#trick answers

[trkstrnd]

Neurodivergent 126 anon here. I'd love to hear your thoughts on tarlos and Mateo!

hi anon i cannot believe i didn’t see this sooner but i would love to give you in depth examples of my opinions!!!

disclaimer: i am not a medical or psychiatric professional. do not use my posts or statements as means of diagnosis or medical advice. i am simply a person who struggles with mental illness/neurodivergence and am headcanoning characters that make me happy/that i relate to!!

that being said!! yes!!

mateo:

i firmly believe that mateo is autistic just based off of his social awareness. i know he’s canonically dyslexic, which, according to a quick google search, is strongly associated with autism. also, canonically, he’s an outcast, people look down on him, think he’s stupid, or slow, when really, he looks at things incredibly literally. i think we really see this in 1.07, with his struggles with his exam, finding a safe person inside a safe space and heavily relying on that routine of answering questions with marjan, then being thrown into a completely different situation that he was expecting just to panic. plus, when he got in there, the captain asked him if he needed anything to drink and mateo answered honestly, which got the sentiment of, “it’s sarcasm, einstein.” which is such mateo wasn’t even wrong to assume. in situations like this, before, he’s had people who cared, and he is trying his hardest to relate back to the past experiences he’s had, since most of the time he’s flying blind socially.

plus, mateo is really bad with the non-verbal communication as well. the main time i think about this is the last scene with the 126 in 3.18. when the boys were going to announce that they were engaged, but everyone figured it out before hand, EXCEPT MATEO, because to him, there’s nothing different. it’s just a 126 hang where people want to talk beforehand. he constantly has to be clued in.

plus, he was raised a loner, easily influenced by the actions of others. he feels incredibly strongly but doesn’t know how to express it and reach out. all of this was with marvin. messy room, bad actions, not being able to handle grief, being a “problem child.” they’re all autistic traits.

mateo, to me, is almost textbook autistic, but lmk what y’all think!!

tk:

truthfully, i haven’t done as much research on adhd as i have with asd, but from what i’ve read, it fits for tk very well. i honestly think part of it is why he gets along with carlos so much. tk is very all over the place, except for when he’s working or passionate about something. he’s able to fixate on one thing, and let all the others go for those moments (work, foosball, lou). he also tends to let things in his personal life show much more. he wears his heart on his sleeve. when he was upset owen was depressed, his mom’s passing, his sobriety being tested, issues with carlos, all manifest in places that there should be complete focus, but he has trouble focusing his attention on something unless it is the most important thing to him in that moment, which it often isn’t.

also, he’s impulsive!! i mean, who takes home a lizard from a guys leg?? he often does what he thinks is right no matter the circumstance, like in 2.08 when he goes for the alarm, 1.03 when he follows marjan into the corn despite judd’s orders, the bar fight in the same ep, 2.01 going after the person with the crossbow almost alone until judd offered backup, stealing a firetruck to find his dad, walking out on carlos, pushing carlos when he had nowhere else to place his anger at the situation, breaking up with carlos, you get my point. he struggles with emotional regulation and it manifests in impulsive behavior.

plus, he sucks at sleeping. ex: 3.13, 3.18.

okokokok

carlos:

boy oh boy have i saved the best for last because there’s a REASON i kin him ok.

all rise for the president of autistic carlos nation: me.

carlos is closer to what common folk would call ‘mildly’ autistic (which is not a term i indorse. everyone has different needs and they do not dictate the severity of a disability!!!) he has lower support needs, and because of this, when he was younger and he voiced them to his family, he was met with the cold shoulder.

look i will be a gabriel reyes defender until the day i die and i will never forgive tim for what he did to my favorite dad ever but this is not to say he didn’t have faults because he did!!! and they have a lot to do with how carlos’s autism presents itself.

many people with lower support needs go undiagnosed for years, and because of this they fall into this pit of isolation from their friends and family, and sometimes, themselves. carlos was constantly being reprimanded for being too soft (likely intense, overwhelming feelings, when he was younger. meltdowns.) he didn’t get the support from his family that he needed, so he isolated even more, leading him to believe there was something wrong with him. he couldn’t get along with his sisters because of the age gap, his dad constantly cared for him but in a way that made carlos second guess every decision he made, from coming out to joining apd.

again, he stayed pretty much a loner through childhood. in school, he said all he had was iris, and his shame and mask forced him to make the decision he did when they graduated. he married her because he needed to keep himself from being the burden he perceived himself as for /having needs/.

autistic people tend to take things literally, jump to conclusions. he never asked his parents how they felt after he came out. he just assumed they hated him and tried to soothe that by marrying iris and disregarding himself once again.

it’s why every time he expresses a need, it’s in the form of an argument, or when someone else is upset with him, he brushes it off because his feelings don’t matter because they never have. he masks so much that he almost broke up with tk because he kept brushing off his frustration (2.04), and he held his tongue for so long that he exploded and sounded like an anshole (3.13). he didn’t even tell tk he didn’t want kids until the issue was forced, and i want to highlight how good tk is for him because carlos didn’t run away from the discussion and let tk have whatever he wanted, he recognized the conversation as the collaboration it was!

he has an intense need for routine, he stims all the time (hand rubbing), he tends to have explosive bouts of emotion from masking so long, and he only truly opens up to tk. tk takes care of all of the social stuff, too! carlos’s entire friend group is tk’s friends. tk talks during catan, socializes, while carlos takes on the big, rehearsed speeches.

getting to see him open up with the right person over the last four years has been an absolute delight, and i cannot wait for more.

anyways that’s all for now! if you have any questions about these or others feel free to ask, and if you’re curious about my other neurodivergent 126 hcs, you can check them out here!!

i will forever believe in autistic carlos thank u

[prokopetz]

Oh, you're a rules-light storygame designer making their first foray into writing a crunchy tactical RPG? Very cool. So: mecha or magical girls?

[gleafer]

Hi!

Your art is SO GOOD!!!

I wish I could draw as good as you.

When it comes to drawing a singular character in a simple pose, I can manage that.

But when I try to draw something a bit complex or draw comics of my own, I struggle a lot. Especially when there are multiple characters interacting.

I have so much going on in my head but I'm unable to put it on paper.

Can you please share some tips or resources to get better at art?

Again, your art is ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS and I LOVE how you draw the movements of the characters!!!

YES I CAN!

Here’s a Gleafer Quicky cheat sheet!

[unexpectedbrickattack]

your headcanon abt peppino performing while he cooks reminded me of that scene in kiki’s delivery service where the chef guy does a cool spin with baking pans solely to impress kiki’s cat

peppino’s in the kitchen with brick and he’s like check THIS out. does a sick pizza flip or smth. brick’s like :O!!!

hes so talented !

[tofixtheshadows]

Hello, op! While I do find your reading of Kabru’s self sacrifice and how little he eats really good, im curious why you consider him the deuteragonist? He is a foil to the protagonist yes, but still a supporting character.

I think its pretty clear Marcille is the second most important character in DM, and her story has much more weight than Kabru’s.

Hello! I've mentioned this on my blog before, but I actually consider Marcille and Kabru to both be deuteragonists to Laios's protagonist. I just wasn't talking about Marcille in that post.

Technically this term is meant to be used in playwriting, and the Greek tradition at that, so I'm playing a little loosey goosey with semantics and my argument would sound different if I were writing an academic paper. But this is tumblr dot edu and I'm trying to get a point across on my little blog, and part of the idea of a deuteragonist is that they support the protagonist. "Secondary main character who has their own importance in the narrative while bolstering the protagonist" works well enough for my purposes.

I think Marcille and Kabru are both playing specific and complementary roles to Laios. Marcille is at his side, facilitating the A plot: namely, "save Falin", which requires Marcille's magic, and then Marcille's method of resurrection ropes Thistle in, so the continuation of "save Falin" necessitates confronting the Dungeon Lord and conquering the dungeon (the B plot).

Kabru only intersects with Laios, but he is tied from the beginning to the B plot- and with dragging basically everyone else into it. Actually, the fact that he brings in this extremely loaded B plot despite only having brief face time with the protagonist should be seen as significant. In a sense, Kabru represents the surface world and all its concerns.

Before I talk about that more, I want to continue with the complementary line of thinking and point out that Kabru and Marcille have very similar background motivations.

Laios wants to save his sister first and foremost, and it's only along the way that he starts to consider what he'd do with the responsibility of Dungeon Lord. Coming to the conclusion that he wants to create a home for disparate peoples to live in harmony has connective tissue to both Kabru and Marcille's desires.

Marcille is the only one in their party who starts out with a greater motivation other than saving Falin (Izutsumi is a special case, but she's ultimately along for the ride), one that she keeps hidden for a long time. Because she is a mage, and because she is driven by a very personal tragedy (my dad died; I am terrified of outliving everyone), she is looking for a miracle to bring the different races closer together.

Kabru comes from a background of personal tragedy as well, but it's also a far greater, more political tragedy than just the death of a parent. It is not a coincidence that Kabru is a brown boy from an exploited region that suffered despite and because of military intervention from a first-world power, nor that he was adopted by a white woman whose coddling/dehumanization of him represents the paternalistic oversight of these world powers.

Thus, Kabru's motivations are both personal and political: if they, the short-lived races, can finally access the secrets of the dungeons, then not only can they have agency in stopping tragedies like Utaya's, but it will also give them a greater power of self-determination.

Marcille and Kabru have both correctly identified and set themselves against a problem that is greater than saving the life of one girl, greater even than sealing this one dungeon.

Despite Marcille's hopes, there is no grand magic solution to this. Only small, slow, backbreaking, ordinary solutions, the kind you labor over in kitchens and bedrooms and throne rooms and meeting houses and hearths and negotiation tables. The kind you run a kingdom with.

There is a reason why Dungeon Meshi ends with Marcille and Kabru on either side of Laios's throne.

Okay: back to Kabru (under the cut).

I've talked about this a little before, but I'll reiterate here: I consider Kabru to be the counterweight to the back half of the story. In a very literal sense too, as he pulls the focus up from the depths to the surface not once, but twice. Dungeon Meshi builds itself on the premise that the traditional "dungeon" must function as an actual ecosystem, and the monsters in it are biological actors in that ecosystem and not merely magical obstacles independent of their environment. The first couple dozen chapters are focused on this. Like regular animals, monsters have needs and instincts and unique behaviors, and they can be killed and consumed as part of a food chain.

And then Kabru comes along and he reminds us that humans are also part of their own special ecosystem, with their own needs and instincts and unique behaviors, and that beyond the biological drive of the literal food chain there are also complex social issues influencing these behaviors (like capitalism). Tansu's visit with the governor introduced us to these ideas, but Kabru is the one who carries them.

The way he and his party break down Laios's party also serves an important function. I think most readers are so busy being shocked that Kabru is "so wrong" about our goofy boy Laios that they don't realize that he isn't actually wrong about anything (he's only missing the context of what drives Laios, which he admits to and is part of the reason why he pursues him). We've gotten only Laios's view of things so far, and Laios is pretty tunnel-visioned. The narrative, through Kabru, is telling the reader this is how our protagonist actually comes across to his community.

We like Laios because we are following his story from his inner circle. We know he's naive and struggles with people but that he has a good heart and is ultimately just a big silly guy who won't harm anybody if he can help it. But we only know that because we're seeing him with his inner circle, in his environment. Outside of the dungeon, Laios is anti-social to the point of rudeness; he misreads situations and misjudges people, he acts in ways that cause friction, and he accidentally aligns himself with people who make his whole enterprise look suspicious: a prominent half-foot community leader, a mysterious foreigner literally surrounded by spies, the disgraced daughter of a criminal who now has to shoulder the burden of her father's reputation, and an elf in a land where there are no elves. And they seem to be very good at what they're doing. Yet this whole time, Laios acts as if he doesn't care about profit or taking the kingdom, the only logical reasons why anyone on the Island would gather up such a party and throw themselves into this death pit day after day.

Yeah of course Kabru finds this suspicious and interesting. Of course people don't know what to make of Laios. This all reiterates the question that Zon the orc already raised: What will you do, Laios, if you defeat the Mad Mage? If you gain control of all of this? Can you be a leader? Laios himself doesn't know yet.

This is all necessary context for our protagonist and the journey he has to go on, and it's fittingly brought up by the most socially adept character, who is so concerned with human ecosystems and the bigger picture of the dungeon. There is a reason why Kabru, as a character, is connected to large webs of people as he moves throughout the narrative: his own party, Toshiro's party, the Canaries, the denizens of the first floor of the dungeon.

Kabru is responsible for bringing Toshiro down to Laios's party. Toshiro is not a big mover and shaker in the story itself, but his confrontation with Laios is a huge part of Laios's character arc. His detour down to the lower levels also allows Izutsumi to escape and join Laios's party later.

We also have this very important moment:

It shows the first inkling- to the audience, to Kabru, and to Laios himself- that Laios is willing to do a painful, necessary thing to protect other people, that he won't just allow them to become collateral for his sister/monsters. That he can listen, and that he can assess a situation beyond his personal feelings. Again, fittingly, big-picture-thinker Kabru is the catalyst for this.

And then, not content to leave him as merely a device for Laios's character growth, the focus slingshots back up to the surface, and we follow Kabru.

The Canaries were going to go into the dungeon soon anyway, and they were always going to stir up the crowd in order to lure Thistle to them. Unless Thistle had given up right then and managed to slip away, the story could have very easily ended here:

Falin, immobilized and surrounded by Canaries, would have certainly been killed, and there would have been no way to ever resurrect her. Thistle would have been neutralized. The dungeon would have been taken by the elves, and anyone they could get their hands on would have been imprisoned at best. And maybe the dungeon would have been managed safely ... or maybe something would have gone wrong, and more lives would have been lost. Remember: the Canaries arrived in Utaya one year before the tragedy.

This is a huge moment that changes Laios's life forever, and he doesn't even know it. Kabru single-handedly keeps the story on course by sabotaging the Canaries, and he does it not just for Laios's sake, but for everyone's sake. For his friends and companions in the dungeon and everyone else outside it. Laios is a part of his motivation, a key player in Kabru's hopes, but Kabru has his own desires, his own agenda. He's trying to change the world. In a way, he succeeds. And while the Canaries might wish it were otherwise, as an entity in the narrative they are always anchored to Kabru's character. The two forces collide because of Kabru. The unsealing of the Winged Lion and Marcille's emergency ascension to Dungeon Lord happen indirectly because of Kabru.

While I have talked so much already that I don't want to give a detailed breakdown of it, I do want to mention Kabru's unique interiority as a character. That is to say: we see the inside of Kabru's head more than anyone else. Every character in the main ensemble gets their own moments of inner monologues or fifteen minutes in the limelight, but for Kabru, it's constant. He's always thinking, talking, narrating. His POV chapters always stand out for how first-person they feel compared to most others.

Notably, the only other character I could compare that to is Marcille, specifically during the dungeon rabbit debacle and her ascension afterward, which is when she really takes center stage as a character.

I hope I've explained my reasoning without becoming too insufferable.

To cap off my thoughts with a nod to my original post, I cannot stress enough how significant it is, thematically, that Kabru's relationship with food is the inverse of Laios's. It isn't just that Laios is the main character in a story about cooking monsters and Kabru happens to be his monster-hating foil. The artistic choice to deny the reader the visual of this character ever enjoying food, and only ever putting it in his mouth in situations where it hurts him, in a manga that gives so much attention to eating and the pleasures of meals, cannot be understated.

[year2000electronics]

MORE REVERES BILLFORD AND MY LIFE IS YOURS 🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣

of course!! take some from my stash

[inexplicifics]

Somewhat, someday, a goose trick gone very wrong... or good, it depend realy...

Oh gods that's terrifying.

[canisalbus]

Holy shit. I get it now <- wrote a tragedy and got obsessed with my own ocs and now I can’t stand their story ending the way it did

I have decided to follow in your footsteps and make a modern au where things turn out (marginally) better for them

.

[wickedcriminal]

THE OL' QUARTER (or pearl) IN THE EAR

Spiritual successor to this. he gets it from his dad

[cairafea]

he makes this joke every time.

[transannabeth]

Are the buttons in ghost trick really ghost and trick /gen

i would never lie to you about the ghost and trick buttons. you ghost or you trick you trick or you ghost

[trkstrnd]

Here's your friendly neighbourhood anon asking you about neurodivergent 126. I'm curious about your thoughts on this!

HELLO ANON

my current hcs are as follows, specified by canon and not.

carlos: autism spectrum disorder (hc)

tk: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (hc)

mateo: autism spectrum disorder (hc)

paul: obsessive compulsive disorder (hc)

marjan: neurotypical (canon)

nancy: neurotypical (canon)

tommy: post traumatic stress disorder (hc)

owen: post traumatic stress disorder (canon)

judd: post traumatic stress disorder (canon)

grace: neurotypical (canon)

these are what i have so far and i have so many reasons as for each so if you have any questions about any of them, i would love to discuss my hcs with the fandom! feel free to ask!l for any individual and i will explain more in depth! this is just an overview since i don’t wanna make a post too long <3

[im-totally-not-an-alien-2]

Danny covered his nose with his hand. Where ever he landed smelled absolutely foul, like rotten fruit and burning tires mixed with chem lab.

"Remind me to bring a face mask the next time I explore the Infinite Realms." He muttered, before kicking a soda can down the alley he was in and being repulsed by the squelch sound it made when it came into contact with a very questionable looking puddle, "Better yet, a gas mask." He glanced at the puddle again, "Or I could go full Hazmat." Clockwork had told him this world was full of superheros and villians and to steer clear of it, but once he learned there were aliens in this world he couldn't help himself. Danny had always been weak to his curiosity, but he liked to believe he was cautious, and chose to stay in his Phantom for for added protection.

Turning on his heel he exited onto a deserted street lined on one side by a chain-link fence. The sky above him was filled with clouds so ominous and dark that Danny honestly couldn't tell you if it was night or day, all he knew was that it was going to rain soon and hopefully these awful smells would be drowned out by the downpour.

Danny got his wish only minutes later. Thankfully Phantom was unbothered by the cold and could just bask in the rain as it fell apon him. A lesser known fact about ghosts is that thier clothes are made from thier ectoplasm and are part of thier bodies, much like a second layer of skin, so one would be able to feel things on thier clothes as easily as they would with thier bare skin. The level of sensitivity varies with the type of clothing however. All this to say Danny loved the feeling of the rivulets of rainwater traveling down his ghostly hazmat suit.

He was so preoccupied with enjoying the sensation that he didn't notice anything was wrong until he was jolted forward from the weight of someone landing on his back. The person was quick and precise, taking no time at all to have his wrists pinned behind his back and- weirdly enough- thier teeth digging into the material around his neck.

His parents designed the Hazmat suit Danny was wearing not only to deal with dangerous chemicals, but to fight supernatural foes. The area around the neck was reinforced with the intention of protecting against fatal gunshots and decapitations so naturally someone's jaw wasn't going to be enough to break through to his neck.

Danny let out a laugh as the person kept chewing on his neck like a confused puppy. Oh, Danny thought, they've gone feral. It was odd for someone to go feral but it could occur when a person has gone through something traumatic recently or through extreme stress. It made sense since the person ridding piggy back on him was dressed like a superhero. Danny wondered if that was why the person didn't have a scent. Danny learns facepalmed when he remembered that scentblockers existed and not everyone's scent dramatically changed whenever they went out as a hero. The scent change was probably one of the few things that have kept him alive up to this point to be honest.

"So, I guess you're not going to tell me why you're chewing on my neck like the worlds most pathetic vampire, are you?" No one deserves that title more than the fruitloop to be honest. He made a mental note to use that one against Vlad the next time he saw him.

Chewy whined at this, seeming to slump a bit from the apparent failure to bite him. What was that about? Was this actually a vampire? How would a vampire even react to Dannys ecto-blood combo meal anyway? Would it be like food poisoning? Or would it taste amazing from one undead to another. "I'm not exactly human, are you sure you wanna bite me? I might not taste so good." Danny warned, but the moment he mentioned letting the person bite him they were eager again.

Danny chuckled and unzipped the material only a bit before it was loose enough to move out of the way. The vampires bite came with a sharp pain like he expected but there was no suction. No drinking of blood. Just some weirdo biting Danny on the neck. Huh.

Danny hoped he didn't get rabies from this.

He must have accidentally said that out loud as there was a small laugh from the rooftops above them. There stood another person in a superhero outfit with some really tall dude dressed as a giant bat, and that was when Danny decided to bail. It was one thing to let a maybe vampire bite you in a random street in the middle of the night but more of them? And ones a big scary furry? Hard pass.

Phantom did as Phantoms do and went invisible and intangible, escaping from Biteys jaws and startling the heros. He ignored the distressed whine Munchy let out after loosing their spookyest chew toy and quickly rubbed the scent gland near dannys jaw on the top of thier head as an act of comfort before bolting.

----

Danny poked at the bite mark on his neck. Screw rabies, he better not get turned into a werewolf. He didn't need that on top of his ghostly crap. Sam seemed fascinated by the mark, after all, it wasn't every day that Danny got a scar, especially one so obvious. Most injuries heal quickly and leave no trace of him ever being injured in the first place which helped a lot in keeping his secret identity.

Luckily Danny hadn't needed to lie to mom and dad. He truthfully told them about some wierdo jumping off of a nearby rooftop and plunging thier teeth into his neck and that two other people had tried to corner him during this. He assured his mom that he had gotten away quickly but was a little shaken by it and his dad praised him for being brave and managing to escape.

That was nice. But he still had to figure out what was up with this bite...and why he felt so compelled to go back to that city.

Back to that hero.

-----

Aka an A/B/O au where in Danny's universe all the Alphas are extinct and the betas followed soon after and the DC universe all the Omegas went extinct and betas followed after . Not like a "they finally went extinct in the 1700s after centuries of thier numbers dwindling" thing and became a myth/fairytale (tho I like that too) but a "this might be the missing link between cave men and modern humans" kinda thing.

Its up to you which bat bit Danny and exactly what that means. I love abo aus without smut cause there's so much potential for chaos and I am very much ace.

[kirbydaily]

31 - final boss

and that's the end of kirbtober! i had a lot of fun, and i hope everyone had an amazing halloween :)

[wyrmswears]

this piece is actually almost a year old, but uhm it seems i forgot to post it. so.

[didderd]

I've been waiting many months for this moment.

The Crispy Crew are done!!!

Info and stuff under the cut.

From left to right: Rice (nightmare Tourette's sans) Crack (horror Tourette's sans) Snaps (killer Tourette's sans) Pop (dust Tourette's sans) Marsh (cross Tourette's sans)

Ofc, the usual:

Draw them all you want, but please don't try and represent their Tourette's without some proper research on it.

Don't ship them with other sanses publicly. It would make me uncomfortable.

A teensy bit of lore:

Rice has been doing this since long before he ever met any of the others, but he dragged them all into it too. While their job is to keep balance in the multiverse, and keep Rice feed with negativity, they all share the hobby of studying and recording AUs. And since the war is over with Rice's brother, they have permission to study the AUs in his territory too, as long as they don't cause any problems. But they are surprisingly well-behaved when studying a place, and usually stay out of sight.