technical/gameplay/scheduling/financial issues they ran into at various parts of development.

Like the Ketheric thing (Point #3). Was it bad PR to bring up that Ketheric was a “kill your darlings” decision late in development around the same time you’re openly promoting the end of your relationship with BG3? Yeah. Totally. But I’m not surprised they had to cut something like that. Games, movies, books do that all the time. How many deleted scenes from movies have we seen where it could have changed the whole narrative (maybe even made it better) if it had just stayed in? I can think of a handful. It sucks, but trust me, it hurts the writers and developers way more to cut content they’ve poured money and time and heart and soul into than it hurts us, the players who would never know the wiser if they hadn’t said anything.

But also, the game is ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE. On PC you have to have 150GB free just to install it. Can you imagine how big it would be if they had shoved everything they wanted into it, even if they had delayed the game a while to make it happen? 150GB is a lot.

For perspective, that puts it on par with a very, very, VERY tiny sector of PC games at about the same level (or higher) of GB requirements, including Red Dead Redemption 2 (a fantastic open world game that still holds up in 2024), Microsoft Flight Simulator (which requires 150GB because it’s literally just flying through high quality renders of actual Earth), Forspoken (everyone says all the GB went to graphics here and I believe them), Star Wars: Jedi Survivor (which only has about 50 hours of playable content, allegedly), basically any VR game, and ARK: Survival Evolved which comes in at a whopping 400 GB mostly because of DLC. In other words, games that big get that big either because of graphics or like a hundred DLCs.

BG3 manages to fit in gorgeous cinematics, a super complex spell-combat system, a more or less streamlined video game build for complex D&D combat rules and mechanics, 10 potential companions, 8 romances among those companions, several large maps to explore, and branching narratives that would take you days to read every scrap of dialogue for (I’ve downloaded the datamined files for Patch6, and there are whole leagues of dialogue, encounters, and bits that are in the game, unbugged, that most of us pass by because we don’t explore enough). You want to know where most of the GB goes? It goes towards sustaining a D&D combat/narrative structure that was originally never built with video game constraints in mind.

Do you know how many conditions/status effects there are in the game? Over 1100. 1100+ unique descriptions and titles for conditions that debuff or buff your character or your enemies, granting hundreds of actual gameplay affects. Do you know how many spells there are across the 12 playable classes and all unique spells for enemies and allies? Like 400, if we’re getting picky and splitting hairs over stuff like Rolan’s Magic Missile being different than the usual Magic Missile or if we’re splitting out something like Disguise Self into its 32 different variations. Each spell needs a different icon, a different graphic effect, and it needs to do the right kind of damage and cause the right kind of condition or effect, some of which are immediate, others which linger.

We can speak with dead with hundreds of characters. That’s a lot of dialogue. We can talk to ANY named NPC. That’s a lot of dialogue! We can talk to any animal, with or without speak with animals enabled. That’s a lot of dialogue!!

A single playthrough where I try to explore as much as possible takes me 150 hours or more. I have 500 hours in this game and I’ve only got 4 characters and I’ve only finished 2 of them. This game is mind-bogglingly big. Even if it’s not the biggest game in history ever, or even the biggest game by the time of its release, its BIG.

The biggest critique I would have here is one that I’ve had since I first started playing the game, and it’s that D&D systems and video games don’t mesh comfortably well. I think that Larian got distracted trying to make the ultimate D&D experience, catering to a demographic that is known to ignore plot and pursue shenanigans, and Larian felt the need to build in a lot of shenanigans.

I think they got a little overzealous about it, and that’s where we have missing content, and a lot of fluff that isn’t always plot-relevant. If the game feels unfinished, it’s because Larian started too many threads, and while there are endings to all of those threads, many of them feel rushed or unsatisfactory. Why do they feel unsatisfactory? Because we’re offered so much freedom early on, only to be pulled back into the much more limited narrative constraints of a video game at the end. Because the game has to end eventually, unlike a D&D campaign which could go on or explore many other possibilities. But by act 3 in a 150 GB game, we’re running out of time and space.

And yes that’s disappointing as hell and Larian could and arguably SHOULD have made different decisions on what to focus on.

But ultimately, you just can’t fit a full-on, any-choice-goes D&D experience in a game that needs to be packaged neatly enough to run on most PCs or consoles, and Larian was ambitious as hell to try. Contrary to popular belief, I think they did pretty freaking well given the challenge, and no, it isn’t perfect, and no, to confess to my own bias, I don’t have the same complicated history with the game that early access or release day players have because I bought the game like 2 months after it was out and patched twice. But they’ve clearly built a game that people love so much they’re upset there isn’t more of it, or at least upset it isn’t the best it can be.

But sometimes we have to be realistic too. I can only imagine how many more bugs or render issues we’d get if they did try to shove in Upper City at this point. Games can only be so big before they start to become too much for the systems that try to run them and I don’t want the games industry veering towards making games an elitist hobby for only the rich and elite who can afford expensive rigs and $100 games.

(And also, I’m not at all upset that for $70 bucks I got 500 hours of gameplay and I’m not 100% sick of it yet. When EA and Activision are getting players to pay hundreds in micro transactions and DLC and dangling extra maps and new missions behind paywalls? Bish, please, I’m good. You want to talk about an unfinished experience? Dragon Age: Inquisition made us pay for our epilogue content as a DLC. At least Larian built theirs in for free from the start.)

Anyway.

All that said, I’m sure if Larian could turn back the clock and start over, they’d make different decisions about what to keep, cut, and refine. But we’re here now.

If I want to see anything from Larian right now, it’s a dedication to fix ongoing bugs that make the game unplayable or that block the narratives that they have built so that they play correctly (like with the Minthara romance). IDEALLY I’d like to see them add more content for companions other than Astarion, to equalize the romance experiences, but I’m not holding my breath (again, considering things like game development, actor schedules, contracts, etc).

While I’m sad about the permanent loss of stuff like the Upper City and disappointed by all the rushed questlines, I’d rather them fix the bugs that make the game un-fun to play and bow out gracefully once they’re sure the game won’t need constant supervision.

Besides, they’re working on cross-platform mod support, and mods are gonna add and mess with the game for many years to come, so we can pivot to support them instead while Larian works on its next game (and hopefully learns from its mistakes with BG3).

[lucent-roase]

Why I Think Willow has OCD

(i've done a lot of reposting lately so i'm just going to reply to this instead of my previous post about it)

explanation is below the cut, i just wanted to address a few things beforehand. there will be a few triggering topics when you go on.

before anything else, Willow has extremely good neurodivergent representation in general. clearly unmasking in front of her friends, succeeding in the plant track because she learns differently than others, and of course, she (arguably) hyperfixates on flyer derby. those are pretty surface level symptoms that i'm sure everyone knows, but there are other traits (belonging to the entirety of the neurodivergent spectrum and also specific to OCD) that i will go into throughout this post.

Willow’s anxiety. one of the interesting facts about OCD is that many scientists consider it to be a syndrome rather than a disorder (for reference, obsessive compulsive disorder) because it consists of so many other disorders such as anxiety, depression, different EDs, amongst others. furthermore, Willow’s is debilitating. she defaults to blaming herself in almost every situation, even when she gets more confident in ASIAS. nothing stops the nagging feeling that she made the mistake, set a bad situation into motion. she thinks back to everything she did and she excuses everyone’s actions except for her own. in ASIAS, like i mentioned, this is so prevalent. Willow is constantly doing the right thing, for her team and everyone in it. she’s hopeful and she pushes her teammates to be their best selves. she helps Hunter, and he initially pays her back with jail time and the promise of leaving her friends and family forever. that situation was entirely in Hunter’s hands, and he would have picked up a few other students to join the emperor’s coven anyway. but Willow blames herself for everything. she shouldn’t have asked Caleb to join her team. maybe she shouldn’t have even made the team in the first place, her old teacher was right. she put many people she cared about in danger. until she can “redeem” herself by helping everyone back to safety and hear Hunter indirectly apologize for putting them in that situation himself, she’s in her head about it. with the distraction and confirmation of being of help to those she “messed up” with and that she didn’t really even mess up, she was able to go back to her charming, typical self.

similarly but also slightly different, she regrets her actions immediately after doing them, assuming she’s at fault and kind of gets hyper focused on it. when she, Gus, and Luz get caught animating the house, it takes her a moment to remember that she can grab the root they’re hanging from and completely save their asses from dying. lots of OCD people tend to second guess their own judgment and actions. this can show up when police are called, and trying to find someone. someone with OCD might believe they committed a crime even if they were just, say, reading a newspaper. another instance is if someone talks in a different tone than usual, triggering anxiety and leaving because they think they have done something wrong and that the person who talked differently doesn’t want the person with ocd to be around them (sorry, that was a mouthful of words). this is similar to when Willow gave Hunter that picture of him and Flapjack, causing his eyes to widen and just stare at her. for all we know, he could have just been taking in her nice words and gesture. she shut down and fled the situation as to “not bother” Hunter anymore.

Willow also has her “out of sight, out of mind” mindset. i would argue that this is compulsive behavior. when an OCD individual has intrusive thoughts, such as “___ will die in twenty minutes from now,” they are typically convinced that it will happen. sometimes, partaking in some sort of ritual will ward off the thought or almost counter-convince the person (this will generally sound like “if i turn the light switch on and off 6 times, that car crash won’t happen and everyone will be safe) (also, that’s why people with OCD are usually stereotyped to always be cleaning—rituals like needing everything lined up in the right order are common). Willow’s “out of sight, out of mind” and “i can do this” is similar to an OCD ritual, especially because her thoughts are sometimes dangerous (to her wellbeing). when the polaroid of her and Amity came up, she immediately told Luz her motto. thinking about her old best friend might have sent her into a downward spiral, because it would have reminded her of how she "wasn't strong enough to be Amity's friend" and how badly she had ruined her life. i also believe that the vines that she had created were very representative of intrusive thoughts. they were literally eating her up, and they wouldn’t go away until she let her emotions out, and actually facing how badly she felt.

i can assure you that some of these are far-reaches but i really felt represented by her throughout the series, especially the vine scene in For the Future. it felt so realistic no matter how much magic was being used.

uhh, i’m bad at conclusions, thanks for coming to my ted talk!

[gyaruogutz]

👀 i'd be curious... (about your last post)

You’re in luck , I love talking about myself when asked ~

Information is under the cut , mostly for my personal preference ! CW for , well , transharmful things !! I don’t really go into detail until the very end , but still . I’m trigger-tagging this as a vent just in case.

It will probably be a lot lmao !! Be careful what you wish for Anon !!

A lot of my harmful thoughts come from rage . And that sounds very stereotypical , right ? Like “ oh, of course the transharmful person has homocidal thoughts , that’s a given . “ You’re right of course ! But it’s not just homocidal thoughts I get .

I get paraphiliac thoughts and urges as well when I’m in a heightened state of emotion , whether it be a positive OR negative feeling that I’m experiencing . & I’ve gotten homocidal thoughts from excitement or joy before . With heightened emotions these days comes heightened impulse .

I’m very good in retrospect with controlling these impulses , for the saftey of me and those around me . I’ve done nothing that warrants suspicion from those who trust me IRL , and nothing to tip off any mental health professionals , much less anything authorities would be concerned about.

I experience these thoughts near-constantly . I’m either wishing to be violent , aggressive & homocidal , or I’m fantasizing , usually sexually , ( but not always , to be fair ) about one of my paraphilias . When I’m not in these states of mind I’m almost purposefully distracting myself with special interests or hyperfixations . And mind you this is while I’m ON my medications , haha !! Though I doubt I’d be at risk of offending for either side when I’m not , my medication moreso keeps anxious paranoia and depression away .

These thoughts at this consistently don’t just come out of nowhere . To start off with , I’m also cis-traumatized , and had a C-PTSD diagnosis at the chrono age of 14 ( though apparently it’s not a diagnosis anymore ? correct me if I’m wrong ). My specialized therapist and I have determined I have genuine plurality that is either mostly or completely traumagenic , most likely P-DID or DID . I also have reason to be weary of having suffered R4MC04 ( censoring in case of antis jumping my post ) abuse as a child , due to knowledge of some of my alters I have experience with , and how I react subconsciously to certain things .

However , I have also most likely gained these thoughts from doing harmful things in my adolescence , usually impulsively and on purpose.

Disclaimer , chrono-minors ; I cannot and will not recommend you do ANY of these things listed . I’m not your parent and I can’t stop you , I understand that , but I feel obligated to put this warning here . Additionally I’m not providing details on how I did these things myself , and I will not do so if asked .

For one , as a young teen I would purposefully seek out sexual contact with much older men for my own sexual and emotional amusement . This is where I developed a lot of my sexual tastes from , honestly . I never felt bad for doing these things , only shame for getting caught by then-friends who were appalled.

I would also frequently ( with their consent ) use friends in my group for that same gratification . I lost my virginity to a friend I met in my first year of public middle school , years later in our friendship , for example .

I was also ( and still am , honestly ), a stalker of those who gave me enough attention to be interested , whether online or in person . I was also obsessive , checking messages and getting intense emotions when I saw my various objects of affection over the years do something I didn’t approve of .

There were also some things in younger childhood ,

— I ( unintentionally ) scared the absolute shit out of most boys in the two grades below be because I was notorious for harassing them for my amusement as a kid . ( my autistic ass simply thought that’s how people played at the time , but I thought it was also REALLY funny )

— for some odd reason , in my small impoverished Catholic elementary school , my year consistently had the most traumatized kids out of all of them . I was faced with sexual assault stories , parental death stories , physical abuse stories and more by my close friends all before I was ten, and besides the parental death ( which was a singular case ), all of that was normalized and unfortunately almost romanticized by the girls in my grade .

I specifically remember a friend of mine getting assaulted by a college boy when we were in third grade , and recall three girls asking her excitedly about the experience . ( STATING THIS IS NOT TO ROMANTICIZE IT, this is a genuine example of how serious violence was romanticized in my childhood. )

— I can name at least one teacher I know in middle school that clearly had eyes for me sexually . Nothing ever happened with him in my active memory , but I knew , and I think he knew I knew , and I definitely used it to my advantage . There was also one in high school , who , again nothing in my active memory happened with him , but I definitely knew and again used it to play him like a fiddle .

Until I was TOLD that these things were wrong , I wasn’t aware . I saw it as normal , fun , and exciting .

So those are most of my thoughts on the subject . Not sure if I’m cis-harmful or trans-harmful really .

[chronic-invisibility]

I stopped coming on here for like almost a month i think bc i added some tags onto a post i reblogged and the op called me out and said i completely misunderstood everything (except they misunderstood what i was trying to say so fuck me ig) and i got upset and dipped. In the meantime, lots of stuff has happened, but also not much.

I went back to university, the semester started last Thursday and it’s going well so far, I’m majoring in Museum Studies bc I am a big nerd, and it’s a 100% online program so I’m still working and I don’t have to like, move to Arizona, which is good.

Work is meh, we’re starting vaccine clinics again soon so I’ll be doing that again with this season’s flu and covid shots, and maybe other vaccines as well I’m not sure what the regulations are now. We still only have one pharmacist on staff so we’re stuck with a rotating cast of floaters, some of whom are more helpful than others. And the customers are still horrible, that hasn’t changed. I got yelled at for 10 minutes today by someone who’s doctor called in over a dozen prescriptions and then faxed us and cancelled all of them so we put them all back, which was a mistake apparently and then after we finally got it sorted and got them called in again, we were supposed to close in 10 minutes so it was physically impossible to fill 15 prescriptions for one person, and she wanted us to stay open late just for her, which legally we can’t do and also no, we want to go home and she was being so rude we didn’t really want to help her at all. So yeah, work is work

In good news, I’ve been talking to someone i matched with on a dating app (my intro that they messaged me about was mcr related, so you know they’re a keeper) and we’ve been on 2 dates and text a lot and we’re planning on hanging out again this Tuesday. They’re a special ed teacher and they have adhd so they get how my brain works and they work with kids whose brains work similarly to both of ours, and they’re really funny and cool and smart and nice and pretty, I really hope this keeps going well bc I really like them.

I watched the newest season of Heartstopper twice in a row after it came out, reread all the comics that are out (Alice Oseman is still publishing them, too, so that’s nice) and then rewatched both seasons in a row. It’s so cute and so good and i can feel the hyperfixation building. I’ve watched it enough that I keep slipping into a british accent when I talk, which is entirely unintentional but not the worst thing. I can also do it on purpose, but i tend to pick up accents from people I hear talk a lot, which is maybe the only fun side effect of masking my whole life

I’ve seen a few really good plays and musicals recently, I know I saw The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window before i stopped posting on here, but that was really good, and then I saw Kimberly Akimbo the other day, it was INCREDIBLE. The music and the writing are amazing, obviously, and the actors were all so good, again obviously. They won 5 Tony’s last season, including for Best Musical and Best Featured Actress in a musical and Best Lead Actress in a musical, which were so well-deserved, I seriously cannot hype this show up enough. There’s so many good shows on Broadway right now and I wish I could see them all, there were a bunch I wanted to see but closed before I got the chance, too, including Prima Facie starring Jody Comer, but I bought the script for that one.

In less fun news, I think i might need to put a read more here bc there be triggers coming

Between my chronic GI issues (trying to see a specialist about it again but there’s a whole mess of problems with that i just don’t feel like typing) and watching season 2 of Heartstopper and also rereading it and seeing Charlie struggling with his eating disorder, I’ve lapsed pretty hard with my own. I can’t really call it a relapse bc I was never really actually trying to recover, but I was trying for a while to eat a little more normally, but that’s basically out the window now. Thanks brain, so helpful of you to see a person struggling with a similar mental illness to mine and say “well they’re sicker than you so you suck and also you need to work harder at being sick like them” like FUCK OFF that’s not helpful and also Charlie is literally a fictional character and most of the storyline is about how he’s trying to get help for his ed and how awful they are, and his ed and mine aren’t the same, nor are our reasons for being disordered. So that’s not been fun.

I also realized (after watching a video by a therapist reacting to the scene when Ben assaults Charlie in Heartstopper and then going and obsessively researching legal definitions) that what happened to me in the summer of 2019 would probably be classified as a rape, not just a sexual assault. Which it also was, but what happened falls under the legal definition of rape, not just assault. So I’ve been spiraling about that, even though I still remember almost none of it and once again my garbage brain has decided that I’m somehow not allowed to be that upset or say I’m traumatized bc I don’t experience two of the most common symptoms of ptsd (flashbacks and nightmares) so clearly, this is all me being dramatic, even though basically everything else fits. And those aren’t required to be diagnosed with ptsd. Not that I WANT ptsd, but for whatever reason I feel like i’m not allowed to even say i’m a little bit traumatized by what happened bc of that. Again, stupid brain. I also realized after talking to the person I’ve been talking to (idk if we’re officially dating, maybe i should ask) about boundaries and what we’re both comfortable with, that the last person who I’ve had any “romantic” physical contact with was the person who raped me, and also the only sexual contact I’ve ever had (unless i’ve blocked out more than just the one assault I know happened) was with that same person, so now i’m extremely anxious about doing anything with the person i’m sort of maybe dating, even though neither of us are interested in just jumping right to physical intimacy, they’ve also experienced similar situations so they’re anxious about it too, and also they’re a nice person who i’d trust to not push it if i wasn’t comfortable with something, but idk how to say “i’m anxious about kissing you even though i like you and i want to kiss you bc the last person i kissed was the person who raped me over 4 years ago”

I’m working on finding a new therapist now that i’m done with my IOP and i know that’s going to be one of the (far too many) things i need to deal with in therapy, as well as all the other trauma from that summer, and from my previous university experience, and my whole fucking childhood, and also my other issues that aren’t necessarily trauma related, although most of them probably are to a certain extent bc being an undiagnosed audhd person who also doesn’t realize they’re trans until they’re an adult is inherently traumatic.

I don’t know if there’s any other big stuff I want to/feel like I need to say that’s been going on, not that anybody will probably read all or any of this. But yeah, a lot is going on, but also not much is actively going on. This was a lot longer than I thought it would be. Oops.

[memequeme]

Related fic thoughts but also super personal things so it’d going under the cut (tw/cw for discussion of death)

I was super into comics in hs and undergrad and then i sort of fell off them when I got really into hockey

this week last year, one of my closest friends died suddenly and tragically. he was a very important person in my life and its been an extremely difficult year.

I went to my first comic con with him, we would go to our local comic book store together, we shared a lot of interests together, he was more into marvel than dc but it was still something we connected over.

I've always loved the batfam, their dynamic and the things they represent. there is a lot about jason and his story that I connect with and I relate to (as much as you can in a fictional comic book superhero story) I enjoy writing from his perspective and it feels like I can process through some of my own shit when I write him

I was thinking about this the other day but I don’t think its a coincidence that I got right back into my hyperfixation with the batfam around the same time that my friend passed away. (I had rewatched YJ in Dec 2021 and that triggered the whole thing but I think the timing was really apt)

And I don’t think it's a coincidence that I’ve clung to Jason’s story as hard as I have the past year. I think there’s something in me that wishes comic book shit happened in real life, that no one who died actually stayed dead. I think almost anyone who has experienced great loss feels that way in some capacity.

The way my friend died, we didn’t get to have a proper wake and burial, his body was never found so we only had a memorial service. There was no casket and there is no grave to visit. There’s an immeasurable lack of closure.

Death is not something foreign to me but I’ve never experienced such a lack of closure before.

These circumstances make the whole thing feel very surreal. The stages of grief come in waves and some of the time it just feels like he’s gone away on a long trip but he’s going to come back, he has to come back.

I know this isn’t the case and that he’s gone from me in this life, but that wish is always there.

The point of this post is that writing a story in which Jason gets to come home, in which his family and friends get to see him again miraculously, no matter how unrealistic it is, is therapeutic in a lot of ways.

The way I am choosing to write Bruce and the rest of Jason’s relationships with his family is the happy ending I want to see. I want to show that there’s a lot of love there and that often we take a whole lot of shit for granted every day.

I want to write a Bruce that would do anything to keep Jason in his life, to keep his kids safe and healthy and happy, no matter how often they butt heads on other things.

I look at my friend’s parents, the state that they’re in, how hard it is for his family, and I can’t imagine reacting in any other way to your deceased child coming home.

I don’t really have anywhere else to put this so it’s here, if you’ve read this far, thank you and hug your friends extra hard the next time you see them.

[geek-freak0263]

I Feel Like This Needs To Be Spoken Of…..

Note: I promised I wouldn’t bring this up, but with the recent small information that came up, I feel like this person could be a danger. A danger to other Star Wars discord servers, writers, and minors if this is ignored. This is to bring awareness and to prevent any incidents in other potential servers, minors, and writers.

Trigger warning: Kidnapping, pedophilia, rape, death threats, and homophobia mentions

Before I start this post, I want to apologize for the people in the Bad Batch server I’m in. I want to apologize for opening old wounds about this incident and I won’t blame you for skipping this post in the need of moving on. I just can’t ignore this anymore. I just feel like people should be aware. I’ll leave everyone unnamed for the protection of their privacy.

On this platform, there is a person by the name of @ahsoka1, @lightinglightsaber21, and some may know her as Megan. Some of you Star Wars writers might be familiar with her. A while back she was in a Discord server with me and things were… Okay at first. Well I noticed she was off a bit. Almost like the mind of a child despite her saying she was 21. Well my suspicions became a click when she said she was autistic. Nothing wrong with that. Me personally, I never interacted with someone like that so it put me in a situation of walking on eggshells from the severity. Please forgive me for being uneducated about autism. I’m open to any info about it. Anyway my sense of humor is everywhere and it seemed like I couldn’t hit some areas of my humor because of it leading to it getting me in a bit of trouble in the server. It was never mean spirited humor, more of the “fucking around” humor. That was just my personal experience with her, but with other stuff it just made me go “What the fuck is happening?”.

I would notice some self absorbed behavior like when someone would vent, she would make it about herself. Even acted homophobic towards a member. Megan would even completely disregard someone’s pronoun then made herself look like the victim without saying what fully happened. She would mention something so fucked up in venting at times without warning in such inappropriate timing. For instance, there was a member in the server who mentioned a family member getting Covid. Megan decided to share in great detail of her grandpa dying of Covid and the description of his dead corpse…. Yeah, not the best comforting story there… Aside from the venting incidents, she would repeatedly put in the same stuff just so it would get attention. I would notice the same headcannons and the one thing of art over and over. She would basically beg other people’s headcannons her barely put together prompt. It would be like “What if the Bad Batch went to Disney World with me?” or “What if the Bad Batch went to the beach”. The whole point of a headcannon is to come up with it yourself. This was the tamest things she did surprisingly.

Something that also weirded me out was she was REALLY obsessive over the clones. Like to the point it seemed like she forgot that these are fictional characters. At times she would come up with self inserted scenarios with the Bad Batch. If someone wrote a how they would actually react that didn’t go into her view she would think damaging a fictional character’s belongings is gonna solve it. Those would get toxic pretty quick. It got to the point we had to remind her that they weren’t real people a good few times. People have their hyperfixations, yes, but this wasn’t even that. It was a full on, unhealthy obsession. It was a bit worrying at times.

This brings me to my next point with headcannons. She would make the NSFW headcannons be from being, “Yup that’s a clone’s dingy ding dong” to “Okay that’s unsettling”. A thing she would constantly bring up was the Bad Batch being creepy as all shit. Like pulling off a Spongebob with the panty raid… I wish I was kidding. She would repeatedly send that hours in between. She would be asking people to come up with ideas of the Bad Batch being creeps towards her. We all felt uncomfortable and ignored that. But she just kept putting it in. I would call her out, only for her to then delete the previous messages and send in the new ones. Delete. Copy. Paste. In that order. It took me jokingly sending the Spongebob scene to get her to stop because it was really getting uncomfortable for everyone. That was the one thing she would stop at least.

You’re probably wondering where’s the proof. Well to be dead serious. There’s none. I know, not that strong of an awareness post if I don’t have proof. That’s why I was hesitant to write this post for the longest time. The moment someone questioned her or spoke of logic, she would delete all of her messages to hide what she said. The she would play innocent to it by continuously apologizing, but never learning anything from why she apologized. It would always be an empty apology. She would keep doing it. We would warn her repeatedly, but she never listened or learned. Megan would drain us from the repeated deletes and apologizes, which lead her getting kicked. The thing is, she was originally blocked from having the inability to learn from what we were warning her because it wasn’t mindful to the people in the server. It was unfair for us to baby her and it was unfair for her to be babied. What we found out hours later brought us to pure disgust.

After we kicked her, a fellow member came forward about Megan. Before she joined the Bad Batch server she was in another Star Wars server. She got kicked from that one due to requesting kidnapping, rape, and pedophilia to writers. When one understandably got uncomfortable and blocked her, she went to another one. Then another one and so on. When Megan got caught, she wished the people in the server would die from Covid before she got kicked. It became to my attention that she got kicked from another Star Wars server recently which is becoming a worrying factor that it has happened 3 times. I wanted to write this as a warning to possible writers, role players, and Star Wars discord owners to be aware of this user as she could be a danger to minors. Don’t play into her pretending to be innocent act, she’d never tell beyond of why people are calling her out. Or what people are saying. It’s all manipulation. Be mindful and avoid her. Blocking her is the best solution for minors and writers. Kicking her off servers and blocking her is the best solution for discord users.

If you somehow find this Megan, I hope you find some serious help because that’s not okay. You as an adult should know that’s not okay. It’s basic knowledge that you should know that pedophilia and wishing death upon someone, is not only inhuman, but very illegal. Own up to what you’ve done. As much as I’m disgusted, I don’t wish violence or hate. You need actual help. Help that’ll make you a functional member of society that won’t end you behind bars. The fact that you tried contacting my best friend of 6 years to deal with your dirty work had me fuming. Instead of hiding with deleting and being vague about your situation, own up and accept you did something wrong. It’ll not only save you, but also others as well.

[kindness-ricochets]

I’ve been seeing a lot of thoughts and hc of autistic wylan lately and you seem to also be a fan of the concept. May I ask why? Exactly? I could definitely kinda see it but wanna hear you thoughts you’re always so eloquent

Hey there anon! Sorry for the delay—I’m guessing you already found an answer to this elsewhere while I was off Tumblr for a bit, but just in case, here are my thoughts. This will be heavily personal, but… well, you can’t very well ask an autistic person about autism and expect neutrality!

Autism is different for everyone and can be difficult to pin down, so while Wylan is arguably autistic, he misses several beats that for me would have made him definitively and undeniably autistic. For example, when the bells start to ring, triggering black protocol—I work in a place with a lot of bells and am frequently caught too close to one and normally press my hands over my ears until it’s over because that sound is like shrapnel raking across my insides. All of them. Not just the ear and brain parts. Wylan doesn’t have that sort of visceral reaction, but that may just mean he doesn’t have the same sensitivities that I do, or to the same level. He also never, that I recall, eats meat—as weird as that might sound, eating meat is incredibly complicated with heightened sensitivities to taste and texture. I’m not sure how old I was when I realized it was strange to get up from the table to spit out my food because it viscerally repulsed me. So it might be that Wylan is autistic and has different experiences than I do. Those are things I would include in a story as major indicators of a character being autistic. This might also mean that his father’s way of raising him taught him to hide unusual reactions and stimming behaviors. It’s not that much of a reach to assume a man who tried to abuse the dyslexia out of his son would take the same approach to autism. (More on autism and abuse later.)

So while I’m going to lay out why I read Wylan as autistic, that’s why I think it’s valid to read him as not being autistic as well. Both are valid.

A final caveat, I am well overdue for a reread of the books, so I likely left something out or could have found better examples. Take this as a few of my reasons for a personal headcanon. Anyone who feels differently, that's fine! We can each read things our own way :)

1 - Hyperfixation: The way Wylan loves music

Most of the Crows’ backgrounds color how they see the world: Kaz’s shrewdness, Matthias’s tactical thinking and superstition, Inej’s faith and Suli wisdom, etc. That’s a sign of good character writing. But very little of Wylan’s upbringing seems to have influenced how he sees the world. It comes closest when he thinks about how his father would scorn his new friends, but we never see that scorn from Wylan.

The way a hyperfixation feels, it’s like you’ve always lived in a close parallel world, never fully been a part of the other one where it seems like everyone else lives, but suddenly there’s this bright shining piece of your soul laced through the other world. It lets you connect, it lets you exist in their realm, and you can’t help but filter everything new through that lens because it’s the brightest, most wonderful thing. (I had been between hyperfixations for a while when I started a new job; six months into that work, I read Crooked Kingdom. One of my coworkers thought I had fallen in love, it was that marked a difference.)

So, combining these: Wylan never really acts like he was part of his father’s world, and indeed is in some ways separate from the other Crows, but he parses everything through music, his hyperfixation. He sets words to music to remember them, like he does with the contract. Even his own anxiety is made sense of through music, when in his first narrated chapter, he sets it to music: what am I doing here what am I doing here…. When he’s overwhelmed, his thoughts are “a jangle of misplayed chords”. The Crows have backgrounds that influence how they react to the world, but Wylan’s hyperfixation is his means of experiencing and understanding the world.

2 - Literal thinking: Wylan responds to exact words

In this post, I went into detail on the line where Wylan suggested waking up men to kill them. Wylan is generally unsupportive of killing people—Oomen, Smeet’s clerk, his father… he advocates not-murder in each of these situations. Accepting his aversion to murder, his suggestion to wake men up and kill them seems like a genuine reaction to Jesper saying he doesn’t want to kill unconscious men. Wylan takes things literally.

This happens the most with Jesper, probably because Jesper talks to Wylan the most. Nina and Matthias don’t really register him past how he might be useful, Inej is usually quite direct, and Kaz is very deliberate when he speaks with Wylan. This really interests me because Kaz tends to vary his speech more than the others do, he adapts more to being around other people. He jokes a little with Jesper, spars with Nina, speaks more openly and more sharply with Inej, and he’s precise with Wylan. Kaz may not know what autism is, but he recognizes what’s effective with Wylan.

Another example is when Wylan is sketching the Ice Court plans and Jesper says it looks like a cake. There are plenty of valid responses here: pointing out that concentric circles look like lots of things, that it’s just a sketch, telling Jesper to stop looking over his shoulder. Instead, Wylan says that the Ice Court is sort of like a cake. That… doesn’t sound like something Wylan would normally say. He’s not addressing the whole situation, he’s addressing the specific words Jesper said.

One of the most heartbreaking examples of this (to me, anyway) is with Marya. Wylan does the same thing with his mother, when she asks if he’s there for her money and says she hasn’t got any, and his response is, “I don’t either.” We understand as readers that what Marya is communicating here is that she is so accustomed to being utterly ignored unless she is being used, and if she told Wylan that no one visited but to take advantage and she assumed he was here for the same reason, he would say it wasn’t the case. But he just responds to the immediate statement.

There are a lot of examples of this.

3 — 0% perception, 100% creativity

Wylan can identify things that don’t make sense or that he doesn’t understand, but at the beginning of the series he can’t make leaps, only ask questions. On the Ferolind, he wonders about the source of water at the Ice Court; though Kaz doesn’t say as much, he was clearly wondering, too, because he eventually figured out the underground river. There’s an interesting parallel here where, in the beginning of Crooked Kingdom, Wylan asks a question about how they’ll break into Smeet’s and Kaz tells him to use his eyes instead of running his mouth—at which point Wylan is able to figure it out. I don’t think this is because he never tried before, though, but because no one ever bothered to teach him. Kaz can be harsh but he gives harsh corrections rather than harsh rejections and Wylan learns from him.

It’s hard to understand the world for people with autism. The world is designed and run by and for people whose minds are fundamentally different from ours, whose thoughts and experiences are unlike ours. Imagine trying to learn English or Spanish or Mandarin or any other spoken language if your first language was olfactory. That’s sort of what it’s like for someone with autism to just get dropped into the world and expected to figure this out.

This can be attributed to Wylan’s upbringing, but I disagree with that because none of the others were brought up in the Barrel, either, and Wylan doesn’t understand trade or politics with any special skill. Kaz wasn’t born in the Barrel, but he managed to go from “stealing is wrong” to “wrong isn’t my concern” real quick; Colm Fahey didn’t raise his son on gambling and firefights; the Ghafas never expected their daughter to be away from the family. Only Nina has relevant training—and even that’s precious little, she left school way too early. The others figured it out; Wylan needed a bit more help. He also seems surprised by the way his father conducts business. Wylan takes things on face value—like the time he’s surprised someone would do something, simply because it’s unlawful. This is something he expresses to a group of gangsters. He’s never been taught the way of any world and these things are not intuitive to him.

But Wylan isn’t stupid.

He doesn’t know how to understand the world, but he does understand how things go together. Given a pointy diamond, a handle, and a screw, he cut through Grisha glass. He carries flashbangs and magic napalm, he recreates military hardware—Wylan understands how to make things interact for a specific result. But to me the most telling thing isn’t just that he puts together chemical pieces, it’s that he figured out Jesper controlled bullets. He saw the pieces and put them together.

Wylan can understand when things don’t make sense, but he can’t make sense of them—yet when he understands things at their basic level, he understands them without preconception, for what they are. This is a very autistic way of thinking about things, it goes back to the literalism. He can’t make the leaps of logic other people can, but he also doesn’t make the assumptions they do—“I’ve never heard of a bullet Grisha, so that’s not a thing” vs “Well Jesper’s an almost impossibly good shot and he controls metal and bullets are metal, so why not?”

4 - Broken brain/body connection

Wylan’s great at chemistry and drawing and playing flute or piano—but he’s something of a disaster other times. This is in particular contrast to the other characters, all of whom are physically adept. Meanwhile it’s a challenge for Wylan to climb a rope ladder and he spends a full paragraph trying to figure out what to do with his hands. It’s easy to say, well, he’s used to a sedentary lifestyle, but at this point he’s not. He’s worked in the tannery for months. He’s just physically awkward.

I have less to say on this point only because it’s about something I don’t fully understand myself. I don’t really understand what it would be like to have a body that just… does things? Like normal stuff? Without tics and stims. No idea. Only that Wylan’s discomfort in and seeming lack of mastery of his own body feels very relatable to me.

5 - Abuse

One of the most familiar things about Wylan is how he has been so thoroughly abused and broken down that he’s afraid to do or say much of anything. Again, this is a place his background can be an obscuring factor. Of course Wylan didn’t think to blow up the walls when the first met the parem-juiced jurda and got trapped, he’s a spoiled rich kid! Except, he also startled when Jesper said his name later. Wylan didn’t hesitate because he was spoiled, he hesitated because he had no confidence.

He also thinks Kaz would laugh at him for playing music at his mother’s grave. Now, personally, I can’t see Kaz laughing at Wylan—being indifferent, thinking it’s pointless sentimentality, shaking his head, maybe commenting sharply that they need to go if they don’t have the time. But not laughing. Kaz is a snarky, sharp-edged jerk sometimes, but he doesn’t go out of his way to criticize, he just lets people know when they inconvenience him.

Wylan has been trained to identify attention as negative by an overbearing abusive father who literally saw him as less favorable than a demon. Now, that may have been hyperbole, but Jan criticized everything he could about Wylan—art, music, emotion—and made clear that he was worthless and competent to nothing. (Jan Van Eck can suck a rotten donkey dick but that’s neither here nor there.)

A lot of people with autism experience levels of bullying that have similar impacts. Or as the kids these days are calling it: we go to school. We go to school where we are weird. Where we look weird and move weird and talk about weird things and there’s a whole little bevy of asswipes to makes sure we know it. I got teased more for playing Pokemon and sitting alone reading than the kid who pissed himself onstage at assembly. (This was before Pokemon was cool. I’m old.) And that is not unusual for autistic kids. It’s also not unusual for this to be compounded by relatives or even parents who may be trying to help but don’t understand and can make things even harder.

So we can’t read social cues and we’re taught at a vicious age that everything that comes naturally to us is wrong. Imagine trying to interact in society with that background. There is no guide and most advice from neurotypical people isn’t actually what they mean. It breaks you down.

Wylan’s anxiety isn’t definitive of autism, but isn’t something that was incredibly familiar as someone whose neurodivergent experiences created a strong level of anxiety.

6 — High Compassion, Low Social Competence

Wylan isn’t very good at making friends. In fact, none of the Crows likes him much in the beginning, and only some of them soften toward him by the end. (Matthias and Nina come to respect his skills as a chemist but neither seems to particularly like him.) But you can see throughout the books that Wylan wants to connect with them and be one of them, he just… isn’t. He’s off-beat. He’s weird. He asks questions and mimics behaviors (trying to be cool and tough like Jesper, saying “mission” like Matthias does, imitating Kaz’s scheming face) but he doesn’t quite get how to adapt.

But he still cares about people. Not just them. Everyone. He cares about the people they leave in the ditch outside the prison wagon, he cares about Hanna Smeet, he cares about Alys. He cares about the people who’ll take a hit from Kaz’s sugar caper.

Wylan’s awkward social skills have undeniable big autism energy. I posit his compassion does as well. This is simply who Wylan is, and that means being someone who cares about everyone. I have nothing to back up that this is related to autism. I can say that it’s like me. (Not to brag.) I can’t turn off the part of my brain that says everyone matters. Individuals can opt out of that compassion, but they have it by default. There’s a certain agony in feeling a pull toward and love for just about everyone and yet an inability to develop meaningful connections with them, and that keen loneliness… it just burns.

Again, it’s not definitive of autism, but it’s very similar to an autistic experience.

I said in the beginning that I didn’t think Wylan certainly had autism and I stand by that, but he is a powerfully honest reflection of many people who do. So he can be understood to have autism, and that’s part of the reason some people have that headcanon.

[probably-enjolras]

r.e. disabled les amis headcanons: omg please add yours

yay someone wants to hear mine! some of this will be projection on my part. i’m disabled myself, i need a cane to walk because of a condition called Amplified Musculoskeletal Pain Syndrome (AMPS) which is very similar to fibromyalgia. i’m also going to include some neurodivergent and mental illness headcanons, but i know some people don’t consider those disabilities, but from my own experience with them, i do, so that’s why i’m adding them!

jean valjean has chronic back pain, specifically a problem with the discs in the upper spine, from his time in prison. gradually gets worse as he gets older because of lack of treatment and him triggering the pain himself by lifting the crashes cart and then marius in the sewers. in my modern aus i like to think he gets an upper back/neck and shoulder brace that he wears, and he’s a bit insecure about it so that’s why he’s always wearing big coats even in aus where he’s not being pursued by javert

javert, marius, and enjolras are autistic. javert has known most of his life but marius wasn’t diagnosed until his late teens due to lack of familial support. enjolras would have been diagnosed as a kid but he’s afab and there’s lack of diagnosis for afab children and he doesn’t get diagnosed until he’s in his 20s after doing his own research.

enjolras, grantaire, courfeyrac, and bossuet have adhd. enjolras and bossuet have more hyperactive traits, enjolras’ manifesting in his need to constantly be doing something and chronic boredom, while bossuet doesn’t display his as physical hyperactivity but more racing thoughts and an inability to slow his mind down. courfeyrac and grantaire have more attention deficit issues. they can’t focus on one topic for a while unless they go into hyperfocus or it’s a hyperfixation. grantaire has a lot of self worth issues because of his adhd because growing up he was seen as a bad student and a bad child because of his attention issues and executive dysfunction. courfeyrac got medicated really early on in childhood. enjolras did too and it becomes a bit of an issue between him and grantaire because grantaire doesn’t start medication until he’s about 24 and enjolras has been on medication for a long time and he’s kinda forgotten about how difficult it can be being unmedicated so he thinks grantaire isn’t trying enough. that changes when the pharmacy won’t refill enjolras’ medicine and he has to go a week without it. it’s a really humbling experience he apologizes to grantaire once he’s back on meds (this is based on personal experience actually… i didn’t start meds until a few months ago and i had a friend who started meds in middle school do what enjolras did and ur sucked)

joly had to get his knee joint replaced through surgery and still can’t walk properly without pain in the area so he walks with a cane. he also has an autoimmune disorder that makes him get sick really easily, as well as chronic fatigue and brain fog that makes it hard to complete daily tasks even when he has a low pain day. he also has very bad anxiety that sometimes manifests in worrying about his health excessively and vigilance about staying healthy because he knows that if he even gets a cold, it will be worse for his body than someone without a chronic illness

cosette and eponine both have c-ptsd from living with the thenardiers, and i have so much to say about this that i’m thinking about making an entirely separate post about it. just know that both of them have trauma responses, with cosette becoming very docile and a chronic people pleaser because she doesn’t want to get in trouble even though she won’t be punished like that anymore, while eponine has become hardened by her trauma and puts up walls so she doesn’t get hurt. she also gets frequent nightmares about her siblings being hurt and wakes up sweaty and almost screaming. gavroche came home late one day and eponine was on the verge of a panic attack even though it had only been half an hour

combeferre is blind in one eye and his other eye is partially damaged so he doesn’t have very good depth perception in what he can see, and he also has very limited color vision

feuilly is deaf and grantaire is HoH. feuilly’s primary form of communication is sign language, though he can lip read but not very well. all the amis know basic signs like how to ask if he wants some water/food, hellos and goodbyes, and how to sign their names. once feuilly becomes close with them, he creates signs specifically for their names, which at least in the american d/Deaf/HoH community is very special. a very close family friend of mine is HoH and he gave me a name sign when i came out as trans (it’s a quick movement of the letters R and Y up in the position where male signs are signed like “father”) grantaire is hard of hearing and has hearing aids. sometimes when he fights with enjolras he just takes out his hearing aids and just lets enjolras keep going until he realizes what’s going on.

this next one is very personal to me and is something i don’t think i’ve ever seen before, but i hc jehan with having schizoaffective disorder (bipolar type). i personally have this disorder and i have found some comfort thinking jehan has it too. they started having mood symptoms first, which started as a depressive episode and then suddenly they felt like they had been shocked into a manic episode. once the mania started they began having delusions of grandeur and the belief that they were a prophet sent to help the world. they began thinking people were after them and they heard voices from “angels” telling them what to do. they started writing poetry as a way to get the voices out of their head and onto paper. it took two years to get a diagnosis and a some very rough nights where they weren’t sleeping and would show up to meetings with delusional ideas, and they were scared. they refused to go to the hospital but needed help, so grantaire took them to the community out reach center that he goes to for alcohol addiction treatment and jehan got a psychiatrist who started them on antipsychotics and a mood stabilizer. i like to think that jehan got better quickly, just because i’ve had this disorder for a very long time and i’ve tried almost every antipsychotic out there and im not really better, so i want them to not have my experience. they were accepting of treatment pretty easily, but they did worry that their poetry wouldn’t be the same afterwards. fortunately, they channeled their frustration into poetry as opposed to writing what they were hearing and even though their poetry changed once they got on medicine, they didn’t lose their ability to write it. they’ve also learned how to have confidence in themself and the revolution without becoming delusional, which did take time because hearing enjolras’ strong ideas, it just felt like too much for a while. but the longer they’ve been stable and connected to reality, the easier it becomes to believe that yes, some things may seem improbable, but they can still happen AND some ideas are delusions and can be differentiated between the improbably ideas

bahorel has hypermobile joints and has to be careful when boxing with grantaire because he has subluxed or even fully dislocated his shoulders, elbows, and finger joints while boxing. jehan bought him some colorful finger braces and has stitched patterns into his knee and elbow braces

that’s enough for now because this is getting really long but yeah. lots of projection on my part (whoops) but what is this blog without me projecting my issues onto les mis characters? is this not what this blog is based on 😂

[babyflash]

hey all! brief life update: (tw: animal death, will be tagged but just in case i’ll put the rest under the cut) this is going to be a bit of an explanation for the next couple of months for me and this blog!!!

so i was going to wait until sunday night to close my inbox because i leave for my summer job on monday, but i’ve decided to shut it down and take my break earlier than i planned. [if you’re sensitive to the trigger but still want to read this, skip this paragraph and move to the next] i’m doing this because we’re putting our second family dog down tomorrow morning, our first was put down last year (almost to the day) and losing both of them so soon has really taken a huge toll on me and my family. we’re super family oriented people, so losing them is losing members of the family to us. her passing is pretty unexpected, the vets found a really large cancerous mass in her abdomen and it’s begun leaking. they discovered that this week and her condition has significantly worsened in a short amount of time. i won’t go into any more detail (i just kind of needed to get that off my chest, so feel free to not read it at all!) in addition to her passing, my pet rat’s health has also been on the decline lately, he’s 5 years old and recently lost his companion (his brother) and his movement is slowing. 

basically, things are really changing right now (not just my pets and career, but other and more personal things) and i think taking a break from online spaces early would be good so i can focus on my family and my job and not worry about this blog! during the summer, i’ll be working as a camp counselor, and while there is wifi and space for staffers to use their computers, i think it’d be best if i just didn’t! i’ll be taking a break from all social media, not just this one, because that’s kind of the point of summer camp LOL. 

this whole explanation may seem a bit silly to some of you but in the short time i’ve been active on this blog i’ve made several wonderful mutuals and friends and i don’t want to leave people who regularly interact with this blog in the dark!!! i really appreciate that it’s given me an outlet to talk about a hyperfixation i’ve had since i was a young child, and it’s given me the confidence to post more of my writing. (i’ll probably continue to write this summer because i find it very cathartic, so maybe come august i’ll have some good stuff for y’all LOL). online fandom spaces mean a lot to a lot of people, and i’m no exception!!! 

anyways! that’s my little explanation. shoutout to my billy batson enjoyers and wallinda truthers, you guys in my rbs, replies, and inbox have made this blog and my tumblr experience as a whole a lot better!!! i’ll see everyone in august - until then, have a great summer!!! <3

[demetriandelibinaryboyfriends]

Can you talk about autistic Hawk/Eil

Sure, I’d love to!!!

Credit where credit is due, of course--I got a lot of my Autistic Eli headcanons from @jackonthelongwalk, who’s got a little more authority to speak on the subject since he’s actually autistic and whatnot. I mainly just saw his takes and was like “THOSE ARE GOOD TAKES” and adopted all of them XD Although I DID come up with a few of my own headcanons!!! I’ll just compile everything here.

~Eli tends to be pretty particular about physical touch, and a lot of the time he doesn’t really like it. Over the years, Demetri’s found that one type of touch that Eli’s okay with is shoulder-squeezing, and it kinda becomes their thing. Typically Demetri giving Eli a quick shoulder squeeze helps comfort him and makes him feel safe by basically reassuring him “I’m here for you, I’ve got your back.” You can see Demetri give Eli a shoulder squeeze in 2x09 when he’s comforting him about Moon, and he does the EXACT same one in the school fight in 2x10 just before kicking him into the trophy case. I think it was his way of saying “even though we’re fighting right now, I still care about you” and that kinda helped snap Hawk out of his near-psychopathic rage. In Season 3, he’s still shitty to Demetri, obviously, but it’s more controlled, not as unhinged or feral--even when Hawk breaks his arm, he hesitates a LOT before and regrets it IMMEDIATELY after in a way I’m not sure his UNCHECKED RAEEEGE self would have during the school fight.

~Over the years Demetri develops kind of a sixth sense of when Eli is about to have a meltdown. He’s able to pick up on super minute changes in body language, changes in the way Eli speaks, small alterations in Eli’s general temperament--basically anything that indicates he’s getting overwhelmed.��That’s actually how he discovers the shoulder squeeze tactic--Demetri realizes he needs a quick way to comfort and reassure Eli when he can’t go in for a full hug (like they’re in the middle of class or something) so he can calm Eli down a bit and stop him from having a meltdown. Mainly because Demetri knows the bullies will have a field day if Eli cries in front of the other kids, so the shoulder squeeze develops as sort of a way to protect Eli from this.

~At some point after Demetri first started using the shoulder touch/squeeze on Eli, Eli started also using it on Demetri to quickly communicate affection/appreciation. Demetri isn’t nearly as touch-averse or picky with physical touch as Eli, and would’ve been okay with a number of physical touches, but he’s honestly super touched that Eli saw him doing a thing and was like “Oh hey!!! Demetri does this thing to me and it makes me feel safe and loved, so I’m sure it’ll do the same if I do it to him!!!” It kinda becomes their special touch, and becomes somewhat of a silent “I love you” (although obviously these two clueless idiots are led to believe it’s ONLY platonic love for many, many years XD). You can see Eli give a little shoulder pat/squeeze to Demetri at the beach party in 1x09!!

~Eli really does not like being touched around or under the chin, mainly because this is how bullies like Kyler touch him and it’s triggering for him. Demetri basically never touches him here. Even after they get together and start getting intimate, Demetri tends to touch/stroke Eli’s cheeks or the side of his head if he wants to touch his face, but he avoids touching Eli’s chin like the plague because he knows how much Eli dislikes it. This is something Eli really deeply appreciates--even Moon wasn’t able to catch on to the fact that he didn’t like having his chin touched, and he was too obsessed with coming across as “tough” to her to admit that it bothered him. Moon didn’t mean any harm at all, of course, she just wasn’t able to pick up on his more subtle indications that he wasn’t a huge fan of chin touches. Demetri has come to pick these indications up by second nature.

~The whole thing Demetri does at the beginning of the show where he kinda talks “for” Eli (the thing that, ironically, people loooooove to blast him about for being a “terrible friend”) I think is largely done because Eli is autistic. Eli seems to have a lot of social anxiety right from the get-go--he doesn’t even verbally greet Miguel when he first sits with him and Demetri and Demetri introduces Eli. Eli just kinda awkwardly smiles and nods at him. He’s obviously not great with social cues either, which we see later on--he’s so PAINFULLY oblivious to the fact that Piper is super not at all into it when he tries to hit on her in Season 2. I imagine after a number of social blunders in their youth, and seeing just how uncomfortable and anxious social situations made Eli, Demetri took the reigns and did a lot of communicating FOR Eli to take some of the pressure off of him to talk. I’d argue that once Demetri is taken out of the picture, we can see in full force JUST how socially anxious and uncomfortable Eli really is--he seems damn near terrified trying to stand up for himself against Johnny when Demetri’s not there. He’s lowkey stuttering and tripping over his words, his voice is shaking. He nearly leaves the room in tears. He’s used to letting Demetri be his voice, and this seems to be what makes him feel safest and most secure. When this is taken away, he has to find a new way to protect himself--hence, possibly, the entire Hawk persona.

~Eli has a lot of issues with emotional regulation and often feels emotions really, really strongly and gets overwhelmed by them--as an ADHDer, this is a struggle I understand SO MUCH. When Eli gets really overwhelmed with strong emotion, he tends to have meltdowns. These can be either sadness-based meltdowns (like we see in the flashback) or angry meltdowns (like we see when he beats Brucks up). Due to his emotional regulation issues, Eli has a really hard time hiding his emotions or stopping a meltdown once it kinda onsets--this is why he tends to “bawl” at movies. Once he starts crying, he can’t really stop, or reign it in--it just keeps coming. He also can’t really hold it back--his emotions tend to force their way out, whether he wants them to or not. This is also why he goes so HARD when he’s angry--wailing on Brucks, throwing punch after punch at Demetri at the school fight, getting carried away and attacking Robby’s injured shoulder at the tournament. His anger (and other emotions) tends to just kinda explode out, and he has a really hard time reigning them back in and keeping them in check. Demetri, ever the voice of ration and reason, can help with this--and probably has a lot, historically. With Demetri less and less in the picture and their relationship on the rocks, Eli’s emotions just seem to get even more wild and uncontrolled, particularly his anger. Part of the reason I think Demetri and Eli work so well together--Eli tends to get very caught up in his emotions (no shame in that--I’ll admit I do too!), and needs someone to help him keep his feet on the ground and be the pragmatist who helps him keep things in perspective.

~Karate is most definitely a special interest for him. It lowkey takes over his life and he makes it damn near his entire identity--big special interest energy. And Demetri (at first, at least) is lowkey so supportive!!! Like he goes to the all-valley tournament to support and cheer Eli on, despite not having any personal interest in fighting and seeming to think the whole thing is the kind of dumb macho shit that goes against everything his nerd identity stands for XD But he goes to the tournament anyways to clap for his boyfriend best friend’s badassery!!! The real MVP!!! Also special interests in general (not unlike ADHD hyperfixations) tend to be very random, hence why seemingly out of nowhere Eli gets absolutely OBSESSED with karate.

~Just a random little headcanon I have (I think I mentioned it on one of my general headcanon posts), but I like to think after Eli adopts the whole “Hawk” persona, he gets a special interest in birds of prey in general for a little while. Like back before he’s too “tough” for anything even remotely related to “nerd shit,” he watches nature documentaries on raptors and the whole 9 yards and constantly rambles excitedly to Demetri about how badass he thinks they are, and how cool it is that they can “literally hunt mice from the sky and shit” (probably an exact quote from him). Demetri finds this sudden new obsession both amusing and kind of endearing--but as always, he shows an interest in it and accommodates it as best he can. I imagine he’s seen Eli go through a number of special interests over the years, and is a pro by now on how to handle them (my own childhood best friend is a fellow ADHDer, and he was CONSTANTLY getting new hyperfixations--I imagine it was something like that XD).

~The whole “Hawk” persona in general seems pretty autistic, speaking of that--like it’s almost entirely based in mimicry and masking. Like Hawk pretty frequently mimics Johnny’s expressions, body language, and speech patterns, and (at least at first) Miguel’s fighting style. He also starts to mimic a lot of Kreese’s problematic views and general “never accept defeat” attitude in late Season 2 and Season 3, setting his good old Bastardization Arc in full swing. The whole Hawk thing could easily be masking, especially given how exaggerated and overdramatic Eli’s facial expressions, voice, and actions tend to be when he’s trying to be Hawk. When he slips back into “Eli” (or how he was before he adopted the mask), it’s usually around Demetri (i.e. the Doctor Who conversation)--which makes sense, since Demetri “gets” Eli better than most people and Eli doesn’t have to mask or overexaggerate his expressions or statements to communicate effectively with Demetri. They’ve known each other so long and Demetri is so familiar with his body language and mannerisms that Demetri is able to pick up fairly easily on what Eli’s trying to communicate/express without Eli having to work too hard at getting his point across. It’s why Eli’s expressions and body language aren’t nearly as exaggerated around Demetri, even when he’s trying to intimidate him--he knows he doesn’t have to overstate what he’s doing to communicate with Demetri.

~Relating back to the social troubles and social anxiety thing, I think Eli has always had trouble communicating verbally, hence why he’s so quiet at first. And even when he does get more talkative, a lot of it is mimicking other people’s speech patterns and ideas (namely Johnny’s at first)--it doesn’t really feel like him talking. Even alone with Demetri, he tends to prefer to let Demetri do the talking, hence Demetri saying Eli’s a “man of few words.” He often prefers to communicate nonverbally through body language, and when he DOES communicate verbally, he does it somewhat sparingly and chooses his words carefully, not usually bothering to say things he doesn’t mean (if he isn’t masking, anyways). THIS is why Demetri was so ready to accept such a short, concise “I’m sorry for all of it” from Eli instead of a long, drawn-out apology for each individual thing he did wrong. Eli knows he doesn’t have to bother masking to communicate with Demetri, so he’s not going to bother saying something that isn’t genuine. Eli has never been the greatest at articulating his thoughts verbally either, so TRYING to apologize for each individual thing he did to Demetri would be extremely hard for him, and Demetri knows this. This is why he accepts Eli’s apology without question and doesn’t expect him to elaborate on it. He knows Eli’s communicating a lot more than he’s actually saying aloud, if that makes any sense, and he cares more about the entirety of what Eli’s trying to say rather than just the spoken part. And Eli definitely communicates he’s genuinely remorseful through his actions as well--saving Demetri from the Cobras, teaming up with Demetri afterwards to help Deme’s side win the fight, straight up openly  BETRAYING Kreese and Cobra Kai AT GREAT PERSONAL RISK TO HIMSELF (especially if Tory’s threat is anything to go by!!!) in order to go back to Demetri. Honestly, given everything he knows about Eli and how he operates, expresses himself, and communicates, I highly doubt Demetri expects at all for Eli to go on a long, detailed rant about how sorry he is and is honestly just grateful to have Eli back in his life.

~I think at the beginning of the show, Demetri puts a lot of work into helping Eli feel as safe and secure as possible--possibly in part because Eli’s autism makes him feel kinda isolated as a “freak” or “outcast” or what have you. Demetri makes an effort to crack jokes and make Eli laugh when no one else will, possibly to help Eli feel more relaxed and at ease. And Demetri’s reluctance to try out karate could be a kind of misguided overprotectiveness on his part--he’s spent a lot of time building up their own little world for them where he can keep Eli relatively comfortable, and he’s worried anything that interferes with that or shakes up the status quo is going to stress out or overwhelm Eli too much. Demetri wants to keep things as they are, because even if it’s not perfect, and they still get bullied on the regular, at least he KNOWS how best to help Eli and help him feel better (or at least he thinks he does) in their current situation (i.e. “I think we’d rather spend our afternoons playing Crucible Control than getting hit in the face”). If they were put into a drastically different new situation, he WOULDN’T know how he should best assist and support Eli with it, and that scares him a lot--because he’s ALWAYS kind of intuitively known how to help Eli, and the thought of anything changing that makes him terrified that without him, Eli is going to get really hurt somehow.

I think that just about covers everything--might add more stuff if I think of it! Definitely go check out @jackonthelongwalk’s blog for more quality, in-depth autistic Eli content!!!

[cassnovawrites]

Oh, hey Tumblr - How’s it going? It’s been a while! I kinda missed this hellscape. (Especially going from checking it daily for a decade to a complete blackout for four months...)

What have I been up to? Holy hell. So much. But biggest update:

I WROTE A BOOK! AND IT’S AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDERS!! (x)

It’s a queer, new adult, low fantasy, campy novella featuring a deliriant book, original parables, and etymological hyperfixations!!

“Vox Libri” follows Etta down her escapist spiral after finding a mystical book of parables that can trigger campy, vaudevillian visions. The story focuses on themes of mental health, queer identity, escapism crutches, and late bloomers.

If you want to read a more in-depth synopsis, click here!!

If you want to continue learning more about my book journey and how you can get involved, continue reading below!!

“Vox Libri” started off as my undergrad Senior Writing Project back in 2015. But after leaving college, the WIP was basically left untouched for ALMOST SIX YEARS. Then after years of working alongside countless other first-time authors as a Developmental Editor and aiding them in structuring their own draft manuscripts, I finally understood how to turn “Vox Libri” into a viable, publishable manuscript.

While writing the latest draft, I wanted to explore what it meant for young adults (particularly the not-straight or cis kind) who are late to reaching the societally assigned milestones and what it can look like if/when they misstep. “Vox Libri” - a loose Latin translation for "the voice of books" - is my own navigation away from escapism crutches and making sense of my personal late start, all while working through the feelings of being left behind by my peers.

My publisher (New Degree Press) and I have developed a pre-launch effort to help spread the word and cover the cost of publishing my book - including the VERY COOL snippet of my Book Trailer featured at the top of this post!

So far, I’ve been able to raise 71% of my goal, and I have another 15 days to come up with the rest.

Everything I raise goes directly to publication costs; including my many editors, cover design, layout design, copyediting + proof, launch + promotion, and print. If I don’t end up securing the total costs, my backers will be fully refunded.

Becoming a backer of “Vox Libri” includes some pretty cool perks; such as a signed paperback copy of “Vox Libri,” behind-the-scenes of my publishing journey, beta privileges, involvement in cover design selection, and more!!

(There’s even an add-on option to receive a one-on-one Book Consultation for your own book, which - if you didn’t know - is a TOP TIER perk as I am a professional Developmental Editor and have been working in the publishing sphere for a while now.)

If you’re at all interested in pre-ordering “Vox Libri” and becoming a part of my Author Community, you can do so here: (x)

Or, if spending money isn’t feasible at the moment because #fair, spreading the word and sharing this post is JUST as helpful!! AND if you reblog this post and tag me (@cassnovawrites), I will paint you a 4x4 scene from “Vox Libri” of your choosing!!

ANY and ALL help is unendingly appreciated and brings me one step closer to becoming a published author. And if you have ANY questions, I’ll happily answer them!

Stay safe and have a Happy New Year!!

[dreamblasterharuka]

Bunch AC Headcanons

Just a bunch of Ace Combat headcanons that may or may not ever show up in my writing. It’s only 0 and 7 because those are the ones I’ve been hyperfixating on recently.

Zero

Pixy has a gift for languages. He’s fluent in Belkan, Osean, Erusian, and Sapinish, while he can hold a conversation in Yuktobanian and Volsagian. 

He does actually have a bit of a Belkan accent, but you can only hear it when he’s super out of it. 

Pixy’s that one guy who’s good at almost everything he does, but he can’t cook to save his life. Cipher is actually a really good cook, but you have to talk her into doing it. 

Back at the orphanage, the matron used to call Pixy a “changeling child” because he was such a little shit. The nickname evolved from there. 

Cipher knows the lyrics to almost every musical made in the 60s, only because her little sister loved them so much. 

Due to a shaky grasp of Osean, Cipher didn’t actually know what a cipher was until she already had the nickname. She also would forget if it was spelled with an i or a y so early paperwork of hers has both spellings. 

Cipher’s a dog person. She’ll literally stop in the middle of her sentence in order to coo at one and then carry on like nothing happened. 

Cipher likes music like U2 and Muse, and Pixy likes classic rock and folk music :). 

7

Tabloid listens to whatever the Strangereal equivalent to Coast to Coast AM is. 

Technically Trigger has been flying since she was fifteen. Her parents had a little crop duster that they taught her to fly in. No, she did not have a pilot's license, and no, she did not realize that it was illegal until she was twenty.

Count and Trigger both grew up in the middle of Fuck All Nowhere, and if either had lived in the next town over, they would have gone to high school together.

After the war, Strider/Cyclops squadron will occasionally tell stories about Trigger being her regular, feral self on the internet, and once in a blue moon she will pop in and explain herself. This leads to her becoming something of a meme. She will never confirm nor deny that the internet cryptid with the silly dog posts is actually the legendary ace.

Trigger drives like she flies. Do not let her drive.

Tabloid goes on to become a fantasy author.

Count got arrested for pretending to be a long-lost Shilagean noble. It actually worked for a bit, since many of the records for those families were destroyed either in the revolution or the Erusian takeover. 

Count and Tabloid were cellmates and now Count knows way more about Osean politics than he ever wanted to.

Of the main crew, Huxian, Avril, and Count have tattoos, Tabloid and Trigger do not. Huxian technically has the most, because she has a big fox on her back. It’s super badass. She jokes that she got it while working for the yakuza, but she just had a friend who was a tattoo artist who owed her a favor.

[thehollowprince]

At least elu or sobbe fans are not "curious" to know how eliott and the boys he had would have played out. Martino and Niccolò are beautiful together. In my opinion they have everything a couple should have :softness, passion, playfulness, cuteness... And yall still think about his past 🤦‍♀️

You know what's really funny about this? I mean, aside from someone being so bored on a Friday night that they're in random people's inboxes in some vain attempt to cause problems. No, what's really funny is that I reblogged that post from someone else, meaning it wouldn't show up in the tags. That means you deliberately went searching for it, ans then stupidly try to act "surprised", as if we all don't know how this website works at this point.

But I've made time, so let's get into this, shall we?

The only thing Elu and Sobbe fans truly seemed to care about is Elu and Sobbe themselves. Not the individual characters themselves and what they went through or the journeys they took, but the whole, in a relationship part, and only when they were cutesy and in lurve. If there was any kind of drama (which, come on, this is Skam) the fandom chose Eliott's and Sander's sides in almost every instance.

Which, of course, brings us to one of the cornerstones of fandom in general. Fandom loves their broken white boys. So much so that they'll often ignore anything that doesn't have to do with how broken they are, because it triggers some kind of uwu fantasy where YOU would know how to treat him, and YOU would make him feel loved. That's why the Skam fandom was always so hyperfixated on the Even character, because that was the half of the pair that was into girls. And for a fandom made up predominantly by women, that was perfect. The Isak character became a self-insert for them to live out their fantasy of mending their broken boy, without actually having to interact with anyone who had a MI.

That's another reason why most of you hated Marti and Nico so much, because Marti was taller than Nico, and it ruined the binary, big-small, top-bottom stereotype. But let's not get into that right now.

This fandom never cared about Robbe or Lucas, except in how for how they made Sander and Eliott feel. There was nothing but scorn and mocking whenever Robbe or Lucas did anything to try and be "more straight". A vast majority in the fandoms didn't care about them dealing with their internalized homophobia, they just wanted them to skip to the happy gay shit so they could watch two boys kiss. That was incredibly apparent with WTFOCK, because they didn't follow the normal timeline of events, and all I saw for three weeks was "where is Bel!Even?" Over and over and over again. Almost like, you didn't really care about Robbe or what he was going through. It got worse the further along it went, like when Robbe snapped at Sander and y'all immediately started talking about having Sander be with Lucas VDH instead.

People like you didn't care then, so I find it incredibly hard to believe that you suddenly care about Martino now. Why does it bug you that we're interested in Marti and Nico passed their relationship with eachother? Is it because both Marti and Nico got development on their own? That they had things going on aside from Marti's love fixing Nico's BPD? That we actually got to learn that Nico had a whole life before he transfered to Marti's school? What is it? And while you're at it, show me where any of us said we wanted Marti and Nico to break up? Show me.

[bardicbird]

hi I’m thinking about cad again and self projecting or whatever so I’m just gonna ramble on my thoughts abt his childhood and shit

(i don’t know if this is going to be especially triggering, but i am discussing my interpretation of his backstory, which includes)

//angst// //dissociation// and //weight mention/body image// so be safe :]

so like. this boy grew up as the ‘weird one’ in the family until his younger sister was born, and i take that to mean a couple different things. first of all: weak boy. we already know he had some troubles being born but like,, sir you are a stick. he’s also a lot paler than his siblings, and has the white hair. nothing to ,, alienate him exactly, but when you’re a very perceptive person like cad, you tend to latch onto small reactions and treat them like utmost truth. i have my own personal headcanons for his neurodivergency, but either way he definitely grew up a bit more offbeat than his family, leading him to sort of settle into a slightly muted version of himself. he wasn’t,,, hiding himself from them, or lying outright, but the really weird thoughts were pushed down and saved for when he was alone; he also ended up dying his hair.

being in a big family is weird, especially as the sensitive and perceptive kid. you tend to notice others emotional states easier, and because of that, end up trying to help in your own ways. but, when you’re the one always helping and being the ‘nice kid’, it’s hard to show your own vulnerablility. we know cad said he had a ‘small house’ (which. yeah gross) but i also take that to mean that he didn’t really get a lot of space to himself ! there wasn’t a lot of time to just. let himself go and feel something, especially with the push to meditate until tranquility, which is a lovely thing, but can also cause you to avoid problems instead of talking them out. it was a small house; someone would hear him if he cried.

and then, people started leaving. and cad, not the youngest but the one chosen to stay behind, was left alone. for ten years. he probably replied heavily on routines: tending to the grove, making tea, checking for any visitors, making more tea, grab something small to eat, check the status of the forest etc. of course, people did come to see him sometimes, but they were all mourning. the only contact he had with anyone (aside from the few ventures out for supplies) was with people who were depressed, angry, and needed his help to guide them. he spent all of his time either alone, or helping terribly sad people. he couldn’t even talk to the foliage, as it had slowly been corrupting.

spending your time around depressed people makes you depressed. especially as an empathetic and sensitive person. at some point, probably not too far into his isolation, he started running on auto pilot. tend the grove, make some tea, help people, sleep a few hours, wake up and do it all again tomorrow. when Taliesin introduced him as ‘not necessarily healthily thin’ i just,, whoo yeah that’s a boy who’s already naturally skinny, but forgets to eat because he’s literally. been alone for ten years... eventually, when the nein found him he seemed,, dissociated, to say the least. part of this is probably just cad’s general demeanor, but he was stopping halfway through sentences, switching topics, forgetting his own words. he wandered off some point in the middle of a conversation with nott to look for flowers. it was almost like he didn’t fully register that they were there, and when he did venture outside the grove? almost immediately got overwhelmed as hell.

and then he adjusted. gradually. he still isn’t fully comfortably in this group, but they feel like a family. a family that cad could be more truthful to than his own parents,, because, other people were offbeat here. they thought he was nice, and they needed his help. another group of mourners,, but this time it was a little different. he wanted to stick around, and the idea of going home, back to his family felt.. wrong. he loved his family, and he missed them, but he felt like a watered down version of himself before meeting the nein. if he had to go back, get used to the family routines again, be seen as the younger, weird brother would it feel right? he was needed, with the nein, they thought he was wise, and accomplished. something he never really felt at home.

I’m going to stop rambling now bc i feel like that’s enough for one post but god. i didn’t even talk about his relationship towards death, or how he views faith as an escapism from choice and consequences, because he’s so afraid that he’ll do something wrong so he just asks the wildmother instead .. can u tell I’m hyperfixated lmao

[foxgloveinspace]

Andrew Minyard is ADHD:

I said I would only really write this if people were interested, but I lied, lol. WAIT One person liked the og post while I was typing this, so there's interest and it’s justified! Lol.

Ok, I’ve seen other posts talking about this, but some of them used some things that I didn’t agree with, so I’m gonna do my own.

I wanna set the preface of, if you see Andrew as ADHD, awesome! If you don’t, that's great too! In reality, this is all speculation, and self projecting, and my desire for actually good representation of ADHD characters that are not stereotypical, so if you see Andrew as something different, that is completely and totally a-okay.

-ADHD has three types, inattentive (formally known as ADD), hyperactive (previously just ADHD) and combined type. Some people prefer calling it Executive Function Disorder (EFD), because Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder describes how it affects people around ADHDers, more than it affects ADHDers. For the sake of this, I’m going to refer to it as ADHD, because it’s more commonly known, and it’s what I call it for myself. I also acknowledge that according to the timeline, Andrew would probably be diagnosed with ADD (if he ever got diagnosed, that is, which I don’t know if he would or not). Please keep all this information in mind.

Things that would be explained if Andrew was ADHD:

Instead of reason’s I think Andrew is adhd in canon, I mostly have thing’s I think could be explained if he was:

-Why he ‘hates’ exy:

This is a big reason in my mind, he is very insistent he doesn’t like exy and I can explain why he actually doesn’t with him being ADHD.

He started playing in juvie, as something to do, it’s a good way to completely clear his mind and concentrate on something that he is actually good at, which is instant gratification, it's something ADHDer’s experience a lot. It’s one of the main reasons ADHDer’s love video games (if your curious there are videos on youtube explaining this. I am ADHD and this is already overwhelming enough for me than trying to explain this as well).

Andrew only tries at exy when he is in the goal, otherwise he couldn’t give less of a fuck about it. He doesn’t care about stats of other teams, or watching other peoples games, it’s only interesting to him when he’s in the goal or when other people make bets/dares with him; “can you shut down the goal?” “pick a number” playing while coming down from his meds for a long period of time, things like that. Making it interesting, keeping himself engaged with it, is a big thing for him. Again, instant gratification. And also an explanation for why outside of the court, when people try to talk to him about the sport, he doesn’t care, he ‘hates’ it. Cause he does. He hates talking about, that doesn’t interest him. It’s boring and not what gives his brain satisfaction within the sport itself.

-Spending habits (TW: Not sure how to tag this tbh, but Andrew being prepared to die? I’ll put it in double parentheses, just incase):

((While I am of the firm belief that the number one reason that Andrew bought the first car is cause he completely wasn't expecting to live through the crash and then had no idea what to do with that amount of money when he wasn't expecting to live)), ADHD would also explain why he buys such expensive stuff. Again, it's instant gratification. It's like trying to tell yourself to wait for something you really want as an award. What's the point when you can have it now? He goes out and buys the most expensive cars he can cause it scratches that itch in his brain.

- Subcategory to spending, Daredevil:

It could also have to do with going fast. Most 'daredevils' are actually ADHDers. Going fast and doing daring things triggers chemicals in our brains, same as hyperfixations and instant gratification. In fact, that could also be a reason for sparing with Renee as well.

-Zoning out:

Ask any ADHDer about maladaptive daydreaming, and dissociating. Andrew has been known in canon to lose himself in thought a lot, and stare out in space for extended periods of time. This is very common with ADHD, and while it’s a small thing, it’s something I think about quite a bit, and so I included it.

-Loud Music:

Another way to drown out your own thoughts is to listen to music, and a lot of ADHDers like loud music. Andrew likes loud music while driving fast. This is very ADHD to me.

-His major:

I think this is something else that can be explained with ADHD, as a hyperfixation. Its not something he wants to do with his life, but it's something his brain lets him concentrate on, and therefore, something to do with his time in college, something he doesn't necessarily want to do, and is doing it out of necessity.

-His memory:

Something about adhd is that it is almost always paired with a different thing. Autism and dyslexia are the two most common. So his perfect memory would be something else neurodivergent that could be paired with his ADHD.

-Attachment issues/RSD:

Andrew keeps everyone at arm's length, and while this can be a part of his past, it can also be combined with RSD, or Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. Which can mean any sort of negative attitude towards you can send you into a spiral. So Aaron not being understanding of their deal/promise and pushing him away would be devastating to him on a whole other level, one that feels right for how he acts in canon. But on the other hand he can't let go of Aaron because he is already attached to him. 

Again with Nickey, he's someone that's been in his life for so long it would be devastating for him to just up and leave, especially to an eighteen year old. He would never tell him this, because of RSD, and if Nickey decided to leave despite that, it would have been very devastating to him and Nickey would have never been allowed back into his life, so that would be the number one reason for Andrew to get Nickey into college with him.

ADHDers are also very quick to get attached to people, something we see with Andrew is that once he has decided someone is 'his' he is unshakable in his loyalty.

I hate going into it, but that would be another reason for how he is with Cass, why he is so desperate to stay, despite what is happening in the back ground.

-Emotions:

I know Andrew has reasons for being emotionally distant, but when he feels emotions in canon, anger, he is quick to it, and feels it fully to the point he can't control it. It's very common in ADHD to have no control over how you react to your emotions unless you spend a lot of time doing it, like Andrew has.

-Long Weird Conversations:

The way he talks to Renee, and then Neil, where they jump around from subject to subject, with no discernable connection to the subjects. Like, that's stereotypical ADHD, but one that actually ADHDers relate to. 

-Sensory things:

Things in canon that Andrew does/likes that scream sensory issues or stimming:

-Stimming:

Likes extreme foods (sweet and spicy things).

Has comfort objects (arm bands, while I know they were to hide his scars, I feel like the fact that they don't bug him even in extreme weather is a major factor in them being a weighted stim for him).

Smoking (I don't know how to describe how this is a stim for Andrew, but it is?).

-Sensory Issues (I know most of these have canon reasons, but I wanna say they could be heightened by ADHD, so keep that in mind):

Not eating around other people/eating in small bites. (Hating food textures is a common thing for ADHDer’s).

Being a light sleeper/taking forever to fall asleep. (Brain won't shut off/be quiet).

Wanting a routine but simultaneously hating it. (His love/hate relationship with exy. He never complains about getting up for practice, that Neil mentions, but is constantly hating how repetitive it is. Going to Eden's almost every Friday, where it's the same place but different every time without being too different.)

That's all that I can think of right now. I tried to not mention anything that happened while Andrew was on medication, so the whole 'keep my attention' doesn't really count in my opinion.

Thank you for reading, and maybe I might come back to this and add more someday, but for now it's finished.

In conclusion: Andrew being ADHD makes a lot of sense within canon.

[starcrossedjedis]

hi hello i just started following you can you give me the quick and dirty rundown of your oc's??? pleeeeeaaaase

Oh wow... oh boy... well, first of all welcome <3

Second of all, I am 87% sure you are gonna regret this ask^^’

Quick and dirty you say. I will simply follow my edits tag backwards and see what I’ll find tracing back my hyperfixations ;)

Lyra Stark (Game of Thrones - Robert’s Rebellion Era)

Lyanna’s older sister. Love interest is Arthur Dayne. They pretend Jon is theirs after the rebellion, to keep him save from Robert. It’s all the classic fake marriage, co-parenting tropes we love about rom coms, but it’s GoT so it’s also mildly depressing x’D Also, this was 100% @perfectlystiles fault, because unfortunately she appears to know my trigger words ^^’

Moira Finnigan (Harry Potter - Marauders Era / Golden Era)

One true love of one Sirius Black. Her story is simultaneously told in two timelines - one telling the story of her Hogwarts years, the war and how she and Sirius found each other. The other one picks up during POA, when Sirius escapes from Azkaban and then spans the second war.

Nora Black Finnigan (Harry Potter - Golden Era)

Daughter of Moira and Sirius, is in the same year as Ginny, but forms a close relationship with the Weasley twins - especially George. Even though her story naturally spans the second war, it’s a lot about healing - first it’s about overcoming the pain of believing your father is a mass murderer and the wizarding world’s Most HatedTM and then later about living with the trauma of having fought in and survived a war.

Jay Vendar (Star Wars)

Star Wars - kinda inbetweeny RotJ and Mandalorian. All Jay Vendar wants is to live the quiet life on Takodana and keep his little sister Ria as far away from thetug-of-war between the Empire and the New Republic. But his plans go up in smoke when Ria and their friends not only buy an old Imperial freighter from Maz Kanata, but also agree to help a Togruta named Ahsoka Tano save a group of very special children from the clutches of the crumbling Empire.

Lady Leila (Narnia)

Leila grows up at the Telmarine court with Caspian. When his uncle’s looks and advances get too close for comfort, she assigns Caspian’s help to make a match for herself that will take her away from his uncle’s leering eyes and wandering hands. It’s not long until Caspian realises that there probably is a reason that he can’t even stand the thought of her marrying another man, but just as the two of them start to question the nature of their feelings for each other, Caspian mysteriously disappears on the same night Prunaprismia gives birth to Miraz’s son…

Dr. Ellie Taylor (Primeval)

When Dr. Eleanor Taylor lands her dream job at the top secret Anomaly Research Center, she thinks she’s as prepared as humanely possible when you share your workplace with a bunch of dinosaurs… and a mammoth. But she isn’t prepared for time travelling murderers, the impending end of the world - or for the feelings she catches for the ARC’s stoic Head of Security.

Nyka’a Sundar & Jaren Korr (Star Wars)

“Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet the Force.” Nyka’a Sundar and Jaren Korr have recited these lines every day of their lifes growing up in the Jedi Temple of Coruscant, but when the young Jedi’s deep bond of friendship blossoms into something more - something beautiful and dangerous and forbidden - they have to decide if living their lives by this ancient code can ever be enough for them again. ( aka. my Star Wars universe romance novel ^^’)

Mila Lebedev (MCU)

When a young Mila defected from Russia and The Red Room following the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. she never expected that nine years later she’d find herself working, fighting and living with the newly crowned Captain America and a weary hundred year old ex-assassin. (my soft girl I love her so much)

Cassia (Star Wars - Sequel Era)

When Poe Dameron finds himself on the remote planet of Lok - injured, hunted by the first order and without back up - he is saved by a street thief named Cassia. Realising the young woman could be a dead ringer for the missing crown princess of the Aquilean System, Poe hatches a desperate escape plan. With unforeseen consequences for him… and Cassia.

Tarlesyn Sand (Game of Thrones post!S8)

(no gif, just manips^^’) When a series of unfortunate events leave Tarlesyn Sand, the only bastard son of Oberyn Martell and Ellaria Sand, as acting ambassador to the newly independant Kingdom of The North, the young man is less than thrilled. A son of sand and heat is not cut out for the bitter cold of winter and there are hundreds of places in the now Six Kingdoms that he would rather be exploring. But when he arrives at Winterfell and meets the beautiful young Queen, Tarlesyn finds that there might be something about the North that he could love…

Detective Catherine Williams (Titans Prequel)

Most days he was her best friend. He was the most important person in her life always. And some days… Some days she was almost in love with him. Some days she thought it was enough for her. But laying on the ground with both her hands pressing down on a gunshot wound and looking up at her partner’s masked face she realized just how wrong she’d been. It turned out Cat Williams didn’t know Dick Grayson at all…  

I went “And that should be it” at least three times and then found more I AM SO SORRY T_T I stuck to my fandom OCs too and spared you the army of my original rejects^^’ Thank you for following and for asking and if you really read all this <3