#half the characters are autistic man I just didn’t notice

[rockysledding]

Me four years ago making one of my characters autistic: oh man i hope i dont offend anyone, maybe i shouldn’t write an autistic character when i’m not autistic but like i’m not outright stating that she’s autistic she just has some of those traits is that okay?

Me now, post autism diagnosis: oh man i really gave that character all of the autism behaviours i was suppressing huh how did i not realize that

[giddlygoat]

whatever. i keep thinking about dt17 LP and drake.

launchpad has been all over the world and made tons of friends and connections, but can’t seem to connect with anyone on a more meaningful level. i think it’s safe to say watching darkwing duck was his only constant in the time he spent traveling and he looked up to the character as a guiding light amongst all the uncertainty. iirc he was kicked out at a young age by his parents [in the classic shows at least] and honestly at this point that is cemented as part of his character for me. the majority of my LP hcs are total speculation bc we don’t have much to go off of but. i think the people who mattered to him most probably told him to get his head out of the clouds or get out of the house and the next thing he knows he’s up in them for good. isolation is launchpad’s nightmare.

drake’s autistic ass got bullied big time as a kid and darkwing imprinted on him heavily because he identified with the character and latched onto the idea that he would stand up against injustice and prevail because that’s the only option he has. he couldn’t even consider staying down after being beaten so many times, it just doesn’t register as a possibility for him. he would just get back up. he doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who had much support at all growing up, but he still chooses kindness. you can’t separate drake from his natural inclination towards compassion. and yet ….. ! he absolutely FEEDS off attention. he’s starving for it. he just needs someone to notice him and look at him and listen to him or he will wither. he needs love and validation and respect or he becomes a shell. been there, buddy

do you think when he got the role as DW in the movie he even thought of it as a job at all. i think drake didn’t have to act. i think drake knows the character so well and embodies all he stands for to such an extreme that playing darkwing was like breathing. it’s not hard for me to imagine that drake had moments where the line between him and the character faded, and he would stand at the top of some high tower in the lonely shoes of his hero and look down at all the broken teeth and singed feathers waiting for him and it would not be this profound or unfamiliar thing. i think drake recognizes himself better in the mask.

or you know, maybe he’s a totally normal well adjusted person with no self image issues whatsoever, but somehow i doubt it.

launchpad, meanwhile. hewboy. what if your worth is inseparable from the services you provide for others? what if you give everything you have every chance you get and never ask for anything back? what if the pain and the loneliness that follows the headfirst run into the emotional divide feels more like home than any one place ever did. what if every night you watched a cartoon about a flawed and flamboyant hero who protects a whole city and never takes his mask off for anyone - except maybe a very close friend - because this silly and attractive man can provide the ultimate service on an extreme scale and still be deeply flawed and still be loved.

i think LP naturally needs to follow someone. he’s not a leader, and he doesn’t want to be one. he takes charge when he’s needed, he’s dependable and kind, he cares so much it hurts. but i think following a lead makes him feel secure. he needs to see everyone else rise into their best selves and become self sufficient and content in their lives, but he doesn’t know how to do any of that without someone to build up in turn. launchpad needs validation, especially from the ones he admires, but he’s so programmed to give that he doesn’t know how to ask for anything. i’m guessing half the time he doesn’t even know that he needs help.

launchpad has put himself apart from everyone else, not on a pedestal, but down in the well that never runs dry. he’s forgotten that being happy to help isn’t the same as never needing it.

when him and drake met i think something amazing happened. i think there were a lot of emotions but the strongest had to be relief. drake let launchpad praise and encourage him and launchpad had someone to support and take care of, with the same hyperfixation, no less. two people who had made themselves unreachable suddenly couldn’t separate from each other, and they both know what it’s like to need to look out for everyone else. i think letting their guard down with each other came naturally and vulnerability put itself on the table. they’re both experiencing an easy and strong connection for the first time and it’s beautiful!

i hope these characterizations aren’t too far off, but i wouldn’t be surprised if it seems askew. it’s very difficult for me to keep my thoughts in order but i hope it’s coherent enough. this post is long enough already so i’m going to end it before i talk myself out of sharing it lawl

[tenpintsof-sundrop]

I decided to do a notes app with all my commentary so lots of texts incoming and because of that signing here. -Rotten Anon

He had gone from a gangly, boyish man to a full blown man.

Cue me scrolling up to remember and really absorb the difference. Also the four years makes me think of Seb and how he’s changed and grown. Kids grow up fast sometimes.

This chased out that tiny splash of lust and brought on a whole new wave of confusing emotions. 

Oh here we go.

“JJ!” You cried out her name happily, your entire demeanor changing when you saw her.

I don’t know her that well but she’s in top 5 for me in terms of favorite characters from CM.

Spencer felt a pang of jealousy that he wasn’t being greeted with as much affection.

I don’t know what happened but Spencer, I don’t know what you expected.

“You know that you didn’t have to make up some excuse just to come and see me, right?” 

Oh, this is going to be so bad. Here we go with the (soulmates) trying to avoid the inevitable!

His expression went from tight-knit anger and annoyance to ‘shit-your-pants’ worry. The danger went from being theoretical to being very real in that moment. 

Ohhhhh. Oh Spencer.

Naturally, he remembered your favorite flowers. 

Naturally. With that eidetic memory of his. Those are nice flowers though.

JJ hated the look in Spencer’s eyes. That deep, bitter fear.

Spencer. JJ. Oh.

but she did truly think this highly of Penelope’s skills. 

We love Penelope in this household.

But she definitely couldn’t understand your rage toward Spencer. 

No idea what happened but it’s whatever! Staying mad.

“You knew what kind of person I was back then. I wasn’t good to her. I wasn’t good to anybody.” 

Oh fuck. I probably need to go re-read that wiki.

He wanted to be that person for you. He wanted to be your Superman. (But he feared that he couldn’t live up to that. That he would fail you when the time came.) 

Oh Spencer, baby.

“You know… Henry wants a puppy.” JJ’s voice shook, her throat clenching up around these words. 

I would hug her if I could.

“How I lost you,”

I love them.

“I never told her what happened to me. What happened with Hankel.” 

Communication is key. It’s fine to not talk about if you aren’t ready, but fuck, Spencer, you have to say something at least.

“I didn’t want things to change between us. Even though they did anyway.” 

That’s the way it usually goes, isn’t it?

“Do you still wanna be with her?” JJ asked. 

Fantastic question JJ.

“I fell in love with Will because he looked at me like I was Superwoman, but I stayed in love because he takes care of me when I’m powerless.”

I also love them.

“I know Y/N pretty well.” He replied. “At least I hope I still do.”

Ugh. Fucking. That’s real as shit.

Spencer’s chest jumped at the way she said ‘your son’ - so casually. 

That is your kid.

He could really have a child in his life. This could really be his future. If he played his cards right, this could be his future with you. 

Presented without comment, just an aching feeling, akin to longing, grief and fear.

he could whisper epic romantic ballads in your ear before kissing you with such intense passion that it left your head spinning.

And what a dream that is.

speaking lowly to you as though his words were precious and only meant to be yours. 

God, I love him.

Subby Spencer is so good. He’s trying (and at the moment succeeding) to be Romantic Spencer though. But I do just want to make him melt.

He yanked up the blinds in front of the space where he had set up a very expensive, advanced, gorgeous telescope - one that had been there the last few times you had visited.

Oh baby, what are you doing, you romantic nerd?

You loved that Spencer was someone so gifted who loved to share his knowledge, rather than gatekeeping it or being snide toward others who weren’t as privileged as him.

He’s autistic like that.

When he noticed your shoe half-hanging off your foot, he stepped over to you and softly grabbed your ankle, sliding your shoe off the entire way before gently rubbing the sole of your foot. “Let me help you with that, Princess.” He said quietly, before moving to take the shoe off your other foot. 

I love him. I’ve already said it several times but god this one made me soft.

“I got you a star.” He said proudly, grinning even wider now. 

I just realized how much I would personally love that and I would probably have to marry that person on the spot, or at least kiss them senseless. Thank you for that.

He had literally changed the night sky for you. 

My exact, verbal reaction was an “Oh my god.” and a gasp, precisely like the next fic sentence.

“No, it’s not.” He said firmly, reaching out and putting a hand on your jaw, tilting your face up from looking at the certificate to look at him. 

I don’t really know him, but this makes me so soft and I love him.

It bloomed nothing but those same feelings in return from you.

Well now I’m just thinking of how this also probably works in the opposite, negative way with anger and such.

You could put it next to your marriage certificate; eventually, put next to wedding photos when the two of you eventually got married.

Oh, honey.

Standing proudly because this was just the beginning of it.

And when is the beginning of the end?

Oh, this necklace speech. This fucking star necklace speech. Spencer Reid, I adore you.

You could easily imagine yourself feeling so proud to answer whenever random strangers or your co-workers asked where it was from. 

Knowing what’s to come, and also not knowing, really is something.

“So…” He whispered against your neck. “What else does the birthday girl want?” “I can think of a few things.”

Fuck yeah. Also that kiss against the chain was incredible. I loved it, peak romance.

Subby Spencer, which is just Spencer, I fucking adore you.

After the break-up, Spencer often looked up to the sky and thought about you. 

Oh fuck.

He spent many nights staring out his telescope, wondering if you were happy, blanketed under that inky sky. 

His apartment is probably all wrong but I can picture this so well in my head.

You thought it was a lot like your relationship with Spencer. Placing all of your hopes and dreams onto something already dead - something where the light had died out long ago.

Fucking — ugh.

Anyways, incredible as always. Love Sebastian, brilliant baby boy. I cannot wait to actually see him and his interactions with everything and everyone. I love JJ and Spencer, a special mention to Subby Spencer. This chapter made me a little soft at parts. A little. Is it cause I don’t really know this character so I can only feel so much for this? Or is it because I know this ends horribly at some point and stays that way for 4+ years? Maybe both? And will I come off of anon just to be able to reblog and put a damn read more on my comments? Also a maybe.

You have to know that I was screaming and wiggling in my bed like a worm and smiling SO HARD while reading this for the first time omg.

Even simple comments on fics make me so happy, but these kind of comments make me feel like - superpowered. Like this gives me the energy to go off and write like 10 more fics!!

okay okay

Yeah, Spencer starts out looking very boyish, and he looks even more manly in the later seasons, and I considered setting this in the even later seasons, but I didn't want the time difference to be so vast that their kid would be like 10 years old and Spencer had gone for most of the kid's life without knowing that the kid existed. I thought that four years was the perfect amount of time, because the kid has grown up a bit and can absorb meeting his father for the first time (and he's just starting to ask 'where is my dad? do I have a dad?') but Spencer can still play a role in his childhood and his development

I am glad that you like JJ! A lot of people in the fandom don't like her (because people think that if you like Spencer, you have to hate JJ because they have disagreements, and it's like - you can like both characters and appreciate and understand both sides of those arguments). But anyway - I love JJ. She is one of my all time favs.

"Spencer, I don't know what you expected" - He expected a fucking hug. Because he thought that the reader missed him just as much as he missed her, which might be true on a deeper level, but she's pissed and defensive. So - no hugs!!!

Okay but imagine how haunting it is for him that he remembers everything about her in detail - her favourite flowers, her favourite movie, her favourite foods, her favourite songs - and whenever he interacts with those things, even by coincidence, he is reminded of her long after she left him.

WE LOVE PENELOPE IN THIS HOUSEHOLD!!!!

"No idea what happened but it's whatever!" - When you find out what happened, it's gonna be one of those things where you view the entire story with a different lens and you're gonna go oh.

Okay, okay, in terms of 'what kind of person' Spencer was back then, I was largely thinking of this clip of Spencer and Emily. This is very important for the context. Like, this is most of Reid's characterization after the Hankel incident (when he was on drugs) - which is one of the major precipitating factors for the breakup. (He made not-so-subtle cries for help, and then when people tried to get close in order to help him, he snapped at them and made personal attacks toward them. And that is a huge inspiration for this fic.)

"I would hug her if I could." I WOULD TOOOOO

"I love them." We need more JJ/Spencer friendship appreciation in 2024

"Communication is key. It’s fine to not talk about if you aren’t ready, but fuck, Spencer, you have to say something at least." -> again, his characterization back then was being closed off and defensive as hell and it took him a long time to work through that !!!!

"Presented without comment, just an aching feeling, akin to longing, grief and fear." Rubbing my hands together like a cartoon villain knowing that I accomplished this lmao

"He doesn't gatekeep his knowledge -> He's autistic like that." LITERALLY I SNORTED READING THIS. Because it's TRUUUUUUE. He is just so autistic that he can't contain his knowledge and can't keep it to himself

"My exact, verbal reaction was an “Oh my god.” and a gasp, precisely like the next fic sentence." -> AGAIN, rubbing my hands together like a cartoon villain knowing what I have accomplished. Spencer just makes you go omg. it's an instinct

"Well now I’m just thinking of how this also probably works in the opposite, negative way with anger and such." okay but this is SO TRUE. because they have the soulmate connection, the anger brews between them, and so does sadness and pain. (They feel each other's pain so hard.)

"And when is the beginning of the end?" This GOT TO ME. Because I know when the exact moment is in the fic and it's PAINFUL

"Subby Spencer, which is just Spencer, I fucking adore you." - which is just me all the time lmao

I am so glad you liked it!!! and don't feel like you have to come off anon, I am just so happy that you love my fics enough to read something from a fandom that you're not even in lmao

[redbootsindoriath]

begging you to elaborate on autistic beleg and autistic túrin!!

Bro thanks so much for asking because I’ve been sitting on these thoughts for years.  And now I have to dig up the list.  I’m just glad I wrote it down, and thankfully @frodo-with-glasses is also visiting and could help me remember what I forgot to include.  Brace yourself because this post is going to get long.  Seriously.  I even left out any headcanons and just stuck with what evidence I have from the source material.

We’re going to start out with the obvious: Túrin.  And I say obvious because I have seen one other post talking about how he comes across as autistic, and his traits are more obvious (especially in the more well-known Silmarillion as opposed to other versions of the story).

Clearly he’s quite bright, especially as a strategist (it’s mainly the CurseTM that turns his plans into a bad thing whenever it’s least convenient), but a significant number of fans describe him, sometimes affectionately and sometimes not, as stupid.  This is probably because he’s completely blind to many social cues.  One of our first examples is him never noticing how interested Nellas was in him (whether romantically or platonically I’ve never been able to figure out).

Coming suddenly out of thought [Túrin] looked at Beleg, and said: 'The elf-maiden that you named, though I forget how: I owe her well for her timely witness; yet I cannot recall her. Why did she watch my ways?' Then Beleg looked strangely at him. 'Why indeed?' he said. 'Túrin, have you lived always with your heart and half your mind far away? As a boy you used to walk with Nellas in the woods.' The Children of Húrin, chapter VI

Another example is how he completely missed the fact that Finduilas loved him and he continued shipping Gwinduilas.  (Also note the uncomfortable miscommunication between an autistic character and allistic character in this section.  Both of them assume the other is just being difficult for some reason.)

Afterwards Túrin sought out Gwindor, and said to him: 'Gwindor, dear friend, you are falling back into sadness; do not so! For your healing will come in the houses of your kin, and in the light of Finduilas.' Then Gwindor stared at Túrin, but he said nothing, and his face was clouded. 'Why do you look upon me so?' said Túrin. 'Often your eyes have gazed at me strangely of late. How have I grieved you? I have opposed your counsels; but a man must speak as he sees, nor hide the truth that he believes, for any private cause. I would that we were one in mind; for to you I owe a great debt, and I shall not forget it.' 'Will you not?' said Gwindor. 'Nonetheless your deeds and your counsels have changed my home and my kin. Your shadow lies upon them. Why should I be glad, who have lost all to you?' Túrin did not understand these words, and did but guess that Gwindor begrudged him his place in the heart and counsels of the King. The Children of Húrin, chapter X

There’s more of this in larger amounts in how he dealt with Mîm and Saeros.  He was friends with Mîm until Beleg came back and then he practically ignored Mîm, albeit unintentionally, and somehow didn’t see how betrayed the dwarf felt as a result of that.  Túrin ignored Saeros’s bullying until he couldn’t take it anymore and then he lashed out in a spectacularly disastrous and emotional manner that somehow nobody (except Mablung) saw coming.  I should point out that time that he missed the fact that he’d accidentally taken Saeros’s seat at that one banquet, and immediately afterward completely missed the fact that Saeros was trying to make a snide remark about it:

'Seldom does the march-warden favour us with his company,' [Saeros] said; 'and I gladly yield my accustomed seat for the chance of speech with him.' But Túrin, who was in converse with Mablung the Hunter, did not rise, and said only a curt 'I thank you'. The Children of Húrin, chapter V

On a somewhat similar note to his social awkwardness, he forms very few deep friendships.  When they are deep they're very deep, but most of the rest of the people in his life seem to be just casual acquaintances.  He likes them, but he doesn’t have a deep bond of trust and love with them.  He has his categories of “people I like”,  “people I don’t like”, and “heckin frickin friends that I love with all my heart and soul and I will tell my secrets to”.

His moral system is very black and white.  He may draw the line in weird places, but he has a definite line that cannot be crossed.  We actually get an example of him moving this very clear line:

'At least my hands shall not again be raised against Elves or Men,' said Túrin. 'Angband has servants enough. If others will not take this vow with me, I will walk alone.' Children of Húrin, chapter VI

Notice there’s no “I’ll kill bad humans and bad elves” here.  It’s “nope, no more humans or elves”.  Black and white.

He’s not much good with understanding figurative or flowery language.  Again, quite early on in Children of Húrin there are multiple examples of him going to his friend Labadal and asking him to explain something that Húrin or Morwen had said.  He’s a very intelligent child, but figures of speech are not his strong suit.  Of course, as he grows up he tries to overcorrect this by employing some probably-artificially-learned circumlocution, with varying degrees of success.

He has extremely obvious hyperfixations, and he excels in those skills he does have.  If he doesn’t like doing something, he doesn’t bother with it.  But if he does like doing it, he completely dominates at it.

One only was mightier in arms among the march-wardens of Thingol at that time than Túrin... Children of Húrin, chapter V Led by signs that [Beleg] could read, or by the rumour of the passing of Men among the wild things with whom he could speak, he came often near, but always their lair was deserted when he came to it; for they kept a watch about them by day and night, and at any rumour of approach they were swiftly up and away. 'Alas!' he cried. 'Too well did I teach this child of Men craft in wood and field! An Elvish band almost one might think this to be.' Children of Húrin, chapter VI

A human--and a young one at that--doing better than elves at the things elves are supposed to be best at?  It smacks of the savant stereotype, except with tragedy to balance it.

Some other things--his lax habits about hygiene, his stubbornness, his obsession over single tasks or ideas--don’t really need explaining, I think.  They’re in the Silmarillion so most people are familiar with them.  There are, however, three more specific things that I’m rather undecided on but I’m going to mention them anyway.  First, he’s clumsy when it comes to very fine motor control.  You could attribute some of this to the curse, but it could also just be him being, well, clumsy.

...in crafts of making he had less skill, for he was slow to learn his own strength, and often marred what he made with some sudden stroke. Children of Húrin, chapter V

He has some minor selective mutism.  There are a few times it’s mentioned, but it’s right off the bat in Children of Húrin, literally in the first chapter.

...he was not merry, and spoke little, though he learned to speak early and ever seemed older than his years. Children of Húrin, chapter I

You’ll excuse my pointing out that this hints at Asperger’s specifically: no speech delay.  I know it’s not a commonly accepted subcategory anymore, but it’s a very specific detail and I like those.  Also I feel obligated to include this bit as well:

But courage and strength were renewed in the Elf of Nargothrond, and departing from Taur-nu-Fuin he led Túrin far away. Never once as they wandered together on long and grievous paths did Túrin speak... Children of Húrin, chapter IX

That’s months of silence.  I know it’s because of trauma, but still.  I had to include it.

And finally, he’s extremely sensitive.  I almost didn’t include this one in my list because it isn’t in itself a guaranteed sign of autism, but it’s pretty common as a comorbid symptom.  There are many examples of his emotional sensitivity and quick temper throughout all the versions of the story, so I’m just picking one:

...but [the outlaws] feared him, because of his sudden angers, which they seldom understood. Children of Húrin, chapter VI

Note again the difficulty in communication.  All in all, I think Tolkien wrote Túrin this way on purpose.  He may not have had a word to describe it, but he made a character with too many autistic traits for me to ignore.

Now!  On to Beleg.

The traits that make me suspect Beleg as autistic are much more subtle, but if you’re looking for them you start seeing them everywhere.  Also many of them are in the Lay of the Children of Húrin, which probably explains why not many people noticed them because that thing can be difficult to unravel compared to the other versions of the story.

Right off the bat, we know that Beleg does whatever the heck he wants and nobody can stop him.  I’ve seen a quote floating around on almost every Wiki article about Beleg that says that he followed no man and could not be restrained.  (If anyone can tell me the source for that, I will draw Beleg for you, because it certainly matches what we know about him but I like the precision of knowing the source material in case anyone challenges it.)  While this isn’t exclusively an autistic trait, it is common enough that I thought it deserved to be included.  Beleg also lives in the woods and only comes around Menegroth when he’s good and ready.  Again, not exclusively autistic, but this casually asocial attitude was one of the first things that roused my suspicions about him.  Heck, according to the Lay he’s especially unsocial.

It was Beleg the hunter, who farthest fared     of his folk abroad ahunting by hill     and hollow valley, who cared not for concourse     and commerce of men. The Lay of the Children of Húrin, I: Túrin’s Fostering

In the Lay, “Men” is capitalized if it’s meant to be translated as “humans”.  Note that it’s not capitalized in that passage.  I’m also going to address this next line before moving on because I know someone is going to point it out if I don’t:

Then Beleg departed from Menegroth and went back to the north-marches, where he had his lodges, and many friends... Children of Húrin, chapter VI

He may have “many friends” among the march-wardens, but he doesn’t spend all of his time with them.  In fact, most of the times we meet him he’s alone.  You can have a decently sized friend group without being around them all the time, especially if you’re immortal.

Now, on to his skill set: elves are supposed to be either healers or hunters/warriors.  Beleg really went “watch me do it anyway” because:

And the Eldar deemed that the dealing of death, even when lawful or under necessity, diminished the power of healing.... On the other hand many elven-men were great healers and skilled in the lore of living bodies, though such men abstained from hunting, and went not to war until the last need. Of the Laws and Customs Among the Eldar

Only one was there     in war greater, higher in honour     in the hearts of Elves, than Túrin son of Húrin     untamed in war -- even the huntsman Beleg     of the Hidden People, the son of the wilderness     who wist no sire (to bend whose bow     of the black yew-tree had none of the might),     unmatched in knowledge of the wood's secrets     and the weary hills. The Lay of the Children of Húrin, I: Túrin’s Fostering

Now was it that it came into the heart of Beleg the hunter of the Elves to seek after Túrin so soon as his own hurts were healed. This being done in no great number of days, for he had a skill of healing... Book of Lost Tales part II, Turambar and the Foaloke

Now Beleg was sorely wounded, but he was mighty among the Elves of Middle-earth, and he was moreover a master of healing. Therefore he did not die, and slowly his strength returned. The Silmarillion, Of Túrin Turambar

Talk all you want about older notes being cancelled out by newer notes, I’m still taking this as another subtle hint at Beleg being autistic.

Hyperfixation.  Extreme hyperfixation.  When he’s bent on something, there’s nothing anyone can do to distract him.  This is a focus that’s been honed by all the practice an older-than-the-sun-and-the-moon lifespan can afford.

Many messengers had been sent out by Thingol to seek Túrin within Doriath and in the lands near its borders; but in the year of his flight they searched for him in vain, for none knew or could guess that he was with the outlaws and enemies of Men. When winter came on they returned to the King, save Beleg only. After all others had departed still he went on alone. Children of Húrin, chapter VI

Beleg also thinks in black and white, even more so than Túrin at times.

'Fare free,' said Túrin. 'That wish Mablung gave me at our parting. The grace of Thingol will not stretch to receive these companions of my fall, I think; but I will not part with them now, if they do not wish to part with me. I love them in my way, even the worst a little. They are of my own kind, and there is some good in each that might grow. I think that they will stand by me.' 'You see with other eyes than mine,' said Beleg. 'If you try to wean them from evil, they will fail you. I doubt them, and one most of all.' 'How shall an Elf judge of Men?' said Túrin. 'As he judges of all deeds, by whomsoever done,' answered Beleg... Children of Húrin, chapter VI

His conversational skills are a bit lacking, although less obviously so than Túrin’s.  He swings back and forth between being overly blunt and being overly cryptic.  As with Túrin, he might be trying to adjust for a natural lack of subtlety and accidentally overshooting it.  He also seems to have a habit of dominating--or at least trying to dominate--any conversation he’s in.  The most obvious example I can think of was when he showed up late to Túrin’s trial and literally pressures Elu Thingol himself into accepting Nellas as a witness.

Then there was silence in the hall, and Thingol lifted up his hand to pronounce his doom. But at that moment Beleg entered in haste, and cried: 'Lord, may I yet speak?' 'You come late,' said Thingol. 'Were you not bidden with the others?' 'Truly, lord,' answered Beleg, 'but I was delayed; I sought for one whom I knew. Now I bring at last a witness who should be heard, ere your doom falls.' 'All were summoned who had aught to tell,' said the King. 'What can he tell now of more weight than those to whom I have listened?' 'You shall judge when you have heard,' said Beleg. 'Grant this to me, if I have ever deserved your grace.' 'To you I grant it,' said Thingol. Children of Húrin, chapter V

Bear with me because we’re getting close to the end of the list, but I saved the clues that I found most interesting for last.  Beleg is at any given moment either the most calm and collected character you can imagine, or wildly excitable, and there is no in-between.  Anyone who’s read the Silmarillion knows how stable Beleg can be sometimes, but here:

Then up sprang Beleg: 'That our vaunt and our vows     be not vain for ever, evern such as they swore,     those seven chieftains, an oath let us swear     that is unchanging as Tain-Gwethil's     towering mountain!' Their blades were bared,    as blood shining in the flame of the fires     while they flashed and touched. As with one man's voice     the words were spoken, and the oath uttered     that must unrecalled abide for ever,     a bond of truth and friendship in arms,     and faith in peril. The Lay of the Children of Húrin, II: Beleg

He really suggested the Gaurwaith swear an oath of loyalty like the Fëanorians.  That’s a special breed of chaos.  Not to mention the whole manic monologue he went off with to Flinding (Gwindor) later on in that chapter of the Lay.  All it takes is a single suggestion to send him from 0 to 100000, as long as it’s something he’s interested in.

Now this leads me to my favorite piece of evidence for an autistic Beleg: a surprising inability, especially for an elf, to gauge the volume of his own voice in a moment of excitement.

In eager anger     then up sprang Beleg, crying and calling,     careless of Flinding: 'O Túrin, Túrin,    my troth-brother, to the brazen bonds     shall I abandon thee, and the darkling doors     of the Deeps of Hell?' 'Thou wilt join his journey     to the jaws of sorrow, O bowman crazéd,     if thy bellowing cry to the Orcs should come...' The Lay of the Children of Húrin, II: Beleg

(This is only a small side note, and really doesn’t hold up on its own, but Beleg has dogs.  Animals are a common enough autistic special interest that I thought I might as well mention it, especially when we remember that he can communicate with some animals.)

Now enough of the individual traits. When we look at the two characters together, we can of course contrast the old-autistic and young-autistic differences.  Beleg literally does whatever he wants and people have just learned not to bother trying to change his mind.  He doesn’t bother trying to fit into everyone else’s world but rather runs along perfectly content in his own parallel reality.  Túrin, on the other hand, is stressed, frustrated, and confused both by himself and by everyone else, and he spends most of his life trying to figure out where and how he’s meant to fit in.  But I’d also like to mention that of Túrin’s friends in the whole story, Beleg is the one who has the least miscommunication (although when there is miscommunication it’s spectacularly bad, insert obligatory dark humor here, yada yada).  They may talk in rather dated syntax, but they are able to communicate what is needed when it’s needed.  They’re both blunt and they trust each other enough to take a verbal blow without grudging it afterwards.

'I would lead my own men, and make war in my own way,' Túrin answered. 'But in this at least my heart is changed: I repent every stroke save those dealt against the Enemy of Men and Elves. And above all else I would have you beside me. Stay with me!' 'If I stayed beside you, love would lead me, not wisdom,' said Beleg. 'My heart warns me that we should return to Doriath. Elsewhere a shadow lies before us.' 'Nonetheless, I will not go there,' said Túrin. 'Alas!' said Beleg. 'But as a fond father who grants his son's desire against his own foresight, I yield to your will. At your asking, I will stay.' 'That is well indeed!' said Túrin. Children of Húrin, chapter VI

For being in a book packed with flowery dialogue, their conversations tend to be rather to-the-point.  There’s no small talk, everything that they discuss is pertinent to the current situation.  And Túrin, who is not particularly well-known for listening to anyone’s advice at any time for any reason, seems to respect and appreciate Beleg’s bluntness even to the point of saying this immediately after Beleg called him out on a particularly stupid comment:

Túrin's eyes glinted, but as he looked in Beleg's face the fire in them died, and they went grey, and he said in a voice hardly to be heard: 'I wonder, friend, that you deign to come back to such a churl. From you I will take whatever you give, even rebuke. Henceforward you shall counsel me in all ways, save the road to Doriath only.' Children of Húrin, chapter VII

They’re both stubborn and they’ve found a way to work around it because they know that there are no subtle background messages to what the other is saying.

And, of course, to close, I’d like to point out that autistics tend to find each other because they feel understood in a world that is as foreign as a different world.  Perhaps Túrin, coming to a kingdom of people who aren’t even of the same race as his own, found solace in someone who understood the way his mind worked without having to explain anything, and that someone was Beleg.  Never before had he known anyone who so instinctively understood the way his mind worked; and Beleg, thousands of years old, alone even in a realm filled with his own people, found in a human child a sense of purpose and validation that he’d not even known he was missing his whole life, and chose a mortal as his closest friend.

TLDR, there is no TLDR.  I’ve way overthought this and as a result I’m not sure how to summarize it.

If I think of anything I missed in my essay here, I’ll add it later in the comments or a reblog or something.

[vickyvicarious]

Leverage Redemption Pros/Cons List

Okay! Now that I've finally finished watching the first half of Leverage: Redemption, I thought I'd kind of sum up my overall impression. Sort of a pro/con list, except a little more just loosely structured rambles on each bullet point rather than a simple list.

This got way out of hand from what I expected so I'm going to put it all under a cut. If you want the actual bulletpoint list, here it is:

PROS

References

Continuity

Nate

Representation

Themes

New Characters

General Vibe

CONS

'Maker and Fixer'

Episode Twins

Sophie's Stagefright

Thiefsome

You might notice the pros list is longer, and that's because I do love the show! I really like most of what it does, and my gripes are fewer in number and mostly smaller in size. But they do exist and I felt like talking about them as well as the stuff I loved.

PROS

References

There is clearly so much love and respect for the original show here. Quite aside from the general situation, there's a lot of references to individual episodes or character traits from the first show. For example, Parker's comments on disliking clowns, liking puppets, disliking horses, stabbing vs. tasing people. The tasing was an ongoing thing in the original, the stabbing happened once (S1) but was referenced later in the original show, the clown thing only had a few mentions scattered across the entire original show. The puppet thing was mentioned once in S5, and the horses thing in particular was only brought up in S1 once. But they didn't miss the chance to put the nod to it in there; in fact with those alone we see a good mix of common/ongoing jokes and smaller details.

We got "dammit Hardison" and "it's a very distinctive..." but also Eliot and Parker arguing about him catering a mob wedding, and Eliot being delighted by lemon as a secret ingredient in a dish in that same episode (another reference to the mob episode). Hardison and Eliot banter about "plan M", an ongoing joke starting from the very first episode of the original show. We see Sophie bring up Hardison's accent in the Ice Job, Parker also makes reference to an early episode when describing "backlash effect" to Breanna, in an episode that also references her brother slightly if you look for it.

Heck, the last episode of these first eight makes a big deal out of nearly reproducing the iconic opening lines of the original show with Fake Nate's "we provide... an advantage." And I mean, all the "let's go steal a ___" with Harry being confused about how to use them.

Some of the lines are more obviously references to the original show, but they strike a decent balance with smaller or unspoken stuff as well, and also mix in some references between the team to events we the audience have never seen. If someone was coming into this show for the first time, they wouldn't get all the easter egg joy but most of the references would stand on their own as dialogue anyway. In general, I think they struck a good balance of restating needed context for new viewers while still having enough standalone good lines and more-fun-if-you-get-it callbacks.

Continuity

Similar to the last point, but slightly different. The characters' development from the original to now is shown so well. I'm not going to go on about this too long, but the writers clearly didn't want to let the original characters stagnate during the offscreen years. There was a lot of real thought put into how they would change or not.

It's really written well. We can see just how cohesive a team Parker, Hardison, and Eliot became. We get a sense of how they've spent their time, and there's plenty of evidence that they remained incredibly close with Sophie and Nate until this past year. The way everyone defers to Parker is different from the original show and clearly demonstrates how she's been well established as the leader for years now - they show this well even as Parker is stepping back to let Sophie take point in these episodes. Eventually that is actually called out by Sophie in the eighth episode, so we might see more mastermind Parker in the back half of the show, maybe. But even with her leading, it's clear how collaborative the team has become, with everyone bouncing ideas off one another and adding their input freely. Sometimes they even get so caught up they leave the newbies completely in the dust. But for the most part we get a good sense of how the Parker/Hardison/Eliot team worked with her having final say on plans but the others discussing everything together. A little bit more collaborative than it was with Nate at the helm.

Meanwhile Sophie has built a home and is deeply attached to it. She and Nate really did retire, at least for the most part, and she was living her happy ending until he died. She's out of practice but still as skilled as ever, and we're shown how much her grief has changed her and how concerned the others are for her.

There's a lot of emphasis on how they all look after one another and the found family is clearer than ever. Sophie even calls Hardison "his father's son" - clearly referring to Nate.

Nate

Speaking of Nate! They handled his loss so, so well. His story was the most complete at the end of the last show, and just from a narrative point, losing him makes the most sense of all the characters. But the way he dies and his impact on the show and the characters continues. It's very respectful to who he was - who he truly was.

Nate was someone they all loved, but he was a deeply flawed individual. Sophie talks about how he burned too hot, but at least he burned - possibly implying to me that his drinking was related to his death. In any case, there's no mystery to it. We don't know how he died but that's not what's most important about his death. This isn't a quest for revenge or anything... it's just a study of grief and trying to heal.

Back to who he really was real quick - the show doesn't eulogize him as better than he was. They're honest about him. From the first episode's toast they raise in his memory, to the final episode where Sophie and Eliot are deeply confused by Fake Nate singing his praises, the team knows who he was. They don't erase his flaws... but at the same time he was so clearly theirs. He was family, he was the man they trusted and loved and followed into incredibly dangerous situations, and whose loss they all still feel deeply.

That said, the show doesn't harp on this point. They reference him, but they don't overwhelm new viewers with a constant barrage of Nate talk. It always serves a purpose, primarily for Sophie's storyline of moving through her grief. Anyway, @robinasnyder said all of this way better than me here, so go read that as well.

Representation

Or should I say, Jewish Hardison, Autistic Parker, Queer Breanna!

Granted, Hardison's religion isn't quite explicitly stated to be Jewish so much as he mentions that his "Nana runs a multi-denominational household", but nonetheless. He gets the shows big thesis statement moment, he gets a beautiful speech about redemption that is the emotional cornerstone of that episode and probably Harry's entire arc throughout the show. And while I'm not Jewish myself, most of what I've seen from Jewish fans is saying that Hardison's words here were excellent representation of their beliefs. (@featherquillpen does a great job in that meta of contextualizing this with his depiction in the original show as well.)

Autistic Parker, however, is shown pretty dang blatantly. She already was very much coded as autistic in the original show, but the reboot has if anything gone further. She sees a child psychologist because she likes using puppets to represent emotions, she stims, she uses cue cards and pre-written scripts for social interactions, there's mention of possible texture sensitivity and her clothes are generally more loose and comfortable. She's gotten better at performing empathy and understanding how people typically work, but it's specifically described as something she learned how to do and she views her brain as being different from ones that work that way (same link). Again, not autistic myself but from what I've seen autistic fans find a lot to relate to in her portrayal. And best of all, this well-rounded and respectful depiction does not show any of these qualities as a lack on her part. There's no more of those kinda ableist comments or "what's wrong with you" jokes that were in the original show. Parker is the way she is, and that allows her to do things differently. She's loved for who she is, and any effort made to fit in is more just to know how so that she can use it to her advantage when she wants to on the job - for her convenience, not others' comfort.

Speaking of loved for who you are.... okay, again, queer Breanna isn't confirmed onscreen yet, and I don't count Word of God as true canon. But I can definitely believe we're building there. Breanna dresses in a very GNC way, and just her dialogue and, I dunno, vibes seem very queer to me. She has a beautiful speech in the Card Game Job about not belonging or being accepted and specifically mentions "the way they love" as one of those things that made her feel like she didn't belong. And that scene is given so much weight and respect. (Not to mention other hints throughout the episode about how much finding her own space meant to her.) Also, the whole theme of feeling rejected and the key for her to begin really flourishing is acceptance for who she is, not any desire for her to be anyone else, is made into another big moment. Yeah, textually that moment is about her feeling like she has to fill Hardison's shoes and worrying about her past, but the themes are there, man.

Themes

I talked a bit about this yesterday, so I'm mostly just going to link to that post, but... this series so far is doing a really good job in my opinion of giving people arcs and having some good themes. Namely the redemption one, from Hardison's speech (which I'm gonna talk a little more about in the next point), and this overall theme of growing up and looking to the future (from above the linked post).

New Characters

Harry and Breanna are fantastic characters. I was kind of worried about Harry being a replacement Nate, but... he really isn't. Sure, he's the older white guy who has an angsty past but it's in a very different way and his personality and relationships with the rest of the crew are correspondingly different. I think the dynamic of a very friendly, cheerful, kind, but still bad guy (as @soundsfaebutokay points out) is a great one to show, and he's got a really cool arc I think of learning to be a better person, and truly understanding Hardison's point about redemption being a process not a goal. His role on the team also has some interesting applications and drawbacks, as @allegorymetaphor talked about. I've kind of grown to think that the show is gradually building up to an eventual Sophie/Harry romance a ways down the line, and I'm actually here for it. Regardless, his relationships with everyone are really interesting.

As for Breanna, first of all and most importantly I love her. Secondly, I think she's got a really interesting story. She's a link to Hardison's past, and provides a really interesting perspective for us as someone younger who has grown up a) looking up to Leverage and b) in a bleaker and more hopeless world. Breanna's not an optimist, and she's not someone who was self-sufficient and unconcerned with the rest of the world at the start, like everyone else. She believes that the world sucks and she wants it to be better, but she doesn't know how to make that happen. She outright says she's desperate and that's why she's working with Leverage. At the same time, Breanna is pretty down on herself and wants to prove herself but gets easily shaken by mistakes or being scolded, which is a stark contrast to Hardison's general self-confidence. There are several times when she starts to have an idea then hesitates to share it, or expects her emotions to be dismissed, or gets really disheartened when she's corrected or rejected, or dwells on her mistakes, or when she is accepted or praised she usually takes a surprised beat and is shy about it (she almost always looks down and away from the person, and her smile is often small or startled). Breanna looks up to the team so much (Parker especially, then probably Eliot) and she wants to prove herself. It's going to be so good to see her grow.

General Vibe

A brief note, but it seems a fitting one to end on. The show keeps it's overall tone and feeling from the original show. The fun, the competency porn, the bad guys and clever plans and happy endings. It's got differences for sure, but the characters are recognizably themselves and the show as a whole is recognizably still Leverage. For the most part they just got the feeling right, and it's really nice.

CONS (no, not that kind)

'Maker and Fixer'

So when I started writing this meta earlier today, I was actually a lot more annoyed by the lack of unique 'maker' skills being shown by Breanna. Basically the only time she tries to use a drone, the very thing she introduced herself as being good at, it breaks instantly. I was concerned about her being relegated into just doing what Hardison did, instead of bringing her own stuff to the table. But the seventh episode eased some of those fears, and the meta I just wrote for someone else asking about Breanna's 'maker' skills as shown this season made me realize there's more nuance than that. I'd still like to have seen more of that from her, but for now the fact that we don't see a lot of 'maker' from her so far seems more like a character decision based in Breanna's insecurities.

Harry definitely gets more 'inside man' usage. His knowledge as a 'fixer' comes in handy several times. Nonetheless, I'm really curious if there are any bigger ways to use it, aside from him just adding in some exposition/insight from time to time. I'm not even entirely sure how much more they can pull from this premise in terms of relevant skills, but I hope there's more and I'd like to see it. Maybe a con built more around him playing a longer role playing his old self, like they tried in the Tower Job? Maybe it's more a matter of him needed distance from that part of his past, being unable to face it without lashing out - in that case it could be a good character growth moment possibly for him to succeed in being Scummy Lawyer again down the line? I dunno.

Episode Twins

This was something small that kind of bothered me a little earlier in the season. It's kind of the negative side to the references, I guess? And I'm not even sure how much it annoys me really, but I just kinda noticed and felt sort of weird about it.

Rollin' on the River has a lot of references/callbacks to the The Wedding Job.

The Tower Job has a lot of references/callbacks to The White Rabbit Job.

The Paranormal Hacktivity Job has a lot of references/callbacks to the Future Job.

I guess I was getting a little concerned that there would be a 'match this episode' situation where almost every new Redemption episode is very reminiscent of an old one. I love the callbacks, but I don't want to see a lack of creativity in this new show, and this worried me for a minute. Especially when it was combined with all three of those episodes dealing with housing issues of some kind. Now, that's a huge concern for a lot of people, and each episode has its own take on a different problem within that huge umbrella, but it still got me worried about a lack of variety in topics/cases.

The rest of the episodes failing to line up so neatly in my head with older episodes helped a lot to ease this one, though. Still, this is my complaining section so I figured I'd express my concerns as they were at the time. Even if I no longer really worry about it much.

Sophie's Stagefright

Yeah, I know this is just a small moment in a single episode, but it annoyed me! Eliot made a bit of a face at Sophie going onstage, but I thought it was just him being annoyed at the general situation. However, they started out with her being awful up there until she realized the poem was relevant to the con - at which point her reading got so much better.

This felt like a complete betrayal of Sophie's beautiful moment at the end of the original show where she got over her trouble with regular acting and played Lady Macbeth beautifully in front of a full theater of audience members. This was part of the con, but only in the sense that it gave her an alibi/place to hide, and I always interpreted it as her genuinely getting over her stagefright problems. It felt like such a beautiful place to end her arc for that show, especially after all her time spent directing.

Now, her difficulty onstage in the Card Game Job was brief and at the very beginning of being up on stage. @rinahale suggested to me that maybe it was a deliberate tactic to draw the guy's attention, and the later skill was simply her shifting focus to make the sonnet easier for Breanna to listen to and interpret, but he seemed more enraptured when she was doing well than otherwise in my opinion and it just doesn't quite sit well with me. My other theory was that maybe she just hasn't been up on stage in a long time, and much like she complaining about being rusty at grifting before the team pushed her into trying, she got nervous for a moment at the very beginning. The problem there is that I think she'd definitely still get involved in theater even when she and Nate were retired. I guess she could've quit after he died, and a year might be long enough to make her doubt herself again, but... still.

I just resent that they even left it ambiguous at all. Sophie's skills should be solid on stage at this point in my opinion.

Thiefsome

...And now we come to my main complaint. This is, by far, the biggest issue I have with the show.

I feel like I should put a disclaimer here that I had my doubts from the beginning about the thiefsome becoming canon onscreen. I thought the famous "the OT3 is safe" tweet could easily just mean that they are all still alive and well, or all still working together, without giving us confirmation of a romantic relationship. Despite this, the general fandom expectations/hopes really got to me, especially with the whole "lock/pick/key" thing. I tried to temper my expectations again when the character descriptions came out and only mentioned Hardison loving Parker, not Eliot, but I still got my hopes up.

The thing is, I was disappointed pretty quickly.

The very first episode told me that in all likelihood we would never see Hardison and Parker and Eliot together in a romantic sense. Oh, there was so much coding. So much hinting. So much in the way of conversations that were about Parker/Hardison's relationship but then Eliot kept getting brought into them. They were portrayed as a unit of three.

But then there was this.

I love all of those scenes of Parker and Hardison being intimate and loving and comfortable with one another and their relationship. I really do. But it didn't escape my notice that there's nothing of the sort with Eliot. If they wanted a canon onscreen thiefsome, it would by far make the most sense to just have it established from the start. But there aren't any scenes where Eliot shares the same kind of physical closeness with either of them like they do each other. Parker and Hardison kiss; he doesn't kiss anyone. They have several clearly romantic conversations when alone; he gets important conversations with both but the sense of it being romantic isn't there.

Establishing Eliot as part of the relationship after Hardison is gone just... doesn't make any sense. It would be more likely to confuse new viewers, to make them wonder if Parker is cheating on Hardison with Eliot, or if they have a Y shaped relationship rather that a triangle. It would be so much clumsier.

Still, up until the Double-Edged-Sword Job I believed the writers might keep it at this level of 'plausible hinting but not quite saying'. There's a lot of great stuff with all of them, and I never expecting making out or whatever anyway; a cheek-kiss was about the height of my hopes to be honest. I mostly just hoped for outright confirmation and, failing that, I was happy enough to have the many hints and implications.

But then Marshal Maria Shipp came along. And I don't really have anything against her as a character - in fact, I think she has interesting story potential and will definitely come back. But the episode framed her fight with Eliot as a sexyfight TM, much like his fight with Mikel back in the day. And then his flirting with her rode the line a little of "he's playing her for the con" and "he's genuinely flirting." The scene where he tells her his real name is particularly iffy, but actually was the one that convinced me he was playing her. Because he seems to be watching her really closely, and to be very concerned about her figuring out who he really is. I am very aware though that I'm doing a lot of work to interpret it the way I want. On surface appearance, Eliot's just flirting with an attractive woman, like he did on the last show. And that's probably the intention, too.

But the real nail in the coffin for me was when Sophie compared herself and Nate to Eliot and Maria. That was a genuine scene, not the continuation of the teasing from before. And Sophie is the one whose insight into people is always, always trustworthy. She is family to the thiefsome. For this to make any sense, either Eliot/Parker/Hardison isn't a thing, or they are and Sophie doesn't know - and I can't imagine why in the hell she wouldn't know.

Any argument to make them still canon leaves me unsatisfied. If she knows and they haven't admitted it to her - why wouldn't they, after all this time? Why would she not have picked up on it even without an outright announcement? Some people suggested they wouldn't admit it because they thought Nate would be weird about it, but that doesn't seem any more in character to me than the other possibilities. In fact, the only option that doesn't go against my understanding of these people and their observational abilities/the close relationship they share.... is that the thiefsome is not a thing.

And furthermore, the implication of this conversation - especially the way it ended, with Eliot stomping off looking embarrassed while Sophie smiled knowingly - is that Eliot will get into another relationship onscreen. Maybe not a full-blown romantic relationship. But the Maria Shipp tension is going to be resolved somehow, and at this point I'm half-expecting a hook-up simply because of Sophie's reaction and how much I trust her judgement of such things. Even if she's letting her grief cloud her usual perceptiveness... it feels iffy.

It just kinda feels like I wasn't even allowed to keep my "interpret these hints/maybe they are" thiefsome that I expected after the first couple episodes convinced me we wouldn't get outright confirmation. (I mean, I will anyway, and I love the hints and allusions regardless.) And while I'm definitely not the kind of fan who is dependent on canon for my ships, and still enjoy all their interactions/will keep right on headcanoning them all in a relationship, it's just.... a bummer.

Feels like a real cop-out. Like the hints of Breanna being queer are enough to meet their quota and they won't try anything 'risky' like a poly relationship. I dunno. It's annoying.

.

That's the end of the list! Again, overall I love the new show a lot and have few complaints.

[knickynoo]

I loved your recent post about Marty and his ADHD! It was soo spot on. And, I saw in the tags that you mentioned Alex Keaton and how you believe he’s not neurotypical either. Care to elaborate? Do you have any headcanons about neurodivergent™ Alex? I’d love to hear your thoughts! :)

Oh, hey, thank you! Marty having ADHD seems to be one of the most common headcanons in the fandom, so that post was a lot of fun to work on.

As far as Alex goes...yes, I will elaborate, BUT I'm putting it under a cut because ya girl is really going to E L A B O R A T E.

I've mentioned before that I think Alex's overall personality/demeanor comes from a variety of different places. Some parts of who he is are likely caused by all the pressure put on him to be a high achiever, due to being so academically gifted from a young age. Other parts are due to being overly coddled and spoiled by Elyse and Steven. Still, there's probably a part of Alex that genuinely enjoys being difficult and getting a rise out of people. Then, there's the obvious anxiety he struggles with, which even MJF has talked about in some interviews when discussing how he approached playing a guy like Alex.

"Giftedness" & anxiety are already included under the umbrella of neurodiversity but in Alex's case, I actually think there's even more to it than that. Yeah, Alex is a funny character whose actions/words are so often played for laughs. He can also be a really irksome character when he's dishing out the sarcasm and being selfish. But I also can't help but look at Alex and think, This guy is just so not NT and he is struggling, somebody Help Him. And since Alex P. Keaton is one of my favorite characters AND I love to analyze/ do deep dives AND the topic of neurodiversity is a particularly strong interest of mine... well, here you go....

Mans is autistic.

• Difficulty with social cues and "reading the room". Seriously, there are so many instances of everyone around him all being on the same page about something or dealing with something serious, and Alex walks in and just proceeds to miss every single cue people throw his way. Two scenes that pop into my head, in particular, are the Reflective Pajamas one and the Clam Puff one, lol.

• He frequently struggles with putting himself in other people's shoes: Alex is certainly shown to be a compassionate person. He can recognize when people are hurting and will do the right thing, but sometimes he needs some help to get there. It seems that a lot of the time, all he knows is how he feels or thinks about something, and it doesn't occur to him that another person could be experiencing it differently. Then, once Steven, Elyse, Ellen, etc, break the situation down for him and explicitly say things like, Hey, that person's feelings are hurt because... or Here is the exact reason this person is angry... Alex is finally able to connect the dots, which usually leads to him being like, I hadn't ever thought about that/ I didn't mean it. (Of course, there are also times where Alex is just purposely being a jerk, but I'm not focusing on those)

• Specific, intense interests: Politics & economics, obviously. It's made well-known that Alex has been completely fixated on these two areas since he was a toddler. He's prone to enthusiastic, overly detailed discourse on the topics and either doesn't care or can't pick up on when people are growing bored at listening to him.

• Also, can we talk about how it's established that Alex's favorite toy as a little kid was a box? Like, he carried it everywhere, played with it, slept with it, and was devastated when it fell apart. Idk, I know kids can be attached to random objects, but it's just interesting that Alex is noted as having been enamored with a box. I'm just picturing little Alex, ignoring all the toys he has in favor of just sitting and staring at a box, and his parents are like, Yeah, this is normal.

• Highly intelligent, bordering on genius/prodigy (He was doing long-division at like, 3 years old) but has difficulty connecting with peers & making friends: This is most prominently shown in "A, My Name is Alex," where we see glimpses of various events in his childhood. In the scene where Alex meets Greg, we learn that Alex spends recess inside, helping the teacher plan her lessons rather than going out to socialize with his classmates. He's bewildered at Greg's invitation to come play, meaning he likely spent the majority of his childhood on his own due to being considered an outcast by his peers and just generally relating more easily to adults. (He also mentions taking night classes at a local college at age SEVEN. So like. If the long-division story and night class thing are taken to be actual facts of Alex's childhood...we're looking at something similar to hyperlexia/hypernumeracy here. This kid must have been bored out his mind having to sit through elementary school if he was that advanced)

• Very literal at times/ misses sarcasm: Interestingly enough, APK is very fond of being sarcastic but doesn't do so well when he's on the receiving end of it. Someone will make a joke or spin the sarcasm towards him for once, and he'll either just stare blankly like ???? or smile/thank them and they're like, Yeah, that wasn't a compliment, or, I was kidding.

• Black and white/ inflexible thinking: This might be the biggest one. Alex is super concerned with rules and ensuring that everyone is following them correctly. There's right and there's wrong, with no gray areas or middle ground as far as he's concerned. My favorite instance of this is in the episode where the family goes to visit Steven's mother and Rob, Alex's uncle, is telling a story of how Steven got in trouble as a kid for refusing to put his name in the upper right corner of his test papers. Everyone around the table laughs...except for Alex, who is deeply troubled by the information.

Just...Steven's delivery. The way he pauses and stares at Alex before replying with a ridiculous punishment that obviously didn't happen, but Alex shows no signs of being aware of or amused at the joke and is just glad his father faced the consequences of his actions. It's great, and a prime example of Alex's preoccupation with "the rules."

Another good example (& one that crosses into the empathy category as well) is "Big Brother is Watching", where Alex exposes a cheating scandal at school (that involves Mallory) and then can't wrap his mind around why everyone is angry at him when he gets the students who were involved suspended. He spends half the episode saying things like, But cheating is wrong. It's wrong and I told the truth about it. I did what's right. You (Steven) told me to always tell the truth, which I did. WHY PEOPLE ANGRY???

And so Steven has to basically spell it out and be like, You got those students suspended, Alex. They are upset with you because of this. They were exposed publically, which embarrassed them, and people tend to not like being embarrassed.

And Alex is like, Oh.

• Repetitive behavior/movements: Most often seen when Alex is distressed or scared, his mannerisms definitely stand out in many scenes. He paces, taps his foot/bounces his leg, rubs his hands together or over his lap, rocks back and forth, and avoids eye contact. I made a post about this a short while back because it really is interesting (and a testament to how well the character was played). There are moments where Alex is completely confident and "calm", and you can see that reflected in the way he carries himself. But whenever he's upset or anxious, you'll start to notice a variety of the things listed above.

So. Yeah. All these things considered...I headcanon Alex as possibly being autistic?? Which is not a take I've ever seen anyone else mention (and I seriously doubt anyone working on the show had this angle in mind at all) but watching through the series, my radar just goes off when it comes to APK.

I have no idea how this will be received. (If anyone even reads it because wow, this got away from me).

Thanks for the ask. As you may be able to tell, I enjoyed being able to spew out my thoughts.

[kitkatopinions]

I’m probably over thinking/over complicating things but Ironwood and Penny have been really bothering me. It because prior to the moment that destroyed Penny’s arc the show and Ruby were really pushing that Penny not matter her body was human and that’s a very positive I like that especially when it comes to characters of Penny’s nature.

So my problem kicks in when I think of Ironwood. Namely this part in his song:

“What if it's true as they say

That I don't have a heart

That I'm more a machine than a man?”

Like wtf. I mean I “get it” especially with that dumbass line of Winter. But when it’s talked about Ironwood it was always in reference to the fact that his body is half robotic and there for we are meant to see the correlation between his body and his character.?

Put next to Penny’s message that really bothers me. Even more so since Penny gets a “reward” of becoming human, but the writers push that Ironwood sacrificing his arm to stop Watts and replacing it (a medical decision that could be debated given that he wanted to be up and able immediately to handle things not to mention that fact that nerves and muscle are severely fucked up) with a new (uncharacteristically uncovered) prosthetic means that he’s moving away from humanity. This thought has been driving nuts for a week.

I don’t think you’re overthinking at all. The writers have been pretty blatant about what they think of disabled people.

On the topic of James, 1. They wrote their triple amputee character to be coded as losing his humanity. This is suspect from the get go, but writers imo need to be especially careful and sensitive when they display things like villains with prosthetics. CRWBY is not careful and sensitive. 2. They specifically connected the loss of his limb to the loss of his humanity outside of the show, and as you said, his new prosthetic is uncharacteristically uncovered as well, and there were some pointed shots showcasing his arm and emphasizing it before showing Ironwood doing something wrong as well as a shot that particularly bothered me of them having James fall to Winter when his aura broke and then them immediately flashing to a fallen, broken robotic soldier. Tying the loss of someone’s humanity to them losing a limb / gaining a prosthetic in any way is wrong imo. There are better ways to display someone’s loss of humanity than villainizing the loss of his arm, and I don’t care what justifications people have for ‘they just meant to say that he was too impatient to-’ Idc. Tying the loss of humanity to the gaining of a prosthetic is wrong. 3. They never once treated Ironwood’s clear PTSD, history of mental health problems, and trauma with any sympathy, instead spending their time ragging on him for not wanting to feel his pain anymore and condemning him for... Trying to control his emotions. 4. CRWBY also gave him a semblance and explained how it worked by saying he hyper focused, talking about how James’ passive semblance that he can’t control forces him to focus on one single goal and fixate. I’m not disabled, but I do hyper fixate. It’s not something I can control, and to see it used as a justification for evil (in one of my favorite characters in the series who reminded me of my father lol) and being treated as something bad... It doesn’t feel good. I can’t imagine how other people must feel who are much more affected by this than I am. 5. As you say, the writers go out of their way to reference his metal body as being more ‘machine than man’ and make lines about him being heartless. And yeah, I get that he’s an allegory for the ‘Tin Man’ from Wizard of Oz but ffs the Tin Man had always had a heart and I honestly thought that was what they were going for in V3 with Qrow commenting that sometimes he thought James didn’t have a heart and the audience seeing Ironwood’s actions as questionable, only for the entire show to tell us repeatedly that he actually is a caring and good person who’s willing to destroy all the forces he was proud to show off if it means saving lives and was actually pretty freaking blameless in the Fall of Beacon and was super kind to the kids and when the chips were down, Qrow and Glynda both absolutely knew without even questioning that James would never ever willingly hurt the world or fully betray them and had absolutely no hand in the Beacon attack. Like, I’m sorry, but between Penny and Ironwood, season eight is the season of taking well done character allusions and throwing them out the window for the exact opposite moral done incredibly poorly. And anyway, getting off of that rant, making a ‘more machine than man’ sentiment tied around a triple amputee character is incredibly harmful and hurtful to people with disabilities and only propagates the real world stereotypes against people like James.

So, yes, their treatment of Ironwood, his mental health, and specifically his disabilities was so badly done, harmful, incredibly insensitive, and frankly, appalling that it came from grown adult writers in 2019-2021! But, as you point out, it’s not just Ironwood. And here’s where things really get bad for CRWBY. Because Ironwood alone is enough for me to say they were ableist - unintentionally or otherwise - and ought to apologize for the hurt they’ve caused their fans. But when you get into the rest of their treatment of characters with metal prosthetics or non-flesh elements to their body, it becomes a pattern.

Penny’s entire body is removed from her on threat of death, with the justification that it’s hurting her and that her body is just a machine and not part of who she is, contradicting Penny’s earlier themes of self-acceptance and validating her humanity in the body she already had. She then dies by assisted suicide in a way that feels unneeded, after having asked to be killed earlier in the narrative. So many people have talked about how destructive her story became in V8 and how it personally hurt them, especially non-binary people, trans people, autistic people, or disabled people who saw themselves in Penny or saw in her arc something that they could relate to, only to have Penny’s differences stripped away from her, having her conform to normal body standards and have her previous body type invalidated by her friends, and then they had her killed via assisted suicide in an unbelievable way, insisting as well that she never made a choice before she was a flesh-person and couldn’t feel things right. It’s all horribly done, but it’s important to remember that while Ironwood is accused of losing his humanity as he loses a third limb and gets a third prosthetic, Penny’s earlier validation is taken away and is instead only granted and she is only justified as a person when she loses all her ‘nuts and bolts’ and becomes a flesh person. And then she’s killed anyway.

Yang’s prosthetic is the least ill handled, but it is still dismissed as ‘just extra’ despite her former fairly strong arc of coming to terms with her disability and making it a part of her. She casually justifies what’s happening with Penny despite Penny not being in a position of adequate consent. Yang’s trauma and PTSD also vanished when Adam died at the end of season six and in my opinion, that situation was handled very badly.

Maria and Pietro, two other disabled characters, disappeared, left when Amity fell and were not even mentioned iirc since. Not even when Penny is awake, not even when they’re evacuating, not even when Penny is choosing to die. She never brings up her father. And Ruby’s supposed ‘mentor’ who never had an actual narrative role that couldn’t have been filled by Qrow and has had nothing to do since season six even past that is also forgotten out in the tundra and not mentioned again.

The writers go out of their way to have Winter say that because she was just following orders (a statement that contradicts her previous character imo) and pushing down her emotions, she was the real machine, whereas Penny had been human underneath her apparently easily tossed aside and destructive previous metal body.  And I don’t know if this means anything, but in that scene where she and Penny meet when Penny is dying and transferring the maiden powers to Winter, Winter is in her V7 character design, instead of wearing her assistive brace. Like I said, I don’t know if I’m reading into that, but with everything else, it feels like an iffy choice.

So yeah. In the past season CRWBY specifically cultivated a pattern of disrespect, dismissal, and villainization of any non-flesh attributes in my opinion. It seems pretty intentional and clear to me, but I’m willing to accept that maybe this was just a wildly bad uneducated mistake. Here’s the thing about that, though, after the Faunus/Racism allegory, the CRWBY writers should’ve learned their lesson and not touched on any real world topics that they weren’t willing to do the research on and treat with the sensitivity and care and respect the topics needed. Their Faunus/Racism allegory was harmful and hurtful and frankly could’ve sunk them in the water, they should’ve learned to put much more care and effort into their work or stayed the hell away from anything that could further spread the negative stereotypes surrounding real world people. But they didn’t learn their lesson and they’ve continued to push harmful narratives with no awareness or sensitivity. I don’t think you’re over-reacting at all, I think this is something that - intentionally written or otherwise - the writers should be called out on, or they’re just going to continue writing harmful narratives.

Also, I am not disabled, many of my opinions on the treatment of these characters comes from posts I’ve seen from many disabled or neurodivergent RWBY fans (or former RWBY fans,) or other people more affected by these narratives - minus the thing I said about Winter appearing without her brace when she talks to Penny, as it was something I just noticed while typing out this post. Since I’m not disabled, I’m not the best person to talk about these things, so if I got anything wrong in this, anyone more affected, please know you can let me know and I can edit and fix.

[incomprehensiblelentils]

1, 39, 43, 133

1. a book that is close to your heart

The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth, which I think I've blogged about before. It's about a young lesbian growing up in an extremely oppressive religious environment and struggling with guilt over her parents' deaths, and in the second half of the book her guardian sends her to conversion therapy. There is a movie, which I haven't seen and don't plan on watching, because by all accounts the movie mostly focuses on the conversion therapy half of the book and that's not why I connected so strongly with it. So much of the first half of Cameron's story reminds me of myself; I didn't start figuring out my sexuality until nearing the end of high school/beginning of college, but even as a kid I could tell something about me was different (besides being biracial Chinese in a largely white community and also being undiagnosed autistic, lmao). Cameron's experiences resonate more strongly with me than almost any other fictional character, even if I didn't literally have most of them. (I should caution, this book is quite old by queer YA standards and thus may not be as resonant to readers who are used to a different bookish climate: it contains the T-slur once and some questionable depiction of a two-spirit character, along with pervasive and at times violent homophobia and secondhand descriptions of self-harm. If someone would like more info I'd be happy to elaborate via private ask.)

39. a book featuring your favourite character

You know...I'm gong to have to go with Amelia "Mia" Migonette Thermopolis Grimaldi Renaldo from the Princess Diaries series on this! And I guess the one I would choose to highlight is Princess in Love, my favorite, because I think it's the one with some of the best plot shenanigans and also I'm a sucker for the incredibly cute ending. I started reading these books when I was 13, right after I saw the movie (I didn't see it until it had been out for several years), and I've read every single one at least three times and the older ones probably more like five or six times at this point. These characters genuinely feel like old friends to me. Mia is such a fun character and her growth is so great to watch as the series progresses. I like the movie version as well but she really doesn't hold a candle to book Mia.

43. a book that you have read more than three times

Actually both of the above books qualify, lmao. But in the interest of bringing it up again, Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng, which is my Cool Literary Answer to "what is your favorite book." I've read this four times now and every time is just as good if not better than the last. I notice something new every time I read it. (I also feel this way about her first book, Everything I Never Told You.)

133. a book that you came across randomly and fell in love with

I'm not........a huge fan.....of Maggie Stiefvat3r in general but when I was in high school I read The Scorpio Races, which is a horse girl book with graphic man-eating horse violence, and I've read it like five more times by now lol. I think the horse girl market is wildly untapped once you get out of like, middle grade, and this book has bonus fantasy horses that can EAT YOU and a dangerous horse race and a plucky heroine trying to save her family's farm and a boy who has a bond with a man-eating horse and they don't even kiss till like the last page so you can ignore that part if you want to and most of it is about how much they love their respective horses tbh and I just really love it a lot!

[genderbinaryisforlosers]

everyone on the carte blanche for the ask meme

everyone? oh boy this is gonna get long ajfhdsf

JUNO

First impression: i, like a lot of people who get into the podcast without knowing a great deal about it, was expecting at most an ambiguously bisexual angst machine with a closely-guarded heart of gold. juno being an explicitly bisexual genderqueer angst machine is perhaps the most pleasant surprise of my life. the angst machine heart of gold characters were kind of my type at the time, so i loved him right away

Impression now: every time i think about juno’s arc from depressed mess held together by bad coping mechanisms, safety pins, and a few good strong puns into someone who can talk about his feelings, feel comfortable about being happy, and recognise when he needs to change, i want to cry about it a little bit. the depth of my love for juno steel has only grown along with him

Favourite moment: juno has a lot of great one-liners and i’m still a big fan of the “on the other hand i wasn’t wearing a watch” bit and who can forget such classics as juno finally deciding to stop moping over nureyev and move on only for him to open the door to his apartment and find nureyev sitting in the dark dramatically, but honestly nothing will ever hit me harder than his sudden, pissed-off declaration of “i can’t die yet, i still have shit to do!” in promised land. god.

Idea for a story: oh i have so many and i want to write most of them so no spoilers, but juno accidentally kidnaps a baby during a carte blanche heist and shenanigans ensue

Unpopular opinion: obviously we all know he’s dummy thicc but i feel like a lot of people forget he’s an actual genius, like the stuff he notices and how he strings it together is sometimes so obscure and he’s almost always right. oh, also juno is not skinny and i will not be taking criticism on that

Favourite relationship: this is so tough because every dynamic is so good, but i think it has to be juno and rita. those two are so good! the best best friends in the world!! i’m really a sucker for any dynamic that’s ridiculously in-sync so i loved these two as soon as juno saw rita’s notes in prince of mars and went “makes perfect sense to me” (which it probably didn’t, because rita, but he trusted that she knew what she was doing which is the important part)

Favourite headcanon: this isn’t really a headcanon but i still think about how juno is (was?) deathly afraid of heights but when he heard rex glass coming he still attempted to climb out of the window. either his aversion to working with dark matters/other people in general was so strong is overrided his fear, or his office was actually on the ground floor. not sure which of these is funnier.

NUREYEV

First impression: we’ve all seen the memes about nureyev knowing juno steel for one (1) day and deciding to Risk It All by leaving him with his name, look at this Hopeless Romantic, this utter DISASTER of a homosexual. the fact the very next time we hear from nureyev (at least directly) he’s patiently waiting in juno’s dark apartment to surprise him with a heist definitely supports this image.

Impression now: even after literally being inside peter’s head, i feel like we didn’t get a real sense of who he is until man in glass, where we find out he aggressively compartmentalises everything that causes him stress. he’s also distinctly someone who’s had his heart broken before, i think, which makes those first appearances of his very strange. but it does remind me of what juno says about diamond, and how he decided to provide the trust first and wait for the trustworthiness to grow in (only to get severely hurt), and i think that’s exactly what nureyev did. i am also... very uneasy with how suspicious he’s behaving this season because obviously i want to believe he’ll sort it all out and not betray the crew but... oof

Favourite moment: the beginning of what lies beyond pt1 where he’s affectionately bullying juno into taking care of himself? cleared my crops watered my skin etc etc etc

Idea for a story: i’d love to hear more about his past as a young thief idolising buddy and vespa (i can’t actually remember if that’s canon or fanon but anyway i wanna read it!)

Unpopular opinion: i think people often cling to an image of him that more resembles his first impressions in season 1 instead of seeing the depth that we’ve been given about his character in season 3

Favourite relationship: him and juno but honestly it’s a close call between them and his budding friendship with rita. even though she learned it by accident, his name is still a point of intimacy and it’s one less secret to keep around her which has to be a weight off his shoulders, at least a little? they seem like they could be really good friends once ultrabots is out of the way. juno steel love (and also bullying) zone activates whenever they’re together

Favourite headcanon: i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again - nureyev has never done a household chore in his goddamn life. he doesn’t know the water needs to be hot when you wash dishes.

RITA

First impression: honestly i’m not sure? i don’t remember having a big awareness of her in murderous mask but i remember loving her “note-taking” in prince of mars, i thought she sounded really fun and cute

Impression now: rita is really fun and cute, she’s also an extremely hardworking and dedicated woman who had the guts to throw in with a detective fired from the force and then invest all of her time and money into helping him help people.

Favourite moment: Rita Gets A Knife. enough said

Idea for a story: i don’t know honestly! i really struggle to write rita because her thought processes are so wild and i don’t think any story i could come up with would match mega ultrabots of cyberjustice.

Unpopular opinion: this shouldn’t be unpopular because juno steel himself shares this opinion but all future-jupeter headcanons are incomplete without rita also being a huge part of their lives

Favourite relationship: rita + franny 4ever obviously.. jk it’s juno & rita have you heard rita minute 3 they’re too adorable for this world. im still Soft over their conversation at the end of soul of the people when he said he couldn’t stay in hyperion anymore but he wouldn’t leave with the carte blanche if rita wasn’t coming because he was done leaving her behind, and she threw out all her hesitations on the spot and said call the big guy. speaking of, rita & jet are a close second. instant best friends i love them.

Favourite headcanon: i think this is basically canon now but rita being literally half the height of jet is so good

JET

First impression: “haha lorge funny man puts juno in the trash”

Impression now: jet sikuliaq is one of the dearest characters to me out of anything ever. he is a huge, menacing, polite, kind, sincere man who i would very much like to give me a hug. he’s the best aro ace in outer space and while being generally very levelheaded and straightforward, also takes every opportunity to fuck with juno because it’s very easy and very hilarious to him personally. he is everything my autistic acearo ass needed and i’m so glad to have him

Favourite moment: all of them every single one. him putting juno in the trash is of course a classic and every moment jet chooses to be funny makes my heart happy, but also every piece of genuine advice he gives. i’m a particular fan though of buddy recounting her years in the lighthouse and him saying he became concerned when she didn’t come downstairs at the usual time. “you took the door off its hinges.” “i was deeply concerned.” king of understatement

Idea for a story: again no spoilers for you but..... tools of rust time loop au

Unpopular opinion: this isn’t “unpopular” as much as it is unknown but jet is buddy’s queerplatonic partner and i will keep saying it until everyone believes it

Favourite relationship: jet and buddy,,, just everything about them. the way he suspects when she’s lying, the way she makes tea for him when she expects him to drop by. the fact he comes to check on her when she is 41 seconds late to the family meeting because it’s unlike her to be late and the last time she was late for something her brain was turning to radiation soup. but most especially the way she snaps at him to stay out of her business and he said he could not because he made her promise eight years ago to never stay out of the business of her health, no matter how many times she asked. they r literally in a qpr

Favourite headcanon: i don’t think this is true but i still think it would be funny if the ruby-7 used to be painted red but when jet got it he had it painted green because he Just Really Likes Green (as evidenced by his hovercycle). it’s very funny to me.

BUDDY

First impression: it’s been a minute since i relistened to time gone by but i’m pretty sure the first thing she ever says in the podcast is sliding up to depressed accidental whiskey thief juno and say “that’ll be ten million creds,” scaring the shit out of him, so needless to say i was in love instantly.

Impression now: my love for buddy aurinko has only grown and if it sounds like i already said that in this post it’s because i did about juno and it’s appropriate because the parallels are astounding. the heart of it all gave us such depth to buddy’s internal monologue and why she always sounds like she knows exactly what to say and what that’s like and honestly will i ever be over the heart of it all as an episode? unlikely. i think i’m gonna have a little piece of it in MY heart forever.

Favourite moment: everything she’s ever said is iconic as hell i especially like “in an impressive fit of hubris i’ve decided not to prepare my words for this vow” which made me laugh out loud but once again i must give it up for her iconic “I WANT TO LIVE” moment. honourable mentions to her taking rita out for ice cream and giving juno shooting lessons while she’s in her actual wedding gown. i love her

Idea for a story: buddy and vespa as sun/moon dieties.... that’s all

Unpopular opinion: stop drawing her with a fancy high-tech eye like the theia!! it canonically looks like garbage and it’s described in detail, please, i’m dying, also don’t minimise her scars you bastards

Favourite relationship: buddy and vespa invented romantic love and the entire carte blanche crew’s relationship to her is great but you know by now i’m a slut for buddy & jet out-of-this-world queerplatonic partners. the way she checks in on him during tools of rust to make sure he’s not relapsing and he comes to find her when she is 41 seconds late in the heart of it all to make sure she’s not having a heart problem!! it’s the trust,, the devotion,, the mortifying ordeal of being known

Favourite headcanon: she can sing. absolutely tears it up at karaoke. i’m right

VESPA

First impression: knife lesbian goes STAB. she will heal your wounds but she will be threatening to give you more the whole time

Impression now: she is extremely strong, heart-rendingly tender, and despite being in the older half of the carte blanche crew somehow has unmistakable little sister energy which makes her downright hilarious. i’m so glad she got to marry buddy and they’re official space wives now they’re so good for each other

Favourite moment: both from shadows in the ship, either “GUN!!” “KNIFE?!” (iconic) or when she clocks the dark matters drone pretending to be juno because it called her crazy and juno wouldn’t call her crazy. i’m always a sucker for “shapeshifter fails to fool mark because they Know Each Other Too Well” and it was just *chefs kiss* so good

Idea for a story: i really want to write something about when she was first staying at the lighthouse with buddy post-reunion, and getting to know jet and stuff. i think it would be cute

Unpopular opinion: i know vespa doesn’t canonically have lots of scarring but people who don’t draw her with scarring? cowards.

Favourite relationship: once again, although buddy and vespa invented romantic love, i just love the dynamic between vespa and juno so much. they’ve come so far with each other and their weird sibling dynamic gives me life. at the end of what lies beyond when juno says “we’re not gonna kill her, vespa” and instead of sounding full of Rage and Suspicion she’s like “whyyy notttt?” and he’s like “because i said so!” and that’s just good enough for her even if she’s a bit grumpy about it. i love it.

this took.. a hot minute to do! jshkfjsdgsa thank you dyl ily <3

[autisticpride]

April 10th: How important is representation to you? Is the representation that is out there generally good or bad? What is your favorite piece of representation? What you like to see more of in autism representation? What would you like to see less of?

representation is really important to us and we’ll end up going on a couple long rants about some of our favorites (under the cut) because we can, it’ll be real messy because theres at least 3 of us talking and im just about positive that people were blurry when writing shit out so sorry about that but that’s just how it is

for us, representation enables us to see people like us in stories. the other thing for us, not specific to autistic representation, is just that we tend to enjoy more diverse stories more? maybe we’ve just had good luck but we’ve found that stories with characters who are members of marginalized groups (whether the story itself is diverse or not) tend to be better written. maybe it’s because we generally prioritize ownvoices works, idk.

so first i wanted to take a look at some numbers regarding autistic characters we’re familiar with (yes we know there are more, we just have a focus on books in our brain) and we started with books & comics and got some interesting numbers that we weren’t expecting! we haven’t read all these books yet so there are some gaps in the information.

of the 10 characters (from 8 books and 1 webcomic):

5 are female, 4 are male, and 1 is nonbinary.  2 are black, 2 are white, 1 is mixed (surinamese/dutch), 1 is mixed (vietnamese/irish), 1 is mixed (fictional races). 9 (possibly all 10) are main characters 6 are over 21, 2 are under 12 (9 and 11), 1 is 16, 1 is 18 3 are straight, 3 are gay/lesbian, 1 is bi.

I think that’s very cool actually! we would like to see more trans autistic characters (the only trans character out of the 10 seems to be the 1 nonbinary character) for sure, and more explicitly canon autistic characters in general. i’d like to see less “autism representation” that isn’t actually canon (even though we do love some of the characters, if you have to go find an interview with a producer where they say probably in order to find out the character’s autistic, it’s not canon).

now time for our specialized little rambles!

so i’m going to start with another quick explanation of fictives again because it’s extremely relevant right now.

again, a system is multiple people in one body. individuals within a system are system members (there are many different terms, that’s what we prefer). fictives are system members who are/are based on/are versions of characters

i’m a fictive of danny becket from the webcomic sharp zero and honestly we all love sharp zero! it’s extra fun now because it’s one of the special interests we all share and it’s my source and i’m double autistic (system as a whole is autistic, and I was autistic to begin with) so i now have this intense special interest surrounding... myself??? anyway, sharp zero is great because

sharp zero doesn’t go “the autism one is pure and innocent <3″ sharp zero goes “the autism one drags a corpse through a magic portal to perform a ritual to resurrect him” and that’s pretty cool

also explicitly showing the use of stim toys!! tangle spotted

~Danny

I’m a fictive of Julian from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and I’m one of the favorite cases of representation for most of the system, which is very interesting for me. In the show, it’s a case of unnamed disorder, which my parents tried to ‘fix’ via genetic engineering. I specifically matter to the system because of one particular parallel.

When I was a child, my parents noticed me ‘falling behind’ and decided to ‘fix’ me, and then proceeded to hide that information from me. When I was 15, I found out what they’d done, and began going by a different name.

When the body was a child, we were going to a neurologist for other reasons, and the parents were told that we’re most likely autistic but to not get a diagnosis ‘unless it gets in the way’. They proceeded to hide that information from us. When we were 15, we found out about that. Around the same time, the old host came out as trans and began using a different name.

That parallel is very important to most of our system members, especially the old host.

Despite it never being stated that I’m autistic, and it being implied that my parents may have succeeded in their attempt to ‘fix’ me, it’s clear from my behaviour that they didn’t. Even if they had, it was clearly shown that what they did was illegal and wrong, and that it did direct harm to me. But every autistic person we’ve met who has watched DS9 has taken one look at me and said something along the lines of that man’s a whole autism.

I’m shown having clear interpersonal issues, including trouble with social cues and clear implications that I never had friends before arriving on DS9. My own parents thought a half-finished hologram with no personality who didn’t recognize them was me.

I think that kind of representation is important. The kind where things did go wrong, where there has been suffering and loneliness, and it takes time, but a support system does get found.

-Julian

k now y’all need someone who isn’t just sorta talkin about themself i think, who fuckin knew i’d be the one who was giving the general system-wide opinion

so, rep is really important to all of us, seeing people who’re like us. makes us all feel like someone might actually understand it and understand us

our favorite autistic rep is probably julian, which is real fun with him being here and all that. and i mean it’s actually fun and we all get each other. the way our system works, the way we have a mostly-shared memory, means that we all really get it, and all of us relate to julian a lot in one way or another

anyway, a while back we started lookin’ for books with autistic rep by autistic authors and the first one we found was on the edge of gone by corinne duyvis, and we’ll always have a soft spot for it cuz it’s really good and it was the first one we got

-trip

[spacebatisluvd]

Summary: Entrapta receives an invitation. 

Content Warning: A neurotypical writer attempting to portray an autistic character (with respect, compassion, and love, but I recognize there’s a chance I’ve fumbled here—just know it’s unintentional), Sea Hawk, Hordak’s poor sense of self-worth, cult-typical abuse, veiled references to masturbation, genital discussion, discussion of sex and sexual relationships.

-

Entrapta looked through the microscope, studying the micro-welds she’d made. Her mouth twisted a little, dissatisfied with the results. She sighed. “Emily, make a note—I need more silver solder. This prototype is a bust.” She tossed it behind her head, hearing it crack against the ground a moment later. One of the little recycling bots would be by to pick it up and take it apart soon enough, making sure nothing went to waste.

She glanced at Emily. “You know, Hordak’s really good with delicate work like this. His hands are so steady, and his welds are so...precise.” She gave a happy little shiver. “I wanted to surprise him with a working prototype, but maybe I should just give him the designs and let him build it. That’s still a surprise, right?”

Emily made a negative-sounding beep. Entrapta winced. “You’re right. Of course you’re right.” She stood, stretching. “I just need to make a working prototype—it doesn’t have to be pretty, just functional!” She used her hair to perform a tight backflip, shaking out her limbs as her feet came to rest on the ground once more. “Okay! Let’s do this—Emily, play recording.”

Emily made a happy whirring sound, the top half of her chassis spinning. Then Hordak’s recorded message began to play. Entrapta shut her eyes, listening to him describe the far-off stars that were normally too dim to see with Etheria’s many moons. She knew he’d probably assumed she would only listen to it while gazing up at those stars, but she’d found herself listening over and over again, lulled by the sound of his voice, even if she’d long since memorized his words.

She sat down and went back to work, adjusting her initial design into something more workable. When Hordak returned,  they could refine and revise her work. She just needed to provide proof of concept. S he hoped it would work. She thought it would. The data indicated that it should, but she couldn’t exactly test it. Well. Maybe if she asked Kadroh...but would he guess what it was for? She knew Hordak would prefer to keep this—

“What?” she asked, looking up when Emily insistently butted against her. “What is—?“ Then she realized her communicator had been ringing for quite some time now. “Oh! Answer call!”

Scorpia’s face appeared on-screen, accompanied by Perfuma. “Hey!” she said, waving a claw. “I was getting a little worried there. We called twice, and I didn’t want to bother you—“

“I’m not bothered at all! If I was in the middle of something dangerous, Emily wouldn’t have interrupted me.”

“...dangerous?” Perfuma asked, gripping the front on her shirt more tightly.

“Oh, good!” Scorpia said, while Perfuma frowned. “I just wanted to invite you to the flower festival.”

“Flower festival?”

Perfuma stepped forward, smiling a little. “Yes! Plumeria has an annual flower festival during the week of the summer solstice. It celebrates the transition from a time of renewal and recovery to a time of joy and growth!” Entrapta smiled while Perfuma spoke, waiting for her to finish, but she stopped abruptly. The silence lingered.

Entrapta checked the data pad.

“Hold on, I think there’s a lag. Can you repeat the last part? I missed your explanation.”

“Um.” Scorpia and Perfuma looked at each other.

Clearing her throat, Scorpia said, “It’s uh, basically a big party to celebrate summer. There’s flower crowns and food and music. Perfuma says it’s a lot of fun. I was hoping you, um, might want to come too?”

Entrapta’s hair curled and twisted. “Are a lot of people going to be there?”

“Oh, yes.” Perfuma smiled widely. “People come from all over the region for the festivities. We’re hoping all members of the Princess Alliance—“

“And their partners!” Scorpia added.

“—will be able to attend.”

“Oh.” Her hair knit itself into anxious hands, the psuedo-fingers laced together. “I don’t know....” She looked away, thinking of all the people that would be in attendance. Would it be like the Prom or another formal party? Could she skirt the edges and just observe? (Would that be weird?) On the other hand, they’d specifically called to invite her, and this wasn’t like Princess Prom—they didn’t have to include her at all. Despite her concerns about the crowd, it was hard to pass up what seemed like an obvious overture of friendship. “Can I think about it?”

Scorpia blinked. She looked at Perfuma, scratching the back of her neck. “Um. Sure. Take all the time you need! The party’s in a couple weeks, so you’ve got time.” She smiled. “Hopefully, Mermista will let Hordak take some time off, so he can come too.”

Her hair frizzed. “Hordak’s invited?”

Scorpia nodded. Perfuma looked at Scorpia, who returned her gaze, eyes wide. After a beat of silence, Perfuma said, “Y...yes. If you come, he may...join you. As your guest.”

Entrapta couldn’t help but spin in place, her hair coiling under her to lift her high. She hugged herself, humming giddily. As she dropped back down to the ground, her hair formed a  large cushion to catch her. “Really?!”

Scorpia beamed, and Perfuma exhaled slowly, though she too smiled. “Yes. Really,” Perfuma said. She looked to Scorpia, who offered her the Scorpinoid version of a thumbs up.

“Well, that changes things. I don’t think he’s ever been to something like this before. I’d really like to bring him. He hasn’t had a lot of opportunities to engage in leisure activities, and I’m trying to get him to explore and experiment with activities he might find enjoyable. This seems like an ideal opportunity.”

Perfuma looked at Scorpia again, and Scorpia slung an arm over her shoulders, shaking her gently. “Yep. This would be perfect for that, right Perfuma?”

The other princess smiled, exhaling again. “Right. It’s definitely the perfect opportunity for the former—“

“My former boss!” Scorpia interrupted, “Yep! Perfect—perfect opportunity to see if my former boss can, um, relax.” She blinked, and withdrew her claw from Perfuma’s shoulders to press it against her chin. “Actually, that’s a good question. Can he?”

“In very specific circumstances,” Entrapta said.

Perfuma looked between Scorpia and Entrapta before saying, “As long as he behaves himself.”

Entrapta cocked her head. “I don’t really know what you mean by that; Hordak is very well-mannered.”

Scorpia was already reassuring her, though. “Of course he will! I’m sure we won’t even notice he’s there.”

“Oh, you’ll probably notice him. His height makes him stand out,” Entrapta said. “If that’s going to be a problem, I’m not sure how to fix it.”

“No! Nope—Hordak’s height is not a problem,” Scorpia said very quickly, watching Perfuma. “Well, anyway, I, um, I hope to see both of you soon. Bye!” She hung up before Perfuma could say goodbye. Entrapta didn’t mind. As soon as the communicator cut out, she called Hordak.

His image resolved a moment later. “Hello, Star—“

“Entrapta!”

Hordak’s ears folded back, and he glared at the back of Sea Hawk’s head. “Hi!” she told them both, waving. “I just got a call from Scorpia—“

“Ooh. What did she say?” Sea Hawk asked.

“Well...” She rolled the word around, bouncing a little on her toes. “Plumeria’s going to have a flower festival during the solstice, and we’re both invited to come!”

Sea Hawk’s eyes widened. “You are?”

She nodded, bouncing a little more. “Mmmh-hmm. Scorpia really seems to want us to come. And Perfuma too! Well.” Her hair deflated a little. “I think she was excited? It’s hard to tell.” Perfuma always seemed so nice...until she suddenly wasn’t.

The data pad twirled as Sea Hawk ran off with it. “You have to go—both of you. It will be the perfect setting for romance . What are you you wearing? Wait, don’t tell me right now. I’ll call you later, and we can plan. Don’t worry about Hordak’s wardrobe; I’ll make sure he dresses appropriately.”

She cocked her head. “There’s a dress code? Scorpia didn’t mention that.”

“Oh, yes. A dress code—for love!”

The data pad was snatched from his hands, and Hordak’s face appeared, though he was glaring off-screen at Sea Hawk. “That is enough.” He shook his head, ears back, then he faced the data pad. “My apologies, Starlight. I believe he is being overly optimistic as well as overly involved. Reconstruction will not be complete by the solstice, and I do not believe Mermista will give me to leave to attend—with travel, I would be gone for nearly ten days, and I doubt she would approve of that.”

“What makes you say so?”

“I conquered her country and essentially destroyed Salineas.”

“You think she’s still upset about that?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

His ears twitched. “I will ask, of course.”

“Okay. I mean...” She looked away, running her fingers through her hair. “It’s all right. Maybe next year?”

“Perhaps.”

Off-screen, Sea Hawk yelled, “No! This is unacceptable! I will not stand by and allow such a travesty.”

Hordak looked at him. “You are being dramatic. This is not—“

“A travesty, I say!” The data pad jerked, then the camera lifted high—from the little she could see, Hordak was holding it overhead to keep it out of Sea Hawk’s reach. “How can you stand by and accept this? Are you not a man?”

“I am a clone, and I do not understand why my gender is important to the conversation.”

Sea Hawk made a wordless sound of mourning. “You aren’t willing to fight for your love?”

“There is nothing to fight! The treaty clearly stipulates I must prioritize the restoration of Etheria above my own personal happiness. Considering the destruction I wrought waging a completely senseless war—considering I brought Prime here, to the very doorstep of this world, I think those terms are more than fair! And considering that you yourself fought in both conflicts, I am stunned you are so determined that I break those terms.”

“It’s just ten days!” Sea Hawk said, “Besides, you haven’t taken a day off since you got here and that cannot be healthy.”

Entrapta blinked. “Hordak, is that true?”

As if abruptly remembering she was still there, he turned the data pad so she could see them again, though he was still scrupulously keeping it out of Sea Hawk’s reach. “Well. Yes. I do not require—“

“Hordak! I know you know that taking breaks is important—the Horde soldiers were allowed time off.”

His ears folded back. “Of course they were—Etherians are not very productive if they aren’t permitted unstructured free time periodically. My Force Captains insisted this was true and research seemed to prove them correct. But I am not Etherian. I do not need—“

“That’s ridiculous!” Sea Hawk said, “Everyone needs to take time off.”

“Clones do not. Even when at rest, we were put into stasis pods and our neural networks were used as relay stations for the hivemind.” He cupped a protective hand over the back of his neck, and Entrapta slammed her welding mask down, trying to keep out the thoughts of Prime and what had been done to Hordak and Kadroh and their brethren. Hordak noticed. “It was not that bad—“

“Don’t.” She exhaled slowly, voice shaking. “Don’t minimize what he did.” Through the mask, everything took on a soft teal tone. It made everything feel distant and ethereal, like she was looking at a world encased in glass. The tension in her chest eased, though the pit in her stomach lingered.

“Fine,” Hordak said, his voice soft. “The fact remains—I do not require time off to maintain productivity.”

With her mask on, she could hear her own breathing, steady and strong, and her voice echoed faintly. “Etherians do not regard time off merely as a necessity. It is considered inhumane to force someone to go without for long periods of time.”

“Yes. Because it is a necessity. I understand that—“

“You clearly don’t.”

He shut his eyes and his ears folded back. He exhaled slowly before saying, “I will ask Mermista.”

She lifted her mask a little. “...I just want you to take better care of yourself.”

“I will ask Mermista, but I don’t want you to be disappointed when she says no.”

“If she says no, then I’m coming over there. And we’ll go to the beach. And get ice cream. And maybe go swimming, if the salt water won’t damage your ports.”

His ears twitched, and his features softened. “Though I am uncertain of the swimming, I would otherwise be amenable to that.”

“Okay. Promise?”

His mouth twitched a little. “If it pleases you, then yes; I promise.”

She pushed the welding mask up the rest of the way. “Excellent. I’ll speak to you later, then. Unless there’s something else?”

“Nothing for now. Goodbye, Starlight. We will speak soon.”

Sea Hawk waved. “Bye, Entrapta! Never fear—I will use my masculine wiles to seduce my lady love, and convince her to release your...um—to release Hordak to you!” Hordak shut his eyes, and though it looked like Sea Hawk had more to say, the feed suddenly cut out.

Entrapta smiled to herself and resumed working on the prototype.

-

The next morning, a robot delivered a small package with her breakfast. Seeing that it was from Salineas, she made a high-pitched, happy sound and tore it open. Inside, she was surprised to find several sea shells, along with a note that merely said, “The shells are for Kadroh.” Among the shells, she found a data chip that was surely for her.

With a happy hum, she plucked the chip from the package and set the box aside, attaching the chip to her pad to see what he’d sent. It contained two files. One was her research notes. The other was her procedure proposal for their Intimacy Log. Seeing that, she had to get up, pacing and using her hair to flip and twist as she completed a circuit of her suite of rooms—her excitement simply couldn’t be contained, though she cautioned herself aloud, trying to minimize her expectations. After completing a third circuit, she finally felt settled enough to actually read what he’d sent. “Okay. Okay. Let’s do this!”  She shook out her hands and settled back on the bed, opening her proposal.

She smiled a little, reading his notes. She wished he was here; she would have loved to demonstrate how she would ‘reward him for good behavior’—and to test out the newly revealed sensitive spot behind his ears. In fact, she could demonstrate the former by showing him how much she appreciated his willingness to reveal the latter to her. She hummed again, reading his response to her question about biting. It wasn’t a ‘no’, and she was eager to see what he might mean by a “strong reaction”, though she would wait until he was ready for such a step, of course.

Then she saw the short paragraph he’d written at the end.

‘I do not think it would be wise to extend your study to my genitals at this time. I have limited knowledge of them myself; I’m not even sure if I am capable of penetrative sex, though I understand that is not necessarily a requirement. I know enough to be certain that my genitals differ from all standard Etherian configurations. I would not want to subject you to anything unusual or surprising without forewarning. For this reason, it would likely be best if I were to conduct some private research first, then we will discuss the possibility of mutual study.’

She leapt to her feet, using her hair to guide herself through a midair somersault. She began pacing her rooms again, punctuating her circuit with various acrobatics and occasionally humming to herself when her thoughts grew too loud.  She fumbled for her recorder, talking fast as she said, “Intimacy Log, personal notes, number 12. This is so fascinating! Hordak has revealed that his genitals are not Etherian in nature—which is unsurprising—and that he has limited knowledge of their form or function.” Something unpleasant itched at the back of her mind, but she just started to pace faster, burying those thoughts.

“I cannot begin to speculate on either. I have every reason to believe Hordak is what we would classify as a mammal—the presence of nipples implies his species at one time nursed their young, and he is quite warm, suggesting he does not have to rely on external heat sources to maintain his body temperature—but he is still an alien. These mammalian traits may be evidence of convergent evolution, rather than a common ancestor, though I still believe the bipedal body type suggests that our species are not entirely unrelated. Nonetheless, none of that necessarily implies so-called ‘sexual compatibility’. Hordak already seems to know that penetrative sex is not a necessity for a sexual relationship, but I will also endeavor to reassure him that our genitals do not need to be ‘compatible’ for sex to be satisfying. I should also relay that I am not put off by his confession. If anything, I am excited by the opportunity for discovery!”

She performed another somersault, shaking out her hands as she landed. “This is so exciting!” she hissed under her breath. To the recorder, she added, “He’s said that he would like to experiment on his own so as to avoid surprising me, but I would be very interested in experimenting with him. Query—has Hordak decided to experiment solo primarily out of concern for my comfort or his own? If the former, then he may allow me to at least witness any experiments he performs on himself—though I would welcome a more hands on approach, if he is willing to wait. However, if he is uncomfortable including me because...”

The unpleasant thoughts managed to break through, and she pulled her mask down securely. “While it is possible Hordak wants to experiment on his own in order to sate his curiosity in private—which would be completely understandable—I believe it is more likely that he’s uncomfortable sharing this with me due to shame and prior conditioning from Horde Prime, a suspicion reinforced by his lack of education regarding his own body’s sexual organs.” She flexed her hands, hair coiling around her limbs. “If that is the case, then I am unsure how to proceed. Hordak’s health, safety, and comfort are of primary importance, and I’m worried I’m not well equipped to make sure he isn’t harmed by our experiments. I’ve...never been good with people.” 

She shut off the recorder and cycled through her mask’s filters, trying to find a more soothing way of looking at the world. She settled on infrared, gazing at the smear of colors meant to represent variations in temperature. It was comfortably alien, and pleasing to place her hands on the metal wall and watch the colors change—like painting with her own body heat. She traced patterns on the wall and watched them fade as the transferred heat dissipated.

She took a breath and raised her mask when she felt settled enough to proceed, blinking as she readjusted to her surroundings. Clicking the recorder on, she said, “Hordak has consistently proven himself to be unlike anyone I’ve ever known. He seems to understand and respect my need for clear communication. Thus far, we have been able to prevent the kinds of misunderstandings I’ve had in the past simply by talking to each other. I have to assume I can keep him from coming to harm in the same fashion. When we next speak, I will—“  Her data pad signaled an incoming call. “Oh!” She clicked the recorder off, assuming that was him. “Hi, Hordak—wait. Sea Hawk?”

“Greetings, Princess!”

“Hi! Do you need something?”

“No. Not...not exactly.”

“Are you sure? People don’t usually call me unless they need something.”

“I don’t need anything, I just.” He winced. “I...may have...possibly...slightly overestimated my ability to convince my beloved to allow Hordak time off. And...vastly underestimated her vindictiveness.” His gaze grew watery and distant. “She is as magnificent and unforgiving as the sea.”

“Oh. Well, that’s okay. At least you tried. I’ll just—“

Sea Hawk held up a hand, shushing her. “Entrapta. Are you in a secure location?”

She glanced around her bedroom. “I suppose so.”

“Good, good. Now, tell me...how far are you willing to go to prove your devotion?”

She blinked. “What?”

“Do you want to take Hordak to Plumeria?”

“Well, yes—“

“How far are you willing to go to get him there?”

“What?”

He moaned, as if in pain. Before she could ask if he was okay, he leaned close to the camera and said, “Listen to me. I have a plan to get both you and Hordak safely and happily to Plumeria. But it may possibly be slightly illegal.” Entrapta cocked her head. “And by ‘slightly’, I mean ‘extremely’. So, how far are you willing to go to prove your affections?”

She snorted. “Sea Hawk, don’t be ridiculous; at least three of my current experiments are technically illegal. Breaking a few laws won’t prove anything. With that said—what’s your plan?”

“Well—wait. Technically illegal?”

She gestured dismissively. “Mystacor isn’t really equipped to oversee scientific studies, but my experiments are technically overseen by their ethics committee. Which is guided by a woefully outdated moral system and staffed by technophobes. I stopped asking them to approve my more interesting studies ages ago.”

“Oh. Well. I’m going to assume that’s not at all nefarious—“

“I guess that would depend on your definition.”

“—and tell you my incredible, masterful plan! First—do you by any chance own any strappy high heels? A low cut dress, perhaps? Preferably in black.”

“What?”

“Never mind! We can continue without, but I feel that ignoring the aesthetic shows a lack of commitment.”

She stared at him. “What?”

-

A/N: As always, I’m extremely grateful for all the comments you guys leave. I read them all, often multiple times. I’m not good about replying, but I am always intensely grateful.Thank you so much. I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. ^//^

[evelhak]

Oookay, so Sia's excuse for not casting an autistic actor in the main role of her film is gross. She tried, but it was "cruel to cast someone at the character's level of functioning"?

Well isn't that because the film is clearly made with only neurotypicals in mind? I for one couldn't comprehend half of the trailer on first watch because there were so many flashing bright colours and quick cuts. Seeing that, I have a really hard time believing that anyone REALLY tried to understand the needs of the autistic actor Sia says they considered casting.

And even if the film's nature really did make it too uncomfortable for ONE autistic person to play the lead, I'm sure they could have found someone else. Even some highly verbal autistic people would intuitively understand a big part of the non-verbal autistic character's world, better than a neurotypical actor can.

I'm "high-functioning", highly verbal and a high masker, and I had a friend as a kid who was mostly non-verbal and "lower functioning". I didn't even know I was autistic, but he still made more sense to me than other kids. I could completely understand why he reacted to loud noises in a way that seemed over the top to others, his meltdowns made perfect sense to me and I could sense them coming, and when he repeated dialogue from Disney movies I didn't feel so alone, because I was always repressing that same need. Everything about him made so much more sense to me than why other kids wanted to play house or truth or dare the way they did. I wanted to play too, but it was obvious I didn't play with the same rules and I always made a mistake somewhere and I didn't understand why everyone was laughing. To this day I'm not in on that secret although I'm 27. But I never have to wonder why that boy, now a man, obviously, does what he does, though I very rarely see him anymore.

It would be ideal if the actor resembled the character as closely as possible when the experience they are trying to portray is commonly misunderstood, but ANY autistic actor would have had more insight into the main character than a neurotypical actor, because you can't understand an EXPERIENCE by simply observing, no matter how much you observe, because experiences are invisible and I think this is especially true with neurodiversity. And yes, all autistic people are different too, but we still share a lot.

All humans understand other people's experiences from behaviour, but if you don't speak the same language with your behaviour then you'll be misinterpreted. Studies show that autistic people communicate with autistic people just as well as neurotypicals communicate with neurotypicals. So we can and do understand ourselves and each other.

After seeing how clearly the trailer failed to consider any autistic audience I'm skeptical about whether the autistic actor's needs were really impossible to meet if more effort was made, but since I don't know the circumstances, I'll just say that there's no excuse anyway. The fact that autistic actors replied to Sia, saying that they could have acted the part on a short notice, and Sia replied "Maybe you're just a bad actor" speaks for itself, even if it was said in anger and she didn't mean it literally. Obviously not every autistic actor would have been "just a bad actor", so it's obvious the issue is that it was not a priority.

Sia had a vision and wanted a person who fit her vision to act it. The intention was never to represent real people, just her view of them. Sometimes people can't really tell the difference.

And believe me, as a writer, I get it. Sometimes it's really compelling to combine different elements of human reality in a way that feels pleasing in an aesthetic way, (=dead girl in a red dress on snow), plotwise (=a character's blindness is an important plot point but nothing else), thematically (=a character who can't walk learns to fly) or some other way. Sometimes a theory feels compelling to us because it seems "cleaner", more satisfying, than reality. and YES we have artistic freedom but we should still consider whether our choices are harmful because stories don't exist in a vacuum. Freedom should also mean responsibility.

[Edit:] My fiancée just pointed out how the word "cruel" in Sia's comment implies the actor was at the mercy of others, as if she had no agency. Didn't even realize that myself.

[datingintampafails]

Chapter 32: Timmy*

Timmy* gave off a frat-boy kind of vibe with the pictures in his profile, a trope that has become my type. His profile did seem to be half-heartedly filled out; his hometown was just the abbreviation of the state, his employment simply said "cardiac surgery," and a couple typos.

Mostly my reason for wanting to message him, in particular, was that one of his prompts about a travel story was very obviously cut off and he ran out of characters. I messaged him saying the cliffhanger was dramatic and wanted to hear the whole story. It was a very long story, involving being in Ireland and a random person coming into his and his family member’s room. I mentioned I didn’t have anything quite that interesting regarding my travels before. We chatted more and although I wouldn’t say we had a lot of similar hobbies and interests, the conversation did flow well. He was definitely more active than I, going to the gym often and eating pretty healthy and en mass. Very much a gym bro type. I also had assumed he was a surgeon, given his position being cardiac surgery, but then learned later he was more involved in some sort of programming instead for cardiac devices, so not really cardiac surgery per se.

When we moved away from Hinge and onto text messaging, we were both mutually behaving as if we had known each other a while, and better than we did. At one point, he had asked, “are you a guy version of me?” To which, I was very aware of how little we knew about each other, which led me to respond that it was too soon to tell.

I did however confirm my place as forever the more aggressive one; I text him one day "Timmy*, when they fuck are we going out?" Not that it had been too much of a long time talking, but just that he had not yet made a move, and that we were obviously getting along and it would make sense for us to take that next step. We plan for a few days from then, a Tuesday, after work, and that it would have to be more or less played by ear because of our jobs' schedules being semi-unpredictable. My easy place, Armature Works, was chosen as where we would meet up.

Our date got pushed back slightly, as I got off on time, but he was going to be held up at work later than expected. He did however give me ample heads up, so I just relaxed at home a little longer than I would have otherwise, and perfected my outfit and minimal make-up. The day of the date, and leading up to it, I made jokes about being a catfish and that I was actually a middle-aged, fat, Russian man. I continued this while I waited for him when I was describing what outfit I was wearing so he could recognize me better with my mask on, then later added that I was still a middle-aged Russian man, but that I was still wearing a skirt and crop top. I waited for him on a bench for almost 30 minutes. I arrived on time to when he had delayed the date, but still too early apparently. Luckily, I had brought my headphones, so I just listened to some music to pass the time by.

Finally, I received a text message saying that he had parked and then that he could see me. Nothing is more uncomfortable than being seen and not seeing who is looking at you. I looked around and didn't see anyone that looked like him, so I went back to staring at my phone. Eventually, a man looking more like him appeared trotting down the small set of stairs next to me. Although he definitely wasn't short, he seemed shorter than what I was expecting, and his hairline seemed to be just starting to recede.

He was not familiar with the location as much as I am, so I took it upon myself to give him a tour of the location. Despite being indoors, and still pretty amidst a pandemic in late February, Timmy* kept taking his mask off. As a healthcare worker, I was confused and appalled; he should know better. I yelled at him every time to put it back on. Once he said, "you're one of those huh?" I almost rolled my eyes back into my head. Then he also asked me, "well when can I take it off?" to which I responded, "when we are outside and/or we sit down to eat/drink." He got a beer at one of the bars, and it was a beer that had some marijuana in it, which was an interesting choice. After having toured the whole place, it was time to split off to order our respective meals. I got my food, and a drink, and wandered over to the area I had last seen him, as he had said he was going to get a pizza. He was nowhere to be found, so I text him asking where he was. He indicated that he was over by where he had gotten his beer.

I found him and then he told me that he had ordered food from two different restaurants because he couldn't decide and also eats so much due to his athleticism. We found a spot to sit nearby outside, and it is a lovely night, we were comfortable in the fresh air. We both finally did take off our masks and started to eat.

I half-heartedly apologized for being so hard on him regarding the mask-wearing, but emphasized that I am passionate about proper mask-wearing because of my experience with having the virus and wanting to make sure to reduce the spread. He then said, "Oh you had COVID! I'm in a way glad to hear it." He then pauses before saying, "I have COVID too. My doctor said I'm asymptomatic? So I'm totally good." My eyes must have gotten the size of saucers; I leaned away from him and was looking around seeing if anyone had heard him. "Wait what?" Is all I could say. "Uh, no. Please tell me you're joking?" Timmy* stares at me confused, "I'm asymptomatic! So that means like I don't have it."

I am prepared to leave immediately. "So you had a positive test? What? Why are you here right now?" I say. Finally, he drops the rouse and admits he was kidding, but that he got me. "That was not funny. I was legitimately terrified!" So far, this date is bizarre. He mentions that because I joked around so much that I would appreciate it. I did not.

We eat our food and chat. Unfortunately, he also is a person who seems to eat with their mouth open. Another strike. Timmy* has become very comfortable around me, as he also decides to tell me another long story about the time he was "sexually assaulted by a doctor." Which was that he went to a doctor for a physical and that she had grabbed his testicles and had him cough, though the way he told it was extremely drawn out and had many mini-stories leading up to the point that was supposed to be the assault. I then told him, "I'm sorry to say that your doctor was not trying to hit on you on anything, that is a normal thing that happens with mens' checkups." This was news to him. It was obvious that he is not a well-versed healthcare worker.

Once we finished our food, I suggested we walk along the river. First, though, I wanted to drop off my leftovers in my car. We walk to it and I make him guess what kind of car I drive. He is impressed by my car and we don't linger long before I say we should leave the parking lot. He tells me that he has a muscle car, which is so random and I would never put him in a car like that. Whereas a sixteen-year-old girl might be googoo-gaga over this, as a full-grown adult, it isn't quite as alluring to have a car like that.

While on the riverwalk, I become irritated at the fact that he walks very slow. Slower than I am able to walk. It makes no sense as I am significantly shorter than he is, so my strides shouldn't be longer than his. I mention to him that he walks slow and I ask that he walk a little faster. He picked up the pace, but then slowly reverted to his tortoise-like speed over time. I tire of our uneven velocities and we take a seat on some rock benches. We chat about brief things and I suggest we walk back. Again, I battle with the paces, mention it a couple more times that I am unable to walk as slow as he walks.

We get back to the main area of Armature and take a seat in some oversized chairs. He tells me about his family and some stories about his relationships in middle school and high school, which are also drawn out and bizarre. It nears 10pm, and we are told by staff that they close at 10. A couple minutes til, I remind him we need to leave and I ask where he parked. He parked in a different lot, I offered to walk him to his car. He offers to drive me to my car. We do so and his muscle car is indeed very overly-masculine. He goes on to go through a bunch of random songs on Spotify, only playing each song for less than 30 seconds, very ADHD-like. He drives me to my car, but wants to keep me there, again showing me more songs. I'm politely just listening as he flexes on all the types of music he listens to. He tries to show off that he knows "alternative music," my preferred genre, but I point out that a lot of the songs he's playing are more "pop-punk" or just old alternative jams.

He compliments my music taste and mentions that he has noticed I am adept at knowing song names, musicians, movies, and so forth. I begin to joke that likely I am a little autistic, adding "I'm working on my eye contact," as I make direct eye contact with him. What he says next, is something that I was not prepared for, and something that still baffles me, and possibly always will. "Yeah, you do look a little retarded." Immediately, I burst out into laughter; not because I think what he said was funny, but because I am so bewildered and shocked by what was just said. Eventually, through the laughter tears I am able to get out, "Dude you shouldn't say that to a woman." He insists it was a joke and makes excuses, but I keep laughing, with my hand on the door handle just waiting for a good moment to step out. I repeat that what he said isn't cool, and eventually stop laughing long enough to say, "alright, on that note, I think I should head out." Being friendly, I still ask that he tell me when he gets home since I know he has a longer commute home than I do. I wave goodbye through our car windows.

The formalities are complete; he texts me ever so briefly the next day, respectfully I respond, knowing well I never plan on going out with him again. Then it seems we have a mutual ghosting situation, as I don't try to text him, nor he to me. This day I have another date, and after that one, I have no one that I want to communicate with as that is also a dud. All is good until a few days later when I am out with my friends in Ybor, drunk. I get a text from Timmy* saying "yo." I lament and groan and my friends ask about my reaction. I explain the situation and one of my guy friends asks for my phone. I hand it to him as he starts to text him on my behalf.

My phone is with my friend, but with my Apple Watch, I can see the text conversation and when he is responding. I start yelling "oh god please don't bring him here. I don't want to see this guy." Respecting my wishes, my friend decides to still fuck with him, but prevent this poor soul from spending money on an Uber and coming down.

My friends then send a selfie of themselves, with me not in it, saying "she's with me." I yell at them more saying, let this guy be, just ignore him. However, instead, my friend takes it a step further.

I tell my friend that he was too harsh and that I of course would have told him I wasn't interested, but a lot more mature and kindly. When later I check, understandably Timmy* has unmatched me on Hinge*, likely blocked my number. No loss there though.

[sparkyyoungupstart]

Fictober 2020 (but make it Power Rangers) Day 3

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26831140

Prompt number: 3 (“You did this?”)

Fandom: Power Rangers (2017)

Rating: G

Pairing: Billy/Jason

Warnings/Tags: Promposal, Canon Autistic Character, Inspired by 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

Even though the football game started at 7, Jason had picked Billy up at 6. "I know you don't like getting squeezed in with the crowds, so I want to make sure we got there early and got the good seats with lots of room."

"Thanks," Billy said after kissing his boyfriend hello. "Still don't get why we're going to a football game, though. I thought you were done with those after you were kicked off the team?"

Jason shrugged. "Eh, most of the team has forgiven me for getting booted at the start of the season. Actually, a few guys told me they were glad I got hurt because they play better without me!" Jason chuckled, but then he noticed Billy giving him a concerned look. "It, uh, it didn't sound nearly as mean coming from them."

"Sure."

"Anyway, the rest of our team is gonna be there too. And the girls are bringing a whole thing of snacks so we don't even have to get up to visit the concession."

"Now that's a smart thinking!" Billy grinned.

Jason was right about getting there early - the first few fans were just starting to trickle in, and there was plenty of space to get the good seats before the bleachers were flooded with people. Jason led Billy to the good spot near the edge of the field, and pulled a pair of seat cushions from his pack to make sure the too of them were comfy. While they waited for things to start and their friends to show up, the two of them held hands while Jason listened intently to Billy talk about the 90s Spider-Man cartoon, which he'd been binge watching over the past week.

After about fifteen minutes they heard a call of "Yoohoo boys!" as Kim appeared down the row, followed closely by Trini and Zack. "I thought you might be hungry, so we brought you all a meal." Billy leaned past and saw she wasn't exaggerating, and Zack was making a show of struggling with a heavy cooler (surely he was just playing, because with their ranger strength that cooler would be easy for any of them to pick up). Once they were all seated, Kim opened it up and started handing out thick sandwiches, thermoses of Zack's homemade soup, and an actual bushel of apples.

"We raided the supermarket," Trini said casually as she bit into her sandwich. "Everyone who fights over the concession line down here is an idiot."

Eventually the game got underway, and Billy was surprised at how much he was enjoying himself. He wasn't a huge football fan, but he'd learned the rules for Jason's sake so the two of them could watch games together at home, or sometimes even with Jason's dad. And Angel Grove was winning, which made the crowd around them even more excited. Billy could usually handle that much stimulus if it was positive; he was certain that if the team started losing he would want to crawl out of his skin. But, at least he also knew that if that did start happening he only had to let Jason know and he'd get the two of them out of there as soon as he could.

That's what he liked about Jason. It wasn't that he never screwed up, because he did. And it wasn't some silly, power-of-love thing that made him like him in spite of screwing up. No, it was because whenever Jason screwed up he acknowledged it, apologized, learned from it, and never screwed up like that again. Billy talked, Jason listened, and that's what made them work.

As the first half of the game came to a close, Billy glanced around and saw that it was just him and Jason sitting there. "Wait, where did everyone else go?"

"Hmm?" Jason asked, seemingly distracted by something on his phone.

"Where are Kim and Trini and Zack? They were just here a minute ago?"

"Uh...maybe they went to grab snacks?"

Billy looked at Jason with disdain. "I thought we were prepared and didn't have to get snacks?"

Jason paled a little. "Oh, right. Um. Bathroom, I guess."

Billy nodded slowly. Something didn't add up. Why would Jason make a mistake like that when he had planned the food stuff all in advance? Unless he was lying. And why would he lie? For that matter, why would the other three all go to the bathroom at the same time unless there was something else going on?

Billy started to feel a little nervous. It was the way he felt when he figured out that somebody was about to prank him. And that feeling wasn't always correct necessarily, but it had been honed through years of high school torment and he preferred to be safe rather than sorry. He didn't want to believe that his friends were doing something mean behind his back, but every alarm in his system was going off. "Jason, we gotta go."

Those words broke Jason out of whatever he was concerned with. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I don't want to be here anymore."

"Okay, let's go." Jason didn't blink, he just took Billy's hand and the two started excusing themselves between the seats of everyone between them and the exit. Jason was frantically texting as he did so, but never once did he let go of Billy's hand.

When they reached the edge of the stadium, Billy noticed a small crowd clad in red and gold gathering on the side of the field, and they weren't football players. "Is that the marching band?" he asked with concern.

Jason flinched. "Yeah. Yeah, it is."

"But I'm in marching band." He started to feel really nervous now. "Oh no, that's why I was feeling weird. We must've been scheduled to play during halftime and I forgot it...how did I forget it? I thought I put all the rehearsals in my phone...unless they didn't want me in there tonight. Why? Why didn't the tell me about tonight? And who's gonna be playing second trombone? I gotta go over there, I need to know what's going on -"

"It's a promposal!" Jason snapped. Billy turned to him in surprise. "Sorry," his boyfriend apologized in a softer tone. "It's...it was supposed to be a promposal."

"A...what now?"

"It's when you do some grand romantic gesture to ask somebody to prom." Jason ran a hand over his face in embarrassment. "I should have thought it through more. I thought I had! I was on such good terms with the team, and the band kids all love you, and we were watching Ten Things I Hate About You because you said it was your third favourite movie." Jason was rambling now. "I thought it'd be really fun if during halftime I did the whole Heath Ledger number for you but I just made a mess of things."

"Jason!" Kim called as she ran up from the direction of the band. "What are you doing? We're all waiting for your signal so you can - oh." She tried to feign innocence. "Hey Billy. Um...surprise?"

"What's Billy doing here?" Zack asked as he and Trini came in from the parking lot, each holding onto two poles with fabric wrapped tightly around them. "He's gonna see the giant sign!" he whispered through gritted teeth.

"No, it's off," Jason said as he blushed with shame. "I screwed up, it's my fault. Call the thing off." He turned back to Billy. "I really am sorry. I wanted this to be a special moment for you, and -"

"You did this?" Billy asked, cutting Jason off. Jason just silently nodded. "You did all this?" Billy asked again as he gestured to the stadium, the band, the giant sign Zack and Trini were carrying back to the parking lot.

"I, uh, yeah. Sorry."

"Don't be!" Billy declared loudly. "I mean, I thought you guys were tricking me and - I mean I guess you are, but this is a good trick. It's not like when kids stuck crayons down my pants in elementary school or getting shoved in a locker in middle school or getting crayons stuck down my pants in high school. This is...I've never been part of a fun trick."

Jason smiled, even laughed a little. "You mean you're okay with...the whole thing?"

"I mean I know what you're gonna do now, but I want to actually see you do it. It'd be awesome."

Jason's smile grew even wider. He ran back to Zack and Trini. "Come back! It's back on, come back!" Then he bolted in the other direction, straight past Kim and the band, pausing only to grab a microphone from the conductor. Soon he was standing out in the middle of the field and his voice was echoing through the stadium.

 You're just too good to be true  Can't take my eyes off of you  You'd be like Heaven to touch  I wanna hold you so much  At long last, love has arrived  And I thank God I'm alive  You're just too good to be true  Can't take my eyes off of you

Even though the whole stadium was watching him, Jason was stuck looking directly at the exit, right at Billy.

 Pardon the way that I stare  There's nothin' else to compare  The sight of you leaves me weak  There are no words left to speak  But if you feel like I feel  Please let me know that it's real  You're just too good to be true  Can't take my eyes off of you

Then the band flared to life as the chorus began. Zack and Trini ran past Zack with their sign a third time as Jason continued.

I love you baby! And if it's quite alright I need you baby! To warm the lonely night I love you baby! Trust in me when I say

Jason started running towards Billy, singing the whole time.

Oh pretty baby! Don't bring down, I pray Oh pretty baby! Now that I've found you, stay And let me love you Baby Let me love you!

He put the microphone aside and leaned in close to Billy. "Care to join me?"

Billy hesitated, but just for a moment. "Okay!"

Jason took his hand as the orchestra continued playing, and the two of them half-walked half-danced their way back to the centre of the field. "Billy, when we first started dating I thought it was a fluke, but now I know I'm the luckiest guy in Angel Grove because I get to spend every day with you." Zack and Trini unfurled the sign, revealing a message written in bright red paint on a deep blue canvas. "Billy Cranston, will you go to prom with me?"

The band stopped and a hush went over the audience. Billy looked at everything around him, then back at his wonderful boyfriend. He paused, just to make him squirm a little.

"Please say yes dude!" screamed an anxious, scrawny kid on the football team. One of his heavyset teammates dope slapped him.

"Yes. Yes! Of course!" Billy exclaimed. The crowd cheered, their friends cheered and Jason ran up to Billy and kissed him full on right there.

Billy had no idea how him and Jason would make prom work, but he knew that between his brain and Jason's heart, they'd figure it out. They always did.

[velkynkarma]

Why Brandon Sanderson Is an Amazing Writer (and Why You Should Read His Novels)

Last week I was recommending some novels to @bosstoaster and was really struggling to not fan squeal all over the place about just how incredible Sanderson’s novels are. Usually, when this happens, I try to pick 1-2 things I like about his writing to talk about, so I don’t talk a person’s ear off...but that usually means so much gets left out.

But I’ve been thinking about it since, so you know what? I can do whatever I want on my blog. So here’s my full, unadulterated breakdown of all the things that are so damned incredible (and consistent) about Brandon Sanderson’s novels (as well as his writing methodology). 

Does contain minor spoilers, but not for anything huge, and I tried to keep even the minor spoilers vague.

PLOT

Incredible world-building—that isn’t generic medieval fantasy-land

I love fantasy as much as the next person, and I enjoy most generic medieval fantasy stories if the plot or characters are great. But Sanderson’s always exploring different kinds of worlds, and entering them is always engaging. Magical cowboy western? A world continually buffeted by enormous hurricanes on a regular basis, so everything evolved to survive them, including the flora and fauna? A world where ash constantly falls? A world that is literally the embodiment of thought and concept? There’s always something exciting to discover.

Incredible magic systems

Like the generic medieval fantasy world-building, I’m used to the D&D style magic systems with energies and fireballs. Sanderson doesn’t touch these kinds of magic systems, though, and I’m continually stunned at just how creative the ones he does use are. Ingest metal, and use it to activate a latent power of yours? Bonding with the literal living embodiment of a concept in order to gain abilities? Re-writing the history of an item so it believes it can be different, and it changes? Using color as payment for a system based entirely around souls and soul coding? The list is long and always entertaining. He’s even written a whole article about how to design magic systems, which is also worth a read.

Really good at the ‘good’ kind of plot twists that leave you genuinely satisfied

I know we’ve all been frustrated by the recent trend that media seems to have these days: viewers or readers guess the direction the plot is heading in, and creators, in a panic, throw in a completely unrelated plot twist (changing the whodunnit, killing off a character, adding a resolution that makes no sense). Those suck. Let’s be real.

Sanderson does the opposite. He leaves the clues in his stories—they’re always there, and you can figure it out with the context clues, if you’re clever. If you’re not, he’s real good at throwing in twists that are hinted at, but still feel incredibly impactful and really satisfying. The end of The Emperor’s Soul still gives me chills, and I still love the twists regarding the big bads in Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive.

Also? He genuinely will catch you by surprise, sometimes. I consider myself to be a pretty experienced reader, and a decent writer. I can usually tell where plots are going for most stories. That’s satisfying, of course. But Sanderson has a way of still managing to sucker-punch me with a plot twist or reveal that feels shocking in a good way. I don’t see a lot of these coming, but the result isn’t disappointment, it’s a “holy crap—wow, how cool!” followed by an intense desire to reread half the story to pick out the clues that were sitting in front of me the whole time, now that I know what they’re actually for. 

Really interesting meta-level stories 

Depending on how invested you want to get, there’s a meta-level of interconnected story with the Cosmere. All of Sanderson’s stories are enjoyable on their own, and you’re never required to go deeper. But if you want to, you can, and suddenly there’s a whole second layer of information and characters in the background that you never really noticed, because most of his stories are actually connected to each other too. You don’t have to know who Hoid is or how he contributes to each separate story, you don’t have to be able to find the crossover characters that have literally crossed over from other books, and you don’t have to understand the whole Shards angle, and you can still enjoy all those books on an individual basis. But when you do know how to spot them in the narratives, it’s really fun, and you feel like you’re in on a great secret.

CHARACTER

Only male author I’ve ever read that actually writes GOOD female characters 

Brandon Sanderson seems to have hit on the not-so-secret secret that most male authors—who dominate the fantasy genre—haven’t seemed to figure out yet: women are people too. 

Consequently, Sanderson writes incredible varieties of female characters, each with their own personalities and quirks, who don’t necessarily fall into the “damsel in distress” or “masculine-coded action lady” stereotypes. See the politically savvy Sarene, the scholarly Shallan, the clever and artistic Shai, rebellious and somewhat childish Siri, the formal and analytical Steris. (These are literally just the ladies with names that start with S). 

But it gets better. Because even with action-hero ladies, they still have characterizations outside of ‘being a lady that beats people up like a man and strives to be as unlady-like as possible to prove she can beat people up like a man.’ Vin might be an action heroine, but she’s also a young woman who’s learning how to have a family, who’s scared of opening up to people, and who’s insecure about her place in the world. Marasi wants to be part of law enforcement, but admits to another character that she also likes the make-up and dresses and looking pretty—and she hates that people expect her to be a masculine action-lady that wears pants and starts fights, because she feels like she won’t even be seen in her field if she doesn’t, and like she has to represent all women. 

But I think the biggest example of this comes from his short story Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell, which (despite its edge-tastic title), is about a mother trying to protect her daughter. Sanderson wrote it as a part of the anthology Dangerous Women, and in his post-script on the story in Arcanum Unbounded, he writes: 

“I thought for a long time about the nature of an anthology called Dangerous Women. I worried that the stories submitted to it might fall into the trope of making women dangerous all in the same way....I didn’t want to write just another cliched story about a femme fatale, or a woman soldier who was basically a man with breasts. 

What other ways could someone be dangerous? I knew early on that I wanted my protagonist to be a middle-aged mother.”

In short, Sanderson actually understands how women work and writes actual, believable, likable female characters, who are just people and not sexual objects or prizes for men to receive at the end of the novel. It’s something we need, and it’s refreshing to see.

But on that note—he’s not afraid to let his male characters be softer either

In the same way that most female characters in fantasy are forced to be masculine-like action ladies, most male characters are also forced into the same role. There’s this misunderstanding that male characters have to all be sword-swinging barbarians who can’t have emotions. 

Sanderson punts this misunderstanding out the window and will have none of it.

There are so many good male characters in this series too that don’t immediately make you want to cringe. Look at Elend, who’s an intellectual doing his best but genuinely screws up a lot, and is all but useless for the first half of the series as a combatant. Look at Wayne, and his heartbreaking moment at the end of Bands of Mourning, who grieves for a person who’d been family to him and isn’t afraid to show how much he cares. Look at Adolin, who seems like the quintessential sword-swinging action-oriented jock, but then completely subverts all expectations by patiently and carefully helping characters with mental illnesses deal with them on their bad days, and being unhesitatingly supportive of his autistic brother. Look at Gaotona, who spends the whole book trying to educate someone on how they’re wrong—only to learn from them instead, and realize he was wrong, and to admit to it. 

Men have their soft moments, written by a male author who’s not afraid to put those moments into his works. And that’s really good, too.

In general, just really good characterization

Sanderson’s characters feel like people. They have oddball quirks, realistic-sounding conversations, and occasionally do things that make no sense. Just like friends, family, coworkers, etc that you and I all no doubt know. Hammond’s philosophical rambling (and Breeze’s frustrated bickering over it), Lift making it her life goal to steal dinners, Wayne’s justification for his kleptomania since he ‘trades’ items instead, David’s weird speech patterns and idioms—these characters are just fun to read, and have extra layers that just make them feel more real.

His books have a strong non-romantic relationship focus

Media in general is inundated with romantic and sexual relationships, and doubly so for fantasy novels—especially when fantasy novels often have a ‘prize’ romance at the end of the epic journey. Save the girl, get the girl. It can be frustrating, especially for people who aren’t interested in romance as a genre (there is a reason a lot of us are reading fantasy novels, and not romance ones).

Sanderson loves focusing on all kinds of relationships though, not just romantic ones. Found family, real family, strong platonic friendships, mentorships, interesting rivals, bonds out of duty—they’re all in here, and Sanderson’s not shy about making it clear. Look at Kelsier openly telling Vin he wishes he and his wife had a daughter like her and admitting he sees her as one, or the way the rest of the team turns her into their little sister that they all teach and protect. Look at Wax taking in Wayne, a scared kid who’d gotten in over his head and didn’t know what to do. Look at Kaladin looking at an entire band of slaves and going, ‘yeah, you’re all mine now and I protect you all,’ and how he forms a whole family out of Bridge Four that ultimately turns around and takes care of him, too (and of course, a lot of Kaladin’s story is driven by his own relationship with his actual family, specifically his younger brother). Look at Shallan doing all that she does at the start of the series to protect her brothers. Look at Prof struggling so hard to protect his little band of Reckoners even as he struggles to protect them from himself. Look at Shai and Gaotona, how they’re set up as prisoner and jailer, and yet they grow to ultimately respect each other.

I could go on and on, but the point is, these non-romantic relationships are everywhere, and they are considered to be just as important as—and sometimes more important than—romantic relationships. 

But on the flip-side, his romantic relationships are very well handled

Anyone who knows me knows I’m not a big fan of romance or shipping. It generally doesn’t hold my interest. In most books, I skim or skip the romance parts, because I’m just not invested in those relationships. They feel flimsy. 

I don’t do that with Sanderson’s works. They’re the only books I’ve ever read where I genuinely feel invested in the characters’ romantic relationships. 

Because here’s the thing: all of these characters that are romantically involved, are also good friends, and that’s the basis of their entire relationship to begin with. And that means these relationships are accessible to everyone, regardless of romantic inclinations or interests. 

Adolin and Shallan just joking around and bantering, with him teaching her how to use swords, with her rattling off witty repartee to defend him in verbal spars? When they just genuinely enjoy each others’ company, without having to constantly make out or have sex to indicate why they like being around each other? That’s genuinely fun. It’s some lovely character interaction. Maybe I don’t “get” the parts where they want to do more romantically inclined things, but I can enjoy that they legitimately enjoy being around each other, that they’re good friends as well as romantic partners, and that they trust each other. And that means I can still be engaged in their relationship instead of yawning and skipping ahead a few pages.

Which brings me to:

He also takes common romantic tropes...and throws them in the garbage bin

Sanderson has other ways of handling romantic relationships that I (as a person who doesn’t like romance) finds so impressive it deserves its own section. Because he takes common romantic tropes, and subverts them, and makes the characters all the more healthy for it. 

On at least two occasions (in Stormlight Archive, and in the sequel Mistborn series), Sanderson has set up a classic love triangle...and then immediately broken it. In one novel, one of the male love interests graciously offers to back out if it will mean the female love interest is happy, because he really just wants her to be happy even if that means he’s not around, and she chooses him anyway...whereupon he makes it clear he’ll definitely help her with her mental health and he wants to be supportive of her. Holy shit, what a wild notion, an actual supportive character in a love triangle. In the second series, the love triangle gets set up, but ultimately broken when the man ultimately chooses the arranged marriage over the ‘true love’ angle, and then realizes he actually, legitimately enjoys the company of the lady in the arranged marriage, and the ‘true love’ love interest realizes that actually, that would have been a terrible idea and she wants to pursue her career. Again, a refreshing and ultimately all-around healthy take for all the characters on something that normally has some nasty fallout. 

In Mistborn, my first introduction to one of Sanderson’s series, I remember being genuinely floored and in awe of Elend’s and Vin’s relationship...because Vin is still really nervous about opening up to people and not comfortable with intimacy, and Elend is completely okay with that. He takes it slow with her, lets her set the pace, and doesn’t force her to do anything before she’s ready. Vin is most comfortable just being around/near him without doing anything inherently romantic, just being in his presence, and he is completely cool with that. And that’s such a healthy thing to see in a romantic story, because it’s really important for readers to see that yes, it’s totally OK to not rush into things, and yes, it’s totally OK for people to take it slower or easier for an uneasy partner. 

I could go on and on, but basically, romantic relationships in Sanderson’s novels are also engaging because a lot of the time? They’re healthy, and friendly, and toss most dramatic romantic subplots out on their ass.

While on that note?

He doesn’t do sex scenes

This one might be a loss for some, but it’s a win for me. Depending on how I feel on a given day, I’m either ‘irritated by’ to ‘really uncomfortable by’ sex scenes in novels...and unfortunately they’re prevalent, especially in fantasy novels. I usually end up uncomfortably flipping through these pages, trying to figure out where the scene ends so I can get back to the actual story. 

I honestly can’t think of a sex scene in any of his novels though. In fantasy, it’s stunningly refreshing, and I feel super safe and comfortable reading his novels because I don’t have to worry about uncomfortable surprises. Plus, circling back to the above points, it’s kind of nice to see characters having established relationships without it having to be solely reliant on them having a good or bad sex life.

Has LGBT+ relationships 

Yup, they’re there, and edge past ‘strongly implied’ to ‘blatantly stated’ in some cases too. Offhand, I can think of a pair of men in the Stormlight Archive who are noted to be in a relationship with each other, and a lesbian gunsmith in the second Mistborn series.

What I find important is not just the inclusion of these blatant relationships, but also how it’s treated as completely normal and not taboo in the context of these worlds, too. Non-straight relationships aren’t treated like a scourge or a difficulty these characters have to deal with; it’s just normal in these realities. 

Additionally, what I really like about them is the way other characters will get called out about it if they do cross a line (usually accidentally). In the above cases, Kaladin makes an ignorant off-hand remark about his gay Bridge Four soldier and is immediately called out about it by the rest of the Bridge Four gang, whereupon he realizes he’d crossed a line and apologizes right away. In the Mistborn series, Wayne repeatedly makes passes at lesbian gunsmith Ranette, who spurns his advances. But when he realizes she’s actually into girls, he backs off and respects that, rather than insisting on her dating him. These are some nice little lessons on how straight people actually should react regarding their non-straight friends and family, and normalizes non-straight people existing in society.

Sanderson has also been openly responsive to and cool about people interpreting his characters in non-straight relationships or reading “implied” relationships/romantic subtext, even if he hadn’t originally intended to put them there. Offhand, I can think of one situation where a reader told him he probably didn’t realize “just how bi” he’d written Shallan in regards to her interactions with Jasnah, to which Sanderson’s response was basically, “Well that wasn’t on purpose, but alright, cool, cool.” 

Also very good about inclusivity for mental illnesses and disabilities

While we’re on the topic of inclusivity, let’s talk mental illnesses and disabilities as well, because Sanderson is great about including these too. In Stormlight Archive alone, we have: 

Renarin, who in addition to having some physically disabilities (specifically, seizures and being physically weak), is confirmed by Word of God to be on the autistic spectrum. And he’s treated with respect and support by his family members and friends. His father shows up to meetings or events he wants to go to, just so he can feel comfortable going to them to show interest in things men typically aren’t supposed to. His brother protects him fiercely in combat but also does his best to give him space to grow, and understands that his brother is incredibly intelligent but sometimes just needs a little time to organize his thoughts or figure out how to communicate. Kaladin understands his physical disabilities immediately and is able to give advice on how to deal with them. The entirety of Bridge Four adopts him as another brother. Jasnah finds another way. I could go on, but basically, Renarin is great

Kaladin has clinical depression, and possibly some form of PTSD, even if they don’t have the technical words for this in-universe. He really struggles with this a lot in the series. Despite that, other characters look out for him a lot, and this creates some genuinely tender moments. 

Shallan rapidly developing some identity disorders. Actually breaks down and admits this to another character. The other character is fiercely supportive of her despite that and doesn’t give up on her so easily

Lopen doesn’t have an arm, but despite being physically disabled, Kaladin still immediately values him and he finds a place on the team. He’s also just...legitimately chill about being an amputee, makes missing arm jokes all the time, and doesn’t seem terribly bothered by it. I believe Sanderson even stated that there’s no real tragic story behind the missing arm...it’s just Lopen. That’s it. 

Teft struggles with substance abuse and insecurity, but the entirety of Bridge Four is super supportive in helping him break it

There’s a character who ends up paralyzed from the waist down over the course of the series. She thinks she’s done for and her life is over, but her mentor keeps encouraging her to try things anyway. 

Honestly, this series is enormous—there’s probably a ton more I’m not even remembering off-hand.

All of this is usually handled pretty tactfully and often brings in some really heartwarming character interactions when characters struggle with issues and other characters help them overcome them. Do you like hurt/comfort and whump in fanfiction? Sanderson does this in actual fiction. It’s great.

WRITING METHODOLOGY

He actually takes the time to write good stories

Sometimes a long-awaited book in a series coughDeathlyHallowscough comes out and you just know it was rushed. You can see it in the way the plot threads are resolved, in the way some threads are just never resolved and end up hanging there open-ended, in the way the epilogues are short and empty.

Sanderson doesn’t do this. He’s pretty transparent about it on his Twitter, where he’ll post updates on his writing progress percentages. Sometimes he apologizes for a delay on a book, because he wants to make sure it’s done right or he works out a plot point just so, or he needs to go back and re-read some old material to make sure there’s no hanging plot points. 

This is good. This is great. This means he genuinely cares about his work, and he wants to produce good content. I will happily wait an extra couple months if it means the book that’s going to sit on my shelf for years to come has a satisfactory start, middle and end.

He’s always ready to give advice to up-and-coming writers, and he’s great about fandoms

Sanderson has a whole segment on his blog devoted to answering questions about writing. He also has a whole series of lectures available for free online. I’ve even heard him in podcasts and blogs in other things. He’s not shy about giving advice and encouraging up and coming writers, and he’s always so encouraging about it too. He’s also totally cool with fanfiction, unlike some big name authors out there who get very elitist about fandoms and the comparative “worthlessness” of fanfiction. 

Some of his novels are available for free, right now, on his website

A bunch of his novels and novellas are available totally for free on his website, which means additional accessibility for people who don’t have the cash for books, ebooks, or audio books, and don’t have time to get to a library. 

Many of them are also available as audiobooks, which means you can probably snag them through your local library’s audio book checkout system as well. 

In conclusion

Brandon Sanderson rocks, his stories rock, and everyone who likes fantasy should really give them a shot, for all of the above reasons. 

[datleggy]

I’m autistic and one of the things I have trouble with is change. I’ve watched 911 since the third episode and now they have a second one? Idk. I’ve been seeing a lot of good things about it but I’m not sure if I want to watch it. Basically what I want to know is if it’s worth watching. Is it good? Are there any parallels between the new one and the Buck one? Who are the characters and what are they like? Will you start writing for this series instead of the other one? %

so, this got WAY longer than i thought it would, sorry!!! TL;DR is at the very very end!

tbh i didn’t wanna really give 911 lonestar a chance originally, i was lowkey annoyed bc it felt like they were like “oh u guys want buck and eddie, who are CLEARLY meant to be and have all this canon chemistry and relationship development to eventually get together??? lol NOPE but here’s a spinoff where u get ur white/latino gay ship :D”

which i do genuinely hope to god isn’t the case, like, i really need OG 911 to be like PSYCH here u go, some DIAZ-BUCKLEY fam. as a treat.

i did end up watching it bc curiosity and too many awesome gifsets finally got to me lol

and im only a couple of episodes in (haven’t had a chance to watch the 3rd ep bc of work and other things D: ) and so far i gotta say, i like the OG 911 calls that they get sent to more than 911 lonestars calls but again, im only 2 ep in, maybe they get more “woah thats crazy/hilarious/hearbreaking!” as the show goes on.

i honestly don’t see too many parallels between Buck and TK—the only thing i noticed where they’re pretty similar is how much they both enjoy easy physical contact. buck is very touchy feely and comfortable about showing affection/feelings and i feel like TK is the same regarding physical contact (with his dad at least)? but that’s about it.

for what it’s worth i do think the show is pretty entertaining and worth a watch!

my main reason for watching past the first episode is my enjoyment of the characters. i just think they’re all neat.

this is from a post i made when i first watched the show lol:

captain strand: good dad to all of his children

tk: hot gay messy boi

grace ryder: a fave, no nonsense beauty, judds better half

judd ryder: tragic big boi

captain blake: chaotic good w baby voice

marjan: wild feral messy gurl

mateo: if anybody’s mean to my SON im throwin hands bih

paul: again, if anybody’s mean to my SON im THROWIN hands

officer reyes: ready to dick tk down

here’s a more descriptive/longer summary of the characters if u wanna know more, if not skip down to the bolded sentence below lol:

owen strand is the captain (played by rob lowe) and to me he gives off chris traeger vibes (from parks and rec if u watched?) but with more depth. i like his character a lot, he’s a caring dad, seems like he knows what he’s doing, and like, c’mon, it’s rob lowe (i fell in love with him a million years ago when he played soda pop in the outsiders nipr;guebwuogrnofw)

tk is his son and a hot gay mess w some substance abuse issues (tho a lot has happened to him in only 2 ep i really don’t know how to feel about him entirely, bc besides stuff happening TO him, i don’t feel like he’s reacted in a way that shows much of his character?) idk maybe it’s just me. but he is a certified cutie so. lol

grace ryder, she’s smart (one of the only characters with more than ONE brain cell lmao) and gorgeous and an emergency 911 operator. she’s very supportive of her husband and what he’s going thru (which is A LOT), she herself has been thru a lot bc of the big incident at the beginning of the series and is still somehow held strong in spite of it all, she’s a personal fave of mine.

judd ryder is kind of a dick at first but i think its very understandable given the hell he’s been thru, im actually surprised at the amount that i like him. he’s very raw and vulnerable but has this “don’t worry im fine, back up” attitude that i loooove. 

captain blake is the captain for EMTs, she’s got this soft teeny baby voice that contradicts so hard with her give no fucks ima do what i need to to find my missing sister actions irwughqwgoriegjf i like. she’s caring and does goes out of  her way for the little guy.

marjan has ZERO chill but in a good way, i can already absolutely see her getting into trouble by doing some crazy impulsive thing on a call in order to rescue someone—-TBH she actually reminds me a lot of Buck from OG 911 in that way. like yea she’s reckless and impulsive but u can tell its bc she CARES and this firefighting thing is what she’s meant to do. i really like her.

mateo—-OH MAN. he’s 10000000% my favorite. it hurts me everytime he’s on screen, bc he’s such a sweet and HARD WORKING man and he deserves to be a firefighter and do what he wants/has been waiting for for so long, im so HAPPY captain strand gives him a chance. i think he might have some learning disability or maybe he grew up in a household where maybe his family was too busy or didn’t care to check up on how he was doing in school and they neglected to see how much he was struggling—this is all just pure speculation from the fact that on the show he tells captain strand during the interview that he’s always passed the physical exam to be a firefighter but keeps failing the written part :( i love my son.

paul is a trans firefighter who’s mainly known for his crazy good observational skills in the field—there’s an ep—ep 2?—that shows off his talent but like, i found it unintentional funny bc the way they did it was in a scene that honestly truly felt to me like a scene I MYSELF would write in a fanfiction if i wanted to show off a cool skill the character has but was also too lazy to make it look good???? lmaoooo im not trying to be mean but like, if u do watch it, its the 2nd ep i believe, the “office meeting” scene. other than that tho there’s only been a few scenes with paul in it (my personal fave being the skin care routine scene lol) but i look forward to more scenes of my son being a lil sherlock holmes :)

officer reyes is tk’s potential new mans. he seems like a good cop from what little ive seen of him doing police work. so, i saw a post someone made basically saying how ugly are the men in texas that officer reyes is out here thirsting over tk so HARD—and not to be rude, but he really is!!!! reyes is a goodlookin guy, so idk what’s up with that, maybe he likes messy bois? bc same.

p.s. im not sure how to feel about reyes and tk together yet bc it doesn’t really seem as if they have too much chemistry. hopefully that changes? i do kinda like that they haven’t started off their potential relationship on the best of foots, bc i love drama, an indisputable fact.

ONTO THE FINAL QUESTION!

OG 911 will always be my first love and i just don’t see this changing anytime soon. buddie will always be the #1 ship in my heart! and i have about a gazillion awesome prompts i need to work on so me switching over to 911 lonestar isn’t gonna happen. i love OG 911 way too much iuqhur4ogfoie3jwnwjinioj

tho i may occasionally—per the request of prompts i’ve gotten in the last week or so–take a couple of the characters from 911 lonestar and put them in a 911 fic as a crossover? we’ll see.

this ended up soooo long oruhibgruoeqwp i hope some of it helped tho?

tl;dt: 911 lonestar seems fun and the characters are interesting enough to keep me entertained so i say give it a chance  :)