#this is way longer than it really needs to be but that's because i'm neurodivergent baby and i need to say everything exactly

[ourceliumnetwork]

i did the biggest and scariest of the things on my list (the last thign on my list in fact) and it took like. MAYBE 5 minutes total including login time navigation and page loading.

now i get to have fancy Oreo Poptarts because i'm a big strong boy whose knee is slightly dislocated (it's fine i just went too hard and i'll wrap it up here in a minute) and did a big scary thing and also now gets to fully devote brain power to anxiety about the (potential) hole between two of my heart chambers and the accompanying doctor's appointment tomorrow morning.

[halfgirl-halfdolll]

Extremely self-indulgent. For the neurodivergent girlies. English isn't my first language, so my apologies for any mistake. I also have no idea how to write a Scottish accent 🧘🏻‍♀️ bear with me

You knocked on the dark hardwood door as you've had done plenty of times before.

It has been almost six months since you've signed that contract. That one, the one where you forfeited 4 years of your life in exchange for stable wages and proper housing.

For someone with no life, no family and no friends (besides the online weirdos you'd talk to from time to time), that was kinda good, if you could say so yourself.

You had stability, even though it came with the cost of being tied down to a military base chock-full of people who didn't really understand you.

That was fine though. THAT, you were used to. It comes with the neurodivergence: the side eyes, the whispers and the isolation.

What you weren't used to, however, was how your heart would race like a rabbit on a run for its life whenever you knocked on that one door. And you had to knock on it quite a lot of times.

You rapped your knuckles against the hardwood once more when you got no reply, cracking the door open just a little bit to peek inside.

"Cap?" You said, voice almost a whisper. After a few seconds, you heard an answer.

"Come in, love. Didn't know it was you." A strong, booming voice came from inside and you swallowed the lump on your throat that always formed whenever you had to go to Price's office.

Not because you were afraid of him, no. On the contrary. Maybe Price and the rest of the task force were the only ones who didn't treat you like an aberration – probably because they were aberrations of their own merit.

Maybe it was stupid of you to get giddy over being treated well by some of your coworkers, but when the bare minimum was so rare, you latched onto it like a dog with a bone.

And in spite of yourself, you couldn't control your own heart. It would be racing like a schoolgirl with a crush whenever you went to visit any of the men from the task force. You gave up on trying to tame it.

"Hi Cap" you said, with a small smile, approaching his desk. On the corner of your eyes, you saw the other three burly men that made up 141 and waved.

"Hey, lass, good ta see ya!" Soap hollered, voice loud as ever. You could probably feel it vibrating inside your bones if he spoke for a little longer and you loved it; as much as you envied it. What wouldn't you do to be just a little bit outgoing like that? Maybe things would be just a tad easier.

"How can I help my favorite secretary?" Price asked, the corner of his eyes wrinkling as he smiled, crow's feet getting a lot more pronounced in a way you probably thought of more than you should.

You scoffed, rolling your eyes.

"I'm your only secretary."

"Doesn't make my statement any less true."

You shook your head and placed a manila folder in front of him.

"I need your autograph, Cap."

"What for?"

"Because I'm your biggest fan and I wanna put it on my refrigerator...?" You answered humorously, and Price raised an eyebrow. You sighed. "We need to authorize the training of a few new recruits and they need your approval. So I need you to sign it."

Price huffed out a low chuckle and began leafing through the needlessly thick document. You poked your finger into the folder, fishing out the last pages, and walked towards the other men sitting on the other side of the office.

"I like today's dress, love." Gaz was manspreading on one of Price's armchairs, head resting on his palm as he gave you an once over. If it were anyone else, you'd probably hate the way you were being perceived – it usually made you feel like a bug being watched through a magnifying glass. But under his gaze, you just felt like a doll being admired.

"Do you, now? It's one of my favorites." You bowed dramatically while holding the hem of the dress. It was just another one of the black frilly dresses that you wore like a signature. It flew around you as you spun on your feet to show the black ribbon on the back.

"Adorable as always. If I wasn't selfish, I would say it's wasted inside this base, but I like to have you around way too much." His eyes gleamed with mirth and, in any other situation, you'd think he was secretly mocking you – but not Kyle. Not any one of them. You knew the compliments were genuine, even if they didn't understand why you insisted on sticking out like a sore thumb when it brought you so many problems.

You knew they would never really understand how masking could hurt you, but you were grateful they still defended your decision on just being yourself.

"Look at tha' key on yer neck." Soap pointed at your necklace. "I ken what's tha' for. It's the key to my heart, aye?" He said with an exaggerated wink and a smile that could blind you.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say." You rolled your eyes, smiling, and pushed a paper into his hand and did the same with Gaz and Ghost.

"I need your autographs as well. You heard my explanation already."

" 'm not built for a life of fame, love." Simon grunted, shifting on his seat right beside Soap.

"Too late, the spotlight already found you. Now you gotta give me your autograph or I'm gonna cancel you on social media."

He huffed.

"Don't ya think I should have been canceled a long time ago?"

"Probably." You shrugged, and handed him a pen. "I like my favorites problematic, what can I say."

Soap barked out a laugh, mindlessly scanning the document and Ghost merely shook his head.

"Do I gotta sign this? Don't really feel like training new runts." The masked man muttered and you shrugged.

"Don't shoot the messenger. I don't really want new young men around me either." You walked back towards Price's desk after collecting the documents and placed them neatly inside the folder after he was done surveying every single fine print.

"What do you guys want for lunch?" You asked as you tucked the documents under your arm. Price clicked his tongue.

"You don't have to keep bothering with making food for us, love. We can all eat at the canteen like everyone else." The older man leaned back on his chair, folding his arms.

You looked to the side, with a small pout on your lips.

"But if I make you guys' lunch, then I can emotionally blackmail you into eating with me at the kitchen." You mumbled, avoiding any and all eye contact.

"So it was all a ploy to keep us nearby? I thought you were doing that because you liked us. I'm so hurt, dear." Kyle spoke up from his seat, a dramatic hand over his chest as he leaned his head back. You put a hand over your mouth, hiding your grin.

"Maybe I'm just learning a thing or two from hanging around tacticians?"

"Aw, Captain, come on. How can we leave the poor doll hangin'? And we get ta eat actually good food, not that canteen slop! Come on!"

Price sighed, shaking his head in defeat.

"Anything you make will be great, love."

"As long as it has proteins and carbs." Ghost added from his seat and you snickered. He had already seen you eating your comfort foods before and, needless to say, he didn't approve of them.

"As long as it has proteins and carbs." Price repeated, with a nod.

"Proteins and carbs, okay, got it." You said with a fierce nod, walking back towards the door to the older man's office. "Meet you guys at the kitchen?"

"1200, sharp." Price said, with eyes as soft as the smile under his moustache. You gave him a small salute on your way out.

"Yessir."

This will probably be a little anthology of scenes I think of, involving poly!141 x neurodivergent reader who works for them as a secretary. They might not have much continuity but I'm using this as a self-healing, self-indulgent blog, separated from my main. Expect mostly fluff and angst from me.

[endearing-dalliance]

My two cents on Jayce's final speech

While I do not consider myself disabled, I have chronic health issues that are sometimes disabling. And I'm used to having to live my life with that in the back of my mind. Not in a self-hating way, simply pragmatically. I need certain medications and technology in order to function in a way I find worth living for. While I certainly don't speak for the entire disabled community, I'm not unfamiliar with the struggle™.

TLDR: they really, really needed a sensitivity reader or disabled person's input. A for the idea, F for the execution

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"You've always wanted to cure what you thought were weaknesses. Your leg."

Jayce: *breaks leg* *leg can now no longer support his weight* *builds brace to compensate for leg weakness* *proceeds to shame Viktor for wanting a permanent fix for his own leg issue*

"Your disease."

Last season, when Viktor's disease was actively killing him, Jayce got Heimerdinger voted off the Council so Viktor could keep researching what Jayce himself joyfully admitted was a potential cure. How hard did this man's head hit the bottom of the pit?

But you were never broken, Viktor.

Why is Jayce the one getting to say what is and isn't broken? Broken is literally defined as "damaged and no longer in working order". The man was in chronic pain, visibly wasting away before our eyes, and born with a body that was not functioning as it should. Viktor describes his body as "eroding". He has never said that it makes him feel bad about himself as a person. Even when he called himself a cripple, its one of a list of obstacles he’s had to overcome to get where he is now. He isn't ashamed, he's proud. And Jayce is inspired by it enough to not to give up on his work. Or his life.

Side note: Some neurodivergent and disabled people use the term broken in a non-offensive way. For some, its a reminder that they the *person* are not broken. For others, its simply a fact of life they adjust to. But that doesn't mean other people get to label them as such.

"There is beauty in imperfections."

Sure, in the same way they used to call tuberculosis "consumptive chic" because it made you pale and thin with red lips. Death isn't beautiful, its devastating.

"They made you who you are, an inseparable piece of everything I admired about you." 

Except, Viktor wouldn't be any less brilliant or determined or humorous if he wasn't disabled. Instantly made me think about this scene from Bojack:

Over and over I have watched the disabled community patiently explaining, passionately advocating, or righteously, ragefully, unceasingly insisting that they are more than their disability. That their disability doesn't define them. To see past it to who they are as a person. That regardless of your personal opinion, they have the same inherent value as an able-bodied person.

I get what Arcane was going for here. I really do. It was a nice idea in theory. But what they ended up with was a well-meaning, able-bodied, privileged person assigning labels to a disabled person's own opinion of himself, tell him what he should and should not do with his body, and then tie this deeply questionable conversation about Viktor's body to Viktor as a person.

And for once true to his S1 character, THAT DID NOT SWAY VIKTOR AT ALL. The last time he saw Jayce, he got soundly rejected. The next scene of them is him continuing to "evolve" Jayce. Ekko's device gave Jayce the opportunity tell Viktor how much he wanted him and THAT made the difference.

[nekropsii]

asking you this since you’re the only person who understands mituna in the entire fandom in my perception of the hs fandom

is it okay to headcanon mituna as autistic? sorry if you get this type of ask a lot/have already answered this type of ask

Instead of answering this question, I will give some food for thought: Mituna has a TBI. He has Brain Damage. This is a core element of his character. Probably the biggest one. In fact, it's so important to him that it's an injury that has remained with him in death. His TBI is a huge, huge part of what makes him... Well, him. It's why he's interesting.

So... Why is a need felt to also declare him as Autistic? Assuming this is a projection thing, since it tends to be most of the time - if you relate to him for his already canonical Neurodivergency, which is Brain Damage, why does one need to give him Autism as well?

Oftentimes when people headcanon him as Autistic, they tend to minimize or even outright erase his TBI. Oftentimes, people say he's Autistic as the reason he's canon Neurodivergent representation... Even though he's shown no real signs of it, but instead is fully written as a character with a Frontal Lobe Injury, and is constantly stated to have Brain Damage.

TBIs and other Neurodivergencies are often seen as less palatable than Autism. On Tumblr especially, it's far more "acceptable" to be Autistic or ADHD or headcanon a character as such than it is to have Brain Damage or literally any other Neurodivergency or acknowledge that a character is written with those. Autism and ADHD are seen as cute and relatable - even though they're very complex and at times devastating disabilities that do have the potential to seriously fuck up your livelihood, much like Depression and Anxiety, and I'm saying this as someone who has and struggles with all 4 - and are often used to erase the presence of other Neurodivergencies. Hell, it's to the point where people use "Neurodivergency" as a synonym for ADHD and Autism.

Again, I'm not going to answer this question for you. I think there's a way someone could potentially make the narrative of Mituna having Autism prior to the TBI compelling - the TBI has essentially stripped him of his ability to mask, after all, so one could make it be a situation where some of these symptoms are ones he already had, but is only just now really getting shit for because he's no longer able to hide it, and part of that tragedy is knowing that had he never been good at masking, his "friends" would have never accepted him. You could get some interesting questions about that. Was the repression worth it? Would it have been better if he'd just been himself the whole time? I think it's extremely valuable to ask yourself why you see any character as any specific minority - necessary, even - and how that affects not only the character's writing in its original text, but also your relationship with said character. Consider optics. Consider the way in which this character is meant to function in the source material. What purpose do they serve, and what is the driving force behind this character? Is Occam's Razor applicable? Are there other explanations as to why they are the way they are? Perhaps ones that are more succinct, and cover more ground?

Yesterday, I watched a film that has provoked a response in Tumblr that I think is applicable. I Saw The TV Glow. It's a film about a Trans Girl who never finds the strength to accept herself or come out. It's an incredibly gut-wrenching watch. It made me cry several times, and there are parts that made me feel a deep pain in my chest. I sat through 95% of the film with a pit in my stomach. I had to lay on the floor in the dark for a while after I finished. There's a scene where the main character is asked whether she likes girls or boys. She says she thinks she likes TV shows, and elaborates by saying that every time she tries to think about that kind of thing, it feels like someone's cutting her open and shoveling out her insides until there's nothing left. Not that there was anything in there to start with, of course - she says she knows there isn't, but she's too scared to look for herself and see.

That scene was about how Gender Dysphoria can completely disrupt your sexuality and repulse you from the thought of that level of connection with others, because it is, in essence, a deep disturbance with the nature of who you are as a person. Many people who are Asexual, or Aromantic, or both, related to that scene because it, on the surface, depicts discomfort with romance and sexuality. What they failed to understand by chalking it up to its own sexuality, is the fact that that scene wasn't depicting a Sex-Repulsed Asexual, or a Romance-Repulsed Aromantic, it was depicting a Trans Girl who is at such deep odds with herself and her identity that she cannot grapple with the concept of loving or being loved.

What, functionally, is the purpose of slapping an extraneous label onto a character that is meant to depict a certain thing? What is the purpose of assigning the label of "Autistic" to a character meant to depict the tragedy of a loss of support after gaining a disability, or "Aromantic" or "Asexual" to a character meant to depict a deep internal struggle with unresolved Gender Dysphoria?

Ask yourself these questions, and carry on from there. See where your mind takes you.

[aro-culture-is]

I've been questioning if I am aro or not for the past year, previously I identified myself as a lesbian because I dont have an interest in men, and I usually feel more comfortable on women. However when I try to imaginr myself in the future I dont see myself being in a relationship in the future, like I am wondeeng "how the hell does one manage a relationship"

But I dont know if I am really aro because when I was in middle school I had a sort of "crush" on a person but I was mostly thinking "Hey this girl is really nice and the only person that understands me maybe I have a crush on her" and I really love the idea of romance and shipping characters and seeing other aromantic people being repulsed by the idea made me question even more.

hi! thanks for reaching out. since it's been a while since I've answered stuff like this, reminder that all asks of this nature are filed under the tag 'am i aro'

Your first paragraph is such a common experience in a-spec communities - initially, most folks start from "well, i'm not attracted to x gender, so I must be attracted to y?" or "well, I'm equally attracted to all genders, so I must be bi/pan?" when the problem is, 0 attraction to one gender is not related at all to how you feel about others, and 0 = 0. You're in very, very good company among a-spec folks, including yours truly - who rotated through the whole of LGBTQ before realizing aromanticism was an option that actually fit very well.

With regards to the second paragraph - first of all, mood! Personally, that "crush" was something we'd later identify as a squish, or friendship crush. Hilariously, we no longer like this particular person at all, as becoming friends led to us discovering our specific neurodivergent flavors interacted to constantly frustrate us. Enjoying - or not enjoying - romance and shipping is not at all something inherent to your attraction.

Plenty of outwardly aro folks talk more about our experiences with romantic repulsion and frustrations with shipping culture because we are in aromantic spaces and talking about the sociological implications, but - personally? I adore shipping, dislike seeing irl romance, and think it's mostly interesting to talk about how romance interacts with expectations and laws in society. I don't like to call myself romance repulsed, romance favorable, any of that - I think those are personally limiting to my identity and how I interact with those subjects. Other folks find it useful as a shorthand to explain how they feel, and that's great too!

I can't tell you what your identity is, but I think it's useful to say this: you've described to me a very, very common story to many a-spec folks. You're seeking advice from me, which tells me it probably matters a lot to you, and I wouldn't be surprised if, in some ways, you feel like you need permission, or verification, or any of those sorts of things.

I think, rather than relying on that - what would happen if, privately, you give yourself permission to explore what it feels like to say "I am aromantic", or "I think I'm aromantic"? How do you feel? Nervous, anxious, bubbly, weighed down, vulnerable - those are all common. But the thing is, if I think of an identity I am 100% sure I do not belong to in that way - I certainly don't feel a little flutter of hope. I don't feel like I might be onto a scary new journey. I just feel like I've said that the world is shaped like a rabbit - nonsensical and wrong. If you feel like there's a possibility - does it hurt you to say, "I might be, and what does that change?" The worst that happens is, quite literally, you learned something about yourself.

-- mod axel

[mdhwrites]

how do you feel about disability rep in the owl house? Anyway it could've been done better? Cause as someone who is neurodivergent (autism) I felt like Luz's arc had unfortunate implications ('shes literally neurodivergent and a Minor' type vibes and mixed in with the whole fantasy vs reality themes and it came off as telling neurodivergent people to reject reality or like we wouldn't be hindered in the slightest by our disabilities in xyz worlds- which feels gross) but I could be reading into this too much. I also don't like how Hunter lost his 'disability' yeah you can compare it to getting a pacemaker or a mobility aid with his problem not being fixed but made better but that 'pacemaker' came at the cost of his best friend and his whole possession situation felt gratuitous to me. I'm really interested in seeing how Hunter could've been done better if you have any ideas

So I am going to try to be as calm and kind on this subject as I can. I feel like I've let a lot of heat come into my blogs lately that I try not to because I've been in distress. I am actually, legally disabled after all. It is the vast majority of my income, not helped by how randomly my brain will just break and I will have no way to get it to work again. I'm on the brink of another who knows how long run of my brain no longer functioning and am clawing to try and keep it together so I can do SOMETHING besides just ramble in these blogs. So I can keep writing or streaming rather than vanish. So this topic is important to me to put it extremely mildly.

To talk about this with The Owl House we kind of have to talk about each angle it takes on this subject one at a time. Eda and Hunter are two sides of the coin for this representation after all. I know you bring up Luz and yes, nuerodivergence can be disabling but if we want to talk about disability, I don't think Luz is actually a part of the conversation. If she is, it's for the theoretical representation of depression in S3 when she is at her worst as a character. People like to claim trauma and depression for why it's okay that she's constantly lying, or why she tries to abandon an entire world despite admitting it's her fault it's in trouble. She is her absolute worse self in that time and... If that is the rep we get for mental illness, I'll wait another five years. I don't want someone who is entirely apathetic to others and makes excuses for their actions to be the one who represents me, not when I hear that shit from assholes on the news too much already.

We'll start positive and head down from there. Eda actually starts out great. With regular medication and self care, she is able to live a fairly normal life. I have admittedly criticized in the past that there is no cure for the curse, that Eda is a slowly ticking time bomb who only through death will not end up harming all of those around her eventually, but I actually want to rescind that. As a dramatization of the anxiety that especially mental disability brings about of that day when everything breaks, even if it never comes, it works. It's within the confines of the fantasy genre and isn't demonized but sympathized that she has to work so hard to hold this back. But she can and she stands strong despite it, stronger than most in her situation in a way that is inspirational.

Then we get our first slip up with her at the end of S1. In order to find reprieve, to come back from the edge... She shares her disability. Her peace of mind, her ability to be a human being, comes at the cost of another person. I say slip up though because one could argue it's dramatization of the communal help that many disabled people need. I worked as a Home Care Aid at one point for someone in a wheelchair. My own family helps me because I am a complete mess of a person. I do my best to be able to function entirely on my own but when you are literally incapable of being a functional human being... Yeah, help is good. Do I like how high of a cost it comes for Lilith? Not really, nor the fact that she becomes disabled in the same way because some people do think disability and mental illness is contagious but I'm willing to let it slide for the sake of dramatization.

Affearances genuinely course corrects to show the small ways in which Eda deals with her illness not just with medication but also understanding of it. Her need to stay calm, the ways she tries to center herself, all so the medication is more of a stabilizer and last resort. That is genuinely good.

Then... A point I'm torn on. In the episode itself, I do not mind the formation of Harpy Eda. The process of coming to not just deal with but accept your disability is big and hard and you can come out the other side feeling like a new person. One could even see the Harpy form like that and even the deals we make with our disability to let ourselves do more like in Eclipse Lake. I'll even retract old heat I gave this for implying your disability can be a superpower because it fits within the genres of fantasy. I will even admit part of this kindness comes from writing this myself and realizing that it's just more fun and exciting to let the disability have upsides to it rather than treat it as purely debilitating.

No, my bigger issue comes from the fact that it is the end of it as a disability. Eda is essentially cured besides some lip service and if they were going to go that route, they should have just said it. In the finale, she loses to the curse in a deeper way than we have EVER seen before... And then freed from it like it's just a snap of her fingers. Harpy Eda is literally just a super form, not her having to genuinely deal with the illness, especially as it just becomes the way she fights. I do approve of the idea of showing that you CAN get better from this stuff, some people do, but it makes me wish they'd just said that. Just admitted that her coming to accept it was the final step. Would that have been realistic? No but I've showcased how many times already how much this rep relies on dramatization? Give us the feel good ending of Eda having mastered it, explicitly, instead of just letting it be up in the air and used for cheap drama in the finale. That makes the whole thing feel almost exploitative because if I lose it like Eda lost it in the finale... I can't just turn that off. I get to be terrified and shaken and have that day firmly implanted into my mind for the rest of my life. For the show, it was shock value instead and I'm not okay with that.

Speaking of things I'm not okay with, let's talk about the other side of this coin: Hunter. Now remember that I was willing to give grace to some elements... Except now they're reinforced by a second character sometimes and that makes it a lot harder to shrug off. We'll get there when we get to Flapjack though.

No, where I actually want to start with for him isn't even that he has a disability, it's actually with Willow. She tries to make it out like being a late bloomer is the same as NEVER being able to do this. Like telling a paraplegic person you understand their pain because you had a cast once. I've had someone go "Yeah, it's hard for me to get out of bed too but I always manage it," while trying to motivate me to just power through anxiety that was LITERALLY CHOKING ME and I wanted to punch them in the face. And this is the start of your ROMANCE PLOT. The core thing that tells the audience that these two are going to get close and get together.

In one scene, it becomes SUPER clear that there is no one on this writing team that actually understands what the fuck it means to be disabled. The nice portion of the blog is over.

Okay, let's actually pull back. I will give Hunter this: In his early scenes, he genuinely comes across as someone who has adapted to his physical disability and the limitations of it. His staff is his aid device and he makes up for lack of magic with increased athleticism. He is by all means, the most dextrous person we see in the entire show and genuinely, the show never takes that away from him. It's also just really easy to forget because the show doesn't exactly give a lot of chances for it to shine, not while it's mostly shitting on him or having the trained soldier lose to others, if he even seems much more physically capable than those around him at all.

But hey, how about first that aid device! We do recognize Luz takes his crutch, right? Like his staff is what takes away his handicap versus the rest of the Isles. That helps him overcome the limitations of his physical disability and an entire episode has the main character steal it from him and blackmail him with it. He is mildly annoyed about this for the entire episode, almost like not having the way that helps him feel normal doesn't mean much to him. It'd be like if in Affearances, Eda didn't get mad at her mom for taking her elixir because her elixir is the equivalent to Hunter's staff. Gwyndolen is demonized for this action while we're supposed to be on Luz's side because Hunter is a bad man who will do bad things if allowed his staff back. That... That isn't okay to me.

Btw, this isn't even the only time this happens in the show. Belos asks Luz to call him Philip. She calls him Belos. The show is really all for just being entirely disrespectful to someone's identity and personhood so long as you are morally better than them. What the fuck?

For the rest of S2, there's a really, REALLY bad flaw with having Huntlow be his ship. EVERY single one of Willow's episodes to some extent features how being a late bloomer, having struggled/struggling with magic, makes her feel like an outcast. That despite the fact that really she just wasn't great at this skill, she gets a lot of dramatic weight to this. Hunter... Doesn't. His disability is almost entirely ignored to prioritize the fact that he's a Grimmwalker or his relationship with Belos. It is just not a part of his character despite the girl he is blushing at explicitly making it clear that this society ABSOLUTELY looks down on Hunter. That not having magic makes you be less than anyone else. Hell, we get more of this from EDA AND LILITH in the first episode of S2 than we ever get from Hunter. The prejudice they are treated with and their struggles to deal with it while Hunter is at best all subtext.

This admittedly starts getting into how this show fucking hates men and how they are almost all at some point a joke, villain or both in their time. So... Yeah, Hunter not being given respect for his disability while the women are is hardly surprising.

The big thing that shatters EVERYTHING is of course Flapjack's sacrifice. You remember how I had to kind of work around how to make Eda making someone else disabled okay? Well now we have a second time where a disabled character is 'cured' to some extent of their disability... By the suffering of someone close to them. This time with literal death.

One of the worst prejudices that disabled people, of any sort but especially mentally disabled/ill people, have to face is that we are burdens and menaces to society. That we are more prone to hurting people than regularly abled people. That there is a price to having us around that everyone would not have to pay otherwise. If there is one thing you CANNOT do with your disability allegory, it is to make the disability cost someone else their life, figuratively or literally, unless you REALLY plan to examine what the fuck that means. TOH does both, once with Flapjack and once with Lilith respectively.

In order to be 'normal', it literally costs Hunter the life of his best friend. In order to be saved from the extremes of her illness, Eda cripples her sister. What the fuck are you supposed to take away from that? And there is no way to square this with it just being a fantastical representation of something. It's not just making the consequences of disability more extreme or reflecting the shared burden that can sometimes be our existence and our need for support. Being cured should be joyous. Instead, it's melancholic, not for the grief of your existence inherently changing, Hunter is meant to purely celebrate that he now has magic, but because it came at extreme cost to other people.

In that one moment, paired with Lilith, I can't approve of TOH as disabled representation. There is no way for me to ever square it, just like how Luz using depression as an excuse to be the worst version of herself makes me not okay with her as nuerodivergent representation. Not when it doesn't explore this stuff and even tries to celebrate and say this is correct, since Luz is never criticized for her awful behavior during her angst arc and Hunter is made out to be better without his disability, no matter the cost.

I am fine if you don't want to show clean or nice representation of these things. Not all disabled people are nice. Not all nuerodivergent people are functional. There is a wide spectrum to our experiences but to take the worst elements of your representation and give them the most narrative weight is BAD. Even Eda suffers from this. Her taking care of herself is mostly in passing. Way more weight is given to Eda not being able to take care of herself. To how missing her medication by even an hour makes her a danger to everyone around her, or even susceptible to manipulation like when King uses her transforming 80% into the Owl Beast. Suddenly, the fact that she manages her condition like many disabled people do feels really overshadowed by the constant reminders, and literal showings, of the danger she poses to those she cares about most. The cost of allowing us to continue to participate in society, the damage we do to others, the harm that comes from a bad day from us, is so much harder to ignore when those are the elements that your work decides to focus on. It especially sucks because it hardly focuses on the pain and incapability of the condition, just the danger. It's all about what it will do to others and not the agony it inflicts on the person who has it.

TOH is bad with almost all of its themes and attempts to be progressive and this is no different. See you next tale.

======+++++======

I am going to assume that it's the same person who sent me essentially a variation of this ask like five times. If you are that worried about me responding, the Discord is where you will get a MUCH faster response, especially since I am kind of trying to pull back from TOH criticism. It has been genuinely kind of nice to talk about other things recently.

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

aita for going no-contact with my ex a couple months after we broke up?

i (22nb) dated my girlfriend (26f) for nearly three years. we were long-distance, and i had intended on visiting her post-covid (we started dating in fall 2020). the relationship was great at first, messaging each other every day and being lovey-dovey. in december 2022, things began to fall apart. she told me that i would never be able to visit her or she would be able to see me due to her homophobic parents. i told her that really hurt because that was a huge part of starting the relationship, and i wasn't sure if i could be completely ldr. we didn't talk for a week or so after that.

while we weren't talking, things began to bubble up. i realized how she was using me almost exclusively as an erp partner/person to write her self-insert fanfics and used me as a bank when she wanted to spend money on nsfw art commissions instead of her phone bill (i had to really be on her about paying back $100+ before all this), and how the relationship was starting to fade compared to when we first started dating. i brushed this aside due to my own neurodivergency (bpd, among others) and the fear of abandonment.

fast forward to summer 2023. I'm on vacation visiting my uncles and having fun as it's my first time flying alone. i told my gf before this that i was going to be on vacation and busy during that time. during my time away, she messaged me asking to continue an rp we had done before the trip, saying "it only needs two more replies". i told her matter-of-factly that i was on vacation and didn't have the time. she accused me of being harsh and told me, "i could've just said no". i talked to my uncles about this, as it was upsetting me. they advised me that "a person can be in your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime," being that not everyone will be in your life forever. i took this in and decided it was time to break up with her.

we didn't talk for a few weeks after my trip until i decided to break up with her. while telling her i didn't want to be in a relationship anymore, she asked "will we still rp and write fics together?" it was clear where her priorities lay. i said yes, and that we could continue to be friends, just not dating. this was in july 2023.

now, up to september 2023. i wrote 100ish-word drabbles for kinktober instead of longer fics so i could balance it with my college course load. i shared the link to the beginning of the collection with my ex. she suggested i write 500 words for each day instead of 100. i asked why, and she said (her exact words)

"how are you gonna write a threesome in 100 words though? this convo we're having is at 65 words rn, that's over half your wordcount"

this upset me, and i had the urge to cut her all off and act self-destructively. i decided to instead calm down and not talk for a few days as i mentally sorted it out. a few days later, i civilly responded to her, saying

"what you said about not being able to fit a fic like that into 100 words really hurt ... all I have time for between responsibilities is 100ish words, and I chose to do that rather than abandoning kinktober ... if you’re that dissatisfied with my writing, you can find someone else to write your self insert fics"

she responds while i'm on voice chat with two different friends. she says,

"i'm not dissatisfied with your writing. i did not mean what i said that way. there's no need to be spiteful."

the spiteful comment completely threw me off, and i sent the screencap to said friends i was on vc with. my instinct was to respond civilly again, trying to patch things up. my friends acted like kronk's devil and angel on my shoulder ("no, no, he's got a point"), and i ended up blocking her on every platform instead of responding at all. i feel relieved that she's out of my life.

a month later, i checked my tumblr inbox for an ask from a friend. the second message in the inbox is clearly from her, but from a side account she denied having when i brought it up to her a year or so ago (the blog sent me a meme that she had shared on her main account so i wondered if it was her). it read (paraphrased),

"it's obvious you were never gonna work on that fic or rp again! you always had an excuse to push it off. i didn't matter when i was no longer your gf. you were a suffocating datemate, and i couldn't be gone for more than 10 min, but it was ok for you to not respond for hours!"

little note: i was a full-time college student working two jobs at the time. i had very little time to socialize on platforms like discord, and i took every opportunity i took. on the other hand, my ex was unemployed aside from occasional freelance writing, was not in education, and lived at her parent's house.

i deleted the message as she didn't deserve a response, nor did i want to make it public, but how our relationship ended still weighs on me. aita?

What are these acronyms?

[focusfixated]

in my quest to archive old fandom works i have been peeling through old livejournal entries to find links to fics and fanart, and i came across this entry dated july 2007, when i travelled way out of town to meet some fandom friends:

the reminder struck me that i used to refer to my anxiety disorder as "my adrenaline", because i had no knowledge at the time that it was a disorder, or what being anxious even was, except a word that came up in the thesaurus next to "nervous" or sometimes "keen".

all i had was the experience of what felt like high levels of adrenaline pumping, needlessly, around my body. i would notice the tight stomach, the tight chest, the way my fingers would go cold. i knew what an adrenaline rush felt like, so i called my anxiety the same thing. a big burst of adrenaline that made me feel shaky and strange.

it's interesting to me. because i don't think i necessarily saw it at the time as something connected to psychological or mental health. by not having the language to describe it as a disorder, i simply made a pretty bang-on assessment of understanding what was happening in my body - an excess of adrenaline that would sometimes "go fucking crazy", that i was aware of and simply had to live with.

i guess my observations from this are twofold:

this is, demonstrably, evidence for the concept that we do not have "more" people with various disorders these days, but that the language to describe the disorders that had already manifested has evolved, and both become standardised enough to be a recognisable descriptor, and also nuanced enough to cover a range of experiences.

there was certainly an interim period when i discovered i had an anxiety disorder, where the ability to label it as such and both seek support from other people and allow grace for myself was an incredible relief and extremely useful. however, i do often think about the sentiment outlined in this post, as below:

depathologizing your own responses to things means no longer worrying about which symptom matches which diagnosis matches which branded treatment model and instead practicing gentle non-judgmental curiosity about what you’re going through

that is, having gone through the labelling phase (for multiple things, "becoming" - i.e. finding the language to describe myself as - neurodivergent, autistic, nonbinary, genderqueer, a person with anxiety), i feel like the end result of leaning on the label as an explanation for what i'm experiencing is no more practically useful than simply describing how it felt.

saying now, "the reason i find this difficult is because i have an anxiety disorder", while comforting initially, can kind of engender a give-up response. whereas, "my adrenaline is off the fucking charts right now" also asks, "well, why? can you do the task anyway? do you need a sit-down first? maybe we can try again later."

(to be clear: these are personal observations and not universal statements about anyone else's experiences at all. i think there are mixed positives and negatives around these concepts, and it's more an observation of being subject to the changing trajectories of science, language and culture, rather than really trying to discover the correct practice.)

[catgirlbussy]

holy shit i just realised im autistic

i know this seems like a shitpost, and tbf i am laughing at myself pretty hard rn. it's dawning on me at 6 AM after being awake all night, but (if you care, and if you don't feel free to ignore too, have a nice day!) hear me out, cause this genuinely feels meaningful and insightful for me with how my life has gone so far. I spent an hour writing this post in hopes someone might find it helpful too :3c

If you don't wanna read my post pls enjoy this picture of our famous friend autism baby stackin those cans before you go~♪

(source: wikipedia)

l

like i already /knew/ I was before this moment, but i was thinkin about what i used to do as a kid and wow i am so autistic how the fuck did i not realise sooner. It straight up wasn't until I was already well into my 20's that I started to meet other autistic people online and learned about their experiences and difficulties from talking with them that I realised a lot of things they described matched for me too.

I live in assfuck nowhere so most of my life the only few times that I had met autistic people were like, folks who were nonverbal or whatever, just generally needing direct assistive care, and I never bothered to look things up on my own because I was already inundated with the pressures of growing up, school, mental health, etc. I remember one of the first times I had built up the courage to ask anyone about it, I was in the hospital because of mental health issues. This was in my second year uni, and when one of the doctors assessing me was asking me questions, I said I thought maybe I was autistic. He promptly and with a fair amount of snark told me that if I was autistic I wouldn't have gotten into university.

Thinking back, he was probably just an exhausted, fresh outta school resident with no special interest in psychiatric care (and also just seemed to suck in general), but it was enough that I shelved the idea for another 5 years.

Lo and behold, now I am lying here in bed, just absolutely gobsmacked by the VERY REAL idea that im autistic and like holy shit I feel so vindicated.

I've been on tumblr for just a bit, but I see a lot of folks talking in various neurodivergent circles about their experiences and that's been so wonderful for me. I also have a few good friend groups w/ a lot of neurodivergent folks, and that's been really exciting too.

Like, I'm still processing this cognitively as I'm writing, so please pardon this ill patterned post, but this feels like such a beneficial thing for me. Over time I've adapted a few strategies here and there to help myself accomplish various tasks, but now I feel so empowered to, like... actually figure stuff out.

Even after feeling confident I was autistic, it was this nebulous, floating concept in my head for so long of, "oh yeah im autistic or something idk," that I never really dedicated much effort to finding healthier ways to do things that didn't irk me or whatever. I don't feel like the label /itself/ is what is important to me here, but rather the awareness around why I do so many things in the ways that I do and that it's /okay/ that I do.

I don't want this post to go on too much longer, but I feel it's worth noting that I've fought for years with my family because they didn't understand why I was going about things the way I did. Again, remember, they all grew up in this cloistered hellhole too. But, surprise surprise, the times in my life that I have been doing better than any other are when I felt confident enough to ignore what everyone was trying to get me to go along with and instead just fashioned my own best methods (which also sometimes included informing said overbearing individual(s) to go fuck themselves cause I'm busy doing shit. It's hard for them to argue with me telling them as much when I would be completing X objective well, which is what they wanted in the first place).

I don't want to make this sound like I'm trying to be overconfident, but I mention as much instead as a sign of support for other neurodivergent folks to feel similarly empowered to drum to their own beat. Thinking back, I went from almost failing high school and ultimately retaking a grade to excelling in all my classes. Every single one. I know that's a relative assessment, you got variable difficulty levels, etc., and the grade score isn't important in and of itself, least of all because the school systems here (Canada) are a mess it seems, but just that alone as an idea, within the parameters of a particular system, I went from initial abject failure to thorough and lauded success.

Just think of what so many people could do if they weren't being pigeonholed into formats that absolutely aren't working for them.

I already have a boatload of (genuinely helpful by way of enabling access to proper education and treatment) diagnoses from my history of working with my (very wonderful and genuinely caring and helpful) psychiatrist that match with what I know about the neurodivergence term umbrella like ADHD, OCD, and bipolar, so it seems |autism| will feel quite at home in the group ^w^. I'll ask her about it at my next appointment to see if an official diagnosis has any value versus me just continuing to figure things out on my own.

Either way, I am thrilled right now thinking about the next time I get to shout

"FUCK YOU IM DOING AUTISTIC SHIT"

while an electric guitar squeals and lightning strikes all around me and I make cool stuff happen :3c.

[shiraishi--kanade]

An aspect of Saki's character that interests me as a disabled person who, admittedly, only keeps up with Leo/need at a very surface level (not for the lack of interest but because if I tried to be invested in 4 more characters my head would explode): a) how did she and the rest of the girls meet b) how did they manage to keep their friendship alive considering Saki's prolonged hospital stays.

I think there's... A weird kind of isolation that being chronically ill from a young age brings into your life.

You see, I was never a popular kid in class, okay? Very obviously neurodivergent, absolutely socially clueless, and frankly a bit of a stuck-up asshole in the way straight A's kids in elementary school tend to be. Even so, I had a couple of friends. The ride or die friends for a elementary student, which usually amounted to stuff like going home together and the like.

Until the second grade, that is. Which is when I got sick for the first time, had to spend half a year in quarantine, and acquired a heart condition that would later lead to my lifelong disability.

I'm not about to say my friends abandoned me immediately when I returned to school because that would be untrue. As a child, you're really struggling with the concept of invisible disability, I think. As hard as is was for me to accept I'll just Be Like This, for my friends it was basically non-existant.

But there was a difference. One of the best runners in the entire school suddenly no longer able to run. Constantly dizzy. Constant headaches. Missing school. Having to tap out of activities early. Adults interfering with your plans and fussing more than normal. All of the things elementary aged kids took Very Seriously and I was suddenly not able to participate in most of them, while my injury remained absolutely invisible to everyone else.

I don't think they ever ditched me outright. Nobody told me they didn't want to hang out anymore. I don't think anyone does it that way; it's mostly just slow, painful realisation that people invite you out less and less, until it's not at all. Gradual isolation.

Also, even if you're feeling fine about doing stuff, there's a non-zero chance the adults around you wouldn't. I was not allowed to participate in PE anymore. I still had to be there for the headcount, though, so with that done I'd just sit there on the bench for an entire period. You know, like a loser. Which isn't a good first impression make when you join a new class.

I was, and still am, very frail. This fact was made very loud and obvious by the adults around me, to their credit, in my best interests (or so I hope). You know what happens when kids get told "hey, this thing is very frail - if you touch it they wrong way it'll break and you'll have Consequences"? They will either avoid the thing in question with all the power they have at the fear of accidentally breaking it, or smash it head on to see what happens. Neither of these were pleasant to deal with.

Which is to say: loud announcements that you're disabled whether or not you want to disclose that because the homeroom teacher decided to make you a good example during the "how to treat people different than you nicely" morning assembly is not a good friend maker either. Even well-meaning ones come with presumptions, and are very quickly to fall out once they realise you're not the timid and shy disabled kid they've been fed the idea of.

Anyway, considering the above said: my experiences make me so so very interested in how exactly Leo/need friendship happened and stayed alive for this long, through so much stuff, especially considering whatever Saki was going through was much, much worse than I.

[blucifer08]

long vent post under the readmore, i'm stressed and i need to get my feelings somewhere and i do have a priv twitter for that but i need something longer

if you are one of the few who also follow my priv twitter a lot of this is repeated from what i've been saying but i just want to put it all together to make me feel better<3

I hate my job. And I've spent ridiculous amounts of time the past several months while working it hating myself because of it. I'm a perfectionist people pleaser and I'm neurodivergent. Which somehow has cooked into the perfect storm for me to be--aboslutely AMAZING at customer service.

Which like, sounds like a good thing, but here's the problem. I cannot break a rule, because every time I break a rule it feels like it's breaking me. I've got that insane sense of 'justice', you know? When I was a kid my mother literally could not punish me when I did wind up doing something against the rules because I would sob and cry and berate myself for it, and not as a way to get out of the punishment, but because I couldn't believe that I would do something my mother told me not to, and that I felt it made me a horrible person for doing so.

And this mindset stems from a few issues but it feels as ingrained in me as my bone marrow does. It makes navigating social situations really hard, because I've got the 'rules' for social situations and speaking to people written in my brain. the rules can change slightly but not much.

And this is what makes me good at customer service. I must be polite, I must say these things this way, if the customer needs me to do this, I do this. If X happens, contact Y department. I deliver very quick and helpful responses to customers and I've grown adept at figuring out who to go to for quickest resolution on an issue. I always call my customers back to give them the necessary updates, I apologize as though it's my fault when someone else has fucked up, I let the customer get angry and take out their frustrations on me, I de-escalate when the situation is fiery.

This is, however, incredibly, horribly, depressingly taxing.

I'm not a talkative person in the first place. any who have tried to dm me learn this quick. Even among people I hold in the highest regards I can be quite tight lipped. In my experience, i'm a bit more talkative around people I /don't/ know, as a measure to fit in, and when I'm around people I trust I get more quiet because I trust them to accept my silence as a part of me.

And so this job has wittled me down. I work from home, i take phone calls all day and do the equivalent of paperwork. It's all in all not that difficult, really. Thanks to my shift I receive the least amount of inbound calls, close to 300 a month which really isn't bad at alL. The last company I worked for I would have surpassed 300 within like, 4-5 days. (Though in high-pressure times at this company i have taken 90+ calls in one day. luckily things have changed since then.)

And yet, even with this I feel wittled down with every word. I work on a team and I don't feel like my teammates work even an ounce as hard as I do, which the statistics we receive per month back this up in my eyes as I outpace everyone on my team in everything but received calls, which I cannot control. And the lack of teamwork, the feeling that everyone expects me to do everything, it's dragging me down. I found out recently that the other teammates misunderstood the protocol for a specific type of inquiry we receive, and long story short the reason i was getting so many angry customers claiming they were transferred back and forth before getting to me (and me proceeding to help their issues) is because my coworkers had an incredibly stupid misunderstanding of how things worked.

I feel like I always just get the upset customers when we're busy. It drains me so much. I have it so much easier than other people, i work from home, this job is calmer than other phone jobs, but I feel like i'm breaking apart. I'm very good at retaining information, I know so much about everything. I can do our work so much faster than anyone else here because I have such a good memory for it. I don't want to go too much into detail about it but just. my coworkers forget every direction given to them and i remember every single one and so I do everything according to those 'rules' and I have to do it exactly by the book or else I feel like i'm dying and it's just too much.

My boyfriend, and basically everyone else I know, wants me to quit. And specifically, my boyfriend wants me to quit and attempt to live off of art. When I moved in with him, we luckily created a very nice living situation with a very low cost of living. He really thinks I could start selling charms and prints and the like and focusing on c/ommissions and make enough to survive. He's a very realistic and down-to-earth kind of guy and I really wasn't expecting that from him. He sat down with me and broke down how much I'd have to make and how much I've made in the past while doing art at work and really made it seem viable.

But I'm just so, so scared.

I grew up incredibly poor and getting this job was the highest I've ever been paid. Coming from a southern state with 7.25 as the minimum wage, getting paid 16/hr felt like magic. But now, honestly, it feels like so little for what I do. But I'm so scared. I grew up with fucking nothing and I'm so scared of the possiblity of ending up like that again. It wouldn't happen. I am in such a safe and stable situation now. I understand realistically he's right. If the art stuff doesn't work out, I can just get a part time job. But I also really don't want that.

I really just want a job where I don't have to talk to people. But I made less-than-good decisions in college and got a degree in something that is essentially useless to me now, partly because I didn't understand myself then. I've come to know myself a lot better this year through living happily with him and I wish I'd had the clarity back then to know that:

I hate talking to customers.

I hate customer service.

I hate working on a team.

I am good at tedious work I can do by myself and do at my own pace.

He really really thinks I could do well focusing on art. And my best friend from college heard about this and said "I wanted to tell you to do this months ago. I can't believe you're stuck in that shitty, underpaying job when you have a skill like this." And my best friend has been cheering me on about it but I'm ridiculously scared.

My loved ones keep saying 'art is what you always come back to. You have never stopped drawing and creating. You have to give it a shot.'

I don't know where all of this confidence in my art suddenly came from, no one has ever shown this much confidence in my ability to create, never in my life, ever. I feel like I'm living in an alternate reality. I grew up with a sibling who was and is way better than me at art, and everyone accepted that they would grow up to be an amazing and successful artist and that I should go into something else. This was told to my face directly.

I'm a complete mix and mess of emotions because of it. I had planned to put in my notice at work the other day during a meeting I had scheduled with my boss but I completely chickened, I felt sick to my stomach. As much as I can't stand him and the way he's made my work life so difficult this year (that is its' own post istelf but TLDR i was the only person on shift taking calls from march 8th to july 8th because he took forever to replace my coworker, and replaced her with an off-shore employee they can under pay and he frankly, sucks at the job [and it's wrong of them to do that to him, too] also it's not directly my manager's fault and more like... HIS manager's fault..)

no matter all that I still really /like/ my manager and I feel like his management is crushing HIM too. They give him insane amounts of work and he has been demanding a raise for himself AND for my team and hasn't been able to get it. I like talking to him. He has upset me a lot in the past, not taken me seriously, gotten frustrated with me when I was right, driven me fucking crazy but I do like him as a person and I felt crushed to be about to tell him that I was leaving because it would fuck him over real bad lol.

They will probably replace me with another offshore person they can pay like shit who can't do the job as well. Which is no disrespect to the people hired from that country but english is not their first language and the job I do is complex. They're getting put into a shitty situation for less money.

whatever though. all of this is to say i'm scared. this job is stable at the very least, for now. They most certainly cannot fire me at the moment. but this job drives me insane. it wittles me down. it makes me feel like shit. It makes me cry and sob and beg that i could be 'normal' and that phone calls didn't make me feel like i was dying sometimes. this job is easy. i think i'm insane to leave it. I only got it off of reccomendation from a friend, it was such a blessing. It has benefits, too. i'd be fucking insane. but 40 hours a week of this is killing me. i work from 2:30pm to 11pm which is so much of the day i'm tucked away in my little office which unfortunately doesn't have a window (and there's no other room for me to work out of in here).

i want to believe in myself and strike it out as a freelance artist but I don't think I really /do/ believe in myself. But what a dream it would be, to wake up and get to go outside for some fresh air without stressing because i Have to be At My Desk at This Time and talk to people on the phone. To sit back down and get started on work. I love working with clients art wise. The last round of c/omms I did made me so happy as it was centered around delivering the client's vision for a piece and so I got to work creatively with my buyers.

I really, really don't believe in myself to succeed. Maybe for a month or two I could scrape by. but then I think I'd need to look to a part time job. and anything around me that I could do would involve talking to people. I feel incompatible for this world. I feel like a disaster. I feel like I was made wrong. And it makes me hate myself so much. I wish I could just be normal enough to do this full time customer service job. It's not hard. I know it's not. It's easy. It's complex. but it's not hard. It just takes knowing a lot of information. I don't want to feel like this anymore. but I think quitting would be a mistake. I know so many who are struggling to find work.

but is this really worth 16/hr? I don't just take phone calls. I don't want to explain the specifics but i have to multitask handling emails, handling cases that come in from our system, and taking phone calls/solving callers problems. Not tech support but a lot of the emails/cases are kind of like filling out paperwork but you Have to do it very correctly.

I don't know. I'm backpedaling so hard. Last week I was full of ideas on ways that I could work on my presence online and what kind of items I could work on selling and different c/omms i could offer, while also coming up with ways I could get involved with the local art scene in my town.

but i feel so scared now. I don't understand why my boyfriend and other loved ones are so confident in me. I should appreciate that confidence but it just confuses me. My boyfriend especially. It makes me want to cry with happiness but I just. I'm so terrified and anxious and I'm literally at work right now typing this and i just. i dont know. if you read all of this i'm sorry it was long and oh my god why didn't you quit halfway /j but there's no conclusion. I'm terrified.

[midfight-artchive]

Hello!! It's been a while and I feel like I should explain why I've been gone for so long despite the blog working on a queue system. The short answer is mental health stuff, the long answer is below.

What's important is that the blog will now officially be on hiatus until further notice. When I come back, I'm going to overhaul how I do things behind the scenes that will hopefully bring more of the archive to you without tiring me out as much. Thank you for understanding, and again a more full explanation is below.

I've been going through probably the worst mental state I've ever been in lately. Nothing to do with the blog itself thankfully, I'm very passionate about this blog and MFM as a whole to this day, but the circumstances I'm currently in make it difficult to run this blog.

You know the saying "it gets worse before it gets better?" I'm basically going through that, fully realizing my traumas and really putting myself under a microscope to pick out what needs to be healed and improved. Things are looking up for me overall, but the amount of mental strain and exhaustion I'm experiencing can't be understated either. (Not to mention the fact that I'm still in the situation that gave me this trauma in the first place, so healing is a little difficult when I'm being retraumatized pretty much constantly... x_x) Said exhaustion makes it very hard to even fill the queue for this blog, let alone have the energy to answer asks or even tag sometimes. It's rough! This blog isn't demanding by any means and it's still too much to even think about. (And I have thought about it a lot!!! I've wanted to come back numerous times but didn't because of the constant fatigue I've been feeling.)

Part of that is because I'm neurodivergent, though, and MFM hasn't been a hyperfixation of mine for YEARS. In fact, I haven't had a solid hyperfixation since about...2019-2020? Since then I've been coasting along on special interests and even my focus on those have lasted shorter and shorter the longer time has gone on. I started this blog way after MFM was in my brainspace full time, which is why it took over a year to even set up. I felt that the premise was more important than my brain's shenanigans, though, so I pushed through and tried my best to keep it up. The sad truth is that I don't think about MFM as much as I used to, and when I do think of them these days it's more of a "damn, I really miss them...." for a few minutes before my brain goes back to whatever it's currently grabbed hold of. It's not my choice, as many people with hyperfixations know, and trust me when I say that if I could keep them in my focus long enough to keep this blog running I would in a heartbeat. The fact that this is comorbid with depression really means I have to scrap for whatever energy I can, and that means focusing on things that actively bring me joy just so I can have enough energy to get out of bed, meaning even a fun side project isn't as possible as I previously thought.

HOWEVER, NOT ALL HOPE IS LOST!!! I've started medication and as I've said, I'm working to better myself. This blog going on the backburner is me taking a break, NOT a cancellation, and when I come back I promise to be better about not disappearing for random stretches of time. :P I can't say exactly when I'll feel well enough to pick this blog back up, but it absolutely will happen.

Thank you all so much for the positive reception to this blog, and I'm looking forward to continue archiving for you all!!

[mio-nika]

Also. Re: my previous post. Or more like comments under the YouTube video.

It's gonna sound mean. So like sorrey I'm not really sorrey

Am I the only person who kinda CRINGES inside when they see people diagnosing other people? Like, "hey, I think you have ahdh, get a therapist ;)". Or "the things you said reminded me of autism symptoms, I think you have it". Like. Its weird???

I saw this post on tumblr. Artist drew herself as three different parts of self. And people like "hey! Maybe you are a System!". Shut up???

Maybe it just feels weird for me, since I'm a person with many symptoms which correlates to other neurodivergencies. Like, getting easily overwhelmed with sensory overload immediately getting a banging migraine and puking my guts. Or coping with stress by uncontrollably talking about my personal interests up to four hours. Without breaks. Or needing to draw big black cross on my hand, so I will not forget to go to the store on my way home (works great actually!). Or having wild mood flips and unhealthy attachments. By that I mean crying in the bathroom because someone made a nice comment to me and fucking STALKING BEHAVIOUR (it was in my youth, now i stable). Coping with hurdles with both alcohol and energy drinks (the first in the evening, the second in the morning). Rotting on the bed for THREE FUCKING MONTHS STRAIGHT. Not even having enough energy to think longer than three hours (you think for 3 hours, sleep for 15, repeat).

Basically if someone would tell me that I have. Autism, ahdh or bipolar. I would start maiming people. Even tho, from the outside perspective. I can appear to have them. I also don't have any of them.

[kaija-rayne-author]

Is Solas neurodivergent?

Of course, unless Weekes confirms one way or another, we'll never actually know. But I'd like to point out a few things.

Firstly. I'm autistic/ADHD, so are my kids and I've been an advocate for invisible disabilities, especially those two, for almost a decade now.

I offer an option on my Patreon for parents (or even just people) who need or want advice.

I have a little bit of a clue here. (More like a massive clue by nuke, but I digress 🤣.)

Why I code Solas from Dragon Age: Inquisition as neurodivergent.

1. Mentally ill fits under the neurodivergent (ND) umbrella. There's no way on Thedas that Solas isn't mentally ill.

(Yes, it really does fit. I'm not going to entertain arguments on the topic. It originally meant 'autistic' it no longer means that and hasn't for a long while. Neurodivergent brains = brains that work in any way other than 'the average'.) The antonym is Neurotypical. I tend to abbreviate them. Neurodivergent = ND, Neurotypical = NT.

At the very least, he likely has survivor syndrome. I'd wager on Depression and CPTSD too. (I have these conditions and am comfortable with saying he has a lot of the traits.) The guy was the leader of an enslaved elves rebellion and a war against the Evanuris. In his own words, he got his hands bloody.

No matter who you are, violence, whether you're the perpetrator or the victim, causes trauma to the psyche. And it went on for actual ages. An Age, in The Dragon Age franchise, is considered to be 100 years, so for hundreds of years, if not thousands, this dude has been fighting. Humans can get CPTSD just from a bad childhood. There's no way he hasn't developed it too.

Survivor syndrome is the response of a person when they believe they have done something wrong by surviving a traumatic event when others did not, often feeling self-guilt. (Can we classify Solas clearly with this? Yes, yes we can.)

He wakes up in a world so horrific to him that he can't even conceive of the people as people.

That's a type of disassociation, which is a symptom of many mental illnesses. Depression is the most obvious. He fucked up, he knows it, he's now trapped in a hellscape. (Heeee, we're all trapped in a dystopian hellscape right now and Depression is on the rise, the correlation is there.)

Disassociation is feeling disconnected from yourself and/or the world around you. For example, you may feel detached from your body or feel as though the world around you is unreal.

There could be a few other things there. He'd be a classic case for Disassociative Identity Disorder, for instance, but given the shit rep on the topic, I'm not going there.

2. ADHD

ADHD is still not very well understood by the average person. Sometimes people think it means we can't hold still. But a lot of the time, the H-Hyperactivity portion is only evident in our brains. For me, for instance, I have to constantly be feeding my brain written stuff or I get very antsy and uncomfortable. (ADD no longer exists, we're all ADHD now.) It's why i developed the habit of reading encyclopedias for fun. (Yes, I really do this.)

Solas is constantly reading, or studying, or thinking.

He shows a pretty typical type of temper for an ADHDer several times. Our tempers can be hot, flaring up suddenly for seemingly unexpected reasons. He absolutely does that. Now, there's always a reason for it, but few people on the outside of us will be aware of whatever the issue is.

ADHDers can also experience incredibly fast (compared to neurotypicals) shifts in emotion. Solas does this. Especially in the after the well of sorrows/pre-breakup scene and the break up scene itself. He see-saws emotionally a lot.

He's incredibly creative. He paints (and probably draws at least a little to paint the way he does). So many neurodivergent people are incredibly creative.

Snark. Many ADHDers tend to be snarky or sarcastic because of, well, everything that usually happens to us in life. The snark and salt simply spill out of Solas. Especially on the 'make him hate you' route through the game. Or any time he's around Vivienne.

Finally, ADHDers very frequently have a deep seated drive to change the world and make it better. Stares at Solas. Yup!

3. Autistic

So, firstly, let me say that most people don't understand what autism is or what autistics look and act like.

As an autistic/ADHD person, my experience of life is completely different from a neurotypicals simply because my brain is wired differently.

Reminder that you can't see autism or ADHD. You can sometimes see common comorbids, but without a brain scan, you cannot see autism or ADHD.

I connected and empathize so heavily with Solas because he's a well written, complex character, and because I love anti-heros.

But also because he's exhibits the exact same type of autistic/ADHD traits that I have. (Both autism and ADHD come in different flavours.) Seeing that rep in a triple AAA game was an incredibly powerful experience.

Even though, given Bioware's absolutely shit rep re: disability, it had to be accidental. I credit Weekes with that rep. I read on Twitter they were recently dxd with one or the other (ADHD or Autism, I honestly can't remember which. And up to 80% of ADHDers are also autistic.)

Solas practices esoteric arts. It's a common thing for many autists & ADHDers to learn and practice arts that just aren't as common anymore. Mine? I spin with a spinning wheel, drop spindle, or Andean hand spinner. I make maps. There's several other strange hobbies and skills I've picked up along the way too.

He shows hyperfocus several times in the game. (Hyperfocus is a trait of both ADHD and Autism.)

He stims with his hands a lot. Especially in the kiss scene. I don't recall seeing any of the other characters do this. I'm not talking about the 'dry hand wash' movements most of the characters do. Solas does a thing I do, taps the tips of his fingers against each other. Whoever did his modelling (is that the right term for making a game character?) understood neurodivergency or are ND themselves. Whether they know it or not.

You could even call his painting a type of stimming.

Stimming is where someone will use repetitive motions or sounds to self-soothe. It's really bad to prevent an autistic/ADHDer from using their stims.

I used to have to have a book on my person at all times. I'm late diagnosed, so I didn't know I was using the books as both a stim and a comfort item.

Solas has something autists call 'flat face effect'. Basically, his face is a bit masklike. He doesn't show emotions strongly on his face or in his body language (unless you make him angry 😅 which is also pretty typical for many of us). I've seen rather a lot of discourse about how emotionless Solas appears. I can read him easily, the emotive cues are there, just subtle, like they would be in an autistic & or ADHD person.

He's a decent actor. Now, most autists will agree that we're not innately good at lying or acting. But we're also really good at acting, at least, many of us are by the time we're adults. It comes from having to mask (autistic masking) almost every second of every day just to survive. Masking kills us. So it's not good that we are forced to do it. But it does make many of us incredible actors.

Anthony Hopkins is argueably one of the best actors of the past several decades. He's openly autistic. And he's spoken of how he got to be a good actor. Dan Ackroyd and Darryl Hannah are a couple of others who are out about it. I code a lot of other creatives as being one or the other, but it’s considered rude to assign a diagnosis like that to a living person. That's for them to do.

Solas managed to stay hidden as a 'unwashed apostate hobo' for however long the Inquisition took to fix things. I've seen estimates of 18 months to 2 years. That's a looooong time to be acting like something you're definitely not.

We see in Trespasser that he's not like that at all. But he still sold it so well his reveal at the end of the game shocked many people.

He's a nerd. An absolute nerd about the fade. Nerdery isn't solely the domain of autistics and ADHDers, but it’s a really common trait.

He's stand-offish.

Many autists and ADHDers are rather stand-offish with people for a variety of reasons.

1) We've been hurt so many times because of people refusing to do half the work of communicating with us. (Trust me, autistics and ADHDers are trying ALL THE TIME to communicate with neurotypicals. Y'all could pick up your part of things, y'know?)

2) We've been rejected so often for a genetic condition(s) we can't change. But accommodations for us, which are usually pretty simple and often help neurotypical people too, are considered 'too much'. There's something called RSD that most, if not all, autistic and ADHD folks experience. Rejection Sensitivity Disorder is a bitch kitty and there's no dealing with it well. It hurts.

3) We're often stand-offish while we try to figure out whatever social rules exist in that space/time. We often warm up when we know (or think we know) the rules. Or once we get to know people.

4) Solas is often alone, he's rarely pictured as being with anyone else other than Cole and the Inquisitor. NDs often end up either pushed to the edge of the crowd, or we choose to stay distant as a preventative measure so we aren't rejected.

Food sensitivities: Solas utterly loathes tea. There's a whole cutscene about it. (Fun fact, Solas doesn't like tea because Weekes doesn't.) But that extreme reaction to a relatively innocuous drink is a classic example of a food sensitivity. Most autistics and ADHDers have food or texture sensitivities or both. I can't abide raw tomatoes, and I'll get the urge to cry if I touch corduroy fabric.

Sensitivities can really be anything, but if you know someone who has them, please understand we're not trying to be difficult or to ask for extra attention or to make trouble. The modern world is frankly hell for most autistics and many ADHDers. Brain scans of us when we’re exposed to our sensitivities show that they actually are causing us physical pain. Pain centres in the brain light up like a Yule tree.

Solas is quiet, until he's not. Then he'll talk your ear off. This is pretty common for many of us too.

Solas and the fade. Special interest, anyone?

Special interests: Most autistics and ADHDers have Special interests. It's something that can utterly enthrall us. We tend to want to learn everything we possibly can about the subject we're fascinated with. And we love to share that information. In something called 'infodumping' we're trying to connect with other people. It's one of the ways many of us say we care about someone. By sharing our favourite things. We're also deeply penalized for something we can't change, there, too.

We deeply enjoy the thing and want to share our enjoyment with people we like/love. This can utterly backfire on us, but it doesn't change the urge to share. Often until our audience is giving us the 'dead fish face'. It's where the person's eyes are a little glazed over and they look a bit concussed. Anyone who has ever taught a class of students or is a parent or child caretaker, or is autistic/ADHD knows the look I'm talking about.

I'll stop blabbing for now, but those are most of the reasons I heavily code Solas as autistic/ADHD/mentally ill. Or, in another word. Neurodivergent.

Thanks for reading! If you have the wherewithal I'm a disabled mom of two disabled kids and a tip would help more than you can probably understand. Another way to help is to become a patron. My work of words is my only income and we live well under the poverty line. Like a lot of other neurodivergent people do.

KoFi:

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[eveningrelics]

For the record, we love making games and want them to be approachable.

This whole debacle has had us discuss trigger warnings for the future because some people are only sensitive to certain sub-sets of issues, myself included.

On a store page and in fane, however, these warnings could be lengthy.

Would it be good, I wonder, to have the lists on the store page and at launch, as we have thus far, and then each respectively direct you to where you could read more about each trigger type?

For example, a longer warning might be:

Transphobia:

Depiction of violence against a transwoman; scene includes aftermath of physical altercation

"T Slur" appears twice if player interacts with [PC in Chiyo's room]

Online abuse against a transgender individual (Sexual harassment and dehumanizing language)

In-game, I think it should be fairly easy to do a trigger warning directory with breakdowns and possibly examples of each?

It's time consuming, but if it's something that would make people feel more comfortable playing horror games, I am always looking to explore new options.

I don't think doing this would have mattered in the recent abuse, but it does matter to us for making sure players are comfortable moving forward.

I mentioned these things in my itch.io response on Mare's page before comments were closed.

For what it's worth now, the "T slur" was used because people who tear us down really don't give two shits if I'm nonbinary, trans masc, or whatever. Being trans is enough for them to hate me.

Maybe it's regional, generational, or whatever, but it's been applied plenty to trans masc and nonbinary people around me as much as transfemmes because people who hate us don't really see a difference.

As far as trigger warnings in games though, I am always happy to discuss ways to improve on it further. Z and I are both neurodivergent, queer game devs and I am also disabled.

Making stuff accessible is very important to us, so I would genuinely like to have a conversation about what makes approaching dark subject matter feel safe.

However, given the recent targeted hate campaigns, I will Not be engaging with anyone who comes to this in bad faith.

You will be blocked immediately, and I encourage others to do the same rather than engage.

[nevermoredragon-main]

character ask game, i just ask all of itafushijun? lol

In short: I care them(which is why i am hugging and squeezing all of them). Then below me is the longer version

Yuuji

I love Yuji so much. I want only good things for him. I love his pink hair and his smile and how he looks like he could give me the best hug ever if he was real. Also just love his arc of killing curses. Silly little goofball turning into a terrifying badass is a character trope I am fond of. I am very fatigued by all of the bad things that have happened to him and am glad things are finally starting to turn around for him in canon. I hope it stays that way even though I plan on ignoring canon in favor of imagining itafushijun fluff

Megumi

Gonna be real here, I watched jjk in dub the first time I watched it because Robbie Daymond is Megumi's English va. And it just added to the experience of seeing and hearing Megumi laugh gleefully at the end of season one. I love cocky murderous bastards. (That's also why he's silly to me... such a little goofball as he murders curses and then gets picked on by his friends playfully). Also I really personally just love his current emotional despair arc that he needs to be pulled out of. Whether he finds the emotional strength to do it himself or needs Yuji to pull him out(a combination of both preferably). I just want him to get hugged after all this and also therapy. (Therapy for all of them actually)

Junpei

Ok I will say with Junpei I am not the only one who is correct about him. In fact there are some really nice blogs about him that have really good analysis on him that are probably better reads on him than mine. (There are also other jjk fans that are very wrong about him but I'm not getting into that barrel of salt)

But yeah I project onto him a lot just due to the fact that he is very neurodivergent and I dream all the time about my silly little AUs where he is alive and well and has two awesome boyfriends. I've always felt sad that he died so soon because I feel like Gege accidentally created the most interesting character ever who had the potential for a really interesting character arc of self discovery and learning to open up to others and let them in and accept himself and grow, and then just... killed him for shock value and to subvert tropes (tbh there is value in trope subversion but there is also a reason tropes are popular in the first place if you ask me). (Next part starts off as a Junpei focused thing and then starts to spiral lol.)

And I think that's part of the reason why I like itafushijun so much. Like, Yuji is the safe friend who he knows he can trust because Yuji *saved him* in this alternate universe in my head. And Yuji is also again just the bestest boy who helps him grow to start building connections again. And then Megumi is new to him and keeps his distance and acts kind of mean sometimes. But they're classmates and Megumi is not a bully. Just has a bit of a cold shoulder, which Junpei can relate too, and just over time develop an unbreakable bond. And Megumi and Junpei both see the same thing in Yuji. The best of humanity.

And I just could go on and on about the possibilities and potential these three had for a while but I won't.