I’ve thought about it some more and I want to rephrase: the specific thing about the way Dungeon Meshi handles gender and autism that makes me bonkers is the blunt way the author states the differences between Laios and Falin’s treatment by the world. If Falin had been the one to try and carve out a space for the both of them, she would have been dismissed at best. But Laios was the one to try that, and for the crime of being a big autistic man, he was beaten for it. Many- most, even- aspects of this world and the real world favor men, when a gender or presentation is favored. Misogyny is extremely present in so many of our lives. But it is naive to pretend that there are no downsides to being seen as a man, especially one of color, or one that’s not neurotypical, or any number of things. Falin faces unique struggles as an autistic woman, usually internal, and usually to do with the social pressures placed on her to be seen as nothing but agreeable. But Laios faces unique struggles as an autistic man, like getting the shit kicked out of him or punched in the face or having people plot to kill him.

I’m super not trying to say that either has it better. Facing conflict because you are incapable of not presenting as exactly the kind of person you are isn’t inherently worse or better than being unable to present at all, trapped within yourself. But the way it’s presented in Dungeon Meshi is fascinating to me.

Ok so first of all I want you to know I GET IT. I HAVE SEEN HOW BAD IT CAN SUCK FOR AUTISTIC MEN IN A LOUD AND OPEN AND PHYSICAL WAY and how NO ONE FUCKING DOES ANYTHING ABOUT IT because Guys Are Supposed To Be Tough and You Should Just Stop Acting Weird And Having Feelings and all that bullshit!!!!!!! I watched that happen to someone very close to me over the course of My Whole Childhood. It's fucking dismal and it makes me really happy to see a character like Laios where those struggles are front and center.

BUT! I also want to point out that your wording here, altho it is not your intention to belittle Falin's suffering, makes it seem like her/typical autistic women's suffering is wholly immaterial. Which is NOT true. It's not that Falin's emotional suffering is equal to Laios' physical suffering, it's that their autism/neurodivergence makes them both vulnerable to physical AND emotional abuse, but in different ways because of gendered social dynamics.

•••

(Quick aside: non-autistic men and women both experience physical as well as emotional abuse because of their percieved gender as well, btw. Yes, men get priveleges, but patriarchy harms them, too. You know what, this video discussing the strengths and weaknesses of The Barbie Movie actually explains it really really well. Anyways, back to the main point.)

Due to the different gendered social expectations placed on men and women, yes, men are more likely to escalate social conflict to physically fighting each other. But the same way that doesn't mean that there's NO emotionally abusive aspect to men's social punishment for being too different, the fact that women are expected to use emotionally abusive tactics to address social conflict does NOT mean that there is no physically abusive aspect to the ways that autistic women are mistreated.

The same way Laios' inability to hide his autistic traits puts him at risk for both getting the shit beaten out of him AND being lied to for purely social reasons, Falin's coping strategy of being agreeable puts her at risk for being shunned emotionally AND enduring physical harassment.

If Falin had tried to actively & forcefully carve out a place for herself and Laios in the world, dismissal is NOT the worst that could have happened to her. What Falin's childhood experience being subjected to folk rituals by her mother and rejection from the town REALLY shows us is that, if Falin was TOO unnacceptable to the people around her it would have become someone else's responsibility to "fix" or "cure" her. Her parents', or a doctor's, or a betrothed.

I'll try to find it later, but in one of the bonus comics where we learn more about the Touden sibs' relationships to their parents, one of the things we learn is that their mother tried to "treat" Falin's magical abilities using a variety of ineffective folk cures. Their mother felt pressured to do this by the townspeople's very negative response to Falin's magical abilities, which along with their father seeking advice from a Gnome, proves that the threat against Falin was not completely in Laios' head.

Falin says she saw this as quality time with her mother, but...I mean, girls with unhealthy relationships to their bodies often see childhood dieting and clothes shopping with their mothers as quality time, even if that "quality time" instilled in them a deep-seated belief that they should mistreat their bodies and view themselves as objects to be consumed. Just because Falin thinks of it as quality time now does NOT mean that there was no damage done.

In a world where her social and fiscal autonomy are already highly limited, Falin's physical autonomy is threatened by her neurodivergence, just in a more roundabout way than Laios' is.

sigh.

i think im a james potter kinnie in the most shameful way possible because yes i relate to being social and having lots of friends but more than that i relate to feeling like you’re constantly doing either too much or not enough and people lose interest in me and i feel like shit because what did i fuck up but then i go and loose interest when i know its not that persons fault i just cant help myself but to hate everyone because i hate myself. and like james im too loud all the time so much so that when i finally decide to be quiet i have people shoving their concerns down my throat and i dont know how to appreciate it when all i want is to be left alone. lately ive been feeling like there something misplaced in me because all i want is to spend my last week of school with my friends and be happy and enjoy my time but all i can think about is i dont want to be here and i dont want to be touched and i dont want to see these people because these people keep talking and my head hurts and my eyes hurt and im feeling dizzy and none of this looks real anymore and im not sure what to do with myself anymore. and i would hate to hurt their feelings because its truly not their fault but like i said theres something wrong with me. i think im just a rotten soul and im fucked up in way unknown to most. as james would, i feel judged after everything i say and i feel ridiculed for every decision i make and i feel like they dont want to listen to me at all they just keep me around to have someone for themselves and a part of me knows thats not true but the larger part of me wont let me fully believe that. and i feel like james in the way i dont know how to do anything casually and i love with my entire soul but i hate with my entire soul too and when im in something im fully in. and its such a fault to have because i like people more than people like me all i just end up hurting myself because as much as i tell myself im not i think i still like that one guy from august and my miss my best friend when i cant call her that anymore and the girl ive known since 2nd grade is barley answering my texts and summer is coming i feel like everyone is going to forget about me and what if i forget about everyone and i dont want to be forgotten. and i feel like james because i feel overbearing when i ask to hang out with people and annoying. and i feel like im being made fun of every time i speak and i have to pretend that it doesnt bother me but it does. and im like james because all i want is someone to talk to and thatll listen to me but i know how hard it is to stay attentive when i talk because i talk so much about stuff no one cares about and i try to hide it but it hurts more than id like to admit because everyone cares about what they have to say and i sit and i listen but when i talk they leave the room or change the topic or turn up the music or outright tell me they dont care. joke or not it hurts. like james i spent most of my childhood being told im too loud or too intense or talk too much or too chaotic or too dramatic or talk too fast and like james i think no matter how much confidence i fein in my teen years ill never grow away from the 6 year old girl that everyone called a psycho because she had emotions too big that she didnt know how to deal with yet and they wernt her fault. it wasnt her fault she got her dads anger issues and tendencies to scream or her mothers ability to feel everything twice as strong as she should. and now im 15 and its still not my fault but ive suppressed it so far im not 100% sure how to feel that deeply anymore.

hot take moment cwilbur is literally just psychotic as all hell and i think people got way too comfortable villianizing the shit out of a man who was clearly portraying signs of severe mental illness. cwilbur was like im so fucking paranoid and scared and i think everyone is out to get me and hurt me and ive spiralled to the point i cant reach out to the people closest to me because im so afraid and lost in this spiral and im having constant panic attacks and hurting myself because i dong know what to do with myself and the only way out for me is to die. and everybody was like EVIL MAN WHO ENJOYS HURTING OTHERS AND IS ABUSIVE ON PURPOSE AND A VILLAIN AND SHOULD NEVER BE TRUSTED AGAIN. and then he came back and was like im still deeply troubled and afraid but im desperately trying to make up for the wrongs i did in the past and the people i hurt in my own way and communication is really hard for me but i hope people know that im truely sorry and i love them. im going to try my hardest to fix this in the only way i know how and then respectfully remove myself from the situation because i feel thats the kindest thing i can do to the people ive hurt. and people were like ABUSER ABUSER ABUSER EVIL MAN ABUSER. like girl

Yeah no based true real no questions asked

I'd hope I manage to portray Wilbur the way he deserves in my content, cause that man is heavily bpd coded and he just needs therapy and someone who genuinely loves him but also can handle his bullshit (which has exclusively and reliably been Quackity like, canonically)

But yeah no completely agreed. The man has issues and has definitely fucked up a lot but at the end of the day he really does need love and care and patience, but also boundaries (and therapy and meds, obviously)

Any men out there wanna pretend to be my bf to get my parents off my case about marriage? I am so so serious right now.

the truth is im not sure if any other towns with ivy leagues in them tend to have the hatred and resentment for the school that ppl from new haven often have for yale. id love to just sit down and chat with someone from another ivy league town bc like. is it just the combo of a school full of very rich prep school kids in one of the poorest areas in the state where our public schools literally does not have the funding or curriculum for a lot of students to qualify for the college in their own fucking town or is this a wider issue in other places

Ykno it kinda makes me uncomfortable when ppl refer to Vash's genitals with smth like "vashussy". "Plantussy" gets a pass from me bc it's referring to the specific way that the plant biology would be different, but Vashussy???? Do you refer to Any character's genitals like that, or are you just being weird about a trans man??

i also dont know why i get such overwhelming feelings of stupidity and guilt these days when im blorbo posting. especially if its about kip. it just comes to me every time nowadays and i dont know why

WAIT WHERES MIM?!?! PLEASE TELL ME YOU’LL RELEASE THAT ONE AGAIN PLEASE

I need you guys to understand that the reason I took down my stuff was for my own peace of mind because they're my stories and i started feeling unsafe having them out because of how they - and I - were being treated.

absolutely nothing is wrong with mim and I love that fic and I care so much about it which is why - for my peace of mind - i want it to belong to only me rn. I know the fic was only out a month after i finished it and that really upsets me about taking it down. i want to reupload it because i know people like the fic and i love sharing my stuff but also there's that level of how much the fic matters to me and how much more devastating it makes it when people are cruel. and how much it hurts when I, as the creator of something, am treated like I don't matter at all and that my stuff can so easily be stolen or copied. like, it's an extension of me, yknow? You can't separate content and creator in such a small and intimate sphere as fandom. like, you guys all use my first name when referring to me, yknow?? there's that sense of connection. and since it's such an intimate space, having that trust be betrayed or disrespected is so much more potent than if we were in a large fandom with a lot of creators.

the fear of having MiM copied is really immense and real for me rn and i know that's potentially me being overly paranoid but considering the Amount of times this has started to happen - and how blatantly rude and nasty and entitled readers have been getting with me and other creators over the last year - it's definitely not out of the realm of possibility.

MiM wasn't written for readers, it was written for me. and i shared it because i wanted to and that was wonderful. but to have any of my stuff stepped on so much just doesn't make me feel very safe in this fandom space rn and makes it hard to let people have access to something that matters so much to me.

I'm not saying MiM has been deleted forever, I'm just saying i want some more time for it to be mine.

man im having a wanting to die kinda night again :(((((((((

im trying so fucking hard to make friends but i guess i just cant and just gotta die instead

you know if you guys voted for stretch armstrong i probably would have shut up a lot sooner tonight

the "also sick" comment isn't like "btw I'm SICK, how dare you not know" it's me saying I'm sick like how 2/3 of my roommates are

but like I'm so;;;; it feels so rich that L is like wtf do you want from me about me not replying for 45 minutes when I had to beg his gf over hours and hours of texts every so often to not force me to sit in unwiped shit after my surgery bc she had openly told me she just didn't rly feel like setting up the attachable bidet after telling me for weeks she would, and I never ever got a reply from her or L ever acknowledging that they were wide awake hanging out and laughing while I was like stuck in bed barely able to move begging for follow through on a commitment they made in advance and i eventually had to spend over $100 to hire someone to come out the next day and do it for me and I had to hold my shit for hours lmfao

like L is sooooo great at couching things in flawless tumblr wellness speak but only to talk about how valid they are for not showing up for you and how fucked up it is that you MIGHT ever have a moment where you can't be 100% there w them. like idk what to tell you I've been laying in bed with a sore throat and cough and fever passing out and waking up to roll over in buckets of sweat like the rest of the house. I do genuinely get being annoyed by a lack of response but it's also right back to this whole thing about Always assuming I'm mad at them which is legit one of the only things that actually makes me mad fjdkddhk like bro I do not THINK about you when you're not acting like I'm a bomb about to blow (also, as an aside -- we all take turns buying TP and it's usually me who does it like it's not out of pocket for me to say hey you are the One person who is out of the house already rn, can you get this on your way bc None of the bathrooms have back up rolls and one is totally out and I had to text our sickest roommate telling her to use the bidet and drip dry like.... "am I the first person you asked" yes bc you are the person who makes the most sense dumbfuck. I'm not being "overly needy" toward you or whatever jfc)

they literally told me at one point that the reason they're so scared of me is that my face is "triggering" for them when I'm angry or not feeling good and puts them "back in a really bad place" they have seen my face angry literally 3 times and each time it was on my way back to my room to decompress and each time I said nothing to them other than that I was in a bad mood and I was going to go to my room. I didn't yell either I just said it normal. like I genuinely feel gaslit here like I'm this horrifying monster of a man when it's like dude sometimes people are mad I don't know what YOU want from ME!! I do all my venting here where they can't ever see it even tho we've blocked each other, I censor their name like anyone even knows who they are, I isolate to chill out and it's literally been less than a handful of times like should I fling myself from the roof??????? would that fix it???

I literally know it's bc I'm a man too. none of this was like this until my facial hair came in more and it got crazy worse after I got top surgery and they're so so vocal about how much they despise men and think men should all fuck off and die and there's only a handful of acceptable men that they've personally vetted. despite them pretty clearly having a trans woman fetish bc they only date or look at porn of trans women and they do the whole step on me mommy thing about it even tho their gf has complained like. lmfao you're just a baby te//rf even tho you ID as trans masc yourself. like that's all this even is. I'm a big (5'3") scary (spent the whole weekend w my coworkers asking if I was 12) man who's obviously going to snap and kill you all bc sometimes I *checks writing on hand* get frustrated and go lay down about it

dear tumblr users... how do you talk about your ocs without feeling like A Dumb Piece of Shit Loser

I’m going to lose my mind oh my god I am so scared for this quincenera wtf

.

opened twitter today and literally half of the posts on my timeline were biphobia, which just kinda sucks to have the first thing you see on twitter that day be people who don’t even know me telling me i’m wrong about my own sexuality, or saying im not bi im just in denial about comp-het or blaming bi people for the biphobia they face and invalidating the homophobia they face because ‘you can just chose to be in a straight passing relationship’ 🫠

which… that’s really not how it works lol, like bisexuality doesn’t mean you just pick who you like and then get feelings for them, it works just the same as literally any other orientation and i thought that would’ve been common knowledge (although maybe i’m being too generous by assuming genuine ignorance there instead of deliberate obtuseness)

it’s not just online, people feel so comfortable being casually biphobic irl. like, i don’t get comments on it super often, but i’ve had a couple of comments made (mostly by other queer people!!) that are just super invalidating or insensitive things to say. but because they’re not being directly homophobic they don’t see it as being an actually fucked up thing to say.

there’s been a couple of things that i’ve laughed im off in the moment, or like gone away from the conversation and told someone else ‘hey listen to this funny thing my friend said’ only to realise days or weeks later that they were actually just saying something fucked up lol

just let me be bisexual in peace, im literally just chilling i don’t see what the issue is

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