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coldwind-shiningstars · 1 year ago

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Dungeon Meshi is obviously primarily about food, eating, and crucially survival through eating, but it's also focused on other aspects of survival. Sleep, rest, social ties and social exclusion. There's even extensive commentary on things like personal grooming (Marcille’s hair, Toshiro becoming depressed and no longer shaving), clean bathrooms, and other things. When it comes to disability these things are referred to as instrumental activities of daily life (IADLs), which are more complex things like shopping, housework, and cooking, which people need to do to survive, and activities of daily life (ADLs) which are the basic bare bones needs: eating, toileting, etc. Dungeon Meshi is concerned with the logistics of living and finding joy in those logistics.

This is super related to disability! Yes, Laios is autistic, this has been apparent from the beginning. But what does being autistic mean for him and the story? Mostly, it means his desires, goals, and the ways he goes about achieving them are strange, foreign, or baffling. He has different priorities than other people and the way he expresses those priorities are strange. They affect how he socializes, how he eats��

So, it absolutely makes sense that there would be a minor sideplot about activities of daily living and what it's like to be out of sync with everyone else when it comes to prioritizing things. It's Mithrun Time (he's gonna mith all over the place) and I'm so SO interested in the interplay of disability, caregiving and the logistics thereof, and intersectionality & privilege. Who needs care? How do other people feel about them needing care? How do they receive that care? And who do we think is worthy of receiving care and how does that interact with all these other factors?

Bunch of manga and extras spoilers past the cut:

“So, what's wrong with you?”

I see a lot of people talking about Mithrun's non-eye disability as a depression allegory, which I think is true, but I think it's also metaphorically/symbolically both a traumatic brain injury and a trauma response to sexual assault. The sexual assault aspect is pretty clear if you look at any of the symbolism of the actual disabling event: just look at it.

Mithrun is lying in bed and the goat comes to him, lifts him up and puts its mouth on his abdomen and lower pelvis. The eating is sexually charged, as is the particular way he struggles and protests. It's intensely violating, and things that were once desirable are lost. And the dungeon lord group therapy session involves a lot of people talking about the demons like an abusive lover; Mithrun, even though he wanted to kill the demon so badly, still says that they're gentle.

As for the brain injury, chronic TBIs can cause a wide variety of symptoms. Some immediately relevant ones are anhedonia (lack of enjoyment), executive function issues, poor interoception (trouble understanding what's going on in your body), cognitive impairment affecting ability to reason/multitask/plan/solve problems, changes in behavior and personality, depression, agitation, and restlessness. We see… basically all of these, in Mithrun, as downstream effects of the loss of desires. He can't tell when he's hungry, tired, or out of mana; he can't perform ADLs consistently even if he knows he'll die without doing them and dying without doing them will interfere with his long-term goal, he had drastic personality changes, he oscillates between impatient and totally withdrawn.

Brain injuries can also affect more complex tasks and ability to sustain lengthy periods of complex cognitive work. A common example is losing the ability to read and process longer passages; maybe you can read the words but you can't read a paragraph, or maybe you can read paragraphs but now you get a migraine after 15 minutes. Mithrun's skill loss is not related to reading but the effect is similar – he is and was extremely skilled in a particular area of magic, but also disabled in ways that specifically hinder his skill in this area – to teleport things properly you need depth perception and a sense of direction, and he lacks both of these! And while he's still an incredibly effective fighter it seems like he pretty frequently makes those sorts of mistakes.

This is treated often as a gag and it is genuinely funny but it’s also very real, to no longer be as good at the thing you were good at before you became disabled. Kui takes several throwaway gags seriously later on, not just this one. Another ~gag that's not really elaborated on is the bathroom thing, but I appreciate its inclusion anyway, since even if it's presented humorously it doesn't feel meanspirited in a way a lot of “diaper jokes” do. I think people need to talk a lot more about bathroom issues in a wide variety of disabilities, and I think it's nice that a guy I can already picture the “poor little meow meow” posts about also has this issue, you know?

Preferences vs Desire

Even referencing PTSD and TBIs it's hard to really grasp what having no desires means, and the characters don't generally ask, while Mithrun explains it in vague terms. “Desires” is a very broad term and indeed he has lost access to a wide but related variety of things. Unfortunately this lead to him often being treated as nonagentic.

Mithrun does still have preferences, even if he doesn't express them and has no desire which would drive him to seek out pleasant things and avoid unpleasant ones. He'll comment on the taste and texture of foods, for example – sure seems like he has an opinion!

People treat it like his preferences don't matter since he doesn't usually bring them up unprompted, and he's often in situations where there aren't other options.

Kabru seems best at not doing this (and, noncoincidentally, also seems to be the best at actually caring for him; the Canaries have a lot more Resources theoretically than Kabru And Mithrun Eating Monsters And Kabru's A Bad Cook, but although they are loudly distressed by the two of them disappearing it seems to have positively affected Mithrun's general health)

But, uh, acknowledgement that someone has preferences at all is a really low bar to clear and Kabru also doesn't seem to fully understand how Mithrun's brain works. Mithrun’s caregivers want him to eat when they want him to eat. They want him to rest and drink when they want him to.

He lacks the desire for a number of mundane things but also seems to lack the ability to tell when he needs them. He can't explain why he faints; is “I am out of mana” considered a desire for more mana, one that can be eaten? He can't sleep on his own; it's not only that he lacks “the desire to go to bed” but he can't do anything with his own exhaustion, even if he notices it. He comments on the unpleasant taste and texture of several meals; he may be unable to want to not eat it, but he definitely can tell when he dislikes something. But he also seems to be unable to tell when he's hungry.

Kabru will acknowledge these preferences but there's not really other food options, and Everyone Must Eat. Kabru doesn't know the details of Mithrun's condition yet but you can see the immediate frustration here and the way he offers food to him like Mithrun's a child.

Sure, he won't directly communicate preferences, so that makes it extra hard, but you can always just ask, and if he tells you he tells you.

The pathway between opinion and taking actions about it may be lost in Mithrun but the dungeon forces other people into a similar position – it forces them to eat food they don't want to eat so that they can survive or accomplish other goals. We've seen this with Marcille from the beginning. It's difficult with Mithrun because it seems like there is always going to have to be some sort of someone else overriding his autonomy – yeah, he's not hungry but he still needs to eat or he'll faint. Yeah, he's lying about whether or not he's clean but he still needs to wash or he'll die. Yeah, he needs to take a rest instead of keeping moving or he'll faint. But he's not unique in being in a situation where he has to do nonpreferred things. The difference is more that he lacks the ability to independently do anything when it comes to ADLs, preferred or not, which makes it into someone else’s choice and responsibility.

There's also a theme in Dungeon Meshi that comes up a bit of people being pushy about ADLs but from a slightly different perspective, and they're usually right. You see this in Senshi most commonly; he pushes the residents of the Golden City to actually eat even if they don't need to and can't taste it, and while he's correct in that Yaad does get enjoyment from the food even without taste he's still not quite listening to Yaad. Similarly, Kabru is correct in that he can get Mithrun to sleep without a sleeping spell, but he also ignores the way Mithrun says several times that he doesn't expect massage to work. There's a few aspects to this – wild but expected that the elves would choose the “just knock him out with a spell” route, the “easy way” Senshi always talks about when it comes to magic, instead of actually paying attention to other solutions. But also, generally, people know their bodies best, and sometimes even if you're really sure you have the trick to help them you have to listen to what they tell you.

tvtropes dot org frontslash DisabilityTropes

This is going to be a harder section just because it's so subjective; it's nearly impossible to think about the ways in which disabled people are viewed by the people around them/wider society with any degree of objectivity just because there are so many factors that go into it. But I do think Mithrun is consistently treated as relatively nonagentic and there are several ways this can manifest: being treated as a doll/pet/child, being treated as a weapon, and being a surface for people to project onto.

He's framed or treated as childlike intermittently through the manga; scattered about, just a little vibe in the way he's drawn, like the "say aah" above and Pattadol and Cithis through the teleportation scroll :

That's a middle aged man! And he's framed like a toddler getting picked up or misbehaving.

Which doesn't mean they care about him any less; his squad is really fond of him for someone who's technically like their parole officer. How dare you do this to our captain! They love him dearly; this is obvious and he comments on it! They respect him, too, as the leader and as a strong fighter. But loving someone and thinking they're a skilled fighter doesn't mean you respect their autonomy fully.

There's also an element of everyone projecting their own issues onto him; Kabru with their shared Dungeon Trauma. The canaries all suggesting wacky, midlife-crisis desires. He doesn't ever express that he minds any of this, except when they try to stop him from making particular decisions. They also don't often understand why he'd be motivated to do a particular thing, and in fact some of these projections may actually be correct! But while noodles and pottery may be good later-on goals for him, I think it's striking that a) Kabru was the closest to correctly guessing what desire Mithrun might acquire now and he was still guessing the exact opposite (suggesting a desire to not eat Falin but to help Laios, vs Mithrun's actual desire, which was to eat Falin with no thought given to the promise he made at all) and b) it's a desire that actually makes perfect sense with what we know about him, not something totally new.

And, finally, he's a weapon: people are willing to caretake him because he's good at killing things dead. If his only desire is to kill demons dead, it's easy to start seeing that as who he is. I don't think he'd argue that “trying to kill demons” takes up the majority of his life (it's his only goal and he's obsessed with it) but even if there's only one thing that matters to him he has autonomy (in the sense that he can make his own choices about what to prioritize and formulate his own plans) and personhood.

Politics and privilege – who gets to access care?

One of the things we're first presented with when it comes to Mithrun is that he is intensely capable at handling dungeons. Yeah, there's the immediately visible prosthetic eye and the navigation issues, but the Canaries are built up as being incredibly dangerous and skilled, and he's their captain; they all immediately defer to him. He's intense, he curbstomps an entire room of guards, he's efficient, he's brutal, he's strong physically and magically.

In short: yeah, he's very disabled. He's also still very useful.

At the risk of oversimplification, even within his particular disability, he's much more disabled than Marcille is (she lost something relatively simple and easy to miss, she has no catatonia-moment) but less disabled than Thistle, who seems to still have at least one desire related to the king but is still primarily catatonic. It seems like Thistle is not unusual among ex-dungeon lords, even if there's enough noncatatonic dungeon lords to form a support group later. When Milsiril finds Mithrun, she immediately intends to mercy-kill him – this seems to be a condition the elves are familiar with but consider terminal, at least to the degree Mithrun is affected, and people seem unfamiliar what it means to keep living in this state because Mithrun is unusual in that he survives at all. And he's “allowed” to survive initially because he's not as disabled as he could have been (still has a desire) and that desire is useful. They aim him at the dungeons and off he goes. It takes twenty years for him to recover enough to do it, sure, but they're elves. They can wait. He can still be useful.

Relatedly, when he loses the ability to pursue his desire he's immediately much worse off than he was previously.

The no-desire catatonia is something that can recur and the elves continue to not know how to handle it. If Kabru wasn't there to problemsolve I think he'd have just… stayed there with his increasingly distressed squad.

Speaking of his squad, there's also a fascinating power dynamic going on with just the inherent structure of the Canaries; criminals are assigned as his caregivers. There's the inherent unfairness to the criminal Canaries about them being given extra duties, this strange rich noble guy who's now their Responsibility. There's so much possibility for resentment in normal caregiving relationships, much less being forced by your jailor into caregiving someone. But there's also an element of the power the prisoner Canaries now have over him and his most basic ADLs and needs. Assigning Cithis to his care is such a can of worms! The dynamics of the situation are frankly awful for both of them; of course she resents him initially. It would be strange for her not to. When Pattadol catches her making Mithrun do embarrassing things, she instantly reminds Cithis of her lower-status – she's forced to care for this nobleman and then forcibly reminded that she's beneath him.

She's responding to having menial, low-status tasks forced on her by trying to humiliate him, and although he doesn't have the ability to care enough to stop her it's still a deliberate removal of dignity. He's the instrument with which she is punished and she punishes him in return (until it's not fun anymore and she understands him a bit more.)

Mithrun is a long-lived race, who has structural power over the shorter lived races simply because of how long they live. The dwarves and elves try to actively keep certain knowledge from other races, restricting their access to technology, and other expressions of distance. Senshi spends nearly the whole first season not listening to Chilchuck trying to explain that he's an adult and treating him like a child, and Kabru repeatedly says that the elves do the same thing (and tbh we see them doing it). There's even the fact that it took him twenty years to recover enough to join the Canaries again; a shorter-lived race might have died from old age in this time, or become too old to work in this capacity, and then wasted away without the drive to return to the dungeons. But they're elves; the other elves can afford to wait, and he's not going to age out of dungeoneering any time soon. Being an elf probably contributes to his wealth in the same way skin color contributes to wealth inequality in the real world.

Dungeon Meshi doesn't really go into race in the sense of skin color much, and Kui is writing from a different cultural standpoint than I am. While tallmen are quite accurate when it comes to skin/hair color (yes, even Kabru and his blue eyes; it's rare but possible) and cultural references, the elves, uh, absolutely are not, both in the sense of “dark skin & pale hair and eyes trope” and sense of the royals having jet black skin.

Still, I feel like race is so connected to care and caregiving in the real-world west that I would be profoundly remiss not to mention it. Skin color might not matter to elves in the racism sense, but it matters to humans and humans are the ones writing and analyzing this story. (And I fully expect as the fandom grows with anime-onlies people will like Mithrun more because he's white (has white features) than they would if he had darker skin, because fandom is also baseline racist.)

I don't think we can just not mention that Mithrun is pale-skinned and both Cithis and Kabru, his primary caregivers over the story, both have dark skin.

Racism means white people are more likely to get good medical care, the type you need to get diagnosed and prescribed caregiving. Racism means wealth distribution is uneven, favoring white people. Race affects immigrants taking on undesirable jobs like caregiving for low pay. Racism is a profound stressor which means it contributes to who becomes disabled in the first place in that it can worsen health outcomes.

Similarly to race, gender may not be very obvious when it comes to this subplot within the story but the gendered dynamics of caregiving in the real world are something I do want to touch on. There's an oft-cited statistic about how men are much more likely than women to divorce their partners when their partners are diagnosed with a serious condition; I don't like relying too much on those sorts of statistics because they can be so misleading but it does gesture at something very real, culturally. Even if men aren't supposed to be caretaken, women are supposed to be the caretakers. Certainly, it's not Mithrun's fault that he can't cook and can't do laundry and probably can't do most housework, but I do also think about all the posts passed around about “my boyfriend who won't do housework.”

Again, none of these privileges make him less disabled and less in need of and deserving of care, they're just worth talking about when we talk about caregiving in general.

It's Rotten Work, Even If It's You

People expect disabled people receiving care to be grateful, to accept anything, and to try and make it easier for the caregiver if they're able. Requiring care is an incredibly disadvantaged position, even as actually receiving it can be so tangled up in privilege. Caregiving is tremendously difficult work, it's true, but there's a particular vibe people want from disabled people – all those movies about not wanting to be seen as a burden. Never complaining. Being grateful.

And, uh, well…

Mithrun basically accepts anything his caregivers do, but he's not grateful at all! I appreciate that in a disability portrayal. He'll also lie to and ignore his caregivers, which is Annoying but is definitely an expression of autonomy even if he's probably not doing it specifically to express his autonomy. He's not going to thank you. He's not going to make it easy. He'll accept a lot of things considered “undignified,” and he's not mean or unpleasant in the sense that he's taking advantage or anything, but he's certainly not a model patient.

He's running off back into the dungeons just when you think you've finally gotten him somewhere safe.

There's always a strange tension in caregiving, I've found. It is incredibly intimate but a lot of it is done by total strangers. A number of caregiving tasks are viewed by the wider world as entitled but placing those tasks in the hands of strangers is a remarkably tough place to be in. As a disabled person, I've had to accept my bowel movements being discussed with my parents’ friends, all sorts of being physically moved places not against my will but without my permission, even my pubic hair being shaved off by a stranger (nurse) while I was unable to speak or move. When people are feeding you, making sure you use the toilet, rubbing your feet to make you sleep, helping you with hygiene – people are working so hard to help you. Are you supposed to just accept them doing whatever they want to you?

There's also a dynamic where people will say they don't mind caring for you, they're happy to do it, and then as the years go by and you continue to need care the resentment just builds up. Caregiving is hard work. It's often thankless. The goodness of people’s hearts can run dry, when it's been twenty years and you still can't bathe yourself.

Aaand I need to continue in reblogs, because I'm out of space for images. Please hold. edit: you can find part 2 here

#eat or be eaten #I'm real and I beat myself up behind the Blockbusters #tbh i tried not to talk about myself too much here. but uhhhh caregiving issues are so tender for me #tender in the ouch way not the gentle way #anyway #dungeon meshi spoilers #dungeon meshi #mithrun

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tugstoffoles · 2 months ago

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Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson are the two opposite sides of the Autism spectrum... (a list of autism [and audhd] headcanons for mattfoggy)

Matt: Sensory avoident, hyperfocuses on things for months, monotone, very non-expressive, tactile stimming, misses social cues*, strong sense of justice, picky eater, likes dpt, Echolalia, pattern recognition

Foggy: Sensory seeker, gets a new hyperfixation every couple weeks, hyper empathy, extremely expressive, verbal stimming, misses social cues, strong sense of justice, bad liar, struggles with interoception, likes being the one who does the dpt, Echolalia

this is a short version of a long post im gonna make later..

#* he really struggled with social cues and masking until he moved out of the orphanage and met more people in college where he learned how #* to mask and act #* his super senses also helped him learn to pick up on certain cues #they got multiple noise complaints their freshman year because they would bounce back and forth with their echolalia #mattfoggy #matt murdock #foggy nelson #autism #audhd #headcanon #disability headcanon #nuerodivergent headcanon #daredevil

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seeker-of-stories19 · 1 year ago

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Autistic Ghost Headcannons

- Intentionally ignores social cues

- Scowls all the time at everything and everyone but usually not on purpose

- Takes full advantage of his ear defenders and balaclava to avoid sensory experiences he dislikes

- Incredibly restrictive eating, often chooses to go hungry rather than touch something he dislikes

- One of his favorite stims is smelling Soaps hair

- Gets overstimulated by certain things but is also very sensory seeking in other ways

- Wears tight gloves and sleeps under four weighted blankets because he likes the pressure

- Stims by making a tight fist, chewing his lips, scratching, hitting himself, leaning against things, rocking, pacing, rubbing the seam of his balaclava, tapping his ear defenders

- One track mind, he hates switching tasks and never does more than one thing at once unless it’s a hundred percent necessary

- Wears a mask largely to hide his scars and identity but it has the added benefit of keeping him from having to worry about making the correct facial expressions

- Very prone to dissociation

- Violent meltdowns, tends to have a vicious temper and destroy everything around him, hurting himself or anyone else unfortunate enough to cross his warpath

- But eventually when he’s in private he ends up just curling into himself and crying and rocking like he did as a kid

- It makes him feel incredibly vulnerable and he goes to extreme lengths to avoid the meltdowns which is a huge part of why they’re so bad

- Only Johnny and sometimes Price can calm him down

- Everyone else just thinks he has an explosive temper for no reason

- Ties his boots dangerously tight to get more sensory input

- Thrives under military routines but ignores rules that don’t make sense

- This definitely caused problems with COs in the past but Price is way more understanding and generally the 141 gets a lot of leniency on rules because of the type of work they do and the specific value of their skill sets

- Soap sleeps on top of him and always squeezes his hand a little too hard

- Hides in his room when overstimulated and shuts down completely, will literally disassociate for hours until Soap finds him

- Obsessively neat, nothing is ever anywhere other than where it’s supposed to be

- Doesn’t mind loud sounds but hates multiple sounds at once

- Explosions and gunfire are usually fine as long as he has his headphones but people talking and eating all at once in the mess makes him want to cry

- Absolutely despises crowds and will get very agitated and pissed off before eventually checking out until Johnny can get him back to a quiet space

- Soap letting him have the best vantage point when they go out because of how bad Simons PTSD and sensory issues are and he trusts Simon to watch his six

- Drinks but never to the point of being drunk

- Has the shittiest temperature regulation ever, gets so overheated but can’t figure out why and would freeze to death if it wasn’t for Soap making him put on layers because he’s basically immune to the cold

- Other than keeping his space clean which is mostly because it’s been beaten into him by his dad and then the army to the point where having a messy space will send him into a panic attack he’s a disaster. He never remembers to bring his dishes over to the tiny kitchen in the 141s rec room and routinely stares at things for days unable to complete simple tasks until he gets so pissed he ends up crying

- Price used to get annoyed by it and they’ve all three harassed him about it but once they realize that he’s genuinely struggling all three of them step in to make things easier for him, helping clean up his stuff in common spaces and wash dishes

- Soap definitely helps him with his laundry but only at 3am when he suddenly has the urge to do his own because ADHD

- His interoception is appalling, he’ll be furious and yell at recruits or just look at people like he wants to kill them on missions until Johnny leans over to subtly remind him that he hasn’t gone to the bathroom or eaten anything in eight hours

- Is fluent in BSL and uses it to communicate with Price when he’s in a verbal shutdown

- Soap and Gaz ask Price to teach them secretly and when they start signing to Ghost one day he’s absolutely shocked

- Generally he gets by with everyone else by grunting and scowling, people are too scared of him to call him out

- Most of his masking relies on peoples fear of him even though it often makes him feel even less human and it’s a vicious downward spiral

- Soap not being afraid of him was a really big deal because of this but also lead to him being really freaked out and unsure how to handle his prying

- Soap just finds him impossibly endearing and loves all the hidden little movements and noises he makes when they’re alone

- Lets Simon use his hands to fidget under the table during meetings

- Even though Soap isn’t the best at social cues himself he takes up explaining things to Ghost subtly whenever he can

- When Simon comes to his room to ask him about something someone said for the first time he’s ecstatic and considers it a great victory

- While a lot of Simons stims are more subtle or at least misinterpreted Soap will absolutely get hyped up when he’s stimming and start jumping or rocking or flapping his hands eagerly

- Soap sends him adhd x autism memes all the time and encourages Ghost to send back anything that interests him even if he thinks Soap won’t like it

- Is shocked to realize how strong Ghosts special interests are as his phone turns into a constant flood of articles and artwork about things Ghost loves

- Included but not limited to guns, puzzles, animal anatomy and bones, flowers (specifically the meanings of flowers) and many others

- Taking things apart and putting them back together, usually his rifle but will generally do it with everything from pens to knives

- Hoards weird things like old ink cartridges and bullet casings

- Has an unbelievable memory for details of old missions, can remember building layouts from over five years ago

- Soap’s room is so chaotic they barely spend time there because of how much it stresses Ghost out

- Generally they just balance each other out well with Simon being aggressively introverted and Soap being just as extroverted

- He pushes Simon a bit outside of his comfort zone and helps him socialize while Ghost reigns him in

- No one else really gets how they operate in the field except each other

- Soap was professionally diagnosed in school while Ghost was professionally diagnosed after Roba under a fake name with Price’s help so it’s not officially on his military record

- Ghost is actually very okay with how his brain works because it’s made him who he is and allowed him to surpass the regular limitations of a soldier

- He struggles more in his personal life but being around Soap heals a deep part of him that he’s buried since early childhood

- They understand each other like no one else ever has

#autistic simon ghost riley #soap mctavish has adhd #call of duty #soapghost headcannons #soapghost #ghostsoap #ghoap #cod mw2 #soap cod #ghost cod #simon ghost riley #john soap mactavish

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shiroganejpg · 11 months ago

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DUNMESHI MANGA SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Needless to say, a large part of Mithrun's character is his lack of desire. But what this can actually mean and how that can affect him, that can be a bit more ambiguous I think, so here's me rambling a bit about what I believe and how I write him. It's kind of long and I'm trying to be extra cautious with spoilers for anime-only friends so I'm slapping it under a read more but I think Mithrun is SUCH a wonderful character and a total puzzle to figure out how to write.

The winged lion likes to leave scraps. And although it consumed his desires, one of the scraps he left in Mithrun was the ability to desire.

Mithrun didn't lose his desire for revenge against the demon, although we later find out obviously that that desire was something else: he wanted the demon to finish devouring him. That's a whooole other thing I need to write up about insecurity and desire to be loved etc etc.

Things get a little murky sometimes in regards to 'desire' - for example when we see that despite the Winged Lion getting carried away and consuming all of Thistle's desires, we still see Thistle respond to Yaad. That's probably a topic for a whole other meta but the point is: scraps of some variety still exist.

But without the desire to live, the desire to get up or to eat or to drink, one will die quickly regardless. It's not the consuming of the desire that directly kills you, but what that lack of desire then deprives you of. Left alive, yes, but you will then starve to death if you have no desire to eat. It's the aftermath.

In the 40 years he spent recovering, he was taught things (or people attempted to teach him things) to help him survive with this deficiency: Milsiril suggests he envisions his old self and allow him to tell Mithrun what he needs to do. We know that canonically, he relies on pre-established routines and habits to be able to function independently, but when outside of those routines, he neglects/cannot recognise his own needs.

Mithrun has no desire to live, to eat, to drink, to get out of bed, anything. He does these things (and everything else) with only one motivation: pursuit of the demon. Everything that he does, he does to advance that cause. Then later, when that goal is achieved, we see he’s basically catatonic - because there’s nothing else for him to live for.

He also has extremely poor interoception - the ability to understand what his body is telling him. I believe Mithrun does get hungry, does get tired, does feel cold — it's not that he doesn't physically feel these things. He does, albeit weaker than most people which is one reason why things can progress as far as they tend to (like in the panels where we see his body ‘just stopped working’, and he can't explain why — exhaustion, lack of food, mana depletion, he was unable to identify the problems.) I HC at least that Mithrun experiences these feelings, but struggles to identify these sensations as being hunger, thirst, etc — and even if he does recognise them, he has no desire to resolve them.

But, obviously, Kabru brings him back around - You constantly want new things. Desires can be cultivated, and they are an innate aspect of existence. His story ends on the note that he can develop new desires even if his old desires are gone forever - and I believe that healing will not recover those desires. He is never going to have the desire to feed himself, or rest, or even to get out of bed. In my mind the demon ate his desires, and also a large part of his ability to desire - but, just as we see the demon leaves scraps of someone's desire when consuming them... he also left scraps of the ability to desire in Mithrun. Most of it is gone, but some remains. And I don't think Mithrun realised that until the end of the series: that he can try to want things. He can try to desire things. He might not always succeed, but he has the ability to try.

A way I think this shows up is that, post-canon, Mithrun might ask questions or try to be curious (which we see to a limited degree in canon, outside of gathering information pertaining to his goal) as it is a desire that should be easy to cultivate - even though he doesn't really care about the answer. That sounds bad, but understand that Mithrun does care about people; his manner of showing it is simply different, and both he and others have to learn to recognise it. I have to do a write up on this aspect as well because Mithrun does care, but I think he struggles to identify that fact in himself -- and he may come off as uncaring, if you don't know how to recognise it in him.

I love Mithrun getting a happy ending, but I don’t think the damage that’s already done will be undone. Those desires are gone, they aren’t ever coming back. But he can try to replace them.

And I think another big aspect of Mithrun's story is that he's living regardless of if he has the desire to live or not. I don’t believe that he suddenly has the desire to live, or that he is suddenly regaining the desire to live (maybe that may come with healing, I'd say that is down to personal interpretation); regardless, I don't think the damages that the demon did can be undone.

Instead, he is making the choice to live regardless. And while he will never feel the desires that the demon consumed again, maybe he'll eventually be able to desire other things. He can't right now, and maybe he never will, but he has the ability to try. And whatever he is trying to desire will help him continue to live, even in the absence of the desire to live.

He may lack the desire to live, to rest when he's tired or feed himself when he's hungry -- but maybe if he can learn to want other things, resting or eating won't feel so pointless. So he's trying.

#mithrun dunmeshi #mithrun dungeon meshi #captain mithrun #dunmeshi #dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #dunmeshi spoilers #delicious in dungeon spoilers #dungeon meshi spoilers #dungeon meshi meta #mithrun of the house of kerensil #I have so many feelings about this man and none of them are normal #also hey I'm a mithrun RPer and. kabumisu. pspspspspspps

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wordsnstuff · 1 year ago

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Hi!

I have reached out to more people, but I'm still having problems with this, and I wanted to hear another opinion.

As a writer, do you have problems continuing a story once you hit a difficult scene?

Because I do, and honestly it's getting me frustrated at this point.

I have a good idea and a plot already done, but every time I hit a difficult scene I just get stuck, and can't write for weeks, sometimes months. I hardly even open the documents when it happens, and sometimes it comes right when I'm on a writing spree and being happy with my writing.

Do you have any advice on how to deal with this? How can I get past this issue and just keep writing more frequently?

I'd really like to hear it!

What do you do when you hit a snag?

When approaching this topic, the frustrating thing is that age-old advice has a lot of truth to it. Sometimes it is true that the best thing you can do when you're stuck is to stop struggling against the resistance and take a meaningful, intentional break to rest your mind and reset your thought process. Sometimes the key to getting started again is shaking up the routine and the altering the process until you find a new combination of habits that meet you where you are.

However, for a lot of us, the turmoil reaches deeper than that. A lot of people who do creative things are neurodivergent, so that has a place in the conversation when discussing what's preventing us from realizing our vision. Even if you don't identify with specific neurodivergence, there are a lot of tools and techniques that have been tried and tested for coping with immense, intrinsic difficulty with things like productivity, mindfulness, interoception, focus, and consistency. Just because these techniques are not specifically designated for you doesn't mean they won't be effective for you.

It is always a helpful exercise to take a step back and examine how you're feeling, both when you are writing and when you aren't, and try to identify any areas where you might be able to improve by changing things within your control.

When it comes to a specific scene holding you back from carrying on, I usually find that it's the result of a decision I made earlier in the plot that isn't serving the story as it continues to develop. I would take a chunk of time to take an analytical look at the scene, where it's come from, what is and isn't sparking in it (is the stagnation mostly due to the characters, events, environment, or lack of information, and is it a scene that is imperative to the reader's understanding?). A lot of the time, it's a scene that can be cut, or it's a scene that can be made redundant by infusing the necessary information of the scene into another place within the story.

If you've identified a scene as "a difficult scene", ask yourself why. If it's daunting because it's too long, then it can probably be cut way down and then added to later if while editing it seems a little thin. If it's challenging because things aren't falling into place and you aren't getting into a flow, then the set-up for the scene probably hasn't been developed effectively and you need to decide whether you're gonna go back in the draft to investigate or move on and return to it while editing.

If the information in the scene needs to be communicated at this specific point in the story, the problem might be the way you've chosen to present it. Pay attention to what your instincts are telling you, because pushing through a scene for the sake of getting past it will not produce a compelling scene to read. If you need to move past it, you have permission to do that. You can always come back and completely dig it up later.

Overall, I think it's very important to write with acceptance that the plot may not turn out the way you planned it. The process is much more effective and much more enjoyable if you aren't trudging along on a predestined path. If the characters and story develop outside of the lines, see where they go. You'll always have the opportunity to return to the outline and tailor later.

Best of luck,

x Kate

#writing #writeblr #writespo #writing advice #writing tips

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my-autism-adhd-blog · 7 months ago

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Hi! I have ADHD and your blog has helped so so so much!! I struggle a lot with remembering to eat and drink regularly, do you have any advice/tips that could help?

Hi there,

I’m glad my blog has helped! I also have trouble remembering to eat and drink too because of my interoception (basically what you feel within you body).

Here are some tips that might help:

Maybe use a timer/reminder to eat/drink something? Like a breakfast, lunch and dinner

Eating little snacks like crackers between if you get a bit hungry

Even if you aren’t thirsty, drink anyway every now and then (water is the best choice obviously lol). Your body need water. I have tachycardia (fast heart rate) from this so I’m trying to drink more. Be sure to drink lots of water, your body needs it

Eat sweets in moderation. Many really like sweets, but I know it’s not good in the long run and can lead to issues like diabetes.

That’s all the advice I can think of. I hope you find it helpful! Stay hydrated and full for me!

Thank you for the inbox. I hope you have a wonderful day/night. ♥️

#inbox #inbox reply #inbox is open #eating #drinking #physical health

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astranite · 10 months ago

Text

Love is Stored in the Pasta

Scott, John and pasta.

This started off from a tumblr post 'cause somebody needed to cook that guy some pasta!!

Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, really very mild scott is hangrysad, ft john's space issues, Chronic Illness, as thats what im treating it as and its not the focus here he's just living with it, Scott Tracy has ADHD, this is important, Autistic John Tracy, lowkey here but also Important to me, this is fun and fluffy and i love them, i hope this is like a warm comforting bowl of pasta to you too

---

“We need to talk,” John said.

On the other side of the call, Scott’s hologram slumped over his desk, his head landing in his hands. “Oh God.”

“I found your search history…” John began.

Scott peered out sheepishly from behind his fingers. “I can explain!”

“It’s just pages and pages of pasta?”

John was puzzled, honestly. Five to ten recipe blogs and that was Scott trying to decide what to make for dinner during a meeting or while he was struggling to concentrate on work. During lulls between callouts, he and John would sometimes debate options together. More than forty separate sites visited at 3:12pm on a Tuesday afternoon and Eos had flagged it for John, on suspicion that Scott’s computer had been hacked by a malicious entity or some other AI virus.

Scott went from double facepalm of despair to full on faceplant, his head hitting the desk with an audible thunk.

“Why so much pasta?” John questioned. Now his curiosity was piqued, he couldn’t let it go or he’d be doing EVA work later, still turning over possibilities in his mind, which wasn’t conducive to the constant concentration needed while floating around in the vacuum. Outside, any misstep would be your last.

“I dunno. I just feel like pasta,” Scott mumbled into the wood.

Scott sounded…weird. Like he was about to start laughing, or coming down with a cold.

“Scott? Are you okay?”

It had better not be another flu; corralling Scott to take care of himself was hard enough even if he wasn’t feverish. John wouldn’t be able to come down either, quarantined up in Five unless he already had it. Was the slight tug of a headache at his temples from his sinuses beginning to clog up too?

Scott hadn’t looked up yet; his shoulders were shaking. John wiggled his fingers anxiously.

“Scotty?”

Big brother’s head shot up at the nickname John so rarely used. Had John intended to provoke that reaction? The name had been a slip of the tongue but if he was was honest, he sort of had meant to jar Scott out of his thoughts. He never called Scott, Scotty unless he was scared though. And Scott not answering him did tick tick tick up his system from yellow alert into red.

“I’m fine, it’s okay. Don’t worry about me.” Scott’s words ran over each other in an attempt to come first. His voice sounded oddly wet.

Tears, yes those were indeed tears dulled by holographic format, tumbled down Scott’s cheeks.

As soon as he saw John looking, Scott turned away.

Suddenly, John landed on the spark of insight that he had a hunch would crack the code to his big brother’s distress. “Have you eaten anything all day?”

Scott dug around for tissues in a drawer of the desk and gave a half shrug. “I guess not—not really? I tried to before you say anything. Got a mouthful of breakfast in and then there was a call out. Lunch didn’t happen, there was a meeting, I had to make coffee, I ran out of time. I don’t really feel hungry though…”

That did explain a few things. It was well known family lore that Virgil and Alan got hangry, and Gords went all sad and mopey. Scott and John himself though, they got …really, unstably emotional.

So yeah, hence the unexpected bursting into tears. John got the whole shit interoception and not even noticing if you needed to eat while you were buried in work thing; Scott was way too used to ignoring his body too.

John took a deep breath. “Scott, and I’m one-hundred percent serious about this, do you want me to come down there and make you some pasta?”

Thunderbird Five systems whirred around John in the quiet as Scott hesitated.

“Maybe,” he whispered. “Or you don’t have to, I’ll wait, Virge’ll be doing dinner in a bit anyway.”

“Virgil won’t be up until past sunset after the hours Thunderbird Two was out yesterday and into this morning,” John said gently. “You need to eat before then.”

Nor would an overwhelmed Scott and the kitchen be a good combination at this point, and John saw the moment Scott realised this, while fidgeting with the rubix cube on his desk.

“I want to do this for you,” John told him.

Scott dashed at his eyes, sniffled a few times and finally capitulated. “Okay. Thanks, Jay.”

John smiled and signed off, heading for the space elevator. He was usually so far away, he was right now, but it was in his power to close off that distance when he needed to and today he could use that.

He farewelled Eos; she so often missed him but the opportunities to run the space station on her own that weren’t emergencies where he was incapacitated excited her. They showed how much he had come to trust and rely on her. Plus she got full reign of their virtual chess set.

On Earth, Scott was waiting for him as the elevator docked, his hands stuck casually in his jeans pockets but looking as pale and wobbly as John felt. His face was still tearstained.

“Hey.”

“Hey to you too.” John took a few heavy steps before throwing himself at Scott, wrapping his arms around his brother tightly, all the while careful not to knock him off balance. Scott stiffened then melted into John.

Usually that interaction went the other way around.

Scott used the extra height space gave John to rest his head on him without having to duck down like with everyone else. John hugged him close and comfortingly as his fingers tap tap tapped their rhythm at Scott’s shoulder. All of it meant I love you.

“Pasta time?” John said eventually.

Scott nodded silently, following when John started off towards the kitchen. The raw rock wall of the hanger was rough and vividly solid in its three dimensions, as John ran his hand along it for balance as he walked that initial part. He was touching the Earth, he was in the Earth, he was on Earth.

With cold water from the fridge dispenser and the fizzy, brightly coloured tablets shook out of their tube, John made up lidded cups of electrolyte drink for himself and Scott. John needed to be sculling the stuff perpetually to stay upright down here, and he would not be at all surprised if Scott was dehydrated too. It might to something for John’s headache, could go either way for the nausea coming on.

He put a large pot on the heat. One advantage of having a stove so high powered that it could nuke anything it touched was that any volume of water boiled fast.

An entire packet of fettuccine got tipped into the enthusiastic cacophony of bubbles. John poked at it with a pasta scoop, regretting that he hadn’t snapped the long pieces to actually fit in better. Ah well.

He shook in an excessive-to-anyone-not-him amount of salt with a shrug ‘cause he needed it, before having another go at separating the pasta. The pasta scoop was quite an effective implement for that, there were reasons after all it was Gordon’s favourite utensil as John remembered from previous discussions. One could also use it to mash potatoes when held vertically, if one so pleased. His second favourite was the tongs as they could be clicked like crab claws and used to pinch unsuspecting siblings.

Scott watched from his place slumped over the kitchen bench on a stool, chewing on the ragged skin at the edge of his thumbnail. He was trying to work on a couple of screens pulled up as holomonitors, as unsuccessfully as could be expected. John came over and hopped up to sit on the bench, clipping through the projected email inbox and meeting minutes so Scott dismissed them. It was with a sigh of relief.

They smiled tiredly at each other.

The pasta! John tapped at his uniform comms watch. “Eos, set a timer for the pasta, please?” John shaved the minute that had already passed off of the box time and then another couple to ensure it wouldn’t come out mushy.

“So what sort of stuff on pasta do you feel like? There’s a good lot of options you were looking at earlier.”

“We don’t have the ingredients for most of those, I checked. No eggs and no mushrooms so no carbonara. Technically that wouldn’t be authentic carbonara though. No cream cheese. We missed this week’s supply run so we don’t even have any frozen peas!” Scott threw his hands up in the air.

“Hmmm. You feel like something creamy?”

“Yeah. Honestly at this point I’d eat anything.”

John swung his legs and tapped his fingers on the counter while he thought.

“I believe some bacon is hiding in the bottom of the freezer so that’s something. And…” he trailed of as he moved his head too fast and set off a wave of dizziness as he looked around the kitchen.

“Avocado!” Scott exclaimed.

“Avocado?”

“Funny story, we ended up with several cases of them after that rescue on that farm where we saved the whole village and nearly all their trees from catastrophic flooding. They really need eating too and there’s only so much toast you can stand.”

“I have heard theoretically of putting avo on pasta and it does sound good. Mmmm bacon and avocado, John hummed. “Worth a shot?”

Scott reached towards the fruit bowl in answer, grinning at John. “Soon we will have pasta!”

John peeled off the upper half of his uniform and tied the arms around his waist in preparation. In the subtropical summer down here he was already getting too hot and while the temperature regulation built into his suit would do its best to make up for his own body’s lack thereof, it felt weird to have everything covered up from fingertips to neck down here while he was cooking.

Scott began to giggle.

“Huh?” John said, extremely eloquently.

Scott gestured at him.

“My suit?” Was something up with his suit? The full gloved hands and sleeves flopping about without John in them had been known to amuse the lot of them on occasion, ever since he’d used the empty suit as a phoney decoy of himself to trick Eos. It was pretty funny now no one was in mortal peril and Eos was his friend.

“Your face!” Scott exclaimed.

“What’s wrong with my face?”

John frowned. Was it his fringe that never could survive true gravity? He hadn’t gotten freckles while he’d been down all of half an hour and inside, had he? Then he looked down.

His t-shirt had a photograph of his face printed on it, and across the chest, emblazoned in neon orange read the words ‘Space Face’, courtesy of one particular fish brother. Ah yes. That.

John sighed, resting his chin on his hand to hide the smile he couldn’t quite control. “Not exactly subtle, is it? In my defence this was the only one in my closet that was clean and you can’t exactly see it beneath my suit. It’s all Gordon’s fault anyway!”

Scott was still laughing, albeit a touch hysterically and at him, but John took it as a win regardless.

Eventually Scott grabbed himself a cutting board and knife to get to work on the avocados as John carefully slipped off the bench, steadying himself on the counter as his ankles went noodley so he could handle the bacon.

Bacon, bacon, now where had he seen that bacon? He had the image of it in his head, but that was only one piece of the puzzle, a photograph, humanly imperfect, memory woven out of instinct. Digging about in the deep freeze which the evidence pointed to as best John could tell had his fingers feeling like he’d stuck them out in space with out gloves on. They ached sharply as John cursed his crappy circulation.

He gladly found the bacon though, lurking at the second darkest depths. He would not be willing to venture into the midnight zone of Unidentified Frozen Objects and charred dinner leftovers put away for ‘later’. He chucked the packet into the microwave and thawed out his hands by running them under lukewarm water, wincing all the while. If he’d thought this through, if he’d been smart enough, he would’ve put his suit gloves back on—his space rated, cold proof, most definitely impervious to domestic appliances gloves— and saved himself the pain.

Scott came over to rinse his avocado green hands. He dried them off then wrapped his arms around John’s waist so he could lean on him, giving in for a moment in face of daunting gravity. With Scott, he could because Scott got him; they both could.

“You alright?” And there was big brother smotherhen coming out.

John flexed his defrosted fingers. “I will be.” He turned and smushed his face into Scott’s neck for a little bit, hugging back, Scott rested his head on John’s, and they stayed there for a while.

They were both fading. The pasta would help with that, Scott really needed to eat and so did John at this point, the half a dry bagel for breakfast and another at lunch hadn’t really been enough. The trick now was finishing the task that felt as if it expanding faster by the second than the Universe, as measured by the Hubble Constant was. They could do this though. Together.

Scott chopped up the bacon roughly and John cooked it, hissing back when it spat hot oil at him.

When Eos notified them the timer had gone off, and John had very scientifically tested the pasta was done by nomming on a bit, he called Scott over carry the large pot to the colander in the sink to strain.

“Gravity plus boiling water plus my space noodley arms are probably not a good combo,” he laughed.

He was getting better at knowing his limits. Scott’s smile was small and proud, he saw John.

Scott stared at the bacon with the intensity of a starved wolf with its mouth watering, then stole some pieces hot from the pan and burnt his mouth. Scoff Tracy strikes again.

They dumped the pasta in a big mixing bowl with the mashed avocado, a little lemon juice, the bacon, and a whole lot of salt, pepper and parmesan cheese, mixing it together with the big pasta scoop.

John swayed on his feet then, grabbing onto Scott to stay upright for long enough to decide actually the best place for him right now was sitting on the kitchen floor just here. John folded himself down to the ground in a slithering pile of too long, too bendy limbs, Scott wordlessly guiding his descent.

“You want me to grab some sporks to eat with?”

“They’re splayds, technically,” John remarked. He gave Scott the thumbs up anyway, while he rested his spinning head on his knees.

Scott waved about his ‘sporks’ acquired from the cutlery draw with a victorious grin before he sunk to the ground to join John.

John took one, passing the pasta to Scott once he was settled, lanky legs stretched out for miles, bumping into John’s.

“We forgot plates,” Scott said.

John shrugged. “At this point, who cares. We have pasta.”

“We do.” Scott blinked for a moment. “I didn’t before and I wouldn’t’ve but now we do.”

He hugged the warm pasta bowl to his chest, and when John observed more closely he saw the tears collecting on Scott’s eyelashes, sparkling in the kitchen light as he looked up at John.

“Thanks. I love you so much, Jay.”

John gave him a gentle smile, ducking to knock his forehead against his brother’s shoulder like a cat. “Love is stored in the pasta.”

Scott smiled back at him and they both dug in.

It was good pasta.

Really good pasta, because he was here with Scott and through everything they had made it, together.

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds fanfiction #scott tracy #john tracy #astrawrite #ADHD Scott Tracy #Autistic John Tracy #neurodivergent tracies #gordon is briefly mentioned and he is a delight

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