#well-done autistic character

[shoutsindwarvish]

there are two wolves inside me

[absentlyabbie]

man i remember when my time at sandrock was still in development and there was some dev update introducing the town doctor character, fang, with his pretty delicate facial features and long shampoo-commercial hair, looking like every cliche of a "cold, reserved anime pretty boy" distilled

and then the update where they said they would make him romanceable/expand his backstory due to popular demand, and i rolled my eyes in utter disinterest at what looked like the same cardboard cutout love interest we've all seen a million times, cuz that is just not my bag, personally

and then i played the game and well fuck, so he's actually disabled due to deep childhood trauma, and you help him through his struggles to a place where it's less debilitating, learn he's extremely, passionately motivated to help others not suffer the way he did, and is in fact kind and awkward and a little bit of a dork

and oh no, whoops, i've tripped and fallen and married him

[bastart13]

I wonder if you can talk about this manhwa called the real daughter is back. Its a manhwa where its a revenge story but a lot of readers dropped understandably because they pity the sister of the fl that is actually a nice person name hyllian. and the story even fl and other characters always treats the sister like a villain even though her sister didn't do anything bad to the fl heck hyllian was truly a kind person who loves and cherish the fl. Also,a lot of people thinks the fl is taking her anger out on the wrong person that is the sister.

Unfortunately I haven't read it. I would try look it up, but I struggle to read new manhwa along those lines. I've tried reading quite a few of them, but after a while you notice... patterns. Female characters are either the main character, evil bitches, or passive side friends, overly exaggerated emotional dialogue, bloated pacing, etc.

I nope out so quickly the moment I see it

I don't doubt the story doesn't treat the FL's sister poorly. The only ones I've read recently that do treat that sort of character well are intentional subversions of the evil sister/mother trope

[nemmet]

question: who is your favourite scooby doo character and why?

in a similar vein to my how did you get into scooby doo post from last month, i'm now interested in hearing who your favourite character from the franchise is! are they a member of the core gang or a side character? which iteration/version of theirs do you like best? do you have any specific memories associated with them? do they mean a lot to you personally, or do you just think they're neat? it's time to gush about them in the tags/replies!!

[unproduciblesmackdown]

among the boundless billions zaniness like laugh track as it definitely has that moment of expressing "rolling my eyes as The Left makes a kerfuffle of Acting like they have a stance as a veneer over the true belief that [xyz] is cool & chill actually" like what, approximate 0.000% chance wendy isn't, as usual, given the Objective Stance of "yeah yeah ohh we are cancelling involved parties talking about how we Don't watch this But. we all love this damn epic movie & already have it memorized so shut the fuck up, kids today" like. don't wanna really delve into how much billions thinks taylor or anyone is "really" trans / nonbinary like not too much benefit of the doubt in this material including what does provide info abt that specifically

& the general like [head in hands. what do you think any of this could possibly be about (you're the one that made your show at all about Power)] of "yes, it's bad/wrong to be someone that someone has done something to / victim of something" like that to be anti misogyny All Women Must Be Epic Winners b/c there's something to be proved: that they don't Deserve to be victims (of misogyny), not taken as a Given. while when we see some epic winner men stepping on other men (who need not all be guaranteed Winners so as to say misogyny is wrong), that's often Good, well beyond any assumption that various forms of basic disrespect / violation / patterns of emergent/entrenched power difference as Bad (for being things done to people, not for there being people they're being done to), & generally billions has to take an extra step when ppl get shitted on & tell us the Specific Cases when it was undeserved actually & someone was being mean to a specific person who didn't deserve that. & the specific cases when hey guess it wasn't that bad(tm) or when hey It's Okay that you're someone something was done to, in this case. & tell us what we were supposed to know all along like when someone who something was being done to (wrong Of Them, whether b/c they inherently deserve it no matter what, &/or b/c they failed to be someone who could make it Impossible to do anything to them, which, how do you do that besides being The Authority / Superior yourself, exactly? nonrhetorically? what if the in group vs out group / fascism / authoritarianism protected Me?) was actually being treated Too Well b/c ah well the abuse meant you were getting any attention, maybe it meant you were claimed as any superior's property, maybe it meant you weren't Already disposed of, as all Losers were in the end, You're Welcome.

obviously referring to winston where it's spelled out all the abuse towards him was deserved, & More than he deserved in the case of rian having more access & taking advantage of that, all for billions' enjoying its own sendoff there of, again, maximizing violation & violence short of [real violence is physical & leaves bruises / draws blood / Literally kills] which would be distasteful in general But doesn't it make wags look like the winner & winston the loser is that the former's completely unrelated completely impersonal ego blow gets way amplified taken out on winston, the most vulnerable recurring character when spyros as [first & ultimate Everyone Hates Him role] is more entrenched in there & billions still magnanimously pities tuk, as it does winston too, just not quite as much. again that like completely surface level realized power fantasy of forcing the mirror up to the Inferior so they're like nooo my inferiorityyyy & in doing so like, the projection in that lmao, we get it re: the valuing of & need(tm) for such Power Tripping & Reaffirming My Superiority & My Ego Restored; Everyone Claps like good god. & then for all ben & tuk are the slightly softer Two Too Nice Boys duo to the rian & winston quant duo, also like too nice i guess but not as much, ben is in charge of tuk but Any instance of rian being in charge of winston outstrips them in that "yay interpersonal abuse" dynamic, like then in the end billions may be like "yeah it's possible to be mean to them unlike how being mean to winston is actually Nice b/c he deserves everything he gets, we only vicariously enjoy it vs Feeling Bad for tuk & ben sometimes (still magnanimously & it's Not That Bad / just goofin)" like ben & tuk still Fail by not being people it's impossible to do anything to. & not Exceptions who anyone is really being Too Mean to. like if they were women, in which case, no problem surely with a "positive" kind of victim blaming where there is something Inherent that Will be victimized so hey how about to cancel that out there's this special Paternal Protection you Need always, Or Else? :) but instead they are men who are asian & is ben gay & w/tuk & winston nobody mentions glasses or fatness but billions doesn't really do much or very in depth textual mentioning of Anything, even w/nonzero mention that there may be gender & race in this world. a gay man, once. no disability. we just Know who are the inferiors who deserve it when they're treated inferiorly, or if they don't, they start deserving it when they fail to stop/avoid it, but if you start mentioning the factors behind who we all totally agree is inferior like whoa nobody was Saying any of that? being the real agent of oppression on the basis of the factors only You spelled out, much? nonbinary? i never say anything about the Gender Binary when i'm subscribing to it, sounds like You've created & enforced it. obfuscation & deflection onto [so Just Normal nobody has to label, explain, or argue it] couldn't serve a purpose & protect the existing power differences as they are. maybe You're the problem? perhaps you brought it upon yourself & now you're causing too much trouble standing up for yourself while everyone else's criticism is laser focused on you as the prior & continuing negative actions done to you are taken as a given / unquestioned / covertly protected to overtly encouraged?

anyway so wild if the Completely Normal(tm) Victim Blaming is uncritically recreated & oft embraced for "if you're watching this & don't wish you were axe / find him appealing" [billions as a sequence of vicarious power trips] purposes in this series....but a bit wild considering like this is your multiseason show that wasn't just purporting to be those power trips for [enough demographic & apparently specific personal tastes overlap w/creators] & was at all purporting to question the matters of power at play in the material, or yknow, at least to not be completely superficial material while said material is textually & thematically all about power difference being leveraged, how, the consequences, & so on. thus i will have to intermittently talk about it forever like this like lord unbelievable. & the funny little & sometimes less funny less little characters it has trapped in there so that those of us who were never meant to be in the audience can be cursed with this knowledge. like i have some feedback. "imagine not victim blaming" & "imagine adjusting your perspective can go beyond superficial layers added to politely defer to some other ppl while they're present but really like cmon do they deserve that. am i not just saying what we're allll thinking"

[fandom-trash-xl]

You ever just take a look at an alien species and go "you know what, I like you, I just want to explain how you work" for no reason

(This post is absolutely about Frieza)

[casperth3ghost]

my favorite aus are the ones where people hc a character as autistic and then proceed to make the character act the exact same

[dizzybevvie]

what’s fantasy high ?^^

Fantasy High is a DnD show on yt ^^!!!!! its like, small town queer mystery, found family type shit about 6 teenagers in a school for adventurers!!!! <33

season 2 used to be behind a paywall but since season 3 is on the horizon (NEXT MONTH AHHH) theyre releasing s2 on yt now tooooo!!!

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

i'm partway through piranesi and i did not expect piranesi to be such a fucking fantastically written autistic character holy shit

[thegroundhogdidit]

hi i have a question going out to the jewish population of tumblr, what would your stance be on a practicing jewish character who also practices magic as a secular witch, in a world where magic is the norm?

[bluejaybytes]

listen. listen to me. aloy is autistic and this actively makes the narrative better. i know this to be true. in my heart. i have been right about many a things about her and i know im right about this one too. i have actual real thoughts on this and like actual Literary Analysis(tm) and all that. but beyond that i also simply Know

[timsgutterson]

i honestly miss posting fics, but people lift from my rp blog and i'm ready to put their grandma in a blender. if someone lifted from a fic, i think i'd launch an airstrike

[marictheirins]

finished extraordinary atty woo & man, autism be damned my girl can win a courtcase

[micer2012]

a reflection on MatPat's plagiarism

Hello, my name is Della, or micer2012, and 2 years ago Game Theory plagiarized three Tumblr posts of mine, making a video that now holds almost 6 million views.

My posts explaining his plagiarism made their rounds on Reddit, Tumblr and Twitter, but despite the Hermits and Pooka commenting on it (generally in support of me or saying they don’t know enough details about the situation to say either way), MatPat and his team have never owned up to anything, and no mention of my name is present on the video. The one Reddit post they made denying it (which was made before my detailed takedown, which they have never responded to (though the mods on the r/GameTheorists Reddit were kind and made sure it stayed up)) didn’t even mention me by name, just referring to me as “a tumblr user”. (Though one of the screenshotted comments in the body of the post does say my name)

This experience was baffling, but it’s overall had a positive impact on my life. r/Hermitcraft gave me a Golden Apple Award (post of the year, 2021). My inbox was filled with excited fans, wanting to ask me questions or pose their own theories, far more than the hate I got. (Though the hate I got from Game Theory fans was VERY funny. I wondered why none of them gave me shit about saying “MatPat misgendered Evil Xisuma” before realizing none of them read that far into the post.)

And getting on a more personal, and much more important note, I met most of my current online friends through this, including my partner. It helped me grow closer with my irl friends as well and gave me an entertaining story that I tell whenever I have the chance. It was one of the first things in my life that really made me feel like my talents, my autistic hyperfocusing and analyzing of things I love, could be valuable. Useful. Exploitable. It blew my mind that MatPat thought an autistic kid’s ramblings about a Minecraft Youtube joke character were good enough to steal. To put an audible sponsorship on. To get 6 million views off of.

And that’s why I’m writing this post, this update years later. As you might’ve been able to guess, Hbomberguy’s Youtube video on plagiarism reopened this wound. It was really hard for me to sit through, it took days of pausing and taking breaks, because I had experienced everything he was talking about firsthand. 

In my 10 page long takedown post, I wrote about how his rewording of my sentences made him say things that were incorrect, just like Filip did. The content farm production style that made big companies like Cinemassacre take one creator (AVGN/MatPat) and turn him and his content into a brand, a voice that reads out scripts by other people with other opinions/theories, is a history shared with Game Theory. What really hit me was Harris talking about how big creators only do this to people they think they can get away with doing it to. How they view their victims as lesser, as not deserving of their words, repackaging them as their own to give to an audience that can gain from hearing them, but deserves better than to have to listen to the original victim.

That’s the thing, I 100% think a video version of my theory to expose to a bigger community than “Evil Xisuma Fans on Tumblr” is a great idea!! Near the end of the video Harris talks about how video adaptations of things could be a great market, even an accessibility tool, and I completely feel that about my posts. I wrote them quickly assuming the reader was someone well versed on Evil Xisuma lore, after not even watching most of the CarnEvil series, and the diagrams I made to explain them are even less comprehensible. Harris makes a joke that I completely agree with, 

“I’m sure some of my videos would do very well if someone translated them into English.”

I don’t think I would’ve ever made my posts if I didn’t have autism, and a special fixation on Evil Xisuma and Hermitcraft. I made them because I felt the character was being done an injustice, and because I wanted to share with other superfans this theory that might explain it away. I do think that MatPat plagiarizing me was ableist. I used to wonder a lot if this would’ve happened if my posts were articulated better, if they had been peer reviewed, if the posts themselves had been spread to a wider audience before MatPat made his video. At one point when the discourse was fresh (before I had the time to write out my 10 page rebuttal), a bigger YouTuber (100k subs at the time) messaged me and started talking on Discord, interested in possibly making a video on the discourse, but I think my style of typing and general enthusiasm drove him away. You can tell by a single look at my blog (or my original 3 posts!) that I don’t usually type like this. This post you’re reading now has been peer reviewed and edited, and took me hours to format correctly. That video could’ve been huge, the entire outcome of this MatPat situation would probably be much different.

I also used to stress a lot about “being the one who ruined Evil Xisuma’s story”. If you didn’t know, to me S8 Evil Xisuma’s story got wrapped up pretty quickly and unsatisfying (in my personal autistic opinion). (though this might’ve been due to s8 being experimental and ending early with moon big) There was no real culmination of the plot points and arcs going on, and I don’t want to blame myself, but when Xisuma said on stream (when the MatPat thing was first going on) that he didn’t want to focus on the discourse or draw more attention to it, it makes a lot of sense to me that he just wanted to wrap it all up as quickly as possible. For a while I beat myself up about it, of ruining the story of this character I love, but it’s not my fault. If anyone’s, it’s MatPats, but I don’t think it’s useful to just blame someone else. That’s how the story ended up going, and that’s fine. This is Evil Xisuma we’re talking about, their inconsistent lore is what made them such an interesting character. And notably, Pooka made an animation with an awesome culmination of Jeff, the Dreamer, Evil Xisuma, and his own sona’s story, and it makes me so happy to watch. Whatever Pooka does is of course his own choice, but I’m glad he got to give this personal story his own ending (if it is an ending, and not just the start of a new chapter!). 

Typing this all out and getting it off my chest has made me feel a lot better. For a while I wanted to make my OWN video essay about Evil Xisuma’s lore and CarnEvil’s lore, actually going episode by episode to explain it instead of just assuming you knew as much about Evil Xisuma as I did. That idea is still not off the table, but MCYT isn’t something I’m that into right now. Maybe if something else comes out about Evil Xisuma I’ll get back on it, but for now I’m fine with letting that go. But I want to make other videos, share other theories and analysis… if I have the freetime I’d love to make YouTube videos, and if I don’t have the time I’ll continue posting to my tumblr and infodumping to my friends. Apparently my infodumping is valuable enough “content” to steal! Writing this out has made me feel a lot better though, I’m really glad I got it out.

If anyone ever wants to talk to me about the things I’m obsessed with, or reach out to me as a source in a bigger discussion about Game Theory or other channels, my inbox is more than welcome :] Thank you for reading! 

Sincerely, a tumblr user.

[homunculus-argument]

One of the most fun character concepts that I've had that I've never been able to fit into anything is The Most Appropriate Socialite Lady. Nobody dislikes her, but she is, indeed, very Appropriate, always seeming to do everything precisely to social etiquette, even according to social rules that nobody else knew were a thing. If there is a protocol to how to behave or respond in any given situation, no matter how obscure or how long ago it was that this was written down in some Refined Society Etiquette Book, she'll know it. So she is a bit old-fashioned sometimes, but not in a regressive way.

Every time there's a situation where nobody actually knows what the right way to respond would be, they quietly glance at her, because either she knows exactly how to handle this, or if the situation truly is without precedent, her educated guess of what should be done must be the right one. Someone might even write it down for a future etiquette book, of how This Most Polite Well-Mannered Lady responded to this awkward situation.

She doesn't judge people, and is never rude about people breaking Good Manner Rules on purpose (as pointing out someone doing so would be impolite), but the way she seems genuinely surprised and confused whenever someone breaks the protocol that nobody else might even been aware of makes people feel self-conscious or awkward sometimes. And she politely pretends to not notice that. She is very kind, very sweet, but also extremely Appropriate.

So even if this isn't a Victorian style gentlemanly "fine ladies are fragile and must be sheltered from the world"-style society by default, people still feel the need to behave well and be on their best formal behaviour around her, not out of fear of judgement but because she genuinely is that way and nobody wants to upset her. And if someone who doesn't give a shit about protocols upsets her on purpose by deliberately doing something that's fucking rude, they'll be discreetly moved to a different location before getting the shit beat out of them because fuck you for upsetting her.

The thing is, she's actually just autistic as hell. She originally started reading up on social etiquette as a way of masking, but it became a special interest for her, and she isn't just thrilled to teach you how to properly fold a napkin to help you better fit in to the Refined Society, but because she fucking loves infodumping. She's not trying to set herself apart, gatekeep, judge others or show off how she's better than you (like many others of her background would), she just genuinely enjoys having explicitly and clearly written rules and instructions on how to behave in society.

Also the tactful and graceful way in which she doesn't pay notice to veiled insults, or people accidentally saying something insulting to her, isn't always an act. A lot of the time she genuinely just does not notice.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

billions could only have a gay man, who was married, and died by the end of that season; only deal with taylor's upending of presumed cishettery by having everyone who's not terrible be automatically down without putting some crisis about it on them, as the better approach to trying to have people talk about it (true, certainly in this case); extent of its room for rian's latent nonbinariness being "never wearing skirts/dresses, always wearing makeup though"....all that is to say, even with neither of them allowed to be "truly" cishet, b/c that's the rewarded realm for superior people, billions could never do winstuk. but they could be kissing right now