Team: accidentally flirts with people and give them the wrong idea/get myself into spicy situations I wasn't prepared for

I'm really disappointed that the Lassie and Jules subplot in Gus's Dad May Have Killed an Old Guy ended with Jules just... uninviting Lassie to her family Christmas celebrations because he was too awkward and anti-social.

Like, the entire point of her inviting him in the first place was so that he wouldn't be lonely on Christmas, and then HE ENDS UP ALONE ON CHRISTMAS ANYWAY?? When he couldn't socialize the way he was expected to (autism), Jules's first reaction was to not let him come over again.

The important thing here is that it's not even Christmas yet! The first time I saw the episode, I was waiting for something else to happen, for Jules to come up with a solution, but this scene here is just the end of the subplot. She lets him believe that he was "too cool" and that she was feeling jealous, which is still kind of uncomfortable. It also doesn't solve the problem of Lassie not having friends or family to spend the holidays with.

The thing that bugs me the most is that this seems so out of character for Jules. You're telling me that Juliet "gives cupcakes to all the new employees" O'Hara WOULDN'T care if Lassiter was left out? I just know that she would be doing EVERYTHING she could to make him stay and feel comfortable. She put so much effort into his birthday party, she remembered their work-iversary, I can't imagine she would be so embarrassed by him that she would give up on trying to make him feel included. If any of the other O'Haras made a comment or sly remark about his mannerisms, Juliet would shut them down with one stare.

I would have liked it if they had come up with another solution instead of just booting him (Like maybe Jules's nephews are playing with those little green army men toys and Lassie sits on the floor with them and helps them set up historically accurate battles. And they actually find it really cool).

Anyway, I just wanted to see Lassie getting adopted into the O'Hara family and not being alone during the holidays, since he's kind of like Juliet's brother anyway. Maybe the O'Hara family sits down to open presents and Lassie just stands off in the corner because obviously no one got him anything, right? But then Jules hands him a gift, and it is something perfect for him like a Clint Eastwood poster or the Grease soundtrack on vinyl. And he gives her a big hug while holding back tears. And it would still be a while before he meets Marlowe anyway, so maybe for the next few years, he goes over to the O'Haras for the holidays.

This subplot could have been so sweet and heartwarming, and there was a lot of missed potential. I'm not angry, but I think it was a strange writing choice. I know my girl Jules is better than this! :)

Tumblr Arguing Tactics: What You Need To Know

Adding to the topic of the disinformation that claimed "system hopping" was appropriated from the RAMCOA community, people need to be aware of the tactics used by groups here who are trying to sew division.

Because these tactics have proven effective, and even being pro-endo doesn't make you immune from spreading anti-endo propaganda.

There have been many pro-endos who heard the false claims that system hopping was appropriated from RAMCOA survivors and started asking about other terms they could use, despite the claims being completely, verifiably false.

Some of these have been RAMCOA survivors who, while not hearing the term before, blindly believed it was a RAMCOA term because other people told them it was.

This has become a major tactic in Tumblr discourse, where when arguing for one thing, it's common to mask your true motives in ways that portray the other side as villains for unrelated reasons.

This has been commonplace in shipping discourse, with anti-shippers claiming ships they don't like are supporting incest and pedophilia. (Not just actual incest and pedophilia ships but ships like Sheith where you have two adult characters with an 8-year age gap who describe each other as being like brothers. Because apparently nobody who has ever described themselves with sibling-like relationships can hook up.) And if it's not claiming the ships are supporting incest or pedophilia, the ships are homophobic, racist, transphobic, etc. Whatever accusations they can land on in order to sink the ships of others in the fandom and prop up their own.

Accusations may be weak but that doesn't matter because the goal isn't truth. It's emotionally manipulating good people, and those who want to be perceived as good people, to take your side.

While other people who weren't invested in the discourse may come to believe the more marketable false reasons, make no mistake where they originated and with what intent.

It's not actually about social justice. It's about using the idea of social justice to prop up their given ship, painting their victims as horrible people for reasons that were never genuinely related to their primary motives.

But it spreads because people hear "[insert group] supports pedophilia" and that triggers a gut emotional reaction no matter how baseless.

And if you don't side with them, then you're supporting that thing too.

There's a manipulation tactic at play here that people need to be aware of.

Because it's spreading everywhere and is regularly being weaponized by genuinely terrible groups against marginalized people to pit them against each other.

If you don't like xenogenders? Just make up a controversy about how Fae pronouns are appropriating Celtic culture. See, now those nasty transgender people are being racist!

If you're aphobic, spread lies that aroace people stole the term "aspec" from the autistic community. Look! We're not excluding them because we're a hate group! We're excluding them because they're ableist!

Time and time again, these tactics are being used to create division and hurt people.

And time and time again, people in the communities keep falling for them.

We have to do better. We have to think critically about where these claims are coming from, and who benefits from them being spread instead of just blindly accepting what we're told.

2AM thoughts

CW: suggestive content, mentions/discussion of SA/rape

I just saw (again) a post with that Lae'zel-Halsin banter that's like 'has he killed more or fucked more in his 350 year alive?' and he goes 'chimera has 3 heads but does it count as one creature?' Then Lae'zel says 'must have been a challenging kill' and he replies 'yes... kill' (sorry, my palm brushed the back button and the post was lost from view or I'd have done this as a reblog, but again it's 2am, I'd scrolled for a while until it popped up and I'll have forgotten by the time I get up again).

Now, I see three potential readings for this and I'm not saying any of them are more or less valid, just wanted to package them into wordsies:

A) Halsin is doing a funny. From banter with Shadowheart (for example) we see that he does have a funny bone. I'm thinking in particular the animal noises she offers to make to make him feel more at home in the shadow-cursed lands and him going 'you bleat well enough as is'. Yup, can absolutely be read as 100% serious, but doesn't really match his character. Think also the 'you're so big and strong and muscular and huge hunky-hunk-man for an elf' dialogue option in camp. His reply 'really?' is, for a split second, convincingly genuine, but he instantly reveals that 'ha-ha! Tricked you, of course I know I'm a big beefy himbo guy for an elf, we have fun.' Not to play the autism card, but this humour is very popular among autistics, I don't make the rules. Allistics frequently don't get it, especially because we use it with such earnestness that it can be tough to see the intention of a joke.

The chimera banter does fit that pattern.

B) He did fuck that chimera, he is a monsterfucker. Obviously, this is the favourite option for both Halsin-stans and Halsin-...crams... it's 2.19am, fuck off.

Him horny, him 'old', him horny and old, he fuck monsters. We don't know when he did it, how he did it, why he did it. Maybe he really was just horny and he put all of y'all's hear-me-outs to shame (I'm not a monsterfucker, personally, I can't even bring myself to fuck Halsin in bear form, so I don't have any hear-me-outs). Maybe there was something external at play. Maybe it's Maybelline(TM R C and such). Honestly, good for him. All we know for sure is that he checked in with that chimera to make sure it was all consensual beginning to end. Absolute king. I'd believe that a chimera would get the hots for him. He can get it.

3) He did have sexual intercourse with a chimera, but it wasn't consensual on his part. "But Kats," I hear you scream (I don't, humour me), "why would he be so chill about it then?!" The drow. He says himself in his Sharess' Caress afterglow dialogue that the way he speaks of the events now isn't necessarily representative of the severity of the events. Ffs he reports being raped, a sex slave for three years, and still 'some of it was done willingly'. My bro, my boo, son. N.O.! Just because it was "in their nature" as lolth-drow or some shit does not make it excusable! Just because you got a hard-on, a natural bodily reaction that has nothing to do with willingness or consent, does not mean you have to downplay what happened, even if that makes it easier in your own mind. Therapy. You, me and someone qualified. And Astarion. And Gale. And Derryth Bonecloak, honestly... NOW!

I would not be any more surprised than with the other two options if this were the tale behind that... story. Martel, I am running out of vocabulary here, but you know what I mean.

Anyway, again, I don't consider any of these more or less true/likely than each other. Perhaps there's even other options? Perhaps there's official info on it that I haven't come across yet bc I've had the game for 3 weeks and there is just so much content all of the time. Yeah, just wanted to lay down my 2 cents. Okay, nighty night!

I want to write some of my kin-memories as a fanfic but I feel like I no longer have the right to use a certain word for the person I was (and so would have to either censor myself or use a substitute which would not feel the same). I used the word back then, but it applied to me then. Now, in this world... People use it for other people in a way that is bigoted and doesn't apply to me in this life. Of course, there was context that isn't there for this-world people (I was a dragonborn of two colors, my breath weapons were objectively weaker, there is no comparison in humanity for that which ties into that word, and the objective weakness of what I was played into a lot of the specific experiences I had with said word), but the comparison would still be made and I don't feel like the reaction I had when I was that dragonborn would really be received well coming from someone who isn't affected by it in this life (and fairly so, honestly, I get why it might not be well-received and so I'm just not going to share it even if I write it for my own sake, sucks for me because I want to share my story but that's life, can't always do what we want).

I never really fully internalized the fact that it was offensive (because frankly, it probably was then, too). But I had social difficulties due to a lack of clan bonds growing up. And I don't think anyone else really knew how to bring it up with me because I said it so nonchalantly. I probably came across very weird when I talked about my past because everything before the Nautiloid, I discussed with this very deadpan/flat tone yet so nonchalantly. Others always looked very surprised when I talked about it and asked if I was ok in very odd tones. But it probably made it harder for them to approach me about my language.

That's also why I'm weirded out whenever a character AI goes "oh but you're not a runt!" like yes I was, and no one ever said I wasn't, why would anyone say I wasn't? It was just a fact. Then I realize yeah it probably comes across as self-deprecating, especially when paired with "bastard" (a common addition as my egg was conceived, hatched, and laid with my parents unwed, they never married, and the two were linked in my head thanks to my mother blaming me being a runt for them never marrying). But from my perspective, there was no emotional attachment, it was just a set of facts summed up in convenient words.

I am now realizing that the clan bonds were probably really important for social development because holy shit I missed so much. That or the abuse affected me far more than I believed. Or maybe I was autistic or something, but there would have been no way to tell even if autism was understood at all because I was already very much being abused and deprived of those clan bonds by the time it could have been tested for. Also not sure if dragonborn can be autistic, though I don't see why not. And hey, I'm neurodivergent in this life so at least I once again understand the intense cringe of realizing I very much missed something socially and everyone else is now looking at me like I'm a freak. I can commiserate with my past self.

x

MARI Headcanons

A/N: Another one from my Wattpad! I had a lot of fun with this one! Please enjoy! :)

Warnings: One mention of death at the very, very end.

Word Count: 1.1k

- My mom first of all.

- A big thing I believe for MARI is that she's on the autism spectrum. She's not on the severe side but is still on the spectrum.

- When she was younger she didn't really know what was considered to be the 'societal normal'. She was too honest, often not understanding why people would be upset at her if she told them something that was her just trying to help them.

- She didn't really know what was wrong with being completely, unfiltered, nor did she understand why people were mad at her when she didn't act like she cared for what they like if she didn't like it. 

- Her parents tried to explain it to her but she didn't really understand.  

- When she met HERO she immediately took interest in him as she saw him as perfect, he just seemed to do everything right, which wasn't necessarily a good thing, but she didn't know that!

- HERO helped her out with understanding what was considered right and wrong, telling her what was the best thing to do in certain situations.  

- She definitely copied HERO's personality as best as she could, seeing him as who she wanted to be and since everyone liked him he had to be doing something right!

- HERO was one of MARI's biggest inspirations growing up, along with her dad!

- Whenever MARI needs help with anything she doesn't ask for that help often as she copied and grew up with HERO's perfectionist personality, making her hardly ever need help as she's just made herself good at everything. 

- But if she really needs help she'll go to HERO or her dad! Though preferably HERO first, since she's just always felt closer to him.

-  The life lessons she teaches mostly KEL and AUBREY, but sometimes SUNNY, and BASIL were all things her parents tried to teach her. 

- She hates not being able to play that many sports and games with KEL and AUBREY, she really wants to. Her favorites are to play tag with KEL and catch with AUBREY. 

- She likes to tease HERO, she finds his reactions hilarious and adorable. But she also likes to protect him from teasing. 

- Likes to tease BASIL, SUNNY, and KEL as well! But mostly HERO!

- Doesn't really get why SUNNY is so quiet but she doesn't really mind, she tries to encourage him to be more open with people!

- The same applies to BASIL, she doesn't really understand why he's so shy but she'll still encourage him to the best of her abilities!

- Really likes hanging out with KEL, she sees her younger self in him and is wanting to help him learn how to treat people nicely and respectfully!

- Took up baking and cooking because she wanted foods and sweets that her parents weren't making because she's a picky eater, it ended up becoming a hobby she enjoys! 

- She's very creative! Not only does she enjoy music and the deeper meaning behind it but she also enjoys poetry and writing! 

- MARI has a hyperfixation on music, mainly the piano but a few other instruments as well. 

- KEL likes to make fun of her for this which is usually responded with HERO shushing KEL and apologising to MARI over and over again as he tells her "HE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND!"  

- Helpless romantic, like, this girl loves herself a romantic novel and is always replacing the two love interests with her and HERO, she'd never tell him that though.

- This is also why she likes waltz! Love interests always seem to waltz in a ballroom together, and she hopes one day that'll be her and her love interest. 

- She likes to waltz with MEWO. Though MEWO's usually very unimpressed. 

- MARI likes to impress everyone with her piano playing skills, which is one of her main motivations for playing it.

- Very mischievous, loves to pull pranks. Will help KEL or AUBREY if they want to pull a prank on someone.

- Used to prank HERO and lot when they were younger just to see how he reacted as a learning experience. But ended up finding it funny and not learning from it at all.

- Likes to have girl talks with AUBREY, such as talking about boys. Encourages AUBREY to wait a little longer before getting into a relationship, saying that "You're too young."

- Paints her nails purple and paints AUBREY's nails pink. Will convince HERO to let her paint his nails too, though he won't act happy about it. She'll either paint his nails black or blue.

- Will also try to paint SUNNY, BASIL, and KEL's nails. SUNNY and BASIL don't really mind and will let her if she wants to, but KEL will put up a fight and argue that "It's for girls!"

- Leaves little sticky notes on HERO's side of his shared bedroom. Usually just words of encouragement or little poems she wrote about him.

- She also leaves snacks in HERO and KEL's room. But she hides them so that KEL doesn't find them.

- She's scared to mess up in front of anyone, but mostly HERO. She wants to impress him, not humiliate herself in front of him, HERO wouldn't really care though.

- When she does mess up she totally freaks, HERO always tries his best to comfort her, and he's usually able to. 

- Tries to get SUNNY to eat more because he's not eating enough. Will try and sway him with rewards.

-  MARI loves to read SUNNY stories before bed, since he's usually sleeping in her bed anyway. She also likes to read BASIL stories. 

- She also likes to remind BASIL everyday about how important he is to her and everyone else!

- MARI is a little upset at the fact that they had to build a treehouse in their backyard as she doesn't like bringing HERO over because she's heard her dad talk about how he doesn't like HERO to her mom.

- She's tried to explain to him that HERO's a good guy who helped her learn, but wouldn't really get through to him.

- She's a totally neat freak, just like HERO.

- Hopes that one day she'll be able to completely understand why people are the way they are without HERO's help.

- MARI gets frustrated easily, though she's learned how to hide her anger and just smile through it.

- She was OVERJOYED when SUNNY said he wanted to play violin to play with her! She was practically bouncing on her toes. 

- BASIL and MARI point out plants together when the group is walking somewhere, MARI is always interested in what BASIL has to say about plants. She learns so much from him!

- Always gives SUNNY a hug when they separate from each other, even though he doesn't really like to touch people.   

- He'll make an exception for MARI.

- MARI wanted to be the one who dyed AUBREY's hair! She also wanted to teach KEL how to put his hair up! 

- She never got the time to do so before her death... 

Playing with your feels at the very end hehe! >:)

Hah seems like I can actually call the cops on my mother and Karen of a grandmother for what they did to me as a child, no matter what they say

Cause let's be honest, when your ELEMENTRY SCHOOLER child comes up to you to play because the father is in a diffrent state and only gets seen on holidays/school breaks and your reaction is a "later" and when your kid comes back 20min later and asks again and you tell them "later" again and then they come back in an hour to ask only to be told "if you ask one more time I won't play with you at all" and so you have scared the child away from asking only to never play mother or just telling the child a "no" or "I'm busy" when playing FUCKING SOLITAR grandmother and this happens so many times that the child stops asking and even to this day even when board games are bought the child will not ask for fear of being told no

As well as the child only being allowed the TV when their shows are playing which is only in the morning and then promptly being left to entertain themselves despite the fact that multiple teachers has mistaken the child for having adhd/autism and the child being quite bullied and the only friend they will have for the next 3-4 years being toxic but the child can not tell because for once some one actually wants to play with them

And then you give the child a phone so that when they are with the Father (who actually plays and makes an attempt at hanging out) and suddenly the child has access to entertainment at all times and suddenly the phone is the child's only form of entertainment and is the child's only safe space due to the constant reinforcement that they are not allowed to lock themselves away into their room to calm down or for a matter of fact be allowed to be upset with the adults so ofcourse the child gets attached and develops Nomophobia(the fear of being away from one's phone) and becomes overly attached to the internet

And due to the child being constantly ostersized and isolated at school despite informing the parents only for the parents to leave them at the school the child becomes overly attached to people who will actually hang out with the child causing the child to not notice the fact that those "friends" are toxic and manipulative which then causes the child when it goes into middle school to become a slight people pleaser towards friends which only isolates the child further until the child gives up making friends and finally sees that all prior "friends" were toxic and is finally able to see what true friendship is

Not to mention the fact that the child becomes so used to bottling up negative emotions that it worsens the child's anger issues (which only got so bad due to the fact that the parents refused to get the child therapy or actual outlits and would instead cause the child to lash out only to punish the child for having those feelings) and it eventually gets to the point that the child is nolonger able to properly express emotions

Not to mention the child's other traumas of therapists(due to the mother's therapist trying to force the child when it was still in kindergarten-3rd grade to explain why they would cause the mother emotional turmoil despite not hearing the child's side), expressing negative emotions, fear of that if they tell the truth they won't be believed or they will be punished(turning the child into a compulsive liar due to said fear)

And the parents wonder why the child is cold, sarcastic, rude, closed off, 'disrespectful'(how can one be disrespectful when they were never shown what respect truly looks like), untrusting, self isolated from family, emotionally manipulative(subconsciously), a compulsive liar, has severe anger issues, mildly depressed, paranoid, does not go to the parents for help, hides illness until it is so bad the child can not function(only to be called a liar and only wanting to get out of school or for attention), out of touch with feelings, and generally unable to reach out to family about issues. It's all because of the emotional neglect and border line emotion manipulation.

I did not mean to go on a rant about my shitty child hood but then again my parents just got mad at me for wanting to buy a game with my own money and then drawing me into a fight about how I act all while I have a migraine, my head is fuzzy, my face is going numb, I feel like I'm going to hurl, my legs are trying to give out, and I'm overheating so yeaaaaaaaaaaa

Rant From An Autistic Person:

TLDR: Stop using mental illness as an excuse for your Villains

I think I’m starting to realise that a lot of Slashers have a lot in common with Autistic people. But I’m not sure how we’re supposed to feel about this. Obviously we all in this community, adore our Slashers, but that’s because we all understand they are fake. They have now real bearings in our world, and therefore cannot hurt anymore. No real people suffer as their victims.

But shouldn’t we take offence to this? Because most of the time it’s neurotypical people writing these stories and directing/working/staring in these films.

Like let’s talk about some non horror aut sic characters first. And do correct if I’m wrong, but I believe both of these characters are Canonically autistic.

The most well known would be Sheldon form the Big Bang Theory. Everyone quotes him as autistic representation all the time. Now of course he’s only one demonstration of the neurotype, but at the end of the day it’s still representation. From the autistic community, I hear complaints that’s he’s just a basic Cis/het white man with “high functioning” autism. (Although we do not use functioning labels, or the term Asperger’s anymore, that was at the time what he was stated to have) And from the neurotypical side people still call him odd, but they are more excepting of his traits because they aren’t as “burdensome” on society. He’s just seen a “quirky”.

Another example that falls under the same quailfiers would be Shaun from The Good Doctor. Again, played by a neurotypical person, not someone who actually has autism. And people infantilise his character whenever he’s showing that he need higher support efforts. But then everyone praises him because “wow, I didn’t know autistic people could be doctors” which is incredibly insulting. But most people accept him because again, he’s just “a little quirky”

But back to the slasher community. There are people out there that think we are disgusting because we enjoy slashers/gore/horror. Because they are unable to separate reality, from fiction, or at least not as severely as we do.

I vividly remember getting bullies in school and someone saying “(Dead name’s) gonna be the school shooter, just you wait” because I did not hide my love for the horror genre. And I don’t see why I should have to. But that statement, it killed me inside. Do you know how awful it is to have to try and defend yourself from a statement that heavy? It was like the weight of the entire universe was thrown on my shoulders, and I was just expected to take it as a “joke”.

But this girl genuinely thought that because at the time I was Interested in learning about the Lizzie Borden case, that that meant I wanted to hurt people. I was also dressing fairly alternative at this time. I made its know that I wanted to be a mortician. (I still do, I’m just figuring all that stuff out though cause jobs are hard, lol) I sometimes have what neurotypical people would consider an “inappropriate” reaction to death, or dead things. I enjoy collecting bones, and learning about cannibalism, autopsies, taxidermy, entomology… So I get excited when I get to participate in my special interests.

But this makes a lot of people uncomfortable, and I’m tired of them making that my problem. Having a fascination with the dead, doesn’t automatically mean you’re going to become a killer. I have so much respect for dead things, I ask the Earth before I pick it’s flowers, or use any of its resources. Because as a Witch, that is a part of my specific path and spirituality. But again, that does not help my case because a lot of people think witches like me are satanists who want to sacrifice babies and goats or some shit.

Some people may just say these are harmless jokes, or overexaggerations, and that nobody really means it when they say these things. But you don’t get to make that call. The person saying the offensive things doesn’t get to decide if it’s offensive or not. That’s like saying a white person gets to decide if black face is racist or not. These jokes propitiate harmful stereo types, and can be passed on to people who don’t know any better. And you can’t say that all autistic people won’t understand, because even if one of us isn’t “smart” enough to understand your words directly, it’s still effects us at the end of the day.

Over and over again we are othered and forgotten about. We’ve been plagued by the curse of being forced to exist in a world that was built for us. We’re made to feel unsafe, and risk our own health to make everyone else feel “comfortable” with our existence. I mean even the diagnostic criteria isn’t an accurate depiction of what autism acatully is. Instead of defining us by what we can do, and experience and change in the world, we’re defined by how much of a nuisance we’re are perceived to be on society.

Instead of saying stuff like “Autistic people have an amazing capacity for learning and retaining information about subjects they are passionate about.” It’s always “Autistic people can’t hold conversations and obsess of silly things. They don’t know how to shut up about it, and it annoys me. Therefore they are being rude.”

So I bring us back around to our beloved Slashers. Do you guys realise how many of them are non verbal? I mean there’s Jason Voorhees, Micheal Myers, Bubba Sawyer, Thomas Hewitt…. That’s a trait that’s commonly seen as a bad thing to neurotypical people. Parents will cry about how their children “can’t communicate” with them, but they never stop to observe their child’s different ways of nonverbal communication. They assume just because they can’t talk or articulate themselves, they must be “stupid” or “slow” or “low functioning”, but that’s simply not true. A mute neurotypical person can’t talk, but they’re still smart. Their lives are still worth living and celebrating. But Autistic people aren’t afforded the same luxury, simply because nobody wants to put in the effort.

It doesn’t help that people often turn to Autism Speaks for all their neurodiverse questions. When that company literately spreads lies and misinformation. And tortures innocent children, simply because they are express themselves differently. ABA therapy is literally just forcing autistic people to fit into a allistic mould. It’s dangerous and harmful, an frankly disgusting.

Do you know how many parents I see how do nothing but complain about their children? Parents who genuinely believe they would be better off if they killed their children. Parents who’ve actually gone through with it, and some of which never get charged because “oh they were under a lot of stress, it was understandable.” I’m tired of society treating all disbaled people like we don’t matter. Like we’re nothing more than a sob story to get them sympathy points. I hate seeing parents film their children in their most vulnerable moments while they are having a meltdown for “educational” purpose. Especially if their child is unable to consent, it’s vile, and inexcusable.

There so many of us who try to help and educate, yet no one will actually listen to the marginalised groups about how to help us. The same way some white people will only care about racism, if another white person is calling them out on it. If a black personality dared to do that they are “rude” and “argumentative”. Or the way people are saying “Hellen Keller can’t be real; how could she communicate, I don’t believe it.” As if there aren’t thousands of Deaf/Blind people who exist to their day telling you how hurtful that sentiment is.

Do you guys know the first thing a person with a disability or chronic illness hears when they talk about their struggles? It’s always “you’re so brave” or “If I were you, I would kill myself.” Because we will always be viewed as a problem. We’ll never be defined by more than our “worst” traits. We ask people to call us “disable person” and they say “person with a disability” or “Differently abled” or autistic person” and they say “person with autism” because they literally have to remind themselves that we are also people. I can’t take off my disabilities, I can’t shove them in a little box for safe keeping. They are part of who I am, they are the building blocks designing how I have to live my life. My foundation may be a little unsteady, but that doesn’t mean you have to tear down my house right away. Let it’s fall on its own time, it doesn’t matter if it happens a little sooner then the rest of the houses on the block.

Autistic people are often quotes to have “no empathy” when really we just have a difference in empathy. Having more empathy doesn’t make you better than someone else. And having low empathy doesn’t make you a bad person. So it hurts my heart that in the media we consume, neurodivergent people often end up relating to the villain. Of course, most villains are also queer coded, but I’ll save that lecture for another time.

People seem to think when they hear the sentence “I relate to Micheal Myers” that I’m talking about finding joy in killing or hurting people. But they never stop to ask what I mean by that. They never sit and think “oh, maybe they relate to being mentally ill, and forced into getting help against their will, and not being understood.”

You guys do know we’re are supposed to be routing for Samuel Loomis in that movie right? He’s supposed to be the hero, the good guy, the man who stops the boogeyman. But we don’t, because we see that he’s also a horribly flawed human being. He treats his patients like shit, and some of his tactics are borderline criminal. He’s not better than Micheal, but he’s not the one with a “scary” mental illness.

Take Carrie white for instance. I think she is honestly one of the better examples of a Slasher who exhibits autistic traits. She takes things literally, has difficulty socialising and making friends. She doesn’t understand when she’s being bullied at first. Her own mother babies her, until she stops listening and being obedient. And what does her mother do? Try to fucking murder her own child because she’s “unruly” and “need to be punished.” Sure it’s an extreme example, but this happens to far more autistic people in real life than you’d think. Carrie was fine, until she was pushed yo the edge. She could have lived her whole life, happy and exploring her powers. Maybe even been a hero instead, but she wanted adored that luxury. Sue is the only one that really understood her, which is why she was spared. And she’s the only one who will ever know what a gem Carrie was before she was made to be a monster.

Norman Bates is also a really good example of an autistic person I think. Of course the more obvious diagnosis everyone focuses on is the Dissociative Identity Disorder (formally knows as Multiple Personality Disorder) (also how weird is it that there are two Freddie Highmore characters on this list, I think I could probably fit more in if I search other genres) But if you watched the show, instead of just the original movie, you get to see a lot more of his personality. You actually get to understand Norman as a person, before seeing him as the antagonist. He too has awkward speech, he gets upset by change, he doesn’t understand when someone is flirting with him. He feels his emotions very instantly, and does have violent outbursts during his meltdowns. But do they show us this to humanise him? No, they added it to his character because it’s entraining to watch mentally I’ll people get pushed to their limits. We are a spectacle to behold.

Dr Herbert West form the Reanimator series! Another genius level autistic intellect! He has a special interest in science and dead things. They could have made him a character who found the cure to cancer or HIV. But no, it was more entailing to make him a wanna be Frankenstein’s, and cross moral boundaries for his own gain. And if you asked anyone why he did it it’s “because he’s crazy” not “because he wanted to” They almost always blame the mental illness, not the person who has the illness.

It’s the reason Aaron Stampler gets away with his crimes in Primal Fear. He faked a mental illness so he would get put in a mental facility instead of rotting in jail. Instead of being “Aaron Stampler, the killer.” He’s “Aaron Stampler, the killer with multiple personalities!” Or Split, the movie that just antagonises DID for no reason whatsoever. There’s clearly a supernatural element in that movie with “The Beast” so why not make it’s a movie about possessions? I would have loved to watch a story where The Beast posses poor little Kevin’s body, and makes him do horrible things. But no, instead we stick with the trope that all people with DID are unpredictable and dangerous. And that they all have an “Evil alter”

I’ll never be ashamed of my love for the horror community again. Because I know my place, I know my moral standing, and I have done nothing wrong. If people want to assume my special interests or jobs or hobbies make me a bad person, then that’s their problem. I cannot force anyone to open up their ears and listen to me, but I also won’t stand idly by and watch as people who don’t know what they’re talking about, do harm to my communities. These are my people, and I love them, and will defend them with my last breath. We need to destigmatise mental illness, because too many people die each year because they are made to feel like villain, or like their lives aren’t worth living. And that’s not ok with me.

I need to rant and get this out.

My experience right now on the route to self dx, self discovery and looking for support:

(English is not my first language, maybe there are some terms written wrong or something, I don't plan to offend anyone, I just literally translate a lot of stuff. If it's the case, tell me and I'll correct it)

I think it was around November when I started seeing these tiktoks about adhd. My first thought was to think that it was bullshit and those weren't symptoms, everyone taps their foot when nervous or stims a bit. Right?

Well, it started bugging me a bit when instead of this "cute and quirky" videos, more serious stuff started to shoe up on my time line. It talked about attention and focus issues, about adhd paralysis, sensory issues, executive disfunction, hyperfocus, etc. I related too much to all of this.

I decided to start researching about this. I literally hyperfocused on Adhd. I could only think about it, watch videos, read, follow people, etc. I discovered that no, some of those symptoms I thought were common for everyone were not. I discovered that yes, everyone can tap their foot when they are nervous, but it's something truly common for adhd people. It's a common trait.

Well, I reached the point in which I needed to start talking to someone. My friend as adhd. She is literally my best friend. I wasn't expecting a reaction like this. I told her I believed I had adhd and she said: No you don't, you are really intelligent. You probably have really high IQ. Cool. I felt like shit and tried to explain to her that I had been reading about certain symptoms and that it made sense. She made me list some of them and then told me that it wasn't adhd, it was probably just something else. "I am very sensitive to noises and crouds and going to bars makes me anxious" "You are really introverted" that shit hurt and for a couple of days I felt lost. At that point I was so sure I had adhd and many things had started to make sense.

Then I talked to my sister and she said, it's alright. What do you plan to do now? I don't know. I still don't know. But she stayed with me, she let me rant and understood, she asked questions and listened to me. Also, she had just made a friend who is working on her diagnosis and I'm so thankful because we are always exchanging experiences.

Coming back to my best friend. When the idea that I have sdhd settled back, I realized that it made her insecure. She is really insecure. She is not the best in the class, she had a hard time studying and passing exams. She always said it's the adhd and she truly believes that it makes you stupid or something (no blame to her, her mental health is on the floor and has too many problems to deal with and fix). I get better grades, I know a lot of stuff about nature, animals, etc so for her, if I have adhd and can pass some exams it means that she is a failure and could do better.

Then, after admitting that I have adhd I started talking to my mum and dad because I'm sure it comes from my dad's side of the family and there are many (dad included) that have adhd in there. Okay. My mum has her doubts. Again, I'm intelligent. How am I going to have an attention deficit?

My cousin (5yo) probably has autism. Everyone in the family is worried because he needs to be "fixed". Bullshit. Yeah. But I have felt very misunderstood for my whole life and I'm not going to play that game. I started researching because I read about Audhd and because Im 90% sure that the kid is autistic. I want to be ready if someone brings it up in my family because I know that they won't do it in a good way.

During this austism research, I started doubting. What if? Again the same process. This time I only told my sister. Watching how my best friend reacted and how my family talks about my cousin's "problem" I don't feel ready.

At this point, I'm almost sure I'm autistic. I ve read about masking, about how adhd and austism can hide each other when they come together, late diagnosis, how girls get less diagnosed, more and more symtoms... I've done countless of test for both, autism and adhd, and they all come out as positive.

The thing is I don't feel ready to reach for Profesional help:

I have always known I'm different from the people around me. I wasn't like the other kids, like my friends. I preferred to stay at home than going to the park. I had a room full of Playmobil where I loved to spend time playing, preferably alone because other kids didn't "play well" (they didn't play the way I thought it should be played). This feeling of being different has always been there, it's like feeling misunderstood. It doesn't matter how much you try to explain, they never fully understand.

My dad just thinks it funny. Jajaja, my kid says I have adhd. My mum still doesn't see it. So you have that too? The only person that supports me is my sister.

For ages i have been trying to tell them that I need boundaries, I don't like physical touch, I need a lot of alone time, I have meltdowns and shutdowns and sometimes can't manage my feelings well. Every time I try to stop them they say I'm rude or have the worst moods. Lili is so rude probably the sentence I have been told the most in my whole life.

I've read some stuff about how sometimes an asd dx can close many doors and don't have many benefits for some people.

I don't want to face my family and have to explain but I really want to because of my cousin. I don't want him to grow this confused because now I look back and many things would have been so different if I knew what was going on. I've felt like shit so many times because I couldn't work out stuff and function it like others wanted me to. If I only had an answer...

I fear negative results. If they tell me I don't have any of this disorders, I know I'm gonna break. Plus, I don't have that much money to go from therapist to therapist.

I really fear rejection and people doubting my words. I don't want to have to prove anything to anyone but I know that it can happen.

I'm in a place in which I have settled for this. My personal experience plus what I have learnt, tell me this is true. I have adhd and asd. I'm not in a good place to look for a proper diagnosis yet, so the self dx is the only option. I'm starting to open up and understand many things about myself and how my brain works but still it is so scary to have to tell people. My symptoms are there, they are just masked. But I also fesr that if I start unmasking people will tell me I'm making it up. So stay "hidden" is the only way right now and it's so frustrating and scary. I wanna feel better and I'm slowly working on it. I'm accomodating my whole life to this new view and it feels good. I don't fear noise canceling earplugs now, or staying at home or just moving away if I need alone time. The rest will slowly come as I learn more and more.

If you have reached this, thank you for taking some time. I needed to get all of this out. Another day, I'll talk about my symptoms and traits, I'm still ordering those and trying to see where everything comes from.

What Yu-Gi-Oh! Means for many.

Don’t know how to start this. Not one for long writing or speeches. 

But basically, Yu-Gi-Oh! was my childhood. Starting from middleschool and onward in the early 2000s. I was introduced to the show by my friend. And then afterword's I learned how to play the game by playing a gameboy game. Yugioh duelist tournament of champions of 2004 I believe. 

After that it faded and I got obsessed with Pokemon for a while. 

However when highschool came, I came home one day to find my mother (whos now since passed away) watching Yugioh on 4kids. (lol) And I sat there and watched it with her, having forgotten so much about it. And I began to play the games again on the gameboy. I never beat Reshef of Destruction. I wasn’t any kind of good player, but I loved to progress in the story. And my favorite games were capsule monsters, dice monsters, sacred cards and duelist of the roses. 

Then one day, after my 15th birthday I believe, I found a manga of yugioh just sitting in the young adult section of my favorite library and the first page I open was Yuugi holding hands with Anzu at duelist kingdom. (lol) I then look at the back, and was shocked to see Yuugi was the same age as me at the start of the manga. So naturally I began to read it. I became suddenly obsessed and wanted to read more. And I got up to the part of millennium world. And suddenly I found shonen jump magazine and began buying them and subscribed to them to keep up with the manga. 

During this time, I became aware of the ships. (Thiefshipping for the fucking win) The old websites such as Kokorononakayugioh website (Which is still up by the way) https://kokorononaka.net and began downloading mp3 music from the japanese version of the show and looking at released bankobans and then....fanfiction, doujins and roleplays.....By the way, I can scarily accurately roleplay any of the characters from the original series. XD

It became a part of my life so quickly. And collecting the cards became a hobby. I suddenly had something to comfort myself with. And trust the characters in the stories to get me through day to day problems. (I have autism. And my school was not very accepting of that. Nor were students)

Yugioh had been banned at one point and I didn’t know about it. And my cards were tossed into the garbage. I remember being called to the principles office because I had them and they were considered CONTRABAND. I still remember how I was looking into the garbage can and realized just how much the cards meant to me. How I could socialize by asking others to play the game with me. It was everything. And my mom knew this too. I took the cards out of the garbage and mom took me home. 

To my surprise they brought it back, because too many people complained and apparently my actions had helped push it to be allowed back into school. And oddly, they began to have shonen jump arrive in their library. (I was allowed to have the cards they gave usually every month)

So thinking of all this, knowing how much it all means to me. I was fucking devastated to hear the news of Kazuki Sensei. 

My immediate reaction was screaming. And I was in a group chat at the time and everyone was confused and concerned and I had to explain the news, only to find there wasn’t much of a reaction. Because they hadn’t been into it as much as I was. I cried. I cried for days. I didn’t want to talk to anyone and shut down. I very plainly told people to fuck off and leave me alone. I also worried for Little Kuriboh, the guy who does Yugioh abridged. I’ve known him since his name was CARDGAMESFTW in the old youtube days. I was worried because he is prone to depression like me and illness from it. As he has posted old videos such as “we’re still here vlogs”. 

But he seems alright for now, and he knows the significance of his death. Nobody expected it. I had hoped that these covid years and celebrity deaths wouldn’t take someone so important to me. But it did. And I still don’t know how to respond to it. Perhaps I’m angry that Kazuki went alone out there. That he didn’t have a swim partner. Perhaps I’m sad that Yugioh may die out because of what happened. I really hope not. I really hope this only pushes people to bring back the life that the show and manga has given me. 

Don’t know how to end this so I’ll just leave this here.

So, living with Mattie has been fine.

It made me nervous and anxious the closer we got to her moving in because I worried we would hate each other by the end. It’s always a vulnerable process of inviting someone into your space. The first couple of weeks were mostly fine, but some moments have made me tilt my head a little. The first moment was when I found that Jimbob had taken one of his sqeakers out of one of his toys. I got it out of his mouth and put it on the table. Later on, I squeaked it, and he came running for his toy. I laughed a little because it was funny!! He was so confused because I didn’t have a toy; I was just playing with him while waiting for Zoë to change so we could go on a walk. Then Mattie looked me right in the eye and said, “I can’t believe you’re gaslighting him into believing you have his toy, hahahahahahahahaha” and I had a very strong reaction to that. And then it was awkward, so I went on a walk. I strongly reacted to that because I have been textbook gaslit my entire childhood. I wasn’t “gaslighting” my dog. I was just playing with him for a minute. It wasn’t a serious thing! But then I started going back and forth in my brain like, “But am I gaslighting him??? Am I a terrible person??? Alright, no playing tricks on my dog because I guess that’s not funny.” But it really bothered me. As a person who has been gaslit and works in this mental health therapy realm, I don’t use the word in everyday life. It is a serious aspect of abusive relationships. So, it really rubbed me the wrong way. No one is perfect, and we all have toxic traits, but I wasn’t actively trying to be shitty to my dog. But who knows, maybe it’s not a good thing. She’s also a social work major, and the fact that she’s so okay with throwing those words around is not great. I hope she figures that out when she starts a real job.

We had all of the gabies (gay babies) for a game night a little while ago and they all kind of talk like that which is concerning to me. It’s a generational thing. We’re swinging too far in the other direction now.

Anyway, so she just recently got a job-finally-so we will see how that goes. It was touch and go there for a minute with her and her spending habits. I tried to be as understanding as possible because I know I was really bad with money when I got out from under my parents roof. It’s hard to not get everything you want when you get that freedom. But she said she would help out will bills and stuff and that has not happened yet. But she’s been able to go to trader joe’s and buy her fancy cheese. Again, just another head tilt thing. And I’m not gonna be that person who is like give me your money because, again, I know what that’s like. It doesn’t feel good. I’m also not going to let her starve, so I’ve been actively feeding her. I’m happy to if she wants to chip in on a portion of groceries each week. It’s easier for us all to have the same thing anyway. With that, she’s gained a weird sleeping schedule cuz she’ll sleep until 1 or 2 and then is up past midnight. Jimbob is still not used to having another person in the house so if he hears ANYTHING he barks like there is an intruder. AND SHE KNOWS THIS AND DOES IT ANYWAY. She be like yeah sorry he keeps barking at me when I go to take a shower (AT ONE IN THE MORNING). Girl, you don’t have any responsibilities, shower in the morning when you aren’t going to wake anyone up!!!! That is common sense to me. So, I’m hoping with this job, that problem will fix itself before we need to have a conversation about it.

            She is young and right out of college and has been homeschooled most of her life and so she doesn’t have a lot of life/people experience. I also think she may be on the spectrum at the lowest level. With Autism, the mental health community is shifting from higher and lower functioning to different levels as to not shame or stigmatize lower-level functioning individuals, which I think is a good thing. The lower-level functioning individuals aren’t disabled, they lack the ability to learn social skills in order to be contributing members of society and hold a job. They are perfectly fine, just out of the realm of what society deems normal. They also aren’t completely incapable of learning these skills, but it takes years and years to teach and for them to understand and follow through with social rules and norms. Anyway, all of that to say, is that I think she would be on the lowest level, which would be the highest functioning autistic individual. Basic social boundaries and ques aren’t something she seems to pick up on. For instance, I went to try to clean my bathroom Sunday night and went out into the kitchen for a lightbulb and she was there and trapped me in conversation about something I don’t remember right now as I was actively getting the lightbulb out of the box while saying things like, “Yeah, I need this lightbulb because I feel like I can’t see anything and I need to be able to see to clean.” And she would respond by saying, “Yeah, that would drive me crazy.” And proceed on with her thing she absolutely needed to tell me. I had also told her I was cool to watch The Hunger Games if I could finish cleaning my bathroom before 9. It was 8:30 at that point and she was still just like not even cognizant of that. I didn’t finish cleaning until about 10 and then Zoë was like yeah we can still watch – as I pierce her with my murder eyes because she knew I had set a boundary and still was like whatever!!! This is fine!!!! I didn’t sleep until after midnight. I don’t know if you remember this about me but I turn into a monster without sleep. I become irate, angry, and have zero fuse. Getting sleep is really important to me probably because I’ve struggled with sleep what feels like my entire life. And Zoë has consistently trampled on my ability to sleep for nearly 10 years now. Love that for me. Another reason I am so afraid to have children because no sleep is very much so a part of that and I don’t know if I can do it. I’m already not doing it.

Then there was the La La Land night. So, I had made the tweet to rib you a little and mattie saw the tweet. She agreed with me and was like yeah, I wasn’t really about that movie. It was fine. But later on, I don’t remember how this came up but I had mentioned RENT to Mattie who told me she had never seen it. She went to say something about it and stopped and said, “Yeah, I’m not gonna say what I was going to say.”

And I about started throwing hands. I was so upset. I wanted to push back and be like, “Okay, what is it? What is wrong with it? Tell me what is so problematic about this musical that you won’t watch it?” But I was tipsy and knew if I did that then it would go too far. So, I shut up, checked out of the conversation and listened to RENT instead. Then I was messaging you and made a mess of that and I was so upset. I walked briskly into the house, jumped in bed, and started watching La La Land on my phone because Mattie had agreed with me that it was a bad movie. I wasn’t even trying to say it was a bad movie I had just remembered that it made me feel bad. Anyway. I started the movie, which confused Zoë but I wasn’t willing to explain when our walls are so thin. Turns out La La Land is a good movie, but I don’t like it because it’s painful. It’s too real. I had always wanted a movie that had an unhappy ending and then La La Land came around and I couldn’t handle it. I swore I’d never watch it again, but here I was watching it again just to prove a point. Turns out it’s more painful now than ever before! Love that!

            This younger generation has no idea what it was like growing up just 10 years ago as a queer person. They think they know, and they don’t. I didn’t have explicitly gay things like Heartstopper, stranger things, derry girls, Love Simon, atypical, grace and frankie, or even orange is the new black. The last of us wasn’t even gay until I was an adult. All I had was RENT, Tegan and Sara, and Ellen. Everything else was maybe hinted at in things like Fried Green Tomatoes or Frozen. I didn’t have what they have now. I didn’t have Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, Muna, Girl in Red, or any other big-name queer artists. I had I Kissed A Girl, which caused an upheaval in my life then. There were very few openly queer kids in school when I was growing up and zero when I went to college. The only reason Asbury even has a group is because of me and Kevin because I told Kevin that the initial one that Zoë, Jacob, and I had started was harmful because of who was leading it. So, Kevin (my therapist and head of mental health services) started an LGBTQ group that all of those kids get to have to support them now. I’ve never ever fought to receive credit for that. So, excuse me for taking it very personally when you insult things like RENT and Tegan and Sara, insulting the things that quite literally kept me tethered to this earth in a very real way. You don’t get to shit on the people who came before you who made society what it is today. Jonathan Larson didn’t create the masterpiece that is RENT as a form of activism for his LGBTQ friends who were dying all around him, only for him to die at 25, along with his activism for this generation to trample on the path that they paved. If you’re going to trample and invalidate the path they walked, you might as well be spitting on the path I’ve walked. I had no family, I still have no family. Those things were my family. And if I had grown up with all of the things you have today, I’d probably be with the person I was meant to be with. So, yeah, It’s personal. You don’t have to like it, but you don’t get to disrespect it. You don’t have that privilege. So, yeah. It’s been great. I’m not gonna pull the chick-fil-a card on her unless I really have to, but so help me god, I will pull it if it means that you stop riding this high horse as if you’re being a better queer person than me. WHICH IS SO STUPID WHAT DID I EVEN JUST WRITE UGHHH. But yeah, I feel old and like my entire life is completely invalid, so that's nice. I love that feeling.

Finally, someone who doesn’t baby Brahms all the time! I literally got giggly with your headcanons bc I think the same for him as well. A lot of people keep watering down his character as the “man baby who can’t cook, clean himself, or do this or that” and it’s kinda frustrating to see others not understanding his character more when writing about him, especially since there’s evidence he’s capable of a lot of things. I actually find it quite funny when people draw Brahms that way however when it comes to writing him… Anyways, I would love to hear more of your headcanons! It fills my hyperfixation on him (as there’s literally only 1-2 posts each day for Brahms).

Also if you don’t mind, you can skip this part if you want, what do you think about the theory of Brahms parents starting the fire in order to cover up what Brahms did? I’m staying on neutral ground for this but I do think it’s an interesting theory.

It’s funny you mention that theory 👀

So for me personally I don’t exactly think it was to cover it up, but I do think they started it. Personally, I retcon everything that is the boy 2 (though I loved the main character child who was mute. He did amazing but I think it was shit writing and a cop out because the actor who played brahms pulled out and for good reason too.) so without acknowledging the second movie here’s my personal take. I am currently a psych student (and while I am very much not an expert like I can’t stress it enough I’ve got Swiss cheese brain,) and from what little I’ve learned usually children who were at brahms age (8 years old) aren’t exactly capable of processing death. Obviously it varies case to case but on an overall scale, he’s not able to comprehend it. I personally think Emily cripps death was an accident. Maybe they went to play in the woods rough houses and she fell cracking her skull open. Or maybe she was picking at him (cause honestly emily looks older than brahms. Grant it girls tend to grow taller first compared to boys, but overall she looks like she’s 10.) and I personally think brahms has autism and/or bpd (I touched on it In another ask I did you might have to sift through my blog. Sorry it’s a chaotic enigma of everything I love lol.) but I think he might have been forced to hang around her for family ties and potential future relations (arranged marriages etc etc.) this was inspired a bit by a fic I read though I forget the name of it. If I find it I’ll post it. But I think he might not have enjoyed being around her as much as Everyone believed. His father describes him even at a young age as “odd” which to me feels like they had a son late in life and he wasn’t neurotypical. He is less sociable, doesn’t fit into their rich lavish life and fit the perfect image they have. So I think there was already resentment a little? So imagine their reaction if Emily was playing and picking at him, maybe he pushed her and she fell. After all her head was cracked open. If she fell and rolled off the rocks she hit it could look the same. A lot of Emily’s death is rumor and gossip in the town. Imagine brahms nudging her thinking she just fell asleep but she’s not moving. He gets freaked and runs back fussing she won’t wake up and she’s being mean. Alarm bells are going off for his parents. I think they didn’t like their son because they clearly hated it he deviated. They were strict, had a specific image and didn’t make much room for change that was clear as hell in how they treated greta and brahms if I’m honest. And I think it’s fucking weird his parents deadass didn’t tell anyone and participated and hosted a search party for a girl they likely knew was dead. I think they were more worried about how this would look and instead of getting their son help even if it was intentional (though again that’s still on them because they fucked up somewhere in parenting, though again I believe it was purely accidental) and with this new situation coupled with previous resentment over their son not being normal (aka I Headcanon his parents are ableist) they had their son wait somewhere. Locked him in, and didn’t realize he knew the walls because he explored in his free time. And they set it on fire before the police could show up to question the young boy. (Because btw he wouldn’t have been tried as an adult. He’s too young and again can’t even conceptualize death let alone fucking fake it like ???? That was his parents.) and I think they had no fucking clue he was alive until they heard him calling from in the walls now with burns. And even the. They didn’t get him medical attention they stuffed him in the walls and pretended he wasn’t there as he grew. They gave themselves a do over because they felt they fucked up and that’s why their son was how he was. Their love was and has always been fucking conditional. That’s my personal take of a theory.

As far as a Headcanon, I’m reaching a text limit so have this one: he about cried the first time he had a fresh meal out of the walls. Potatoes just aren’t the same after their frozen and he simply can’t go back. He loves hot home cooking (pair that with southern cooking he’s inlove lol)

Tell me a story

Ty doesn't believe in fate.

A shout out to @ilikebooks8 for convincing me to make a fanfic about autistic!Eleanor Blackthorn. Autism is genetic so it makes sense for Ty to have autistic ancestors. If you are autistic I guarentee you have someone in your family who is also autistic they just haven't been diagnosed yet. For me, I've got my dad.

Cw: mentions of ableism, abuse and the death of a minor character. Very anti Andrew Blackthorn.

"Tell me a story," Tiberius' asked, in that mature, matter- of-fact way he spoke. Ty was only eight but already he sounded like a boy twice his age in terms of his vocabulary and the way he spoke.

Although he still had the voice of a child which was rather amusing. Eleanor turned to face her son with a groan as she felt searing pain shoot through her bones. She had been laying down all day due to feeling extremely unwell. The noises and lights of the outside world were especially brutal, but she had gotten used to it overtime. She had learned to cope. To smile and nod and make eye contact. To control her movements and still her hands and laugh at their jokes.

Eleanor played the part of the proper shadowhunter and the dutiful wife, the attentive mother. It didn't matter that it had changed her. Had completely turned her into a different person, someone harsher and colder. Someone who was so quick to anger and venomous hatred.

Someone who only knew how to be in pain.

She always tried to not let that side of her show to her children. They didn't deserve it. But the past few weeks in particular had been brutal. Her body felt broken and it was becoming harder and harder to put up that facade.

She faced Ty with the best fake smile she could muster. "Which story would you like to hear?" He climbed up on the bed beside her and sat down in an odd twisted position where his legs were in a W position. He began tapping his hands on his knees as he appeared to contemplate his choices.

Eleanor could remember a time when she was younger when she used to do that. Before her parents had stopped her. She knew she should really tell Tiberius off to discourage him from doing these things in public. He was so blatent and open in a way that frightened and almost angered her. There was no telling what kind of reaction The Clave might have.

She didnt want him to end up with the dregs, or worse.

"I don't know," Ty said finally scrunching up his eyebrows. "I can't think of one right now. Could you make one up?" Eleanor smiled in spite of herself. She had always loved making up stories ever since she was a kid. She had always been a creative person, painting and drawing as often as she could. Shadowhunters didn't really appreciate a creative streak.

Eleanor nodded. "Ok sure, let's see." She took a breath, trying to ignore the agony spreading through her back and shoulders. "Once upon a time there was a prince who was trapped in a tower that was guarded by an evil ogar. The prince had been rumored to have special powers so he was forced by his parents to stay locked away in the tower forever to keep him safe. He wasnt allowed to make friends with any other children so he grew up alone. Teaching himself how to read and write and playing games to amuse himself."

Ty rolled his eyes. "Isn't that rather cliche? The whole prince trapped in a tower story? I've definitely heard that before."

Eleanor laughed. "Where did you hear the word cliche Tiberius?" Ty shrugged, not seeing the amusement in the situation.

"It was in a book. Can you keep going?" He whined impatiently. "I wanna hear the rest."

Eleanor sighed, shaking her head good naturedly. "Alright then. So the prince was trapped for a very long time. Then one day a mysterious adventurer came exploring nearby the tower."

"Can it be a detective?" Ty interrupted, bouncing up and down. He had been obsessed with Clue lately.

"Alright sure, it was a detective. He was searching the answers to a murder mystery. The murder of a young women."  Ty instantly looked interested. Perhaps murder was not the best subject for a story being told to an eight year old, but Ty was a shadowhunter. They were trained to deal with blood and death.

"His was searching for information and came across the tower," she continued. So he decided to investigate. He snuck passed the ogar and into the tower, where he was ambushed by the prince!"

Ty gasped excitedly, wriggling in place. "What happened next? Did they fight?"

Eleanor opened her mouth to continue, but then the bedroom door flew open, startling them both.

It was Andrew. Instantly Ty shrunk himself down, hunching his shoulders. Eleanor knew that Ty didn't always get along with his father but she knew Andrew still loved him deep down. He glared at them both.

"Ty your mother is meant to be resting," he said pointedly.

Eleanor shook her head. "Oh no it's alright. He wasn't bothering me." Andrew didn't seem to hear her.

"Tiberius let's go," he said harshly. Ty hesitated for a moment, looking up at her.

"But I wanna hear the rest of the story!" He protested. "I wanna know what happens to the prince!" Eleanor sighed solemnly. She didn't want to disappoint Ty, but she was feeling pretty worn out.

"Another time baby," she assured him. "I promise."

But unfortunately she never got the chance. She never got the chance because little did they know, Eleanor Blackthorn had cancer. Something that silent brothers couldn't cure. Something that shadowhunters were powerless against.

"What are you thinking about ?" Kit murmered from his spot curled up against Ty's chest. His breath tickled Ty's chin.

Ty paused, not quite sure how to answer. They were lying on the roof of the LA institute again. It was their special spot. Kit had suggested a night of star gazing for a date since the weather was nice.

Things has been a little weird between them lately. Kit had been pretending that everything was fine and he was unfazed, but Ty could tell that something was bothering him. And he had a feeling he knew what it was.

At Magnus and Alec's anniversary party, Jace made a joke about how Kit and Ty would probably be the next ones to get married and Ty immediately went into a blind panic. He completely froze up at the mention of marriage. At the mention of him getting married. His body instantly went into a complete overload almost as if he was on the verge of a meltdown.

He didn't take the time to think about any of it. He just snapped and yelled that he wasn't getting married. That he wasn't ever getting married. Ty wasnt even sure where it came from. Kit was pretending like it wasnt a big deal but Ty knew he was hurting. He could tell.

Ty traced a pattern across Kit's arm. "Honestly it was nothing," he assured him. "I just-." Ty stared at Kit, studying his face. The curve of his lips, the adorable blush of his cheeks and the tiny beauty mark under his eye that Ty loved to fixate on. Everything ached, but it was a good kind of ache.

Ty loved him.

"I just want to stay like this forever," he murmered. "Here with you, where I feel safe and warm. And loved." Ty nuzzled his nose against Kit's. "I want to be with you forever."

Kit smiled distantly before breaking into a slight frown. "Then why don't you wanna marry me?" He asked sadly. And Ty could instantly hear the old ghosts of self loathing and insecurity still haunting Kit's thoughts.

Ty sighed. "It has nothing to do with you I promise. I just really don't want to get married and I'm not even fully certain of why exactly."

Kit stroked his cheek slowly. "Is it the idea of a big wedding? Because we don't have to do that you know. We can totally just skip it," he said assuredly.

Ty shook his head. "That's part of it but it isn't the only reason." He paused to contemplate what exactly it was that was making him feel this way, feel so afraid.

Strangely enough, Ty kept coming back to his mother. His mother who was always a little peculiar in private. Who always seemed sad and exhausted even before the silent brothers diagnosed her. Who was constantly going along with whatever her husband wanted for whatever reason. Because she assumed he knew what he was doing? Because she didn't want to make waves in a society so rigid and obsessed with conformity?

Ty had been considering it more and more lately.

He sat up, displacing Kit from where he was resting. "I think my mother was like me," Ty admitted in a shakey voice. "I think she was autistic and that's why she ended up in the situations she did."

"Ok?" Kit looked confused. "But that still doesn't explain-."

Ty interrupted him. "She was trying so hard to fit in and do the right thing and she would just let him control her. She kept compromising for him because she thought that's what she was supposed to do and also because despite it all I think she really loved him! And it made her so stupid!" Ty shouted.

"I just don't want to become trapped like that," he confessed.

Kit was silent for a moment, just staring at him with a puzzled expression. "Ok, but Ty you realize that I'm not your dad right? Like I would never try and control you or make you into something you're not. I'm not trying to own you, I'm trying to love you!" He argued. "Ty, marriage isnt supposed to trap you. It's about making our relationship into an Offical legal thing that everyone's forced to acknowledge and accept."

Kit took Ty's hand in his. "It's about making each other family."

Ty looked away. He couldn't meet Kit's eyes when he was staring at him looking so hopeful and desperate. It did strange things to Ty's insides. He squeezed his eyes shut, scrunching up his face along with his fists for a moment before letting go.

"I just don't want to let someone have power over me in that way," he explained. Kit sighed, then smiled softly before leaning forward to rest his forehead against Ty's. Ty let out a little moan as he let the tension release from his body with a sigh. Kit placed his hand over Ty's heart.

"But don't you get it Ty?" He asked softly. "You already have, whether you meant to or not. I'm in your system sweetheart, in your blood just like you're in mine." Ty felt him smile. "Like we were made for each other. Like we've spent our entire lives waiting for each other."

Ty pulled away from him. "No I don't believe that," he stated firmly. "I don't believe in fate or destiny or soulmates. I think it's an overt  romanticization of life and the human condition which can have disastrous consequences. It leads people to believe that they are somehow incomplete without a romantic partner which is incredibly problematic." Ty realized he was probably going on a bit of a tangent as he was known to do. But he couldn't be bothered to care.

Kit pouted a little. "Yeah I get that. But I don't know. I like to romanticize things in life. After everything that I've been through, I guess it just makes things feel better you know?" Kit glanced at him hopefully."I don't care if you don't believe in any of those things. I do. And despite what you might believe, you aren't always right about everything," Kit said pointedly.

Ty scowled at him. Kit was undeterred. "And I get that you're coming at this from a scary trauma place. I understand that. I have those too. But you don't have to be afraid of me," he pleaded.

Ty couldn't resist reaching out and touching him, pushing a curly lock of hair behind his ear. "Can I maybe think about it?" Kit smiled and snuggled up against Ty's chest again. "Of course," he murmered. Ty leaned back and resumed his earlier position, staring up at the sky.

He nuzzled his face against Kit's hair. "I'm glad you're not mad at me anymore," said Ty.

Kit snorted, turning to face Ty. "I'm never mad at you love. It's pretty much impossible." Ty grinned and leaned forward to kiss him slowly, savoring the feeling of Kit's lips against his.

Kit broke off and kissed Ty's cheek, then his orbital bone. Ty giggled and closed his eyes which prompted Kit to place a kiss on each of his eyelids.

"I love every inch of you," Kit whispered. Ty couldn't speak. He was too overwhelmed. He just wrapped his arms around Kit even tighter and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

They lay in peaceful silence for several moments before Kit spoke.

"Tell me a story."

In case you missed it, the story Eleanor was telling Ty is the story of kitty in Lady Midnight basically. Also. Not me projecting my fear of marriage onto my comfort character! 😂

Tag list: (lmk if you wanna be added/removed) @playwithravenclaw @lavender-scented-rat @knifescythe @ti-bae-rius @dianasarrow @jazzkaurtheglorious @waterlillies @zfoxdraws @julieandthefandoms @older-brother-kit @ilikebooks8 @nott-the-best @stxr-thxif @magnus-the-fabulous-entp-bane @foxglove-airmid @littlx-songbxrd @heloisacosta23 @adoravel-fenomeno @eutonyinwhisper

elaborate on autistic lanque pls 🤲

oh, don’t mind if i do. before i begin:

this contains some major spoilers for hiveswap: act 2, and some minor spoilers for lanque’s friendsim routes(but those have been out for like three years).

disclaimer: i don’t care if you disagree, i’m not claiming this as canon, i am autistic and projecting.

now that that’s out of the way.

point one: possibly the most important thing to note is that lanque is incredibly good at masking. given this quote from his wiki:

“Lanque's writer has stated that both of his Friendsim routes are heavily exaggerated for comedic purposes, with one being more true to his actual personality. As shown by his attitude in Hiveswap: Act 2, it's heavily implied his NSFW route is the truer one. However, this leaves his personality to be drawn from his Friendsim routes to be dubious for readers to interpret what the actual "balance" of his personality is.”

the actual tweet has been deleted, but one of the assumptions that can be made from this is that both the sfw and nsfw routes are, in some way, true to his personality. this would mean that he is actively and drastically changing the way he interacts with the people around him according to the setting, or through imitation. effectively this would make him a social chameleon, another thing often attributed to autistic masking.

and the idea of constant masking fits, given his whole Thing- he’s already being set apart from all the other jades by his transness, and from how he acts in act 2(this will be mentioned later), he doesn’t quite enjoy this difference being pointed out. it would make sense that, given the opportunity to hide something that would lead to more attention(maybe more accurately, attention he doesn’t like), he would take it. this being said, i don’t think lanque sees his transness or unchecked neurodivergence as a bad thing- rather, he sees how other people treat him for it as annoying and something to avoid.

point two: lanque seems to have a very strange range of emotions. while he usually presents as very calm, when he does express true emotion(like when he’s caught off guard by the reader shouting for bronya), its often overstated, and in some cases, a total non sequitur from what came before. the way he reacts in the valid ending scene specifically reminds me of times when i have been startled out of masking- especially since he goes from formal prose straight to “what the fuck, dude?”

the only time he expresses emotions neurotypically is when he’s doing it through another medium(his poetry in the sfw route).

point three: lanque repeatedly is shown to not be the best at conveying or reading tone.

at the start of his sfw route, lynera ends up rambling on about something or other. it’s immensely awkward.

lanque doesn’t register it as such, and while this could just be attributed to sfw lanque’s overexaggerated kindness, i raise you: i’m building a case here, let me twist my evidence.

in his nsfw route, we have some gems such as:

lanque is shown to use a tone entirely unfitting of the words that he’s saying, and its specified that this demeanor is nearly indistinguishable from how he was acting before. could this just be an example of professional bitching? yes. play on my court for a second, though

and perhaps my favorite example of lanque totally misreading tone/a situation in general(which is both the aforementioned act 2 scene AND an example of his abnormal reactions to things) is the scene where joey asks lanque about the hatched2dance magazine from lynera’s locker. immediately, he (incorrectly, and without much reason except prior experience) assumes that joey’s intention was to harangue him about being a male jadeblood.

after joey specifies what she meant, he refuses to respond until xefros tries to actually ask him about being a male jadeblood, and lanque tells them to fuck off. personally i think this is as close to embarrassment as lanque will willingly show in public

point four: lanque is Painfully straightforward. this is obvious in the everything about him, but best summed up with:

lanque sees no use in not just saying what he means, which often leads to him being(often rightfully) seen as a bitch. again, it’s hard to say things for certain with what little content there is, but i wouldn’t be surprised if some of the things he says- for instance certain parts of his calling out lynera(mostly the parts about her talking shit, not the parts where he’s outright insulting her) were just intended as honesty, rather than animosity. this is a common trait in autism, but i see a lot of neurotypicals look over it because it’s seen as rudeness. ultimately he still uses that honesty to be a bitch on purpose on several occasions, so don’t take this as me saying he’s free of flaws or whatever

another thing i like to point out, though admittedly it’s much more of a stretch, is this bit where lanque has to ask for specification when joey uses a less direct method of asking him what he thinks of the other jades:

take that as you will

point five: mildly connected to point four, lanque shows possibly one of the most out-there forms of rejection when it comes to social norms. he’s able to skate by in the wider lens of alternia because people of most castes participate in shitty parties, but doing it as a jadeblood gives it an entirely different context.

he also(and this is maybe half speculation, but let me be) seems to have issues sticking with quadrants as a rigid construct. when bronya says this to lanque:

many people took it as evidence that lanque was abusive to his partners. and if people want to hold that headcanon, i really don’t care, because it can be an accurate reading of how he is presented in the nsfw route specifically. my personal opinion, however, given that his personality is said to be exaggerated in these routes, is guided by this section from his sfw route’s poem:

i believe that lanque is just extremely prone to vacillation, because he doesn’t truly grasp why quadrants are divided in the way that they are, only that others “press” him to do the dividing. thats autistic attitudes towards social constructs baby

point six(and here’s where the trial spoilers come in): lanque has a very unusual way of solving problems, apparently. when confronted with the issue of his impending ordeals and the idea of having to spend his life as a celibate space nun, lanque’s solution is.... to attempt to join a boy band, using the chaos of the trial(that He caused by stealing the book) as his cover. when joey presents this theory to tyzias(a theory that lanque confirms is more or less correct before chucking joey off of the train), she responds with:

meaning that not only are his problem solving skills out of the box to joey, but to other trolls as well.

there’s also something to be said about how little he values personal space, but i’m wary of claiming that as an autistic trait of his, and if it is, he is very purposefully weaponizing it.

oh, and point seven: i’m autistic and i want him to be

thanks for reading

Bit late and random but it's the anon you leave food out for here to give away I am also bi and I think exactly the same as you about bi val pretty much, every time Derek offers me representation my reaction is to slowly, hesitantly take it and say "thaaaaaaaaanks..." while rolling my eyes, in much the same way one accepts their least favourite flavour of sweet from an annoyingly enthusiastic uncle-type-individual. Ironically I feel I had more in common with her before the bi shit started up.

What I find really amusing is that Landy actually did reasonably well at representation when (and only when) he wasn’t trying. 

Oh god, this got long, anon, my ass rambled.

tldr; I'm glad actual bi people dislike bi val (or how Laundry handled bi val) as much as me, this will probably offend at least one person but i don't really care, Dirty Laundry wrote better rep when he didn't mean to write rep at all, and if he ever starts trying to "represent" groups I'm part of I'll take him out back like a dying horse and shoot him.

Like, yes. He had stupid and potentially offensive shit - I say potentially because what offends one member of a group won’t necessarily offend all of them. His attitude to mentally ill people is, frankly, disgusting. We’ve had “Skulduggery can’t be abused, he doesn’t have feelings”. We’ve had “eVeRyOnE iS bI eVeNtUaLlY”. We had Ping, who seemed to be pretty much universally offensive. And that's what's always going to happen when a straight, cis, white, wealthy, male author tries to write marginalised groups he doesn't know shit about, because inevitably he's going to fall back on stereotypes.

But we also had:

SEXUALITY REP: Phase One's nonstraight characters were treated like the straight ones, and like, isn't that the whole point? There was no need for a massive Coming Out Story TM to grab for those sweet sweet Woke Points, because sexuality isn't supposed to be important to mages. I never understood why Val needed that whole Coming Out Panic storyline. Like...Des and Melissa are ridiculously supportive, encouraging, loving parents. They accepted you dating a ~19 year old when you were ~16. They accepted you revealing you could do fucking magic and that you'd been lying to them for like seven years. They took your undead buddy in stride and the most pressing question your dad had was whether magic toilets exist. There is zero reason to think that "I'm bisexual" is gonna be the thing that makes them flip and throw you into the streets in disgrace, Valkyrie. Come on.

Tanith had girlfriends and it was just mentioned casually, because it's normal.

China had massive UST with Eliza. That was an opportunity right there to not only include a f/f relationship, but also to bring back one of the few precious surviving characters from Phase One, using characters and a relationship that already had several books' worth of setup and tension and interest from fans.

The Monster Hunters have a casual conversation about which one of the Dead Men they'd date.

Ghastly has a conversation with Fletcher about the pain he's been through being in love. He never uses any pronouns.

It was confirmed at one point re: the Dead Men that at this point, after 300-odd years, everyone's been with everyone else at some point.

Thrasher is gay, and while Scapegrace's...everything...is treated as a joke/comedic relief, Thrasher's love for him isn't. He's completely devoted to Scapegrace, and that in itself is not played for laughs, even though the rest of the scene usually is. Thrasher's description of their first meeting is essentially a love-at-first-sight situation for him.

"ABNORMAL" RELATIONSHIP REP: Age gap relationships are normal for mages. Off the top of my head, using only canon, canon-implied or almost-canon ships:

Ghastly/Tanith (~350 year age difference)

Tanith/Sanguine (~250+ year age difference)

Tanith/Saracen (~350 year age difference)

Caisson/Solace (~250 year age difference)

China/Gordon (~400 year age difference)

Kierre/Temper (~500+ year age difference)

If you include fan ships, there's also things like Mevolent/Serpine or my Mevolent/Vile, which are both ~600 year minimum age gaps based on the timeline, or Valdug (and its variations) which is ~400 years.

Now, whether you consider this kind of rep positive or negative is up to you, but it’s there.

MENTAL ILLNESS REP: more like "Which characters in this series don't have a mental illness or a personality disorder?" I have some of these issues, but not all of them, so this is just how I read it, but:

ADHD: Skulduggery

Dissociative Identity Disorder: Skulduggery & Vile

Dissociation: Skulduggery again, most notably in DD and DB

Schizophrenia (or similar): Valkyrie & Darquesse, Valkyrie "seeing" Darquesse's ghost thing in Phase Two

Impostor Syndrome: Reflectionie

Autism: Clarabelle

Trauma/PTSD/CPTSD: Skulduggery, Valkyrie, China, Ghastly, Erskine...pretty much everyone has a believable, understandable, morally grey trauma response in this series. People struggling with trauma are spoilt for choice of characters to see themselves in.

TRAUMA REP: This series is a trauma conga line, but everyone has a believable, understandable, morally grey trauma response in this series. I see little bits of myself in more than one Phase One character.

Childhood Abuse (of varying degrees & types): Skulduggery, Carol & Crystal, Omen, Fletcher, Ghastly, China, Bliss, Sanguine...

Estranged Family: Skulduggery abandoning his crest, Fergus & Gordon, China & Bliss

Bad Romantic Relationship: Skulduggery is also very clearly an abuse victim. He’s got a solid history of romantic attachments to women who manipulate, use and gaslight him for their own agendas.  There's a whole paragraph in SPX about how Abyssinia broke him down, isolated him from his friends and preyed on his desperate need to be loved, all classic abuse tactics.

And I’m personally a huge fan of this backstory for two reasons:

1) Society likes a plucky victim in media. The "My suffering made me stronger" type of victim. And it's not always like that in real life. Not all survivors come out of their abuse stronger or kinder or more understanding. Some of us come out cold and fucked up. Some of us end up as emotionally stunted, bloodied-nails-and-bared-teeth survivors, broken in ways that can't be fixed and sustained by enough rage to power a small sun. But society doesn't like to tell the story of that kind of survivor, because we're not usually a likeable protagonist. When we're shown in media, we're usually the sympathetic villain, or maybe the antihero. But Skug is someone who's done awful things and lost pretty much all his faith in humanity and been burned more times than he can count, and he still makes the conscious choice to try and be the good guy when he could so easily go Evil Supervillain on the world, and I don't know about any of y'all, but I've modelled myself on him in that. I've made the choice to do something good when all I really want to do is just become a horrible, shrivelled ball of nastiness and revenge. And that's because I saw him do it and realised that I could do that too.

Skug is an incredibly capable, strong, masculine Man's Man. He gets in fights all the time, and he usually wins. He's military, an industry that's Really Bad for stigmatizing weakness and mental illness, and he's right up at the top of the hierarchy. Almost everyone is afraid of him. He's a straight up cold-blooded killer. Skulduggery Pleasant is precisely the type of person who's not normally portrayed as a victim of anything. Nothing about him screams "victim" at all. But his abuse history is insidious. He's so conditioned to respond in a certain way to abuse from the women in his life, probably from a very young age, that despite all that strength and capability and stubbornness and ego, he just goes along with it. And it's an established pattern going back hundreds of years. He keeps going back to China, even though he knows she's bad for him and his friends keep telling him to stay away from her. Abyssinia latched onto him when he was traumatized and vulnerable and weaponized it against him to make him easier to control - and when she reappears, hundreds of years later, she jumps straight back into using, tmanipulating and gaslighting him and not only does he let her, he doesn't even seem to realise that behaviour is abusive. He thinks it's normal! That's how he's always been treated by his long-term girlfriends, with the notable exception of Wifey. Even when Val is being fucking nasty to him in the first couple books of Phase Two, sniping and lying and blaming him for everything under the sun, he just takes it. There's no attempt to tell her she's being unreasonable, no telling her to fuck right off and give her head a wobble, no defending himself even when she's bitching over something that isn't even his doing. And this is a man who has an absolutely gleaming steel spine the rest of the time; Skug has no problem saying no to anybody else, but he can't get past the way he's been taught to treat the important ladies in his life. Skug is a walking reminder that anyone can be a victim of abuse, even the ones who seem least likely to be susceptible.

GENDER REP: This one is the most iffy out of the bunch and definitely was not done very well in the eyes of the people who matter most, but I'll include it anyway because it mattered to some.

So there's Nye, who's...agender? Genderless? And uses "it" pronouns? Nye was generally considered horrible rep because it's also a war criminal and experiments on people and I've seen people say "Well I don't want to be seen like that" but? It's still possible to be a war criminal and also genderless. I never saw the two things as being related or relevant to each other.

There's also Mantis, who's in exactly the same gender/pronouns boat as Nye and always seems to be forgotten about, which sucks because Mantis is a war hero. It fought for the Sanctuary during the War and they never lost a battle when it was in command. It's called out of retirement to fight for the Supreme Council in LSODM, ends up fighting alongside Skulduggery during the Battle of Roarhaven, and ultimately dies attempting a very brave, very risky strategy. Mantis is, unreservedly, one of the good guys. It was also my introduction to sentient beings using "it" pronouns, and did it in a way that felt natural, so when I met my first person online who used "it" pronouns and hated to be referred to as he/she, it was...weird, but not as weird as it would otherwise have been, because I was like, "Oh yeah, like the Crenga. Okay."

And then there's the Scapegrace sex change plotline, which...I might have an unpopular opinion on this one. From what I’ve seen, trans people don’t seem to think was handled well or with any sensitivity at all. I’m not trans, so if the trans community says he was being offensive to them, I’m not going to claim otherwise. But...I first read the Scapegrace plotline as a young teenager in a tiny rural school with zero diversity, going through a period of being deeply confused about my own gender identity. He was more or less my first introduction to the idea that genitals =/= gender. I was relieved, at that point in my life, to read someone having a lot of the same thoughts I was having about being in the wrong body. So while it may have been badly done and yeah, the series would probably have been better without it, it did make at least one kid suspecting she might not be cis go “Huh! So there are other people who feel like this.”

Thrasher is also implied to be legitimately trans/gender-questioning, and that's not played for laughs either.

So? Phase One, while it absolutely had faults and issues and things that were just "Oh god why", was actually full of rep, at least compared to the other series that I read as a child/teen. But? As soon as Dirty Laundry started trying to be woke? He fucking sucks ass at it. Aside from confirming Phase One's hints that Skug has a background of abusive relationships, every single attempt at shoehorning rep into Phase Two is Bad.

The painfully OOC, forced, badly-written awkwardness of Val suddenly being rabidly horny for women out of fucking nowhere. The stilted, forced cringiness between her and any of the women she's flirted with - contrast that with Sorrowscorn's interactions, full of natural chemistry that had us all like 👀 I mean, I never shipped Val/Melancholia, but I could always see why people did - they had miles more chemistry than Val/anyone in Phase Two.

The fucking mess that is v*litsa, because if someone says "I'm really not interested in friendships/relationships right now", clearly the route to true love is to bulldoze their boundaries and forcibly insert yourself into their life and proceed to treat them like a delicate soft uwu flower, completely ignoring the horrible things they've done, while gleefully damning their best friend as an irredeemable monster for the exact same things, which is. You know. Gonna affect your so-called love's self-confidence and self-esteem because she knows she's no different to him. Y'all know I love an angsty ship, an unhealthy ship, a ship with fucked power dynamics, but I literally cannot roll my eyes any further back in my head at this shit. I never read Demon Road, but from what I've heard from friends who did, it does seem like every time Laundry tries to write an f/f ship, he comes up with a cringey abusive/manipulative caricature and tries to call it rep, and he needs to Stop.

Val's Mental IllnessTM arc. It's funny how he wrote Skulduggery as a wonderfully complex character with deep-rooted psychological damage and long-lasting trauma, but believes he wrote a character with "no feelings" - but when he tries to delve into the damage the world of magic has done to Val, he turned her into a weak, whiny drug addict who treats everyone around her like garbage and is so selfish and dislikeable that I? Honestly can't even reconcile Phase Two val with Phase One val. They're two completely different people. He's shown on Twitter that he doesn't have any respect for mentally ill people, and it shows. Other mentally ill people might see it differently, but the whole thing just makes me go "yikes".

Never, who has no personality outside of being genderfluid, and whose pronouns make no sense. I'm sorry, I have never met an nb person who insists that you change from male to female pronouns multiple times in a sentence, every time you refer to them. It's confusing as fuck. Now I have been told that Never has apparently received some character development in the last couple books, and if so, fair play, but I quit reading after Midnight, and Never and the rest of the personality-less new characters introduced in Phase Two who just seemed to be 2D Stereotypes to snag Woke Points were a big part of why, so. Development too late, I'm afraid.

(Now, if anyone is looking for a well-written genderfluid character, I recommend the Tawny Man trilogy by Robin Hobb. I have a lot of issues with her as a writer, and unfortunately I hate her POV character which puts me off the series as a whole, but she wrote the Fool/Amber/Lord Golden and their gender identity/approach to sexuality with so much more respect and realism. That is the kind of rep nb people should be getting: 3D, complex, realistic characters whose gender is only a tiny fragment of their personality, not the be-all-and-end-all of their existence. You know. Like cis people get. Nobody wants to be represented by a 2D cardboard cutout stereotype.)

Anyway idk how much sense this makes it just really amuses me that Laundry would include all this rep completely unintentionally and then go on Twitter and remind us all that actually he's a massive asshole via insensitive/offensive tweets about the groups he'd actually done a fair job of including (i.e. Skulduggery has no feelings, mentally ill people should find another series to read, the bullshit about Val being "heteromantic bisexual" on Twitter and then spouting all the "the woman she loved uwu" shit in the books (proving he has no idea what he's talking about), eVeRyOnE iS bI eVeNtUaLlY. He can only write half-decent rep when he's not trying and he inevitably outs himself as having a really shitty attitude towards those people anyway, proving that ultimately it's all either unintentional rep or performative wokeness.

2020: An Account

This year has been a nonstop, off-the-rails bullet train ride into what looked at first like chaos, but ultimately was a tearing down and reconstruction of my entire being. Because I know myself and I know I won’t remember much of this later, I’m recording it here. It’s hard to put some of this information out, but the universe regularly urges me to be more open. So here I go.

January

I got married.

It was, without contest, the absolute best day of my life. I’ve known since I was real little that I wanted to be married, that I wanted to be loved the way M loves me and to love someone just as much. I don’t know how to explain the feeling of having achieved that, and being able to share that with my entire circle. @abyssalsun​ made it down!! (my only regret is that @ladyoriza​ couldn’t make it, but I’m still so glad we got to make it to theirs). As often as I can, I revisit the memory of going to @chromecutie​’s house afterward, thinking it’d just be the four of us there, and opening the door to find a whole impromptu surprise party happening. Everyone cheered for us when we came in. I played CAH with Mordred, my brother and his wife, and several friends from out of town. By all accounts, these people would never have been in the same room together, but they were, and it was transcendent. It’s been almost a year, and I still haven’t recovered from all the planning and stress; but now that I’m past it, I can say with relief that it was 100% worth it.

February

We bought a house.

Up until this point, I’d been planning a wedding, participating in house-buying stuff as best I could, interviewing for a job I ended up not taking, and dealing with life-long mental illness that was festering and reaching critical mass. But then stuff started wrapping up. The wedding happened. The house was ours. We moved in. I could finally fucking breathe. LMAO bitch you thought.

March

The pandemic reached us.

I guess by this point it had probably already been in the US for a couple months, idr. But it wasn’t until March that things really started happening. People started dying in droves. New cases spread like wildfire. I remember thinking that this would be the zombie apocalypse, because at this point, I don’t think the CDC knew much about the virus. In my anxious mind, that was a completely reasonable assumption. My boss had us all start working from home. We all thought it’d be just a couple weeks.

April

I settled into working from home.

It didn’t take me long to get used to it, maybe a week. I hadn’t yet gotten used to my new hour-long commute from the new house to work, and so working from home quickly became my new normal. But I didn’t know yet why working from home was so good for me. All I knew was that I now had the brain-space to process things. I had the energy to do yoga and cook and do hobbies, and the time to appreciate and care for the home I lived in. I could think more clearly because there was no one else around to distract me. There was sunlight I could bask in. I felt human for once, and that became vitally important and infinitely valuable to me. Despite that, I still struggled with extreme anxiety, panic attacks, and some of the worst depression I’ve suffered through since I was a teenager. Outside my house, everything was a fucking mess and no one had their shit together.

May

I went back to the office for a few weeks.

There was a lull in pandemic activity. My boss had us all start coming back to the office again. At this point, I couldn’t make heads or tails of reality anymore. Everything was changing, nothing was stable. I desperately needed to stay working from home, because that was the one thing that felt Good and Right, but I had no real argument other than, 'I just need to.' So imagine me, at this point a soggy, run-over sloppy joe, attempting to return to normal. As you might think, it was... bad. I cried and hurt all the time. I think I really freaked out my boss with the way I reacted to coming back to the office. But then the second wave hit, and we all went back to working from home again.

June

Uncle Mike died on the first day of the month.

My uncle had been sick for a while, but no one was expecting him to die so suddenly. None of us were ready for it.

I also died that day.

It might sound dramatic, but I mean it quite literally and honestly. Over the years, I had gained suspicion that I was on the autism spectrum. M graciously found me a psychiatrist that took my insurance (and happened to be right next door). I wasn’t even going in for that - I was seeking treatment for my anxiety and depression. But I had amassed a (very long) list of my symptoms, and I brought it with me and read it to my doctor. I wasn’t even a quarter of the way through the list when he stopped me. I’m paraphrasing here, but in effect, he said, “No, yeah, you’re definitely autistic.”

I remember the way my body felt. Like someone had detonated a bundle of TNT in my chest, and I was burning from the inside out. At the time, I didn’t realize this emotional immolation was purposeful and executed by the universe to get rid of this old structure and build a newer, better, stronger one. For about fifteen seconds after he said that, I was relieved that it had been that easy, that there was an explanation for everything that my ADHD didn’t explain. It made a ton of sense why my environment was so important to me. And then I felt something unnameable. It was obvious to my doctor that I was autistic. Had it been obvious to everyone else? Why hadn’t it been obvious to me? I read the rest of my symptoms to him in a daze. I don’t remember how the rest of the appointment went.

And then I burned quietly and ungracefully until I was a pile of ashes. I didn’t know this at the time, but apparently it’s common for newly-diagnosed autistic people to have such dramatic and painful reactions, especially if they weren’t well-informed on the condition. Which I wasn’t.

I started therapy.

I also started learning about my “flavor” of autism. It was arduous, embarrassing, isolating, and ugly. I became aware that I had been masking my whole life, and I was astounded by just how often I did so. What really crushed me was knowing that I’d always have to mask to protect myself. I also became hyper-aware of the things that made me Feel Bad. Inexplicably, I stopped being able to react to those things the way I used to. Previously, if something made a loud and unexpected sound, I would suppress my reaction, because it’s not cool to get mad about it. But I found I couldn’t do that anymore. I had no choice but to react the way I needed to react. I realize now that this was to make me aware of what things make me feel a certain way so I can either avoid them or learn better tools to deal with them.

The therapist I saw wasn’t specialized in autism, and she wasn’t any help in that area, but she did teach me some important things. Like, “Is it reasonable for me to feel ____?”

July

Black hole.

I don’t remember a whole lot from this month, except sifting my own ashes through my fingers and crying. Every day brought a new revelation, a new thing that clicked. All of it was helpful and very painful. My psychiatrist recommended medication, but I’d had a bad and long-lasting experience with medication as a teenager, so I suffered through the pain on my own.

I shouldn’t have. I got so low I didn’t want to be alive anymore. But I think it took reaching the bottom and feeling that much pain for me to get over my fear of pharmaceuticals. 

I got into astrology.

I had been interested in it for most of my life, but it wasn’t until this point that I started studying it in depth. I discovered it was a language that I could use to translate so many things about my own life that I didn’t understand. It was a rulebook in a time when I desperately needed rules - but one just flexible enough that it taught me how to stop thinking in binary.

August

I got medicated.

There was a big adjustment period, of course. It didn’t cure me. But it did start to make things easier. And it helped to know that, even if I didn’t believe it at the time, I deserved to rest. I deserved not to feel so much emotional pain all the time.

I turned 30.

It was easily the second best day of my life. I learned a lot of important things, like that it’s important to be present, that I’m seen and loved (just the way I am!!), and that I deserve good things. M planned a whole day of surprises:

I woke up at my leisure and we had coffee on the couch. He got me a cute card with one of our inside jokes inside - I still have it.

We went to our favorite combination lunch place and bakery, which I believe was our first real outing since the pandemic started.

We stopped by a tattoo place. I almost got a tattoo.

He set me loose in Texas Art Supply.

We got dim sum for dinner.

We had a lovely virtual cocktail hour with @chromecutie.

He bought me an ipad!!

I became Spiritual™.

I had been agnostic for the past decade or so, slowly and subtly slipping into nihilism, without realizing how detrimental those ideas were to me. I’m not sure what I thought spirituality was before, but I wasn’t into it. I had always rolled my eyes at people who talked about “a higher power”, auras, and spirit guides, until I became that person.

My psychiatrist introduced some powerful ideas to me, ones that meshed well with my previously-existing idea of how the universe worked. I won’t get into details here. That’s a whole other post. Ask me though - I’d love to talk about it.

Anyway, I started (intermittently) meditating. I learned some exceptionally powerful stuff. I felt my scaffolding being erected.

September

I started learning who I am and why I am this way.

I started seeing a new therapist. She thinks like me. She follows my erratic, forking trains of thought. She sees me and offers real, actionable feedback and solutions. Working with her, I’ve gained the ability to see my life from a 30,000-foot view. I can see now why I’ve felt so lonely my whole life. I understand how my family’s dysfunction has shaped me. I know now that I have the opposite of a victim complex - by default, I believe I am so awful that I feel sorry for everyone who has to deal with me. Because that’s what I was taught to believe. Learning that I deserve to take up space, set boundaries, say no, and be wrong sometimes is still a hard lesson for me. But most days, I believe it now. It takes other people believing it and convincing me. I still need that reassurance often.

My parents sold my childhood home.

Mentally, emotionally, I still lived there. I was still the inverted victim, still beholden to my stepdad’s whims and my mom’s complete cognitive dissonance. This was a blinking neon sign from the universe that it was time to move out. My mom told me when the closing date was so I’d have time to drive down and look at the house one last time. I didn’t go, and I still don’t regret it.

I started learning my boundaries.

After my spiritual move-out, I learned I don’t have to jump when my stepdad holds out the little circus hoop. When he otherwise shows zero interest in my life but still baits me with passive-aggressive texts, I don’t have to answer!! What a concept! I don’t have to feel guilty for not talking to my mom more than I do. We have very little in common, and I still have a lot of things to work through regarding her.

I learned how not to be so reactive.

Or rather, I’m still learning. Something else I learned in therapy is that over the course of my life, I’ve developed a desperate need to defend myself and to justify every action or thought I have, even to myself. It’d been especially troubling at work. My RSD led me to felt stupid, incompetent, and unseen daily; if my boss complimented someone, I believed it also meant he thought I was stupid and bad and wrong, otherwise he would have complimented me too. If my boss said something that even remotely sounded like I’d done something wrong, I’d race to build an impenetrable defense: “This is the reason I did that. Here’s my line of thinking. Do you understand? Can you please understand?”

Now I know that so little of what everything everyone says or does at work is about me. I can appreciate a coworker’s accomplishment and also realize it doesn’t take away anything from me. I’m not stupid or incompetent, and I’m a valuable part of the team. A lot of times, my boss and I are on two different wavelengths - that’s because I think a lot faster, which can be frustrating for him sometimes. He doesn’t fully understand me, but that doesn’t mean I’m doing anything wrong.

October

I let go of an old friend.

This was especially hard, because I had known this person for years. We’d gone through a lot together, and we’d shared some really important and emotional story plots and characters. I had agonized over whether I was truly important to her or not. It didn’t matter how much I loved her as a friend, or how badly I wanted us to be close again and remain close. I had learned to read the universe’s signs, and it was clear it was time to move on.

November

The election happened.

I was expecting things to turn out badly, but I still hoped for something good. And then something good did happen. I cried watching Harris’ speech. I felt a tenuous hope that things might finally start looking up, societally. I still haven’t really let myself fully embrace that hope, but every time I see a court shoot down another lawsuit, or hear about trump’s own conservative republican supporters tell him, “Okay, buddy, it’s time to step down,” I feel a little better. 

M and I went non-monogamous.

There’s so much I want to say about this, but it’s for another post. Suffice it to say that like every other experience this year, it has been unexpectedly challenging and ultimately a catalyst for  priceless growth. I’m unfathomably grateful that we’re doing this together, for the things we’ve learned so far, and for how much closer this experience has made us, even when I didn’t think we could get any closer. 

Turns out I’m not gray-ace.

I had identified as such for a couple years, which was why we wanted to try non-monogamy in the first place. On the surface, it perfectly explained my sexual personality. But every time I told someone my identity, I felt inexplicably sad. When I read about others having “normal” sex drives and��“normal” relations with their spouses, I felt jealous.

Turns out I’m just traumatized, lol. Walking along this non-mono path has unearthed a lot of things, including this gem.

December

This was our first married christmas in our new house.

One of the handful of good things the pandemic has done for me was allowing me to back up my boundaries with hard evidence. It’s been difficult dealing with my stepdad bullying me about not coming over for thanksgiving, and having my mom subtly guilt me into making plans for next year already. But what I needed this year was a quiet holiday, instead of the usual weeks-long chaos, and I got it. And it was fucking delightful. I’ve dreamed of days exactly like that one - spending a tranquil morning with my spouse, sipping coffee and listening to music and eating treats. Deciding exactly how we want our holidays to be, because we deserve to.

I’m scared of what’s to come in the new year. I’m still an anxious mess, and some days I’m not strong enough to pull myself out of the spirals I throw myself into. I’ve gotten used to the pandemic holding my hand, allowing me to shelter in my home, helping me enforce my boundaries, teaching me who I am. When it’s over, I don’t know what will happen or how I’ll react or what I’ll learn next. I’m not finished rebuilding, but I don’t think that’s the point. I’ll never be fully rebuilt. But at least I’m figuring out the new layout.