#putting the autism symbol on there was too easy

[catsharkzzz]

ah hell nah who gave the furniture a conscience

[ciphermitarai]

I got an ask on the mark blog pertinent to this while I was writing this post so it’s a sign I guess.

My Disorganized Thoughts On Why Mark Berskii Acts The Way He Does

I think the reason why I got so attached to Mark immediately is because I saw a lot of myself in him. Mark acts really standoffish and uncomfortable, kind of snarky in general, in a way that indicates (clearly) that not only does he not trust his classmates, but he never did. This isn’t to say I know the real reasons why he acts the way he does, but it is to say that my insights might be of some form of value to other people.

From my personal perspective, his behavior mirrors the way I acted in high school quite a bit. It’s pretty easy to forget that Mark would be a first year college student, or in his last year of high school. (I’m also eighteen.) He’s obviously impacted by the game in a realistic way—I think his vulnerabilities are evident in places. On cue grabs beanie, pulls down over face.

But as for the reason why I think he acts this way from the very beginning, or at least what of I see of myself in him… I acted that way out of anxiety. I didn’t fit in very well with my peers (whaaat? Me? Nooo way!!!) so I became standoffish. I came from a pretty closed-off town, so I kind of hardened to my peers. They didn’t welcome me, they even made fun of me, so I became sort of… pre-emptively a bit of a jerk as a way of protecting myself. That mindset gets cyclical. It gets hard to admit that other people might actually want to be let into your world, genuinely, and aren’t making fun of you in some way. I’m also fairly often characterized as being standoffish and rude without intending to, partially because of this and partially because of autism, tone issues, my face, whatever.

Which brings me to

self esteem issues

This sort of behavior is heavily exacerbated by a feeling of low self-worth. I think the reason why Mark doesn’t want anyone to comment on his work isn’t particularly mysterious, especially while it’s live! Recently, I showed an animatic I made to some family friends who were essentially obligated to receive it well, and I couldn’t even look while it was happening. If I trust someone, it’s okay for me to show my work to them. But with people I don’t know or trust, I’d rather they just not say anything at all about it, especially if I’m not showing it out of my own will. it would be impossible for me to believe that they’re telling the truth, you know? It’s actually sort of upsetting!

Showing your work to fellow classmates, which Mark might already have a negative predisposition towards if he was received in a similar way, probably provokes such a reaction.

I can’t ever say for sure why Mark feels negatively about his own work, but what I can say is that when you do become heavily invested in a creative drive, when you create things that you personally don’t like, it can be shattering. Especially when you have a lot of effort put into it! If your art is an expression of “you”, then what is this?

For someone on the world stage, the disconnect is million fold. He’s known for things that he doesn’t identify with, that he doesn’t like, for whatever reason that may be. So when people tell him positive things about it… it not only doesn’t mean anything, but it feels like an insult. I hope that one day he can create something he is proud of.

oh Also

I think mark’s alligator symbolism is really interesting. He too is lying in wait in a sense. It’s totally possible that he does some fucked up shit in the future, but I feel like it would be out of desperation, or in other words it wouldn’t have much to do with his outward personality.

It’s important to remember that, again, he’s eighteen. He has some semblance of principles—at least, I think that’s why he’s so resistant to Damon after the whole Cara thing. I don’t think he’s secretly evil, or even overly hateful. Something that shouldn’t be underestimated, yes, and someone definitely capable of rising to the level of cruelty that the killing game necessitates, but he’s clearly only snarky to people who are loud and abrasive themselves (or, I guess, exceedingly stupid).

And I think that’s why there’s appeal in jettski, platonic or romantic—jett doesn’t care about the things that mark hates about himself. That’s obvious from the beginning. And I think that those attempts to get closer to him make mark, annoyed as he is, feel like someone does actually see worth in him, or want to go out of their way to talk to him. Maybe just a little bit.

Or maybe I’m just projecting. Who knows?

[captaindibbzy]

I think the thing about Laois Vs Shiro is Shiro is expecting Laois to do the legwork without telling him.

By Shiro's cultural standards Laois is being very rude, and being someone of nobility it's very much a shock to come up against Laois's manners. But instead of adapting to this he keeps going forward with the same system he knows.

Laois is incapable of seeing it. He literally can not. Shiro can see that from Laois. He shouts about it, how he knows Laois is genuine and he hates that because he wants it to be deliberately rude cause then he can treat him with the contempt he deserves in return, but Laois isn't doing that. But instead of changing his strategy, or adapting himself to deal with this situation he keeps going on the same failing path thinking if he hints enough Laois will suddenly get it and stop. He wants Laois to learn his manners, but never tells him this, or communicates in any way that Laois can understand.

This could equally be read as autism just like Laois: these are the rules and I don't know how to function outside of them. Or it could be read as privilege, where he expects to be treated in a certain way and Laois is NOT doing that. It could just be cultural.

But Laois can't change to information he doesn't have. Shiro may as well be talking a different language, but Shiro still expects Laois to suddenly develop the skill to understand him and then "voices" his frustration in that same language that it's not happening.

Is Shiro wrong to do this? Depends on your interpretation. Maybe he can't change himself just like Laois can't. Or maybe he doesn't want too.

I don't think Shiro hates Laois, there is more of that later in the story. I think he was tired, hungry, and stressed when he said those things. They may have been true but not the whole picture. He holds great respect for him. The bell is a symbol of that.

For me I think it reads as a criticism of Japanese culture on autistics. It is a Japanese manga/anime after all, and Shiro's behaviour will be very familiar to that audience. So what happens if you need direct communication in a culture where saying No outright is considered incredibly rude? You end up like Laois, reaching out in the only way you know how, misreading everything, wearing you heart out on things you read as friendship only to discover that you are wrong, you are rude, and nobody wants you there (or even, like Shiro to Laois, maybe it is not hate but in frustration things have been voiced and you can't read between those lines either).

Walking in on people you thought were your friends to find they hate you is something I am very familiar with. It's not something that is easy to recover from. You just have to put your heart away and learn not to take it out.

[afrenchaugurey]

Day#16

Today's prompt was "Favourite Newt's costume".

This one was easy. The first movie blue coat and mustard waistcoast, with the tweed costume (aww, tweed).

For many reasons. The waistcoast is very "earthy" and fits well Newt's personality (and Hufflepuff). The overcoat is of course blue, and a good metaphor for Scamander. Also blue is for many the colour for autism, and even if I'm not a lot in it, that could be another cue to put Newt on the spectrum (before all the ITW).

But I also see a peacock symbolism with this association of colours (+ the iridescent eyes, like the bird's feathers). And well... I really could write something long about it.

I know the first thing we think about (at least in France) when we think about peacock is pride. Which isn't really a Newt's trait. Well, it is, a little bit, if we consider overconfidence which he has (and has not, regarding to people), regarding to his creatures (the playful thing in the shed with the swooping evil, how he interacts with "dangereous beasts", the "I'll catch you thing", etc). This is not a bad thing and one of the side of character, even if it's not the biggest part.

An other important thing regarding to peacocks is immortality, in Middle Age this was the believe and they ate peacocks for that reason. This one is very interesting, because of all the alchemy things that gravitate around Newt (the runes, Newton, Artemis, ...), and the fact that we know he'll have a long life.

Peacock's feathers are associated to "wind of change" too. And that is something that I cleary relate to Newt. He created his own field of study, he uses unconventional magic, and he'll change many things in the WW (American laws about Thunderbirds protection, then all magical beasts, the breeding ban - for the law about the werewolf registry, I have some other thinking that would take me too long to explain). His role during WWII/GWW is probably also another very unconventional thing (at least, that's how I imagine him, and why he's implicated in everything).

But the reborn symbolism can also be linked with Newt's evolution during the first movie, how he opens to people, and meets significant ones who'll share his life until the end. (some even associate peacock with phenix... well...)

In China, the peacock is associated with peace and prosperity. Well, peace is just everything that he tries to do, at least in the "avoiding conflict" part (but he also fought during WWI).

To finish with this part, and something I didn't know until lately is that peacock is associated with water. Some beliefs say that if you want some water, a source, you need to have a peacock (to make things simple). The peacock's cry would mean "the rain is comming" (which, considering all the water symbolism that is in the first film, is very interesting).

I also love how this costume, as is the case, cries how much it lived. I'm one to almost always wear the same clothes, to buy them again when they're completely ruined (and can't be patched anymore). It talks about his time in the field, it talks about his way of life (maybe).

Just saying ...

Well, I planned a 2 min post and wrote for almost an hour. Oupsi.

[hdmason]

To disclose, or not to disclose

Words: 905

Of course a major step between Mason and potentially achieving his biggest dream is paperwork. Just his fucking luck.

It had to be forms, that was the last thing he ever wanted to do. His autism made this shit nearly impossible when it was just a one or two page document for the doctor, but now he had four pages? Fuck him, he guessed.

But if this was the the biggest hurdle in between him and getting on a show that could potentially debut him? Then he would do it to the best of his ability. He would even write twice as slowly as he normally did so his handwriting would be actually legible. Sure, his Korean handwriting was better than his English, but he didn’t want to take any risks and have anyone unable to read a single symbol.

He had to do this in stages, basically filling out a section, then taking a break and playing a round of Overwatch. Another section, then a youtube video. A section, then a few minutes doing the upkeep on his Minecraft world. He was actually almost done but stopped when he realized the next section might actually be the hardest.

“Three pieces of trivia about you”.

Fuck. Why was talking about yourself so easy when you weren’t supposed to, but when asked, you forget who you are? Well, maybe that was just Mason.

Then, Mason smirked as he thought of his first one, thinking that his autism would be a badge of honor for making it this far in the trainee process with it. However, before his pen hit paper, he thought about it again. This wasn’t just some personality quiz or dating app profile, this was potentially his future. He had to really think about this.

He had to consider where he currently was. He was in South Korea, where autism still had a huge stigma around it. Mason wasn’t ashamed of it by any means, but he knew to not draw too much attention to his condition with those who grew up here until he really got to know them and knew they would be accepting. This show wasn’t like telling a friend, this would be telling the world something about him that could change their perspective of him before he even got a chance to show off who he was. Mason knew everything about everything in kpop, and he knew there were zero openly autistic kpop stars. Sure, there were some he suspected, but that was mostly him hoping for the sake of solidarity; he didn’t have any concrete proof.

But then that was a potential positive, wasn’t it? If Mason was the first kpop star to be openly autistic, maybe he could seriously make a difference in the public’s perception of the disability. It could be huge! Plus, Mason knew how important representation was. He thought of how many little kids with autism could see him living his dream and see themselves in him, and wasn’t that the most important thing in the world? If Mason could help one kid feel better about themselves through his performances, his entire career would be worth it. With that, he put his pen back to paper, ready to write about his condition when another thought hit him.

He wouldn’t be able to be representation for anyone if he wasn’t let on the show in the first place. The stigma was there, correctly or not. If he publicized it too soon, he might not even get the chance to be on TV, let alone debut.

Mason sighed, leaning back in his chair and running his fingers through his hair. Who knew writing three facts about yourself could be so hard? He blew air out between his lips as he stared at the paper before making a decision.

He would publicize his condition... just not yet. He wouldn’t be able to make any difference at the trainee stage. But once he debuted, once they won their first award, once he was already a welcome presence in people’s homes, then he could drop the bomb. He could then be an inspiration for little kids with autism everywhere. He made a promise to himself that he would do it, make his condition known, once he was in a more stable position and actually able to make a difference.

But that left him with three more “fun facts” to think of.

Think, Mason, think. Who are you?

Alright, well, he’s been dancing since he was eleven. That not only showed off his skill, but also his dedication to his art. Boom, there was one. Second, hm... oh, maybe his love for Overwatch 2? It was a relatively popular game, either for good or bad reasons, so people would see he also has interests outside of kpop (though admittedly, not many). Now for the third...

Well, people calling him the “unofficial maknae” of the Wonder Nation boys was interesting, right? That was something that no one else was going to write and was memorable, at least a little?

He wrote all three down before going back and reading the entire document, triple checking it for errors. It looked good to him, and he was honestly proud of himself for getting it done so quickly after receiving it. He literally reached around and gave himself a pat on the back before deciding to celebrate with a bit of ice cream.

He earned it. 

[thattimdrakeguy]

Okey! Some Autistic Timmy thoughts, coming right up! (Most of these are self projection lol😅)

1. HATES chalk. Like really, really hates it. The texture is the WORST it gets on his hands and he HATES it so so so much. He touches chalk and immediately has the urge to rip his skin off. The first time he touched chalk as a toddler he actually started crying.

2. Needless to say, his life is pretty unstructured. This doesn't really bother him, HOWEVER, if his "suiting up in the cave" routine is interrupted it WILL mess up his entire day. If he's suiting up at home or anywhere else it's fine, but for some reason he's particular about the cave routine. Luckily Bruce is also a very routine oriented person so it's not a big deal, but when someone else is in charge and it changes it bothers him. He can still function perfectly well, he just gets more anxious than usual.

3. Kraft mac n cheese is his comfort food. He measures out the ingredients exactly so it will taste the same every time.

4. Watched a documentary about ocean creatures when he was 8 and memorized the whole thing. Can and will tell you the creepiest and most disturbing facts from it if prompted to.

5. Rocks in his chair when he's sitting and thinking, to the point where the floor around his desk has scratch marks. He's fallen over and bonked his head many times and it drives Alfred insane.

6. This one is actually supported by canon to an extent but I think he really likes labelling things with the Robin symbol. It's fun and easy to draw and it gives him a little serotonin boost every time he see's one of his things labeled like that. Bruce noticed it and always makes sure to label all of Tim's new gear before he gives it to him. To make things easier to distinguish, of course. Because it would definitely be so easy to mistake the primary colored xx small clothes and gadgets for belonging to anybody else.

Sorry, not all of these are directly related to autism I guess. I just put things that I see commonly in myself and other autistic people that I thought he might also do. Love your blog btw!

I honestly really love these to be honest, cause I can really easily picture Tim doing all of these kinds of stuff. Like it fits in amazingly well with his personality. I mean I don’t know about the chalk and Mac and Cheese, but that’s purely because I don’t think you could tell that from a personality, but you can get what I mean lol. It’s all great.

I actually had the Robin one myself too, at least kind of. Maybe not a label specifically on everything, but I can picture him just having a Robin symbol of everything that’s his rather it was bought that way like the symbol on his shirt or a backpack, to the labels and tags on other things because Robin just means so much to him. 

Now it’s got me imagining it on LITERALLY everything, like Dick, Cass, Babs maybe even, and Timmy himself all having a sleepover party in the living room or cave or something, and someone nearly grabs Tim’s pillow and blanket and he gets jumpy like “Hey, no, that ones mine!”, which isn’t even tellable at first because this ones just his plain pillow and blanket, not his merch one. But he yoinks it out of their hand and shows them a personally made label in the form of a little tiny tag on them both.

If you put out all of the Batkids stuff in front of you (I’m imagining like all neat and folded and each person’s stuff is in their own little group next to the other people’s stuff’s also grouped), it’d be so obviously Tim’s (I mean besides no one else being able to fit into his tiny tiny clothes). Like “Okay, Robin flashlight, Robin lunchbox, Robin jammies, Robin blanket, Robin socks, Robin shirt, Robin labeled short pants, Robin cap, Robin band-aids, Robin sweater, Robin jacket, Robin briefs, Robin wrist watch, Robin nightlight, Robin label on the grappling hook, Robin label in the boots and as a shape on the sole, Robin toothbrush, Robin hairbrush, Robin--okay hmm. Who’s is this?”

Not that he wears all of it at once, but just having the option makes him unreasonably happy, and he can’t even really explain it to a Dick or Cass who may ask, but it just does.

Dick sarcastically asks him: “Was the Robin identity and costume not enough?”

When there’s a mess somewhere, you can always tells what’s Tim’s to be able to give it to him.

I also really like the one about his routine cause it feels like that thing that would just nag at Tim and he can’t really explain it. Like everything's going well, he has everything, but the school changes the schedules for everyone and Tim’s just uncomfortable for the rest of the day. He just doesn’t like it.

Ends up making him do these little checks to make sure he has all of his gadgets too, and Bruce could’ve sworn he checked like twice already on everything, but Tim just has to do it or else he’ll be upset for the rest of his night.

Same with Y.J. when he goes to Mount Justice he also had to do these routines and Bart and Kon catch on and try to mess it up sometimes when they’re feeling extra pranky, but I figure either Cassie or maybe even Slobo of all people figures out why Tim always seems perpetually grumpy or upset at them afterwards, so they eventually knock it off. Included with an apology even if it does sound half-assed at first.

Like I could go all day with the little visions popping in my head with the headcanons, but I really like it.

Oh! And thank you for enjoying my blog! That's amazing of you.

[crispyjenkins]

I dare you to write an Ani5 fix-it fic. I will not be taking criticism and will die on the hill that this is the most powerful ship and could’ve saved the entire clone wars. Bonus points if it features the ship Mace Windu/headaches (bc anakin is a walking mess of shatterpoints and lives to annoy Mace). Codywan to help knock some sense into anakin would also be top tier. I LOVE YOU ZEPH’BUIR

(of course i can’t do a whole fix-it in a quick prompt answer, but i think i’ve set it up for a far happier ending than in canon! support communication and education in relationships (ღ˘⌣˘ღ) and also adhd clones.

fives might be the most i’ve ever struggled with a character (‘cept maybe ahsoka....) so it took a little while to figure out how to write this scene in a way i liked. also, had to go and watch fives clips to try and get my autism brain working, and BOY HOWDY do i actually hate dbb’s take on the clones, especially the accent but everything else too. their character designs make me want to cry. so i’m begging, for me, to imagine this fives like this especially because then we get Tol Anakin and a Smol Clone BF and i think that is a seriously underutilised dynamic.

thank you for the prompt, ad, and for cursing me with this ship in the first place. someday i’ll get around to actually writing them as the battle husbands they are 🧡)

Alt+R to quick reblog on desktop, Hold the reblog symbol to quick reblog on mobile

  Echo's always been good with programming, but Fives is better with the actual building. He's not any good with inventing, maybe, but putting things together? Opening them up and knowing immediately what's wrong? Fives would even say he enjoys it — and being able to talk shop with Skywalker like they're nobody mechanics from the Outer Rim instead of General and Soldier makes the long hyperjumps between missions actually bearable. 

  How that led to him sitting in a rarely used hallway on the Resolute with Skywalker ("Anakin," he keeps insisting with a smile), both leant over a mouse droid in pieces on a drop cloth, Fives isn't really sure. It probably had something to do with Skywalker's excited bounce when he'd come to ask if Fives wanted to help him, the sparkle in his eye reminding Fives just how young the both of them are. How, technically, he's older than Anakin.

  Because, yeah, he is Anakin, not Skywalker, when they're like this. With his growing knight cut a curly untamed cloud around his ears, grease smeared on the underside of his jaw, with Fives stripped down to his blacks from the waist up, with even his blasters set on the floor next to them. 

  With it quickly becoming clear that Anakin doesn't actually need help to rewire the mouse droid, but had asked for Fives to join him anyways.

  They've been at it for a few hours now, their jokes winding down to companionable quiet as they both work on separate parts of the droid. It honestly might have been easier to start from a scrap droid than try to rewire this one correctly, but it's easy work Fives could do blindfolded, and sharing the mutually-focused silence is actually quite nice.

  Anakin is elbow-deep in the outer casing when he finally asks, "Do the clones feel love?"

  And Fives almost gets up and walks away. He knows not every battalion ended up with a good Jedi, that the 212th and the 501st had been so kriffing lucky to end up with "The Team", but sometimes he forgets. Maybe that's the worst part of it: slow, personal moments like this, Fives forgets he's not natborn and bearer of a face shared with millions. Being around his general makes him forget, and maybe he had taken that for granted until now.

  Or maybe it's for that reason that he hesitates from storming off, because Anakin had been the one to name Alpha, to insist on giving them proper leave, to defend them from anyone who talks down at them even if they're a planetary leader. And Rex had said something, once, about Anakin’s brain working in either/ors, being hardwired in some way to only see in black and white and believing that if you're one thing, you can't be another. That what Anakin says isn't always what he means.

  So instead, he asks, "What kind of love are we talkin'?"

  Anakin refuses to raise his head, and Fives can almost see him stressing about how to phrase this.  "Y'know, grand romance and stuff. One-and-onlys and holodrama romcom propaganda and imagining growing old together."

  "'Not quite sure what you're asking, sir." He takes a deep breath. "The short answer is yes, we can and do feel that, but the long answer is I can't speak for every brother, and I would not want to. Some of us don't feel that." Shrugging, he passes Anakin a socket wrench before he can ask for it. "But it's not because we can't, not because of the longnecks. We're bred to be obedient, sir, not emotionless."

  Quiet settles over them again while Anakin processes this, his mouth twisted rather horribly. Fives starts to think he would do a whole awful lot to turn that frown back into a haughty smile. 

  "What do you really want to ask, General?"

  "I'm married to Senator Amidala."

  Now, everyone with eyes knows that. Maybe Torrent knows even better, when they've been covering for their general for over a year now, and clearly the Jedi just aren't doing anything about it — but Fives also knows Anakin has never actually told anyone about this, not even General Kenobi. Rex says Anakin still thinks they've been discreet.

  "If I may be blunt, sir, this is not news."

  And Anakin actually laughs at that, shaking his head as he tosses down his tools to stare at the opposite wall instead. Fives watches his gaze go distant, somewhere far away from the Resolute lost in the middle of space. “I’ve loved her since I was nine years old, Fives. I loved her through not seeing her for a decade, through her assassination attempts and the First Battle of Geonosis and becoming a knight, and I...”

  Fives sighs once. “No one said you had to stay in love, sir.”

  “But that’s just it,” he groans. “I’ve never known how to do anything else, how to be anything else. I don’t... know who I am without it.”

  He has to look away from Anakin, then, because he’s seen brothers go stupid for people they meet on campaigns, or for their Jedi, and Fives isn’t nearly as young as some of the shinies out there, but he knows what it looks like, when they leap in without thinking. He lets out a long, slow breath, his eyes falling on the ‘saber at Anakin’s hip. “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

  Anakin blinks at him, and nods.

  “That’s too young to decide what you want to do for the rest of your life.” Fives raises a brow at his general’s startled expression, which is maybe more amusing (endearing) than it has any business being. “General, you’re barely an adult, just the same as the vode. If my mental timeline is right, you weren’t even twenty standard when you married Amidala, which, frankly, was reckless and unfair on her part.”

  “Padmé would never–”

  “I don’t mean intentionally, sir. The fact of the matter is, no wonder you don’t know who you are without her, because you’ve always had her.” That decade of no contact notwithstanding, considering Anakin didn’t not have her, either. “Senator Amidala knew who and what she was before you, and she’ll know who and what she is without you.”

  “That’s not quite fair,” Anakin grumbles, but his throat is flushed in what Fives hopes is entirely appropriate guilt, or at the very least embarrassment. “It was my idea to get married after Geonosis.”

  Fives snorts. “The idea of a child thrown into war, afraid to lose anything.”

  “You’re being uncharacteristically candid, Fives.”

  “Respectfully, sir, the last thing you need is to be coddled.” His general laughs again, this time good and bright in a way he hasn’t heard before; and then Fives can’t help what he admits next. “We weren’t allowed toys, or anything.”

  Laughter cutting off abruptly, Anakin’s eyes grow haunted instead. There might not be anyone else in the galaxy with quite the same experience as the clones, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t those that understand.

  “Hevy made me and Echo– Well, he said they were mythosaurs like Kal taught us about, but they looked more like sad loth cats. He cut up his own bedsheet to make ‘em, and couldn’t tell the longnecks what he’d done with it, so he just slept on the bare mattress.”

  “Fives...”

  But it’s clear Anakin doesn’t actually know what to say, so Fives pushes on. “Some of Fett’s instructors tried to teach us Mando’a, you know? I think Spar is the only brother that ever got fluent, the rest of us have been making up words and combining them with Basic and Kaminoan and whatever else the Cuy’val Dar spoke that sometimes we don’t even remember what language they are anymore.”

  “I didn’t learn Basic until I was five.” Anakin thunks his head onto the wall behind him with a sigh, the mouse droid forgotten at his feet. “Other padawans always told me I was lucky Master Obi-Wan knew Huttese.” Ahh, kark, his general had been a Hutt salve; at least the spice runners made sure their slaves could communicate with their customers. “I couldn’t read a word of Aurebesh when I first came to the Temple, though to be fair, I couldn’t read anything else, either.”

  “You grow up around other kids?”

  “Yeah, my mom and I lived in the biggest slave slum on Tatooine.”

  Fives doesn’t need to tell him how lucky he was just to have had their own quarters. “I think, sir, that the vode know better than you think, what it’s like always standing on the edge of losing everything.”

  Squeezing his eyes closed, Anakin inhales sharply and clenches his fists over his knees. “What happened? To your mythosaur toys?”

  “One of the longnecks found them while we were in training, ‘threw them out before we got back. I think Hevy was even more upset than we were.”

  The leather glove over his prosthesis creaks as he tightens his grip on his own palms. “Was it easy? To just... forget about them?”

  “Of course not,” Fives snorts and crosses his arms, “we were the equivalent of eight standard at the time, but we honestly didn’t have a choice. As we got a little older, we stopped trying to put meaning in things, because we weren’t allowed things. Our names are our only real possession, even our armor can be taken from us, but we will not, cannot, let anyone take our names.”

  Groaning, Anakin scrubs his hands over his face before pushing himself up to finally look at Fives properly. He still doesn’t speak for a moment, just watching him, then teases flatly, “You’ve been spending too much time with Cody and Obi-Wan, you’re starting to speak in riddles.”

  “They are riddles only to you, sir.” He offers a small smile, and is only slightly disappointed when Anakin doesn’t return it.

  Instead, he lets out a winded breath. “So. You’re saying that it’s not easy to let go of even small things, but we must. And then there are things that we shouldn’t let go of?”

  “Some things aren’t ours to keep.”

  Anakin swallows. “Like Padmé,”

  “Like any person, no matter what sort of love we have for them.”

  Groaning, Anakin pulls his knees back up close and drops his face into his arms. “But I still love her.”

  Knowing that this is not a new problem, that General Kenobi has been trying to teach his general this for as long as they’ve known each other, Fives takes a moment to consider. “You don’t really have to stop loving her.”

  “But you said–”

  “You think I stop loving my brothers when they die?”

  Whether or not it’s healthy to hold onto affections for someone after a romantic relationship is a conversation for another time, Fives decides, and leans over to pick up where Anakin had left off with the droid.

  “General, it sounds to me like you already know all this,” he says, twisting a wire into the grip of his glove to yank it from the motor. “And  that you’re digging your feet in — which is the crux of the problem, isn’t it?”

  “You sound like Obi-Wan,” he groans, but doesn’t deny it.

  “Hmm, well, at least we’re still just kids.”

  Anakin very slowly looks up from his arms, just enough for Fives to see his wide eyes. “What do you...?”

  “Well, we’ve still got time to learn, don’t we?” Fives raises his eyebrow as he fits the new wire into the motor and starts to close all the panels back up. “I still think about Hevy and Droidbait and Cutup, and honestly, I still think about Echo’s and my mythosaurs. That’s not a bad thing, I don’t think, not even the Jedi would think that’s bad. I’m still angry when my vode don’t get funerals and I honestly hold that against the Chancellor and the Jedi both. But I don’t get to go back to Kamino and take my anger out on the longneck that took our toys, and I’m... working on it, not being so angry with the generals. I’m still angry. But I know the Jedi have about as much say in all of this as we do, and I know burying my brothers won’t bring them back. So I’m working on it.”

  “I... don’t have to be good at it all at once.”

  “Great Maker, General, just because you’re the Chosen One doesn’t mean you have to actually be good at absolutely everything from the start. You just have to try, and you still have time to.”

  He looks up and finds Anakin already smiling back. “Fives, I could kiss you.”

  “Considering it sounds like Senator Amidala just divorced you, I think that’s a very bad idea, sir.”

  “Bah, you’re no fun.”

  Fives feigns offense, “This mouse droid we’ve rigged to follow Captain Rex around and scream says differently.”

-

  The night the 501st returns to the Resolute after finally (kriffing finally) leaving Umbara, Fives finds a hand-sewn stuffed mythosaur on his bunk, with a string collar and a dogtag etched with CT-782.

-

Mando’a: Cuy’val Dar — “Those who no longer exist”, group of 75 Mando’ade and 25 others put together by Jango to train the clones vod/e —  “brother/s, comrade/s, sibling/s”, technically gender neutral but used most often in fandom as “brother/s” (*in this context, fives is using brothers as gender neutral as well, because you won’t take trans and nb clones even from my cold dead hands*)

[autist-tips]

I was diagnosed when I was 16 but I was going to a place called Camhs since 11... They misdiagnosed me with fedal alcohol syndrome & even when resultd were negative kept insisting on it.. Later on I went private & Turns out i had autism..Tho my education was ruined because of the misdiagnosis & I'm wondering if you have advice on how to start going back into learning and classes, if not i completely understand. Thank you!

I’m sorry you had to deal with a misdiagnosis for so long. Congratulations on getting that fixed!

I do have some advice for you. I’ll cover as many subjects as I can think of. Good luck!

History:

• Watch Crash Course History on Youtube! They cover pretty much everything in world history in a way that’s fun and easy to remember.

• Use Quizlet as a study tool. It lets you play games while you learn content. And it’s free.

Math:

• Write down step by step how to solve problems and put an example problem or two beside the steps. Usually a basic and a complex problem are best.

• Make sure you understand what symbols mean and what formulas will give you. If you know how to use formulas correctly, you can do a lot of math even if you don’t understand the wording of a question.

• Khan Academy has a lot of instruction videos that walk you through different problems. I still use it in college.

Science:

• In general, take some math learning skills to this subject. You need to be able to do math to do science.

• Units! Formulas! Very important!

• Khan Academy is your friend.

• Science concepts can be explained well through pictures and diagrams. Make yourself pictures or find some online if you learn that way.

English/Writing:

I don’t have advice for English (I suck at it) but I do have advice for writing:

• Don’t take prompts literally. Have a little fun with them. You don’t have to answer questions in the order they’re given to you.

• Pretend you’re having a conversation with someone (or actually have a conversation before writing.) What would you want someone to know if you talked to them about your writing prompt?

• For creative writing, make sure to remember that surroundings exist. A reader doesn’t know what they’re ‘seeing,’ ‘hearing,’ etc. without you explaining it.

• Show, don’t tell. Ex: She was embarrassed vs Her cheeks flushed pink and she averted her eyes.

Foreign Language:

• Get a translator’s dictionary. You can search words from your native and target language when you forget them.

• Quizlet helps here too.

• Duolingo is a great support tool. It won’t teach you everything, but it helps with vocab and grammar.

• Find someone who’s speaks your target language and practice with them!

• You can practice by reading in your target language. It doesn’t always have to be books! Try fanfiction and memes. Also try watching shows and YouTube in your target language (if you need subtitles, only use the ones in your target language!).

• Think to yourself in your target language. It’s a great way to practice ‘speaking’ without your voice. It also helps with fluency and confidence.

Art:

• There’s plenty of guides on YouTube for just about anything related to art.

• You can buy books that teach you to draw! I believe they can also be found in most libraries.

• Write yourself reminders. Like if you’re learning to draw human heads, write reminders of how it’s supposed to look. Ex: egg-shaped, pointy bottom

• Use reference pictures for art. Use yourself or a friend for poses (you can take a pic of the pose.)

• Practice drawing whatever you like! Make it fun.

[crockettmarcel]

Tumblr won’t let me paste the symbols but happy headcanon and house/bedroom headcanon for reesker because we deserve soft content in these angsty times 💕 -punksarahreese

happy headcanon

not to be too gay but the happiest ava and sarah are is when they’re together. even just driving together in silence makes them happier than anything, because they love each other and love being with each other.

ava’s pretty private with her emotions, but if you know what to look for, it’s easy to tell when she’s happy. she’s a lot more forgiving with the people around her (even the med students who keep getting in her way), and she’s way more likely to agree to something (sarah absolutely uses this to her advantage if she wants something asjfhjskhjk). also, contrary to what most people at med think, she Is capable of smiling, and does so often! it’s just that no one at med (except sarah of course) ever gives her a reason to smile

sarah’s a lot more external with her happiness, and everyone can always tell when she’s having a good day. she gets really smiley and bouncy and she’s just more energetic in general, and it’s nice to see. when sarah’s happy, she tends to make everyone around her happy as well (her smile is contagious !!)

house/bedroom headcanon

sarah was really nervous when they moved in together. it was a big change, and she really doesn’t vibe with change (it’s the autism babey!). originally they were going to move into ava’s place because it’s bigger, but that was too much for sarah, so they made it work in sarah’s (smaller) apartment

ava thinks it’s cute, and there’s enough room for both of them so the size doesn’t matter too much, but it would have been easier in a bigger apartment (ava would never complain though)

she likes to describe the place as cozy, and it is. she brought a load of blankets and pillows and throws with her when she moved in, and introduced sarah to the concept of fairy lights (sarah would either put like three lamps on or just sit in darkness. her life has improved so much since ava bought them fairy lights). ava also brought her fish with her (obviously) and sarah loves them so much!! ava never bothered to name them so sarah took it upon herself to do so <3

their bedroom’s rlly nice as well. like the rest of the apartment, it’s not big, but it’s a safe place for both of them and they love it a lot

also this is something i’ve spent an unreasonable amount of time thinking about but ava sleeps on the left and sarah on the right (if you’re looking at them from the foot of the bed). i don’t know how i know this but i feel it deep in my soul and no one can change my mind. but also sarah takes up A Lot of room when she sleeps, and if ava’s come home from a late shift and sarah’s already asleep, it’s impossible to move her or fit in the bed so ava normally sleeps on the couch

[itsclydebitches]

Hey Clyde! Love your reviews on RWBY. My question is about Ozpin. If he survived fighting Cinder, would the events of volume 4-6 still happen? I believe the only reason team RWBYJNR treated Ozpin that way was because he was with Oscar who basically looked like a kid to them. However, if he was still in his adult body, would they have been more respectful?

Hi, anon! Thank you! I’m actually super glad you asked this. I’ve touched on how Oscar’s age and looks have impacted how others perceive Ozpin a bit in other asks, but haven’t had the chance to compose a substantial meta about it. I will attempt to fix that here! 

FYI, it’ll get decently image heavy from here on out. 

First, as a general response to the question of whether the events of Volumes 4-6 would have changed if Ozpin had survived: absolutely. If only because Ozpin as a figurehead would have still been around to lead both his inner circle and function as a symbol of strength for the rest of the world. Unless he was completely incapacitated from the fight or something (like in a coma), the expectation is that Ozpin would have begun rebuilding his school. Glynda wouldn’t have been left alone to try and deal with a frozen Wyvern attracting grimm. Ironwood wouldn’t have been left to figure out where to go from here. Qrow wouldn’t have been sent on a mission to return Ozpin’s cane. The whole world (including Atlas) may have been less likely to panic with Ozpin there to provide perspective and support. Lionheart presumably would have been less inclined to betray him, at least so soon and so overtly. An Ozpin who will reincarnate at some unknown point is a future Lionheart problem, and therefore far less intimidating. An Ozpin who still lives and commands his inner circle is way more of a threat and Lionheart would be more likely to get caught. Remember that even Salem was surprised by how quickly Ozpin reincarnated and dove back into the game—all the baddies were banking on more time. So yes, a ton would have changed. The group’s focus is now more along the lines of, “So is Ozpin going to fix things and can we go back to school?” and less, “Ozpin is dead as a door nail and no one is able to fix things for us. Might as well go hunt Cinder ourselves.” 

But onto the meat of the ask. Is the group treating Ozpin like they are at least partly because he’s in the body of a kid? That’s also a resounding ‘yes.’ Human beings, including the humans and the faunus that we write in fiction, are incredibly judgmental (for better and for worse) based on how someone else looks. If you’re able to see then you tend to prioritize that information over other aspects of a person. We create markers that we then learn and assume mean something when, much of the time, they don’t. Or, to put it another way, we create stereotypes. We can think about this in terms of gender presentation: a masculine-looking person giving orders is seen as the “boss” whereas a feminine-looking person giving orders is seen as a “bitch.” We can complicate that with race: we’re more likely to view a white woman giving orders as “assertive” when compared to a black man giving orders. That’s “aggressive.” From giving a girl long blonde hair when you want to cue people into the fact that she’s (supposedly) dumb, to making a man skinny when you want him to seem vulnerable, our media is chock-full of those markers, subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) encouraging us to read characters in particular ways. There’s a reason that Yang, the go-getter, is blonde whereas Blake, the bookworm, has black hair. There’s a reason that Cardin wasn’t designed as a twig and Jaune is a couple inches shorter than him. There’s even a reason why the sap the group collects is red rather than, say, yellow, orange, blue—literally any other color. Only red sap makes it look like Cardin is covered in blood when he attacks Jaune, thus increasing how much we read him as a threat. The characters’ designs matter. 

What does all that have to do with Ozpin? Well, at the start of the series his markers all point to authority and wisdom. He’s a white man, for one. He dresses in a formal suit. There are nods towards his age (a cane, white hair) that tell us, despite his baby face, that he’s someone who has been around a while and thus has a great deal of experience to draw on. He’s also, significantly, tall. Take a look at how his talks with Ruby read visually. 

Ruby is incredibly small compared to Ozpin. He towers above her and she’s constantly in a position of looking up to him, mirroring the ways in which she figuratively looks up to him for advice. Her mannerisms are also younger and don’t carry much confidence. Crossing her arms and sulking. Wringing her hands while asking if she’s made a mistake. The way Ruby moves contrasts Ozpin’s own very still, very composed mannerisms. Body language and facial expression is one of the primary ways that we communicate and the slightest change can carry a world of meaning. For example, compare these two shots of Yang from Volume 1 and Volume 6: 

On the surface they appear quite similar, but provided there isn’t something impacting how we read these moments (such as some people with autism), we learn that these poses mean two very different things. Two hands on your waist is a relaxed pose; one hand on your waist is an arrogant pose. At least when combined with an angry expression. One arm, the placement of her eyebrows, and suddenly Yang’s attitude towards Ozpin has radically changed. We went from casual respect to defiance, and most viewers wouldn’t need to know anything else about RWBY’s story to read that here. Her body language alone tells the story. 

Ozpin’s body language with Ruby then cues the viewer into the fact that he (supposedly) has the answers here, simply by virtue of him exuding a confidence that Ruby doesn’t possess yet. Who do you look to in a bad situation? The person screaming and running around in panic? Or the person who calmly announces that they can help, getting everyone else to calm down by keeping calm themselves? This sort of characterization is partly why the fandom grew suspicious of Ozpin early on. It’s not simply that he (on the surface) is modeled after the shady authority figure trope, but that we’ve learned from real life experience that a person’s ability to keep calm and speak eloquently doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re right. Sounding authoritative is a skill and it’s why the likes of cult leaders and dictators are so dangerous. If you just sound and look like you know what you’re doing, people have a tendency to believe you. And if you’re inclined towards critical thinking, you might be wary of the person whose demeanor is a little too polished. 

Even when Ozpin is being playful he maintains a certain level of dignity. His clothes, his physical looks, and the controlled movement of the mug—he’s not jumping around like Nora might—all remind us that Ozpin is the headmaster here and thus, though he’s making silly jokes about popcorn right now, he deserves a certain amount of respect. Even his posture speaks volumes, one arm still tucked behind his back and shoulders ramrod straight. It’s a posture that speaks of training and discipline. There’s a reason that the general (Ironwood) is always animated as standing tall with hands neatly folded and the presumably less dependable drunk (Qrow) is animated with a constantly hunched posture. How Ozpin stands is a quick and easy way to tell the viewer, “This guy is in charge. He’s powerful. He’s wise. You can rely on him.” 

All of this changes dramatically once Ozpin is thrown into Oscar’s body. Moving chronologically, it’s significant that the group is not introduced to this new Ozpin as a dignified individual. 

This is what we get later. Note the crossed legs, still good posture, even the ‘adult’ way he holds a mug. In contrast, someone younger and more childish in terms of their personality, like Ruby, tends to hold a drink with two hands and chucks it all back in a manner that would never fly at a dinner party. 

Rather than a dignified Ozpin knocking at the door, the group first encounters Oscar, someone who, like Volume 1 Ruby, can be incredibly timid and lacks in self-confidence. This isn’t the body language of a leader arriving to provide you with all the answers. 

Oscar’s slouched posture, downward gaze, wringing hands, and fearful expression all paint him as the weak one here. Made worse by the fact that he asks to see Ruby and ignites (an entirely understandable) suspicion in the group. Their first interaction is characterized by perceiving him as both a potential threat, but also one they can easily handle. We don’t like that he’s asking about Ruby, but we can take him in a fight no problem. 

And yes, this first impression makes a difference. Knowing something about someone on an intellectual level usually doesn’t trump the emotional response we have to the physical markers we’re faced with. As a non-RWBY example, let’s say you were introduced to these two characters. 

Ignoring for a moment that we’re comparing a villain and a hero, let’s say for the sake of argument that you’re told—and are provided proof—that each of these characters are morally sound, powerful adults and you should afford them with the respect they deserve. Being told that simply can’t outweigh what we see. Who are you more likely to respect? The woman who looks like a literal child named Baby Doll in a cutesy outfit, or the very old looking man in badass robes, literally named the Ancient One? All the, “But I am an adult” in the world isn’t going to convince people to read, and therefore respond to, Baby Doll in the same way they would the Ancient One. 

That’s the situation Ozpin is in now. He’s told the group that he’s Ozpin, he’s managed to prove it, but there’s always going to be a part of Ruby and the gang that doesn’t quite believe it. Not in Jaune’s literal sense of, ‘He could be lying about who he is,’ but just in a more instinctual, ‘He says he’s our headmaster, but all I see is a fourteen year old kid.’ What you see makes it really easy to ignore what you know, particularly when those two things contrast. Those markers Oscar brings to this new version of Ozpin are simply too influential and yes, that opens the door for the group to treat him with far less respect than they would in his adult form. We see it right from the start when, despite having been told that this is also Ozpin, the group coos over him in an overbearing, disrespectful manner. 

This continues even after Ozpin has taken control and is doing everything he can (those dignity markers) to regain some level of trust and respect. Even while seated and attempting to command the room as Headmaster Ozpin, Nora nevertheless undermines that with “Cute little boy Ozpin!” She has chosen to emphasize his looks over his status and notably no one listens when he says, “Please don’t call me that.”

Ozpin has, in this moment, literally been labeled as a child. A “boy.” Though we can’t be sure about what age all his hosts were when Ozpin arrived, based on Jinn’s vision it doesn’t look as if reincarnating into teenagers is common. This may even be the first time.   

Any of these past reincarnations would have been able to command more authority, simply because they’re adult men not dressed in dirty farm clothes. If this Ozpin had shown up in Haven, 

we would have gotten a very different volume. Age matters. How we perceive age matters. We saw this right in RWBY’s second episode wherein Weiss calls Ruby out on attending Beacon. 

It’s Ruby’s looks and Ruby’s looks alone that encourage Weiss to come to the conclusion, ‘You shouldn’t be here.’ The same thing has now happened to Ozpin. You look younger than us and are inhabiting a body that physically couldn’t beat us in a fight? You shouldn’t be here. You definitely shouldn’t be giving us orders. 

The group had control of Ozpin’s safe house. They were poised to interrogate him for showing up at it unannounced. Now they emphasize Oscar’s age and characteristics over his, which is ironically the only time that they emphasize Oscar’s individuality over Ozpin’s. In short, they’ve created an environment where a part of them truly believes that they’re older and more knowledgeable simply because of how Ozpin now looks, even though technically they know this isn’t true. It’s a new dynamic and with that comes the confidence to treat him like the fourteen year old stranger he “is”. I don’t believe for a moment that Yang would have ignored Ozpin’s direct questions, shot out irrational accusations, and then demanded a promise from him if he still looked the way he did at Beacon. Especially as someone who came to Haven later and therefore missed the initial proof, Yang simply doesn’t read Ozpin as Ozpin. We’ve seen how other characters interact with him from a student-teacher dynamic and it’s far more respectful. 

As this shot demonstrates, there’s also that issue of Ozpin’s size. Where as a headmaster Ozpin commanded authority by being taller than almost everyone else around him, Ozpin as Oscar immediately loses authority by being the smallest in the room. As I mentioned with Jaune and Cardin, size is an easy way to emphasize vulnerability. We quite literally couldn’t have gotten this scene if Ozpin was still 6'6" and looking twice Jaune’s age. 

In this scene Jaune honestly thinks this might be Ozpin. He’s accusing him of lying again, of claiming to leave when really he’s spying on them, or just pretending to be this kid called ‘Oscar,’ whatever. The point is that Jaune is working under the assumption that he’s interacting with his headmaster, yet that knowledge obviously doesn’t give him pause. Because Ozpin’s new look outweighs everything else Jaune knows about him. He’s angry and now suddenly Ozpin isn’t an intimidating huntsmen capable of defending himself, Ozpin is a teeny-tiny kid with no training. Jaune becomes Cardin through the realization of, “Oh. If I’m bigger and more powerful than this person, I can do whatever I want to them.” 

Ozpin’s size is an ongoing reminder that, despite possessing his own skill as well as magic, he’s in a vulnerable position. He needs to stand on the furniture in order to recreate his students literally and figuratively looking up to him, but now it just reads as a joke. 

This isn’t the first time RWBY has used size this way. Cordovin is an excellent example of how a small, non-dignified looking person is unable to maintain authority in the way someone with another appearance might. Her white hair just makes her look old rather than wise and her short stature is so extreme that it invites humor. It’s not just that Cordovin is a racist, or that her guards act like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Her appearance immediately gave the group another excuse for why they shouldn’t listen to her. Look at this tiny old woman trying to tell us what to do. Yeah right, lady. We could probably punt you into the sun so step aside.

This is a look that makes guards release prisoners in three seconds flat. 

This is a look that encourages laughter and, by extension, a lack of respect. 

The extreme camera angle in order to make Cordovin look ‘imposing.’ The fact that she looks like a literal child next to Weiss… none of it encourages the group, or the audience, to take her seriously. Rooster Teeth made a conscious decision when they decided to animate Volume 6′s “bad guy” as an old woman with sagging breasts and an extremely small stature. 

The only time when someone that small is re-characterized as authoritative is when they’re standing up against unimaginable odds. 

Ignoring that this scene in reality is Ruby refusing to take responsibility for the crimes she is currently committing, what Rooster Teen wants this shot to do is function as an example of extreme heroism. That’s accomplished by taking our second smallest character and situating her in front of a larger-than-life mech. Ruby’s refusal to back down in the face of something so much bigger than her is (again) supposed to be inspiring. She’s standing up to Cordovin’s “bullying” in a way Oscar was unable to do with his own mech: a bigger and more threatening Jaune. 

(I really cannot express how awful Volume Six was wow). 

All of which brings me to my final point. Namely that, by virtue of his age and size, Ozpin as Oscar will always look ridiculous when attempting to make use of his former markers. Using a cane? 

Headmaster Ozpin’s age and height makes it look distinguished. Ozpin at Oscar’s age and height makes it look silly. What’s the fourteen year old doing with a cane nearly as tall as he is? (Acknowledging that this is an ableist assumption. Some fourteen year olds do need canes, but most viewers are going to question this in a way they never would with the white-haired adult). What’s the kid doing with such a fancy looking cane when he’s literally covered in dirt, bandages, rags, and badly mended clothes? That’s a silly contrast. 

Headmaster Ozpin fighting? Totally badass. One of the shortest and yet most talked about fights in the show. 

Ozpin as Oscar fighting? Still badass… if you’re willing to work for it a bit more. But really, the kid swinging a cane around just will never have the same feel as a grown man who looked like Ozpin did. 

Ozpin himself is a dignified person, but anytime he adopts those mannerisms now he looks silly at best, arrogant at worst. 

I think his look is largely why so many fans read the snow scene as him talking down to the group. He no more talked down to them here then he did when he conversed with Ruby, or Pyrrha, or the team while heading off to Mountain Glenn. The only difference is that the previous Ozpin commanded all that authority, so his warnings and criticisms held weight. This Ozpin not only doesn’t look the part of an authority figure, half his time is spent being Oscar, someone who defers to and scurries around the rest of the group. So when Ozpin tries to take charge here, everyone is far less willing to listen. People are inclined to read him as arrogant, patronizing, talking down to others, etc. because it looks like a small child giving orders to a more older, more powerful team. Even though it’s not. 

It’s the combination of everything above that leads to moments like this. Where Ozpin is smaller, more vulnerable, looks too young, too naive, where the group towers over him for once and hurts him both physically and emotionally because now they can. 

Tl;dr: Yeah. Oscar’s looks and Oscar’s personality changed things irrevocably. If Ozpin had still looked like Ozpin the group wouldn’t feel half as entitled to this behavior and gaining their respect—from ‘Please don’t address me like that’ to ‘Please understand why I kept secrets’—would be far, far easier. 

[winterfergerart]

A Sort of Hiatus on Canon Related D:BH Content

I said as much on twitter, but here I’ll go into a little more depth about why I’ll be sticking with AUs.  This is a personal post, and I’m not speaking for anyone else.  Minor edits added to fix my failures at English.

I do enjoy Detroit: Become Human.  It’s never been great.  It’s always struck me as sort of that gloss of tonedeaf some 90s Star Trek: TNG episodes had, where the characters were good but the plot would be some sort of fumbling social commentary that was very awkward and sometimes uncomfortable (See “Code of Honor” or “Journey’s End”).  Every decision course of D:BH either has that vibe or if you choose more aggressive, less sympathetic routes some sort of mediocre early 2000s AI style android movie feel.

With a sort of detachment, that’s easy to watch.  That’s the reason why “coded” things can often have a sense of lingering popularity even where representation is important.  Someone who is ‘queer-coded’ or ‘autism-coded’ or “race-coded” can often be watched no matter what’s going on in the real world without sparking a sense of real world trauma so long as there’s a safe degree of separation.  It can be imported and exported to places where certain subjects are forbidden.  It can usually be enjoyed without provoking a sense of anxiety but also being relatable.

Of course this can go the opposite way, too.  Until very recently, Destiny was pretty cut and dry on its “shoot the alien invaders even after we establish a ‘not all invaders’ standard.”  Sort of a bad scene after you realize races like the Fallen are actually refugees from the same thing that’s happened to humans.  They’re described as ‘nomadic’.  But no, they lost their home.  They’re searching for a new one.  They’re refugees.  Emperor Callus is seeking more territory but being cooperative and negotiable in contrast to other Cabal, and his people only attack you when you attack his.  But it’s so masked in bug people and space rhinos that it’s easy to wave off.  Only recently have we, in game, actually started questioning the good guys and how good they are.

Metal Gear Solid has its own coding, too.  It’s thinly veiled, usually exploitative towards women especially, but the one thing that Kojima very much got right was its respect for painful international history.  If you listen to any amount of radio recordings from most of the latter games, like Kaz’s briefing files in Peace Walker or calls with Para-Medic in Snake Eater, you will see an intense respect for actual harsh pasts and the real history that leads to these campy, fake futures and nonexistent conflicts.

Now that brings me back around to D:BH.

Detroit: Become Human is not as separated from reality as it should be for the sake of its subject matter.   There’s not enough stated awareness about the real past while it aims too close to current social circumstances with its android plot arc.  You get a short comment made by Rose Chapman about the history of the underground railroad and then passionless meanderings in potential world-establishing futures in found news articles and on TV.  There are various holocaust/nazi themed shapes in designs and grim ideas/plot angles used in reference to fictional androids and not the real people that suffered because of them.  They’re left like Easter Eggs and not meaningful commentary.  There are riffs of actual symbols from the ‘android lives matter’ flippant remark from Connor to the tacky uses of slavery-related song.  Hank’s suicidal ideology was depicted as unique when more cops die by suicide than in the line of duty.  There are authority figures meant to be as bad as the ones being protested that, yeah, get what’s coming to them, but there are cops that fearfully react and kill androids and you’re meant to be sympathetic to them.  

There’s enough realism there to hurt and right now it can’t be handwaved away.  It’s salt in an open wound rather than being an overly optimistic mild embarrassment. There are problems enough that if the actors didn’t do so well with their material and with improvising, it’d be intolerable.  

I will likely continue to draw Hank and Connor along with the other stuff I draw with that awareness because I love redemption arcs.  I need redemption arcs and I love Clancy Brown who is a good soul.  Most important to me is the treatment of depression in D:BH.  So far it’s been the only game that has gotten depression and suicidal ideology in such a way that I completely identify with and relate to.  But I can celebrate that in a context that’s not a landmine of badly depicted tonedeaf reminders.  Right now, no better than an interpretive dance of mourning or offering someone a pepsi to end racism.  

So for the next few weeks if I draw them I’ll be using AUs, probably.  If anyone is interested, reverse AU plot is a corruption conspiracy plot where Hank’s memories were put in an android and sparked a little at a time, monster AU is him as a werewolf that hunts other monsters, and I very recently posted my Fallout AU rundown. 

[murderslugs]

Could you please give me tips on how to make a proxy OC?

Some of these rules apply to CreepyPasta Ocs In General!!!

Try to make your character look like they could possibly exist in real life. I really think that's what makes a character scary, or relatable, or whatever you want it to be, the fact that it could be a real person. For example, maybe don't make their character design too crazy or too eccentric. You never want your character to be too much to look at. Like, don't add fairy wings and devil horns and a rainbow dress and hooker boots and a mohawk and a unicorn horn, etc, etc. Try to have a reason for even the simplest things from their hair color to the reason they wear the sweater they wear to why they are missing an eye.

It is important not to overpower or underpower a character, or make them flawless or useless. What I like to do is make an equal set of bad and good personality traits. Also make an equal set of strengths and weaknesses.

Their clothing should make sense to where they are located. For example, if your character lives in Arizona, they most likely won't wear a sweater and blue jeans around. Or, another example, of they live in Alaska, they won't wear a tank top and shorts around.

!!!"CRAZY" IS NOT A PERSONALITY TRAIT!!! Never, ever, do you ever put down "crazy" as one of a character's personality traits. Crazy can mean a million different things. Why does your character get called crazy? Do they have visual and audio hallucinations? Are they wild, eccentric, or adventurous? Do they make illogical decisions impulsively? And do not just write down that they are "crazy" because of Schizophrenia or any other mental illness. This is not acceptable.

Try to make their name make sense to their time period and heritiage/nationality. If you have to, look up names from a certain time period or form a certain language to use.

Though it is tempting, please try to make your story completely unrelated to the stories of the other pastas and proxies. The only pasta that should exist in your character's world is Slenderman. The other proxies may exist, but your character should not meet them in the story.

I can not stress this enough, do research before you add any physical or mental illness. Do NOT just add a mental or physical illness to a character without doing extensive research on it. An illness can be completely different than they show on TV. And an illness can give a person certain personality traits as a result. I can not tell you how many times I've seen someone add Bipolar Disorder for some edgy points, or Depression for some sympathy point, or Anxiety for relatable points, or Schizophrenia for Scary points. That is not at all what these illnesses are about. Also, maybe think about why a character has the illness they have if they have one. Does it run in the family? Have they gone through a physical injury that cause it? Do they have trauma which brought it on?

Obviously, the Slenderman wouldn't just pick any person as a proxy. What makes your character qualified for the job? What were they chosen? Are they good at combat? Are they easy to brainwash? Create a logical reason that the Slenderman would choose your character of all people to be his proxy. Show how they proved themselves fit for the postion.

A lot of people headcanon (though I am not sure if it is canon,) that all the proxies have a proxy symbol somewhere on their body. So, if you want to, incorporate that into your character design!

Though the fandom tends to make out Slenderman to be some amazing child saver, in reality, he is designed to be a kidnapper who brainwashed people into doing his deeds. So, your character should not have a great relationship with him the Slenderman. Make your character hate him, angry with him, or confused by him, or even hopeless because of him.

Make sure that their story isn't too much, and could possibly maybe happen. Try to make their be a few positive events in their story, not just negative, negative, negative over and over. Again, try to have a logical reason for everything that is going on in the story. For example, why did they go to the mental ward? Oh, because they had autism and it was the early 1960s, and that's how they dealt with autism back then. Or, why did their sister die? Because she had been fighting cancer for 4 years.

Show how certain illnesses a character had and certain things a character has experienced effects them. So they have Social Anxiety. How does it affect them? Well, they have a hard time in public situations, and trouble building bonds with people. They were in a car crash a year ago. How does it affect them? Well, now they are afraid of being in a moving vehicle, and can't even get their driver's license because they are afraid to drive.

Like I've said, have a reason for everything. From every event in their backstory to their name to their appearance. Never ask yourself 'why'? And have the answer be 'I don't know'.

Though all the rules on this list are important, THIS rule stands above the rest: Just have fun with it! If you don't like your character it's not yours. If you don't have fun writing for you character, roleplaying as your character, or drawing your character, then there's no use in having it. You want your character to be something that YOU are happy with. If you like your character, then, politely, fuck what everyone else thinks.

If anyone would like to add anything in the comments my inbox, or by reblogging, I welcome you!!!

If you guys want anymore tips on ocs or anything else, just send an ask!!!

[shadows-bitty-fun]

A long wait, but worth it

A bit of a longer story, focusing on Blaise in this one! It starts off in third person for the part where Blaise is followed and then switches back to first person in the end!

Chain lamia’s (Blaise) are from @vex-bittys​

Twister lamia’s (Rowan, shortly mentioned) are from @selkiesbittybonanza​

WARNINGS: Mention of self-harm, mention of mental illnesses, suggestive talk at the end of the story! (Nothing happens though!)

He’d been very careful in the start. He hadn’t wanted to do anything that would end with his new bond wanting nothing to do with him.

But he knew now his fear had just been getting in his way.

Evanora was different from the others he’d felt a possible bond with. She was kind and caring even with her troubles. It hadn’t been hard to see them once he was looking for them. She had told him about them as well as soon as they had settled in so he knew what to expect.

Autism, anxiety, depression, very low self esteem and easy to break under pressure. Those were the things she was struggling with in her day to day life. Crowds made her uncomfortable as there was a lot to keep her eyes on, too many and loud noises made her anxious. If she got too anxious or nervous, she would scratch her arm. She was still healing from a wound she’d made when she’d been visiting family and they had started arguing. She had just been happy it had been smaller than the ones she’d made before.

Despite these things, that was not what he saw while living with her.

She was loving. Even the smallest creatures were worth something, so she didn’t take them for granted. When she had the extra energy to do so, she was kind to the people she spoke with and never snapped unless something really harsh was going on. She was so creative, sewing and drawing things when she had the time and not just for her work. And the way she treated Blaise himself along with Rowan was…

It was better than he could have ever hoped for.

She had shown Rowan a lake a bit from the house where he could go to swim anytime he wanted. Blaise had watched as Evanora was - by accident - dragged first into a hug.. And then into a bit of a surprise swim in the lake. Once he was sure she was okay with it - the high laugh had told him enough - he decided to just shrug a bit and join in on the other two.

The nap that had to be taken once they’d all returned home had definitely been needed.

But what he had been careful about, was courting her.

Oh he’d known. He felt it deep in his soul when she started speaking to him about scars and how she saw them. There was just something in her eyes that told him enough. But of course, he had to make sure before he would start anything. But the longer he lived here with Evanora, the more his soul was sure in his feelings.

He loved her.

Deeply and with his whole soul.

So merely a few days after he’d started living there, he started up. He flopped onto her legs when she was relaxing, smiling when she chuckled and stroked his back as she relaxed further into the couch. He did this for a few days before deciding that he could go on with the next step.

He knew the courting ritual usually meant practical gifts first, so even if his instincts were saying to get her something else, he knew he had to do this right. She deserves it. So went he went out hunting he made sure to bring back something for her as well.

The first time she had been surprised and he’d been about to tell her she didn’t need to take it when she’d given him a kiss on the top of his skull.

“I’m sorry! I was just surprised and happy! I forgot to get some meat for dinner tonight and this is perfect!”

He made sure to time his gifts like that afterwards.

Not too long after that, Rowan became a part of their family. The first night there he went to the big snake, gently shaking him awake.

“Hmm? Wha’?”

“heya there.”

“Oh, ‘ey Blaise. What’s on ya mind?”

“just wanted to talk ‘bout something, before-”

“Ya courting ‘er? Yea don’t look so surprised, I noticed how ya been looking at ‘er. Don’t worry ‘bout me. ‘M not interested in ‘er like that.”

Blaise hadn’t thought the conversation would have gone so easily. But well, he was happy it had gone that easily. Meant they wouldn’t have any problems. Rowan the Twister did seem like a nice one, he seemed to make Evanora happy as well.

Then came the step of courting that he wasn’t sure what to do for. Giving a gift that was sentimental was vital, so he had to get her a good gift. Even so, something shiny wasn’t really what he needed to get her. He had a lot of those things - even if some of them he’d been forced to give back seeing that it was something of Evanora’s that meant more to her than he’d known - and he didn’t feel like something like that was enough.

The idea came to him one day when they were all sitting outside in some chairs, enjoying the sun. Evanora was once more sewing on something, in the middle of finishing off a symbol he had long since noticed - and read up on while she hadn’t looked - she had all around her all the time.

Maybe… He could make her something. He had a good idea of what to give her.

It would be something she hopefully found to be a sentimental gift. He couldn’t be sure, but he’d put his entire soul into making this item for her. So, sneaking off, he set off to make it for her.

A dreamcatcher with three circles. He made sure to weave patterns into all three of them: the largest of them was made so the shape of a tree was there, the second was a star where - as he couldn’t help it - he added some small gems he’d found out while hunting. The last he did his best to make to show a crescent moon. He wasn’t sure how well he’d done it, but he was proud. He also made sure to add some feathers beneath them all in strings.

She hadn’t stopped hugging him the entire day after he presented it to her. She’d called it the sweetest, most thoughtful gift she’d ever gotten.

He hadn’t stopped blushing that day.

He knew she would be open to the idea because of the bond, but he was still unsure as he asked Rowan for some privacy for the final stage. Rowan had merely chuckled and nodded to him, telling him ‘good luck’ as he slithered on out of the house and off to take a long session of swimming in the lake. Evanora was out but surely to return any moment at that point, so Blaise got ready. He was going to do this.

He hadn’t known just how surprised he was going to be that day.

~ POV: Evanora (First person) ~

I got home from a normal shopping trip, just had to pick up a few things me and the boys were missing, chuckling as I was instantly greeted at the door by Blaise like usual. He knew how much that meant to me, how happy I was that I wasn’t alone in the house anymore. It had been quite too quiet for my tastes…

He helped me out putting things away and I couldn’t help but notice…

“Where’s Rowan? Is he home?”

“eh, no… went off to go swimming a bit ago. it’ll be a while before he’s back.”

Oh well, that was fine. I knew how much it meant to a Twister to get to swim so I was quite fine with it. And there wasn’t anything in the woods that would be dangerous for him, so I had no reason to worry. I was a bit interested in Blaise though. I could feel his excitement through our bond, so I knew there was something going on there, but I couldn’t quite tell what it was.

Once things were packed away, I went to sit down on the couch, tired from the long day. I was surprised when Blaise laid down on the floor in front of me, directly in a beam of sunlight that was falling in and…

Making his scales shine. The orange seemed so much brighter the way he was laying, the white almost having a sparkle to it. I had known he was special, but right now he was looking stunning!

He turned over to his back, this is when I noticed he was looking at me the entire time, making me blush quite heavily. Because I realized what was going on. He was displaying for me. Because of the gifts he’d been giving me - both in the form of kills, but also a stray crystal or small gem here and there - I had gotten curious and sought out information on it.

And there I had read of the courting ritual that the lamia’s did for any potential bond-mates.

Right now, he was displaying for me, hoping to catch my eye in the final step of courting. I hadn’t thought it really. I wasn’t exactly a looker as it was - at least I didn’t think so, a bit too much around the middle - but sitting here now and feeling the bond…

Hope, nervousness, excitement, happiness.

That was all that Blaise was sending out at the moment.

“like what you see?”

I was snapped out of my thoughts with the sentence, noticing that I’d been staring at him for a while. His nervousness had died down a bit I could feel and instead the hope for this to work had been going up. I smiled at him as brightly and true as I could.

“You know I’ve found you stunning from the day I met you Blaise.”

The orange color that took over his cheekbones just made it better at the comment. Thinking back on what I read… I couldn’t help it.

Standing up, I noticed that he was looking at me very closely as I moved over so I was standing in the sun now, the light hopefully framing me as good as I could make it. I made sure to keep a close feel on the bond to make sure I was doing this right. I felt a bit silly, but I really was hoping this would come across right.

Removing the hoodie I had been wearing and allowing it to fall to the ground, I smile at him nervously as I slowly move my hips from side to side, watching him closely. His eyes were wide and I felt a bit of disbelieve come through the bond for a bit… But it was only for a few seconds.

Then he was up and had slithered over, pulling himself close to me. I quickly supported his tail - being that I’m taller than him - so that he could stretch himself up to my eye level.

“please tell me that was what i thought it was…” He said, so much hope going through the bond as well as… Love. The romantic kind of love, the one that runs so much deeper than the kind of love I had for Rowan.

I smiled as I send my own love back at him, the one that was new but slowly forming, making him gasp for a moment as I spoke to him softly.

“Well with you doing such a nice display for me… I thought I’d go ahead and return the favor…”

The look in his eyes told me enough, even without the bond we shared. The pure happiness, love, relief and just overall bliss that I felt in the bond I could clearly see in his eyes as I leaned in to give him a kiss.

I can’t quite tell how long we were like that, holding onto each other and kissing slowly, but way before I was ready for it we pulled back from each other and just stared into each other’s eyes.

And then, well…

“so… seeing as ya liked the display… wanna see more?”

I couldn’t help but chuckle in embarrassment, happy that he would be able to tell what was up through the bond, because I had not expected him to say something like that.

But I was happy that Rowan took as long as he did to get back to the house after his swim.

[kaleidographia]

[Reflection] The Final Piece of the Puzzle

I spent the new year at my cousin’s beach house, overlooking the warm waters of the Southern Brazilian coast. Inside the open plan kitchen/living room, cooled by the chilly ocean breeze, we gathered round for one of our old family pastimes: six pairs of hands, or seven, or eight, depending on who dropped in or out, deftly sorting through piles of tiny pieces, seeking out shapes, patterns, colors, snapping them together; little by little, a skeletal frame emerges, blocks of attached pieces sliding from hand to hand, a box passed around the circle, an auntie asking “does anyone have this corner?” — from a jumble of one thousand units, a picture comes together within a few hours. Someone presses down on the final piece, locking it into place. We take a moment to appreciate the results of our efforts, congratulate each other on a job well done, and then tip the board back into the box, scattering the fragile creation into its constituent parts.

 This memory of communal jigsaw puzzle solving goes back as far as my conscious awareness can reach. Almost every family function involves a coffee table spread out with a freshly opened puzzle box. Sometimes everyone sits down to solve it, but often it’s left as an open challenge, with solvers drifting towards it in between coffee, cakes, gift exchanges, and naps. It could take hours, or it could take days, but eventually it is finished at whichever leisurely pace it requires.

In an old home video, a 2-year-old me delightfully solves a wooden toddler puzzle, excitedly showing off my skills to my parents. From then until this most recent holiday gathering, puzzles have been a part of my life, whether they be jigsaws, logic exercises, sudoku, or videogames. Beyond the thrill of intellectual challenge, puzzle-solving is intertwined with a sense of community and belonging. It’s as much about getting together with loved ones to solve a problem together as it is about solving the problem itself. Some families play games, some watch movies, ours solves puzzles. It’s how we enjoy each other’s company.

 As I write this, it is April 2nd, Autism Acceptance Day. On this day, and throughout the month of April, autistic people warn of the dangers of Autism Speaks, an organization that treats autism as a disease to be eradicated, as opposed to a neurotype inseparable from our own personhood. Among its many problems, Autism Speaks uses a puzzle piece symbol, historically representing autism as “a puzzling disorder”, at other times evolving into other meanings, such as “the complexity of treating autism”, “the diversity of autistic people”, “the missing part that makes autistic people incomplete”, “trying to put together the pieces of the disordered mind”, “solving the mystery of autism”. Regardless of what meaning is in common usage, the autistic community rejects this symbol; with few exceptions, the negative connotations are too great, its iconography too closely associated with an organization which has done us far more harm than good. 

 This breaks my heart. 

 I know my individual feelings can’t erase the damage this symbol has done to our community, or the hurt it has caused my fellow autistic friends. Even I take a step back whenever I see a puzzle piece, suspicious of the intents of the user, as it often indicates someone who hasn’t taken the time to talk to and understand autistic people. But the puzzle piece is a symbol so special and significant to me, I want to open up a space to reclaim my own meaning. 

 When I think about being autistic, I don’t think about the difficulty recognizing people, the overwhelming sensory sensitivity, or the auditory processing issues requiring subtitles on most things I watch. Those are part of my life, sure, but they’re not “me” — not like the drive to research a special interest, the excitement of infodumping, or the elation when I see an airplane fly overhead. It may be a cliche, but those traits that make me a so-called “little professor” are the defining traits of my autistic experience, and suppressing my autistic traits suppresses everything I love about being myself. 

 That includes the puzzle piece.

 I can see my traits in my paternal lineage. I don’t know whether my family is autistic, or if they would ever identify as such. It doesn’t matter to me, because when I’m around them, solving a puzzle, that’s when our bonds are at their strongest. It’s about problem solving, but most importantly the pure enjoyment of immersing ourselves into a meticulous task, the meditative quality of a good hyperfocus. When we solve a puzzle together, we are materializing the traits that make us who we are: people who care deeply about something and then give that something everything we have. We are not “putting together the pieces of a broken mind” — we are using our uniquely developed minds to put together the pieces of the things we love. We are creating. 

 It’s discovery. It’s pattern-seeking. It’s making something happen purely because it gives us joy. The finished puzzle never stays that way for long. It doesn’t have any practical use. In it goes, back in the box, hours of work breaking apart, because the joy wasn’t the end result, it was the process. And the process is what I love, and the process is who I am. Whatever I am doing, work, school, or personal projects, I find my pleasure and fulfillment in the process; hammering out the details is a pastime, not a chore. It’s the drive, the repetition, the coming back to something left unfinished, the letting the mind decide what it wants and then letting it be. 

 I know every autistic person is different. Many people will not share my experience, and that’s okay. But rather than focusing on what I am not, I want to focus on what I am, and I think many people can relate to the idea that passing for neurotypical means severing the parts of us we love. For me, that means pretending that I don’t love sinking myself into a task that requires sorting through mountains of identical-looking pieces. I have to avoid looking like I pay too much attention to any one given thing, because that’s obsessive, inflexible and bad, and to shut up about my special interest because everyone’s sick of hearing me go on about a subject nobody understands. This is what the misuse of the puzzle piece symbol feels like to me; shut up about the positives of autism, we want to medicalize your neurotype and strip away what makes your life enjoyable. 

 Look, it’s not easy, I get it. I don’t enjoy meltdowns or sudden nonverbality or being unable to rip myself from a task to the point of starvation or misreading a social situation so badly I humiliate myself. But among autistic people I’m normal, we understand each other as fluidly as allistic people understand each other, and I am sure an allistic person living in an autistic-only world would feel just as disoriented. It’s contextual, and the context of our stories and our symbols depends on who is scrutinizing us and why. If Autism Speaks represents a shadow over my community, and the puzzle piece represents our dehumanization, I can’t do anything to change that. But I can keep puzzles to myself. 

Because the joy of my life is all about sitting around a table at my cousin’s beach house, and the moment someone presses that final piece of the puzzle into place.

Photo: The partially completed puzzle we solved over the holiday break.

[autisticsuperpower]

Kicking Autism Acceptance Month Off #AutisticSuperPower Style! 🧩💚

Well here we go, another Autism Acceptance Month.

I love April for many many reasons.

Autism Acceptance Month is one of them. 

You can call it Autism Awareness Month, you can call it Autism Acceptance Month.

I personally don’t have a preference, I’m totally okay to say either one.

It always depends on the different person on the spectrum.

Now in recent years, Autism Awareness seems to get more and more complicated with different views on how the world should celebrate this month.

I have some tips that might help you neurotypicals better understand what Autism Acceptance and/or Awareness Month is for.

First things first:

#1: Realize that each Autistic person sees their Autism in a different symbol.

Now there’s been a LOT of discussion of which symbol best represents Autism.

Many people stick with the traditional puzzle piece.

In recent years, however, many people have shifted to the infinity symbol.

Personally, I stick with the puzzle piece for various reasons, such as the following.

Reason One: The puzzle piece to me resembles my life in progress, not a cure.

It’s no surprise that I have been through a lot and have experienced quite a bit.

But it’s also relevant that I have grown tremendously over the years.

Each puzzle piece that I have in my life resembles each significant stepping stone, both Autistic and non-Autistic.

From being able to speak for the very first time, to being able to get a Bachelor’s AND Master’s Degree.

And many more life milestones yet to come.

Reason Two: My puzzle pieces come in different shapes and sizes.

Autism is not just seen in one group of individuals.

Autism is found in all walks of life all over the world. And even from people you would never think twice about.

Now in my case, it’s fun to be able to represent being a high-functioning Autistic adult.

Especially when people may not notice you’re Autistic at first glance. 

But remember, the Autism community is a wide range of people on different levels.

All levels are just as good as the other.

Now this is my symbol of how I view MY Autism, and this is just one of MANY out there for the millions of Autistic people.

Secondly,

#2: We’re not robots and we’re not dictionaries. We’re actual human beings.

Yes, we might be an entire encyclopedia of different things that interest or intrigue us, but it doesn’t necessarily mean we’re always bad at human interaction.

We actually do relatively well at communicating how we feel. Not always, but I would say 60% of the time.

It does take work to communicate more than meeting the eye, but I have begun to notice that more people actually see the effort we put in. 

And it’s not always easy.

We’re not selfish unemotional robots.

Sometimes, a particular social environment is too overwhelming.

And that’s completely okay.

Yes, we like to talk about our interests. Whether it’s STEM, music, the different types of dinosaurs that once roamed the earth, we enjoy our interests and fascinations.

But what a lot of neurotypicals don’t realize is that we can have the ability to incorporate our interests into a conversation.

Another thing to keep in mind: Not all Autistic individuals are introverts.

Look at me.

I’m pretty much what people call a “social butterfly”.

Does it mean that I’m 100% perfect at communication?

No.

Does it mean I always get social cues or verbal cues?

No.

But I put in the effort to better communicate.

Autistic people work harder to communicate with the outside world, more than I honestly think people acknowledge.

So instead of putting us down when we don’t communicate your way, recognize that we put in a lot of effort, just to have a simple conversation.

Try putting yourself in our shoes, like we do with neurotypicals.

Finally, and I have to capitalize this:

#3: WE ALL WANT INCLUSION AND ACCEPTANCE IN THE WORLD AT ALL ASPECTS OF SOCIETY.

The statement pretty much says it all.

Being included in conversations, activities, events, and everything life related is something that so many non-Autistic or non-disabled people take for granted.

The world is big and it is round. 

We have so many incredible gifts, so many incredible talents, so many incredible world-changing opportunities for the world, if only society has the door wide open for us. 

Let me remind everyone this:

We would not have been able to end a world war without an Autistic scientist. 

We would not be able to drive clean resourceful cars without an Autistic entrepreneur.

We would not be able to enjoy some classic films, like “Ghostbusters”, “Splash”, and “Silence of the Lambs” without Autistic actors.

Some of the greatest and most legendary people in history are in fact Autistic and have contributed everything and more to society, even with closed doors in their faces.

Let’s make that open door permanent.

Allow Autistic people to use accommodations.

Allow Autistic people to share their stories and feelings without feeling belittled by society.

Allow Autistic people to make the world a better place for future generations to come. 

So as we venture through April, keep these touchpoints in mind.

Keep in mind that Autistic people are capable of doing great things.

Keep in mind that people on the Autism spectrum are human and have feelings, just like neurotypical people.

Just remember this:

If you’ve met one person with Autism, you’ve only met one person with Autism. 

Happy Autism Acceptance/Awareness Month. 🧩💚 

[brujebutchdraws]

this post features talk of abuse, ableism, pathologization, ABA therapy, forced medication and dehumanization. please do skip it if this might put your mental health at risk. the r slur will be spelled as such “r.t.rd”.

spoilers for the Undertale game have to be looked out for too.

links will be in bold.

[seven images of the video game Undertale’s character Flowey, one being a gif, and the six others being the same images, but transparent and composing the gif. Flowey is on his pink-reddish computer browsing internet resources. there is a gay flag sticker on his computer’s logo. he also has various reactions, an ‘owo what’s this’ one, a surprised one, contemplative ones, a sceptical one, and an angry one, when the computer brings up the puzzle piece symbol.

upside of him is written the tag Go Red Instead. downside him is written the tag actually autistic. both are in big red letters. on his left is written “support autistic people” followed by “by learning about us ! especially if you hate us ! don’t hate stuff you don’t know, jerk !!”, then on his right by the following:

“browse tags about us” 

“respect our identity regardless of how nice we are to you. disliking someone, even for good reasons, does NOT excuse ABLEISM”

“look up why ‘high/low functionning’ are bullshit, why our symbol is a horizontal 8, symbol of infinity, why autism speaks is BAD, consider joining a facebook group about autism open to allistics, or following blogs !”

“don’t use us as your personal educator or data base.”

“do your own research, google terms you don’t know, don’t ask us for easy to find definitions.”

each phrases are preceded by upside-down red-lined hearts.]

this is april month, autistic people awareness’ month, so i’m here to teach anyone who’d listen a bit about smtg from autistic people.

#(Go)ReadInstead is a movement of the autistic community against autism speaks’ “light it blue” movement. autism speaks promotes the idea that autistic people are sick, compare us to cancer patients, and “light it up blue” to “raise awareness about the Bad Autism we must seek and destroy out of our children”. it is a logic of abuse apologism and ableist conceptions of a neurodivergency that is no illness and neither lethal nor dangerous to anyone, caused by old myths and outdated fears of demons and faeries/changelins.

the character Flowey is a jerk. he is a liar, manipulative, plays with people’s lives and laughs at the player’s/Frisk’s misery in the game. he is, by all means, an antagonist, and a bully. he is also, canonically, able of doing good. of learning. trying to get better. he is not inherently mean, but was because it was easier for him. he is as such the best representation of ableist allistics i can think of in the game, and thus i illustrate my point with him.

i already made a post about good allistic allyship in general with Frisk’s. it also has links to organizations to donate to. Toriel’s informs of good allistic parenting, and Grillby’s, of good allistic friendship and romantic/sexual relationship doing.

this, is a post of ressources.

i invite you to course through my #actuallyautistic tag on my main, elitigre, for more insight on many things autistic.

my askbox on said blog is also open for you to ask some things on being autistic. do keep in mind i’d be answering on my free time, not as a job.

then, the tags i mentioned a few times up here are at your dispostion, again, and so are #autism acceptance, #asperger, #autistic rant, #autistic voice, #red instead, #boycott autism speaks, #social model of disability, #asd. there are more to look for.

a list of online resources sites you want to know about (keep in mind some of these are held by benevolent people bloggin bout autism on the side. not your personal educators) :

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network’s tumblr blog

Happyhands.toys’ tumblr blog, to learn about stimming.

Safechewablethings , tumblr blog, about stimming too.

Sounds like you have a lot to learn about autistic people but ok, a facebook group, self-explanatory.

Growing up Aspie, tumblr blog, who makes comics about their own life.

Positivelyautistic, a tumblr blog.

Neuroqueerpositivity, tumblr blog.

Autistic-Answers, tumblr blog.

Autism in women, tumblr blog.

The Spoon Theory written by Christine Miserandino, something to consult to understand the spoonie culture, that applies to all disabled people.

more various resources, this good list first, by Bob Wood on facebook :

why it’s cool and encouraged for you to stand up for us.

why you really got to let us define ourselves and even other autistic people should.

what kind of behaviour you really should avoid.

why autistic kids need to be left at peace.

why stimming is good.

why autism speaks is bullshit.

why functionning labels are b a d.

why trying to “cure” a child from being autistic is actually abuse.

why we sometimes talk in seemingly pretentious fashion.

why aba therapy and variations are disgusting.

why autism moms need to fucking stop.

a tidbit about “indigo child”.

why it’s important to learn about empathy and compassion and moral judgements and to not label autistic people as heartless.

why you gotta be critical about what “made-for-autistic-kids” brands you support and promote.

Thanks you for your attention- Uidelsib E.N.

companion pieces about autistic people: Papyrus, Chara, sans.

companion pieces about allistic allyship: Frisk, Toriel, Grillby.

the character Flowey, from the video game Undertale (2015), belongs to Toby Fox.

this post is not invitation for debate on the autistic spectrum being an illness, harmful, or how Actually Autism Speaks Is Good And ABA Saves Lives.

all attempts to do so will be blocked.