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Laios, devourer of all things horrible.

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Online | Tom Cardy ft. TWRP & Montaigne

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this was a comment on one of my post from a recent live event. it was photos of joyful queer buckaroos celebrating together and proving love is real through creation, community, and a trot of love. most important I AM LITERALLY IN PHOTO AS A REAL FLESH AND BLOOD HUMAN

it got me thinking about how DEEP AND VICIOUS the irony poisoning of these early internet communities goes. the way buds like this cannot fathom someone just being a sincere person unrelated to their OWN old days of cynical posting. it is fascinating, and i will admit, sad too

despite a DECADE of work, countless live events, 350 tinglers written well before large language models were a thing, there are still people who cannot imagine someone like me could exist. it is a strange place to be. not just part of me, but my entire EXISTENCE is often gatekept

it is easy to say ‘well chuck your art IS strange’ but honestly i think it is more than that. magical realism is common. there are stories about dinosaurs and bigfeet and unicorns. this scoundrel reaction is about two unspoken things: my art is neurodivergent, and my art is queer

heres the thing: I WILL BE FINE. what concerns me is not an issue of MYSELF, it is a concern for the other young outsider buckaroos who see comments like this one and think ‘is that what they will say if i express MY unique way? will i be dehumanized like this at every turn?'

i will be honest, i cannot say that WONT happen, but i CAN say this: for as deep as this irony poisoning goes, it is slowly dying. the way i was treated at the start of my career is LIGHTYEARS DIFFERENT from the way i am treated now. there is a massive shift towards sincerity

BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY. to young artists trotting up, the things that i am harassed over and doubted for and made fun of for are NOT tangental to what has made me successful, THEY ARE LITERALLY THE SAME THINGS THAT HAVE MADE ME SUCCESSFUL. YES I AM STRANGE, WHAT OF IT?

the things that you tuck away for fear of a review that says ‘there is a PROBLEM with this art because it has always been done another way’ THOSE ARE YOUR SUPERPOWERS. the gatekeepers want you to tuck those parts of yourself away because THEY TUCKED AWAY THOSE PART OF THEMSELVES

never forget that your unique way is PURE UNFILTERED 100 PERCENT ROCKET FUEL. it will stick out (maybe, if you are lucky, scoundrels will even say that someone like you could never actually be real), but sticking out isnt so bad when you are waving the flag of love.

in fact, when youre waving the flag of love, sticking out is pretty dang cool. what are flags for, after all? LOVE IS REAL BUCKAROOS. thank you for reading, and if you enjoyed this long post then please consider preordering BURY YOUR GAYS.

LETS TROT

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i hope i never ever ever see this image while im high or it will also straight up kill me. it would make me so scared my skeleton would run away And id be a boneless scared heap on the ground

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Rich pregnant socialite: So we went to this clinic and let them manipulate our genes so we're 100% sure our child won't have any disease, he will have my hair and his father eyes and so much things we did for him! And you Bruce ?

Brucie: Found em in the trash. Except Tim, he found me in the trash.

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To The Person Who Walked Past The Window - Jordan Bolton

My first book ‘Blue Sky Through the Window of a Moving Car’ is now available to pre-order! Get it here - https://smarturl.it/BlueSky

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i just found out tumblr was storing over three GIGABYTES of cookies on my device without me knowing and that's why it's been running so fucking slow recently... incredible. anyways everyone go clear your fucking cookies. don't let this website run a goddamn video game's worth of disc space in the background for no good reason.

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Armadillo Girdled Lizard

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with the news Gumroad is going to be cracking down on nsfw content due to payment processor pressure, reminder that itch.io is mostly known for games but explicitly allows books/zines/etc too and many nsfw creators swear by them as a host for their paid works. (with the caveat that they do limit this to nsfw content that is fictional, not eg irl porn work, among other content requirements; the full policy is here.)

itch.io is especially noteworthy because their approach to creator/platform split is incredibly flexible; you as the creator choose the split. you can in fact choose to take 100% and give itch.io nothing, only losing out on any payment processor fees. obviously itch does need people to choose to share some revenue with them to continue going, but if you as a creator need to retain your profits to keep going, you can set it wherever you like and itch honours that. and as itch has a culture of people choosing to set it above zero because the community wants to keep it going, if you need to reduce their cut, it's an option!

itch isn't as popular as a platform to share non-game works so promoting your stuff elsewhere is important for visibility. but as someone who regularly buys both comics and books off there, it is very, very viable. here is a basic 101 guide:

now: itch uses the same payment processors that prompted the gumroad changes, and may at some point be challenged on the same grounds. it's not inherently a safe haven. but itch.io has historically made its commitment to working to keep nsfw content viable on its platform clear (look up the epic store apple lawsuit nonsense sometime; it didn’t result in a nsfw ban despite everything) and as of now is still small and niche enough they are not getting challenged the way larger, more generally popular sites like gumroad are; they are not trying to be a big commercially viable site, just stable enough to keep trucking, so they are less likely to be subject to that much scrutiny, or cave to it.

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Let's eat

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Represention of Autistic Frustration in Laios Dungeon Meshi

Like many other autistic people, I related strongly to Laios Touden while reading Dungeon Meshi. This post isn't going to spend time disputing whether he displays autistic traits or not—while I could do that, I want to focus on why specifically his portrayal struck a chord with me in a way the writing of most other autistic-coded characters has not.

Disclaimer: as the above suggests, this post is strongly informed by my own experiences as an autistic person, as well as the experiences of my neurodivergent friends with whom I have spoken about this subject. I want to clarify that in no way am I asserting my personal experience to be some Universal Autistic Experience. This post is about why Laios' character feels distinct and significant to me in regard to autistic representation, and while I'm at it, I do feel that I have interesting things to say about autistic representation in media generally. This also got a bit long, so I'm sticking it under a read more. Spoilers for up to the end of chapter 88 below.

The thing that stands out most to me in regard to Laios' characterisation is the open anger he displays when someone points out his inability to read other people. This comes up prominently in his interactions with "Shuro" (Toshiro Nakamoto):

The frustration pictured above (Laios continuing to physically tussle with Toshiro, using crude language toward him) becomes even more notable when you remember that this is Laios, who, outside of these interactions, is not easily fazed and often exists as a lighthearted contrast to the rest of the cast. Then we get to Laios' nightmare.

In Falin's words: "Nightmares love emotional wounds. Wounds you hold in your heart. Things that give you stress, or things that were traumatic for you. They aggravate memories like that and cause the dreamer to have terrible dreams." (chapter 42, page 10.) (damn. i'm properly citing for this post and everything.)

Thus, Laios' nightmare establishes an important fact: even if he is unable to recognise social blunders while he's making them, he's at least subconsciously aware that other people operate on a different wavelength to him, and that he's an outsider in many of his social circles (both past and present). His dream-father's disparaging words stress the impact this has had upon his ability to live up to the expectations set out for him, and we also get a panel of kids who smirk at him (presumably former bullies to some degree). Toshiro's appearance only hammers home how much Laios is still both humiliated and angered by his misunderstanding of their relationship.

I've thought a lot about anger as concomitant to the autistic experience. When autistic representation portrays ostracization, it's generally from an angle of the autistic character being upset at how conforming to neurotypical norms doesn't come easily to them; as a result, they express a desire to 'get better' at meeting neurotypical standards, a desire to become more 'normal' (whether the writing implies this is a good thing or not). In contrast, not once does Laios go, "I need to perform better in my social interactions, and try to care less about monsters, because that's what other people find weird." His frustration is directed outward rather than inward, and as a result, it's the people around him who are framed as nonsensical.

The Winged Lion starts delineating Laios' anger, and Laios' reaction is to think to himself, "It can sense all my thoughts, huh?" (chapter 88, page 16.) This is the scene that really resonated with me. I'm not saying I have never felt the desire to conform to neurotypical norms that is borne from insecurity, but primarily, I know that I don't want to work toward becoming 'normal'—I don't want to change myself for people who follow rules I find nonsensical. It's the difference between, "Oh god, why can't I get it," and, "WHY CAN'T YOU GET IT?" (phrasing here courtesy of my friend Miles @dogwoodbite). And for me personally, Dungeon Meshi is the first time I've seen this frustration and the resultant voluntary isolation from other people portrayed in media so candidly. Laios' anger is not downplayed or written to be easily palatable, either.

The culmination of Laios' frustrations in this scene wherein we learn that Laios has fantasised about "a pack of monsters attacking a village" drives home just how alienated he really feels. I need not go into his wish to become a monster himself, redolent of how many autistic people identify/have identified with non-humans to some degree as a result of a percieved disconnect from society (when I was younger, I wanted to be a robot. I still kind of do.)

Obviously, wishing death upon other people is a weighty thing, but the unfiltered nature of this page is what deeply resonated with me. The Winged Lion is laying Laios' deepest and most transgressive desires bare, and they are desires that are a product of lifelong ostracization by others (whether intentional or unintentional). This is the brand of anger I'm familiar with, and that my neurodivergent friends express being familiar with, but that I haven't seen portrayed in writing so explicitly before—in fact, it surprised me because most well-meaning autistic representation I've experienced veers toward infantilisation in trying make the autistic character's struggles easy for neurotypicals to sympathise with.

Let's also not neglect the symbolism inherent to Laios' daydream. "A pack of monsters attacking a village". Functionally, monsters are Laios' special interest—he percieves everything first and foremost through his passion for monsters. His daydream of monsters attacking—killing—humans, is fundamentally a daydream of the world he understands (monsters) overthrowing the world that is so illogical to him, that has repeatedly shunned him (other people). I joked to my friends that it's an autistic power fantasy, and it actually sort of is. And in it, his identity is aligned with that of the monsters, while his anger manifests in a palpable dissociation from the rest of humanity. This is one manga page. It's brief. It's also very, very raw to me. I think about it often.

To conclude, I love Laios Dungeon Meshi. This portrayal of open frustration in an autistic character meant a lot to me, and I hope I've sufficiently outlined why. Also, feel free to recommend media with autistic representation in the notes if you've read this far—I would really like to see if there is more of this nature. Thank you for reading. I'm very tired and should probably sleep now.

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A happy ever after ending we all need.

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leave your body and soul at the door (don't run away it's only me)

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May I have this dance, Mrs Tims?

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it is once again... binturong appreciation hour