#so this is to contextualize some things

[quinn-pop]

let’s do some autistic meta knight headcanons!! over explaining my interpretation of meta knight yet again wooooo

this orb has NO idea how to talk to people!!! outside of work anyway. a lot of this is partially due to upbringing (suppressing his emotions all the time) but he does not know how to express emotions, like…at all.

this goes into a few things

1. yeah talking is hard. even after figuring out what he wants to communicate he will struggle. conversation can be so overwhelming, especially under pressure. he will need time lol

2. because of that, forming connections is hard. i really don’t think meta is much for shallow relationships, and certainly not early in the timeline. which also means he has very little experience with friendship. so a lot of the relationships he did have went kinda neglected, and issues that probably could’ve been worked on by talking became…*cough romk* escalated.

3. honestly i wouldn’t be surprised if meta convinced himself he couldn’t feel emotion (anymore) until like. katam-ish. he tried very hard lol

vulnerability is terrifying. (though this gesture here is also just comforting, like his little cape cocoon thing he does.)

unmasking—yeah im taking the mask thing very literally here—is a big deal and a very slow process for mk. i’m sure he has a lot of feelings on that lol. it served as a way to ensure no one could ever, y’know, see him.

i can’t say i think he’d ever fully ditch it—there’s always gonna be some days that are more stressful than others and if having it could help him get through it, it just makes sense. mainly when working.

it really is about vulnerability. granted, i don’t think he has the most expressive face (in my head every astral just tends to stare at things) but i doubt he has much control over it. can’t fake a smile but also can’t hide it. probably blushes easy because yeah, astrals; just look at kirby’s face.

just the idea that someone might be able to read his expression and know what he’s feeling before he’s ready for them to (or even understands it himself…) yeah he doesn’t want that

but emotional turmoil aside, i think his mask also hides a lot of his stims

remember that whole “suppressing your feelings” thing? yeah turns out that ignoring half your instincts isn’t a good idea. so in true meta knight style, he tries to stim as subtly as possible

1. he has the least control over his wings, so they will flick and twitch on their own. they’re usually a good indicator of how he’s feeling, not unlike the body language usually seen in cat ears and tails lol. flapping is also an extension of this of course, though he probably suppresses it more.

2. this also effects when he takes his wings out. pretty much every time he’s excited or nervous it just happens. kinda makes me wonder if his wing cape ordeal might also go into the suppression thing… (i’d say yes, but using a cape is also very comforting so it’s not necessarily a bad thing)

3. going back to the mask thing; he stims a lot underneath it. think like biting or pursing your lips. he bites his tongue and clicks his mouth. that sort of thing. his mask also makes it harder to notice that he is constantly sighing, humming, grumbling…all that

one nice thing about the mask though is that it helps a little bit with lights!!! woo

(look at him and his magically floating glasses)

sensory stuff—i think he’s mostly bothered by light and sound. maybe a bit of texture. he’s pretty sensory avoidant and perfectly happy standing off to the side not touching anything.

the one exception to this is physical affection, which is, despite all of this, most of how he shows affection. it’s a lot easier to hug someone than to try to explain your feelings for them, after all.

i think he would like pressure though. so that’s probably part of it. and i’m pretty sure there’s some connection in here to fighting (dang, is that the only way he knows how to get his energy out?)

anyway, pretty much all of this is in contrast to kirby, who i would gladly nominate as the champion of Doing Whatever He Wants. he might pick up a few bad habits, but he will never mask the way meta knight does. he might not understand how he feels, but he’s in tune enough to express it…usually.

this is a very good thing for meta because it helps him to do the same thing. kirby’s so energetic, it’s hard to not want to stim with him. it reminds meta to be kinder to himself and explore his own emotions. he can also help kirby understand themselves, so this connection is very important.

yeah, at the end of the day, everything kinda just boils down to kirby and mk as parallels

this is the conclusion i promise

to me, meta’s arc is about growing stronger by growing kinder, and this is mostly by learning to be kind to himself. letting himself be a person again, loving and understanding other people, and eventually, letting go of all the expectations placed on him and doing the things he’s always wanted to do…

autism headcanons are fun for me because it’s cathartic to write, but at the same time, it just makes sense in this sort of narrative. meta is, to me, inseparable from these things. and so is kirby! that’s a dynamic that’s a lot of fun to play with, and it’s at the heart of my kirby interpretation.

if you actually read all this WOW thank you

[rivetgoth]

I know I keep saying it and other people keep saying it but what’s so unbelievably frustrating is that MENA people, Palestinians, Iraqis, Persians, Muslims, Arabs… are just people. Like they’re literally just people. They drink, they party, they have sex, they like the same fandoms as you, they can be gay, they can be trans, they can have all the same existential fears, the same mental illnesses, the same infinitely nuanced and complex opinions and frustrations about topics like religion, morality, politics. They’re doctors, lawyers, teachers, actors, scientists, musicians, artists. And because people can’t process this, MENA people are left having to fucking spell out their humanity to people who consider themselves otherwise bleeding heart liberals. It’s insanity.

One of the best indicators of the lack of knowledge people have of Arab people to me is the existence of arak. It’s the Middle Eastern liquor. It’s produced across the region. It’s considered the national drink of Lebanon. Production of arak in Palestine is internationally recognized and has won awards. This seems like a tiny thing, but it’s actually crazy how many westerners truly believe Arab people don’t drink, that they follow religious law with such strict adherence that their behavior is just unrecognizably foreign, and they live in some state of austere repression beyond which the average westerner could even imagine. They have no idea this even exists.

Shortly after the onslaught post-Oct 7 I remember following updates from a Palestinian girl on Twitter who, in between sharing fundraisers for herself and her family (who, thankfully, did manage to evacuate safely, although not without needing serious medical attention) and updates about the broader situation, logged online after a few weeks of silence to lament the fact that she had missed her favorite anime character’s birthday and was sad she hadn’t been able to celebrate it with her mutuals. Her friends drew pictures of him for her.

And like, I truly believe that people are deserving of life even when they are quite different from us. Nobody deserves to be murdered en masse by the imperialistic machine as a display of power, over land, over resources, etc. But people aren’t even able to NOT dehumanize MENA people and realize that they AREN’T that different!! You’ve been fed propaganda your entire life that has convinced you that MENA people are just so deeply foreign that you couldn’t possibly understand or relate to them. Steve Jobs is Syrian. Shakira is Lebanese. Rami Malek is Egyptian. Salma Hayek is Lebanese. DJ Khaled is Palestinian. Freddie Mercury was Persian.

I honestly think at this point it’s partly a coping mechanism—If many westerners were actually to conceptualize the literal millions of human beings, people just like them, their friends, their loved ones, their heroes, their family, as burning unrecognizable bodies left charred in their homes they would just fall apart. So the only option is to insist until you’re red in the face that they couldn’t possibly be the same as you.

[idontmindifuforgetme]

Honestly, unfortunately, my life only started making sense and I started having the courage to live my truth after I turned 25 going into 27 and beyond. It took me until 25 to have the courage in my convictions enough to start musical lessons and learning guitar and until 27 to start solving some social riddles which were not making any sense to me. I'm like almost 34 and things are still gentle sliding into place and stop feeling such an internal war about who I appear to be vs who I actually am and living that truth, even if it's annoying and embaressing and sometimes not a win. I felt like a fake a lot of my life as a teenager and at this young age (30 something) I am starting to feel like I'm easing my way over to a more truthful satisfying honest life, where I can look myself in the mirror and be okay.

I love every part about this ask anon 🩷 thank you sm for sharing, this gives someone in their early 20s like me sm comfort to know

[chirpsythismorning]

S5 opener REAL

[spookygibberish]

Made a faintly insane list of of every animated movie I have good enough memories of to feel confident ranking, although some of them I would probably move around if I saw them more recently....

[beatcroc]

i need to STOP going in tags because every time i do i get hit with "oh no one is actually posting the shit i would have considered posting" so that means now ive got to DO EVERYTHING MYSELF.

[moeblob]

Moeblob: (tries to establish a fish theme. likes to be called salmon.) FEH: Broccoli alts only, no negotiations.

(this is for you Leo.... I'm sorry........... you don't deserve it)

[sysig]

Hey, hey! RnR not requested! (Patreon)

[optiwashere]

So, I've been meaning to write a Gauntlet & Nightsong sequence fic for Asheera and Shadowheart, but it's taken me far longer than I intended. I normally don't write a lot of "game moments from this OC's perspective" fics, but this one intersects with Asheera's paladin oaths (Oath of Redemption) in an extremely compelling way for me.

It turned out a little longer than I expected at ~11k words, but I think things went all right.

Anyways, here's Shadowheart/Asheera in the Gauntlet of Shar.

Rating: M for canon-typical violence and themes (see tags)

Category: F/F

Ship: Shadowheart/Trans Fem Tav

Tags and AO3 Summary under the break.

Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, Angst and Romance, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gauntlet of Shar, Paladin Tav, Paladin Oaths, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Religious Conflict, Trans Female Character, Half-Orc Tav, Developing Relationship, Character Study, Implied/Referenced Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Dissociation

Summary:

Within the darkened halls of the Gauntlet of Shar, faith and love are tested in equal measure. Two women whose ideals cannot align, two women whose care for one another is fresh in the face of suffering. Shadowheart believes her faith is steadfast enough to withstand what she's already endured. Asheera thinks her oath strong enough to stand by what she believes.

[vilevampire]

I was gonna go to sleep but then I got distracted scrolling thru my #blorboposting tag all the way down to diff fandoms and it really puts into perspective for me how extremely unwell I am. goddamn

[leon-on-the-froggy-chair]

AHAHAHHAHAHAHA I'M COOKING AN RE6 REWRITE WITH LUIS AND IM GOING NUTS

[yzafre]

This post sponsored by the youtube vid title I saw referring to Aqua as "mom" my teeth are set on edge and I'm eying it suspiciously because I DON'T trust it. I've seen that "oh, she's the mom-friend and the only one with her life together, just going around picking up the boys' messes" opinion too many times, I am hissing warily.

That's way too simplified, stop reducing her depth, she's much more complicated and also even inside the mom-energy she admittedly has, it's like. Hm.

She does have some mom-energy (affectionate) but I think she also has mom-energy (derogatory). Y'know?

[krogans-give-the-best-cuddles]

Reading the Orchid Thief and lemme say. So fascinating to see someone like. Try to come up with a Reason Why humans like orchids. Two chapters here in a row pretty much treating Orchid hobbyists and plant hobbyists in general like one would an entirely alien culture- and don't get me wrong I understand why to an extent. Trying to make this book marketable outside just plant circles and what have you. But some of the way the camera is angled here is just. Fascinating.

Like, she explains how there are so many unique ways orchids evolved, as an attempt to contextualize for a reader why people might go crazy for them in specific, and describes individual species unique mating strategies, and the inability of them to self pollinate- but while I think that context is interesting it doesn't explain a damn thing. For one thing, having an extremely specific mating strategy is not solely an Orchid thing- a LOT of plants do it like that. Lots are flexible but I would say a vast swath are not and require specific things. For another- apples also don't self fertilize, but you don't have hundreds of thousands of apple varietal collectors.

She discusses their beauty as a reason they're collected- I won't deny that being a factor for sure, plants that humans like the shape of have a tendency to get collected and overcollected all the time- but like. A lot of people collect things that are traditionally ugly or even smell bad- and if it was exclusively a shallow pursuit, no one would work as hard as is required for an insane amount of orchids.

Part of the reasons orchids in particular are popular has to do with colonization. I can't articulate it all myself bc I haven't done research- but a genus that largely exists in tropical regions, that became popular in the late 1800s, that, in order to get in homes, white men would travel to all sorts of regions to take plants out of to get in the home? That is gonna help it get more popular than tomato or apple varieties for sure. I'm sure she's gonna touch on this eventually, given that the story she's covering actually involves the Seminole nation so I'm not holding it against her.

I suppose I'm just fascinated by her approach so far as to trying to understand why anyone would. Work to grow something? Really like something? I mean she pretty explicitly states that she "wants to want something" as much as these people want their plants- describes hobby communities and the idea of like. Working a hobby into your schedule or having friends related to the hobby as a "religion". She's baffled by like. Putting time and energy into a hobby and gaining joy and community from it and is trying to like. Break down orchids into their component parts to understand what makes someone. Want to grow a plant? And get community out of a hobby?

I'm going to be charitable and not make presumptions that she doesn't know like. The concept of loneliness and therefore a longing for community. Or that on some level she must know what common signs of autism are (ignoring her having spent several paragraphs describing several different people with classic signs and symptoms and then settling on "weird"). But it makes me want to turn the camera lens around for a moment. What makes someone presume that it's Orchid "obsession" (the word hobby is rather rare in the book acrually) that is particularly strange or more obsessed than other obsessions? What makes one abstract others hobbies and interests as needing a solve while the ones you surely have seen all over and even participated in aren't worth that examination? The line between "normal" and "abnomal" is entirely one made by dominant society

So this is why hobbies and kink aren't so different in the way they're perceived-

Orchids are an obsession to this author, to be highlighted and examined, or a hobby, to most people. They get a noteworthy category because they are seen as atypical. Sports-watching, however, is like. Never discussed as hobby. Watching football, watching soccer. It's just normal. No one says "that's my hobby." Even if a guy had a room full of memorabilia he would be noted as a "team fan" not a hobbyist. Sports has been declared normative, so it's not really considered a hobby by anyone. Plants? Non normative, therefore the same exact behaviors will get you considered unusual and a hobbyist.

Kink is the same way. People who are attracted to women being interested in breasts is so assumed to be normal and natural that no one calls it a kink. Breasts, the fatty deposits intended for feeding young, are expected to be hidden bc this kink (which everyone refuses to call a kink or a fetish or what have you) is seen as so universal. It's seen as immutable fact that there is a sexual nature to them. Feet however? If someone's into that that's a kink or a fetish if you're feeling kind, an obsession that makes you strange and worthy of examination and explanation if you're not.

I'm not arguing for doing away with calling things hobbies or kinks- I'm actually advocating for calling more normative things those words actually- I think it's just helpful to see where the framing of something, the way in which we choose to examine it, also has a lot to say about that which we leave unexamined, and unnamed. Because we don't categorize the normal.

[aroaceking]

"#god I think about this all the time#my 15 year old niece identifies as ace#and I’m like (privately)#you’re 15!#you don’t want to have sex! that’s fine!#it’s not an identity!"

screaming forever endlessly agonizingly this upsets me viscerally

I found the label 'asexual' also sometime around 14. This helped me immensely with recognizing ways I was different from my peers and even potentially harming them. Realizing I had an experience that could be defined and also was outside of many of my friend's helped alleviate some of the panic surrounding what attraction even meant.

I literally did not think attraction was a real thing, except maybe some strange future things adults had that I never wanted to experience, before I ever had a name for it.

Some of it was trauma, some of it wasn't. I still do not experience sexual or romantic attraction.

Also!! It's not!!!! About action! It's not about if you want to have sex or not!!! For some people that's how they learn it but it's not! Fucking! About that! It's about attraction!!!!!! It's about if you're fucking attracted to people!!!

I'm so fucking tired of this shit I'm so fucking exhausted with it. You think it's weird or creepy for a child to identify as asexual but it's weirder and creepier to me that you 1) equate it with sexual activity and 2) equate a child's desire to identify with it to sexual activity!!!

And even if that was how a child was using it, okay, they can always identify away from it when they understand themselves better or feel more comfortable!!! It's okay for labels to chance, it's okay for our identities and understanding of self to shift. It's okay for them to not!

Stop! Sexualizing! Asexuality!!!! It is an orientation! It's very alienating to be a teenager and not have any crushes or understand what people are even talking about when they discuss crushes or what makes someone 'hot' or whatever fucking else and sex doesn't! Have to be a part of that even!!

[man-destroyer]

tell us about ancient spanish?

Yeah!

so. In the beginning of my comic (I'm assuming you havent read it, if you have I'm sorry) the main character is getting established as sort of a "master bullshitter" and very lucky. He's not stupid, the reason he's alive is because he reads situations quickly and lies very well... and at this point my editor had been repeatedly treating him with this sort of bumbling idiot trope, so I was already a bit frustrated.

He's caught as a stowaway on a pirate ship, and is bullshitting a treasure hunt so the pirates keep him alive long enough that he could escape. So, he makes a fake treasure map in Spanish, hoping that the pirates won't know any... because if they can just kill him and take the map, they will. And one of them knows Spanish!

So, the joke I put in to resolve the situation (which I kept) was "but can you READ Spanish?" where he's banking on the pirate's illiteracy, and he lucks out because she can't read.

but my editor wanted him to say "but do you know... ancient spanish?" which makes no sense and isnt funny LMAO to me.

There were a lot of instances like this, but this is the one I remember the most because my editor like. argued with me on putting ancient spanish in there... It was a back and forth for a good bit.

[calugaritsa]

stop putting that stupid ass vladimir nabokov rereading lecture on my dash 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

"one cannot read a book, one can only reread it" SKILL ISSUE!!!!!! I READ THEM ALL THE TIME!!!!