#but what i do want to acknowledge is how. it's almost a bit of autistic wish fulfillment?

[moe-broey]

Although I guess I always am exploring incompatibility and love/learning how to love in the most supportive/accommodating way despite that, but kind of exclusively w family dynamics.

[demon-country]

One thing I like about Stolas is that he learns, and then he takes action of his own accord. He's not stagnant. Sure, he can be a bit oblivious and lost in his own head, but once he's finally informed that there is a problem he always makes a real effort to reflect on it and then do something about it.

We see it as early as Loo Loo Land, where he misses all the cues that Octavia is upset, but once she actually tells him what's wrong he immediately reassures her. He then promptly leaves with her, asks her what she wants to do instead, and takes her there despite not understanding the appeal. His focus is on her the whole time from the moment he finds her crying. He even carries her like she's a small child again the entire way back to the van, and she lets him because physical comfort is something she needs and he knows it.

We see it again after Ozzie's, where Blitz is finally honest about his belief that Stolas wants him for nothing but sex. After a night of heavy drinking, he immediately starts to reflect on things and comes to the correct conclusion that their deal needs to end, because in hindsight Blitz didn't seem happy or like he was having a good time like Stolas previously assumed, and then he tries to find Blitz a way to stay in business without relying on him. He gets a little side tracked because of the divorce, but he never gives up on getting Blitz an Asmodean Crystal, even when it requires him to wait several hours in Asmodeus' waiting room fresh out of the hospital.

We also see it in Apology Tour, where he reflects in his song and starts to realize that his behavior early on wasn't taken as him being cute and playful like he intended, but pushy and overbearing. Despite how Blitz hurt and yelled at him both that morning and the night before, he acknowledges that it wasn't malicious and doesn't try to put the blame for things going wrong on Blitz, although he doesn't yet realize that it's not because Blitz doesn't care, it's because he cares too much and is scared of that.

Stolas is learning and changing, but it's a slow process. It comes in pieces. Which is generally how it goes in real life, too. People don't usually change overnight, it can take years and years to fully unlearn bad behaviors and do better, but fuck if he isn't trying.

He needs problems spelled out for him though. He's been extremely sheltered and socially isolated his whole life, and there are a lot of things pointing to him being autistic as well. He's going to miss or misinterpret things that are just implied, there's simply no getting around that. For example, he was never going to realize that there are problems with how he treats imps in general without prompting, because that's been normalized for him and he's high enough on the food chain that almost no one is going to correct his unconscious bigotry. That is, until Blitz, who is perhaps the only person of a lower class Stolas knows who's not intimated by him in the slightest (other than Striker, who was torturing him at the time, which is yet another trauma barrier that will make it hard for him to reconcile with his racism/classism), tells him in a fit of rage. 

I'm sure he'll reflect on Blitz's words and what they mean about how he acts when it's not less than 24 hours since he got his heart smashed to pieces. I don't know about you guys, but I know firsthand that the humiliation and betrayal he likely felt after having his feelings mocked not once, but twice (first on accident, but the next very much on purpose. Oh Blitz, the self-sabotage is so painful to see) take a little while to get over. Let him reflect on how his over-enthusiasm had him running roughshod over Blitz first for a bit, which he's already in the process of doing, then when things aren't so fresh he'll be in a better headspace to consider his overarching biases.

And from a narrative standpoint, the fact that it's taking a while for him to work through everything is a good thing. Expecting him to just Know Better is unrealistic and would cheapen his character arc. He's fighting to do better for the people he loves despite his trauma and implicit biases making that hard for him, and if he is autistic then there are just some things he will always struggle with, like reading social cues. But for any of his improvement to feel satisfying for the viewers then it has to move at a reasonable pace, and unfortunately that kind of change takes time. It's difficult, but he's actually doing a pretty good job so far. He's making a real effort to fix his behavior. But you gotta be patient, he's basically fumbling blindly through this alone.

Anyway, I just really love that, slowly but surely, he's learning. He's not being babied by the narrative or the creators, he's holding himself accountable and changing himself for the better. If you want realistic characters with nuance and depth then you have to let them actually act in the messy, imperfect ways real people do. This is true for Blitz and his character arc as well, but that's for a whole other post.

[leidensygdom]

Ok, I'm gonna start a post idea I had been pondering. If you're either mentally or physically disabled and you have opinions about representation, this is the thread for you!

So, I've been seeing more people trying to tackle the topic of autism in their stories, but I've felt some of it tries to woobify a bit what is to live with autism, or just focus on the more socially acceptable quirks of it. And as someone with autism/ADHD (was suspected of it for most of my life, got it finally diagnosed by my therapist (who specializes in autism and ADHD) last year), sometimes I'd like for people to acknowledge the more unsavoury parts of it, the weird quirks, etc.

So, this post is going to be about that- If you wanna help people understand how your disability/neurodivergency affects your life, feel free to add to it! Just mention what do you have (no need for a full list, just what you consider relevant to the post) and some experiences, quirks, anecdotes or such that you think that are not often seen in stories or media, and that you consider an important part of it. They don't need to be huge things! I encourage people to share just whatever they feel comfortable. My list is gonna be a mix of stuff, but yours can be very different. Let me start!

Clothes and how they feel was surprisingly one of the most disruptive parts of my autism. As a kid, if I was forced to wear something that caused me some bad texture/sensitivity issues, it would significantly affect my behaviour and performance. It took me many years to be allowed to use mostly sportswear. (And it turns out being a "girl" (not anymore) wearing only sportswear tends to cause a whole lot of bullying)

This happens even nowadays. I've found out that non-heeled boots are more comfortable to me than sport shoes, because feeling something against the back of my foot makes me feel overwhelmed. I tend to wear yoga pants under actual pants, because they keep the actual pants' seams from causing sensory issues. There's almost a sort of ritual on how do I need to combine clothes to be able to function "normally", mostly consisting on reducing how much they annoy me.

On that topic, hygiene is actually a huge thing too. As a kid, I wasn't allowed to shower daily. Days I didn't shower, no matter how much I tried to keep my hygiene in other days, were "bad days" to me. I would literally plan hanging out with friends or eating out around the days I was allowed to shower. I could physically feel the difference between the day I showered and the day I didn't (even if I washed my face, armpits, used the bidet, etc).

This is true even nowadays. I can thankfully now shower daily, which isn't recommended by a lot of experts (specially because it can damage your hair and skin), but it's more worth to me than having days where I feel like I shouldn't be seen in public.

Being overwhelmed sucks! Meltdowns are mostly associated with kids, mostly because adults either learn to mask them, or do everything they can to AVOID having that meltdown. I've mostly figured out routines and such. There's this one place we go eat out every other Tuesday- And in the hours we go in, there's a sort of silent corner that is always free. This week's schedule was a mess, so we went yesterday to that same place, and the silent corner was filled with a very loud group. I got extremely overwhelmed. But enough masking drilled to me means I just sat there unable to talk for maybe 30 minutes.

Autistic adults still do have autism and experience often the full spread of traits, they've just found ways to mask, or avoid being in situations where they do need to do that. I've adapted my life and routine to that. But sometimes I land on situations out of my comfort zone that will make me feel just like when I was a kid. I want to freelance online because I'm fully aware I can't perform properly in a public facing job.

Group projects sucked so much. I know they suck for most people, but most times it was easier for me to do the entirety of the project by myself and add the others' names to it than dealing with chasing people for their parts. My college had a 6-months-long massive group project in the last year, with a 7 people group, which obviously I couldn't do alone. The whole experience was so harmful in so many ways I've had several full therapy sessions talking about it :'')

One of the reasons it's because mental flexibility is HARD with autism. If i set a schedule, I expect that schedule to be followed. If people agree to do a part, I expect that part to be delivered (unless there's a proper reason) on due time. People hate this a lot usually! It will tear group projects apart!

Stimming can be harmless, or it can be very annoying to some. I tend to shake legs and play with something in my hands. I could easy this off drawing in classes- My high school found out that I was paying more attention when I was allowed to draw in classes, and my academic performance was pretty much perfect, so they gave me permission to do that.

However, I had a teacher in middle school that did forbid me from drawing. I stimmed during a class with pens- She got so mad she sent me home with a note to my parents they had to sign. Fun!

Not exactly an anecdote, but I am ace. I hate the discourse about "making an autistic person be aro or ace is infantilizing autism". Aro/ace people can have autism. That's just how it is. I've been infantilized a lot for being ace- Which only got worse because I am autistic, and people perceived some of my special interests as child-ish. The combo didn't make things easy.

On that topic, people will often be very patronizing of your opinions or takes for being autistic. I've had people debate my sexuality (or lack of thereof), my gender identity and presentation, my hobbies, my preferences for everything, down to "what do you want to eat tonight?". This isn't too different to shitty takes about how "autistic people are more prone to being affected by the trans activistsTM", because people assume autistic people can't choose on their own. Trust me: We can.

Anyhow, I'd love if this post could be a good compilation of these sort of anecdotes! I think it could help people who wanna learn more about what is it to live with specific disabilities (and how to better portray them in media)

[cy-cyborg]

Earlier today I saw a video from Council of geeks on Youtube talking about how frequently and potentially overused swearing is in adult animation. It’s a great video, but I wanted to add my 2c to the conversation real quick.

I grew up in rural Australia in an area that is primarily inhabited by bogans, and if there’s one thing rural bogans know, it’s casual swearing. Australia as a whole uses the word “cunt” in almost the same way we say “mate” - in some circles “cunt” is seen as the friendlier option, and bogans take that even further. constant, frequent swearing was such a normalised part of speech when I was a kid that it was normal for our teachers in high school (which starts in years 6 or 7 depending on the state, and goes all the way to year 12) to swear at us. Not aggressively mind you, they just used the words casually, and the kids would swear at them back. It wasn’t usually an issue, even when they were trying to be an asshole.

Despite this, even I find a lot of adult animation’s use of swear words a bit jarring at times, and I think Council of Geeks put the feeling i’d had about it into words very well: it’s the way a lot of these shows draw attention to it, even when it’s supposedly normalised.

The people back home can hardly get through a sentence without swearing at least once. at least. I use the word “fuck’n…” the same way other people use “umm…” and I know someone who named their dogs “sick cunt” (or “cunty” for short) and my own dad named one of my childhood dogs “fugly” (short for fucking ugly - that was his legal name my dad put on his adoption paperwork from the shelter). when these words are used so often, they do loose their impact, and you can tell they have by the way we all use them around there. If you’re going to use that same kind of frequent “bad” language in your work, you need to acknowledge it too. that’s where a lot of shows who try to emulate this way of speaking fall over.

As funny as it is to say, Spongbob was right when it called the obvious stand-ins for swear words “sentence enhancers” - that is usually the goal of words like “fuck” and “shit” when not used in the context of their literal definitions: to put emphasis on what’s being said. You could say “This traffic is SO slow!” or you could say “Fuck! This traffic is SO fucking slow!”. You could say “are you kidding me?” or you could say “Are you shitting me?” - in both these cases, the addition of the swear words emphasises the rest of the sentence and the emotion behind it.

But when you are swearing every other word, they stop working that way. “this traffic is so fucking slow” is a lot less impactful when that’s the 5th time you’ve said some variation of “fucking” that conversation. So when people back home swear, it’s just a filler word. there is no emphasis, there’s not heightened emotion, nothing. It’s a normal, standard part of speech that is so common and normalised, it sounds weird to people back home when you don’t use it. I’d go so far as to say it get’s the same kind of reaction from people back home as if you were speaking with flat affect (I’m saying this as an autistic person who took a while to warm up to swearing like that, with autistic friends who spoke with very little tone or expression).

phrases like “ah get fucked cunt” are an honestly very casual and friendly phrase (no, I’m not exaggerating) said the same tone you might use to say “nah I don’t feel like [whatever the topic of conversation was]”. honestly I tried to give some more examples, but it’s extremely difficult to demonstrate over text. Australia has a pretty big film and TV industry though, so if you want some examples of what I mean, watch some Aussie TV (look for anything with an MA or R rating, anything under that and they will likely limit the use of “foul language”) especially anything set in small towns or the bush or find rural aussie creators online.

My point is, If you want to have swearing and cursing as a part of your regular vocabulary in your setting, you need to treat it like it’s actually normalised like any other word. If you wouldn’t put emphasis on words like “house” or “dog” or “car” then don’t put that emphasis on words like “fuck” and “shit” lol.

[wastelandhell]

I absolutely love your character Val! I'm a newer follower so I don't know much about him, but I love whenever you draw him. could you tell me more about his story? or how he ended up with Danse or even what their dynamic with each other is?

Ah thank you <3 I used to post more "lore" stuff on here and theres a bunch if you go way back in his tag, but in the last year I've just been kind of posting a lot of out-of-context and au stuff with no connection.

Him and Danse are both very opinionated men, and those opinions rarely align. They spend about as much time arguing as they do getting along, their relationship through most of the game is equal parts mutual pining and divorced.

They are finally able to acknowledge their feelings for each other shortly before "The Nuclear Option", but mutually split afterwards while Danse tries to find himself and Val focuses on establishing a stable home for Shaun. They reconnect about a year later when the commonwealth is in less of a state of crisis, and are finally able to pursue their relationship.

You know what, I haven't posted anything about him in a while, who's ready for a

This is not going to be very edited or formatted because I am a clown so. Sorry in advance.

A brief overview?

His "real" name is Vasili Gavriilovich Andonov but he goes by Valerie Anderson wherever he can, and does his best to hide his russian ancestry. He prefers people call him Val, though most of the brotherhood soldiers refer to him as Andonov. He hates people referring to him as Vasya or using his patronymic name, though thankfully there aren't a lot of people in the commonwealth who use russian naming conventions.

He's an autistic, bisexual, depressed alcoholic who indulges in stimulants a bit more than he should. He's surprisingly good at playing guitar, especially slide blues with his steel resonator guitar. He loves aircraft and built/painted scale models before the war. He's very lonely, even when around people who like him he never feels like he belongs. His birthday is Jan 12th, which is coincidentally a sort of holiday for the cryonics community.

He'll spend a lot of time looking inward and ruminating, and can identify a lot of his personal problems, but is not very good at "fixing" them. So he just kind of mopes around and wallows in self-loathing and self-pity. He's very gullible, and hates people messing with him. While he struggles a lot socially he is very intelligent, and is a genius with anything with an engine. Before the war he worked on vertibirds for the us military. His support of the brotherhood has nothing to do with their ideals; just that they keep him fed, paid, and let him work on aircraft. He's not particularly concerned with "saving" the commonwealth, he just wants to hurt the people who have hurt him.

Gameplay-wise, he's a melee/power armour build, with his highest stats INT and END. He can built so many weird and wonderful things that either explode or he can beat you to death with. Maybe both. His LCK and CHR are pretty miserable, nobody likes him and things are constantly going wrong. Playing a melee character in survival with MAIM is... a task.

Some sort of timeline?

He's the son of Russian immigrants who met in the US, His father Gavriil was an angry alcoholic who worked for the government and his mother Lidiya was a stay-at-home mom and a fervent christian. He had a sister, Kseniya, who was almost his opposite; a very polite and reserved child.

Valerie was small as a kid; being ginger, autistic, queer, and an immigrant made him a frequent target of his peers. Paired with his fathers physical and emotional abuse at home this made him a very angry and defensive person.

He spent most of his time away from home, preferring to spend his time in the woods around their home or just walking around town. He started smoking when he was 12 and drinking when he was 14, stealing from his father. As he got older he missed more and more school, spending his time committing petty crimes and getting into trouble.

While his father was more directly hostile his mother was equally overbearing in her own way. Val would identify himself as agnostic and having no belief in god, but for all of her preaching he still harbors a lot of “catholic guilt”, and fears that when he dies he will go to hell.

As he got older he quickly sprung from a small kid to a tall, muscular teenager. While he never learned to get along with his peers he learned to adapt an imposing, aggressive and masculine personality to defend himself.

When Val became too large for his father to easily push around he turned his anger towards Kseniya, whom Val was fiercely protective of. This only raised tensions at home, and Val and his father would get in frequent physical altercations. He contemplated leaving when he was 16 and could drive, but didn’t want to abandon his sister.

Eventually things came to a head when both of them had been drinking and Valerie came home late. Their fight got particularly nasty, and Val broke a bottle over his fathers head. He was immediately out cold, and Val was left shocked, covered in his fathers blood, believing he had just killed him. This would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Kseniya was home at the time, and ran in when she heard the yelling. Val tried to convince her to come with him, but she was shocked and terrified and refused to leave. Fearing retribution, and before he could really process what he had done, Val took any cash he could and the keys to his fathers car and fled.

He sold his fathers car and got something less traceable, which he lived out of for the next several years while he jumped around state to state. He picked up the occasional day job, but mostly supported himself by stealing cars and running drugs.

After he left is when he began going by Valerie Anderson. At first it was out of fear that he was wanted under his legal name, but he soon realized how much better people treated him if he had an “american” name.

When he was 20 he was eventually picked up for a minor offense, but given the political climate at the time he was offered the opportunity to join the military rather than face charges. As much as Val hated the government he was still very afraid of being connected to his fathers murder, and jumped at the chance to avoid any legal issues.

In his time in the military he discovered a love for aircraft, and pursued it doggedly. He got his GED, and went on to earn a masters in aerospace engineering. He never bothered with friends or relationships, he put all of his time into education and work. Lived and breathed for aircraft.

While Val enjoyed his job he continued to struggle with his mental health and substance abuse. He would frequently get into fights, eventually he got into a bar fight bad enough he nearly killed someone, getting the scars on his face at the same time.

While he was in trouble with the law he would end up working with his new attorney, Laura Walsh. She was elegant, graceful, composed, brilliant, persuasive, someone who always got what she wanted. And had terrible taste in men. Before the case was even over they started hooking up.

Their relationship was strictly friends-with-benefits, neither of them really cared for the other as a person and it was just sex. Over time, despite their best efforts, they came to see past the carefully crafted personas that they both presented to the world and fell in love with the people behind them.

He was 29 when they met, and they married less than 3 years later. They were moved to Boston for Val’s work, and it seemed like they would be staying for a while so they tried to establish themselves. Val tried to quit drinking around this time but struggled to face reality sober for the first time, and frequently slipped back.

Laura had always wanted children but Val was initially very against the idea. He still held a lot of unaddressed trauma from his own childhood and did not feel that he could ever be a good father.

Eventually Laura convinced him otherwise, and he agreed, again making an effort to clean himself up. When she fell pregnant his anxiety led to him having a breakdown at work, afterward he admitted himself to an inpatient rehab and spent 6 weeks there. From here until the start of the game was probably the best time of his life; sober, medicated and attending regular therapy sessions.

While Val was worried about his capacity to be a father, as soon as Shaun was born he lost that. That kid was his life, he did everything for him. He stayed on a break from work while Laura returned to practice, being a stay-at-home dad and throwing himself into domestic life. He even built a robot housekeeper!

His sister tracked him down somewhere around here and they began communicating through the post. She reveals that his father survived the attack, and was still alive, though she hadn’t spoken to him in years. They were planning to meet in person in the winter, though obviously that didn’t happen.

He was 33 when he went into the vault, and the main fo4 plot takes ~3 years to complete, but I think I’ve made this post long enough and I am too drunk and tired to keep typing. Safe to say hijinks ensue.

tl;dr hes an orange cringefail loser, and im hopelessly in love with him.

[atiianeishaunted]

some canon stfuf about the sonder cast bwaa :33 you can have ur own hcs btw id love to see them <3 but!! yeah,, i feel liek infodumping a teensy bit hrgfrhfh mainly cuz im not in an art mood 2day sigh doesnt include everyone bc this is only stuff i can think of off the top of my head atm but :3

lance: canonically bisexual, might be a trans man (havent decided? its honestly up 2 the audience, could go either way), was a huge moviestarplanet player when he was a kid, would probably play dress to impress methinks, for the LONGEST time was convinced something was going on between allura and keith and was insanely jealous and bitter, has the worst gaydar ever TRUST, figured out he was bisexual while playing msp but it only got worse when he met keith and hes really pissed about it

keith: gay as hell but hasnt exactly processed or accepted it (just knows hes scared of women) (for many reasons), transgender (will respond to anything besides feminine pronouns n such), most likely did his own piercings dont ask how or why, allura is the only woman thus far hes comfortable with because she reminds him of a certain someone, allura and him r huge gossips, jack of all trades but really does not know what hes good at like he doesnt know a thing about himself (one time lance challenged him to try out his sniper bc they got into an argument and keith was surprisingly good at it, he was evidently more confused than lance somehow?) (think that one family guy audio where s liek "how r u doing that" "i dunno ;;; O_O"), if you ask him ANYTHING about himself he will most likely just say "yeah i dont rememebr" or "I dont know", often talks very old school and "retro" (in lance's words), surprisingly a decent cook/baker, not as good as hunk of course but can keep up, despite this it was revealed in a conversation with hunk that keith was eating glass among other inedible things while going crazy in the desert (his feral era <3), can diy explosives among other things and no one acknowledges it because it scares them, this boy is very autistic, audhd in fact, im right and you all know it allura: lesbian but doesnt realize it just yet, would probably love the idea of neo/xenopronouns she'd find them whimsical, surprisingly prefers moths over butterflies (mainly after a talk she and keith had one night), huge gossip and loves romance but not in a "i need to date a man" way but "i want to play cupid" (think mabel from gravity falls) (she did have a phase of being boy crazy but that quickly went away when she was brought out of stasis), she loves dressing up but mainly dresses down and more casually because she doesnt go out as much thanks to altea going kaput and all that, she adores gardening and likes to make dyes and such from her flowers, huge diy queen (TRUSTT) she can sew and all that, probably real crafty, keith and allura are close friends and both extremely out of touch with normal human people, she frequently asks him for advice due to their closeness and they just make eachother worse /aff, unironically used wicked in a sentence and was very proud of it (lance almost threw keith out of an airlock for this one), not the best cook but tries her best and is fairly confident with her skills (vicecore if you play alchemy stars) (keith almost banned her from the kitchen) (they agreed on supervised kitchen hours)

pidge: aroace and agender, literally a chronically online cosplayer tech nerd, probably has been cancelled multiple times to the point where matthew had to take every piece of tech they had in the house, has doxxed people before, obsessed with vocaloid and anime, wants to get piercings really bad but their parents wont let them, uses any pronouns and if you ask for their gender they will change their answer everytime or answer with something silly like "the void", their favorite person is Hunk but beyond that prefers robots and tech as their companions, keith is their favorite victim of pranks (save him), the only one who isnt scared of keith even a little bit, evil scientist coded, too smart for their own good, not very socially smart and misses social cues but doesnt really care, very picky about the food they consume, iconic 13-14 year old who is a bit too excited at the prospect of having an excuse to build weapons

[emeraldkays]

Hi! Could you maybe do some headcannons of Loki dating a plus sized/autistic reader? Thankyou your amazing ❤️

hiya !! I sure can, and I absolutely love this ask. I'm sorry if the autistic side of this hc is not accurate. I tried to research as best as I could ❤️ & tysm xx (and sorry for responding late) 😭

𝐋𝐨𝐤𝐢 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀 𝐏𝐥𝐮𝐬 𝐒𝐢𝐳𝐞𝐝/𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

loki probably told you over a thousand times that he fell in love with your heart, not what you look like or any disorders you might have.

of course, those two factors naturally made things harder for you, but loki didn't seem to care much about them, and that's why you found it so hard.

you wanted him to care that you had cellulite plastered over almost every inch of your body.

you wanted him to care that you were different.

admittedly, it sounded selfish to want him to care about all of these small things that you wouldn't have cared about if you weren't so insecure.

you knew deep down he did care, even though he said it didn't matter, you wanted him to acknowledge them because they were still a part of you. you just didn't have the guts to tell him any of this.

instead, he noticed that you would often turn down things like sex, date nights and almost any other activity you did together.

you'd push him away whenever he touched you and keep your responses short.

after he confronted you about how withdrawn you'd become, you told him the truth.

he didn't look all too shocked though.

he was more disappointed in himself for not telling you how much he cared about your plump stomach that he loved to rest his head on or the fact that you spaced out in conversations every now and then.

in all honesty, one of the reasons he never told you he cared was because he didn't want you to take it the wrong way (as you had a tendency to do), though that's no excuse because he could have easily explained what he meant.

for the rest of that evening, he listed all your flaws and told you how much he cared about and loved them.

if they weren't so detailed, you would have thought he was lying.

a few weeks after this mishap, your relationship was stronger than ever.

your confidence was rebuilt and you resumed all your usual activities, plus more.

you started to feel more comfortable in clothing that showed a bit more skin than your preferred clothing

you even found it a little easier to talk to people!

it got a bit intense at times, but he was always there to calm you down.

[a-queer-seminarian]

Oh, God. I just realized that the main obstacle to me getting ordained isn’t any of the many things I’ve been listing since graduating seminary in 2019.

It’s not that it’s too daunting to jump through all the hoops as a genderqueer, autistic person — though sure, that’s true enough. All the steps to ordination are designed to root out people like me — but I’ve already made it past most of them! And I’m lucky to have a CPM that is willing and even eager to ordain me!

It’s not my hesitation to formally enmesh myself into organized Christianity in this particular way — though again, that is part of it. There is part of me that winces at the thought of bearing a title that has done so much harm; but a larger part of me wants it, wants to reclaim it from that harm and use it for good. Likewise, I do enjoy my role on the periphery, and being able to hop around spiritual homes, and getting ordained could complicate that s bit, but I could make it work.

No. The main reason I’ve been dragging my heels after coming this far, and while having so many people in my corner: I don’t think I’m worthy.

I can’t imagine myself holding up the bread and wine and proclaiming it the body and blood of Christ and feeling like anything but a fraud. “Get away from the altar, who do you think you are!”

I can’t picture myself baptizing someone or declaring a couple married without feeling skeptical that it “counted.”

I can only imagine myself feeling like I’m playing pretend, dressing up as a priest when really I’m just…god, a silly little girl who has no right to wear a stole and claim to speak for God.

Ouch. The internalized misgendering is a punch in the gut — but that’s what’s in my brain.

The internalized ableism is also painfully clear in a way I can’t believe I’ve been repressing all this time: I’m almost 29 years old, but I feel like a little kid. I infantilize myself, all the time, because of how my autistic body moves and autistic mind thinks and the limitations of how much work I can make my autistic self do before I break down.

Regarding the feeling of not having a “right to speak for God”: The funny thing is my denomination doesn’t claim pastors “speak for God” except insofar as every human can! But my Catholic roots run deep, and not just into the nourishing stuff but the toxic stuff too. I’m acknowledging that more honestly lately since the whole Pentecost incident — that there are parts of my psyche that still haven’t unlearned the Catholic way of putting clergy on a pedestal. And of course I don’t measure up through that lens!

I don’t know how to unpack all this right now. I feel overwhelmed and startled that this has been stagnating here in my brain, weighing down my spirit, without me even realizing. Just naming it is a good start, but where do I go from here?

Whew. Holy crap. Even as I say that as if I want to untangle all this enough to finally get ordained, part of my brain rebels — “no, you’re right about being unworthy! You’re too childish, too unstable, too flawed! Don’t try to convince yourself otherwise!”

What a mess. When I was so sure I believed at a core level that pastors are not in some way “more holy” than anyone else; and also that there can and should and must be more than cishet abled men in clerical roles. How has all this crap been festering in my psyche this whole time??

I can’t help but laugh a little! How fascinating!

Lately I’ve been reflecting on and praying to Mary in her role as Untier of Knots. Well, Mother, here’s a whole tangled mess for you to help me pull apart! I certainly need the help.

[paradoxgavel]

😇🐻 Was Henry a decent person? (For the FNaF headcanon ask game!)

Prompt list here!

Ooh, okay, so... I'm gonna ramble a bit, I got a lot to say about my guy lfkjslkjd

Henry is complicated. I headcanon him as being a very detached person. He just kinda doesn't pay much attention to most people. And he tends to be very difficult to get to know - he's quiet, spacey, distant, intimidating, has a serious resting bitch face, is very disinterested in most folks... But once you manage to get through to him (a very tough task. like, he could, at one point, count the people he was close to on one hand) he's a very deeply kind person. Liked making people smile, in his own reserved way. He just also happens to be a curmudgeonly old autistic fella who doesn't care to get close to most people.

But when Charlie died, he just shut down. Walked away from everything. Went completely hands-off. Like, he tried to stay involved with Fazbear Entertainment for a while there in the hopes that maybe he could get his mind off things with work, making the Toy Animatronics and trying to program them to recognize faces in order to keep criminals away after the whole Missing Children Incident in their previous location, but... after everything there went badly as well, he just left. Gave up. To the point that he literally didn't know ANYTHING that happened after the FNAF 2 location. All the awful shit William was doing just kept going on and he didn't pay attention to any of it because he didn't want to hear a single thing about his former business or friend. He blocked every last little bit of it out. He was just sick of it all without his Charlie.

And he knew, yeah? He had to have known it was William, on some level. All of the murders. He's not an idiot. But he can't get himself to face that fact. It's too much. That's William, his best friend who he's been with since college, who is basically a part of his family, that's HIS William. He knows it was him, but it hurts too much to acknowledge it on basically any level, so for the longest time, he just doesn't. He just leaves it all alone and lets him keep doing what he's doing.

But then... One day, William's boy Michael turns up on Henry's doorstep. And he looks awful - torn open and stitched and bandaged back up, purple skin from blood loss, the fella should be dead. Michael actually showed up there to chew Henry out, for walking away, for neglecting to check in and stop any of what was happening, but... as soon as Henry realized who Mike was and how badly he'd been hurt, he just wraps him up in a hug, and Mike just breaks down. The two of them sit down and Mike informs Henry of everything William did. Henry finally has to face it all, internalize and accept it, grapple with the facts, but the thing that kills him the most is:

"Wait. You... You mentioned Charlie. Why did you mention Charlie." "Huh? Oh, I mean, she's still out there somewhere in the Puppet. She ran off a while ago. I dunno where, but she-" "She's STILL OUT THERE? IN THE PUPPET? MY LITTLE GIRL STILL EXISTS AND SHE'S BEEN OUT THERE THIS ENTIRE GODDAMNED TIME?" "I... You... You didn't know?"

... At which point, Henry sits down and almost immediately starts drawing up the plans for Lefty. He's tracking his daughter down. He's determined to clean up the mess he feels like he enabled with his absence, and to get those souls to rest. At that point, he's so disgusted and betrayed and so, so, SO tired that he just wants it all to be over. So he drags everyone involved in this mess down to rest with him, whether they want to or not, which... the intentions are there, but the morals are dubious. Especially considering that he rigged Lefty up to lightly shock the Puppet if it tried to get away - not enough to hurt, but... still.

In the end, in the afterlife, he's Old Man Consequences, sitting by the pond and watching over Cassidy and William. Sometimes Charlie comes and sits with him. Eventually, he convinces Cassidy to let go, for her own sake. To go join the others and get some rest. Leave the demon to his demons. But... he never really leaves the pond behind. William's down there. And Henry can't get himself to walk away. Not again.

So... he's not a bad person, I don't think. But when he loses the main thing that makes him happy in life, he's all too willing to just shut down, shut himself in, and pretend the outside world doesn't exist anymore just because what's the point of any of it. Allowing people to get hurt while he looks away. Children that he was partly responsible for. And his solution to all of it being to trap and destroy them all without their input is... y'know. But he was tired and hurting, and knew they all were too. So he did what he thought was for the best. So he made some poor but understandable decisions along the way outta grief and exhaustion.

[anexperimentallife]

This "if you don't brag about it online, it didn't happen" culture is so weird. I regularly get people accusing me of doing nothing but posting my thoughts online and not actually helping anyone, and it's like...

Dude, I'm not gonna go online and brag and post pictures every time I donate supplies or money, give someone food or a place to stay, serve as a sympathetic ear, help another adult escape their abusive family, encourage someone through a bad situation, stay on the phone with someone when they just need a human voice, let someone ahead of me at the store, overtip a tired server, stand up when someone's being bullied, or do some other random act of kindness. Posting "proof" of all that shit would just feel weird to me. And pointless. The point isn't to show off; the point is that we're all in this together, and everybody should be pitching in to make things better for all of us. It should just be the standard.

I literally owe my life to people who helped me in hard times with no thought of reward--often when I didn't deserve the help. Hell, when our family was in danger of forced separation because paperwork errors wouldn't let our daughter travel with us, y'all pitched in to pay for getting it straightened out.

(Not to mention that even if all I did was post, posting thoughts online can be helpful--a lot of people have posted things that have been helpful to me, and a lot of folks have thanked me for things I've posted, saying my words helped them.)

I mean, I get the theory that posting about ways you've helped people might inspire others to do more good, so I'm not gonna say everyone who does it is seeking glory, but that's just not the way I roll. I don't even like being acknowledged for stuff like that. It all just comes under the heading of doing my job as a human being. Because if we're not taking care of each other, what's the point of anything?

If I could help out completely anonymously, so that not even the people I'm helping knew it was me, that's what I'd do. Not because I'm some saint, but just because a) the attention embarrasses me, and b) I don't want anyone to feel embarrassed or lesser for accepting help.

Honestly, I'd like to do more. But I'm autistic, disabled (spine, joint, and soft tissue inuries, severe arthritis, a traumatic brain injury that affects my memory and focus, and then there are the brain and body effects of long covid on top of that), have adhd, had covid three times, almost died of illness three times in the past five years (once from double pneumonia with secondary lung infections, and twice from covid, which also left me with a two-year foot infection that ended up requiring surgery to get rid of), and other issues, am about 15K USD in debt (from the issue with our daughter), PLUS I'm raising a toddler and supporting two other adults on a fixed income (and still need to somehow come up with around thirty thousand dollars for needed surgeries and scans and dental work and other treatments that got put off because of the aforementioned issue with our daughter), so yeah, there's only so much I can do.

But it's not "nothing." (And I'll allow myself a little bit of chest-puffing by saying it's probably more than most of the people who accuse me of doing nothing do.)

So yeah... "all you do is post online instead of helping people." Oh, you mean because I don't... what, make people "earn" my help by posing for embarrassing pictures or videos, or giving testimonials about how grateful they are? LMAO what a sad, mean, tiny, drab little world you must live in where no one helps anyone without bragging to the world about it.

(Hell, I'll probably delete this later, because tbh this little rant feels a little too much like bragging to me, but I needed to vent.)

[a-bit-too-much-of-a-zelda-fan]

For autism awareness month, I’ll be talking about my autism. I have a complicated relationship with it. I’ll readily admit that it’s my autism that makes me a bit too much of a Zelda fan, a bit too much of a Pokémon fan, etc.. Whenever I get into a new thing, I go in neck deep and it consumes my thoughts. On the one hand, I get to micro analyze the thing and appreciate it for all its worth. On the other, I sometimes wish I could just like multiple things at once and give me other things to talk about when I’m with my friends, instead of turning to the internet and ranting into the void. I created this blog almost six years ago because at the time I only had one friend who also liked Zelda, and I knew it would be cruel to unload all my autistic Zelda ramblings on him. Same reason I made the Pokémon side blog.

Effective communication does not come easily for me. I’m sometimes unaware of the tone I’m speaking in, and I have very poor control over my facial expressions. Basically I can’t hide my emotions for shit, which can be bad in some scenarios. I miss some nonverbal cues. On the flip side, this has made me work incredibly hard to become an effective communicator. I know that if things are left unsaid, they may go uncommunicated. I know to say what I mean and clarify everything that needs to be. I hate that I over analyze everything I say and hear said to me, but oh well.

As a white, cishet man, I need to be aware of the power dynamics in my relationships. I need to be cognizant of the ways my words and actions can be perceived differently by women, minorities, and other people with whom there is some imbalance of power. I think this is how all people in my position should approach things, but for me and my autism, this is especially difficult. So I verbally acknowledge it with the person so they know I’m trying.

For example, a good friend of mine used to only know me as the author of Oops! All Links. He looked up to me as a writer and put me on a pedestal, which I understand and is completely natural as a parasocial relationship. He is also seven whole years younger than me. At the time, I was 21 and he was 14. When we started to DM and actually become friends, I told him explicitly that I recognized the power imbalance in our friendship, and he should feel absolutely no obligation to do anything that I say or ask of him, and to also tell me immediately if something I say or do makes him uncomfortable. I never had and still never do have any ill intent in this friendship, but the last thing I want is to unintentionally take advantage of him.

Sometimes, I wish things could be different. Compounded with my bipolar disorder and ADHD, my autism makes my life harder. My brain is crosswired and I need to work harder to achieve the things that I want than do neurotypical people. Getting through college has been an ordeal and it’s honestly a miracle that I’m almost finished with it. If I could do away with just the ways my autism my life worse, I would in a heartbeat.

My autism also makes me who I am, though. It defines my personality and the way I interact with the world. I wouldn’t be such an effective verbal communicator, I wouldn’t have the same passions, and I wouldn’t have the same relationships. It’s part of what makes me,,, me. And ya know what? I like me.

I still hate some things about myself. I hate the ways that my disabilities and disorders make my life harder. I sometimes wish I could just whisk it all away so I don’t have to struggle like I do. But there are some good things that come along with it. If I got to choose whether to get rid of the autism and everything it entails… I don’t know. I just don’t know if I would. But I don’t have that choice. For better or for worse, reality has already made the decision for me.

[wilted-woods]

OKAY!! BBIEAL BRAINROT BECAUSE I'M SLOWLY GETTING BACK INTO THE FANDOM!!

STARTING WITH MY BBIEAL HEADCANONS SO FAR!!

Professor Baldi

He actually cares about his students and wants what's best for them

He's only sometimes a bit strict because he values his students education

He still struggles with technology therefore he forgets how to use the You Can Think Pad

He prefers old-school teaching but is flexible with modern-day students that are only familiar with technology

He's 5'9"

He's basically like a Sphinx (hairless) Cat so he'll sometimes be seen wearing thicker clothing during cold weathers

He has mild to severe Parkinson's Disease (hence why he's sometimes so stiff and hardly to never moves when you play the game except for when you get the questions wrong)

He's actually very friendly when you get to know him better

The fact that he can hear practically EVERYTHING gives him really bad migraines (sensory overload)

Principal of The Thing

Same as Baldi, he truly cares and wants what's best for his students

Again, same as Baldi, he values the students receiving their education

He greatly cherishes the safety of his students and would blame himself if any of them get hurt (so does Baldi) hence why he's strict with the rules of the school

He's 6'0"

He also gets confused when it comes to technology as he's an old-school principal

He prefers classical music

He has really bad arthritis (rheumatoid and osteo) in his legs hence why he's always drifting around the school

He has grey hairs

He has a really bad limp when he tries to walk which is really painful for him

Playtime

She's autistic

She's partially deaf though she could still somewhat hear

She plays other games too besides jump rope

She always keeps a ladybug squishy with her

She's the host of the Stress Relief Club (please join :( I promise it's really fun! There's fidgets, stim toys, sensory toys and so much more! So far only the main characters of the game (excluding PLAYER (for others)) are a part of the Club)

She loves lizards

Although she prefers pigtails, she keeps it up in a ponytail because she only has one rubber band

She loves to dance

It's a Bully/This Is A Bully

He has anger issues

He has been bullied before because of the way he looks

He's diabetic but goes against it sometimes because of all the certain foods, drinks and sweets that he wants to eat

He's basically just your typical bully (somewhat)

One thing he doesn't tolerate is driving the students he's bullying to deleting themselves so he just sticks with the usual taking things and maybe some pushing and shoving

He mostly hangs with Playtime as she's the only person he tolerates

He can change his mind on if he's going to bully the PLAYER or not but mostly considers doing so

He has a hard time focusing in his classes (he's a high schooler)

Arts and Crafters

They have selective mutism

He's claustrophobic and agoraphobic

They're mostly sometimes shy and quiet

He has mild scopophobia (hence why he attacks you once you look at him and teleports you to Baldi)

Their favorite artistic expression is Expressionism

He likes crocheting

They mostly hang around either Playtime or the Janitor

He loves ambient music which gives him artistic ideas

Filename2/Null

He's strictly antisocial (hence why he never makes his presence known except for when the PLAYER gets the questions wrong, he's found almost willing during Baldi's Birthday Celebration/Birthday Bash)

He has tried to warn the main characters (excluding one) about the game asides from the PLAYER

He has a stuttering issue but it gets really bad when he's stressed

He's 6'8"

Nobody is aware of his existence asides from the PLAYER (doesn't acknowledge him and doesn't take him seriously) and another

He's very observant to a certain degree

They tried to restrict him from doing what he's currently doing but failed and aren't aware of his existence anymore)

He's grown attached to one person..and that's when he felt it for the first time after being cooped up in isolation for so long...

The Janitor

He has a few disabilities (ex: ADHD, Autism and mild Tourette's Syndrome) which makes his job extremely difficult but he always finds a way to manage things

He's extremely talkative with those he's the most safe and most comfortable with but gets upset when they become annoyed and having to point it out

He tends to zone out quite frequently

He has Insomnia due to being extremely dedicated to cleaning the entirety of the school

He's 7'9" so he comes off as intimidating since he's taller than everyone in the school

He has to crouch to get into the rooms he needs to clean but sometimes forgets so he ends up slamming into the door frames

He found his someone and is already attached...

He's a collector (he owns a lot of items that contain trinkets that he's found (he's basically a crow))

First (1st) Prize

He's actually quite sentient so he willingly tries to give others hugs

He has abandonment issues which makes him a little clingy

He helps Playtime with her club

Even when some of the students are deliberately mean to him, he still does what he does best

[tea-with-eleni]

What went wrong?

So... the whole education department is leaving my museum. Well, okay, not the whole education department. The manager and the two part time workers are staying. But the three of us who were the actual museum educators, who did most of the legwork and actual educating? we're out after the eclipse.

I consider the other two educators my friends. We have quite a bit in common. We're all the same awkward not-quite-millennial, not-quite-gen-Z age. We went through college at about the same time. We're all the kind of people who will teach somebody something if you leave us along in a room with them long enough, but have no desire to be classroom teachers. Our skills aren't quite identical, but we can all cover for each other in a pinch. We're all single and likely to stay that way for the immediate future, have religions but don't really publicize it, don't drink (two of us never bothered, one of us can't), are adhd, and share similar tastes in literature. They couldn't have found a more evenly matched team if they tried. Which is, it turns out, to their detriment.

see... it means that we all generally agree with and empathize with each other. If they wrong one of us, they wrong all of us.

So... a rough list of grievances, in approximately chronological order.

They threw one of the educators out of the loop and effectively banned her from working in the planetarium. The planetarium she built up from ground zero. That one.

They told the other two of us to make a push-button show in two months. It takes experienced teams with no other responsibilities six months. Then, they yelled at us about how much time we were spending working on the show in the planetarium, even though we were going a bit mad, even though we were effectively casting from hit points to keep going, even though we were making incredible progress and could tell EXACTLY where the time had gone; we were hardly goofing off. Even though it was not, in fact, detracting from our other responsibilities. All three of us ended up breaking down inside the planetarium.

They drove us to varying degrees of anxiety/meltdown at their holiday event and didn't need to. Nor did they apologize or even acknowledge what happened. I'm sorry, I don't forget when multiple coworkers have to talk me through an autistic meltdown while they themselves are coping with their own sensory hellscapes.

No educators qualified for a raise this year, ostensibly for assorted minor reasons but probably because they were trying to gaslight us into blaming ourselves rather than fessing up that they couldn't afford it. Had they been honest, I think we would have been understanding. But. Yeah. They lied. Not cool.

I was written up for showing too much emotion at my manager when something went wrong that wasn't my fault, on my recently deceased grandfather's birthday. And told I would be fired if it happened again.

They assigned a stupid and pointless recurring task to the worst possible team member they could have assigned it to. I offered to take it over, since I didn't mind it and (as previously stated) all of our skills overlap to the point where it didn't make a difference. Then they refused to listen, for months, when we pointed out that giving them what they wanted was actually impossible with our current staff -- we can't teleport.

They totally ignored almost all of our suggestions to improve the planetarium and, in fact, told the other two of us to not work on it so much too. Some of the suggestions they used to deliberately insult us and the hard work we'd put in about something we were truly passionate about.

Policy decisions are routinely made by our manager without consulting us concerning things like the planetarium, which she never enters and cannot even turn on. Let alone make it work.

They care more about how effectively we've swept and vacuumed and put away gross toddler-spit-covered blocks that aren't even our department's property than how well we do things that are much more obviously in our job description. The blocks have been disappeared by one aggrieved part time worker. We will never tell. When we leave, they can pin the blame on us. It's fine.

They seem to have it in for the one male coworker. Not sure why. Could be misandry, antisemitism, or maybe they just don't like that he's speaking his mind. Or maybe they don't like that he's a northerner. Impossible to say.

They sent the most personable manager, who isn't even our manager, to try to boost our morale.... her tips were received as "don't think about it too hard", "accept you'll be written up, a lot", and "your anger at your current treatment is overrated".

They fired the education coordinator two months after she started. Was she good at her job? Not really. Did I like her as a person? Not especially. Was she properly trained in her job? NO. Should she have been fired? Probably not.

I genuinely don't think they realize how much we do empathize with each other. I genuinely don't think they realize that we relate much more to each other than we do to management; the differences in stage of life or maybe generation (managers are much more firmly millennials, we relate more to the Gen Z part time employees) is quite sharp.

And clearly, they don't value that they have three employees who all possess fairly rare and valuable skillsets. We can wrangle our planetarium. We can plan low budget educational activities that capture public interest on a dime. We can run summer camps for kids ages 7-13 with very little prep work. We can lecture on things we barely understand and convince people we're experts because we all have that broad kind of knowledge acquired by ADHD people with internet connections. And we're all very comfortable public speakers. We can analyze a situation and come up with ways to creatively improve it.

Other museums -- other institutions, we're not all going to museums next -- can see what we are. They're bending over backwards to get us to join them.

So. We're out. And we're looking forward to some very.... interesting.... exit interviews.

Assuming they get around to doing those, since our last day is April 8 and a little bird told me there's going to be some kind of major celestial event that day that the museum might be a little bit busy wrangling. IDK.

[drdemonprince]

hey i know what im about to ask for advice for isnt ur experience but i thought its possible someone else in ur audience has had a similar one its just starting to get unbearable. im in my early 20s and an autistic lesbian. im almost done with college, have had good friends here, have had good friends online as well, but to my knowledge no one throughout my entire life has had even a crush on me. ive never kissed anyone, no one’s asked me out, even as a kid at recess or whatever. like sometimes i even wish a boy had paid attention to me in that way because maybe then it prove theres not something wrong with me. its just so isolating because literally everyone else in my life has at least been kissed or had a crush situation by the time they were my age. ive tried to talk on dating apps but i just have zero confidence about it because no one who has actually seen me or talked to me for more than a couple times has expressed interest. maybe im oblivious to it being autistic but like i would know if someone said something explicit you know? i feel like it wont ever happen. idk. i think it would help to know if people thought the same things about themselves and then something did happen for them. because it just feels like im the only person alive with this experience who actually wants these things to happen (like i know ace/aro people are out there, its just not me)

Thank you for your question. I'll share some of my thoughts, with the huge caveats that I have not lived this experience, and hopefully readers with more relevant perspectives could also weigh in.

I notice here that you describe yourself and your relationship to attraction in terms of things happening to you, or you receiving certain kinds of attention. You frame yourself throughout this as the possible passive recipient of attraction. But what about what you want? How often have you expressed desire to somebody? How frequently and in what ways have you initiated contact, told someone you were interested in them, or invited someone on a date?

You mention using dating sites and talking with people, but those conversations never turning into anything more. That seems to be a very common problem in the lesbian dating world. I think a lot of women do not feel confident and comfortable in expressing their desires outright and it seems to lead to a lot of grinding of gears and people assuming that nobody is interested in them when really all parties involved feel too shy and disempowered to use their words and directly ask for a date.

I understand that to be a very common thing for queer women, though admittedly it is difficult for me to wrap my mind around as someone who was telling people on OK Cupid that i wanted to meet up and fuck them that evening back when I was like 21 years old, and who moves through the realms of steamworks and grindr and the cell block bar dancefloor now. I've had many interpersonal problems but telling somebody directly that I wanted to bang or even to hang out has not historically been one of them, and I really wish I could just lend some of that hutzpah over to my lensbian siblings because I hear people grousing about how dry apps like Lex are all the time.

It seems pretty glib and unhelpful for me to say "just act more like a bluntly direct gay autistic man" and to say that would be to ignore that a lack of confidence and queer women skewing a bit passive are probably not the only factors you're dealing with. There might be biases working against you like fatphobia, racism, or ableism that incline fewer people to openly express desire for you, and that's a real problem that operates outside of you and that no amount of self love can eradicate, and I think it's validating and important to just acknowledge when the deck is stacked against people.

But there are lots of people out there who will want to date and fuck you, for sure, even if you are dealing with any of those injustices, and additionally, I doubt from your message that you're doing anything particularly weird or off putting in your messages with people on dating apps that's like driving anybody away. You mention that you have a lot of good friends and that things are otherwise going pretty decently for you in life, so it really doesn't seem to me like anything you are doing or bringing to the table is "wrong". And over the years I have known a great many lesbians and wlw who were very social, outgoing, fun to be around, cute, and a total romantic prize who just did not fuck or date until their late 20s or 30s or beyond, because of some of the social forces I already described (and again I encourage my lesbian followers to contribute to the conversation because I know it's not my lane and I might not be explaining the phenomenon correctly).

If you haven't, I would suggest showing your dating app profile and messages to some trusted friends (maybe some gay men as well as other queer women?) to get a variety of perspectives and some reassurance.

But I think, based on the admittedly limited information that I have here, that you just need to approach people more and more directly, and that slowly through that you will become more comfortable with initiation and rejection, as well as with seeing yourself as a sexual being with agency, rather than a passive receiver of others' interest.

Try telling people directly that they are cute, that you like them, that you want to be around them, that you'd like to kiss them, that you'd love to go see a movie with them or tie them up or finger blast them or that being near them makes you happy or horny or etc as the situation warrants. If you havent already that is!

[theoldaeroplane]

meandering thoughts (reflective style)

with my life seeming to settle a little bit (knock on wood) my brain returns to its favorite dilemma: relationships! how confusing they are for me! how i get crushes all the time on everyone and am too scared of alienating people important to me to do anything about them! operation "just be cool and hot and hope people are attracted to you" does not seem to be working, despite the fact i am both cooler and hotter than ever. i have always given off an unconscious air of "don't interact with me" that I think makes this difficult for people. (probably because I largely don't want most people to interact with me, and because I'm autistic and can't figure out social cues, and because even casual touch with people outside of a very small bubble activates like seventeen goblins in my brain!)

i talked to my therapist about these feelings last week and we're probably going to focus on them moving forward. this was really the year where i realized that the depths of the damage done to me growing up were much deeper than I thought. it's difficult to acknowledge that! it's hard to really look in the eye how much work I still have to do even now.

I've been reading about relationship anarchy and finding it appealing. the trouble of course comes in the practice. my therapist, who's trans and poly and is someone I trust to have good takes on these things, said something like ... "you can just ask the people you want to be closer to if they're interested in exploring a possible deeper intimacy." im both fascinated and terrified by this. sure i can just ask. what if i get told no? ive been told no so many times. it does a number on your self confidence! what if it makes this person who is important to me uncomfortable? what if it pushes them away from me? it's happened before! i can't risk losing what I have!

i suspect the fact my support network is almost entirely friends makes this much more frightening; without the kind of anchor relationship most people i know have in the form of immediate family, expressing interest in changing the relationships i do have kind of feels like fucking around in my operating system's files without a backup. it's sort of funny to be okay with the mortifying ordeal of being known, but being too afraid to even get to it.

relationship anarchy says, do away with preconceived notions of what a relationship "should" look like. kick out the fences and define new borders. fuck your friends and live domestically with your platonic life partner, if you want. this fascinates me. it's something I've been writing into many of my characters' relationships for some time now, without having a name for it. do i want a traditional partner? part of me thinks I do, but maybe that's just a lifetime of social conditioning. what would be the most fulfilling for me? i don't know. it seems like something you can probably only figure out with experience, and right now that's my problem.

i was raised by people who wanted me to "court" instead of date. (My therapist made a terrible face and said oh I hate that for you when I told him this.) i was raised by people who definitely would have tried to get me to read "i kissed dating goodbye" if i had done anything other than have a crush on a gay boy all through high school. I still talk to that guy all the time, crush free even, and he's in a great relationship with another man now. their relationship is strictly romantic; the partner fulfills his sexual needs with other people. i thought that was so cool when I first heard about it. I think it was the first time someone I knew personally demonstrated a functioning, nontraditional relationship. Others have followed. I'm so happy for them! I watch, fascinated, from behind the iron wall I've built for myself while "Hello My Old Heart" plays in the background.

it's Christmas as I write this, and I've got no plans. a few people have checked in on me, because I'm always alone at this time of year. (honestly, the checking in kind of makes it worse. "hey I'm celebrating with my loved ones and I know you aren't, how are you?") that's another complicated topic, but it's been a little easier this year. it's probably to do with both time and the fact that my adhd is being managed for the first time ever; it's common to have increased emotional regularity when that happens. I'm lonely, but I'm used to it, and things will go back to normal soon. It would be nice to have someone to spend it with. i don't know if it's in the cards for me. maybe next year.

I worry sometimes that I sabotage myself. Oh, I'm into this person, but they're in a relationship, or they're straight, or they're ace, or they live far away, or I work with them (as if any of those things are a hard limiter in all cases). I can find any excuse not to express my interest in someone. It's something I'm working with my therapist on.

As morose as this post is, I'm okay. today I'll mess around with my server project and go feed my friend's pets while he's away. I'll spend a lot of time thinking about this and distill my feelings down into something I can overlay onto a character; i see myself most clearly when I do it through a mask. I've got things to cook and a fridge to clean and an indoor bike to ride. There are people who care about me and it's important I try to remember that.

uh, happy holidays! i promise i am okay enough. please don't make me think about it any deeper than that. I really truly hope you have a good one.

[the-darkness-does-not-bargain]

lmao that’s making me picture fallenhalo playing minecraft and everytime they hole up in a cave to wait for morning ava’s like “aw doesn’t this remind you of when we first met 🥰” “back when we hated each other and only tolerated each other because it was mutually beneficial? yes” “I didn’t hate you! also you tried to kill me, i wouldn’t call that tolerating” “I wasn’t trying to kill you, because if i was you’d be long dead. I just stabbed you a few times” *cue more ava & lilith flirting via bickering and beatrice in the corner totally not rolling her eyes, half in exasperation, half in a bit of jealousy that she’s in denial about, doing her own thing in minecraft because ava & lilith keep dying*

also ava & lilith are gonna notice beatrice being all grumpy wolf in the corner in a few seconds and beatrice is gonna regret even feeling exasperated because ava & lilith are gonna flirt w and fluster her to death and yes this is far too frequent thing that happens for beatrice’s poor easily overwhelmed gay heart

thinking ava had just accepted diego’s loss after trying to find him (it’s ambiguous about whether he8s dead or not but regardless ava hasn’t found him and she won’t ever for a long long time) so hence her moping around in a cave when lilith finds the cave

ava’s just trying to distract herself and bring a sense of normalcy she’s lacking atm and she ups the “100% purely only goofy guy” mode up to a thousand

meanwhile lilith is already inherently distrustful of ava given she seems to be almost completely human save for her immortality and those type of immortals are often super shady because most of em did horrendous shit to get and/or keep their immortality, esp since she has personal experience w related stuff, which plays a big part into how lilith became a vampire, and lilith’s whole general, lilithness, so they get off the wrong foot ag least

‘

it’s a lot better than in canon probably given while their dislike of each other kinda spans over a few years, (whitcg to them was super short period of time) they probably don’t really involve any pther people other than themselves, at least not when there’s a risk of them (other people) getting seriously hurt, and like lilith said, they genuinely weren’t trying to kill each other, even when their dislike was at the highest esp because they could help each other + they wanted the company

either they probably stay in the same vicinity of each other (same country) but don’t spend time w each other, except/or for when their paths grow and they begin to like each other more, they stay togeyher lonher, but are in denial about it

regardless, probably lilith almost dies ala s1, and that’s when they realize that oh hey, they’d kinda be more than a bit devastated if the other died actually, which is when they begin sticking together almost all the time and/or acknowledging how much they mean to the other more

re: ava’s immorality origin, i’m just going schrodinger’s origin w it tbh, any and all origins are open and close at the same time

have the mental image of Beatrice being such a lil grumpy wolf when lilith and/or ava haven’t been hanging out enough w bea, esp (esp esp pre relationship) if it’s because they’re preoccupied w each other or something and later on when she’s less repressed and more secure in her relationship w lilith & aba (platonic and otherwise) she’s probably lowkey a lil shit about it. gets her work and plops her whole wolf self down onto ava or lilith’s lap and when they’re like ‘can i move” beatrice is like “i can’t because i’m busy w my work rn and taking the time to move would distract me from it” Or something like that

vv black cat in the body of a wolf energy

ava absolutely buys her clothes based on what bat lilith will like to snuggle in or cling to the most, and later on wolf beatrice as well

and also just in general bc beatrice & lilith are very sensitive sensory wise (i am shoving autistic beatrice & lilith in because they both have sm vibes esp lilith who’s whole arc could be vv easily read as a bit of a metaphor for it)

lilith when she still dislikes beatrice like:

Flirting over minecraft, I'm dying lmao. And yes, Ava and Lil have had thousands of years to perfect their special brand of "being a little shit" antics, usually for use on each other, but now that Bea is available? Prime target. Pray for her.

Yes, I would expect that she started living in the cave possibly because that's where she met Diego too. So she was holding out hope that he would come back, only to get Lilith instead (for the best, of course). I've been thinking more about werewolves in this setting and how they came to exist, and I think maaayyybe whatever is going on with Ava is also linked to or is even the source of werewolves (the idea is simmering, I'm playing around with Ava possibly being responsible for turning Diego into the first werewolf by accident, through magical nonsense). Either way, yes she's devastated and trying to distract herself in any way she can, meaning Lilith's arrival helped her on multiple fronts.

If Lilith knew about immortals beforehand or maybe just legends of them, then she would be distrustful at the start, especially when Ava refuses to give her a straight answer on how she came to be immortal. But necessity and strange bedfellows and etc. etc. Ava helps Lilith survive until she can safely leave the cave and then Ava... just sort of follows her, to Lilith's annoyance and dismay. She keeps her distance for awhile, but then gradually gets closer until maybe Lilith has a dangerous moment where she's really hurt or about to burn in the sun and Ava rescues her. They aren't planning their honeymoon anytime soon but they recognize that they are better off with each other than alone.

When Beatrice gets her paws under her, she'll return their antics with her own. Her biggest hits include laying her 300-lb. furry self in front of the door whenever the other two try to leave, forcing Lilith to pick her up (strategic cuddling) and pinning one or both of them under her and then falling asleep (strategic napping).

That graphic put a stitch in my side, bat!Lilith has me dying! It's what she deserves <3!