#polydactyly character

[cannondisabledcharacters]

Today's disabled character of the day is Two Toed Ping from Legnd of Korra, who has facial scarring and polydactyly

Requested by Anon

[Image Description: Drawing of a man with a scar running over his left eye. He has short brown hair and brown eyes. He has a light skin tone and a thin brown mustache. He is wearing a brown jacket and red scarf.]

[gravityfallsthunderboltau]

Nick Scheuer Headcanons (GF OC) 1/?

Nick is 18 years old so 2 years older than Wendy but 4 years younger than Soos

(In my memory Soos is 22 and Wendy is 16 but if I'm wrong please tell me)

Nick is male and homosexual / polyamory . He doesn't lie that he is gay but somehow no one believes that he is gay because, according to others, he looks very "straight".

But Nick doesn't shout out that he's gay (like he doesn't make it his personality that he's gay) and when you ask him, he just tell honestly that he is.

Dipper thought for a long time that he had his eyes on Wendy but after talking to him he said he was gay and Wendy was just his friend in a platonic way.

Even if he is rather introverted, he can speak well with girls and boys etc.

Kind of has the “The (big) Brother” vibe, he doesn’t know why, he’s actually the youngest kid of four kids but he just gives off the vibe.

Especially to Dipper and Mabel (to Dipper only after he clarified that he isn't in love with Wendy) he's kind of a big brother.

Somehow also with Stanley because Nick has polydactyly like Ford and that's why Stanley somehow has a brotherly relationship with Nick. (Stanley feels bad that he put his trauma and feelings he had towards Ford onto Nick and is now trying to "save" Nick because he couldn't save Ford)

Nick doesn't know before that Stanley feels somehow guilty and feels bad when he somehow triggers a trigger from Stanley because Stanley doesn't explain to him why he reacts the way he reacts.

But after Stanford came back, Stanley explained this to Nick and Nick understood it and they both worked on their relationship so that Stanley doesn't just hang out with Nick because of his trauma but in a healthly way and Nick don't feel bad of his action to Stanley (I hope I explained what I mean by that well)

He had very severe acne between the ages of 13 and 16 but it got better until he was 18 but he still had mild acne.

He actually had natural curls because of his heredity but because he was in his rebel pre-teens he straightened his hair to death and now he has straight hair. He doesn't regret it.

His parents said that when he gets older he will regret it and miss his curls but he won't. He likes to have straight hair. It suits his style more.

And having natural red hair as a boy with curls was just too complicated for him with the polydactyly too.

Is the type of brother vibe who accepts friendship bracletes from his "younger siblings" and really holds it up like it's his greatest treasure. He rarely wears them but you know he really likes them.

When copying a piece of paper, manual or technical, he needs a ruler to stay on the line what he writes. (hopefully you know what I mean by that)

He doesn't like Gideon Gleeful. Since the first meeting, the things he did against Mabel and Stanley, he simply hated him and was amused at Weirdmageddon where Gideon would be locked in the cage by Bill Chiper.

No pity or anything. He was just happy to see Gideon suffering. But he never told anyone in the group.

His family is part of Ciphertology and when he found out he cut himself off from his family because he will not be associated with them or will not be part of the cult. He hates Silas Birchtree for make Ciphertology.

His aunt (on his mother's side) is obsessed with the cult and is the cult leader and refers to herself as the "Bill Chiper wife". She somehow sees Nick as a problem because he doesn't want to join the Cult (and that later in the story he becomes one of Bill Chiper's Boyfriends)

Is/Will be in a polyamory relationship with Bill Chiper and Stanford Pines

First lives with "Lazy" Susan Wentworth but then moved to the Mystery Shack where he lives in the room:

(This was part of the Gravity Falls concept art and is not mine↓)

After Ford is rescued, Nick offers him to sleep in his room, but even though everyone thinks Ford didn't accept the offer, Ford often sneaks into Nick's room at night and sleeps there.

Nick helps Ford with his nightmares and they often talk for hours about their similarities such as polydactyly and co.

Ford always thinks he's annoying when he talks for hours, but Nick doesn't mind because he likes hearing Ford's voice.

And Ford kind of likes Nick's physical touch and listening to him for so long.

But for a very long time then, Ford and Nick realized that they liked sleeping together and even started sharing a bed but didn't tell anyone in the family because they think they will be despised because of the age gap in their relationship.

Just like the relationship between Bill and Nick. Bill meets Nick in "Dreamscaperers" and their secret love-hate relationship begins there.

Even though Nick hates the Ciphertology Cult, he somehow loves Bill and Bill loves somehow Nick because he doesn't want to worship him as a Ciphertology follower.

Like "Alex Hirsch" / Dipper, Nick is used to chew on pencils - like that Picture

Is a snack machine child. Everywhere he sees a snack machine or drink machine he uses it and uses it almost every day if he can.

Can only cook very little, like microwollen spaghetti or sandwiches, but can bake more, like muffins and cakes.

More headcanons coming soon .....

Trigger Warning Banner from @cafekitsune

[hoagysalley]

A quick little fucking thing of Chooch cos I wanted a reference of all his extra fingers and toes + experimentation with giving him green eyes (again)

[maplewood126]

[alexthebordercollie]

Ford's autism

K so I don't think I need to defend the interpretation Ford is on the spectrum. People make jokes about him being autistic all the time. We all see it. What I want to do here is sort of connect together some character details and examine them through the lense of my own autistic experiences.

I wanna start with his hands. It's an observation I've seen from multiple people that Ford is insecure about his hands and often hides them behind his back or in his pockets. And yeah, he is obviously insecure about them. He even mentions his six fingers at times when they aren't really relevant to anything. It just showcases the space this physical deviation of his takes up in his mind. And yes, it makes sense that he's insecure about them because he was bullied for them growing up. I want to add to this observation.

Ford would have been bullied regardless.

The problem was never really his hands. When you're on the spectrum people around you can tell that you're weird. Uncanny. Something is different and feels wrong about you to NT people, especially kids. They will pick any shallow superficial thing they can find as an excuse to bully you and justify the sense of revulsion they feel around you but can't articulate. If Ford had been born with normal hands they just would have made fun of him for something else, it would have been his glasses, or the movies he liked, or hell maybe some good old-fashioned antisemitism. Literally, any excuse they could find.

I know growing up I tried for years to change the things about me that I was made fun of for and it never made things any better. The bullying never stopped. "Fixing" things about myself didn't work because the thing that was actually "broken" was something fundamental to who I am. That realization as a kid was soul-crushing. That there was nothing I could do that would ever make me "normal", that would ever make people like me. I felt like an alien born on the wrong planet.

Ford continues to latch onto his hands as a sore spot because they're something simple and obvious he can point to as an excuse for why he's so outcast. He probably knows by this point that the hands aren't actually the problem. I'd argue this journal entry and his comment about "another failed social interaction" shows that he's aware his hands aren't actually the problem. But, it is a lot easier to fixate on those than to dwell directly on that sinking feeling that at the core of you're being you are fundamentally weird, wrong, unlovable. Ford's a genius. If his polydactyly bothered him that much he could have removed the extra digits. The hands aren't the problem, they're a symbol of a more fundamental kind of pain.

Looking at it through this context also makes the gloves Fiddleford gives him an extra sweet gift given what they represent. A kind of wholehearted acceptance of who Ford is and even a willingness to adapt to his unique needs just to show him love and affection. I think something that hurts me so much about their relationship is that Ford had someone who very clearly loved him as is and would have never wanted him to be someone or something else, and Ford was too stubborn to fully appreciate that.

The same is true of Stanely by the by. He never had a problem with his brother being weird. Another relationship with someone who loved Ford as is but who Ford took for granted. He needs these kinds of relationships in his life. People who embrace and accept him for the weirdo he is. He needs them desperately, which gets me to my next point.

Ford's ego. So it's also a common observation that Ford has a massive ego. He's kind of an ass, to put it mildly. But I have had someone in conversation frame it like the pressure to prove themselves was just on Stanley and Ford just spent his whole life being hyped up and told he was hot shit. This isn't true, or at least it's a flattening of his experiences.

Ford was praised for his genius. This is true. But his own father only gave a shit when said genius showed signs of netting material gains for the family. It only mattered cause Ford could be useful. Furthermore, this genius never netted him social acceptance from his peers growing up. He was still a bullied, weirdo, loser most of his childhood. Add that seeing Stanley kicked out would have drilled into Ford's head that if he couldn't make something out of himself his family wouldn't want him either. Stan was an unspoken threat of what this family does to failures.

Gonna bring up my own personal experiences again. Having set the stage for how it feels growing up on the spectrum. That feeling of alienness that you can't really explain. I loved to write and draw from a very young age. Moreover, as I got older I realized that when I drew, people were nice to me. The only time I got social acceptance was when people were admiring or praising me for my art. So I did it more and more, I devoted myself feverishly to my art. I loved it anyway and would have hyper-fixated on it regardless but the positive reinforcement turned art from something I loved to a need. I NEEDED to be an artist. I needed to be the best at my school. I needed all eyes on my work because it was the only way I could make friends. The only way I could prove that I had value. That I deserved a place in society.

I see that in Ford. I see his ego not as shallow narcissism but as an overwhelming need to prove his value as a person. To be loved and accepted and believing that no one will want him if he isn't brilliant. If he doesn't change the world. If he isn't useful. This is also why he couldn't bring himself to destroy his research even knowing it was the safest and most responsible option. Burning down everything he worked for would mean finally giving up on the fantasy of ever being accepted or valuable.

The sad thing is he's so single-mindedly fixated on this personal goal of proving his worth to the world that when people do come along that love him unconditionally he takes them for granted. These people are statistical anomalies in his life. Nice to have around, but not enough to fix the bigger problem. They aren't reflective of society at large. They aren't enough to prove that he, personally, is loveable. Just that on occasion he meets another weirdo. For a while it's nice. Like a campfire in a barren tundra. But he has to keep moving, he can't stay. Warmer lands are ahead if he can just get to them. If he can just keep moving.

This also is why Ford was so susceptible to Bill. Bill told Ford what he wanted to hear. That he was destined for greatness. That, the fundamental wrongness he felt all his life was something incredible other people just couldn't see. Bill promised Ford exactly what he wanted, but not what he actually needed. Ford never needed the world at large to accept him. He just needed a few good people.

I also think his chemistry with Bill was connected to his autistic experiences as well. Bill is literally an alien. There's no pressure to mask around him. To try and "act normal". Ford can just be himself with Bill and not have to think about it. And sure, he could be himself around Fiddleford, but Fidds is still human. The anxieties of human social expectations are still present. Like when Fidds get him a gift for the holidays and Ford feels a bit guilty that it didn't even occur to him to do the same. He doesn't have to think about these social nuances with Bill.

That said I'm sure Bill isn't what his world would have considered neurotypical anyway. Not that Ford would know that. But Bill was also a strange freak in his own society. Just as outcast, possibly more so. I think Bill sees a bit of his own experiences reflected in Ford. I think he relates to him on a level. Not that he would ever admit it outright due to his own ego. I think Bill's fixation on him after the breakup also stems from Ford rejecting the path that Bill chose for himself. Bill still lives with some sort of deeply repressed guilt for what he did. Imagine how validating it would have been to see someone else like him burn their own world to the ground for the same reasons Bill did. But no, Ford's a better man than him, and Bill can't stand it.

Ok, I don't know how to end this long-ass monologue so I'm gonna call it here I guess. I just wanted to spill some thoughts of mine about Ford as a character. If anyone else wants to add to this with other examinations of Ford's character through this lense go right ahead. I'm just saying as an autistic person myself I understand every choice Ford made. I could relate to why he did the things he did even if I know those were mistakes and even acknowledging that he's kind of an asshole. Ford is a strange man who makes an eerie amount of sense to me.

[heartgold]

I think a lot about the way polydactyly is described in umineko ep1 because of the emphasis on the surgery to remove the extra digit often being done in early infancy (therefore without consent), with the intent of making the person "normal" while they grow up not even knowing about it...

of course this hints at sayo having her extra toe removed to hide her relation to kinzo, but I can't help but think about how it's specifically described in a way that evokes infant genital mutilation, especially considering sayo's backstory. all of her character reads like an allegory for intersex experiences imo, which also adds to her trans narrative. a major source of her suffering lies in how her gender struggles were complicated further by the reveal that her body was operated on without her knowledge, which led to sexual dysfunction and infertility.

the narration talks about the polydactyly surgery and reiterates the topic of bodily autonomy (already a big topic in umineko's first episode with the discussion of reproductive commodification of women's bodies) by mentioning how infants can be operated on to "fix" a part of their bodies to fit the idea of what "normal bodies" are like. the parallel to the mutilation of intersex bodies is very obvious to me. in sayo's case it was done as treatment for physical injuries rather than a literal intersex condition, but the narrative centering the violation of her autonomy persists with how she has her body altered and is denied the truth, having never had any means to cope with the inherent trauma of it all because the priority of genji&co was always to cover up anything that could implicate kinzo. she gets everything on her birth records falsified and she is intentionally kept in the dark about her own life. her entire personhood is erased. again drawing parallels to intersex experiences, doctors and parents will lie about it your entire life if they can get away with it. it's not uncommon to only find out you were operated on and/or forced on hrt as an adult!

even umineko's overarching theme about the nuances of truth vs magic can be read as an intersex narrative... it's a common experience to find out you were being denied your truth and made to live a lie "for your own sake". that truth may be unrecoverable and kept from you forever and all you can do is grieve it. your body is made into a catbox. I don't want to get too personal but some parts of confessions were chilling to read because of how similar they were to my experiences as an intersex person and I had never seen these very specific things portrayed anywhere. of course I can't claim to know the authorial intent, but it hit hard even as an allegory.

intersex and trans struggles aren't 1:1 the same but they have a lot of overlap, especially in regards to bodily autonomy, medical abuse and the gender assignment of bodies upholding a strict binary. trans people are denied transition while intersex people are forced through it, so a character like sayo who portrays that intersection of being both with such care is very precious. her struggles are strongly rooted in transmisogyny, intersexism, class and family, all which had her systemically disempowered, dehumanized and stripped of autonomy and agency.

her actions are a desperate gambit to gain some control over her own life, to be in charge of the narrative even if it's through selfdestruction. the horrors in umineko converge into the theme of systemic powerlessness and denial of autonomy. to be made into a piece. all of it combined makes up the multilayered meaning of furniture.

[cripplecharacters]

Hello! I want to write a horror book with characters that are not human but were a long time ago and now are something changed. What I want to do is explore themes of body horror, but what I do not want to do is be offensive or stereotypical towards physically disabled people. I have been doing some research and making sure the horror I am writing doesn’t have real world people it is affecting. (for example, characters with multiple eyes or arms or who have bare skeletons on their limbs) Do you have any tips to be non-offensive in my writing?

P.S. thank you! Your blog has been so helpful to me 💛

Hello beautiful asker!

We have a post on body horror right there! I would just do your research very thoroughly (read Sasza's part, he worded it much better than me). Characters transforming into something non-human is such a cool concept and cool to explore. And while this isn't our area, I would also research stuff like identity, race, body dysphoria, dysmorphia, Ethnicity, queerness, on their intersectionality with body horror, outside of disability and such. It's really interesting and it all intersects in such a fascinating way!

~ Mod Virus 🌸

Hi!

I think that as long as you're making sure you're not passing off symptoms of disabilities as said body horror, you're fine. If there's no connection between the two, then it won't be offensive to physically/visibly disabled people :-)

With that said, there's an incredible number of conditions that can be disabling (literally thousands). So to avoid including any of them as "body horror" or "gore" or what have you, you will need to do research.

There are disabilities that involve extra fingers (polydactyly), extra limbs (polymelia), extra eyes (diprosopus), and other things that involve what's widely considered "body horror" by the genre. Yes, they're very rare (except for polydactyly maybe) but they're still very much real; the Witches movie tried to pretend that limb difference was just some magical scary thing rather than an actually existing disability and it was horrible.

That doesn't mean you can't do it, just don't mimic it 1:1. Put the eyes on their neck, or make their fingers come out of their mouth, whatever. Things that don't happen to visibly disabled people, including the ones that die from complications of their disabilities - I think it's incredibly cruel for the horror genre to treat many of them as some sort of "evil creature inspo" because of severe congenital conditions.

That's just my view on it, I hope it makes sense. Good luck with your writing.

mod Sasza

[hey-its-sybarite]

1. Why is Donald Trump talking about Hannibal Lecter?

2. Why does Donald Trump think Hannibal Lecter is dead?

3. Is the fact that Donald Trump seems fond of Hannibal Lecter the most human thing about him?

Liking Hannibal Lecter is relatable. Thinking he’s dead kind of implies Trump believes he was once alive and therefore real. Which is unhinged.

The Lithuanian Count Hannibal “the cannibal” Lecter is the LEAST believable fictional character EVER. Glowing maroon eyes? Widows peak? RAREST form of polydactyly on his LEFT hand? Rich and cultured. Gifted artist, composer, musician, chef, surgeon, psychiatrist, MURDERER and polyglot? Does complex equations? Eats the rude? So perceptive he comes across as a mind reader? THAT GUY? Trump thinks THAT GUY was REAL??? Hannibal is so deliberately gothic main character he is inconceivable as a real person. I, for one, would like to cut to a live Thomas Harris reaction. Whatever the writer’s intention, it could never have been this.

[disneydarlin]

Gravity Falls: Ford Pines —Aesthetic

Stanford "Ford" Filbrick Pines' Character & Personality

Ford is a man in his sixties who's fifteen minutes older than his twin brother. He's the great uncle of the Pines' twins as the paternal uncle to Mr. Pines. Thus, Ford is also known as Great Uncle or Grunkle Ford. The paranormal investigator came to Gravity Falls, Oregon, to study the large concentration of supernatural activity in and around the town. Ford spent years cataloging his research in a series of journals, but his writings were left behind. He represents the six-fingered hand symbol in the Bill Cipher Zodiac due to his polydactyly and his journals bearing the same symbol. Ford is an intellectual, introverted and nerdy person. The scientist enjoys games involving high levels of thinking. Ford will even ignore the dangers of his research to play such games. Despite his intelligence, he's quite behind the times when it comes to his own dimension. Ford doesn't know about modern technology or customs; thinking it's safe to give children weapons. While still writing, he was paranoid and overly cautious, having a hard time trusting people due to being tricked. Although he's smart, Ford is quite self-absorbed. The adventurer is reluctant to part with his life's work and share his scientific accomplishments with loved ones, relishing the idea of being a solitary hero. This is because Ford has a strong need to have his intellect recognized and celebrated. Due to this, he's serious when it comes to his work. However, Ford genuinely enjoys his research, even in the face of danger. His years of researching the paranormal in and out of his realm have made him a strong, brave individual who'll face danger head-on to ensure the world is safe. Unfortunately, it has also dulled Ford’s excitement for confirming things, like the existence of extraterrestrials.

[batmanfruitloops]

Jervis and his therapy cat Cheshire, a long-haired tabby with polydactyly. Jervis has dealt with undiagnosed ADHD since he was young and developed maladaptive daydream disorder and depression. Cheshire helps his emotional needs as well as helping him remember things and helps him sleep.

(I don't draw Jervis as much as I want to because my brain does a weird thing where "I can't draw this thing/character because I'm not there in the story yet" since he shows up later, but he's not like a spoiler or anything. But I love him and definitely totally don't project really hard on him.)

-Fluffy

[kjetll]

— oc: yohl the mother of chaos

My upcoming comic, "Rhapsody," blends elements of sci-fi and medieval epic. While I usually draw cyberpunk themes, the medieval aspect is depicted mainly through text descriptions and character biographies. In my setting, there are two types of people: the Earthlings who have arrived on a new planet (Yarmir) and the indigenous inhabitants known as the Yarmirians. Despite their external similarities, their DNA is distinct. The Earthlings, with their technical superiority, live in closed megalopolises and are reluctant to share their knowledge with the Yarmirians. Meanwhile, the Yarmirians develop their agrarian civilization, maintaining the traditions and customs of their ancestors.

The art features a Yarmirian woman Yohl [jol'], the mother of one of the main characters, CA. Yohl is dressed in the traditional attire of the Duneih principality of Talmekres. At the beginning of the story, CA has already left her homeland and mother and is in the Capitolium, the heart of the futuristic Earthling world. CA describes her mother as a beautiful in her grief young woman, but a terrible parent. Yohl has central polydactyly.

[cannondisabledcharacters]

Today's disabled character of the day is Lee Geumhwa's sister from Svaha The Sixth Finger, who has polydactylism and hypertrichosis

Requested by Anon

[Image Description: Photo of Lee Jae-in playing Geumhwa's sister. She is mostly covered in shadows. She has a bald head and pure black eyes. She is wearing a dark green robe and a striped undershirt.]

[ckret2]

@horridrabbitcreature said: Ok now tell us how they breed. For educational purposes

Honestly and sincerely, I do not know how Bill's species breeds lmao.

It's a problem of aesthetics, to me. A shape in the style of Bill Cipher has a simple, clean, minimalist perimeter, with perhaps only a couple of arms and legs and (in their home dimension) an eyeball on one corner.

If you headcanon they have the traditional hole or pole anatomy like humans do, it mars their nice, simple perimeter. If you come up with some complicated way to hide the equipment—something like a cloaca—that still will probably be seen on their edge, which I don't like, and anyway I personally feel like "yeah they've got equipment (it's just perfectly hidden most of the time)" is a little goofy and the coward's way out.

You could incorporate it into their existing anatomy—make up an alien way to stuff a reproductive system into their eyeballs, for instance—but I already do SO MUCH with their eye (it's for seeing AND it's their mouth hole AND they probably hear through there) that trying to find a way to shove in a reproductive system feels like too much, so I'm not doing that.* And they don't have much visible anatomical features OUTSIDE of eyes to work with.

(* "What do you mean you're not putting their genitalia in their eyes, you just wrote a whole chapter about Bill being into weird eye stuff?" The eye stuff is Bill's fetish, not a reflection of normal shapes' sexual behavior, and all Bill's shape buddies think he's a freak for it. Glad we clarified this.)

You could invent an entirely new alien reproductive method that gets around the issue, but unless how they reproduce becomes relevant to the fic I'm writing (doubtful), that's a HUGE superfluous avenue of worldbuilding that wouldn't contribute anything but pointless complicated info.

So I don't know how they breed because right now it just doesn't matter to the story I'm telling.

Here's what I do know about their reproduction:

It requires one line and one polygon (triangle, quadrangle, pentagon, etc). (This is not without purpose; I'm all for alien reproductive methods that don't involve pairing up, but in this case for "Bill keeps accidentally paralleling the human characters' experiences" reasons it was necessary to give him a crummy mom-and-dad like Pacifica, Gideon, and Stan+Ford.) Each kind of shape (lines included) is genetically a separate sex and socially considered a separate gender.

"each shape is a separate sex" actually only goes up so far. Shapes with a ridiculously high number of sides aren't naturally occurring and are the result of selectively breeding for extra sides, and often requires mutations or inbreeding. Creating a circle is like spending several centuries selectively breeding humans for polydactyly until you have a baby with thirty fingers. By Bill's time the practice of selectively breeding for sides was scientifically discredited and effectively dead.

Similarly, "each generation your angles/sides should increase" was proven to be rubbish. It's all sex chromosomes.

I've been toying with the idea of making lines a small proportion of the population rather than 50%, to reduce how much it feels like the species is a binary "50% female (lines) and 50% male of various flavors (polygons)"; but if there's so few lines then to maintain the population there might be some kind of "a line can have multiple spouses" rule; maybe a line can legally take one spouse of each shape but NOT, say, two triangles or something; but then that's verging on "to what end am I making this so complicated? What's the point? Does it have any impact on Bill's life?" so I might just chuck that idea. (A lot of my worldbuilding is driven by "Bill's species is extinct in the wild, so justify why exploring this matters?")

Similarly, I've considered maybe making the way the species experiences romantic feelings vary between sexes—like, maybe usually only lines fall in love for some reason, or maybe if there's a town that's 10% line 10% square 10% miscellaneous and 70% triangle then newborn triangles are naturally inclined toward being ace/aro to rebalance the population numbers. Sorta inspired by like how frogs spontaneously change sexes if the pond's population is too unbalanced. The reason I'm considering this is because having Bill experience romantic feelings & falling in love at the same rate as allo humans (like, what, every few years? Constantly maybe?) is just ridiculous for a character who's a trillion years old; but if I'm gonna say "oh he only falls in love once a million years or whatever" I want a good reason that isn't just he hasn't met someone ~special~ enough; and I DON'T want the reason to be "he's ace and/or aro and could reasonably identify that way" because having Bill frigging Cipher grapple with that queer experience just does NOT excite me. Basically—as an ace/aro myself, I don't want it to be possible for ace/aro-ness to be one of the reasons Bill feels fundamentally Weird. Turns me off. So I'm toying with, maybe I could build his species in such a way that, for him, being aro-ish or ace-ish would be seen as normative & expected, rather than queer; so I could still have him only wanna date once every million years WITHOUT feeling like that's a part of his identity he needed to explore at some point. But idk futzing around with how his species experiences romance might be unnecessarily complicated when I could just, like, not point out that only dating once every million years is unusual, and most readers would just roll with it without question.

So, these are the thoughts I've had about how reproduction works in Bill's species.

Still have no idea how they fuck.

[roseverdict]

trying an overly-specific poll of Brain Thoughts of my own

* i ran out of characters on this one but it's "to spite someone into getting you one of alright quality"

[absolxguardian]

I just realized that if Euclyida has a law against mentioning the third dimension and "medicine" for Bill's condition- medicine that specifically treats his eye not his mind, so they weren't just throwing shape antipsychotics at him- that means there has to have been other people with the same condition as Bill. But I can't imagine him knowing this, given how he clearly sees himself as a singular exception. Perhaps if he had looked for people like him, instead of assuming he wasn't just different but also better, he would have been able to benefit from a whole underground culture and not accidentally destroy his home dimension.

This is also a parallel to Ford, I think. Ford tries to be the mythical Great Man of Science. Because of the way his autism manifested, society conditionally held him up on a pillar (the stuff about the medical assessment for his polydactyly in the book also establishes this). He was a capital g Genius, better than normal people (and "idiots" like his brother). His extreme isolation is what made him vulnerable to Bill, not just because that's how abuse works but because, just like Bill, he didn't trust other people with information about the portal, who because of their own background could have noticed what Ford couldn't. If he was part of a team with someone who specialized in occultism, they might have gone "wait a minute". Yeah, Fidds is there, but he's an assistant, not a Great Scientist (which isn't how the history of science actually went down, but that's how it was taught in the 80s). That's why Ford seeing himself as part of the queer or disabled community pre-portal doesn't fit with his character. He sees himself as a singular exception, there's no solidarity.

(And as a final note, I want to stress that I'm making this reading about Ford from a place of compassion. I used to think very similarly when I first got into Gravity Falls, and I only got out of it because of reading articles about gifted kid syndrome, disability theory, the construct of intelligence, and the like. Even if Ford could have hypothetically read articles like these, they were much less accessible in the 80s and Ford strikes me as having no interest in the humanities.)

[zalcolm]

total drama character with polydactyly but since it's the tdi art style they have 5 fingers