#that ones probably a mistake buuuut i mean....its not totally impossible

[pcktknife]

you have to yell when you refer to them

star rail changing all the aeons pronouns from they/them to THEY/THEM is so funny. its most likely the same as how He is capitalized when referring to god in christianity but the sudden change makes it seem like someone on the team is really pissed about the constant misgendering and is not so subtly trying to correct everyone using the wrong pronouns

[12freddofrogs]

I've recently rewatched The Little Mermaid, and I have come to a new headcanon: mermaid culture literally has Love At First Sight.

We all know that Ariel is staring at Eric wistfully from the first. There is an immediate connection there. But what's more noticeable is everyone's reaction when they realise. Sebastian has a dramatic jaw drop when he sees Ariel singing at him - the kind of response one might have if you know its possible she really is in love.

More tellingly, Sebastian very easily agrees to help Ariel win him. A sixteen year old girl (who, granted, has always loved above and has a current painful argument waiting at home) ran away from home to be with a guy she has never actually spoken to. And Sebastian - practical, pragmatic Sebastian - agrees that if he takes her back she will be “miserable for the rest of [her] life.” 

Again, there are a couple of other factors like that her lifelong passion is going to be shattered, but still.

And there's also Triton. Remember the line “Daddy, I love him!”? He accuses her of losing her senses, snapping that humans can't love her back, but he never implies she can't be in love after that first meeting. (Triton knows that's the first time she met Eric - Sebastian told him everything.) Its the response that she's making a mistake, that she shouldn't love a human, but I think he'd have said everything the exact same if he discovered Ariel and Eric had been meeting secretly for a year. Triton never once brings up the idea she can’t be in love with someone she doesn’t really know. 

Plus, “Daddy, I love him!” is a pretty strong statement. It could definitely be a starstruck teenage girl who’s more interested in shutting down her father than really analysing her feelings, buuuut  it certainly doesn’t hurt my headcannon here. 

It also explains certain other areas of the plot. If Ariel grew up in a world where you fell in love at first sight, getting “the kiss of true love” seems a lot easier. From her perspective, Ursula is giving her a tricky task, especially if she can’t prove who she is, but it’s not impossible. Again, maybe she’s just a sixteen year old girl who isn’t thinking things through, who is fresh from her father destroying her study and would rather do anything then go home again. But there’s the possibility she thinks it’s a lot more straightforward than Ursula intends. 

But this all leads to my second point - I think this Love at First Sight goes both ways.

Eric is immediately drawn to Ariel. Like, he’s declaring that he’s going to marry this strange girl who rescued him from drowning. He has spent less time with Ariel then she has with him. Ariel at least saw him playing with his friends, discussing love, indicating that they were similar. Eric decided that he has met his soulmate based on a song, a brief glimpse, and admittedly saving his life.

He knows he’s in love with this mysterious girl. And then he’s spending time with this mute girl in his castle that has the same connection, leaving him conflicted. Because he’s never felt like this before, and now two separate girls are bringing this out in him. He’s in love with both of them - he just accepted he was in love with the singer first, and doesn’t know what to do. 

Frankly, I’d believe that once Ursula realised love at first sight works both ways, she used it to concoct her own love. That could be why she needed Ariel’s voice. Eric wasn’t going to respond to anything but that.

I don’t think it would apply in all situations, of course. Ariel plays ‘He loves me, he loves me not’, which wouldn’t make sense for her to know if all love was requited. The couple in the Poor Unfortunate Souls song would have just talked to each other if they knew the other loved them (which doesn’t mean that they weren’t love at first sight, just that it’s possible to fall in love the slow way here). But maybe it still exists.  

Can you imagine what this would mean for their world? The ideas of sirens would make total sense, because sailors would fall in love with people in the sea and be irresistibly drawn back to them. Maybe some would spend their lives on the docks, wishing they could see that face one more time. Maybe others would refuse to believe it was real. Still others probably went back into the sea in a desperate attempt, giving the real legend of sirens. There probably wouldn’t have been many cases of it, but it must have happened. 

Maybe Ariel is just a teenage girl fascinated with the surface, and got the chance to meet an attractive boy. Maybe she just had a normal crush, and ran away because her father made her home seem unbearable and being with him made more sense. Maybe they just got lucky and turned out to be perfectly well suited for each other.

Or maybe The Little Mermaid could be a perfect soulmate au. 

[irkenheretic]

Does Red have that one genetic disorder? What does it do to Irkens who do have it?

OOOHHH OKAY SO this is all gonna be headcanon stuff for ANX (watch me forget to tag the post as such lmao) so itll be canon divergent at points

so The Red Eye Thing, which has no formal name because why would irkens name it, is a linked gene between the gene that causes red eyes, and a genetic disorder that leaves an irken with a little extra chunk of chromosome in a sex cell that made them. (a sex cell is like, either the sperm or the egg, one of those) not an entire extra chromosome, that doesn’t happen among irkens, but a chunk.

you can’t have red eyes without having The Red Eye Thing, so yes red does have it! ^^

i just have to go on record and say that in ANX, irkens still reproduce naturally. they dont mate for fun or keep the young, but its still not artificial. smeets are also VERY IMPORTANT in irken society as they are seen as the future of the empire (like, assaulting a smeet is so universally hated that if someone is jailed for it they will 100% be killed before they ever stand trial. smeet assaulters are so hated that the control brains know this happens and they just let it happen)

so given how societally important smeets are, it tends to be Very Bad for Red Eyes that the main problem their genetic disorder gives them is infertility. theyre basically looked down upon societally because they’re unable to do a basic biological function that even smallers and defectives can do. 

i mentioned they also have hyperpigmented skin in my other ask, but im putting it here again anyway. skin colors from that hyperpigmentation can range from “dark, but still normal irken dark” to “i have never seen a skin color as dark as yours before holy fuck” these edits i did of red are what he looks like in ANX, and hes on the way far end of the spectrum- out of 100+ characters in ANX, some other Red Eyes, he’s the darkest one. the hyperpigmentation is a result of the extra chunk of chromosome lmao

also, Red Eyes have trouble detecting pheromones other irkens give off. this can be just dulled senses, or it can be a total lack of detection, like what Red has. (ur seeing a pattern arent u, red has a more “severe” case of his genetic disorder.)

the gene also causes developmental disorders which... aren’t exactly on a sliding scale per se? it’s kind of like autism where every Red Eye acts differently from each other that there’s no real “universal experience” for how this specific thing presents itself.

the red eye gene is passed on from parent to child, it won’t mutate and it can’t be carried- you either have it or you don’t. 

“but how can that be if they’re infertile!” i said infertile, not sterile. the reason Red Eyes are infertile is because, since the extra chromosome chunk was in a sex cell, at least 50% of their sex cells will be affected with the extra chunk, too. irkens have a biomechanism that purges cells with missing or extra chromosome parts (extra-chromosome irkens are relatively fine, missing-chromosome irkens are like, hatched with no brain or are stillhatches so good that thats... there) 

but since those cells are purged, that’s at least half of the fertile cells. of course if they have a more severe case, like red, it would be more than half. so it is moderatley hard to nigh impossible for Red Eyes to conceive or fertilize, depending on who it is. so since only Red Eyes can pass down The Red Eye Gene, and these bitches rarely have smeets, there’s only like.... one Red Eye per generation, maybe two.

(fun facts: there used to be more Red Eye family lines, but some idiot got it in his head that Red Eyes caused defectiveness and that most defect trials were a false positive so in order to save everyone he needed to kill all Red Eyes, so now there.... aren’t..... any more......) (yes the control brains crazy murdered that idiot. they hate him so much sometimes they go “hey remember the red eye genocide guy? what the fuck, right?”)

so tl;dnr: it’s a genetic disorder caused by an extra chunk of chromosome in either a sperm or egg that made the irken. it causes infertility, hyperpigmentation, low or no ability to detect irken pheromones, and a developmental disorder that presents differently in everyone that has it.

tl;dnr 2: irken down’s syndrome. 

under the cut im gonna go on about how society sees irkens with this condition (under the cut because.... sexual assault tw. also ableism tw)

Red Eyes are seen as... well... broken pieces of shit. before red was tallest, there WAS another Red Eye Tallest in recent history- tallest Zim. (NO RELATION to invader zim haha) zim becoming tallest made Red Eyes not be.... as hated, but there’s still this societal idea of “you are a broken piece of shit and your cells should have been purged.... buuuut if you do something above and beyond whatever it is your job is, we Might think you’re cool. also we probably won’t say this to your face but we’re thinking it really hard at you, and you KNOW we’re thinking it, so there’s no point in not saying it, but we still won’t so you cant claim we hate you. but make no mistake, we do.” so red just had, the BEST time growing up.

remember in my last ask, i said Red Eyes are liked a little too well sometimes? well... due to their infertility, they’re frequent targets for rape, especially in the military, since military irkens aren’t allowed to mate. nab a Red Eye and you can have all the fuck you want without any, er, evidence. red honestly was lucky he was constantly stickied to purple as an elite, otherwise Horrible Things could’ve happened.

was the general populace worried about a Red Eye tallest? yes. yes they were, back when it was tallest zim. they thought he’d be shit at it due to how “broken” he was. there was a LOT of public outcry, especially since zim was on the shorter side of tallests. they were ready to be all “see, Red Eyes are NOTHING,” until zim was actually an amazing tallest. he was so good the control brains liked him, and the only other modern tallest they actually liked was miyuki. he did great things for the empire, everyone loved him. when tallest red became tallest, everyone was much less worried. but they were still thinkin it, ya dig. 

is red related to tallest zim? yes, zim is red’s grandfather.

is red’s tendency to forget words a part of his developmental disorder? it could be, could not be. there’s not much of a sample size due to yknow, the genocide, so there’s no-one to compare his symptoms against. the disorder presents differently in everyone so even if red is the only living Red Eye with that symptom, doesnt mean its NOT a symptom ya dig? but im gonna word of god it and say yes it is

can you have the same chromosome thing without being a Red Eye? yes! in this ask i talk about spork having a learning disability- he has the same chromosome thing, it just gives him different symptoms because he doesnt have the specific instance that red eyes have.

can you have red eyes without the chromosome thing? no, the gene for red-colored eyes is stickied to the Extra Chunk gene, and unlike chromosome issues, which can happen to any irken, an irken will not randomly mutate a gene for red-colored eyes.

is the term “red eye” derogatory? it was EXTREMELY derogatory before tallest zim took power. now it’s just a general term for a red eyed irken, but... irkens will still use it in an insulting way. like... “queer” is the best parallel i can draw. used to be a slur, now is a general term, but some people still clearly use it as a slur against others. 

are red eyes called slurs? YES. they are targets for The Word. The Worst Word In The Irken Language, So Bad You Can’t Even Call It “The __ Word” Because It’s Too Close To Saying The Word. It Is Just, “The Word.” it used to be WAY worse before the genocide, simply because there were more of them. it decreased even more after tallest zim took power, but make no mistake, it’s still out there. also The Word translates out to “condemned obsolete bastard” with a side order of “the beginning of The Word sounds like im spitting on you and thats also exactly what it means.” its an awful slur its like if every human slur had an orgy

(was red called slurs growing up- YES.)

are Red Eyes defective? they can be! defectiveness is in the PAK, not in an irken’s biology. that’s why they’re called genetic disorders and not genetic defects, to separate them from the “we are going to execute you” defectiveness. they’re still scorned as if they are defective, though. sometimes theyre called “worse than defectives” as a jab at their infertility- like, even the empire’s worst can do that, ya dig? 

back in The Old Days, there was probably a mix of defective and non-defective Red Eyes. now they’re all defective by coincidence.