#autism as well as ptsd or whatever the character headcanon is like i make everyone i relate to autistic or adhd because there is no way tha

[anadrenalineslut]

people getting mad headcanons to me is like getting mad at someone for playing pretend incorrectly like what do you mean i'm pretending this character is autistic incorrectly?

[queen-of-my-goofball-army]

Fruits Basket HCs

If you haven’t been able to tell from my blog, I REALLY love Fruits Basket. I have this immense love for these characters and I want to share the different headcanons that I have for each of these fantastic characters. I’m going to cover a lot of ground so I apologize if this becomes really long. To make this easier for myself this first part is just going to be my six favorite characters (Momiji, Tohru, Kyo, Kakeru, Hatori and Hatsuharu).

Momiji: 

* The mental health side of things for Momiji is that in my non-professional medical opinion (to quote the original show) he has really high levels of ADHD. He learned to combat this by taking gymnastics lessons as a young boy while everyone else was doing karate he was learning to be bouncing ball. 

*This one is a pretty much canon one but I love this idea; Momiji is genderfluid. I love the idea of Momiji hanging around Ritsu and learning about fashion from them. I also just really love the idea of Momiji in a cute little skirt with shorts underneath (don’t judge me I just really love the idea of it.) 

*Number one touchy friend!! He’s constantly a ball of energy and will hug and cling to all of his friends if they indulge him. He loves affection both giving it and receiving it.  

*He is surprisingly a really good baker!! I love the idea of him making friendship cupcakes for Tohru after everything happened just to thank her for all her help (She wouldn’t accept them but offer to share them with him instead.) 

*He learned violin from Ayame. I like to think that out of all the Sohma’s he is the most musically inclined. If you want to learn how to play an instrument go to Aya he’ll help you out fam. 

*How he learned German and started using that as his main language was in elementary school right after what happened with his mom happened (I’m trying to keep this as non-spoilery as possible so that my friends can read this too). He wanted something that reminded him of her but wasn’t painful. So he decided to learn another language and Hatori helped him. 

*He is probably one of the most likely to spoil his future children. He’ll give them the childhood that he was never technically given. If those children wanted something they were going to get it whether or not it was their birthday they want it. Plus he has the money to get them whatever they want!! 

Tohru: 

*So space cadet Tohru is canon and I am of the personal belief that a little bit of ADD which is why she always needs Yuki’s help with school. Most of these HCs are going to be a little bit mental health related mostly because that’s how I see them. 

*If Tohru had the ability to go to college it would be to become a professional chef. She loves cooking for other people and making people happy. Professional chefs to me are the types of people that love to make others happy which is why she cooks for others. 

*She is definitely the hug friend. What is the hug friend you may ask? It is a person that can give the best hugs. She is constantly getting hugs from Uo-chan and Hana-chan and to me she just seems the type that would give the best hugs in the entire world. 

*She has always been interested in being in a relationship someday. When she was little she loved Disney movies and would fantasize about one day finding her own personal Prince Charming. 

*At first in dating Kyo, Tohru gets flustered by EVERYTHING. This poor girl is always blushing around the love of her life. 

*Her favorite subject in school will always be cooking but she is surprisingly good at history!! She loves learning about the past mostly because she is one of the few people that found it interesting. 

*As a mom she is the most doting parent, the type that kids get embarrassed by at sleepovers. 

Kyo: 

*My first HC for our favorite cat boi is that he has autism. Hear me out, when I was in middle school I struggled immensely when it came to relating to people and understanding how they felt. I had undiagnosed aspergers at the time and found that he was one of the few characters that wanted to be better at dealing with his emotions and people. Having that relatability now that I’m older has been a huge help. 

*The most surprising HC that I have about Kyo is that he loves to write. Usually it’s just little things that irritate him throughout the day. It’s how he learned to officially get his anger calmed down so that he wouldn’t yell anymore once Hajime and his kids were born. 

*As a kid Kyo never had ice cream. It’s the same thing with the pancakes where he had never had sweets that wasn’t fruit. Tohru is appalled by this and one of their first dates was to get him to try ice cream (his favorite is mint chocolate chip) 

*Growing up he was alone a lot but I think that he would find companionship in books and literature. I feel like he’d be really good at school like in the original where we see him pouring over books to study. (The best way to get him to do well is of course a little competition.) 

*Kyo is a hella overprotective dad once his kids are born. This is obvious but if he has any daughters those future boyfriends, run just run. 

*Once the curse is broken he is constantly trying to make up for the years where he wasn’t able to get physical affection. After he gets over his own flustered tsundere habits with Tohru they became easily the closest couple. He finds that he loves having his hair pet (if he purrs he’ll deny it until the end of time)  

*I think that out of all my favorites Kyo would be the best listener. You got a problem, no matter how stupid it is, Kyo will do his damndest to help you out. That’s just who he is especially when it comes to those he loves. 

Kakeru: 

*Kakeru’s mental health theory is that he has ADHD just like Momiji combined with dyslexia so he sometimes has a hard time reading things and needs help understanding what exactly he’s looking at for homework. 

*Him and Kimi always start prank wars that could go on FOREVER. If nobody stops them they can just go at each other for days. Eventually either Yuki or Machi will get too exhausted of their antics and force them to stop. These prank wars usually happen about once a month on the second week. They all fear this time of the month and whenever it happens it usually lasts for about three days. 

*Definite anime lover this boi!! He grew up watching the classics and it’s just something that stuck with him. 

*Before he became chaotic Kakeru TM he always hid this part of his personality but now that he’s older he is very open about his love for anime. 

*He wasn’t close to Machi until after she was kicked out of the family house. Before then he was almost indifferent towards her existence but when that happened he realized that he wanted to make her feel better whether she wanted it or not. 

*He is the best cuddler fight me on this. I feel like once you got him calmed down he would always be down for cuddling his S\O. 

*This one is pretty common amongst the fandom judging by how many people ship him with Yuki but I think that he’s not bisexual he’s pansexual he just loves people!! 

Hatori: 

*I don’t have a mental health HC for Hatori really other than PTSD (which let’s face it almost all of this cast of characters has.) 

*Before he met Kana he knew next to nothing about popular culture. His music taste was stuck in the 50′s and to her that was an absolute travesty!! Who hadn’t heard of Queen, Elton John or David Bowie?! She made it her goal to get him into modern things so that he could understand her. At the time he didn’t really understand a lot of the things that she liked. However, once she left him he learned to appreciate modern music and film. 

*Something that I really love about Hatori is the thought that he would be a fan of musical theater. It’s something that not a whole lot of people know mainly Shigure and Ayame and Aya always gets him tickets when a show he likes comes to town. 

*He can’t cook to save his life!! Literally the type of person that would somehow burn water and he doesn’t have the time to cook everyday but usually Momiji will bring him food that he makes. 

*Definitely a romantic at heart no matter how much the idea of love has hurt him in the past. He loves making Mayu happy at random intervals. From buying her random bouquets of flowers to planning things on a larger scale he just loves making her happy. 

*As a parent he’s the type to definitely be overprotective especially when they aren’t feeling well. His kid fainted at school? He’s already there trying to find out what went wrong and keep them at home with him for a few days until they get Dr. Tori’s clean bill of health. 

*As much as he bitches and moans about Ayame and Shigure’s annoying tendencies he couldn’t ask for two better best friends. \

Hatsuharu: 

*Mental health HC is that he’s bipolar thanks to the other dark personality even though most of the time he’s white it’s something that after everything happens Hatori insists he gets an official diagnosis of. 

*He loves grunge rock. The first time he discovered Nirvana Kurt Cobain became his instant hero. Not a way to live his life but someone that he was inspired by. His second favorite band is All Time Low (I’ve never heard any of their stuff this one is for my best friend who is an absolute Haru-stan) 

*He got his tattoo as his own way of rebelling against his family order. I think that his parents (we only really ever hear of his mom) being strict on him. That’s where the multiple piercings came from as well. Whenever he would hit a low point before middle school he would get a new one. 

*He is actually a really good cook and entirely capable of taking care of himself since his parents are often too busy for him. 

*He got into gaming by accidentally seeing Shigure playing a dating sim (Fight me on this one I dare you say that Shigure the pervy bastard doesn’t play these things) 

*He is definitely the romantic type as we see him bringing Rin flowers to cheer her up. He might be a little bit stiff at first and awkward but once he gets used to the person you bet your ass he’ll just cling to you as we see with Yuki much to his everlasting annoyance. 

*He’s an amazing artist!! He loves to draw just about anything that he can get his hands on. It’s something that he does now when he hits a low point instead of wrecking things he learned the proper way of coping with his problems. 

Whew!! Sorry about the length on this guy but I really wanted to do this while waiting for the dub to catch up. I will make more if people want more of them!! 

[azuremist]

So, this post will dip its toes into some of The Discourse™, because today, I will be talking about something I found in the Professor Layton fandom that made me want a Burger King pissy meal. This may not be entirely coherent, as I am a very emotional person, but then again, neither are any of my posts, really. In case any of you are wondering, this is 100% okay to reblog, but if you aren’t an abuse survivor or have PTSD, don’t clown around on this fucking post. This is under a ‘read more’ because, believe me, you do not want this to be clogging up your dash. As many of you know, I’m autistic, so when I’m passionate about something, I tend to infodump, so this may be quite long.

 This post will also be covering possibly triggering topics, so please read at your own risk.

 Now, this post will be about a blog entirely irrelevant to this, except for the fact that it is where this whole thing is happening. I will not be tagging that blog, because I do not think the moderator of the blog is at fault or anything, they just happen to be a confession blog where people put their opinions on; opinions which I will be talking about today. But for anyone interested in seeing the posts, they’re @/professorlaytonconfessions. Obviously, don’t witchhunt, but I’d hope you all would know that by now.

 So lately, as anyone following that blog may know, the hot topic of discussion is how Luke’s parents are portrayed as abusive in the Professor Layton fandom so that Luke can be portrayed as having PTSD/being adopted by Hershel, and how that is apparently a bad thing. Which, allow me to clarify: if you do not portray Clark and Brenda that way, that is totally fine. What is not fine is the way that these people react to an abuse survivor saying that they portray Luke’s parents that way to cope.

So, here is the original post in question:

 (“Luke’s parents are not abusive. Clark and Brenda Triton ARE NOT ABUSIVE. You can say Luke was adopted by Hershel or whatever but the Tritons aren’t and never were abusive.”)

 This, from what I can tell, appears to be the first post on this matter. And, while it isn’t as bad as some of the stuff we’ll be seeing later, there is some stuff to unpack. Mainly, their language in saying that people can do one thing (say Luke was adopted by Hershel), but can’t do another (portray them as abusive). Can it be frustrating if a fandom misrepresents your favorite characters consistently? Of course it is!! I’m not saying it’s not! But what I am saying is that you can’t tell people how they can and cannot portray characters. It’s their choice. If you do not like it, then look for content of the Tritons elsewhere. Or, make it yourself! Everyone has the power to make the exact kind of content they want to see, if they just make it themselves. And if you don’t think of yourself as talented, commission somebody to write or draw it! Freelance artists need the money, you want the content… It’s a win-win.

 However, a different anon replies with this confession:

“You guys can say that Clark wasn’t abusive in canon, and I guess I’ll agree. But fictional characters can be whatever we want, and some people want to project onto Luke and his relationship with his parents. Don’t make abuse victims feel bad for projecting themselves onto fictional characters.”

 And this? This is a perfectly reasonable statement. It is true that abuse survivors can project onto Luke’s relationship with his parents, and it is understandable that, as such, they may get upset when seeing a post that (as we just covered) tells people what they can and cannot do with these characters. People, especially people with trauma, project onto characters so much that it has become practically a meme, of sorts, especially in the artist/writing community. I would know, as I do this a lot, as well. So, while the tone of this post reads to me as slightly more frustrated than I initially was upon reading the original post, it’s honestly not a good feeling when somebody criticisms your healthy coping mechanisms just because they don’t like how you portray a character; especially if, like me, you struggled for a long time with unhealthy coping mechanisms before finding this one.

 And while I wish this was the end, and this could just be a nice post about how traumatized people cope, someone decided to send in the coldest, most brain-dead take here today, in my opinion:

“my good dude, a fictional character may be a fictional character but they are still a… character. that’s literally the meaning of the word. they’re not blank slates. as someone who really adores luke’s parents, this is just really awful and pretty dismissive, please just move your projections elsewhere.”

 Now, this is so much to unpack that I feel tempted to throw away the whole damn suitcase. But okay, sure, let’s take a crack at it. Someone replied, to an abuse survivor, saying that projecting onto these fictional characters to cope with their literal trauma, by saying that their healthy coping mechanism is ‘just really awful’. Why? Because they really adore the characters, of course! That’s more important than an abuse survivor learning to heal from what horrible thing traumatized them! Of course! Yes, perfectly reasonable. (For those of you who have trouble reading it, that was sarcasm.) And then, immediately followed that insensitive remark with an almost doubly insensitive remark: ‘Just move your projections elsewhere.’ This truly shows how much this particular person cares about how two characters are portrayed over how a trauma survivor feels. The utter lack of respect to say, ‘Just move your projections elsewhere,’ to a real person with PTSD trying to cope, just because they dislike seeing fictional people get portrayed as bad people, is lacking empathy in every sense.

 For those who do not understand, allow me to make a comparison. Imagine a soldier with PTSD, who has a service dog to stop them from having a panic attack in public. Their service dog helps them cope with their trauma, and makes them feel safe. Now imagine that they took their service dog to their favorite public place. Perhaps a diner they went to when they were younger, someplace that comforts them… And someone in the restaurant came up to them and said, ‘As someone who hates dogs, this is awful and pretty dismissive. Please just take your canine elsewhere.’

 Now this may seem like an extreme comparison, but let me tell you, as someone who has both PTSD and a service dog: it’s not, really. Either way, you’re calling the way someone copes with their trauma awful for wanting to exist in a place (the diner, the Professor Layton fandom) where they can feel safe.

 Now, let’s just move on from that bordering-on-ableist post, because there are still more things to go. Here is the next post:

“This isn’t aimed at abuse survivors… it’s more that there are so many artists in the fandom (a lot of popular ones) who push for this headcanon that the Tritons were horrible parents and Luke should stay with Layton instead. (Some artists outright refuse to draw the Tritons??? What?) As a fan of the Triton family, it makes me feel bad… no one ever projects these kind of headcanons onto a character who deserves it, like Descole (the one who ACTUALLY tried to hurt Luke) or Randall ect.”

 Okay, so first. ‘This isn’t aimed at abuse survivors, it’s more… so artists’. Implying that artists can’t be abuse survivors? Yes, this even includes ‘a lot of the popular ones’. Just because someone doesn’t say they have PTSD does not mean that they do not have it. You are not, and never will be, entitled to personal information, and that includes diagnosis. The exact artists you are making this vent about may very well be an abuse survivor, but you just don’t know. You shouldn’t have to know to decide whether or not someone is ‘valid enough’ to portray a certain character a certain way. Same goes for people who refuse to draw the Tritons all together. I’m going to say it again: you are not entitled to personal information, and that includes why someone may not want to draw a certain character.

 And, you feel bad? How bad do you think the traumatized people who are drawing this stuff feel? This is just like the autism moms who say stuff like, “But their autism is so hard on me!”

And, as for why they don’t project these headcanons onto Descole and Randall… Maybe it’s because they were abused by their parents specifically, and want to make Luke go through the exact same thing they did. Maybe they just like Descole and Randall more than the Tritons. But then again, as I’ve said: you are NOT! Entitled! To personal! Information!!

“people’s headcanons, preferences and interpretations are not a personal attack. people like and dislike the same things and that’s okay. don’t take someone disliking something you like personally bc I can guarantee it’s not personal.”

 This one is easily the most tolerable of everything we’ve seen, but there are still certain things I’d like to point out. Particularly, ‘Don’t take someone disliking something you like personally.’ Because, for abuse survivors, it isn’t as simple as a matter as ‘liking’ or ‘disliking’. It’s how you cope. It’s how you feel safe. Fictional characters mean so much to people with mental illnesses and/or disabilities, so of course we may take it personally if you decide to tell us how we can enjoy them. And calling coping mechanisms ‘liking something’ seems to be infantilizing the issue quite a bit. But with that being said, again, this isn’t too terribly bad. Unlike this next one, which is, yet again, just a god-awful, brain-dead take.

“i feel like an issue in this fandom is that often artists who get popular have these awful headcanons (like luke’s parents being abusive.) and because those artists are popular it feels like their hcs are EVERYWHERE and people copy them just to get in their good books. when in truth they’re probably just a vocal minority’

 And here we have, again, the return of the assumption that artists (even these ‘popular artists’ that you are trying so desperately to blame) do not have PTSD. Just, assumptions everywhere. We also see the return of the descriptor ‘awful’ to describe how abuse victims cope, which is just… Well, you know. And this particular post leaves me with so many questions! Most of them of the ‘how do you know who and who isn’t traumatized’ variety. “How do you know that artists, even popular artists, aren’t abuse victims?” “So, is what you’re proposing that abuse victims just don’t ever make vent art involving these characters? Or, at least, not post them anywhere?” “How do you know that the people presumably ‘copying the popular artists’ aren’t abuse survivors, either?” There are quite a large amount of assumptions being made here, and it’s just frustrating to see. Anybody can be traumatized, anybody can be trauma victims trying to cope. But, also, say it with me now: YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO PERSONAL INFORMATION, TO SEE WHO AND WHO ISN’T ‘VALID ENOUGH’ TO PORTRAY A CHARACTER A CERTAIN WAY.

 And, with that final post, we are up to date with all of the current posts on the matter. Now, allow me to remind you that ALL OF THOSE POSTS WERE IN RESPONSE TO AN ABUSE SURVIVOR SAYING THAT THEY USED LUKE AND THE TRITONS TO COPE WITH THEIR TRAUMA. Every time someone insinuated that no artists had trauma, called the headcanon ‘awful’, all of that, was in response to a literal, real-life traumatized person. Because… What? They portrayed a character in a bad way? So they should just find a whole new coping mechanism, and ditch this one that works, just because you, a stranger on the internet, told them to?

 So you may be asking yourself, “Azure, I have read 2,000 words of your ragetyping. What is the point of all of this?’ Well, my friend, besides just getting all of this out of my system, I think the point of this can be summarized quite concisely by a post made by @/your-fave-has-ptsd: “It is far more important for us (people with trauma) to see ourselves in the media than it is for us to stay true to canon.”

 So, if you put how a fictional character is portrayed over abuse survivors’ feelings (and, again, I must reiterate: you don’t know who does and doesn’t have PTSD), then maybe you should really reevaluate your priorities. If you don’t like how someone portrays Luke’s relationship with his parents, maybe just make the content that you want to see yourself, and block those who make the content you do not want to see. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.