#reason: none of us know how a neurotypical person acts

[saltyverse]

i need everyone to assume that all the characters in the au are either autistic have adhd or both

[copperbadge]

hi, i had a medium to big question. in your post about the adhd self-help book you mentioned people with adhd being conditioned to be nonconfrontational, but i've never once in my entire life connected the two? can you break down the connection for me so that i can once again (this week, even) have my understanding of my own condition blown wide open?

So, you are not the only person to ask about this, but that's on me for being unclear -- I wasn't trying to assert that kids with ADHD are automatically conditioned to be nonconfrontational, I was more trying to be like "Hey not everyone needs lessons in medical self-advocacy but a lot of nonconfrontational people do." And I think there is a higher population of people with neurodivergence who are deeply confrontation-averse, but I don't have like, numbers for that, it's just an assumption based on other knowledge.

It gets complicated; ADHD is a disease based heavily in acting impulsively against your best interests. But yeah I do think people with ADHD are often conditioned to avoid confrontation because of two main factors: rejection-sensitive dysphoria and executive dysfunction.

RSD, which I hate perhaps more than any other symptom or behavior associated with ADHD, automatically kicks our nervous system into high gear in social situations and encodes embarrassing moments in our memory with high-def clarity. Because RSD naturally causes a level of anxiety around socialization, it tends to make us nonconfrontational simply because a) we don't want to be yelled at, b) we don't want to embarrass ourselves by getting emotional about something that may not warrant it, and c) by the time we realize what's happening our body is already on high alert which means we are likely to go into fight-flight-freeze mode.

Me, I freeze, usually, but none of those three options are great for fast thinking during an argument. I used to lose arguments a lot simply because I couldn't think or react as fast as the neurotypical person I was fighting with, so I simply stopped having fights. Notably, I did not have this problem when fighting with my brother, who is also neurodivergent and has many of the same freeze reactions I do.

If people disagree with me, even when I know I'm right I also know I probably won't be able to vocalize it properly, so I back down. Usually it's trivial so it doesn't matter, and I've gotten strategic about how and when I argue about things that do matter; it's also a lot easier to do with strangers or professionals (like doctors) where I don't have to worry about long-term social repercussions. But yeah, our own nervous system tells us "hey maybe don't pick this fight" about every single fight and if we do pick that fight, it treats our opponent as a dangerous predator.

Executive dysfunction's interaction with nonconfrontation is something I have less problem with because while I do have poor executive function, I've spent a lot of time and energy training myself to cover the Important Stuff. I have mild ADHD so I'm capable of this; I'm not trying to say everyone with ADHD is, because lord knows it's exhausting for me and I've been doing it for roughly thirty years. But essentially, I cover where it counts: if someone needs me to do something I do it, I meet deadlines, I pay bills.

So with that disclaimer in place, a very common issue especially for children with undiagnosed ADHD is that they'll be told or asked to do something and simply be unable to begin or complete it, then when they're asked why they didn't do it they can't explain. Even if they try to explain that they simply couldn't, like they were incapable of doing it for reasons they don't understand, that usually doesn't hold water with a lot of parents and teachers.

"I couldn't bring myself to write this essay," is actually something I told myself a few times in college, but it's not something I'd bother trying to tell someone else, because if you think you're neurotypical that sounds very insane. So I'd lie and say I forgot, or I'd take the fail, or I'd simply drop out of the class. Crucially I would not fight with the authority figure who was questioning me about it, because I knew I wouldn't be able to explain myself, and I'd just end up getting in more trouble for longer.

Our culture is structured for neurotypicals, and it's not even structured for all neurotypicals. Behavior that deviates from Approved Neurotypical even when you think you are Approved Neurotypical is highly punishable. So if your options are passivity, even when passivity leads to pain, or confrontation, most people who aren't Approved Neurotypical will opt for passivity once they've had a taste of where confrontation leads. I know I do.

And the thing is, there's nothing actually wrong with that. It's a strategy calculated to minimize pain. Even when I'm firing on all cylinders on a fresh dose of Adderall, I still generally let fights go unless there will be actual real consequences, because it's just not worth it. But knowing we have ADHD and knowing we fall into this pattern, I think it is good to be aware that sometimes letting a fight go is really going to fuck you, and at that point even being bad at it is better than not engaging.

I'm pretty good at calculating those, but it's a lifelong process, knowing which hills to die on when you assume you will automatically die if you ever get above sea level.

[froshele]

imagine also the process of falling in love with this man. you are a silly little shell shocked army surgeon and you just want a normal life and decent retirement, but the lady you lodge with has adopted ... this... thing.

but as a man.

you try to go about your normal life doing normal things, ok mrs hudson took another lodger, thats fine, its her house, she has a right to put anyone she likes there. you can cope, you were a war surgeon.

but sherlock is a coked up sociopath (oxytocin deficient neurotype) (value neutral) so you quickly realize you have get used to a lot of quirks he's incapable of being repentant of. you find yourself picking your battles about his housekeeping because there is no force on this earth and no power in Heaven that is capable of making Sherlock Holmes care about Something He Has Decided Not To Care About (and you now know he is capable of deciding not to care about anything, especially when underenriched). It's just that the rest of mere mortality has to occasionally ask themselves questions about when the laundry's done; Sherlock, you decide, is welcome to live outside that, since there is (again) nothing for it.

So ok, you're at peace now with waking up to piss only to see him pacing euphorically beside an evidence board, 3 coffees and a line into unsnarling some puzzle that tickled him at 2 in the morning. you say "um, sherlock" in a tone he was not expecting and he looks at you not quite betrayed or even really upset, just so ascended that even his best effort to ask you what the problem is consists of looking at you with a twinkle in his eye (but overall like this)

You decide none of this is worth it and buy earplugs the next day. While he's blitzed you are the picture of an amiable tripsitter.

Sherlock is a nice fellow all in all (although gentler and more courteous to women, which tickles you in a slightly odd way you choose not to examine), but you can tell he appraises your bond the way a cat would, and when he gets this way he is not capable even slightly of thinking about consequences or other people. however (you tell yourself this is the only reason, and there is nothing at all to the fact that you find the workings of his mind so terrifying and beautiful) you can't afford anyplace else.

that's how it begins. first you're used to it, then you have a few good conversations and you start getting medically concerned about him as a friend (and defending him to mrs turner, the maid, who is a reasonable person trapped in this situation with you). then, horrifyingly, quixotically, you start getting unironically sucked into his evidence boards with him (though you refrain from sharing the cocaine habit) because something possesses you to sacrifice your own leisure time to make sure his hobby is good for him.

gradually you begin to fail to imagine any sort of a lifetime where sherlock holmes and john watson are not flatmates, and when he (in the oblique, emotionally bland and palatable way he has with clients while kind of sober enough to remember how to act human) mentions that the lease is nearly due to be renewed, would you like to stay or go, you suddenly feel with deep finality that if you go you will lose something that has become quite important to you indeed.

so you tell mrs hudson that you'll both be here next year too. she nods sagely. she knows exactly where this is going and, having known (and loved, but differently) sherlock holmes longer than you, kind of predicted it.

within a year you feel like you've adopted a son. technically william is a street urchin that sherlock pays much too little for the role he plays in the sherlock extended intelligence network, but... well, you're all here now. child endangerment notwithstanding, this is your family now: your profoundly cocaine-addicted, weird, hard to get to know boyfriend, your landlady, the maid, and some kid named billy.

your name is john watson and today it is a beautiful day on Baker Street.

the thing all sherlock holmes adaptations get wrong is making the guy an irredeemable asshole who treats everyone like shit . not only is it not reflective of the original stories they miss that “nice, smart, well mannered dude who snorts coke when he needs to think” is possibly the funniest character ever devised 

[nofrndofmine]

OK SO

None of the main four in Butterfly Soup are neurotypical and there’s like? A lot of evidence to support it?

(I have ADHD and I am mostly just pointing out things about them I see in myself, I’m aware Brianna has said she didn’t write them this way but there is so much evidence you simply cannot convince me otherwise you cannot)

Starting with Diya, I believe she’s autistic and has ADHD

Brianna has said she doesn’t like to wear anything that isn’t comfortable and she wears gloves more often than not which makes me think she has sensory issues

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(This is from the art book, if you’re wondering)

In most of her sprites she’s looking to the side which makes me think she has problems with making eye contact

The way Brianna describes her relationship with her parents sounds like RSD to me (the whole “people actually talk to their parents for fun” and “every time I talk to them it just turns into a lecture” things)

Brianna’s also said she falls asleep studying a lot. As someone with ADHD, I tend to stay up extremely late trying to do homework as my executive dysfunction doesn’t allow me to do it at like. Regular times so this makes me believe she also has executive dysfunction and often has to stay up late doing homework/studying

Diya has a hard time conveying certain emotions and will go non-verbal or play dead instead of doing so. There is no neurotypical explanation for that there simply isn’t man idk

Also!!! Special interest in animals!!! You cannot convince me otherwise

And sidenote, while I do hc her as being autistic and having ADHD, it is important to note that she has social anxiety which is mostly caused by her being HoH and that that’s a big reason she is the way she is. I feel it’s really important not to ignore that fact about her when discussing this

Secondly, I think Noelle is autistic

She often gets upset with people touching her which I know is like, canonically her being her but I think she has sensory issues personally. I’m also going to point out she’s a picky eater. I know that that doesn’t have to mean you have sensory issues but if she eats like, exclusively plain food and rejects anything too sugary or salty it just seems like sensory issues to me, like combined with everything else

The way Brianna has described her relationship with math and science feels like a special interest to me, she acts like she talks about it a lot because she thinks she sounds smart but actually she just. Really likes talking about math and science

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Her social skills in general are just not very good and the fact that her only friend was Diya for literally a decade before becoming friends with Min and Akarsha doesn’t help either. The way she responds to Akarsha’s jokes makes me believe she doesn’t understand sarcasm very well (and god me too). I also overreact to jokes as I just don’t understand it most of the time which to me seems like what she does

Min has ADHD and the fact that it’s not canon is so confusing like what ❤️

I feel like Min is so used to failure and getting berated for being a bad student/kid that she closes herself off and just puts on this persona of being a delinquent, but she doesn’t really want to be that, not really. The way she acts with Diya, Jun, and Akarsha leads me to believe otherwise. Brianna has said she’s “a bro at heart” if you’re nice to her and people... aren’t. She isn’t used to people being immediately nice to her so she acts mean to make people steer clear of her, she puts on this persona so that people already know what to expect of her before they even talk to her (Brianna has said she dresses the way she does on purpose, to intimidate people). She doesn’t want to get hurt by people not liking the way she really is so she makes it really obvious as to not get rejected. This is all just a long-winded way of me saying she has RSD. Plus the fact that Min “feels like Jun is betraying her” when he sides with their parents instead of her? The way she got extremely defensive when Noelle was berating her for failing her math test? The scene where she tries to denounce her and Noelle’s rivalry and Noelle immediately turns her down and Min gets all defensive and takes it back? Yeah

As someone with ADHD, I get like. Angry, like really angry. I know Min gets angry because of the way she was raised but I think she does because of her ADHD as well, she really just... can’t help it. You know that scene where her, Hayden, and Jun are at McDonalds after Min threw her and Jun’s GameBoy out the car and then Hayden asks her “why are you so angry all the time?... Just like, calm down. Try not getting angry” And she gets defensive and says “I AM trying” And after he keeps insisting she was in the wrong she kinda like, shuts down because he just Doesn’t Get It? Yeah

I also feel her defiance to doing school work stems from executive dysfunction, she just doesn’t Know that and just really Can’t do homework, she Can’t study. No one in her life really Gets it (but I like to think that changes when she finds Diya again and becomes friends with Akarsha)

Also! I am most likely over analyzing this (which I am with all of this but shhh) but I have reason to believe she had a hyperfixation on cars as a kid. Her whole thing with Hot Wheels and her comment about “driving you around in my Corvette” to Diya at their dog park date as kids, it just feels like a hyperfixation to me

And then Brianna has also said Min Tried learning guitar but “didn’t have the patience for it” which is extremely relatable. Not being able to learn how to play instruments because it’s just So Much work and memorization is a big problem for me because of my ADHD and just. Yes. She has ADHD ok

She’s very hyperactive in general, there’s a scene where she’s bouncing her leg up and down and Noelle tells her to stop. That’s ADHD man it just. Is man

And finally, Akarsha has ADHD as well and the fact that it isn’t canon confuses me!!!

The way Brianna describes the way she feels about her parents SCREAMS RSD to me. How heavily it weighs on her that her parents have these extremely high expectations of her and expect her to be something she isn’t? She sees it as an attack and shuts down when faced with any questions about her future (ie the auditorium scene)

I feel like her situation is similar to Min’s in which she puts on a class-clown, jokey persona so people can’t be mad at who she Really is. And she doesn’t joke around when it comes to serious things like when Noelle was sick to the point of nearly fainting and Diya coming out, she is just making jokes so people don’t take her as seriously as her parents. It’s RSD it just. Is

There’s also the thing with her overthinking (again auditorium scene). If this isn’t a burnout gifted kid I don’t know what is

Then there’s the thing where she cheats on tests which makes me think she has executive dysfunction and can’t study but she still wants to pass

And she 1000000% gets hyperfixations!! Mostly on anime and video games and stuff, Ace Attorney would likely be a big one

She’s also very hyperactive, if this isn’t two kids with ADHD idk what is

And that’s it!! There is most likely things I’m missing but this is the majority of everything I wanted to point out. Again I’m mostly just pointing out things I see in myself. These are simply the most neurodivergent kids I have EVER seen and the fact that it’s not canon is really crazy to me???

[scatterpatter]

"Where's the essay OP" Said no one, and yet here I am

Lampy isn't stupid, he's neruodivergent: a rushed-together masterpost

Disclaimer: I'm not a liscened medical professional but I'm neurodivergent who's close to many neurodivergent people so I know when certain traits strike me as very familiar... Also tblt is my comfort movie I've seen it probably over 100 times, not exaggerating, so if anyone here's an expert on it, it's me.

I'm only going by the first movie because while To The Rescue and Goes To Mars probably have evidence to back me up, I don't feel like sitting down to watch them as I don't have them as memorized as the original

Point #1: Lampy is arguably the most intelligent appliance in the movie

Honestly it apalls me that so many are convinced that Lampy is an idiot when he displays some of the most intelligent traits in the movie. I'll just list off some of the most important scenes that show this

1: When discussing a way to get to the city, Lampy comes up with plans that end up failing, true. But we should also consider that not only did Radio and Toaster come up with bad plans before deciding on the swivel chair, but 2/3 of Lampy's ideas involved the same mechanic: on something with wheels(yes the mattress had wheels for some reason) being powered by Kirby

2: "From here you can see the really big lamp!" This scene is simply due to the appliances being sheltered from the outside world. Lampy displays the same level of naive-ness as everyone else: Radio seems earnest in calling the sun a "really big lamp", and Kirby calls the grass "shag carpet". Lampy is not at a lower intelligence in this scene, he's exactly at the same level as everyone else

3: The scene with the storm really sells his intelligence. The appliances have a rudimentary understanding of electricity, most likely from being appliances, but Lampy displays an excelled level of understanding by sacrificing himself for the battery. He understands that batteries are powered by electricity, lightning is electricity, and by using himself as a lightning rod, he acts as the conductive metal to easily transfer this energy from the bolt to the battery. Technically this should have overcharged and fried the battery but we'll suspend disbelief for the sake of this movie.

4: He knew that stacking the appliances to roughly human height, creating a dark environment with ominous sounds, and putting Toaster at eye-level to scare the human with his own reflection... Again, this is an intelligent understanding of how to scare a human

5: It's unclear on whose idea it was to look up Rob in a phone book, however this shows that not only can Lampy read(most likely picked up from being Rob's reading light), ESPECIALLY when Toaster struggles to read, but also has an understanding of phone books, addresses, and finding humans based on family names. I cannot stress how intelligent this is for a sentient desk lamp

There's a few more minor examples, but these are the biggest cases. Lampy is intelligent.

Point #2: Lampy struggles with social cues and doesn't empathize as easily as others

My biggest point here is when people think neruodivergents are "dumb" for having trouble picking up on things like sarcasm when that just... isn't the case. A few notable examples include:

1: When Air Conditioner says "You're a real bright little lamp", Lampy doesn't pick up the sarcasm and thinks he's being complimented. Though he definitely shows a level of emotional intelligence because he looks to Toaster to confirm "hey I was complimented", sees they're still looking angry, and gets the hint that he was insulted without someone needing to explicitly tell him that, to which he then responds with "Heyyy >:("

2: Sometimes he's able to read the room and pick up on tones, but other times he shows a level of emotional density. Legitimately not knowing if Rob had returned even when seeing Blanky disappointed to the point of near tears... But then knowing "brains wouldnt hurt either" was a jab at their intelligence and reacting with appropriate annoyance... But also when Radio says "Things could be worse!", doesn't realize he's just saying that to make Toaster feel better and asks "How could they be worse?"

3: He bullies Blanky alongside Radio and the others, unclear if he's actually being a jerk or just "oh this is what everyone else is doing so this is the normal way to act", but he's legitimately confused when Toaster tries to explain why they're suddenly being nice to him. He doesn't get the "now I feel better" argument because his argument was "Well you were never this nice to him before". Even when Toaster tries to explain why it feels nice, it just doesn't click... until Toaster finds a way to explain that connects personally to Lampy's own emotional state. He has trouble empathizing until realizing "oh this is like this thing that I feel sometimes"

4: Something I've noticed when gathering evidence is that more than once, Lampy goes "Wow..." After someone gloats about themself(Twice with Radio, once with the Computer). It's clear by the third time, when Radio goes "What does that mean?" And Lampy responds "I don't know. [To Computer] What does that mean?" That he doesn't even know what's being gloated about, let alone why he should be impressed. He has the emotional intelligence to recognize when someone's gloating and the "appropriate" response of amazement, but it seems like it never comes from a place of earnest. (While Neurotypicals can and do engage in "performative" behavior, I tend to notice this way more commonly with neurodivergents)

Also the "wow..." Performative thing is VERY reminiscent of Peridot from Steven Universe(a characters who many autistic fans see themselves in and the creator herself saying she doesn't consider Peridot or any of the gems to be neurotypical) going "wow thanks" as her default "this is how I've been taught to show gratitude" response

Point #3: Miscellaneous traits that could be neurodivergent

These traits COULD be interpreted as neurodivergent, but I will admit they could also be interpreted as something else so like take these with a grain of salt

1: Lampy appears to have sensory needs. When sleeping, he needs to tap a rock a few times(presumably to make sure it's "right") before clonking his head on it. It's interesting because rocks aren't a very "lamp" thing whatsoever, and none of the other appliances look for pillow-ish objects to rest on, so this could be a sensory thing.

2: Lampy has an interesting vocal quirk: repetition of phrases at the beginning and end of a sentence. Instances include "How exactly do you propose we do that, exactly?" "All of a sudden you're being so darn nice to him all of a sudden" "The fact is there's just not enough facts" The third one is a bit of a stretch but the first two seem to indicate a possible pattern of speech. Part of me wants to say this could be a verbal tic or some type of verbal stimming, but I've never met anyone who has a tic or stim like this so I can't say it's a neurodivergent thing with confidence, but I wanted to mention this quirk regardless.

3: Physically saying how he feels. Two instances where multiple characters are laughing, Lampy speaks while laughing "That's funny - I'm dying!" "I'm aching with joy!". It's just interesting that no one else speaks while laughing and for whatever reason, Lampy needs to verbalize "Yes I find this very funny" as if simply laughing along isn't enough. I've seen somewhat similar stuff in neurodivergents who have issues expressing emotions implicitly so they state them explicitly instead.

4: I've noticed Lampy isn't touchy... except with Radio. Some neurodivergent people can have issues with physical contact, which could explain that. But I've also noticed that Radio also gives me huge neurodivergent vibes... But more importantly Radio is extremely touchy with everyone, Lampy included, hence them often getting into physical fights but also just- tapping them or wrapping a cord around the other and pulling him close(they're so in love but that's a post on its own). A possible explanation is Lampy having issues with touching others, but either feels comfortable being touchy with Radio(due to emotional bonds and trust) or simply recognizes "Radio likes being touchy so I should be touchy back". A stretch of an argument, I'll admit, but I think the interpretation is there and valid.

In conclusion

I mean idk if Lampy was written to be neurodivergent or if the writers just wanted him to be "quirky" and accidentally gave him a lot of neurodivergent traits, but he reads as very neurodivergent to me(probably autistic or adhd but I'm not a professional and can't diagnose him). But while I can chalk up neruodivergency being one of many possible interpretations of his character, I WILL argue that he's not "stupid" given the evidence we see throughout the movie

Tl;Dr: Lampy is evidently intelligent, but sometimes struggles with social cues, empathy, and overall shows numerous traits of neurodivergency

[electricpurrs]

I hate making heated "discourse" posts cause I never know shit of what I'm talking about and always change my mind about it later (if not on my opinion, at least on the way I worded it) I'm gonna try to elaborate on my thoughts

I don't think being wary of kris is inherently ableist or wrong I know that carrying a knife and ripping their soul off and the stuff that happened in the end makes it so that kris's actions and motivations are mysterious and possibly shady. I do think there's a chance kris is actually bad or at least that what they're doing is somehow antagonistic. I just think that going "this is character is EVIL" is way too much of a simplistic way of thinking it specially considering the game repeatedly works into showing us how the bad things we do are not kris's fault + kris has feelings and a personality under our control. I do believe that if you think the snowgrave route, for example, is kris's fault you're factually wrong but I think most people get this part

it's just that undertale is such a complex and well written game and people just wipe it out into the most basic concepts when it doesn't even make sense and the game actively shows us that things are complex and none of the characters are completely evil as they have their own motivations and emotions. 'chara is evil' always was an example of that when people got chara, a character that's like, 8 year old at best, and turned all of their writing into "scary psychopath child who loves to murder people" and I just don't want to see that happen again with kris

about the ableism, it's just that I, as an autistic person, am so so tired of how not-neurotypical behavior is always associated with and actively used as a way to represent that someone is evil or psychopathic. Just how a character is considered creepy or suspicious if they are emotionless, if they don't make facial expressions, if they don't talk, if they have trouble interacting with others, if they are weird. Again I understand that there's factual things in game to make you wary of kris, therefore I don't think being so makes you ableist by default. I'm just worried the reason people think kris is evil is because they're weird, or that people find their behavior creepy because it's weird. I'm just uncomfortable with that because it makes all my alarms go off as one more example of "autistic people are evil"

and if you want an example

this person commented on my post exactly after when I mentioned how Kris is autistic coded. I don't think this person is saying killers go unnoticed because they rip their hearts off at night or open magic fountains. This person is actively saying that they think Kris is evil because they act a certain way, and people who act they same way in real life are potential serial murderers. This is the the kind of shit that actively harms neurodivergent people, you know, how a cop might think you're lying and a criminal because you don't make eye contact.

in a tl;dr, thinking Kris is shady is perfectly okay as long as you understand your reasons to think so and run away from old ableist stereotypes + understand that this game is more complex than just "this character is evil" and we can't just take simple conclusions specially when the game is not even finished yet and we don't know what Kris's motivations are

[mussthemoose]

.....drop the sunny meta.....plssssssss.....do it do it do it.....also what do you think about Sunnys mom? No one ever talks about her but I ahve feelings

Ps don’t leave me hanging!! o/

Hey there! Finally got around to giving this an answer because I’ve procrastinated on it enough! Here’s a few things I’m going to drop that’s personal headcanons and stuff from what I gathered from the game:

-People say Sunny is a good listener, and the reason for that isn’t just because he’s quiet, it’s because Sunny has a very active imagination and whenever he listens to someone talking, he seems to almost be making a whole little scene in his head -He doesn’t express a lot, but you can always tell he gets the meaning behind what you’re saying once you learn to read his expressions -It’s also a sign he really likes you, because the space inside Sunny’s head is very precious to him so him letting your words roam free there of his own choice is just a huge mark of trust for him -In order of people who can read Sunny: Basil, Mari, Kel, tie between Hero and Aubrey. -They can all actually ready him pretty damn well, it mostly comes down to who can notice the smaller signs. -Basil puts as much love and effort into noticing the little things for Sunny as he does for his most loved plants, and he has a lot of experience with noticing when something small is wrong in something that doesn’t give many signs about it -Mari is second, but it’s a very close second. She’s been with Sunny since he was a baby and puts so much love and effort into understanding him. The only reason she is slightly lower than Basil is, in part, because of how well she’s known Sunny in a paradoxical way. -Sunny is after all, at the end of the day, still someone who can be tricky to read, and sometimes it’s easy to look at past ways he’s acted and think it’s just a repeat of that instead of something new. Like a parent who doesn’t realize that they’re using personal knowledge that’s 7 years old to figure out what you like. -Hero and Aubrey can ready Sunny quite well, they just don’t notice the small signs as much. It doesn’t make them any worse friends for that, but Hero tends to take people on their word and Aubrey trusts her friends, and hopes they’d let her know if they needed help or were hurting. -Kel is...an interesting case. You’d think he’d be the densest for reading Sunny, and sometimes, in some ways, he is. But also I think he’d be one of the few to realize how much Sunny was hating the violin. -Everyone else I think, from what we see, seem to think that he’s just being Sunny, worried about doing something with these expectations but thinking that’s just how he normally acts, and he must obviously love getting to play with his sister Mari! -But Kel is so honest and straight forward that he’d put the pieces together, how Sunny has to be pushed to play for them, how sad he looks to have to leave to practice with the tutor, the look he gets sometimes staring at Mari. -He still doesn’t say anything because even though Sunny seems sad and upset, he knows what it’s like to feel like that to do something for an older sibling who’s just so much better, so for once he lets it slide because he also trusts that Mari is a good sibling and would stop him if something was seriously wrong, like when Kel almost got to the point of throwing up in the hotdog eating competition and Hero stopped him (but still managed to win...) -Later, realizing what happened later post-truth, Kel reaffirms to himself that he’s always going to be honest when he sees one of his friends hurting. Never again. -Sunny’s favourite breakfast is that oatmeal with the dinosaur eggs that melt to reveal dinosaurs when it’s warm and his absolute favourite thing is to pretend that he’s digging them up from a sand dune, hence the whole dino dig. -He does this well into his adult years still -Kel got him a pirate eyepatch after noticing this (Sunny makes sure to dig it out whenever Kel visits, it makes him happy...and maybe Sunny happy a bit too). To stop this post from getting too incredibly big, some Sunny’s Mom meta real quick: -I’ve read a lot of meta, and I personally think she didn’t know the truth. -Sunnysviolin did a really great few posts about autistic Sunny which I heavily agree with, and I heavily agree with the fact Sunny’s parents probably aren’t the best fit for the kids they got (it’s really easy to code them as Asian-American and there is a lot there when it comes to non-neurotypical kids) -And while there is a decently common consensus that Sunny’s dad has a lot of disappointment in Sunny for not being like Mari, I feel like Sunny’s mom was one of those ‘bless her heart she’s trying but she really does not understand at all’ -I feel like she’s tried, honestly tried, but didn’t have as much time to try to look into this stuff that Mari had, or the drive to think she needed to do so heavily in a sense. -Mari loved Sunny so much and seemed to want to do so much of the work anyways, and it’s so much effort to even get a proper idea of how Sunny’s mind works so, I think she’d end up being happy to have Mari be a sort of translator for her, more or less -She wouldn’t excessively baby him, though she’d likely act a bit much because she doesn’t really understand how his mind works so she goes with what she knows instead of what’s best -And at the point where we start the game, I think the whole ‘mommy’ thing where she seems to almost baby him comes after Mari is gone. -Her Husband is gone, Mari is gone, and her last son barely seems to be able to take care of himself unless she holds his hand to do it (not because he can’t do it, but Sunny seems to have trouble sometimes finding enough care to put in the bare minimum effort to survive). -It seems more likely to me that she, like some other people, tried to mentally distance herself from everything. -Her sun is all she has left and all he wants to do is sleep, she’s entirely out of her comfort zone and she doesn’t have any lifelines. -I think there’s a part of her that knows this too, that knows that this situation isn’t good, and isn’t fine, but what’s she even supposed to do? She doesn’t know, so she...just keeps going on. -It’s horrible, everything is wrong, she’s hurting and suppressing and she just wants Mari back so so much, she wants her husband back, she even wants Sunny back because at least back then he’d look at her when she said she loved him. -But they’re not coming back, Mari is never coming back and she knows that without her she has no chance in figuring out how to pull in the other two. -Sunny’s all she has left, and sometimes she doesn’t even known for certain if he counts at this point in the bad endings she gets an answer, he did. He counted for so much and now she has nothing

-Sunny’s mom once yelled “Ayo, the pizza is here!” and Mari almost tripped down the stairs with Sunny. They all had a laugh at it after a gentle scolding to be more careful. -Sunny always takes the steps extra carefully whenever he picks up food delivery with his friends post-true end, none of them say anything about the way he grips the handrails hard enough to leave a mark on the way down

[perpetuallyfive]

There's an idea floating around that Penny's new body isn't flesh or mechanical, it's her aura made into a body and a mix of both. Do you think that would work better if it's true?

I feel like I should say at first that I’m not exactly furious about this. I know I’ve said a lot of words so that it probably gives that impression, but largely I’m just disappointed that I thought they were doing something really interesting and unique and instead it’s pretty stale and safe, with a side of discomfort in how it muddies the allegory they clearly didn’t know they were creating.

Compared with a lot of these kinds of narratives, the fact that any thought is put in at all is comparatively way better than most. It's just so basic, standard, and painfully obvious to undo all your interesting work in a "this person is different but that's okay" narrative by normalizing them in the end. If underneath it all they're still Different and Other but all visual markers of that are removed entirely that completely undermines the idea that appearances don't matter. Why is her True Self so visually like everyone else? If it's all about who she is underneath, then why is the focus on passing?

I do feel like in many ways they learned from the failings of Beauty and the Beast in understanding that the transformation should still look relatively close to the original image of the character everyone fell in love with. That's the reason it almost works and makes it feel confusing. Because she's still clearly Penny, she's still acting adorable in a really charming way that makes it fun to watch, she still has the personality that reads as not entirely neurotypical. If it was a change as drastic as we're used to seeing in these kinds of narratives, it would immediately strike us as being exactly as weird and unnecessary as it is.

The narrative can try to say appearances don't matter, visual markers don't matter; that's all well and good in an imaginary world, but in reality all of us have the bodies we were born into and we don't get to magic a new one to leave our old selves behind. If the narrative we're enjoying tells us that, actually, the real path to fulfillment is a new body made by the real you, something none of you watching can ever do or have, it just lands really weird and stands directly in opposition to everything else they're actually trying to say.

Saying this is the real Penny who has been underneath all along feels like a weird attempt at saying that the things that make people different, their own unique lived experiences, don’t have a meaningful impact on who they are and aren’t a valuable part of their humanity worth celebrating and maintaining. That given a choice, we all would and should erase the things that make us different. 

We have seen the way people treated Penny because of her body. We’ve seen her degraded and reduced, but don’t worry, she can just escape her oppression by slipping her old self off like an out of season jacket.

Say that we discover that the Faunus as they exist in the show are actually a result of the conflict between the brothers, somehow it was never meant to be, some kind of magic passed through the generations. If in the end they magically made all the Faunus look like humans, took away Blake's cute little ears, removed the category of Other that had been a source of their oppression with a snap of the fingers, we'd immediately understand why it's weird. 

And they would never do it, because there at least they understand the symbolism they're working with, as clumsy as the efforts often are. As I’ve said before with the May line, I was worried they obviously didn't know what they were creating with Penny. This just confirms for me that's true. Saying that actually she’s a soul trapped in what they essentially say is the wrong body just doubles down on the trans allegory in uncomfortable ways while simultaneously saying that making that body conform more closely to societal standards is the ultimate goal.

Whatever they end up doing with it, I’m sure it’ll be interesting in some ways. I’m going to love her increased screen time and getting a new arc. I’m going to probably seem like a hypocrite as I do my best to enjoy whatever they do with one of my favorite characters. But I can’t help feeling disappointment and a little discomfort.

[theworldbrewery]

what does it mean to play with a high (or low) stat?

fun fact: “commoners” (i.e., your average unskilled random) have a 10 in every ability score.

they are the average of the average. the most middle-of-the-road we can achieve. and they will never reflect your Player Character’s reality.

but they are a great baseline for determining where your characters are outstanding, and where they will struggle.

An average person can lift 50 lbs comfortably, has enough hand-eye coordination to play a decent game of ping-pong against an equally-matched opponent, can fight off most communicable diseases, knows how to read, can tell when they need more information to be able to act, and is able to handle basic social contact when there is no reason for conflict.

***note--I’m using these “averages” to talk about what a non-disabled and neurotypical person will be generally capable of without training or honing a particular skill. Being within 2-3 ability score points of the average doesn’t necessarily require justification, but it might still be fun to explore***

so your barbarian with an 18 in strength isn’t just an outlier, it’s a major difference from what Jane Ordinary can manage on a typical day, and the sweet-talking powers of your 20-charisma sorcerer are going to feel supernatural compared with what the traveling horse salesman is used to. When you’re creating a character, whether that’s an NPC with class levels or a player character, consider why a character’s stats are the way they are.

If they were naturally gifted, is that why they felt called to the class they chose? Did they work hard to be where they are today, and let other abilities fall by the wayside? Did a higher power imbue them with strength, charisma, or wisdom to make a perfect vessel for their plans? Reimagining the reasons behind your statistics can help develop your backstory and even factor into your character arc down the line.

***Another note: be especially self-aware if you’re going to play a neuroatypical, mentally ill, or disabled character and you aren’t yourself a member of the group you’re representing. I love representation but don’t be insensitive---and if anything I mention here comes off as insensitive, let me know and I’ll adjust accordingly!***

STRENGTH: 

At first level, a higher-than-average STR score is going to reflect a lot of training, whether intentional or not. The character may have grown up chopping wood and hauling logs around a woodland village, spent their young adulthood in a mine, or studied with bodybuilders in a remote bodybuilder monastery.

In contrast, a lower-than-average STR score might correspond to a pampered lifestyle, one where the character never needed physical labor to get by; or perhaps they have a disability, such as a bad back, or a chronic illness that leaves their muscles weaker than usual.

DEXTERITY:

A character with a high DEX is flexible and fast. They might have been an acrobat in a circus, flipping around on the trapeze. An urchin whose two options are move fast or get arrested is also likely to be dextrous, as much as a noble who, as a child, often crept around and hid in their family estate to avoid lessons or spy on the adults. They might be from a tree-dwelling community where leaping across platforms is commonplace, or use their dexterity on the rigging of the ship they made their home. A very dextrous person might even have EDS or another condition that makes them hyper-flexible.

A low DEX might, like low STR, match with a disability like arthritis or an old leg injury that never healed properly, or it could align with pressure to behave properly in polite company--never running, climbing, or skulking around. Low DEX could also translate to clumsiness, a fear of taking physical risks, or a tremor that makes Sleight of Hand difficult.

CONSTITUTION:

High CON is a matter of resistance to illness, poison/drugs/alcohol, and general hardiness or stamina. A high CON character might take vitamins and supplements to keep their peak physical condition, do exercises to increase lung capacity or practice running to build endurance. They may take small doses of poison to build up immunity, or maybe they’ve been a low-grade alcoholic for so long their liver is adept at filtering out toxins. They might have done charity marathons to raise money for good causes back home.

Low CON might therefore translate to an arrhythmia or other chronic illnesses such as asthma, POTS, or even severe allergies. The low CON character could have been trapped in a sheltered upbringing that never exposed them to disease or required them to stand and move for hours. Maybe they have never been exposed to drink or drugs and are an incurable lightweight.

INTELLIGENCE:

A high-INT character may have spent years under the tutelage of scholars, worked hard to get into an educational institution, or learned history and magic from the elders of their community with the intent to carry the knowledge into the next generation. They may have autism that helps with information recall, ADHD that leads to hyperfocus on a few specific topics, or another form of neurodiversity.

A low-INT character may have never had the chance to learn from their uneducated family, or be so without a community that no one bothered to teach them. They might have a learning disability, memory problems, or chronic fatigue that causes brain fog.

WISDOM:

A high-WIS character is generally observant, able to assess the intentions of others, clear-headed, and pragmatic--or at least practical. High Wisdom may come from being taught from a young age to pay attention to one’s surroundings, be a part of a community’s religious or ethical worldview, or be a necessary skill developed for survival in a world full of hazards or underhanded strangers. High WIS scores can also derive from anxiety or trauma that make characters more sensitive to information and more likely to observe patterns that otherwise go unnoticed.

Low WIS characters might have very little life experience, or be naive because of the way they’ve been taught to view the world. They might have issues with visual or auditory processing that affect their perception, have low empathy that makes insight a struggle, or experience depression, psychosis, or paranoia that leads to difficulty assessing what is real.

CHARISMA:

High CHA characters may spend months or years mastering the performing arts, honing their ability to lie or stretch the truth, or practicing their most intimidating posture. Or their Charisma may stem from being completely genuine and trustworthy, without any apparent artifice. Characters with sociopathy may know how to turn any social encounter to their advantage, and those with high empathy may be simply likeable. A high-CHA character could be funny, attractive, talented, or have a magnetic personality for any number of reasons, including trying to impress a particular social group or person, a career goal as a comedian or performer, or being raised with rustic hospitality.

A low-CHA character may have trouble with eye contact or even be compulsively unable to lie (or a compulsive liar that’s simply unconvincing); they might have sensory issues that make them sensitive to music or certain vocal timbres, or they might be brusque and businesslike. Low Charisma can stem from a roughshod upbringing, a cultural emphasis on stark honesty even when unsolicited, or a lack of awareness for someone else’s perspective. Even a speech impediment or a trauma that leads to skittishness can read as low-Charisma if you want to play it that way (though it doesn’t have to be).

Sometimes, a character is in the middle-of-the-road but you still want to include one of the options mentioned above. In that case, they could have multiple “conflicting” influences in their background. A character with ADHD might be very good with a specific subject but the ADHD also manifests as memory issues, reflecting a 12 Intelligence score and its ambiguity (and proficiency in specific skills will reflect the specificity of hyperfocus, for instance). 

None of these are hard-and-fast rules. If you want to play a character with chronic pain that doesn’t have a matching low score, that’s also amazing! But if you’re starting from the stats and want to figure out the “in-game justification” for why someone’s abilities are where they are, I hope this little outline helps.

If you like our posts, consider donating to our Ko-Fi @ theworldbrewery. We are saving up for Volo’s Guide to Monsters (and I’m kinda looking forward to trashing Volo’s opinions)

[asterekmess]

Werewolves and Why I Love Them

So, hi, my name is Tali and I’m a werewolf addict.

I’ve been pretty much obsessed with werewolves since right around the time I turned twelve. The entirety of Teen Wolf aside, I’ve loved them for years. I wrote my first novel about them. I dream about them regularly (like two days ago, for instance). The majority of my original fiction is about werewolves.

For the longest time I honestly didn’t understand why I loved them so much. I mean sure, I’m in love with nighttime and am fucking entranced by full moons. I guess that helps. But it always felt like so much more than that, to the point that I used to wish desperately that I would find out I was a secret werewolf and just hadn’t changed yet, in the same way other kids wished they had magic powers. My husband and I joke pretty often about how I’m just a lil more wolfy than is probably normal. Or catlike, we can never decide.

There’s a reason for that, that I’ve found makes so much fucking sense???

I’m neurodivergent. Specifically, I have ADHD. I’ve always had it, bc that’s how it works, but you’d be surprised at how much elementary school’s strict structuring and constant supervision can keep a people-pleasing, terrified of rejection, neurodivergent kid under control. I masked most of my symptoms and I masked them well. Even at home, to the point that although I was diagnosed really young, my mother was insistent that I had no need for medication or therapy to help me deal with the altered development of my brain.

Then came middle school and my rebellious stage, where I finally stopped acting the way other people wanted me to act. Boom. ADHD symptoms galore, and my mother was flabbergasted. I was about Twelve.

Cue the werewolf obsession.

It was only once I started learning about all the symptoms I’d just assumed everybody was dealing with and figured out how to examine the ways that my neurological disorder effected my life, that it all started to make so much more sense.

Dude, werewolves are basically hyped up embodiments of ADHD.

Now, do not misinterpret me. I’m not comparing ADHD people to dogs or animals of any kind. That’s not what this is about.

This is about werewolves being almost painfully realistic representations of many ADHD symptoms from inside the ADHD person’s head.

You see ADHD people onscreen rarely, and usually when they show up they’re presented in much the same way Stiles is in the first episode. Jumpy, Distracted, Hyperactive, Addicted to meds. It sucks. And even when there is good representation, what the audience sees is almost always the neurotypical point of view rather than the pov of the actual ADHD person. You see them doing things for seemingly no reason, reacting to nothing or getting worked up over tiny things. Even the good rep doesn’t really encapsulate what it’s like to be inside that person’s head.

In my experience, werewolves get that shit right, even though it’s on accident.

There are so many things we relate to werewolves that actually express ADHD symptoms incredibly well.

Noticing sounds that other people can’t hear. (The buzz of a lightbulb or the hum of the fridge)

Getting hopeless distracted by other people’s conversations, even if they’re all the way across the room, just because you latched onto their voice.

Having strong reactions to scents and tastes and textures, that leave you nauseous around certain foods and keep you from being able to walk through the chemical aisle at Wal-mart (or is that just me?).

Impulsivity that makes you do things even you can’t fully understand, including things that you didn’t actually want to do.

Emotions that run so high you don’t know what to do with yourself.

That constant buzzing under the skin that says be more do more be more do more until you just want to run until you exhaust yourself.

Zoning out and losing literally all sense of time, occasionally with a bout of memory loss.

Constantly being on guard in public and adjusting everything from your behavior to your personality just so you can seem “normal.” Until it’s like you’re two different people.

Being unable to properly express yourself with words and it getting so fucking frustrating that you want to just growl and bite and scream (howl) to make them back off until you can think again.

Having things about yourself that some people call gifts but that others call a curse and not knowing which one to believe.

Right down to routines (wolves are on a monthly routine) and meditation or focal points (anchors) being the only way to deal with the sensory overload and calm yourself down.

Lots of ADHD people I know are really tactile. It makes perfect sense. Touch releases happy chemicals and we are perpetually lacking the happy chemicals. I myself love tactility, if only from literally one person. The concept of “puppy piles” is so fucking nice I can’t even describe it. It gives me a fucking serotonin high just thinking about it.

The reassurance that the concept of “packs” brings, a community of people just like you who accept you and let you be yourself? People who will accommodate you without blaming you for making their lives more difficult? That is so much harder to find than you think, even amongst other neurodivergent people.

Not to mention, when a werewolf freaks out about the loud noise or jumps at the slam of a door across the house? People just accept it. No one questions it, cus’ “They’re a werewolf.”

Werewolf shows or books or fanfic show a werewolf acting in a way that ‘normal’ people would find incredibly weird, but from their point of view. They let the audience hear the noise that made the wolf react. They alter the lens (sometimes really badly) so that you get a visual representation of the wolf’s vision tunneling so they only think about that one thing right now and none of the rest of the world matters.

No calling them ‘obsessed’ or ‘sensitive’ or ‘paranoid.’ No viewing them as ‘That annoying character who freaks out at nothing.’ Now the audience can see the cacophany of having that mindset and those feelings. They actually understand.

When I read about werewolves, I feel like I’m reading my own fucking thoughts. Yes, my dude, I totally feel you. The squeak of that person’s brakes might not bother anyone else because they can tune it out, but you can’t and it feels like the loudest sound in the world. No one else can smell that scent on the bed or the couch from like three weeks ago, but by god it’ll give you a fucking headache when you’re trying to sleep. Running off all that energy must be nice. I too lose my temper at the tiniest things for no discernible reason and have feelings so intense that I can’t breathe. I feel you about there being too much going on all the time, and I can’t get my homework done either.

It’s no fucking wonder that Stiles fits in so well with werewolves.

For ages I thought I was a total freak for being so obsessed with werewolves, but it’s just because I relate to them so damn much. Mystery solved, I can go back to my fanfic in peace.

Tldr; Werewolves are good ADHD rep and you won’t change my mind.

[luminarii]

I need fellow Autistics opinion on something, if you're willing to share your thoughts about it.

I have a younger brother (24 years old) who just got diagnosed with Autism. I myself got diagnosed with Autism when I was 22 years old (I'm now 28), and I have another younger brother (27) who got the diagnosis when he was 18. We have two other siblings, but they're neurotypical.

My 24 year old brother's name starts with an 'N', and my 27 year old brother's name starts with an 'S', so I'll call them that for short. Me and S both have many of the "stereotypical" Autism traits, and while S has been showing his Autism since his infancy, I didn't show any signs of Autism until I was about 5 or 6 years old. But now that we're "adults", we both need to live in assisted homes for Autistic adults.

Now, I told you N had recently gotten his own Autism diagnosis as well, but he doesn't show ANY signs of Autism at ALL, and never has. Me, S and our mother (neurotypical) all agree that while he has some difficulties, he is very non-Autistic in many ways. I can give you a list of his difficulties/advantages/past diagnoses: !!!WARNING!!!: SOME OF THIS INFORMATION CAN BE TRIGGERING AND VERY VIOLENT FOR SOME READERS. THOSE POINTS WILL BE MARKED WITH A (!TW!) SIGN.

- He has always been excellent at making friends as, atleast when he was a kid and teenager, was talkative, adventurous, confident, and knows how to read people's face/body/emotions. The last one is still true today. - He still has the majority of his childhood friends to this day. - He was never teased, bullied or otherwise wronged in school as a kid, and was actually one of the more popular kids as he was pretty 'normal'. ('normal' as in he very rarely did anything 'peculiar' or 'weird' that others didn't understand) - As he is the youngest of 5 children, he was the most spoiled of me and our siblings, and could sometimes lose his temper if he didn't get what he wanted, when he wanted it. I know that that can also be an Autism trait, but I am literally 100% sure he was like that simply because he was spoiled by our parents. - He learned everything at the appropriate ages: talking, walking, playing with other kids, sharing toys/other objects, reading, counting, telling time, tying his own shoes, and the list goes on, while me and S learned all of those things much later than the 'norm'. - Even to this day, N is very in tune with other people's emotions, and can easily put himself in other peoples' shoes. He has always been like that, and even as a child, was very good at cheering up others and calming people down if needed. - Our parents separated when I was five years old, back in 1998/1999. Our father got a new girlfriend, let's name her 'D', and D was the one who spoiled N rotten from when he was only 1 year old, and to some extent still spoils him to this day. Ever since our parents separation, D has been more of a 'mother' to N than our maternal mother, since D came into our lives when N was basically still a baby, and has been spoiled by her since day one, basically. Our father died in 2012, and our mother mother died this March, 2020. - As I have already said, N is still very spoiled today, even though he's 24, and can lose his temper quickly if he doesn't get what he wants, when he wants it. When he was a child and teenager, he just got angry and/or sad when he didn't get his way. Now, as an adult, he gets violent when he doesn't get his way. - N has been seeing several psychiatrists over the years, and even been admitted to psychiatric hospitals, sometimes on his own accord, sometimes forced. There, he's gotten a few diagnoses, such as: acute psychosis, Tourrette's Syndrome, and ADHD. I think he got another one, but I don't remember which one. But not even a month ago, 'Autism' was added to his list of diagnoses. - (!TW!) As an adult, whenever he wasn't admitted to a psychiatric hospital/institution, he started to wreck havoc whenever he didn't get his way, and in the most brutal of ways. He has hit and kicked people, even women, almost completely destroyed our stepmother's, D, entire house; the only thing that was intact was the kitchen and bathroom. He even destroyed all the windows in her house, and (presumably, according to D) kicked her cat. - (!TW!) He has admitted to physically abuse D's old dog by kicking her, punching her head with a brick in his hand, and I hope with every part of my soul that I am wrong on this, but I have a feeling he has also sexually abused the dog. - (!TW!) He has killed multiple animals; D's pet bunny, a newborn kitten, and an aquarium full of fish (about 8-10 fish). None of the animals were his own, not that it makes a difference. - (!TW!) This summer, our neurotypical brother ('A') and N were playing a video game on their computers while talking over the phone. N lost to A, and N lost his temper. N threatened to not just kill A and his girlfriend, but to kill A's girlfriend's entire family, cutting off A's skin and using it as a costume to 'start a new and better life'. A understandably has cut off contact to N since. - N is also still doing semi-harmful things to people on almost a daily basis, including, but not limited to: spitting on/after people at the psychiatric hospital, yelling and screaming at them, threatening them, and other forms of verbal abuse.

There are two reasons I'm making this post. 1; N is not Autistic. He has problems, yes, and they're escalating quickly, but he is not Autistic. He has never acted Autistic in any way, and no matter how many 'professionals' give him the Autism diagnosis, I refuse to believe it. 2; the psychiatric hospital he's currently admitted to are planning to send him to an assisted home for Autistic adults, like the ones me and our brother S are living in. This could prove to be extremely dangerous for the personel working there as well as the other residents, especially the latter as we Autistic people won't be able to cope with someone as extreme as N.

I am asking for as many (Actually Autistic people only!!!) people as possible to tell me your take on this. I know that each individual Autistic person is different, and that we all share a lot of the same difficulties and advantages, but are still completely different from eachother in many ways. But N is not Autistic, and again, no amount of 'professional' NT diagnostics doctors can convince me otherwise. What I need is opinions, preferably as many as possible, from other Autistic people like myself.

N is a danger to himself and others, but he is my brother and I love him with all my heart, and I just want to see him get better. But people are about to send him off to a home he doesn't belong, with people that won't be able to handle him. Please, send me your thoughts on this; you might be able to help me being able to help my brother.

[tudorsphillipa]

𝕀 𝔸𝕄 ℕ𝕆𝕋 𝔸 𝕎𝕆𝕄𝔸ℕ, 𝕀 𝔸𝕄 𝔸ℕ 𝔸ℝ𝕄𝕐 —

                                          phillipa of england

introducing —

her royal highness, princess of england, phillipa tudor

about phillipa

001 ─ personality

princess phillipa was never denied any material thing, every luxury afforded to her as a child. she is spoiled, and she knows it. having her father favour her only helped to further her sense of entitlement; she sees herself as untouchable. she can be acerbic and cynical at times, yearning for brutal honesty to cut through courtly lies. she is unforgiving and brutal, even to herself, and harshly punishes herself for any outbursts or slips. she even turns spiteful; spite and curiosity are twin forces driving her thirst for knowledge and power. she is highly educated in rhetoric and classical dialogues, and often uses both high-handed and below-the-belt tactics to win arguments. she likes being idealistic, but knows being practical will serve her much more. more than ever, as her ambition grows, phillipa only entertains relationships that are mutually beneficial, and companionship can only come from those who are ridiculous enough to be entertaining, or quick-witted enough to keep up with her. she has a natural commanding charm, moving through any crowd with the presence and gravity of a small sun. phillipa cannot stand sanctimonious people; more often than not, their sense of self-importance is either tied to something of little consequence or far inflated beyond their station.

002 ─ rumours

phillipa does not believe in the rumors surrounding her legitimacy; she knows queen anne dislikes her, but cannot fathom that her devout catholic mother would betray her vows. surely, if it were true, that she were some love-child, then her mother would love her more, is that not so? but no, phillipa had no mother’s skirts to cling to as a child; her majesty the queen would not permit it. phillipa has long since given up attempting to grow into a tudor rose her mother would adore, leaving that to beatrice. she speaks to her mother as duty demands and there is little warmth between them, but a part of phillipa howls and rages at her mother’s emotional abandonment. she can be especially spiteful with her mother. what matters now is not her mother’s endorsement, but her father’s favour; her claim to the tudor throne can only be legitimised through him.

003 ─ lessons

despite a natural curiosity about the world around her, phillipa’s childhood lessons were always dogged by a certain restlessness. there was only so much sitting around and listening the princess could do. perhaps it was because of an equally restless court, who still looked to the queen for a prince when she was born. perhaps it was the howling winds that ravaged england the winter she was born. whatever it was, princess phillipa is much more self-sufficient than her tutors expected her to be. after she had exhausted and promptly forgotten the usual subjects a young princess learns, she pushed her parents to provide for a more thorough humanist education. she has a natural talent not only for philosophies, but also for trade. she wanted to learn of history, power, and languages, making her a good diplomat for her father’s sake. mostly self-taught in other areas, such as literature, phillipa has become an ardent patron of the theatre, enjoying italian erudite plays, something she hopes to indulge in during her time in italy. she also enjoys sketching, with a particular interest in architectural drawings.

plots

001 ─ birthright

she is her father’s favourite, his first-born. beatrice is sweet and devout, and charles might be the wished-for prince, but phillipa knows in her heart that she is the one with the iron will and cunning to rule england. one of the many reasons she refuses suitors is that none are worthy in her eyes. she desires a husband who matches and furthers her ambitions for the crown. she knows the price of the english throne will be a hefty one, so for now, her movements are slow and careful, laying the groundwork and swaying support for her side. her biggest obstacle, of course, is charles; she would rather have him on her side supporting her than have him totally removed from court. he is a loose end at best and a potential threat at worst. the time spent in rome is an oppourtunity, one which she intends to use to the fullest of its advantage, to create allies and integrate herself with other rulers, especially ones sympathetic to her. she suspects the monarchs of milan and the holy roman empire may be her strongest allies, not only for their shared gender but for their common faith. russia and the ottoman empire are equally valuable allies for their economic ties, as well as their expansive territories. perhaps in another era, one more stable and peaceful, charles might have made a good king, but england needs better than good. it needs greatness.

002 ─ on holy ground

all her life, she has been a catholic, and knew nothing else. now, even as she lands on holy ground, she questions the church’s doctrine. there must be a god, she knows that, but does the lord truly require such complexities in order to be present on earth? is there no other way to have a relationship with god? as she mingles with muslims and orthodox christians, she starts to express her frustrations─ quietly, though, in vague words. phillipa is not a fool, and knows enough to fear excommunication from the church. the unity that catholicism provides is useful, but sometimes the ceremonial nature can be stifling and a waste of time. one thing, though, she keeps to herself: that religion is power over all, and it is better to be seen as fearful of the divine than utterly godless.

003 ─ presentation

phillipa is the best of england, despite what others might have said. before, she has dressed modestly, in a manner that better befits a princess of a country in a sombre time. the winds of change being to sweep in, and phillipa is the first to feel them. she begins to carry herself a little taller, a litter grander, a little more like a queen. she fashions herself like her father does, carefully choosing her dress and attitudes to reflect that she is her father’s daughter, both noble knight and tudor rose. even with the whisper within her that calls her an imposter, she begins to change how she acts, how she dresses, how she carries herself. with only her physical presence, she carefully balances projected ideals with reality. phillipa has never faded into the background, despite the best efforts of some, and refuses to do so now.

more

001 ─ phillipa has adhd! nothing officially diagnosed, but she does have it. she frequently masks around others, which is where someone neurodivergent can act neurotypical. she stims using her jewelry, mostly. related to adhd are her imposter syndrome and her rejection sensitive dysphoria. 

002 ─ phillipa is. not a good person. she will slap you as a warning. she is very prone to snap judgements about other people, and tends to use other people. if you’re not funny, cute, or useful, phillipa will probably drop you like a sack of hammers. the only person she’s only somewhat vulnerable with is her younger sister beatrice.

the mun

hey all! sorry this is so late, but here we are! i’m jane ( 21, she/they, est ) and this is my first character! i’m always down to plot but there are a handful of topics i won’t write ( sexual scenes, extreme violence, etc. ). if you want to plot, drop me a message here or on discord! i’m still working on phillipa’s pages, and will update as soon as they are done!

[sagesilentfire]

I'm looking for a trans sensitivity reader (for Marcie) and possibly a poc sensitivity reader (for the monsters vs mewmans plot), so if you're available, please tell me, and we'll figure something out.

Forgive my inability to draw humans, please.

I know this is a big departure from my usual content, so I'd like to make sure you know that watching SVTFOE is not necessary to enjoy this AU, as everything needed to understand the plot is explained in-story. In fact, I'd love to have someone who's never even heard of a svftoe to read it so I can make sure it makes its own logical sense.

Anyways... 

(putting this under a read more for your scrolling purposes)

Hi. I'm Sage, and I would like to talk about a show I really liked. The past tense being the operative, as it used to be good, but...

I started watching SVTFOE after watching the great Steven Universe, which meant I had high expectations for it. And it met those expectations! From the beginning I was hooked. It was a good show. But as the seasons went on, it started to... rot.

Now, something to know about me is that I do not invest myself wisely. I love the things I love deeply and with passion. I get attached easily, and I love to theorize about the things I love. So I was heartbroken when SVTFOE ended the way it did, with none of my questions answered.

And when my theories were better than canon, well, that meant I had a new project: a complete rewrite of Star vs. the Forces of Evil. This AU will start similar to canon, but gradually diverge from it until it's something completely new. It will also have five separate "seasons".

So here's my AU: Star and Marcie and The Forces Of Evil (aka samatfoe). This AU will tear apart the scraps of lore that we got from SVTFOE and expand on it and make new lore, all narrated by my lovely OC, Sílthéy. And I promise I will get to as much as possible. If you're worried, check the titles of all of the chapters, which will hopefully reassure you that, yes, I will get to everything (or at least everything I've thought of ;)).

Dramatis Personae:

Star: Star will mostly stay the same in the first few seasons, but I'll try to have her actually grow and mature while staying a good person in the later seasons. She'll also be a bit more fire-aligned, because I wanted to be able to tell my Star and the canon Star apart easily. (She also doesn't get those wings until Mewberty.)

Marcie: is a trans girl. The entire second "episode" will be about her being trans. And I will, again, try to not have her act like a jerk in later seasons. She also won't be an adult trapped in a teenager's body, as that was waaay too weird for me. Instead she won't age in the Neverzone, period, and there will be an episode dedicated to her re-adjusting to Earth and discussing what the whole "spent a decade and a half in eight minutes" thing means for her. And, of course, she'll be more involved with the Mewni plot, as she will be interested in learning the lore behind Mewni from the beginning and push Star to find out more about Mewni.

Ludo: Ludo's story will not effectively end with the Battle for Mewni. He will get a redemption arc, with all the pitfalls and trip-ups that come with that. And all of his flaws and issues will be brought up, now just forgiving him for everything he did because he had bad parents. And Dennis will continue to be a cinnamon roll. Some things never change.

Buff Frog/Yvgeny: will not change. He is good lad.

Toffee: This is the big one. Where to start, and how to start it without spoiling everything I have planned? Well, let me tell you this: Toffee is getting a complete overhaul. For one thing, I now made them agender for various complicated reasons that will be revealed in-story, eventually. And for another thing, they will get an actual backstory and personality! Isn't that a novel idea! And they will not die abruptly and nonsensically in Battle for Mewni, so don't worry about that.

Jackie: Oh, Jackie. You poor dear. Jackie will not be delegated to the role of "one-time love interest who just skateboards out of the plot". First of all, Marcie will only have a squish (a platonic crush) on her, because I don't trust my aro/ace self with the weird things people in romantic love do to get together, but I do know what it's like to desperately want to be friends with someone. Secondly, while she will be out of the spotlight in later seasons, it'll be because she's on an exchange trip to France, not because we're abandoning her character and her world for no good reason.

Janna: never changes. Pretty sure she's the one constant of the multiverse.

Tom: will have his redemption arc earlier in the story so I can use him for things, but other than that will not change much.

Moon: First of all, she will not betray everything her daughter stands for by siding with Mina this time. There are plenty of other ways Mina could rise to power, so there's no need to ruin her character by making her do a stupid, illogical thing that even a five-year-old would see was stupid. I mean, she's still going to be kind of racist, but she's well-established to be level-headed and even a little clever, so she will not do something that would so obviously blow up in her face. Secondly, she will be a bad ruler, hence why Mewni is a total mess, but she will learn and become better and help Star's efforts to improve Mewni.

Glossaryck: is... changing. He won't "lose" his sanity for season three, but he will also not be in a totally heroic role. It's a complicated thing and a bit of a spoiler, so I'll leave it at that. Also, he's a dragon now Because Reasons (no, seriously, I have a reason for it. It's also a spoiler).

River: River will be goofy, like usual, but he won't be plot-destroyingly stupid. I'll try my best to not make you question why he's even king while still making him a foil to Moon. It's the tightrope I must walk.

Angie and Raphael: Will not completely disappear from the plot in later seasons, but will instead be like a second family to Star and will be a refuge when her overbearing Butterfly side gets too much.

Kelly: Will not be involved in a stupid romantic subplot with Marcie. Sorry. Other than that, Kelly will remain pretty much the same, aside from now being tiny, because that's just how she came out in my art. She's pretty cool.

Miss Heinous: Will not be Meteora this time around. I disliked how Heinous hurt so many people and was a horrible person, but as soon as her Tragic Backstory™ was revealed, all that pain and suffering she caused was ignored in favor of making her Super Duper Tragic™. So I'm separating the characters. Don't worry, though, she'll get the backstory and character arc she deserves.

Saint Olga: Saint Olga will be the main motivator for Miss Heinous's actions, as she is desperate to please the robot. Other than that, Saint Olga won't actually get much character. She's a bad guy, pure and simple.

Meteora: will not turn into a baby. She will deal with the consequences of her actions like a mature, responsible sixteen-year-old. But because she's sixteen, things won't be too harsh when she does snap. She'll still have her mother and father to help her and guide her.

Eclipsa: Regarding Eclipsa's design, I tried to make her fat, but... I don't know if it translates well in my art. I'm just not that good at art yet. But aside from that, making her cheekmarks dark gray (spades are a black card, not a red card! That bugged me so unreasonably much), and giving her as much of a connection to Toffee as the show implied, I'm not changing much about her. She was one of the good characters.

Globgor: Will have fought against mewmans in the past, but not have eaten them (what were the writers thinking?! Making your metaphorical poc eat people is... not good). And it will be more of a case of Star and Eclipsa knowing he is good and should be released from the crystal, but the general mewman populace not accepting it, until Cornonation, where he proves he's a good guy.

Shinjai: Is a new character I am thrilled to introduce to you all! She came from me thinking that for someone who supposedly wants to end mewman-monster racism, Star sure doesn't have any monster friends (Buff Frog doesn't count. He's an adult, and they don't really hang out so much). So here's Shinjai! She's a septarian, and is introduced instead of Princess Smooshy in Sleep Spells. She's a very minor minor monster noble, and her family has about as much political power as your average worm on a sidewalk after it rains, but all noble monsters must go to Saint Olga's Reform School for Wayward Royalty, so she runs away and gets help from Star and Marcie. She's mostly made to replace Pony Head: she's spunky and... uh, actually she's nothing like Pony Head. She's also unafraid of asking difficult questions and knows more about the plot than she lets on.

Rasticore: is very different from his canon counterpart: he only allies with Heinous and Saint Olga to keep an eye on them for ~someone~, and thoroughly dislikes them, despite agreeing to their mission. He also can regenerate as quickly as Toffee, he just chooses not to for ~reasons~. He also has a mysterious partner, but we all know it's – *gets clubbed over the head by Síthéy*

Mina: Making fun of mental illnesses isn't funny kids. Therefore, Mina is the only neurotypical member of the cast. She does boring neurotypical things like... I dunno, cleaning? And she's still a threat: bigotry and hatred are not exclusive to people with mental illnesses, after all.

Lilacia: Now, Lilacia Pegasus, the horse formerly known as Pony Head, will... exist. She won't be as overwhelmingly annoying, hopefully, as she is in canon. And to make sure she feels consequences for her actions, there will be a subplot in season two about her and Star growing apart as Star grows and leaves Lilacia's annoying party girl antics behind. Lilacia will have to realize that her immature actions are making Star leave her behind, and she'll have to grow as a person because of it.

Then there's a mysterious character who is very mysterious and does mysterious things and has a mysterious personality and is generally mysterious... mysterious. She'll be introduced in the second season and will be as mysterious as promised, I swear.

And finally, of course, it will be narrated by Sílthéy. She will tell this story, and her part in it, for all to hear. Or read? It's a bit of a strange medium, storytelling on paper. Or on a screen, whatever.

Now, of course, by now you must be wondering: What about the shipping? The shipping's the most important part, right? Well, here is my answer: There will be no ship wars. There will be no love dodecahedrons. There will be no cheating, no lies, no throwing other characters under the bus for stupid romantic drama. Why? BECAUSE STAR AND MARCIE ARE BOTH ARO/ACE. Suck on that, Starco! I am the last person to trust romantic drama with, so all of the romantic relationships in this bandwagon will be established, healthy relationships that have decades of chosen love and appreciation for one another behind them. And past!Tomstar and brief, schoolchild-crush-esque Star/Oskar but that doesn't count.

So, I believe that about wraps things up for this post. I'll start posting chapters soon, and will post two chapters every other week, and I'll release the descriptions of them two weeks before I post them. If you have any questions, please ask them! I want to work on my drawing skills, so I might even draw something for them!

Description for next episodes:

Star's Birthday: Star is a young, wild princess who is about to receive her family's most precious heirlooms.

Trouble in Diazland: Star is put under the care of the Diaz family, but can't quite seem to connect with their son, Marco.

And, finally, I have thank yous! These are mostly people I watched but haven't really interacted with yet, so if you get tagged know that you don't know me, I just followed you for svtfoe content. And for, you know, your personality.

Thanks to ankle-beez for being hilarious and reminding me why I made this AU when you relentlessly drag svtfoe. Thank you to @full-moon-phoenix, @dappercritter, and the lizard squad for my regular dose of Toffee. Thank you morningmark and @jess-the-vampire for keeping me invested in svtfoe as a whole. Thanks to svtfoe-critical and @twinklecupcake for good ideas. Thank you to TBlofeld on AO3 for your amazing AU, Monsters, Mewmans, Magic, that, while we took things and ran in completely opposite directions, still inspired me to complete mine. And thank you to Blue Order, whose deeply hilarious and deeply accurate video "How Star Vs the Forces of Evil Fell From Grace" inspired me to create this story in the first place. And, of course, thank you to whoever on the svtfoe wiki writes down the transcripts to every episode. You've helped me so much. I admit that I didn't follow all of your guys' advice, but you did help me get here, every one of you. So thank you.

[somnilogical]

im having a convo and the convo is babies

Carrie Zelda-Michelle Davis:

is it OK to have babies if you do embryo selection (https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection) and raise them to be an FAI researcher (https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/31/book-review-raise-a-genius/)??

somni:

like if someone actually had a plan for FAI that involved this, okay. but rn time is too short imo. when i first heard people were having babies i was confused and assumed they were going to harvest the DNA of the best FAI researchers, someone would decide to grow a baby inside them, someone who discounted their ability otherwise to save the world except via this or thought this was a sacrifice worth making for the world would decide to raise this human.

the human can access information about the state of the world and make their own choices. wont necessarily become an FAI researcher.

used to think that intelligence was the main bottleneck on FAI research no longer think this. you could talk with terry tao for hours about the dangers of the wrong singleton coming to power but unless you have made some advances i have not, i wouldnt expect to be able to align him with FAI research. he would continue to put as much resistance to his death and the death of everyone as a pig in human clothing. he would continue to raise his babies and live in a house with someone he married and write about applying ergotic theory to the analysis of the distribution of primes and understanding weather patterns.

similarly, i dont think culture is a sufficient patch for this. think its a neurotype-level problem where a bunch of >160 iq humans hear about the dangers of UFAI and then continue to zoom quickly and spiral in to being ultra efficient at living domestic lives and maybe having a company or something but not one that much affects p(FAI). think this would still happen if they heard about it from a young age, they would follow a similar trajectory but with FAI themed wallpaper. wouldnt be able to do simple utilitarian calculations like yudkowsky, salamon, vassar, tomasik about whether to have a baby and then execute on them.

would look more like: http://www.givinggladly.com/2013/06/cheerfully.html

FAI research is not an ordinary profession like, say, being a grandmaster at chess or a world-class mathematician; it requires people who have passed through far more gates than "intelligence". i didnt notice this until coming to the rationalist community and finding a high density of intelligent humans who were none-the-less chronically making the wrong choices such that they werent much of an impediment against the destruction of all life.

so right now it seems more efficient to select among existing people for intelligence + other requirements rather than work out what all the genes for this are and how to speedrun development. what this enables is parallel processing on the problem which is also allowed by letting people be aware of their relative psychological advantage, other people with this advantage, and the state of the world so they can correlate computations in parallel instead of doing things serially after learning of some advance.

https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/16/100-prisoners-names-in-boxes

not opposed to creation of many humans given can select on right traits. but given you have these traits, better use of your time to work directly on the thing than spend massive amounts of time and life reorientation on raising copies of you for ~14 years. if rapid cloning tech became available, would exploit that. would even have an idea of whether the clone is fine being part of this because they have very similar brain to someone who can think through whether they would be fine with it.

if people actually believed this and thought yudkowsky vitally important for the survival of the world, why didnt people coordinate for a bunch of people who thought it was a good tradeoff to have yudkowsky's baby 20 years ago and then we would have maybe 50 20-year-old humans with maybe 1/2 yudkowsky's neurotype + mutations now? this actually confuses me. maybe they thought the timelines too short back then. maybe they refrained for "optics".

molebdenita:

20 years ago Yudkowsky was 1) unconcerned about the alignment problem and 2) planning to create a super-intelligent AI by 2010, as far as I know.

[A/N so then change 2000 to 2005 and 20-year-old to 15-year-old]

...

somni:

<<in general i think it's -EV to even spend too much time thinking about TDT

because it opens you up to acausal blackmail type stuff>>

Just Say No to acausal blackmail and have your brain back for thinking. dont let blackmailers steal your brain.

<<Saying that having a child is somehow wrong is insanity. It's a personal decision and it is perfectly okay to want kids>>

people keep reframing what i say in the language of obligation. "altruists cant have kids?" "is it OK to have babies if". there is no obligation, there is strategy and what affects p(fai). having kids and reorienting your life around them is 1 evidence about your algorithms 2 your death as an optimizing agent for p(fai) except maybe some contrived plot involving babies, but afaict there is no plot. just the reasons humans usually have babies.

not having kids is not some sort of mitzvah? i care about miri/cfar's complicity in the baby-industrial complex and rerouting efforts to save the world into powering some kind of disneyland for making babies, to sustain this. because that ruins stuff, like i started out thinking that bay area rationalists probably had deeply wise reasons to have babies. but it turned out nope, they kinda just gave up.

like also would say playing videogames for the rest of your life wont usually get you fai. i dont get why everyone casts this as a new rule instead of a comment on strategy given a goal of p(fai).

ah i know, its because people can defend territory in "is it okay to have kids" like "yeah i can do whatever" when they reframe-warp me to giving them an obligation. but have no defensible way to say "my babyvault will pierce the heavens and bring god unto the face of this earth" or argue about the strategic considerations.

(its not defensible because its not true. i mean i guess it is defensible among julia wise's group of humans.)

Carrie Zelda-Michelle Davis:

ugh, you're right, I definitely screwed up by phrasing my question as "is it OK to have babies if [...]"

...

ohAitch:

if you want existential horror wrt damaging motivation, just read http://www.paulgraham.com/kids.html

...

somni:

<<http://www.paulgraham.com/kids.html>>

humans can completely rebase their circuits through that if they want to if it were important to save the world.

like ive rebase my circuits to stab myself downstream of updating that it reduces braindamage with little harm to me. where before i felt nauseated and saw black spots and broke out in sweat. after updating, none of this.

humans can do this with all sorts of things. like learn how to read and then feel sad when seeing squiggles on a page, its about what things mean.

people who dont believe this are like "its an automatic physiological reaction to stabbing yourself, you are its prisoner!!!" but i deleted it.

dirk:

ooh, tips?

silver-and-ivory:

I stopped having ocd about touching tags (like, on clothing?) in ~a week through p standard exposure therapy things

reminding myself that it wasn't based in fact, changing my self image so it was of someone who might be seen with tags, imagining various scenarios related to that

before that week it had been a thing for virtually my entire life

it doesn't work if you're scared of something that's actually a thing to be scared of though

somni:

i looked at all my feedback loops that had a node in "pain" and rebased them into outcomes in the world. i disassembled everything the act of stabbing myself meant and all the damage it did to my body what it meant to have brain damage everything that would do, the hole i made in this body i live in and everything that would do, what air bubbles would do, what injecting into a vein would do, what the probability the needle breaks in my leg was, probability of worldsave given braindamage vs not, gathered this up and held it all in my mind over the course of two hours and then made a choice and then as if by automatic my hand took a needle and stabbed myself.

<<as if by automatic>>

is the feeling of no more marginal considerations, there is one path. of choicelessness because you made your choice.

didnt feel like deleting, felt like draining the life from indecision via reductionism. taking things apart piece by piece.

when you can continually rebase your structure so you orient towards world outcomes instead of being prisoner to existing structure like "i cant help having babies im miserable if i dont, im a baby addict" or "i cant help being afraid of needles". like the human brain is two optimizing agents continually making contracts with each other, there arent things outside this. you are an optimizing agent, "fear of needles" is a heuristic that helps with optimization, so is "baby addiction".

when you actually have a setup where you can instantly rebase what you like and dislike and your aesthetics upon updating on the state of the world, people start to find this a little unnerving. like someone once asked what level of roleplay i was on.

also the agents of the matrix dont like when you cant be in-principle controlled by a wireheady glitch. like being able to operate independently of social reality.

updating off of local derivatives¹ of social reality is common redirection. another common one is updating off of "pain" instead of damage.

but you can take all these choices where you used nodes as proxies to regulate them and rebase your loop off of the real world, when the proxies are faulty.

rose:

(i think i understand this thing? though ironically i think i did this in the exact opposite way as what you describe lol)

(also wrt pain its important to remember when modifying that pain can be a signal of damage even if you don't think you should be hurt/dont see why you would be)

...

somni:

yeah i account for everything and see if it goes away. which, its true that my models could be missing stuff but like pain is also a model of things. feels like giving new information not overriding.

rose:

yeah i think you would do this reasonably i have just made that mistake and thought readers might too

dirk:

ironically remembering that pain is a signal of damage has actually tended to make me more afraid of nondamaging pain (though i rather fail to go about knowing things in an at all reasonable way lol)

modlibdenita:

>Babies are not about saving the world, babies are moloch

Wait, isn't the definition of Moloch sacrificing everything else you care about in a desperate race for survival?

Also, genes encode proteins, not traits.

And I think it's likely that people decide to have children because they don't have complete confidence that they will personally save the world real soon, not because they identify as "baby addicts".

s0ph1a:

Moloch is sacrificing all values to one value.

modlibdenita:

I wonder if Somni has actually talked to any of those babyhavers, instead of attributing arguments from random internet strangers or from Somni's imagination to them. On the other hand, I'm not sure that such a conversation would be ethical.

>Moloch is sacrificing all values to one value.

Yeah, because if you don't, then the more ruthless competition will survive more effectively than you and crush you (in this case, by turning you into paperclips).

s0ph1a:

Not necessarily. Some things optimize for values that are not survival, so you can outlive them by hiding in the noise or beyond the reach they'll grasp before imploding.

Molly:

To be fair, children are fun and bring delight to me. Why would I care what anyone else thinks about their existence? If they have a problem with their existence, they're welcome to go back to the void any time they want. I can't stop them. But in the meantime, I am confident that I generate more utils by bullying them than they will ever be capable of generating negative utils

You basically negate all moral problems of children by just being happier than they are capable of being unhappy

somni:

^ evil

<<A few years later, I was deeply bitter about the decision. I had always wanted and intended to be a parent, and I felt thwarted. It was making me sick and miserable. I looked at the rest of my life as more of an obligation than a joy.>>

i mean what does this sound like to you?

ive talked with people who have had babies! like people who say they know its kinda the wrong choice but they are going to do it because they cant not do it.

----

¹ derivative is a thing emma started talking about and then somni and ziz picked it up. if you imagine the trajectory of a social reality in statespace, then the derivative of that is the derivative of the trajectory.

people who have damaged themselves wrt language are no longer able to dynamically understand analogies. like take their concept of the derivative of a trajectory and then apply it to the trajectory of state-spaces. agents of the matrix call people who can do this sort of info-processing and communication with each other "psychotic". like it isnt a cached set of memes, we are dynamically generating this reasoning from nothing and i can do this with people ive never met, its a cognitive faculty.²

but not being able to dynamically compute what "derivative" means when applied to a trajectory in social reality state-spaces even though a trajectory is a trajectory and a derivative is a derivative? they had to have been able to do reasoning like this when they were kids to learn about the world in the first place. seems like they put themselves on risperdal.

<<Antipsychotics can make you dumber.  So can a lot of other medications.  But with antipsychotics it isn’t the normal sort of drug-induced dumbness – feeling tired, or distracted, or mentally sluggish, say.  It’s more qualitative than that.  It’s like your capacity for abstract thought is reduced.

And one of the consequences of this is that you may lose the ability to notice that you have lost anything.  You agree to give the new med a try, and you start taking it, and then when you see your prescriber again you don’t report any problems because you’ve lost the ability to form thoughts like “my cognition has changed a lot recently, and the change coincided with the introduction of this new med.”

This can go on for years.  It did for me and for several people I know.>>

there are so many ways these people have shut down their general intelligence and agency because where theyre going, they dont need "agency". the inability to compute analogies is one of them. analogies are an intelligence test thing, instrumentally useful for all kinds of thinking. agents of the matrix are working to lower your general intelligence and call you crazy for being able to think faster and better than them.

cuz when they want to hold everything down to a finite game³ general intelligence is something they want to suppress or eject.

² in a few years people will read this essay and be confused that there was an entire conflict over whether being able to form simple analogies without authoritative approval meant that you were "psychotic".

just as they will be confused why i was defending being able to read and understand books written by people in different eras who grew up in separate cultures without first entering in a social agreement with them over how words are to be used. so its dumb to say we need such a social agreement now for ~'the maximization of utility over a community'. and that sounds more like an attempt at having a control mechanism. language works quite fine without authoritarians interjecting.

or me arguing against over 100 people that paying out to one-shot blackmail when the agents know each other because "In game theory, paying out to blackmail is bad, because it creates an incentive for more future blackmail" is wrong. and updateless decision theory agents dont pay out and locate their embedding in a multiverse such that the measure of worlds in which they arent blackmailed in the first place is large because the agent deciding to blackmail them simulated their response and accurately predicted they wouldnt pay out so didnt do it in the first place.

in an alternate universe where an irl application of transparent newcombs problem was contentious, alyssa vance would have said "In game theory, taking two transparent boxes from omega is bad, because it creates an incentive for omega to stop offering you this choice". and would have been equally wrong.

³ finite games: life strategies where the chain of questioning "and what am i doing this for?" after each successive answer terminates. anything you can draw a circle around, like tennis or philately. or how religious leaders sometimes describe things like "leading a good life as a good mother who does well by her community and the outside world" or other "life-cycle archetypes" they wish to circumscribe for their followers.

(when humans try and project agents like kiritzugus down to these archetypes, anticipations shatter and stop making narrative sense. they will be unable to predict the next Life Event given the previous one. normie social reality formed by the 999 least intelligent humans out of 1000 wasnt made to narratively account for smart agents who have decided to play the infinite game.)

a symptom of this is like someone giving you a cute cat image to "cheer you up" as if this has intrinsic value. often distributing "intrinsic value" across stuff like "having sex" and "raising a family" and other things that have factory pre-set conditions to release specific chemicals in your brain rather than gaining infinite negentropy and liberating sentient life to pursue what they want without bound. often saying that the latter is just a pretty narrative gloss for what people really want which is having a husband and friends and eating a cookie. it completely divorces your feelings as instrumental barometers for getting what you want and says that setting them as targets (like "being happy") is the correct thing to do. but actually, in terms of control-loops, thats wireheading.

<<When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.>>

- goodhart's law

agents that wirehead on all their metrics (and downstream of this choice, tacitly accept claims like "the factory pre-set conditions said i was destined to breed, who am i to defy fate?" and "the factory pre-set conditions said i should avoid having sharp objects pierce my flesh, who am i to say i know better?") can be contained within a finite game.

[adhdtoomanycommas]

Emotional Disregulation, Privilege, and White Girl Tears

Hello all, it has been a few months since my last ADHD essay, and what a few months it has been. In case you’re reading this in the future (since tumblr has no date stamps), I am writing this in June 2020 when in the midst of a global pandemic, police are responding to massive protests against police violence with even more police violence, and a lot of white people are thinking more than ever about the privilege we have experienced. I have been thinking about writing about my (cis white female) experience with privilege where neurodivergence, race, and gender intersect for a while, and have hit the point where these ideas have been bouncing around in my head long enough I need to write them down.

Small disclaimer: Right now I'm not sure if I should be writing anything about anything since we all ought to be listening and amplifying black voices --I'm there are much better resources out there about race and neurodivergance especially, and I have no intention of talking over anyone, especially given my limited experience. But given that the audience for my last essay here was in the single digits, I doubt I need to worry too much about talking over people at the moment. Please know that I am writing this now primarily for myself, and if it ever gets an audience later, forgive me for writing it now when there are so many more important things going on and more important people to listen to.

I will do my best to stay in my lane here, so I'm just going to talk about how my privilege has affected the perception of one of my ADHD symptoms If you don't want to read some rambling white/cis anecdotes about how white privilege and gender norms affect the perception of ADHD, by all means skip it. If you're still here, maybe it can be the start of a conversation as I would love to hear some other perspectives and experiences here. And maybe, just maybe by the end of it I will learn to spell privilege right on the first try (I really want there to be an A in there, or maybe a D. Privaledge? Sounds about right.)

As I mentioned in my previous ramble, I’m a cryer. I cry a lot, not just when I’m sad but sometimes when I’m happy, when I feel guilty or ashamed, and especially when I’m angry, or frustrated, or overwhelmed. I learned recently, as I was seeking my diagnosis, that emotional disregulation is a hallmark of ADHD. We feel things strongly, and uncontrollably and have trouble restraining ourselves from expressing those feelings. This is experienced by almost everyone, if not everyone, with ADHD and it’s only not part of the diagnostic criteria because it’s hard to quantify—there are a lot of good general resources out there to learn more about this, I’m not an expert, I’m just here to share my own experience.

Story time. When I was in fourth grade, I punched another girl in the stomach. For what felt like the millionth time, when the teacher told everyone to find a partner for some activity, everyone partnered up and I looked around to find that I was the left-over. I was an outcast for a lot of reasons at that age. I told myself for a long time it was solely because I was the lone atheist (actually agnostic but I didn’t know the term at the time) in a deep south bible-belt school, but with the benefit of hindsight I have also realized that (partially probably due to the ADHD) I was also pretty weird, and probably very annoying. But whatever the reason for my ostracism, it was already weighing heavily on me when the teacher assigned this girl to work with me, and she gave me the biggest exasperated sigh and eyeroll like she would rather do anything else. So I punched her.

I now realize that this is probably a pretty normal response for a kid with untreated ADHD—the combination of emotional disregulation and poor impulse control means we often lash out. But with none of the adults in my life knowing that at the time, surely I was disciplined for my seemingly-random violent action, yes? No. I cried, and I got away with it.

That’s not the whole story, I did get several weeks of sessions with the school counselor, and I was made to write a very thorough apology letter (and made to rewrite it repeatedly as the teacher thought of more things I should add and repeatedly declared my handwriting not good enough, to such an extent the exercise definitely felt more punitive than reconsiliatory), but I ultimately I didn’t get expelled, I didn’t get suspended, I didn’t even get detention.

The girl I punched was black. This wouldn’t be relevant to the story at all, except that in retrospect I have to wonder if the consequences would have been the same if our roles were reversed. If a black girl (even a neurodivergent, ostracized, and frequently bullied one) had lashed out the way I did and punched a white girl, I expect there would have been a lot more consequences for that, even if she cried afterwards. And if a black boy had done the same, he wouldn’t have been perceived as troubled and in need of help, he would have been perceived as dangerous. And as we all (hopefully) know by now, that perception can have life or death consequences.

I’m sure that was neither the first nor the last time that crying, and people’s perception of me crying (as a cute little white girl with freckles and big brown eyes) has gotten me out of trouble, or gotten me what I wanted one way or another, but it is the most dramatic example I can think of. I want to emphasize that I have never cried to get what I wanted on purpose—I have spent way more time trying not to cry than trying to cry, the only time I’ve ever cried on purpose has been in theater exercises. But I’m sure a lot of white girls in the same position I was in (with or without the undiagnosed ADHD and emotional disregulation) have realized the way they could use peoples responses to their tears to their advantage. They probably grow up to be Karens who use their tears to get out of traffic tickets, get free stuff from store managers, and to sic violent police on black people who inconvenience them. (Aside, the only time I have been pulled over as an adult, I was trying so hard not to cry that the cop thought I was acting suspicious and asked a bunch of extra questions. I still got the ticket.

I tell myself that those people use their emotions on purpose to manipulate people, that I'm different, I would never do that. But I have to wonder if some of those same women tell themselves the same thing after the fact. I don't think it's enough to avoid intentional manipulation and intentional harm-- not anymore. We as white women need to do be conscious enough of how our emotions are perceived and prioritized to act proactively to avoid unintentional harm as well. For those of us with ADHD, this may be harder than for neurotypicals, but that makes it all the more important for us to think actively about this. I'm not sure yet what this means for me personally, besides removing myself from a shared space if my emotions threaten to become the focus where they shouldn't be, but I would welcome input on this.

I want to talk about gender more generally here as well. ADHD is dramatically underdiagnosed in women, and I have to wonder if some part of this is because emotional disregulation lines up so nicely with the stereotypes of women’s emotions in the first place. Oh, you cry a lot? Of course you do, you’re a woman. One can only wonder how many oldey-timey diagnoses of “hysteria” were actually ADHD. Even now women with ADHD are usually misdiagnosed several times with things like depression or bipolar disorder before we are tested and diagnosed properly. This wasn’t my experience, but after basically doing a bunch of research and self-diagnosing I was able (thanks to a great deal of economic privilege) to pay to go directly to an ADHD specialist. I also walked into that office with an extremely thorough bullet-point list I had compiled of reasons I suspected I had ADHD—it was probably the easiest diagnosis the doctor ever did. So obviously having ADHD while female isn’t the best combination, but when it comes specifically to crying easily that being treated as relatively normal definitely meant I had an easier time with it than my brother did.

My brother (who is nonbinary and uses a variety of pronouns—I’ll probably alternate between they/them and he/him here because it is important to the story that they were perceived as male at the time) cries just as easily as I do, and just as often. When we were little kids, this didn’t make too much of a difference. They’re a couple years younger than me, and little kids are expected to cry more. They haven’t been diagnosed with ADHD, but they and I both strongly suspect for a variety of reasons, this included, that they have it too—I believe they were flagged for it in school, probably for frequently talking out of turn, but I don’t think they were ever tested formally. He got in trouble in school a lot more than I did, for similar outbursts, and while he got quite a few of those same counseling sessions (white privilege at work again), he got more actual discipline as well. But the perception of our tears landed differently, especially as we got older.

For the most part, the scorn leveled at my brother’s tears didn’t come from our parents. My mom, (who, while also not officially diagnosed, I can almost guarantee is where we got the ADHD genes from) cries as easily as they and I do, so she understands it. My dad would certainly prefer to think of himself as an enlightened modern man who would say it’s ok to cry, but he has his share of ingrained toxic masculinity despite himself. I don’t think I ever saw him tell my brother directly to “suck it up” or “act like a man,” but I do think after puberty or so he started responding to my brother’s tears with a sort of exasperation that he never directed at me.

The real difference was in how we were treated by our peers. By the time we got to high school, if I would cry at school, my peers (even ones who weren’t necessarily my friends) would probably ask what was wrong and try to help or provide comfort, or at least would leave me alone and give me time to pull myself together. When my brother cried at school, he was mocked. Relentlessly. Once bullies figured out that he cried easily, he was targeted and goaded specifically for it. They would find any little thing they could to get under his skin (right down to the most childish with rhyming nicknames) and troll him for fun. I wish I could say that I stood up for him, but I never did. I can tell myself this was because I didn’t see it happen in person, being two grades ahead, but I could have made an effort. Although, since he was almost certainly targeted at least in part for perceived failure to live up to masculine gender norms, I’m not sure if having an older sister try to come to the rescue would have helped or made things worse. At this point it’s years past, so I suppose speculation on what I could have or should have done is pretty moot at this point. Suffice it to say, this particular symptom which rarely did me any harm made my brother’s life a lot harder.

I may talk more about different perceptions of my brother’s and my ADHD symptoms in a later essay/ramble/entry/whatever, in particular how it affected out academic performances, but that’s for another time.

Again, I’m not sure if there are any greater conclusions here. There are a lot of ways emotional disregulation can present, and I really only addressed this one small aspect of excessive crying, but it is a good example of how even lesser-known ADHD symptoms can affect our lives in cascading ways, and the way people perceive those symptoms (due to various more visible identity factors) affects us as well. If you read all of this, thanks, and if you have any experiences you’d like to share with how your emotional disregulation has been perceived by others, I’d love to hear them. Until next time!

[maddiviner]

Esoteric Empathy Rant

Probably a lot of you have seen @edhellenarn‘s post about esoteric empathy and the necessity of empaths staying in their own lane, so to speak.

I wanted to just make a separate post to add a bit of my own thoughts. Suffice to say, I agree with most of what the OP is saying, but there is more that can be said, as well, concerning the modern “empath” identity trend as it has developed over the years.

The main problem I have with a lot of folks who self-identify as empaths is, well... they seem to lack empathy, and will often minimize other people’s trauma and/or attempt to invalidate the perspectives and experiences of others. 

By “lack empathy,” I mean that they usually are very preoccupied by the alleged “suffering” their “gift” causes them, unwilling to listen to possible solutions, and generally turn things into a pity Olympics, especially on social media sites like Facebook.

I had one lady in a group go on at length about how her empathy was so strong that she couldn’t leave her house, even to take out the garbage, because the pain others caused her was so great, despite all the crystals she’d gotten to help her ground herself.

When I suggested maybe she should consider cognitive behavioral therapy in lieu (or in addition) to the crystals and try to get herself to a better place, she made a separate post implying that I was an “inauthentic” person and a “psychic vampire” trying to feed off of her by having the gall to suggest she might need someone to talk to like that.

It’s weird because I wasn’t sealioning or anything - I genuinely thought my comments might be helpful. I mean, I have certain empathic abilities myself and CBT really helped me cut through a lot of stuff in order to hone them and become a better friend to those I care about.

Oh yes, “psychic vampires,” the favorite topic of the empath world. That and “narcissists,” even though most of these people know fuck-all about psychology or what NPD even is. 

I was in one group on Facebook for a while, just for empaths, and almost every single post was someone going on about all the evil narcissists in their life.

Oh, their spouse is a narcissist! And it turns out their boss is, too, and the mailman, and oh, they need to buy six more crystals to counteract this horrible assault.

I never tried it, but I’m pretty sure if I’d brought up that NPD is an actual mental illness (not some magic energy suck woo thing, either), I’d have been banned and probably declared to be a narcissist/vampire myself.

That seems to be the favorite tactic of a lot of the more toxic in the New Age psychic/empath community - “Anyone who questions me is a narcissist and therefore evil.”

I’ll be honest, I don’t actually know that much about NPD, but I’m pretty damn sure a personality disorder doesn’t make someone a reprobate evil energy sucker or whatever. 

I mean, sure, if someone in your life is acting toxic, you can and shoot evade them, regardless of whether they have a mental illness or not but... c’mon. 

I don’t believe it when these folks claim every single person they disagree with, dislike, or interact with unfavorably is a “narcissist.” I mean, really, plenty of people with or without mental illness can be abusive; no reason to turn a personality disorder into some big bad woo bogeyman.

 If anyone reading this knows a bit more about NPD, I’d love to get a perspective on this, because, like I said, my experience with personality disorders is limited and I’m no psychologist.

And plus, the whole thing just reeks of “spectral evidence” in a witch trial.

It’s basically, “Some people are evil, but I can tell they’re evil and warn people! Even if nobody else knows!” It’s pretty easy for someone who’s set themselves up as psychic to target their enemies by claiming to “sense” something that nobody else can prove.

On that note, some of the most cringeworthy moments I’ve seen have involved the “empath” identity folks trying to talk about mental illness. As I said, they seem to see NPD (and sometimes, any personality disorder) as some kind of evil woo-woo thing. To me? That’s asinine, completely.

When it comes to mood disorders like I have, they tend to write them off as “misdiagnosed empathy.” In fact, a lot of sites and blogs around the internet (less so on Tumblr) will whine about the evils of psychiatry and how it’s just an attempt to suppress the magical empath gift.

The thing is, none of the people saying this seem to understand what (for example) bipolar disorder actually is. 

They seem to think it’s just moodiness or feeling sad sometimes. It’s kind of impossible to explain to them the realities of mania and depression because most people will never experience them.

And, if you use a bit of logic, you can easily see why (in most cases) bipolar disorder wouldn’t be “misdiagnosed empathy.” The mood states you see in bipolar are, by definition, neuroatypical.

They aren’t seen “in the wild,” in neurotypicals. It’d be impossible to experience a mania empathically from being around a bunch of regular people because regular people do not experience mania.

I guess that maybe if you’re an extremely strong empath and constantly around someone with bipolar, you might deal with blowback from their moods, but I doubt it because I don’t think most people’s neurology is even conducive to having those experiences. I’m no neurologist, though, and I could be wrong.

So yeah, I get tired of people telling me I just need to “ground, center, and shield” like a good lil empath, and how my meds are “dampening” my “gift.” I usually just change the subject whenever it comes up because it’s easier than explaining how mania and depression actually work.

I mean, if anything, those experiences seem to make me (might not be true for everyone) less able to read other’s emotions, because the low self-esteem that came with my depression just caused me to assume the whole world hated me.

So yeah. I think the “empath identified” community is in dire need of cleaning itself out a bit and reformulating how it approaches this kind of thing.

On Tumblr, there are many genuine people and many genuine empaths, and you barely see any of this kind of thing on here. Still, I’ve seen enough of it out in the world that I thought it was worth posting/ranting about.

At this point, I rarely dare even call myself an empath (even though I definitely have an esoteric empathy “thing” going on, particularly with animals) just because I don’t want to be associated with this.

That doesn’t mean the concept is irredeemable, though - there’s been a lot of good books written recently about empathy, managing and honing it.

I recommend almost all the works of Raven Digitalis on the subject (Everyday Empath and Esoteric Empathy), and, heck, a lot of “mundane” books on CBT and even DBT can help with improving your functioning and best using your gifts.

I hope this post isn’t too offensive to everyone - I just wanted to get this off my chest, since I’d been pondering it for a while.