#when i clearly stated i wanted to go for an autism diagnosis

[conanssummerchild]

my parents will do absolutely everything for my sister, cater to her every need, and then chastise her for not being able to do things on her own, and they'll ignore my every concern and then chastise me for not asking for help

[jse-ego-hyperfixation]

the JSE diagnosis (according to me. This is my opinion)

(THERE WILL BE ALTRVERSE SPOILERS AHEAD SO IF YOU DON’T WANNA BE SPOILED, DON’T READ THIS POST/RANT- also yes, this is the original poster of this post, this was just something I put on a secondary account @jseegofixation and wanted to add here with a few changes plus, I would like to focus more on this account.)

so… I was recently thinking about the DSM-5 and the JSE egos… plus with Seán’s recent diagnosis with Autism (welcome to the club) I thought I would do this. I also will use behaviours we have seen from the egos and state how that applies to the diagnosis to some level.

note- this is my opinion however, if you disagree, that’s cool. Let me know what your thoughts are or if you have any questions. (Note: I know I don’t go into detail on how these connect to the diagnosis but hopefully The points below make some sense? Also… please don’t self diagnosis yourself based on this information alone… if you suspect you have something please consult a profession before doing so! Also… all videos will be listed as Tumblr has a 30 link/image limit… so comic images will show evidence, but video names will be listed.)

JBM: AuDHD

this one I thought I would start with because he is not only the easiest to see why I would state he is this, but also with the comics- it has become clear and most of the fanbase seems to agree with this.

1. he has a special interest in heros (Autism/ADHD)

now… in the comics, this is clear when in VOL 1. He is talking to the movie theatre worker about the movie…. Now look at this face. Does this look like the actions of someone who is neurodivergent explaining something that is interesting to them?

not only that… but when trying to problem solve… he imagines himself as a hero to help his thinking

Also… in VOL 0… his room clearly shows signs that he loves superhero’s… sure, you could shake this off saying that he’s just a nerd. Which yeah. May be true… but with the additional above info? It seems he is very genuinely interested in this and gets happy and excited by this

2. he overthinks social situations to avoid doing the wrong thing(Autism)

Yes. This is something VERY common in people with ASD, especially for those who struggle with social connections (yes. Even for those considered ‘higher functioning’)

you may wonder… where the hell is this present? Well… look no further than that same scene as before… the one where he was day dreaming. Where he was trying to come up with solutions with how to socialise properly

this by itself, shows he struggles socially, but also expects the worst as he doesn’t know how to socialise on a typical level… however, if someone were to ask him about hero’s? I have no doubts he would rant about it for hours!

3.he is often in his own world(ADHD)

this is more seen in Vol 0, when the manager of Ion X is talking to him. He’s in his own world thinking to himself- which is common in those who have ADHD.

4. he can take things literally(Autism)

I mean… just look at how he got his hero name.

he could have chosen a different name… but as soon as he heard the question of ‘what is you’re name’ he goes to answer his real name. Which is taking the question word for word

5. perseverates when something is new/different/unknown (Autism)

Perseverating- the act someone who is neurodivergent does when they can’t let go of something and think of it consistently. (Definition by me) I mean… just look at how he reacts when he discovers where his powers are coming from isn’t positive… he thinks about it constantly until something takes his attention away from it.

As soon as he stops that though… and goes back to doing nothing… he instantly thinks about it again.

if you’re thinking ‘well that’s something everyone will do’… sure… but, I’ll use myself as an example. I have a VERY intense fear of needles. If I get a bloodshot, I can’t even talk about it for WEEKS. And my body feels itchy in the spot blood was drawn. so yes. Perseverating can happen when individuals face something that is anxiety inducing.

6. sometimes misreads social cues(Autism/ADHD)

now… my main argument is 2 things for this is when Jackie is ranting about his interest, and has no idea the worker at the movie theatre is not interested until he actually looks

another thing to point out/notice… he doesn’t even pay attention to how the robots aren’t harming anybody… or take a moment to look at his surroundings, he instantly goes to beat up the robots, and it isn’t until too late when he realises… this.

If this doesn’t show struggling with social cues… I don’t know what will.

7. Changes/messing up can cause anxiety.(Autism)

now… again, this is seen as something that you may not think Jackie shows…. However, there is one scene in particular that shows he is hard on himself and when he makes a mistake. He is discouraged and has anxiety on messing up.

these 2 scenes above just show he wants to do things right, and when he doesn’t- he shuts down easily. And that’s the reasons why Jackie fits AuDHD as a diagnosis.

Marvin: gifted

this one, was a bit tricker and it wasn’t until recent that I found one that fits him… you may be confused why I chose this… well, first of all- what the heck is gifted as a diagnosis? gifted as a diagnosis refers to individuals who have a higher than average IQ, and are quick to understand things… but struggle a ton socially, it’s similar to autism, but it can be misdiagnosed as ADHD.

1.really good at magic, doesn’t have to study it

now I know you may be thinking ‘well yeah duh! In the comics, he has a higher power.’ And… I would agree with you there… however. I’m Vol 1… he had a look at a book for one… maybe 2 minutes at best… and what happens?

now…. I have no idea about you but for me at least? I would need to read something over and over again in order to understand it and make a connection. 2. gets discouraged when he doesn’t understand something right away/fails

now… you may wonder where that shows and think ‘well that’s everyone’s reaction!’ Which is true!! But… look at his reaction to failing the exam…

obviously, failing is upsetting… and yes. Especially when you fail the first time… however it’s not usual to get frustrated or upset when you don’t understand something… as an older adult.

When you expect yourself to know everything… you tend to put higher expectations on yourself which can absolutely weigh on you.

people who are considered gifted tend to do this exact thing!

3. Knows right from wrong, and not afraid to stick with gut.

this one may seem a bit odd and you might think ‘well… yeah. Doesn’t everyone?’ Yes… but with gifted individuals… they tend to know right from wrong. And when they know someone did wrong doing… it can cause them frustration. Just think of the scene when Marvin discovered the twins erased his and others memories of what happened to the murder?

this up here, shows that when he knows someone went against what is morally right. He is not gonna have it and sticks with his guns.

another moment to point out. Is initially… when offered a really high position with the Magic circle:

this, by itself really shows he sticks to his guns and initially… he does stick to this decision until Ramesses mentions that Moria and Marvin could be put in a position of danger. normally, you would expect children to stick to their opinions regardless… but Marvin here? He goes back. Because his mom could be put in danger. Which is not right!

Up here he even shows concern for his mom! now… I would be willing to say that… when his mom dies. We will see him act in a way that shows that he will stick with his knowledge on how he has a strong moral compass later on in the comics. I can guarantee it!

4. is quick on his feet

now… i know this may seem odd. But… a lot of gifted individuals tend to be quick on their feet and know how to act. And Marvin demonstrates this in a few scenes:

below, here- Marvin finds a family that is about to be killed by a robber. What does he do?

which, that by itself, causes the person to flee.

another really powerful instance. And something I almost forgot to mention is that sometimes with gifted individuals… they tend to have a sense of humour as well that may come off as being more adult.. even though Marvin is an adult. This kind of shows how he has a sense of humour and how the humour helps him be quick on his feet.

also this moment… from when he was a teen.

I’m not sure about you, but normally for me… it takes me at least a few days/hours in order to figure out a good comeback. Not a few seconds. 5. smart

now, this one… may seem like a character trait, and you would be right… however. I would like to point out. that Marvin is damn smart… probably more so than people in the universe realise… this can be seen even before getting into magic school.

that fridge clearly shows a photo of an A… showing that he is smart. I won’t stick on this point too much as I will show some more evidence that he is smarter than people think… IQ wise.

6. has high expectations of himself

I think at this point. The lightning image enough is showing how he has high expectations over himself but incase you’re wondering why I put this out? It’s because of how gifted individuals because they are so smart… and because they just tend to know everything, when it comes to learning and understanding new topics and things, there’s impossibly high expectations that they put on themselves and they get frustrated and overwhelmed easily when they don’t know something that is hard.

Marvin getting A’s in school show he is very smart… but I bet if you threw him a chemistry question at that age… don’t be surprised to see a tantrum.

7. enjoys talking to other people who love magic… but not so much every day people

I know this may seem weird but let me explain. For anybody with neurodivergence… they tend to find it easiest to connect with people who are similar or have similar knowledge or interest in things that they love. It’s no different for those who are gifted. Don’t believe me…

well in VOL 1 of void silver… we see Marvin not be social… nor be friends with anybody at his school. But I’m Vol 2, after moving into his new school… what do we suddenly see?

genuine excitement over talking and being around other people! Hmm…. Now if this doesn’t scream neurodivergence… I have no idea what will!

8. gets excitement over something new or challenging

at this point… you may be confused as to where I get this info from… well… just look no further to Marvin doing his math homework…

he’s bored… and clearly craves something new! That expression certainly does not read excitement unlike when you compare him to doing magic… something that causes him to think… that really challenges him.

9. has strong curiosity of the world:

you may find this weird… even wonder why I put it in… but… consider these 2 images… both come after meeting Ramesses, he’s curious and can’t stop thinking about it no matter what. His brain can’t let it go!

That, and plus. When you look at the excitement for magic. It’s clear he’s curious and gets excited by new things.

so… those are all my reasons for why Marvin falls into this category… now onto the next character… Chase Brody.

Chase: ODD/ADHD

videos for evidence:

“IRIS project Anomaly found”

“JSE power hour-Chase Brody”

“TIE a game about depression”

all videos by “Jacksepticeye”

Now here’s another one that you may be shocked as to why I put this on Chase. ADHD, you’re all probably familiar with, but, you may be wonder what ODD is.

ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder) is basically a diagnosis where an individual is someone who will go against any authoritative figure, and be defiant in every single way- even if they are wrong. This is primarily used for children (yes I am aware Chase is not a child).

(I would like to take a moment here that any of the below information is primarily based on google, research and a couple of experiences with individuals who have/are speculated to have ODD. I am now aware that there is a controversy surrounding it and do apologize in advance if the information comes out as insensitive. I have done research and had no idea that it is more commonly found in black/Hispanic than white obviously this by itself has some racist implications even if they are not intended. Another controversy is it shuts down people helping out those who are diagnosed with ODD as they just focus on the behaviour instead of looking at why someone is acting the way they are and offering supports. Obviously this is also wrong for many different reasons as no matter who you are... services and help should be available no matter what because I believe that everyone deserves to have help no matter what

so... with this in mind, I will be aware of the controversies and try my best to be as sensitive and careful as possible- I will still keep this as I feel in my opinion it fits but if you see otherwise I won’t be mad and I will understand)

1.has a drinking problem (ADHD/ODD)

this may seem like a weird one and a confusing one to put. But, let me explain.

so… think about Chase. Obviously everyone calls him ‘sad dad’ but… he also seems to have a serious drinking problem. If you disagree with me. Then why is it that he is okay with drinking when he is about to drive a car or when he is upset dealing with his emotions.

So with that, I was doing research. And it turns out, those who have ADHD tend to have a higher chance of developing a substance abuse. (Which includes things like drugs, coffee or alcohol). now, another important thing to know is that just because I say this does not mean it applies to all people with ADHD. kind of like how not all autistic individuals love trains or need headphones for noise sensitivities, everyone has their different strengths and stretches when it comes to these diagnosis.

no 2 individuals will be exactly the same

2. Is defiant with authoritative figures (ODD)

I know that this may be an odd one to have but… hear me out. this evidence comes straight from what he was like in ‘Anomaly Found’. Thinking back. He didn’t seem to cooperate too much with the scientist and in fact seem to annoy him on purpose despite being in a place where he had no power.

I know that this may seem unfair, especially considering the circumstances on what was going on were brutal and almost borderline torture. However… I would think that you would at least try and do all that you can to follow what is expected in hopes of getting out.

I can hear you saying “but… that was traumatising! I bet if he was somewhere else he would be different!” Possibly yes! However, there is evidence out there that proves that when he is in a place of authority or a place where he can control others? He has no troubles! But when someone else is telling him something, there seems to be some issues

3. doesn’t follow expectations (ODD)

again, I know this one seems a bit weird. But I also have some backup evidence of this.

one of my pieces of evidence is the fact that during his first video, there is a scene where he is doing trick shots. And a moment in the video he says “this one is called the drive by” before we hear people scream as he is shooting people. (Note: I understand this is a character and this moment has probably been disproven but I’m still putting it in here. because I think it sort of fits). Obviously, if he did do this and actually shoot people- it’s illegal. But it shows he has no hesitation.

4. irritable (ADHD/ODD)

yes… he has shown some evidence of getting irritable with people…

for one, the Anomaly found video is enough evidence to show that he can get irritable specifically with the scientist.

even excluding that though… he has shown he gets irritable when things don’t follow what he plans/what he has in mind. For example, in an older video, I remember Chase being in the bathroom and as soon as the camera comes in on him. He looks annoyed at the camera before yelling “Get out!” Clearly someone being in the house was not part of his plan.

now there is some more evidence I could discuss… but I’d rather move on to get some of my other points done.

5. Can be a bit scattered/is disorganised (ADHD):

There are a few moments where we can see Chase can have scattered thoughts and is not the most organised.

one moment in particular is the scene in ‘CHASE’ where he opens his car door and trash just comes out. Sure… we can account this as him being depressed, but I would also like to mention how even in Anomaly found, we can see that he is not thinking straight some of the times there- easily distracted. Side tracked by voices and visuals popping out of nowhere. we can even see this in his first video- with his first appearance. Even during THAT- it was clear that his thoughts and ideas can be all over the place and even a bit disorganised.

6. acts childlike as an adult sometimes (ADHD).

I know this may seem odd… but this is kind of something I notice.

I notice that people I see who are diagnosed with ADHD, tend to be a bit more hyper or even child like in energy. I’m not saying that this is a bad thing! But it is a pattern that I see in the adults that I hang around who have ADHD.

does this remind you of anybody? Chase perhaps?

well… I think that’s all the evidence for why I believe Chase has ADHD and ODD. Moving onto Anti!

Anti: Autism

videos referenced

“Say Goodbye”

“IRIS project Anomaly found”

“KJSE”

videos by: Jacksepticeye

Now… I know some of you may be shocked by this… however, I have my reasons for putting Anti as this specifically.

1.Sensory seeking behaviour

you may be confused and thinking. “Where the hell does Anti show this?” well first of all, what do I mean by sensory seeking? Let me explain.

when it comes to anything with the word “sensory” it refers to anything to do with the 5 senses. Now… for neurodivergent people, they may easily be overstimulated or under stimulated easily. “Overstimulation” is when someone’s senses are way too overwhelmed that it makes them shut down or go into a fight/flight response to help deal with calming their senses. This is why some individuals on the spectrum feel the need to cut tags off because tags on clothes can sometimes trigger some individuals who get easily overstimulated to the tag touching their skin. “understimulation” is the opposite. This refers to someone who doesn’t have enough going on with the 5 senses being not triggered enough, and they need to have more- having under stimulation is just as unpleasant and can cause someone to sometimes use too much energy making them get tired easily. So for example, may be why you may see some neurodivergent people LOVE weighted blankets, because it provides extra feeling when you don’t get enough. Which is “sensory seeking” (I don’t know if this is a word, but it seems to fit)

now what does this have to do with Anti? Well… I like to think back to “Say goodbye” what was one of the FIRST things Anti did when he took Jack’s body over? Slit his own throat. And this… can be seen as seeking out stimulation. hell, he even walks around with no socks and shoes (we’ve all seen his feet- get your phones back you dirty minded people!)

and he also seems to almost ALWAYS have something in hand- it’s mainly his knife, now… this obviously I think stopped but before 2019ish… he had his knife always!

2. glitching can be considered stimming

Let me explain!

stimming is something that someone who is neurodivergent may do that seems like a repeated motions, or even repeated noises. This can often be used to help calm or settle someone sometimes. what is something that Anti in the past has done?

lot’s of twitching and glitching. And although it’s something he somewhat doesn’t seem to control. I do notice that the more agitated or aggressive he becomes, the more intense the glitches and twitches are. Which ties together with the fact that stimming can be used to help calm someone down who is neurodivergent.

3. stumbles and stutters over words sometimes

once again. This may seem odd and you may not even notice he does it…. But he does do it! Especially when he first took over Jack in ‘say goodbye’ now, obviously since then he hasn’t done this lots but in the beginning when he was in a new environment, and a new type of situation…. It was certainly there.

4. Gets agitated and angry easily

once again. I know this may seem odd… but, for some people on the spectrum. It’s very easy for them to get upset or peeved off especially if something does not go their way or if there is a change in routine. it’s obvious that Anti has a plan for what to do and what he wants…. But he has also made it clear that if that plan goes sideways… there is hell to pay and he will not hesitate to attack. hell, he even shows that he will go through with what he says he’ll do!

now… I think that’s enough about Anti… now onto JJ.

JJ: PTSD

videos referenced:

“JSE power hour- Jameson Jackson”

“JJ’s Jolly Jaunts”

all videos by: Jacksepticeye

this. Is another one that I think is a bit more clear, and here are a few reasons why. For those of you who are unfamiliar, PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) is a diagnosis that is an intense Anxiety disorder that can appear after a very significant traumatising event that can scar people for life and make everything harder to deal with including triggers…. It’s a diagnosis although commonly seen in soldiers, can happen to anybody who goes through a traumatising enough event (sometimes events that may be close calls to death.)

JJ for this, his traumatising event would be what happened in his first appearance and I’ll explain why. (I don’t have many reasons for this but I do have a couple)

1.gets scared a bit when strings appear

I know this seems weird…. However, at first. Think of when the strings first appeared in his second video. Any normal person would be a bit confused but shrug it off… how did JJ react?

sure he did seem confused, but in his eyes- there’s also a bit of fear- as well as anxiety as if he knows what is about to happen. It’s clear Anti has done something messed up enough for him to get a bit worried about strings.

2. signs of anxiety

this seems to happen when Anti is about to attack or is impacting JJ in some way.

this example comes from “JJ’s Jolly Jaunts” but when Anti takes over at the end…. This is how JJ reacts:

JJ has the heavy breathing, the panicked look, the fight and flight response he even dissociates as if he has been triggered and his brain shuts down to protect him.

this all may seem weird but the brain blocking out certain memories, even moments being erased from conscious is not unusual.

Sure… memories can come and go and that is completely normal… however, sometimes the brain, when it recognises a stressful enough situation, it will just block that memory out from being recalled, it’s a protective mechanism and can be healthy!

However. What is not healthy is when our brain as a coping strategy decides to dissociate to escape a situation no matter what. It’s not only unhealthy, but it can be draining and even dangerous.

it’s at this point I will take a moment to mention that if you or anybody you know is struggling with mental health concerns I would HIGHLY Urge you to talk to someone you trust or therapy. It’s not healthy to hold things back. If there is nobody around there are also hotlines you can call to try and get some help. Also please note there is more to PTSD than anxiety and panic attacks, I am very well aware of this and we also unfortunately do not have a ton of videos/media with JJ in it so this is based of speculation that Anti would have traumatized JJ to a point of

Schneeplestien: BPD/ADHD

videos referenced:

“Jacksepticeye Powerhour- Doctor Schneeplestien”

“KJSE”

both videos are by Jacksepticeye.

this one, I also struggled with- but I ended up a bit satisfied with what I have. Even though it took some digging. for those of you who don’t know, BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) is a diagnosis for those who have intense mood swings, and struggle to maintain control of those emotions. And both ADHD and BPD can be diagnosed together so… I felt this fit.

1.coffee addiction(ADHD/BPD)

once again. This may seem like an odd one but like I said for Chase’s those who have ADHD are more likely to have a substance addiction.

coffee is obviously considered a substance, and Henrik here shows more than enough evidence that it is an unhealthy addiction that he needs in order to be okay. This goes all the way back to his first video, and even some IRIS tweets that are speculated to be ‘Zee Good Docta’ mention coffee so yeah. I think Henrik drinks an unhealthy amount of Caffine.

2. impulsive(ADHD)

this one I think Henrik shows lots of. He not only talks about how he will end patients lives who don’t listen. But he also has a graveyard of patients apparently (yes. He mentioned this before)

now… even if this is all something that you’re thinking “well that was old Henrik Von Schneeplestien” possibly… but. I maybe consider the fact that him looking into time travel or… whatever that portal was at the end of a newer video. I don’t know about you… but you would have to be pretty impulsive to look into something like that.

3. threatens when things don’t go his way(BPD)

this one… we generally see with his patients. But also… in my research, people who have BPD can also not only threaten to harm themselves. But also if triggered enough may threaten and even harm other people.

Sound like anybody?

4. has mood swings(ADHD/BPD)

ironic but… Henrik has shown he can go from happy to angry to sad in a few seconds. Yes this may be due to the Caffine however, it happens pretty fast and is concerning how he can go from happy and wanting to help a patient to threatening to kill them and drug them to death is pretty extreme and someone who is not emotionally stable.

no surprise here, this is a common sign of BPD as they tend to have lots of mood swings.

5. Fears of rejection (ADHD/BPD)

you may be confused but once again… let me explain. Those who have BPD tend to have fears of being rejected by others around them.

we see Henrik have a couple moments where he seems to hate and fear the idea of rejection.

1- the fact he went to Doctor school instead of art school shows that he’s worried about letting his family/parents down.

2- the fact that he ties a connection to him having a license to keeping his wife and child and is devastated when he rips it up.

once again. These 2 things show he has a fear of rejection.

and this is all of my thoughts about them! Hopefully you guys enjoyed reading this!

[shrimpathizer]

this is just a theory (i haven't looked into this bit that much) but I feel like the reason that misinformation is so wildly rampant in online communities about ADHD (probably also autism) is in part because of how inaccessible actual professional information about it is.

Like, I remember before I got my diagnosis (what started off this whole thing a while back), I was looking at the CDC website description of symptoms of ADHD with my mom and. If you thought you were neurodivergent and were looking at this thing trying to see if you should get tested, its basically saying "screw you. you're either a child who is going to be here because of their parents, or an adult who is also here because of another neurotypical."

one of the criteria was literally "is often 'on the go' acting as if 'driven by a motor.'" that means absolutely nothing. you are using undefined expressions to explain something to someone who historically is not good at understanding unexplained social norms (such as expressions).

plus, its incredibly subjective. "on the go" could mean something wildly different for one person then the next. and "often" could mean "all the time every day" or "only at school" or even "every other week." not to mention the memory issues that at least a lot of the people who I know with ADHD struggle with.

someone who might have ADHD has no way of knowing if they "often have trouble organizing tasks and activities" or if that is a normal amount. there is no way for them to easily know if they "often do not seem to listen when spoken to directly."

so it seems obvious to me, that they would turn to other people with ADHD. and the easiest place to find them these days is online. thats how I started wondering if I should get diagnosed. they're probably trying to find some other way to understand or know. and since its social media and social media is rampant with misinformation, of course they are going to be fed misinformation.

people are going to tell them "you see this weird thing that you do? I do that too. and its actually because of this much larger thing. trust me." and people will. because there really isn't much of another place for them to turn. they are going to self-diagnose with every disorder under the sun to make themselves feel at home and feel like they aren't weird or wrong.

maybe i'm way off here but I think that if you want people (teens in particular) to stop turning to social media for comfort and information, you should give them other resources that are accessible. that they don't have to pay to see, that they can understand clearly, that acknowledges all the weird things that they feel bad about.

and sort of as a side note: i remember in elementary school, early on (this might have just been my school/city/state), the school set up one of those mobile classrooms on the yard and would pull kids out for like a good couple months to do eye exams. because we've normalized that kids also have eye problems and thats normal. and maybe, could we also get a small little assessment. just to see if we can find neurodivergent kids early on and get them help so that they don't suffer for years and years.

and i'm not talking as someone who has had it hard. i have had it so easy compared to so many others. i have supportive parents and get good grades, and yet, i am constantly burnt out. i constantly feel horrible. not just because of depression. maybe i'm being too radical here but i feel like i shouldn't need a 504 plan to say that if i'm having a panic attack i can leave the room. that if i'm having trouble focusing i can go to the library or somewhere else. that i can get extensions on due dates. that i can see a copy of the notes or lesson for reference. i don't know maybe i'm just incredibly radical that i think people shouldn't have to be expected to work four times as hard to get anything done and then get blamed when they don't live up to the expectation. whether or not they are neurodivergent.

[superfluffychickens]

Animal death mention TW

It’s been less than two days since poor Daisy died, and I just need to get all my thoughts out. She was such a sweet little thing, when she was a tiny chick she was the friendliest of the bunch, and would just sit on my hand. She grew up to be docile enough that she ended up at the bottom of the pecking order, but I always made sure to make sure she got treats while the other chickens would try to hog them all. Now she’s gone, I just hope she didn’t suffer.

To be honest it really hurts to see the post I made with a picture of her, just like a week ago, still being reblogged, because it just reminds me I’ll never see her again. But there’s not much I can do to stop it, since deleting the post won’t get rid of it from other blogs. That happens with photos of some of my other birds who have passed away, it makes me so sad.

But the other birds still need me, and I’ve got to keep going for their sake. What I think happened was, a part of the fence was sagging and some of the stakes were loose. A few of the pullets jumped over the fence, I don’t know how long they were out by themselves. Then something came and snatched Daisy away. I ran out to find Cricket and Stella outside the fence. I looked all over to make sure Daisy hadn’t gotten away and hidden somewhere, but the trail of feathers stopped. I won’t be letting them out without supervision anymore, that’s for sure.

My parents and I are working on getting either a covered run or an electric fence - I’d prefer a covered run of some sort since clearly the pullets are able to clear the 4ft fence I have now, so they might be able to jump an electric fence too. I actually got a painting commission from my aunt, which should help pay for some of that. Also, I’m thinking of rehoming Jack’s flock once they’re done molting. I feel bad that they can’t go out and are stuck in their little run, but they don’t get along with any of the birds in Zeke’s flock. And they’re all afraid of me. But it’s a decision I’ll need to think on for a while, I’m not in a great mental state after all. But in the future, I only want to have one flock.

Also, I’ve been trying to communicate better with my parents in regards to my needs. My autism diagnosis puts a lot of stuff into perspective, and I feel a bit more comfortable asking for help and admitting I can’t do something alone. I think I need more help in my life, like help maintaining my house and keeping it clean, keeping up with chores and appointments and stuff, etc. I guess it’s just different now that I know why I struggle with these things. I applied for SSI/disability, but it’ll be a long time before that’s processed.

For the meantime, life goes on whether you want it to or not. The rest of the youngsters are quickly maturing, now it seems most of the rest of them will start laying soon. Someone laid an egg with a paper-thin shell today and it broke, it was probably due to the stress of seeing Daisy get taken. They still need looking after so I keep going on. I’m gonna start the painting - which is of chickens - that my aunt commissioned from me today, painting is a great way to get feelings out.

[nimdreams]

My Awakening

Written November 2, 2021

When I was around 9 years old, I came across the comics Elfquest in the library with some friends of mine. We all loved this series. The art was beautiful and the characters were enchanting. My friend who was good at art, loved the style and me.. I awakened.

I don't remember much of it since it's such a long time ago. I always felt.. different. I wasn't quite like my peers and they had to teach me a lot about social propriety. When I read the Elfquest comics, I felt a recognition. I was an elf, like them. It was the start of a secret self image, something I had to keep hidden deep within myself and not share with anyone or they'd think I was weird and that would hurt incredibly much as it would be a rejection of my truest self.

I continued to love the Elfquest series and bought any comic parts I could find. But even though the Wolfriders had made me realize I was a feral elf, I also felt like I was different from them. They were half wolves and bound to wolves and even though I went through a wolf phase I knew that it wasn't a part of my self image. So I started looking for my animal half. It must've been a year later maybe when I started to identify as a voself (foxelf).

I can't remember why fox. How that started. It was around the time when Pokémon came out and my favorite was Vulpix a fox pokémon. It could've also been something else, some other way I connected to foxes.

It's really too bad I don't remember it now, I really wonder how voself became such a strong identity of mine. And yet I was always more skeptical about my fox identity, I remember a lifetime of searching for my "real" animal self while continuously landing back on fox and keeping my voself self image.

I really want to focus more on foxes, I need to self reflect and figure out why I keep dismissing them and reclaiming them. There is clearly something there that I should work out.

I continued to have my foxelf identity in the back of my mind as the years went by until I reached my 20s. At this time I was still undiagnosed with my autism and as I grew into adulthood I felt like it was time to stop being childish. To stop viewing myself as non-human, I was a human and I had to start thinking I was one and accept it. I suppressed my foxelf identity and started masking my unknown autism until I literally became so physically and mentally ill that I couldn't continue like that anymore.

I got my autism diagnosis and decided to stop masking and letting myself be my true me. Whoever that was cause I had quite lost myself.

I am still physically ill, chronically, and disabled. My world is very small. But as the years go by, I have become myself again. I'm still learning. Because of the pain and fatigue in my body, I can't really do much in a day but hang around in bed or on the couch. It has given me a lot of time, too much time really, to think about things. And self reflection is good but you also need to live life and have experiences, which is difficult for me in my state. I have at times done too much thinking to the point where I drove myself crazy, wondering who I really was and what labels really fit me. Thinking in negative downward spirals. I'm learning to let go a little now, and to feel more and focus on my body, a place that I have avoided out of fear for my agony.

I have tried to reclaim my foxelf identity a few times since joining the alterhuman community. Using it, but then switching it with other labels. It doesn't matter much what label I use, I am that foxelf child still. But I no longer have to keep it a secret. I am great just the way I am.

[chibabymumma]

This is my private Diary, obviously not that private as it's on Tumblr, but a place where I can scream, vent, cry and freak out without judgement from those close to me, I have to be balanced constantly which is battle.

A little bit about myself I am a mum of 4, 3 adults 1 toddler, the Toddler who will call little lion, has Congenital hyperinsulinemia, hypoglycemia,heart defect, peg fed, sensory issues, possible autism, non verbal, oral aversion and is literally a baby shark! If you can see the state of my arms you would believe me.

I just so need a safe space where I can find some sort of solace in my journey, of being a older mum navigating through the horrors of menopause after finally getting my autism diagnosis at age 49! And ADHD, with the sheer terror of having a little lion and about to be a grandma for the first time! Oh Goddess help me! And the new and improved tantrums now little lion has hit 3!! How do you cope with it? When my premenopausal self just literally wants to lay in the road with him and scream and shout at the injustice and sadness at the world, but no I move forward gently trying to get little lion to stop having a meltdown in the middle of the road, while he's biting my knuckles so hard they are swollen when I get home! All around me people are staring and tutting at me, I don't blame them he's a complete diva when he gets started, the ear piercing screams can shatter the sky, they certainly shatter my ears and my heart.

Little lion was a surprise. I wasn't expecting him, he just sort of arrived, I had at this point as well as my 3 adult children, 6 miscarriages. 3 very painful ones in the few years leading up to his arrival. My husband noticed first I thought the perimenopause had started and only did the test to say "nah see the changes have started" and there they were those 2 clear lines. I freaked out I'm not going to lie, Gave my poor husband a heart attack squealing and fainting. I remember the day so clearly one of my adult children had got COVID I was beside myself with worry this was the day the UK went into lockdown. My wee boy well man, was working ok a diary farm away to try and boost his funds, we had all just watched the news conference and I took the test reading about the effects of COVID lamenting my sadness and worry for my other boy, praying he would be ok, the world was a scary place. The test was next to me. As I read I got more and more panicked for him, I barely noticed the test I finally got my head out of the BBC news site I picked up the test and instantly had a meltdown! The joys of being me. And that was the start of this insane ever ongoing saga that is my life.

[emophilzablr]

Here she is, BPD analysis.

— Disclaimer: I am not a professional, I did study psychology for most of my life and my credentials to this is simply the fact that I am BPD as well. I also want to highlight that these symptoms can also be AUTISM! And that maybe that is even more relatable to him, though, you can have both, because they really tend to coexist

Here are the symptoms of BPD, and either if he shows them or not, or if its believed he does. Remembering you don't need to have all of them, you need to fit the criteria, of some specific ones, that differentiate BPD from disorders like Bipolar and depression, and they all overlap with Autism which causes a confusion in diagnosis.

• Fear of rejection and abandonment: He keeps count of every time he was rejected, his biggest struggle in life was with the fact that Amelia rejected him, replaced him, and abandoned him, he has been in the loop of this trauma for years, it never leaves him, because that's his biggest fear coming true. His fear of boringness or of being mediocre is also in this, he wants to overcompensate so people don't reject or leave him again. Also, this symptom comes with a pattern that is very very common in this symptom, leaving first, losing interest after the chase, people with BPD leave first to not get abandoned.

• Intense and unstable relationships: We know that his romantic relationships are always like this, incredibly intense at first and then it dies out or they leave or he leaves, and they tend to be unstable while it was happening, especially with Amelia, it was incredibly unstable and toxic for both.

• 8/80 relationships, going from intense love to nothing or to hatred: It seems like most of them have this, a big start, and a terrible ending, either it going to nothing or strong resentment (Amelia's case) It also has a part of this not talked, that after this hatred passes, BPD people tend to come back, and, blame themselves which well, next symptom.

• Villain complex: Most BPD people experience this, seeing themselves as absolute horrible monsters, most of his songs make him the villain, he really highlights like hey i'm a horrible person, and this is very, very common. I think funnily enough, C!Wilbur is a perfect demonstration of this part of him, it's a self insert of the Villain he makes himself to be.

• Constant changes in personality: We have seen this, even as a streamer, in a place he was never truly himself, he's always changing completely who he is, even though it's a character. I also feel that the fact that he has so many characters that are all clearly self inserts is a way to express this self image issue he has, going on a limb here but you get it. He also seems to struggle with his appearance and self image and tends to become a sponge when with others.

• Impulsive behavior: So this is many factors, getting from the internet straight up “Impulsive and risky behavior, such as gambling, reckless driving, unsafe sex, spending sprees, binge eating or drug abuse, or sabotaging success by suddenly quitting a good job or ending a positive relationship” He does a bunch of those, he did have a problem with abusing alcohol, most of us believe he did that with coke as well, we know that he impulsively drops all his responsibilities and doesn't keep up his promises, that he's constantly moving, constantly dropping and then coming back to it, that he can be super excited for something and then suddenly not be anymore, he's always ruining his relationships even though some of them are good just because he found something more exciting. He has binge eaten too but I don't know if that is something he always does.

• Self harm/Suicidal tendencies: He shows few of these, some of his songs imply that he was in a mental state that this could happen, what we know is that he did punch a window, accidentally he says, but we don't know, I think his form of self harm is self sabotage.

• Paranoia: This is something that is not spoken much about BPD but I think even his hypochondria could be a symptom since BPD is very prone to paranoia, and his is based on his health, he thinks he's dying literally all the time, that he's sick and that he has something, this is pure paranoid behavior.

• Mood swings: We don't know if he has many, we do know he has Bipolar signs in this, expressing more stages of depression and mania, but he also has constant anxiety problems, which can all be part of this symptom in specific.

• Emptiness: Another one that is incredibly necessary, and we know this is his main affliction most times, he feels apathetic all the fucking time, it's his favorite word in music, he shows this idea that he's incapable of loving too that is part of this emptiness, he thinks he doesn't feel anything because there's nothing inside him type of thing.

• Anger: This is inconclusive, it is to believe that when he was younger he was a very angry person, we don't know if that's still there, but, we know it was a problem at some point.

[caffeinated-rants]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

First there's this paragraph that stood out to me:

"It took me until I was nearly twenty years old to discover, if you will, what is easily my most problematic stim: hair pulling. One night, I noticed a single curly strand in my otherwise perfectly straight head of soft, shiny hair, so what did I do? I plucked it, of course. But I never imagined the devastation that would be wrought by that innocent little pluck. I never dreamed that it was the beginning of the end for the hair that had more than once been compared to the hair of a Pantene model. One pull. That’s all it took. One pull, and I was hooked on a behavior that haunts me to this day."

Then just a little further down there was this statement:

"I tried to reassure myself that it wasn’t that bad: it wasn’t like I was stripping myself bald or something, even if I did have a few small patchy spots. When the hair would start to grow back, I couldn’t stand the stubbly regrowth, so I would pull it out all over again. It’s not that bad? I would sit for hours on the bathroom vanity, pulling, just one strand at a time. I was fixated on the slimy little hair roots, and I would keep pulling until I got a root, which I then proceeded to drag across the back of my hand just to feel its slippery wetness. Then I would stick the hair, root and all, to the full-length mirror in front of me until my reflection was spattered with long brown hairs topped off with the silvery, bulbous roots. When I finished, and there was always a point when I knew I was finished, I made sure to spritz the mirror with Windex and wipe away the evidence of my pull-fest. It was bad. I knew it, and while I felt deeply ashamed of what I was doing, I just… couldn’t stop."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All of this is exactly what I go through, day in and day out. I deeply want my hair pulling to STOP, but no matter what I do I just can't seem to get it under control. I've been shaving my head since around April or May of 2023 and wearing either a wig or a beanie when going out. More often it was a beanie until this past week when I had my sister take me to a professional salon and wig store to get a proper wig fitting, as I'd been wearing cosplay wigs when I wanted to appear to have hair and no matter how flattering the colors were you could clearly tell that it was a wig instead of natural hair. Just as the writer of this piece stated for their own experience, my psychologist also has switched up my medications in order to prescribe me with Prozac. I'm still tapering off the Lexapro I'd been on for almost a year, so I don't see any changes just yet, but hopefully the switch up helps. 

I already have had suspicions as I've gotten to my mid-twenties that there's the possibility that I'm on the ASD spectrum, but I've never officially been diagnosed. My mother doesn't see anything wrong with me, and I'm sure that she'd blow a gasket if she knew I was even entertaining this idea. But truthfully, a lot of the traits are adding up to me and as of right now, I have a closeted self-diagnosis for autism.

Originally, my hair pulling started because I thought I had an ingrown hair. There was a pimple-like bump where the hair strand was, and so I plucked it. The relief from that felt nice, and because I thought it was an ingrown hair, I also dug at the perceived pimple that was left in its place. I made a dime-size bald spot right on my parted hairline. This was back in 2016-17 when I was a senior in high school. I initially thought that perhaps it was stress from schoolwork, as there was massive pressure that came with the mandatory senior project we had to complete, and constantly being reminded by teachers and staff that completing and getting a passing grade for this project was going to determine whether we get to graduate or not certainly didn't help. On top of that, the staff allowed an autistic student stalk me on campus for a good 50% of my time there. He attacked my then-boyfriend on multiple occasions and was only given a day and a half suspension for it. He wasn't being monitored well and his behavior was explained to my mother as a "hard puberty". He would ask invasive questions about my intimate life with my boyfriend and whether or not I watch hentai in my spare time. Things got to the point where he would actively search for me during passing periods and brunch/lunch if he saw that I wasn't in any of my usual hangout spots, and I should have following through with my threat of "taking things into my own hands" (ie. going to the police). This individual jumpstarted what would become the generalized anxiety disorder that I now have to be medicated for. Because of this, my entire outlook on my hair pulling was thought to be a result of these two issues combined.

Now, I believe that it's partly due to stress but is, in fact, a potential autism stim. I can't get myself to stop, and just as this person had in their experience, I can't handle the stubble coming in when it's in the areas I pull most. They are coarse and often feel ingrown, causing sore lumps that I ultimately end up picking at. I have had scabs on the right side of my head for almost a month now because I keep going at that spot. I also have kept my baby blanket despite it being practically in tatters, but it brings me comfort and helps me sleep. I use it as an extra pillow these days, but I also will rub parts of the fabric between my index finger and thumb. I've never understood why I did this, and my mom also said when I was little, I would always rub the red corner of this blanket on my nose all the time. That's another flag for being an undiagnosed autistic.

[thelittlepalmtree]

One thing I hate about the neurodivergent community On the Internet is this idea that "neurotypical" social cues are all stupid and don't make sense.

First of all we are living in a society where 70% of people report at least one Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) aka a traumatic circumstance that effects brain development and 30% of people report 4 or more. A recent study by the CDC found about 14% of children 2-17 are diagnosed with ADHD (which is still underdiagnosed in girls). 2.2% of the population has Autism (again significantly underdiagnosed in girls). And around 50% of Americans have a mental health diagnosis. This is in a country without universal healthcare where mental healthcare is very difficult to access. You are not meeting a lot of "neurotypical" people on the regular. You ARE meeting people who are not neurodivergent in the way that you are.

Most of our social rules are about two things: consideration and reciprocation. Why is someone not being direct with you? Because they are trying to consider you in their communication. Why is someone annoyed with you? Because you were likely not reciprocating the interaction.

For example I recently saw a tiktok where someone didn't understand why people were mad when they answered "are you hungry" with "no." They went into this whole dissection as though the other person was hinting and expecting them to be a mind reader. Clearly the other person meant "i want to go to lunch with you because I'm hungry" and they got mad when this creator didn't magically know this. That's probably the underlying desire but that's not what the asker meant. The creator suggested saying "no, and is there anything else you would like to ask me." But that reaction would probably just cause more annoyance.

The meaning behind "are you hungry?" Is "are you hungry?" Because the speaker is considering the other person's point of view. If person A says "I'm hungry," person B would probably not feel the need to respond (and if they did person A would be putting the issue of their hunger onto person b). If person A says "I'm hungry, do you want to go to lunch?" Person B will not be allowed to share their own state of being hungry or not hungry. So person A checks in first "are you hungry?" That way person B can indicate their own interest. However now Person B needs to reciprocate the interaction. If they just say "no", the interaction is over. They are not showing any consideration for person A because they did not ask person A about their state. This is why it's not polite to respond to "How are you?" With "Good." And instead you should respond with "Good. How are you?" Reciprocation is key to almost any social interaction. People don't secretly want you to ask them about their lives but if they've shown an interest in you and you show zero interest in them it is a rebuff. Think about conversation like a game of catch. They've thrown you the ball and now you're just holding onto it. All you need to do is throw the ball back by returning the question, showing interest.

Okay but why do we have to play catch? Why don't we all just say what we want whenever we want? Because beyond all the ways in which desire is policed by actual social issues, people don't want to impose on you. The person asking if you're hungry is giving you a way to say you're not interested in going to lunch with them. And you might feel comfortable saying no to a direct invitation but a lot of people aren't. So yes, person A ultimately wants person B to go to lunch with them but they don't want person B to go if they don't want to. The more direct a question is the more pressure it puts on someone to say yes ESPECIALLY if they have anxiety or a mental health state that makes them feel like they have to please people.

So often a lack of understanding social cues is just selfishness. Most people are trying to be considerate of your wants and needs, you should consider theirs too.

[a-weird-cryptid]

Accepting that I'm neurodivergent without any diagnosis

I know nobody cares about this, but fuck it. It's my personal blog after all. So why shouldn't I use it to update the 1% who does care about my mental health journey? Cause lemme tell ya': a lot has happened since my self-diagnosis series.

A quick recap:

I experienced many ups, but mostly downs regarding my mental health in recent years. I tried to get professional help/therapy so many times in so many different ways, but ALWAYS hit a dead end.

Teachers send me to my school's social worker. They sent me to a non-profit social worker organization. They told me to talk to my parents, who, btw, couldn't care less about my mental health cause I'm a "picture perfect totally normal child". So even when they talked to my parents, it lead to nothing.

Then I decided to directly go to my GP, only to feel misunderstood by them and not getting taken serious. I have the feeling they only wrote down half of what I was saying, only to then blame everything on my diet (I'm vegetarian). Despite me making it clear that I felt depressed and stressed because of school and my family.

Now to everything that has been happening since:

A few months ago, my insurance offered a new mental health program that they'd cover the costs of. It included a self-help app in combination with phone calls with a psychologist.

Generally speaking, I like my psychologist. Funnily enough she already flagged me as neurodivergent after just 20/45min during our very first call. She told me that I very likely have inattentive ADHD (or ADD, how it's still called in my region). I also told her about my suspected dyscalculia. An idea which she was surprisingly open about.

But even she didn't help me to find any places to get diagnosed from eithe, insisting I should simply ask my GP if they could find a place to get diagnosed from. Despite me clearly communicating that this isn't really an option for me. Neither is switching to another GP, because that would mean even more stress for me. Especially because I can't properly communicate with classic doctors and had a bunch of bad experiences because of it.

I wish I could get dyscalculia diagnosed, since the accomodations would benefit me a lot. I also want to get inattentive ADHD diagnosed, because my psychologist thinks medication could really help me. But it's simply not an option for me...

There's the issues of no "diagnostic places" being anywhere near me, extremely long waiting times with no guarantee to actually get diagnosed at the end, no information about whether or not my insurance would cover the costs of getting diagnosed, etc, etc, etc.

However, there's no need for me to get my suspected level 1 autism (or Asperger's, how it's still called in my region) diagnosed. I couldn't get much out of the advantages, but the disadvantages could disable me further. It still impacts my life in a negative way, don't get me wrong. But I can manage it by looking up coping skills online.

I tried to get professional help and the diagnosis I need. I really did. Multiple times over multiple years. But it all lead to nothing.

I think I'm fine with just saying I'm neurodivergent if it's ever brought up, as it could mean anything from autism to anxiety. (As far as I know) It's unspecified enough for me to not get imposter syndrome or get associated with self-diagnosers on TikTok/here who obviously fake their symptoms for cloud (e.g. ticsandroses).

But it still gets the message across that I'm wired differently and might not be capable of the things others do with ease. That I might need more help or understanding than others might. Based of experience, people also tend to be more understanding of your issues if you simply state them without any specific label attached. It's less stigmatized and not connected to as many assumptions.

[bigthingsforeverintheworks]

ok i can't stop thinking about my anxiety diagnosis so i'm going to post it here because that makes me feel accomplished or something i don't know it's weird but also i don't have a sense of seperation for what goes where and this isn't really speaking in the same way because it's a void and i can control how i talk to it. First of all it just like felt weird because like i was getting tested for ADHD and idk if i'm just missing the point (or like people-pleasing hhhh that's a whole thing) but like being able to click a bunch of buttons doesn't quite feel the same thing. wait hold on i'm just re-reading this because guess what reading my name a bunch of times is weird and i scored low average on the emotional recognition i thought i did well :skull: and then the whole thing is i asked my teachers and my math teacher said i was fine (i'm good at math) and my english teacher didn't. like in general it's like i'm pretty close wait wtf i got a 98 on one of these things.

Point is I'm like bad at english in the sense that I don't do things which uh skill issue and like that has to fundamentally do something like you can't expect me to not have anxiety or something when i'm not doing what i'm being told to and also notably not talking to my teachers like fine sure i guess that's anxiety but it feels contained and not like a part of me

but then also like the symptoms like "randomly breaking out in sweat" i guess but i don't know it's genuinely random and also only really started after i got the diagnosis which idk and like there's also a specific incident socially but also as a whole like i don't think it's "racing thouhgts" so much as "i dont' know how to socialize i was brought up on social forums and forced conversation" like at some point i realized that people like ... talked a lot on discord with other people and i've clearly burned some bridges by again not responding but also idk it seems rational to me isn't a great response

the other thing is that the whole thing was at least i feel badly tested on both my part and the tester's like the document notes how i have problems with the questions and also i don't think i really accurately answered them because i don't have answers but also this was two years ago and i'm now memory-gaslighting myself.

and then also like it can't be anxiety because what "a big lump in my stomach and my head randomly inflamming" doesn't feel like a lot even though it kind of is but then it doesn't happen online and that can't be nothing and it doesn't happen when i'm at a summer camp which ???? to me shows this isn't the default state

and then there's the depression which i think i have but i still don't know if it's sadness or nothing or both and like i kind of think that's like a filter because i can get very hyper and flap my hands around and go spin and then get dizzy and then spin again and then jump and walk in circles for a good while

there's also something where like in my family and my friendgroup i'm so post-ironic that like i don't know it doesn't feel like everything's normal but also i definitely want certain labels and also like apparently i have alexythimia which is weird because like actually it isn't I guess

Oh and in the words of my sister "If you speak better with a stim toy you need a stim toy" but i can't bring one to school because it's loud

and then like when it comes to autism "my early developmental history was fairly typical hm i was 'alert and mentally precocious' and 'early to develop language skills' and like personally i don't really think i've been overstimulated but idk i've definitely been udnerstimalted or just attention span tik tok zuckerberg-pilled i'm listening to music all the time even though i really shouldn't

and i don't really have the same like stubbornness that seems to be a thing with autistic people like i mean there's perfectionism but that's for the most part died i guess and my memory sucks and gosh i need to create something but i also need to consume new media and sometimes when i thought i'd be doing something and then am not i'm uh some feeling (idk which one alexythiimia) but also like i do feel like there's some aspect of like just delegating a lot of this to my parents but i'm going to be older soon and i feel like if i can i'd do something but also gosh i can't with schedules idk

and then like i demonstrably think/talk better when i close my eyes that's got to be something that's not anxiety surely i dunno i like the chonny jash hms model though i also like the "it's a bunch of switches but the like ones that have multiple things and they all go random everywhere" and also like i'm pretty good at understanding and explaining things and idk if that's self-awareness or some sort of like adaptation

idk wtf you mean i'm sensitive and also hhhh i wrote a (very bad) essay on introversion (featuring tumblr posts guys that one can't be normal can it) and i don't think it makes sense and i also desire social interaction so bad

"i'm reported to have a good sense of humor" please stop with the self-perception i'm aslo reported to be creative i don't get that but also i'm gifted how fun wheee oh i do have "a weakness in executive functions" how fun gosh i keep thinking about tumblr posts and things people said and i held a conversation taht worked help what do you mean i just like to be alone

oh right i do kind of have anxiety but in the like "wall of jello to doing a task when actually i can write pretty well and idk i have the idea and it'll be fine"

and then like i feel like i'm too happy like that's got to be something like i've got my aromantic flag oh and tone indicators those are helpful but i don't normally need to use them because i've got al the phrases but like they come naturally to me i don't need to think about it but also gosh i hated social conversation "small talk" and i didn't know that and maybe i learned it but also i forgor and i hav eperfect pitch maybe and like either way i do need to go consume some media like homestuck and doctor who and worm and all those books i have and omori

oh also i play videogames with sound off because i'm listening to music/youtube videos, the latter of which i think i rewatch too much idk smth smth you can't talk absolutely when you have no idea of the relative standard as i said when i was vagueposting on discord i love vagueposting on discord (my main account) and also i can switch registers is that normal oh and i have no sense of numbers even though i math

but like i can't make decisions and i like the charts but i'm too lazy and then too depressed and then my bookmarks bar is too full help i don't use any of them but i like them but then i also like to change them up for variety

and then also like my family like "oh no you broke [me]" and i'm vaguely cat-like but idk how omg i love necklaces and hairclips they're so nice is that a gender thing oh and there's also terminally online but not terminally online enough just like chonny jash thd power hour i wish i knew what a lolcow was

oh right and cringe culture & being pretentious that's the other thing (as if there were just one thing before) like i attribute that to a lot because everybody loves percieving other things and then i do it to myself and i'm like "well this is not what i'm supposed to be doing" but the two are kind of in opposition to each other and there's like virtue signaling but also dear god can i kill the part of my soul that's thinking about cringe culture

[xno-more-smilesx]

Oh yeah, its pretty much the reason i love fics or books so much over shows or series, and i am biased here cuz i dont remember most of the show for how long its been since i last watched it, and ngl Danny being one of my comfort characters makes me miss some cannon stuff, for well, being comfort.

But on the counterpoints

I totally forgot those chapters, so yeah i didnt get much base for that, but it is something that i do get to ask myself when assessing cases, so i vibed with what i remembered

This is a neutral ground. As you said adults (specifically the older generation than most of whom grew up w this show) tend to be the one raised with the mindset of "thats how teens are" and in their faver, yeah, puberty and changes in social environments like coming from middle school to high school and hormones and starting to discover yourself do make you the teen cliché, bc its a cliché cuz its a pattern we go through and its common enough to be of notice, what i was mostly pointing at with that is more on the drastic changes that can be concerning or doesn't fit with the expected change by puberty, thats what i meant by obvious precedent, tho i didnt say it more clearly. 

And yeah not being diagnosed doesnt mean not having it, and you can develop mechanism on your own, I meant more in a formal one, cuz like, you know how kids in noisy environments play with their ears by covering and uncovering them to play with "noise-silence-noise-silence" thats a mechanism to deal with overstimulation and is something they develop on their own and its more of an instict, its mostly seen in autistic individuals but not exclusive, with a diagnosis i meant more as in having assistance from a professional to explain mechanisms, how they function and more formal ones, like using noise-canceling headphones for example for this scenario, or breathing exercises or others that are more subtle

lil break here to go deeper with that, I'm going to use the example of an autistic case cuz its the one I feel is easier to explain and applies more to what I want to explain, and also what I have more experience studying: Autism by the DSM-5 Editon (2022) states autism as persistent deficiencies in social communication and social interaction; it can vary based on how difficult it is for the individual to have a successful social communication and in restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior (it can be Grade 1, as is needing assistance [in learning how to interact, being explained certain social norms, interactions, innuendos, and such]). Grade 2, as in noticeably needing assistance [heavier need in help understanding social cues or having a more socially disruptive behavior], and Grade 3, being the more used in media to "represent" autism and the one that does need a more more incorporated assistance) That being said, when an individual presenting ASD (autism spectrum disorder) goes to a specialist, they are taught how to behave. It sounds bad, but give me a sec to explain: they are taught different ways to help with their specific situations. If they get more overstimulated by noises, they are taught how to deal with those situations to avoid a crisis; if they get more overstimulated by noises, they are taught how to deal with those situations to avoid a crisis, if its the light that's more upsetting, they learn how to deal with that, and so on. (Autistic individuals tend to have more kin senses, so they can get overstimulated easier; that's why it's known that some textures, foods, lights, or noises can be jarring for them.) Autism is a social disorder, so to say; they have difficulty adapting, and that can make it difficult to interact with their environment and to establish interpersonal relationships, so they learn mechanisms that help with their anxiety caused by the uncertainty of how to interact and also to notice social cues that they may not totally get. So you can develop a mechanism on your own, like covering your ears, but it can be taken as a disruptive behavior (sadly it is frowned upon, but it's what usually happens), or you can be taught a mechanism that can be more effective and less "disruptive," so to say.

Sorry I turned this into a whole ass lecture about autism lol, but that is what I meant as in a mechanism given by a professional, and usually you are diagnosed to be given one that fits better your specific needs.

Back to the last point, is that yeah, not the best example i could give, but there are different instances where Jazz does tell their parents about theire behavior, and ussually teens arent taken seriously in the matter, mostly with good reason but also due to age/respect associated stigmas and such (the number of parents that i have encountered that still dont belive their kids have an actual disorder even after being diagnosed and seen by several specialist its concerning) but as you said, theres a lot of off-screen context we lack to completely have an actual picture of theire relationship and dynamics as a family, it is known that the fentons are a very loving family, we see how the parents are to their kids and how danny respects and defends his father from Vlad over and over again, there's a lot we can take from what is shown but is also needed to be reminded that this is a tv show for kids, so they do show more of a interesting plot chapter by chapter instead of a deep and thoughtful lore and some stuff and be misinterpreted (like danny being trans, love the head canon but its a fact that Butch Hartman is not a trans friendly individual) or theres some plot holes, or some rushed stuff and so.

As i said im biased by not having all the canon facts in mind and having some delusion by what its canon and what is fanon.

Okay but like. Real talk. 'Their son died and they didn't even notice' sounds real bad, but can we like- Danny was still living with them. It is reasonable to assume that your kid that is still living with you is not dead. It is not like he just disappeared one day and they didn't notice.

'Their son died and they didn't notice' is a FANTASTIC line for characters to torment themselves and each other with. Danny can lay awake at night and think about it. Maddie can rip her hair out over it. Sam can throw it at them in a spiteful rage.

But like. It's definitely not an accurate summary of what happened there. And I think the author should maintain a careful awareness of that.

[felinedetached]

Fandom Ableism in the MCYT Community

[Edited 14 June 2021]

One thing I’ve noticed about the MCYT (Dream SMP, specifically) community on both Tumblr and Twitter is that when informed of things that are ableist, or harmful to ND people, a lot of people ignore the post/tweet, derail it or actively fight against it.

“I’m ND so I can’t be ableist” is a common statement, which is blatantly untrue. Even I’ve used ableist terms and phrases before, without realising they were harmful. So as a neurodivergent person, with autism, BPD, depression/anxiety, dyslexia, psychosis & brain damage*: here’s some common ableist things both CCs and fandom say almost constantly**.

*note that not every neurodivergent person will agree with me on these, but these are commonly ableist things people have previously talked about online, and/or have been discussed between me and other neurodivergent friends. No minority can ever speak for the entire group.

**note that a lot of these are common outside the MCYT community as well, and that some of these are just considered societally acceptable. This isn’t okay, but it explains why a lot of people don’t recognise jokes or comments like these are wrong, and it means that it’s not a direct moral failing of people that they don’t immediately or directly recognise these comments as wrong.

Now, let’s get into the things you might not have realised are potentially ableist:

1. Use of “Psychopath/Psycho/Sociopath/Schizo” and other demeaning terms for people with mental illnesses as insults, or to describe characters who are considered villainous. Psychopath/Psycho/Sociopath are already terms that people with ASPD dislike using, even not as an insult, but using these terms to describe people or characters who you disagree with or see as villainous only contributes to the villainisation of people with ASPD and other mental illnesses. Using c!Dream as an example: Dream as a character is not confirmed to have any of these mental illnesses. He is, however, commonly labeled as psychotic/psychopathic, incapable of any kind of compassion.

He is also a character that fandom largely insists that nobody is allowed to sympathise with. This is a huge issue, and has hurt a lot of people, especially people with low empathy, or mental illnesses that cause them to relate to some of c!Dream’s actions (e.g. pulling away from all his friends, desperately grasping at straws to gain control of situations etc). Insisting that these characters are characters it’s impossible to sympathise with, all while calling them psychotic/psychopathic/sociopathic, is extremely harmful, and I hope this post draws attention to that.

Here’s another post that talks about that.

2. Use of the term “freak”, in general. As an insult, “freak” has been typically used to insult neurodivergent people, people with visible physical disabilities (ex. “freakshow”, and the term was reportedly created with the intent of insulting people with physical disabilities), or people who display any kind of abnormal/atypical social behaviour/physical aspects — people who are usually ND people who lack a diagnosis or people with physical disabilities. Recent usage has come to mean “people who do things that hurt other people”, but this is harmful as well; using words like “freak” or “weirdo” which mean “socially atypical behaviour” to refer to people who are actually doing things that hurt other people conflates the two, and often has a side effect of hurting disabled people who see it.

3. Calling ND ccs like Technoblade monotone/emotionless. While the term “monotone” isn’t ableist in and of itself, the fact that it’s being used against a neurodivergent man who emotes in a different way to neurotypical people rubs a lot of ND people the wrong way. I’ve partially discussed this here, in a tweet responding to a person who said that c!Technoblade, quote, “has no human capabilities like emotion for example”. This, however, is not something contained to c!Technoblade — one of the most common jokes in this fandom is how rare it is to hear emotion in Technoblade’s voice.

The issue with that is that neurodivergent people almost universally agree that Technoblade emotes perfectly fine, and, in fact, emotes more freely and clearly than a lot of others do. Hence, calling him monotone perpetuates the idea of ND people as emotionless/less able to be hurt/less expressive, which often hurts us. It also contributes to the dehumanisation of ND people — related to how ND symptoms are most often seen in robots or monsters in shows — and is generally extremely harmful, on top of being untrue.

4. Related to point 3: the infantilisation of ND ccs like Tubbo and Dream, usually paired with assigning “caretakers” of their friends, like Tommy and George. This is about the posts that spread like “omg, Tommy helps Tubbo with his dyslexia, that’s so cute” or “omg George is so patient with Dream, I could never sit through that” on videos of Dream vocally stimming because of his ADHD. This is another post that talks about this, but I wanted to talk more about why this is harmful here.

4a) With Tubbo’s dyslexia, from someone with dyslexia, it isn’t harmful to correct his spelling and move on. Personally, I think this is helpful — others will think it’s condescending, because not all ND people are the same — but as the above linked post mentions, this is not what Tubbo’s twitch chat does. This is not what the comments say. It’s all things about how it’s “so cute” that Tubbo can’t spell, how Tommy/Ranboo are “so patient” with correcting him. This is rooted in the need to constantly watch over ND people while acting like we can't live our lives without someone having us under constant vigilance. It feels like savior-complex ableism, like people are trying so hard to not be ableist that they spin back around to hurting us instead. And it feels like we are being treated like children. Like we are lesser than, and need to be monitored/watched over.

4b) Similarly to what people do with Tubbo, the comments on posts about Dream’s vocal stimming are often full of people calling George “patient” for “dealing with it”, or claiming they “wouldn’t be able to handle it”. This is inherently ableist. They’re praising George for basic human decency towards ND people, and claiming in the same breath that they wouldn’t be able to do that themselves. And then there’s these.

These comments infantilise Dream — claiming he “wouldn’t be able to stop/calm down” without George’s help, implying he’d “spiral out of control” or claiming “everyone is now my child”. It’s all related to the infantilisation of ND people, and the belief that without help/a caretaker we cannot take care of ourselves.

5. The way people treat ccs who likely have undiagnosed neurodivergencies, like Wilbur. Wilbur has openly admitted on stream before that his parents considered getting him an autism diagnosis. He also openly admits on stream that he has habits he doesn’t understand why he does, and hyperfixates on things for months at a time and doesn’t know why. Posts like this have gone around Tumblr, in which Wilbur displays blatantly ND traits.

And fandom generally calls him weird for expressing those traits. This video where he talks about eating sand because he likes the texture? That’s an ND trait. This video where he talks about his irrational hatred for anteaters? While mostly a joke, irrational hatred of something when you can’t explain/understand/articulate why is also a common ND trait. He spends 20 minutes during a Philza stream info-dumping about self-sustaining ecosystems (sharing the photo, because I think it’s really cool) and fandom begins calling them “Wilbur’s weird jars”. It’s demeaning to people who infodump, and as a ND person who hyperfixates and infodumps it’s really upsetting to see. It’s also upsetting to see other ND traits being called “weird” or “freaky” & made out to be soley some funny joke for NT people to laugh at us about.

Additionally: It’s strange to me that people think it’s okay to make fun of ND traits just because they know that or perceive that the person they’re making fun of is NT. It’s still making fun of ND traits. It’s still insulting ND people. It’s still ableist as hell. Why is it okay just because the person is NT?

6. Implying that c!Ranboo’s enderwalking is inherently violent. Ranboo has shown us time and time again that the enderwalk state isn’t a violent state. That the enderwalk state isn’t a seperate version of c!Ranboo that does horrific things. Why, then, is it so common to imply that Ranboo would be violent and hurt people why he’s enderwalking?

It comes back to the perception of c!Ranboo as a character with “two halves”, or as a character with DID. Ranboo has made it clear that his character does not have DID, but this headcanon about his character persists, and it persists in a way that is directly harmful to people with DID — and to people who dissociate or sleepwalk. We do not commit horrific acts while we dissociate, while we’re sleepwalking, because the majority of the time we’re just checked out, our body is on autopilot. Insinuating that we do is harmful. Insinuating that Ranboo has “another half” that’s inherently violent or evil is harmful to people with DID. I’m not going to ask you to stop writing these headcanons etc, but please consider the effect you have on people before you do.

7. Related to point 6: the perception of c!Ranboo as “soft” and “cute” and/or perfectly moral because of his canonical anxiety. This is really harmful, and comes once again from the infantilisation of disorders like anxiety and depression. Ranboo has made clear time and time again that his character isn’t moral, and in fact is extremely inconsistent. He’s portrayed his character as inconsistent, as someone who hurts his friends unintentionally and often due to his want to please everyone, and yet he’s constantly seen as “soft/pure/the only moral one” because of his anxiety causing to have repeated and consistent spirals on-screen. These spirals are not healthy. They don’t indicate his “perfect morals” or make him more moral than anyone else on the SMP. Please stop infantilising people with anxiety, it’s really hurtful.

8. Implying that c!Technoblade is inherently a violent person because of his voices. I’ll admit here: my hallucinations are visual. I do not get auditory hallucinations, and I cannot speak for people who do. But many people have spoken out about this, and discussed how talking about Technoblade as an inherently violent character because of his voices is harmful, and a stereotype of people with schizophrenia.

Technoblade’s character is, in and of itself, inherently a stereotype (despite the fact that his chat are more likely to be a supernatural entity than a symptom of a disorder such as schizophrenia) in that the idea of “hearing voices that encourage violence” is a stereotype of people with schizophrenia. As an actual symptom, is a very uncommon one. More common auditory hallucinations for people with schizophrenia or psychosis are, reportedly, whispers or unrelated conversation. One of my friends hears screaming.

But the issue is with the implication that c!Technoblade is “driven to violence” by the voices. Canonically, he has dealt with the “bloodlust” of chat by grinding withers. He’s perfectly capable of being peaceful, even with “voices pushing for violence”, and he’s perfectly capable of being violent without the “voices” influence. It’s the connotations and the history that fandom has in demonising and villainising c!Technoblade for even having the “voices” in the first place, and acting having them makes him inherently violent and unstable. There’s precedent for that already in society, and it’s not okay to perpetuate it.

[Edit: as of 22/05/2021, I do experience auditory hallucinations, and I can confirm that I am not any more violent, and the voices I hear don’t push me to violence. The clearest one just said ‘click’ in my ear.]

9. Jokes about brain damage and the use of “brainrot” as a term. I made a post about how common jokes about brain damage are here, and I would like to reiterate bits of it.

Jokes like these are really really normalized in modern society. I’m sure a lot of you didn’t even register it as wrong, and that isn’t a moral failing! It’s a norm in society, and that means the majority of people arent going to register it as something hurtful, because it’s said so often. But it does still hurt. The idea of using a disability as an insult is really harmful and it feels dehumanizing, like our disability makes us lesser, something that should be laughed at.

“Brainrot” as a term originated in Skyrim, as a disease that literally rotted your brain. However, as a term, it has very similar connotations to “brain damaged” and has been used in similarly joking and insulting ways. It’s something that feels really off to me and other neurodivergent people to see used by neurotypical people. It even sometimes feels uncomfortable when used by neurodivergent people, even if it’s used in positive ways. I know quite a few people who have removed it from their vocab completely because of the connotations, and I have personally done the same. Once again, I am just asking you to please consider your words before you use them.

10. Calling c!Wilbur during his Pogtopia Arc “Vilbur”. Yes, he was a villain. Yes, he hurt people. But c!Wilbur during the Pogtopia Arc only has one major difference from c!Wilbur during the L’Manburg Arc: a visible depiction of mental illness, specifically paranoia and psychosis. Treating him as a seperate person and calling that seperate person “Vilbur” comes across as extremely hurtful, and contributes to the villainisation of mentally ill people. His mental illness does not excuse him from hurting people, but calling c!Wilbur “Vilbur” upsets a lot of us, because wether or not it’s intended, it feels reductive, hurtful, and insulting.

If you got to the end of this post, thank you so much for reading. I hope that this helped you recognise things that you might not have known were ableist, and that you consider what I’ve said here. I also know that I haven’t addressed everything ableist that’s spread through the MCYT fandom community, so if you’re ND and have something you’d like to add, please feel free.

[yjwhatif]

NOTES FOR YJ EPISODE 18… Spoiler

(I’m so late posting this but oh well )

First off that opening scene is really well done -I think its my favourite opening to an arc yet. There's so much depth in the character animation - you can see how the thoughts and emotions develop trough the characters body language as they react to the content of the scene. The best example of this is when Raquel tells Amistad No to finding his hat, there's a moment where he seems to accept - reluctantly - the decision by giving a small nod, but then you see his breathing increases as his anxiety and discomfort builds, which they results in the outburst. The behaviours depicted are all genuine reactions to the stimuli presented in the scene - the same goes for Raquel - you can see in her expressions how she goes from patient, to flustered, to frustrated, to assertive, to wary, to protective. There’s not a lot happening action wise - but there’s a lot being shown through the characters that will likely play a big role under the surface for Raquel as she navigates the plot.

I like that each arc starts by showing the focal characters when they're not heroring - it establishes that they are more than just the masks they wear - they have lives beyond their respective missions - lives that don't stop just because they have a lifesaving job they’re tasked with doing. It establishes that no matter how much they may speak or make reference to their civilian lives/personal situations out loud - those things still exist in their minds and will likely weigh heavily on the decisions they make - whether consciously or not. They are still someone outside of being the hero. They’re still people who feel and get distracted and can make the wrong decisions. They have their desires and they have their flaws - just like everybody else.

I do really feel for Raquel, it’s clear she’s struggling with the adaptations she needs to make to accommodate her sons autism - which I’m guessing is still a fairly recent diagnosis (in an official sense). She’s still in a transitional period and sometimes it’s hard to let go of what’s known - she’s stuck in a state of denial that Noble (Amistad’s dad) seemingly isn’t. All of which is understandable - a lot of people struggle with change, whether big or small, and the time it takes to come to terms with said change can vary from person to person. While Raquel isn’t yet fully comfortable with accepting all that comes with raising a child with autism - she’s still clearly trying to accommodate for her sons needs - she still loves and cares about him and is trying to protect him. She just hasn’t yet reached the point where she can slow herself down enough to go at the pace he needs rather than the pace she’s used to going - and being that she’s a hero likely makes her more used to a faster pace of living. She’s dealing with an adjustment and all adjustments take time for all involved - struggling with finding those adjustments doesn’t mean you’re a bad person - it just means you’ve got some internal perceptions you need to work out. I’m really interested in watching Raquel do that throughout the arc.

Ah, an old woman judging and deciding you’re a bad person because of a misunderstanding they didn’t care to actually understand before insulting you… oh, I’ve been there, had the emotional breakdown and still have the intrusive memory to go with it 👍

Moving away from my own emotional trauma…

I LOVE that we’re getting some proper Jay content with this arc - it’s something I never thought I needed but it’ll be nice to see him as his own hero self rather than an attachment to one of the other speedsters. Also I want at least one acknowledgement/reference at some point in this arc to the fact that Bart is currently home alone - we’re all aware of it and I wanna hear it said. Bonus points if Jay says something about Bart knowing not to get up to any mischief whilst he’s away - then hard cut to show Bart building a time machine in the living room.

Orion’s little exasperated sigh when he realises he’s not being translated - it makes me chuckle every time. Also, I’ve said this before, but I love how this show uses language and the effort it puts into narratively transitioning between different languages instead of just having everyone speak English or showing subtitles because that’s easier. It’s what enhances the realism of this vast universe we’re experiencing every episode.

LIGHTRAY IS AWESOME AND I LOVE HIM ALREADY - as evidenced by the fact I’ve already drawn him three times (that’s why I’m so late posting this.) Also he somehow embodies both Bart and Wally at the same time - physically, personality and costume wise — of course Jay immediately connects with him. Please give me a Jay/Solis conversation where Jay points out that Solis reminds him of Bart and/or Wally. 🙏

If anyone has seen Meet the Robinsons - then Supertown reminds me of the future architecture used in that film… if you haven’t seen Meet the Robinsons - then you totally should because it is a seriously underrated Disney film.

PURPLE FORAGER!

“Kid, you’re gonna wanna rethink that policy.” I really like this moment - instead of retaliating against Orion’s vigilance with hostility or offence - Jay simply and calmly suggest that Orion reevaluate his perception of the situation to understand that it may not be entirely appropriate for the moment they’re in. Orion isn’t intending to mean offence, but he doesn’t process how the bluntness of his tone and words can easily come across as such to someone who’s not familiar with his manner… From the look on her face Rocket definitely takes offence at his request. Orion’s being vigilant - no different to Batman or Nightwing - a trait he’s likely gained from his personal life experiences, Jay’s response remains respectful towards that and never implies that Orion is wrong for being so. He never labels Orion as anything or criticises an upbringing he knows nothing about - he simply give Orion the opportunity to reconsider his request whilst still defending his fellow teammate. The same can be said with Highmother’s response to the situation, she merely reminds Orion of Rocket being their honoured guest and allows him to make his own decision on the matter. She never takes ownership of the situation in order to ‘fix’ it herself, she never speaks for Orion or apologises for his behaviour - she shows trust in her son to make the right choice. She maintains his sense of agency. Throughout the episode she never criticises him for being the way he is or tells him he must change his ways to be better for the likes of other - she shows him respect and support - something I suspect he massively lacked in his upbringing. I’m so intrigued by Orion’s backstory.

Meanwhile Rocket is just giving Orion the death stare as she protects her tech from his confiscation. Had the situation not been diffused the way it had by Jay and Highmother, I think there’s a chance Rocket may have been a little more defensive and sharp towards Orion. He was essentially telling her she must be stripped of the thing which gives her power - which is gonna feel like a personal attack whether it was or not. A defensive response would have been an understandable one - like when she snapped at the woman on the train. The woman was wrong to label Amistad as a rude child whilst also criticising Raquel for failing to teach him manners when she had no context of their situation, especially when Raquel apologised and was clearly trying to defuse the situation respectfully. Raquel ultimately snapping did put an end to the altercation, but you can see she’s the one the background passengers remain looking on negatively - she’s the bad guy even though her defensive reaction was only fuelled by the other woman’s initial defensive reaction to a seemingly personal attack by Amistad. Things might have been avoided had Raquel explained the autism aspect, or had the woman expressed explicitly that her feelings had been hurt by his comment rather that immediately snapping back in offence. Of course, Raquel shouldn’t have to explain such personal matters to a stranger if she doesn’t want to, and the woman was minding her own business, she didn’t intend to offend Amistad’s with her perfume and definitely didn’t ask to be insulted because of it. It’s impossible to simply blame one person for a bad situation like this because when dealing with emotions it’s hard to control the direction they take things. Also you can’t know how something might trigger a person or what their personal situation is in order to keep an altercation under control. That’s why it’s easy to be defensive, to fight hate with hate - problem is, it’s not the most efficient solution and can ultimately fan the flames instead of just extinguishing them with understanding and reason.

I think it’s interesting that there’s a bit of a correlation between Raquel and the old woman from the train. Similar to that woman, Raquel seems to set her opinion of Orion - that he’s not a trustworthy person - based on her immediate reaction of his behaviour and attitude. She fails to look beyond what she sees to understand the person Orion is - to understand what may cause him to behave in such a way - just like the old woman did with Amistad. No one is the person you see, it takes time and understanding to gain a more accurate reading of any person. From to moment of hearing he’s known as the ‘Dog of War’ she’s suspicion of him, then all of his behaviour after that only confirms the validity of her distrust. She sees him try to confiscate her tech, his bluntness and being very closed off around her makes him seem cold, then she watches him ‘attack’ the Larvae and attempt to ‘attack’ her. From her perspective that makes him nothing more than a “Monster” who can never be reasoned with. It’s hard to unsee all the things we don’t like or trust about someone - Rocket’s reaction is completely understandable after witnessing Orion’s outburst - that would be a scary experience and would be hard to forget or overlook. Though in only noticing the bad things, she disregards the discomfort he presents after being trapped in the forcebubble, the respect he shows the bugs by not immediately invading their space, and the fact that he does actually apologise whilst showing genuine remorse after his outburst (an outburst technically caused by the Larvae accidentally attacking him first - another example of reacting defensively towards a misunderstanding and causing more lasting problems than you solve). She disregards it all because she’s already made up her mind. Just like the woman on the train who disregarded Raquel’s attempts to explain, defuse the situation and genuinely apologise for the misunderstanding. Despite those actions, to any onlookers all that will be remembered is Raquel snapping at the old woman.

There’s something about the way Lightray looks at Orion that reminds me of the way Wyynde would look at Kaldur whilst he’s on duty. I don’t know what the dynamic is between these two New Gods but I’m here for it in whatever direction they take it.

Listen to your mother Orion

I love Orion

I think it’s interesting seeing this Orion since our only exposure to him prior was actually M’comm in disguise trying to cause trouble. You can see the validity in Forager’s s3 belief that Orion is honourable and Bears defending of Orion’s name. Here we see that side of Orion. He shows respect towards the Bugs - he stops Jay and Lightray from invading their boundaries without permission, also he essentially shuts down Lightray’s questioning of Foragers presence at the meeting by reinforcing the fact he wasn’t the Bug who committed the crime. Though it gets a little difficult to notice at times behind his blunt manner.

BAD M’COMM!

What is it with this show and giving us cute things - the Larvae are so freaking adorable!

Jay and Lightray are great together - give me more!

I’m guessing that was M’comm messing with the Ruction cell? Time shenanigans?

It’s cool seeing the different types of Bugs - but also leaving some still identical - emphasising their argument that the New Gods think all Bugs look alike. I guess it is similar to what I said above about Raquel’s assumptions of Orion and the old woman’s assumptions of Amistad and Raquel. The New Gods assume all Bugs are the s as me because they look alike - they don’t want to put the time into seeing beyond their outer shell to understand what makes them individual. Forager is Forager, and Forager is also Forager - but they are not the same and that’s why Forager sees no confusion where the non-Bugs do.

“Forager rolls with Foragers hive” - I love how he says this line

DON’T LET GO CONNER!

I get the feeling Darkseid is manipulating M’comm with no intensions of actually giving him what he wants - there’s always gonna be one more task to complete and because M’comm is desperate for the help he’d get, he’ll probably keep doing whatever Darkseid asks.

Has this Lor Zod already ‘killed’ Conner? Or could we be seeing him out of sync with the chronology of everyone else? Time shenanigans? A part of me wonders if this M’comm could find himself being involved with that first arc troubles - like causing the cave in or being asked to help with killing Conner - but maybe can’t go through with it because of how he knows it effected M’gann? Though probably not.

I love the Orion losing control scene - seeing how Lightray truly cares about Orion’s welfare and speaking up for him when he himself can’t. Lightray’s first instinct on scene was to retrieve Orion’s Motherbox because he knows how important it is in helping Orion find comfort when stressed. Then there’s so much concern in his voice as he pleads for Rocket to release Orion as to not inflict more damage than intended — please give me the backstory of their bond — please! Then he shows how strong he is as he’s able to physically stop Orion in his tracks - this moment is so cool. I do love a duo which compliments each other but can still keep up with one another — like Ed & Bart, or Thena & Gilgamesh from Eternals. Seeing Lightray being strong enough to stop Orion with one hand, despite being such a contrast to him in many aspects, is pretty impressive - I just wanna know more about him. Also I love this shot and just had to draw it!

There’s so much shame in Orion’s voice and body language when he apologises for his outburst - my heart breaks for him - especially after his little convo with Highmother. Come on Rocket, how can you overhear that and still not feel for the guy - or at least consider there’s more to the story than realised. He’s not a “Monster” Rocket - he’s just misunderstood!

Like we didn’t already know Conner was in the Phantom Zone

TYE & ASAMI!!! They have got to be showing up at some point - also they are positioned at the most focal point of the composition - right where your eyes naturally view the image and in between BL & superman’s heads. Asami was the first person I noticed as the credits started. PLEASE GIVE US A RUNAWAYS REUNION!

So this is how superman’s been dealing with his grief - scouring the internet for decent pictures of potential heroes for his JL reserves PowerPoint. He’s certainly been busy with it.

Did he say Peacemaker?! As in the dude from The Suicide Squad who would kill anyone in the name of achieving peace - he’s on the list?! Really?? Ok… if you say so Sups.

I really loved this episode and I’m excited to explore more Fourth World content. I’m looking forward seeing Raquel’s journey and discovering more about Orion. I don’t know what expect, but since I’m so late posting this, I don’t have to wait long to find out.

LB

[okay-victoria]

Random Personal Rant

For anyone somehow here not from the original thread, this started off me getting asked what finishing school is and me getting shit off my chest that is only mildly relevant about how I could both be of the social class that gets sent to finishing school and grows up on welfare.

With an understanding that in many parts of the world it wouldn't qualify as so, as far as the US goes, my dad is from what counts as a very old money family from Baltimore & Philadelphia. Both his siblings went to college and one now owns a major hedge fund, and his sister is married to a C-level executive at a huge conglomerate. His parents went to college. His grandparents went to college. All eight of his great grandparents went to college. My dad...did not go to college. He was not about that life, and while I don't mean it as an insult, when I say his primary occupation until I was ~5 was a drummer in a mediocre band I mean that he opened for a lot of great acts, and if you lived in the Boston to Atlanta area in the 80s you may have heard him play, but he was never a huge national name. But he wasn't an amateur band playing for free at some random local gig either.

My mom grew up on a chicken farm in a Mennonite family in Pennsylvania but also completely rejected her heritage and became a model, sort of like my father, of mediocre status. Not Giselle Bundchen, but had national contracts and if you have a Graco ad/box from 1990-1993 you might see both me and her on it. They met because my mom's friends placed bets, one each, on who could sleep with a member of their favorite local band first and my mom picked my dad and...my mom was actually supposed to go be a model in Tokyo and found out she was pregnant with me and couldn't go 😂

So, after my parents had two kids back to back with a third on the way and determined they needed lifestyles more in line with having three children, they became much poorer than they originally were because my mom stopped working and my dad, with a barely-passed-high-school education but needing a true "day job" worked day labor in construction. My dad's father was too proud to give us money/help if my dad didn't beg for it; despite having eventually four young children my dad never did so we ended up on all the state assistance programs one could imagine. My grandma jokes that dinners at my parents house were BYOC - bring your own chair, because we didn't own any.

My mother and paternal grandmother had no such pride issues and I live in eternal gratitude that my welfare childhood was not as crappy as it should have been because my grandmother would have my mom accompany her on grocery runs and buy us food without my father or grandfather knowing, and every Christmas and birthday my grandparents/godparents could give us the one big ticket gift all the kids wanted that year. But, on the other side, I once got stung by a bee inside my mouth because my brother threw a hairbrush through a cracked window at me and broke it and we couldn't afford to fix it for about two years and a hornet got in one day and rested himself in my coke can (my parents were the very American type that fed me coca-cola in baby bottles at age 8 when I was jealous of my younger siblings lol).

It is hard not to believe in "toxic masculinity" when two men warring over dumbass pride issues would rather their children/grandchildren go without food than suck it up and decide 'help' isn't the worst word in the English language, and you know you've only been saved by two women who came from totally different backgrounds and entirely disapproved of each other but reached out the hand to shake when it came down to toddlers getting the short end of the don't-bend-the-knee stick. It wasn't that either of the men were bad people, I loved them both and got along great with both, but on a societal level I feel they were socialized in a very fucked up way if that was the end result, as both claimed "male pride" in these instances [my dad took multiple thousands of dollars I'd saved from working during college from me during the 2008-2010 financial crisis and didn't tell me and that was the reason I was given for why I hadn't been informed/asked, because it would be too emotionally difficult for an adult man to ask a young woman. My graduation present was them repaying me 1/3 of the money they'd taken from me without asking because I'd like, trusted them when it had been in a joint account that was a holdover from when I was <18 and couldn't have my own bank account].

While in some ways my parents on the surface achieved the American dream of going from nothing to a bunch of money, the real factor in play was that my dad's father was the bank. My parents had no credit and couldn't get real loans. My dad worked construction and during the two major periods that flipping houses was very lucrative, he never had to get an actual loan or pay actual interest, he just had to ask his father to pay out cash and then repay him at a flat 2% interest rate that didn't even accrue over time, just...whenever you are ready, repay the value of the loan + 2%. Because my father was doing something productive, in these instances, my grandfather was happy to pay, because it wasn't giving away money, it was loaning it. I had a very weird situation of mostly being poor but like also getting taken to the "big donors" events at the Kennedy Center and my grandparents regularly buying me a dress as a child worth more than my mom's wedding dress and also needing to pretend I fit in with these people.

And look. When I say "these people"...honestly, by and large, most wealthy people, whether inherited or not, are not the assholes you want to imagine. Most of them are extremely nice. Most of them are generous when it comes to the less fortunate who are in their personal sphere of being. Most of them are just really out of touch. The 100% kindest of all of them that I know once relayed to me that she thought people would be happier if once a year they did what she did...go to the airport with a purse packed full of absolute necessities, buy a one way ticket to the most appealing destination on the flight board, buy your clothes and book your accommodations after you'd arrived, and come back after you felt you'd 'centered' yourself. She didn't understand why there were so many unhappy people who weren't taking this very obvious route to being happier. I didn't quite know how to explain that saying "most" people couldn't afford to do that either financially or from a job/career angle didn't even cover it, as "most" sounds like 70% instead of 99.7%.

I was both my parents eldest son and eldest daughter in the worst combination possible. I was the eldest son because I was the most stereotypically male of all my siblings, in everything from desire to physically fight the battles I was given to dislike of shopping/fashion to lack of emotional connection to my relationships, so I can now fix your average household plumbing/drywall/electrical issue better than most "city" guys I interact with and remain less clingy to them in the process. I was also very much the oldest daughter from a responsibility perspective, I managed our household and from age 10 - 24 managed the finances of our family business, my mom almost died giving birth to my youngest brother after a ruptured uterus that should never have happened in the first place if we had adequate insurance to get her a non-emergency C-section (I was just past 9 years old at the time) and I was informally withdrawn from school for two years to take care of the family when she couldn't because there is no paid parental leave in the US and we got double-fucked by the medical industry because she got a bad "mesh" put in and then had to have a further surgery to repair that which we also had to pay for and didn't have the money to win a lawsuit over.

I don't know quite how to put this, but in the deepest fuck you of the universe, my rich-immigrant-ggggg grandfather's money led to him owning banks, insurance companies, etc, and the family cashed out in a big way when their ownership was bought by and merged with what is now Cigna, one of the biggest US healthcare insurers, and my nuclear family specifically got screwed by the American health insurance industry, but anyway, we were the people selected for that karmic comeuppance so if you want to feel schadenfreude at my expense, I'll allow it without begrudging the sentiment, my family might have fucked up your family’s life too, not just their own.

I got up twice a night to feed my brother because my dad had to sleep unmolested in my room to get to work and my mom was too weak to carry my brother or even hold him against her while she nursed so I had to hold him up to her. Adjusting to living in a city and hearing lots of random noises all the time was not easy when I'd had mom sound instincts from age 9.

I learned to drive the fall my youngest bro was born because my mom couldn't and I had to get my middle brother to preschool and go the grocery store on my own. While I hold absolutely no ill will towards my father or grandfather for this and given that about 1/3 of my paternal family either has an autism diagnosis or should, I fully feel the struggles they both went through to be communicated with, my father wouldn't ask for help, and my grandmother that lived 20 minutes away couldn't give enough help because my grandfather refused to do a single dish on his own as that was outside their "marriage contract" type agreement and she couldn't ever stay with us overnight when there wasn't a clearly-communicated need, so they let the burden fall on a 9 - 11 year old child and that really shaped a lot of my life in both good and bad ways. My youngest brother is 22, and we have only just climbed out of the medical debt his birth left us with between my dad's life insurance and my oldest brother and I paying for the extra cost of out-of-state college tuition.

The irony of all of this is that because my father died before his father, when my grandmother dies, my siblings and I will all inherit enough money (as a non-blood relative my mom, despite keeping her vows to part at death and not having remarried in eight years, is cut out entirely) to make this a non-issue, but my grandfather couldn't conscience spotting his unluckiest child some money in the end of days to pay for my youngest two brothers' education and take that worry off my father as he was dying. The day before he died I had to hold him down in bed to keep him from trying to climb in his truck to go to work because he was so anxious about trying to provide for us in spite of his father having fuck you money, because his father didn't think it was fair to the other siblings (who, at the time, still owned a major hedge fund and were married to a C-level executive of a huge conglomerate). A day and a half later I went back to my job because at the time I was then the sole provider for the family and didn't want to risk asking for the standard week's bereavement leave when I knew I was capable of showing up at work the next day and was fresh out of college so hadn't built up a reputation yet.

My father worked the day each of us was born, so I suppose it is only fair and he smiled at the choice. In spite of what it may seem, I gave a baller and very heartfelt speech at his funeral to all his rich friends that over and above everything, he'd taught us how to be happy with our own lives no matter what, and multiple of them emailed my mom in the aftermath to say they'd reassessed their relationship with their children in light of it, although...tbh I kind of doubt that lasted and they probably changed nothing 😅. The last good talk I had with him, two weeks before he died [his liver was going and it sent toxins to his brain that de-personed him after that and he no longer recognized me as his daughter, but as his sister], I reassured him that though we would all be sad he'd gone, we'd live on just fine without him because that's how he'd raised us, and according to my mom that was what gave him the final bit of peace he needed. Although honestly, I don't think I will ever see the strength in another human again that it took my grandmother to sit next to him and stroke his hand and tell him to close his eyes and imagine he was happy on a beach and die, for God's sake, because he was unaware and in pain and just prolonging it for our sake by then.

That type of obsession my grandfather had with assessing his children and grandchildren on the basis of economic productivity and a very black and white idea of "fair" is one you don't easily forget, I promise you. My hedge fund uncle is currently positioning himself to screw us out of our inheritance because of janky writing in the will and I'm doing my fuck all best to gain the wherewithal to go toe-to-toe with this cold motherfucker in court as the oldest and representative member of my happily much nicer and softer younger brothers who I want to remain that way not because I even care that much about the money, I know what bills affect your credit first and what you can put off paying and all of us have good enough career prospects to do our own thing, but just because I want to give the middle finger to a man that was a multi-millionaire and drew lines on his milk and orange juice bottles when I came over so he knew if I drank what my parents couldn't afford when I was approximately six. Anyway, ask me why I support major reforms in wealth taxation. I don't care who it goes to, just not that guy, you feel?

Having expendable income was very exciting for a bit after I started working but once I got to the hateable point of assessing my annual bonus and internally complaining that I'd spent the money I should have spent on a Sauternes cellar to drop five digits on bedset materials (to be fair they are drop dead gorgeous, very comfy and the factory pays a living wage for people to handmake the sheets/duvets/pillows to people in San Francisco, which is not cheap, so maybe I did more good than harm with that), I two seconds later nodded to myself and went "the government needs to confiscate more money from me". The narrative is always that the "undeserving" will use it for dumb things they don't need like iPhones or refrigerators...?...but like...I could also have gone to Bed Bath and Beyond and bought a very nice sheet/comforter set for at most a tenth of what I paid so am I really spending it responsibly either....?....who is going to get more joy out of this misspent money....?....not me, that is for sure, I probably would have had more fun going to BBB and laying on all the demo beds and buying something there.

My lifelong dream, which may become possible if/when I do have something of an inheritance, is to provide food security for one of the many towns in the US were most residents don't have it. It's the thing I remember the most distinctly over the years. I never could quite believe it when I got to the point that I could just...pay to eat at a restaurant. One of the most disappointed my mother has ever been in me is when I was twenty five and confessed I actually had no idea how much a gallon of milk cost in a city grocery store besides that it was probably between $1 and $5, because I didn't have to know. For now I make a weekly drop off of my excess produce to a mom group I met under somewhat weird circumstances but I was walking through the cut-through that went through the low-income housing back to my apartment at like 2 AM on a Saturday and these moms were out there partying and smoking weed with their kids all strapped in strollers around or the older ones watched by a rotating member of the group and I felt very safe and like these moms had a very good vibe of both living their own lives [seriously for mental health parents but in most cases specifically mothers need to be able to keep up relationships with people their age] but keeping their children safe and accounted for while doing so and trying their fuckin' best against all the odds to figure out how to make that happen when life had dealt them a shit hand.

...anyway, looping way back to the original question of what finishing school is, when I was almost done with middle school my dad had built a legit construction business that then very quickly took off because we lived in a commutable zip code to the now-rich-in-their-own-right people he went to high school with who trusted him to redo their homes. We eventually moved to that zip code but I stayed and commuted back to my old high school. But, i was a pretty wild kid which my father appreciated for a long while because I would follow him around on jobs and enjoy doing physical labor, but once I was mid-puberty and also he had to maybe show me to his high school friends that did not fly.

I snapped - not broke, snapped - my left thumb and my parents had to trap me like a wild animal to get me to go the hospital. Then I got a deep cut that partially injured a tendon in my leg and at eleven I tried to beat the shit out of my dad to prevent him from picking me up to strap me in the car and go to the hopsital. Next I got a deep splinter due to my eternal-barefoot tendencies and it wouldn't come out so got infected and I refused to go to the doctor [another weird back story but I was minorly sexually assaulted [[to be clear, not raped or anything big traumatic]] when I was eight and had to stay in hospital for a week and my parents couldn't be with me all the time so I have a permanent heebie-jeebie about going to the hospital, not true anxiety, I will go if I know I need to and I don't breathe heavy or anything, and I'm actually not permanently weirded out by sex or anything, just doctors in hospitals specifically I kind of unconsciously try to justify not needing to the extent I can rationalize it] and my dad was tired of my antics so he was like "fine if you don't go I will slice your foot in half with a Swiss Army knife to get it out" and I called his bluff and laid down on the floor, stuck my foot on his lap, and he didn't really know what to do when a barely fourteen year old girl called his bluff so my brothers watched in fascinated but horrified awe as I got my foot sliced open spectacularly so that the infection/splinter could come out and I didn't even make a sound out of spite despite it being quite painful to my recollection almost twenty years later.

They saw me cry from pain exactly one time when while trying to break up a fight between all three of them (it was over ice cream) I got pushed and my ankle got dislocated and what actually made me cry was snapping it back in place and they realized it was not a joke. These dumb assholes that I love have ragged on me for "skipping" chores the day after I was in the hospital because the day before that I had to spend 18 hours running Thanksgiving as a good sub-hostess like I didn't have a serious infection that needed treating and couldn't rest because none of them were up to any task beyond peeling potatoes.

After the Swiss Army knife incident, my dad's discussion of sending me to finishing school became real, which I knew when my mom made me take a walk with her and talked about it. Finishing school is like...etiquette school....? In ye olden day when finishing high school was not the norm for anyone, wealthy men finished high school and wealthy women often went to "finishing" school to have a combined education on being a proper lady but also being able to hold a decent conversation with your presumably-educated husband, so it wasn't entirely etiquette non-academic. It was more just like "what a rich man wants in a wife" school, which was sort of household management and knowing enough about cleaning/cooking to correct the staff if they fucked up, how to be a polite hostess, and how to not entirely bore him when you were alone together and had done your five minutes of sex or whatever so actually had to have a conversation. In modern times it has obviously expanded to be less bleak.

I said miss me with that, I can be a girl on my own, so I went full throttle into the girliest sport they offer in high school and ever since have gained the inestimable advantage of knowing how to also use femininity to my advantage, which I am very grateful to my parents for making me learn. It would be great if we lived in a world where that didn't count, but it did/still does, and they really set me up to operate in all the worlds.

It is weird for me to tell the story to Internet strangers because it's one of those things that makes your parents sound terrible and abusive in the general tone of the Internet nowadays, and while I support gender nonconforming children I don't remember my childhood or parents that way. But, I feel like the bits and pieces of my life I've given don't always make a ton of sense together without the context, so here it is, and in the end, I think a number of parts of it are areas where you can probably understand where it makes me have the opinions I do when I write.

Anyhoo, this makes my life sound far worse than it is, I actually have a great life and I am not unhappy with it at all and feel I was on the whole blessed with many more turns of luck than unluck, so, please, do not take this as a depressed artist rant, it is more like a rant of a very energetic person who rants about a lot of things all the time and didn’t need to come out but just did because the question was asked and the time was right with my life being in a bit of flux to think about how I got where I am and where I want to go and why.

Always remember no matter what problems it seems like I have, if I didn’t solve them on my 2 year round the world traveling hiatus I took from working, it’s my own fault, I definitely had the time and money to solve them and just chose not to.

[brucewayneargento-moved]

To All My Fathers (Chapter 1)

Summary: Damian Wayne, a fourteen year old with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, goes onto a road trip with the four men who shaped him as a person before his bone marrow transplant.

Fic also avaliable on FF.net

Damian had definitely decided he would not wear a fanny pack.

It didn't matter that it was the most convenient and comfortable way to take a chemo pump iv from place to place. He'll much rather attract attention with a backpack connected to a pump than to regress back to the eighties in the most horrendous fashion. Sure he might pick up unwanted attention from strangers but A) He could always stare at them back; B) He was past the time to care and C) He already didn't have eyebrows so that was kind of a moot point.

The boy was currently seated at the med bed of the 666 room. (Drake had made several jokes about it, which Damian didn't mind and in fact encouraged, because with his diagnosis came a morbid sense of humor and he was also glad at least one person still treated him like a human being). He was practicing violin while he could still hold it and also enjoying the fact that he was wearing actual comfortable clothes and not a paper robe that made his autism completely and utterly fucking lose it.

Some kids from the other rooms had come to see him perform and Damian loved to have an audience. Because he had an ego, not as much and not as evil as people usually thought, but still. Most of them were children younger than ten who just needed some entertainment that wasn't a superhero.

"This was Ode To Joy by Bethoveen," Damian explained. The three children around him applauded. When they stopped he could still hear hands clapping, he looked up and his eyes met his father's.

Bruce came closer to him and the kids left after being called by a nurse. Boy and man looked at each other for a few seconds.

"Are you ready?" Bruce finally asked

Damian might have sounded insane if he said it outloud, but his father and Jon were very similar.

The blue eyes, the black hair and the fact that they both cried before or after entering a room with Damian in it, bonus points if he was being stabbed with a needle right at that moment, then you could see their eyes getting crystalized almost in slow motion.

And it's not like Damian was annoyed by their emotions as one might have thought, it was more of a...sting, (man being stabbed with a needle on a daily basis was really taking a toll on him, wasn't it?) like, something that hurt but it wasn't enough for him to do anything about it more than to grit his teeth and power through it.

Numbness was apparently a common thing among patients. But Damian thought of himself as many stuff, but common wasn't one of them

And perhaps his ego was the only thing keeping him optimistic, perhaps thinking that he was too special to die alone in a hospital room was what made him stronger against the whole GvHD thing.

Leslie had told him that he was lucky to find a donor that was relatively near, in Kansas nonetheless, home of Superman and. So now he had just to keep up with the program: L-asparaginase,dexamethasone and vincristine several times a day and wait.

Or at least that was the original plan.

"Yes." he finally answered, standing up.

When all you receive in your life is gaslighting, you don't even notice the medical gaslighting.

Maybe it was the whole "being indoctrinated since birth by an ecoterrorist death cult" thing but his ability to exercise his free will hadn't been particularly developed.

The bruises? Vigilante stuff. The fever? Probably the flu. Weight loss? Maybe he had gotten a growth spurt that just made him seem thinner…He had to throw up blood to even be admitted into a hospital.

The Wayne-Head name allowed him the finest care probably ever known to man. "Nepotism: where you can die comfortably" that was an actual thing he had said while high on sedatives. He could only imagine his mother's face upon hearing it.

When he woke up both his parents were there. Damian could immediately tell something was wrong. His father was crying and his mother was stoic.

"Oh, ok, so I'm dying" He said, grabbing their attention. Both Talia and Bruce turn to look at him. Damian tried to sit and noticed his arm was cranked to an IV. "Oh, I'm actually dying."

"Do not speak like that." His mother warned him with a threatening voice. Bruce kept quiet but still with a face wet with tears.

Next to them there was a third person. She was an older woman with gray hair and glasses. Doctor Thompkins, his father's godmother. She went over to the medbed and sat on the foot. Damian crossed his arms. She was a smart woman but had the annoying habit of treating him like a perpetual child. Probably the closest thing he had to an actual grandmother.

"Damian," she fixed her glasses and looked at the clipboard she was holding. "Your blood count is in the 200.000 white cells."

Damian's eyes slightly widened, which covertly hid how much of a gut punch he just received.

"I can't have leukemia," he simply stated. There was a slight pained sound coming from his father's mouth which made Damian look him in the eye…that's how he knew it was true.

He started to grin which turned into a giggle which turned into a laugh.

Bruce and Talia looked at him with worry.

"Denial is very common," Leslie stated, trying to remain calm and also sooth Damian up. The teen kept laughing and then stopped to talk.

He had tears in his eyes. "I mean... so much for being an eugenics frankenstein monster, I've failed at even that."

The rest of that afternoon was a blur for him. Except for the being stabbed with needles on his spine parts, that one he remembered very well. Since he had such a high tolerance for pain, the fact that he was casually hurt was news to him.

Of course Dick had been the first one to enter the room.

Damian had hoped that he wasn't but after all it made sense that he did, he was his Robin. He could imagine him punching a wall and screaming when he heard the news. That mental image didn't upset him at all, clearly.

Damian was pretending to watch TV where his oldest brother entered the scene. He had prepared what he was going to say. How he was okay and how he was too stubborn to die anyways. But all of that went to hell when Dick entered the room and immediately ran up to hug him.

All of the walls he had been building up until now feel down hard. Damian just had to press his head against Dick's shoulder for the tears to start running.

"I want a falafel."

They were in the hospital room after a particularly hard session of chemo. His brother was on a chair in front of him reading a book and not looking at him.

"You just threw up on my shoe," he reminded Damian.

"I'm here for a good time, not a long time"

Dick rolled his eyes, now accustomed to the fact that his sibling had developed a morbid sense of humor because of his condition. Right at that moment the door opened and Doctor Thompkins entered the room.

"How are we?" She asked.

"Great." Both responded almost robotically. Damian gagged.

"I wanted to talk to you, Dick, about the bone marrow transplant."

"Why not talk to me?" Damian intervened. "I'm the one whose blood isn't working."

"Because you're still a child," Dick answered as a matter of fact. And despite everything he was glad his older brother at least now had the courtesy of treating him like he had always done. "What's the prognosis, doc?"

"We're considering the umbilical cord transfusion." Leslie explained. "But you will have to ask my godson first.

"Why would he need to...wait...Selina's pregnant?!" Damian asked but then he threw up again. "That wasn't meant to signify my feelings on the matter."

Leslie continued. "But that will still take a few months and...I'm afraid we don't have that much time."

Damian pretended to gag and looked down at the bucket, all to avoid looking at Dick's face.

"But the good news is that we found a match."

Damian hadn't even had time to think about that sentence before he blurted it out, but now it was there, out in the open. For everyone to hear.

"I want to have children."

Everyone being an hyperbole since Alfred was the one who was actually there. His father had to go to patrol so the butler had the night shift to take care of Damian while at the hospital to which the boy was appreciative of. Except for this moment when he was mentally slapping himself for letting on too much. Side effects of being raised to be a killing machine.

"I...did not know that." Alfred admitted. Up to twelve seconds ago he had been standing up listing the symptoms of chemo at Damian's request since he didn't trust Leslie to do it without sugarcoating it and his father might burst into tears in an attempt to do so. Damian had been listening attentively before Alfred mentioned that it was possible that he might wind up being infertile.

The boy simply turned around to the other side of the bed and sighed as tears left his eyes.

Dear Damian

I could not be more content that you are receiving the transplant that you so much need. I wish I could accompany you on the journey to Kansas, but sadly Lady Talia needs me to look out after Bialya...I wish you nothing but a rapid recovery. I implore you to remember that you are not alone in this, to remember that there is a plethora of people that adore you with all of their souls and that you will always have their help. Even when you do not want it.

Best Wishes

Ravi.

Damian looked at Alfred who glanced at him for a nanosecond in the mirror of the car. He knew he was the most active ally he had in this game. Since he not only advocated to his father for this trip to be possible but he also was the only person to always show his compassion in spite of if he actually deserved it or not. Bruce was next to him while Richard sat next to Damian and assesed his condition.

They stayed in comfortable silence in the car with only the sound of "dad music" on the radio for background noise. Damian allowed himself to close his eyes and to feel the soothing bounce of the car against the pavement on his skin...

They stopped suddenly after a while and Damian opened his eyes, he frowned in confusion as Alfred parked the car in front of the airport.

"What are we doing here?" he asked curiously.

Alfred turned around to look at him. "Your father , Master Richard and I thought It'll be a good idea to fly in a friend of yours."

Damian's frown deepened. "A friend?"

Suddenly a tap was heard on the window. They both turned around to look at the front window. It was being slightly knocked on it by a man with a white cane and a bald head who was smiling at them.

"Ravi?" Damian rubbed his eyes and felt them watering up.

Damian knew that he could never make up to Ravi for being responsible for losing his vision. And he also knew that in spite of that the man would still love him unconditionally.

That could be proven easily by the letters that he had written to him when he found out about his diagnosis…

All his father figures were here, suddenly he felt an internal strength he hadn't felt in a while.