#… though people already think aroaces are robots so!!!!

[misscammiedawn]

Penlight - Spoiler Analysis/Review Post 1 (Nozomi Route)

Download Penlight (Pay what you like) from Itch.io here

My other Penlight reviews: Quick Review - Sayori (Part 1 - Doll) - Sayori (Part 2 - Alter)

Turq's reviews: Hiroko Robot - Hiroko Tickling - Nozomi Zombie

So I had reviewed the game Penlight before and wanted to give some more praise on its narrative choices and themes. I felt the best way to do that was to break down the routes I enjoyed and what I learned from them.

Before I begin I wanted to say much of the discussion here breeds in from @spiralturquoise and I going back and forth on this game for weeks. Turq is writing a post as well and though we share many viewpoints we come from different angles. We are also aware that we have our own biases and headcanons which we may present as fact, Nozomi being AroAce for example. This post represents a read of the game and we actively encourage people to have their own reads and share them so we may read them.

My posts are going to be plot overviews with analysis. Turq had a fantastic bit of commentary on my first post and I wanted to keep the conversation running.

This post is from the perspective of someone who either has already played and enjoyed the game or someone who isn't going to be convinced to play without having been spoiled first.

If you're on the fence, play the game, come back. It's a few hours commitment and so worth your time.

The post will be here when you get back <3

So as of the latest public release this is the route map:

It sort of looks like the map of Dracula's Castle.

Also this post and any future posts will only feature content from the public release. Nozomi Reversal route is actually polished as of writing for Patreon members with a better script and CG for the ending. This is using version 0.1602.1.

As you can see the game is pretty broad. The map is color-coded between the Brown (Nozomi), Blue (Sayori), Pink (Hiroko), Purple (Consequences) and Salmon (Villain) routes.

Ignore the green, those are just to highlight the latest changes to the map from prior versions.

So I thought I'd handle my Spoiler posts the same way. Brown, Blue, Pink, Purple and then... I think I'll skip Salmon. I have no real desire to play the villain routes.

Though I was happy to see this in the Q&A segment of the Discord:

I am glad this game continues to deny any attempt at vindicating unethical choices.

Anyway. With that preamble. Let's get started with Nozomi's paths...

To begin the Nozomi route Kyou will mention that he has been studying hypnosis and this will trigger Nozomi meeting with him at a cafe after school to ask about his experiences.

She admits that she has been into hypnosis for several years, fluctuating between shame and pride in her interest, admitting that she had not intended to practice in real life until she found herself volunteering for the hypnosis show during the previous cultural festival, an impulsive action that was driven by her repressed desires, she notes that she did not plan on volunteering until her hand was already in the air.

Nozomi regrets that she did not get a chance to bond with the senior who ran last year's show and is now admitting it to Kyou.

From the offset the power dynamics are skewed. Nozomi views Kyou as a stalker and knows he has no friends to practice with. But she is also quick to keep things even by admitting her fetish, overtly admitting she "gets off" on the topic, noting how giving this information to Kyou is a risk.

In showing too much of her hand, Kyou, who does not himself have a hypnosis fetish, despite his study, gets a window into her fantasies.

Nozomi enjoys hypnosis and is excited by it.

Nozomi fantasizes about giving up complete control.

But she is aware that such scenarios only exist within the realm of fantasy and she understands hypnosis enough to know that such a thing could never happen and because she knows this. Because she has found someone who knows how hypnosis works. Because she regrets not being able to make a connection with the last person she could connect about hypnosis with, she tells him she wants him to hypnotize him.

What comes next is the first hypnosis scene, which takes place in Kyou's home.

Every route of the game follows the same timeline for the most part. Most of them keep to a week or two time frame where some others stretch out over months. But the facts of the timeline are always true. Many of these facts will come into play later on but it's important to note them because the writing around these "canon events" is tight.

Kyou's father works until late and will always have a business trip to excuse his absence for weekends. I believe I have only seen him show up one time in the entire visual novel, referenced in text as Kyou speaks about his previous night.

So with an empty home Nozomi comes over and sets down the ground rules.

Sessions are to be discussed in full before approaching hypnosis. All sessions are to be recorded. All suggestions are going to be tidied up at the end.

Kyou performs a quick down-up with a simple number amnesia suggestion (albeit there is a blank choice for a future route where you break her consent at this time) before Nozomi realizes that she needs to go home for dinner and heads out leaving Kyou feeling that the scene had no adequate deescalation and he's left to feel things were left off without a conclusion or understanding with where he and Nozomi stand in their freshly ignited entanglement.

I want to get into the canon events a little more later on, but there is a level of beautiful dramatic irony that DeMille tends to take when it comes to how she approaches similarities in the routes and consistency of the characters or timeline, particularly in how Kyou's choices impact the characters. Hiroko is the most notable example as her tennis scholarship can be at risk even if the surrounding events of the week cause her to worry. Her emotional state mingles in with how she plays tennis, after all.

I explain this as each character is well written on their timelines and depending on how early or late you play Nozomi's route in your exploration, you may find that Nozomi's evening actions are more flexible than the other girls. With Hiro and Sayori there are external factors at play with their tennis, study club and cram school commitments. With Nozomi the amount of time she gives or refuses to give, with very few exceptions, is her choice alone. She also denies Kyou justifications, though they tend to mostly be around her not wanting to explain herself to friends and family. Sometimes we know from other routes why she is unavailable, sometimes we do not. It helps put the player in Kyou's perspective. Not knowing if they can trust if Nozomi is getting her fill and abandoning Kyou or if the pair are doing a poor job of planning their scenes to include deescalation, debrief and aftercare.

Kyou's confusion grows the next day when Nozomi refuses to associate with him at school the next day. A theme which grows larger in two of the routes. Feeling like he is a shameful secret, much like Nozomi's interest in hypnosis, Kyou is forced to wait until Nozomi returns for more sessions, completely in the dark as to where he stands.

When he asks for clarification on this topic Nozomi makes it very clear.

She has no intention of dating anyone.

From here you are given the option of either respecting her boundaries or pretending to. Pretending to locks you in to a bad ending from the Delusion route.

Agreeing will begin the divergence in the tree to chose from 3 options. From here on I'll be focused less on plot outlines and more on plot analysis as it is at this point the themes of the game begin paying off.

Trance: Kyou introduces a reinduction trigger and the pair explore the kink with increasing levels of thrill seeking. We get to see the risks of abandoning safe framework, the hurt that comes from compartmentalizing your kink and social lives.

Reversal: Nozomi is offered the penlight and becomes the dominant. We get to see how the girls must have felt under the penlight's sway and experience Kyou being unambiguously mistreated without the fallback of "it was his own fault"

Zombie: A massive abreaction happens and the focus of the story falls upon safety and mitigating damage in hypnosis scenes.

So let's do them one at a time.

Trance:

One of the biggest themes of this game is that hypnosis is a collaborative action that takes place with communication, trust and caution. As I had mentioned in the initial review post any of the endings which are considered "good" involve the penlight being broken as it represents a "one way" process of hypnosis, whether it be overriding agency, skipping communication/feedback or removing safety.

It's my personal view that the penlight represents the toxic elements of a hypnotic relationship and compress the timeline of damage from years into a single week. It's one of the few things that Turq and I diverge in from our reads. It's also why I think Turq's review of the Nozo-Trance route is going to be the definitive one, in the same way I intend my analysis on the Sayori-Alter route to be definitive when I get around to writing it. My history with the toxic elements of hypnosis all revolve around a lack of safety in hypnosis itself, after all and that is the lens I approach things from.

The reason I say that is because the Trance route is firmly based in the relationship aspects of hypnosis and how trust, communication and collaboration need to be established.

Nozomi continues to treat Kyou as a trance dispenser in this route, disappearing when their scenes are concluded. She also intends for hypnosis to only work when they are in Kyou's home as a way to ensure it is secret from the world and no one can know the things that she is interested in.

This leads to the route being divided between scenes at Kyou's home where the pair slowly erode their safeties to introduce more and more exciting ideas into their mix and school scenes where Kyou is ignored by an increasingly standoffish Nozomi who refuses to acknowledge Kyou's existence outside of sceneplay.

Kyou even says it himself in narrative "I might be the one hypnotizing her, but it's really me following her suggestions around here."

When Kyou stands up for himself and says that he didn't even know if he needed to prepare for Nozomi's arrival her reply is nonchalant.

At the start of the route Nozomi was eager to be fully communicative of all things and yet as her comfort with this arrangement has continued she has assumed more and more that Kyou would be willing to go along with anything she wanted. The divide between them grows more as Kyou finds that his day-to-day life hasn't really shifted as much as he would hope.

So... if "good communication and mundane hypnosis" is part of the condition for a good ending, what is a condition for a bad ending?

Outside of the obvious outcomes such as being expelled or punished, a decent number of endings have Kyou given the responsibility of caring for another human being who no longer has agency.

The game is always clear that when collaboration breaks down but the hypnotic relationship remains then one party is having to do all of the work and it is not a good thing. There is no ending in the game where Kyou is willing to or enjoys having a mindless and controlled partner.

That's important to note because with the understanding of Kyou's comfort there we know that collaboration and a relationship (not dating, just a relationship) is what he desires and in this route he is not receiving that because Nozomi stonewalls him.

What's worse is that she's not even put any thought into the fact Kyou may feel this way.

But hey. It's not like he's a mind reader or anything...

Oh by the way the suggestions have subtext to them. We'll get to that a bit more with the Nozo-Reversal route.

From here Nozomi has Kyou say her trigger phrase (and almost crashes into the floor because there's no safety in place for how she flops) and Kyou has her come clean.

Nozomi is finding it increasingly more arousing how little control she feels she has when she is in Kyou's home and much of her fantasies involving hypnosis revolve around a complete helplessness.

The fact that the penlight is overriding her caution, repression and agency is something that she finds actively enticing and even the act of being forced to confess her "shameful" kink is alluring to her.

This squicks Kyou out enough that you are forced to make a decision on if you even wish to pursue a relationship with her. A sign that even the person enabling her fetish isn't fully accepting of it. A bad ending will occur if Kyou decides not to continue, but to continue he now finds himself on the slope and catering to her desires.

The problem is, they're not communicating.

Nozomi told him all of this under hypnotic compulsion. She is no closer to reconciling the shame from her sexuality but now she has revealed the depths of it to Kyou and he has taken it as instructions. In exchange Nozomi will try to include Kyou in her life more.

Kyou then goes online and begins reading ReadOnlyMind stories and learning what he thinks a hypnofetishist would enjoy and has come away from the encounter believing that Nozomi actively desires having her agency removed. The lack of communication allowed him to know what Nozomi desires and he has mistaken it for what she wants.

Further up the slope and with some dangerous new ideas of what their fun and games should be, Kyou visits Nozomi's home on Saturday and discovers that his post hypnotic suggestions still work on her outside of Kyou's home.

In every route Kyou is a believer of the "essential lie" of hypnosis. "No one can do anything under hypnosis that they didn't want to do."

That will come up a lot. The Delusion path is a thorough takedown of the idea in general.

Here it informs Kyou that Nozomi is eager to surrender her agency and removes another layer of safety. The rule that the suggestions only impacted at Kyou's home has eroded.

The pair commit to some kinky shenanigans and Nozomi's mother almost catches them doing some hypnotic rope play that is well handled in CG art and I shall not deprive you the enjoyment of seeking it yourself (the game is "pay what you want" on itch) but stands to show two things.

Kyou is having more fun like this and Nozomi is becoming increasingly comfortable with her desires and allowing for more risk taking.

Also there's a choice between spanking and tickling and I firmly believe that this is the most overtly erotic scene in the entire game. Kyou keeps testing her limits and whether it be via the penlight or Nozomi being free to explore her kink without any shame, she keeps on matching his challenge at every turn, seemingly enjoying every second of it, even when they court the danger of discovery.

Kyou even notes a few times that she never breaks scene at any point for her own comfort or security.

...I will save my personal commentary on hypnotee agency until Sayori's review... But I have thoughts.

At the end of the day in which Nozomi insists Kyou needs to head home, Kyou suspects he is being brushed off again because Nozomi had her fill from the scene and no longer wishes to be around him. She says that she has no more time for the weekend and will see him on Monday.

Kyou decides to press back and hypnotically forces her to come to him the next morning. They even stay up online to discuss their next scene.

Unfortunately Sunday is, in every single route of the game, Hiroko's tennis tournament and Nozomi must dedicate her day to being with her bestie and throwing her a karaoke party afterwards.

But her compulsion commands her to go to Kyou and so she does, abandoning her friend.

The next morning they have a roleplay scene that is increasingly high stakes and Kyou continues to press his advantages, unaware of the sheer power of the penlight. She even gets Nozomi to her underwear with very little effort.

Though the scene requires a little bit of management afterwards, Nozomi forgetting that her clothes are her own, it was an enjoyable experience for them both.

But then her phone pings and she is informed that she is missing Hiroko's game. She insists she has to leave and Kyou, not understanding the importance of this event, pushes back and assumes that she is once again ditching him because the scene is over and she does not want to deal with Kyou outside of their play.

There will eventually be a route where you get to hypnotically command her to stay but for now Kyou accepts that she has to leave.

Having let down her best friend, Nozomi withdraws and goes back to the former arrangement, scolding Kyou via text message for attempting to pester her during school and says that she needs to take some time to focus on study, leaving Kyou feeling abandoned again.

Something they both fail to do as they fail their mock exams hard and this leaves Nozomi feeling yet more shaken and wanting to retreat from kink.

However she believes that if they just "get it out of their systems" they'll be free from their obsessions. Leaning further into the slope that the pair are on.

The safety and sanity have long since vanished off of the horizon in their risk profile and consent has been on a broken foundation since the start.

What follows is a scene where they bring their kink into school hours. Creating an open trigger (with no safeties) that will reenact the tickling/spanking trigger from the weekend.

It goes poorly. Regardless of the effect Nozomi will feel it continuously for the full lunch hour and it gets worse with every iteration of the trigger.

That night the pair attempt to mitigate the damage and once again the thrill of the high is placed above the detriments it is having on their social lives.

So Kyou decides to escalate instead of deescalate.

This is not a good idea.

The scene escalates until Nozomi is on her knees wearing nothing but her underwear and unable to speak above a whisper, exclusively referring to Kyou as "Sir". The further into the scene the pair get the more Kyou shapes himself to become the type of hypnotist he believes Nozomi dreams of.

At this point you are given your final options for the endings:

Make me a cheese omelet - Become my girlfriend - Become mindless for me.

Nozomi actively resists the penlight and tries to physically restrain Kyou to prevent him snapping his finger or pressing her forehead to force her to be his girlfriend. This is the one boundary that you had to accept at the start of the route to allow things to get to this point. You literally cannot reach this moment without Kyou agreeing to respect that boundary and breaking it is a guaranteed bad ending. Either Kyou steals Nozomi away from her friendgroup and the pair will sink into their kink exploration with no allowances for their school, career prospects or external friends to interfere or Nozomi will succeed in stopping Kyou from robbing her of her agency and leave him for breaking her one rule.

The "mindless" ending is... dark. I'd rather not go over it as it doesn't make additional points other than having Kyou finally understand his penlight robs people of agency, which he does not learn in this route until the very end.

The omelet ending is a sweet and tender scene between the pair which has an ethical jumping off point.

The next day Nozomi slips and refers to Kyou as "Sir" during school hours and her friends instantly get on her case about it.

I should note here that Sayori knows Nozomi's fetish in every route. These little bits of characterization that remain constant through all of the routes really add flavor to certain interactions.

The true growth comes when Nozomi, seeing Sayori interrogating Kyou and thinking the worst of him, comes in and offers to invite her friends to Kyou's house to tell them everything.

Once there she discovers all the programming tied to being at Kyou's home kicks back in to both party's surprise. Kyou agrees to remove all suggestions so they can talk.

The subject of the penlight is raised and they finally realize that it is a bit special...

Kyou puts it eloquently here:

The penlight is destroyed leading to the golden ending of the route. Nozomi, realizing how much damage the pair had done in their chase of thrills, cuts off from hypnokink to focus on her studies.

After a timeskip she meets up with Kyou after exams and says she has been watching hypnosis videos again recently and asks if they can start exploring again without the penlight.

She accepts that she still does not want to date but she may end up treating Kyou as a trance dispenser again if she approaches without an arrangement and Kyou says he doesn't want to push her. The pair communicate and agree that they just want to explore out of friendship and interest.

Nozomi kisses Kyou on the cheek and it is clear an establishment of trust has been made and the pair will find something more healthy this time.

Now... I'm the type of person who enjoys watching "analysis" videos that just tell the plot beat for beat and I would need so many more hours to even attempt that for the entire game so I'll be more swift with the other two, especially as a lot of similar ground is covered. I'll likely do a more full breakdown of Alter route for Sayori but let's get through the other two a bit faster...

Reversal:

One of the main reasons I wanted to do Trance route in full and show off how the entirety of a route plays out is that the knowledge of how other routes play out help so very much with the retelling and expanding on the themes.

If Nozomi takes possession of the penlight then Kyou will become her plaything for the duration of the route. Her behavior is not altered, however. Her risk profile is, however.

In the Trance route Nozomi wants to put strict safety and restrictions on early play because she is afraid of being discovered and does not fully trust Kyou to play with her mind. She does not hold the same reservations in reverse, however. So what happens when someone who ditches scenes without deescalation is running the scene?

A constant "Bad" condition on any route is an open trigger/suggestion that bleeds outside of play spaces. We say a lot of that with the restrictions of Kyou's hypnosis only supposed to work within Kyou's home in the trance route and how things get worse when that restriction is tested and broken. In other routes one of the absolute worst situations is the impact of a suggestion exiting the scene and stretching out into the world.

God I should have started with Sayori...

As a sidenote, Hiroko's route actually has some mildly positive impact (at least not inherently BAD) of play stretching out beyond scenes. But Hiroko's routes are a little more light hearted than the serious lectures on communication, safety and abreactions that Sayori and Nozomi's routes deal with.

So Nozomi's first command is to perceive her as invisible and she runs off to her evening plans without closing out the suggestion.

As I said earlier, the suggestions are symbolic at times.

One of the most interesting things about this route is that we get to see what the girls experience with their time going under for the penlight. Most of the inductions involve Kyou starring at the penlight for a few text boxes and then waking up with no clue as to what happened.

Kyou also likes asking his hypnotee their opinion on topics and finds that they're always accommodating and accepting of his playstyle. Nozomi was remarkably good about all of the events that transpired in the Trance route after all...

Sorry, Kyou...

The penlight makes it so enjoyable to go into hypnosis that you cannot really advocate for yourself. Hypnotee Agency is not a thing in most of these routes and the Reversal route makes this clear. There is only one actual choice you can make in the entire route and it's only there because Nozomi tells Kyou to make it.

Incidentally the bad ending of the route (newly added as of this update) is unlocked by making the insignificant choice of "pat head" or "striptease".

Turq and I have a mild disagreement on this moment. I believe that when Nozomi sees that Kyou is willing to and incapable of stopping himself from getting naked for her she is so turned on (sexually or otherwise) by her level of control that she is pushed over the edge of morality. Turq's read is that she dehumanizes Kyou in that moment and loses empathy for him that leads to the good ending.

Odd that the sex-repulsed asexual has the read that she was turned on.

Anyway...

Nozomi continues to ignore Kyou at school and come to his house at night to brainwash him and selfishly steals him away for Hiroko's tennis match, asserting that she is going to take him with her for the celebration.

Funny. In Trance route Kyou subvert's Nozomi's agency to have her skip the tennis match, in Reversal route Nozomi subvert's Kyou's to force him to attend.

In this route she doesn't mind associating with Kyou with her friend group because she is in control and doesn't feel like the association will out her or be a mark of shame for her being a "freak" (her word, not mine).

She puts Kyou through a mortifying scene and bullies her friends around to get her way with making it happen, the power of the penlight having brought up some bullyish tendancies within her. She wants to check in that Kyou is okay but as before he is only allowed to agree.

During school she continues her unempathetic behavior and starts a big fight with her friends when they attempt to talk to Kyou and she continuously talks over him and at one point she even commands him not to say a word.

Nozomi's behavior is fairly toxic at the end of the fight, going as far as to pull a guilt tripping "I'm horrible" as a way to distance Sayori.

The controlling behavior and lack of communication, trust and safety bleeds out once again as she commands Kyou to tell her the truth about if she is a horrible controlling monster and he does.

He tells her she has not been fair. That she stopped cleaning up her suggestions the moment she took over. She took Kyou's stated limit (not wanting to sing karaoke) and instantly overrode it. She forces Kyou to hang out with her friends but does not extend him empathy or kindness. She just treats him as a toy.

Like. Literally. He tells her outright.

This causes Nozomi to get defensive and demand that if Kyou was so upset then why did he chose to continue obeying. We are then lead to the good end or bad depending on the earlier scene.

In the good end Nozomi breaks the penlight realizing what she has done and in the bad she becomes Miss Akemi and makes full use of the penlight.

The deprogramming scene that follows is actually remarkably tender and sweet with all the tenderness of someone's first hypnosis scene, checking back and forth if the other is okay, Nozomi knows she has gone too far and is so careful in this sequence.

To add in to how tender and connected the hypnosis scene is, this time there is no brutal cut between penlight and waking. We are in Kyou's perspective the whole time as his eyes slip closed and he follows Nozomi's voice through the experience. We get to see Kyou reacting to Nozomi's words and experiencing the delightful relaxation and trust he has in Nozomi during these moments. He wonders if he is actually hypnotized while agreeing in thought to go with it.

Eyes open and close for fractionation and each time the artwork fades in and out, Nozomi's expression becoming more serious and/or concerned as it continues.

Questions of if it's working become certainty and Kyou even notes "I can't resist" not because his agency is overridden but because he tests his eyes and knows he cannot open them and that's okay.

"I just want to listen."

This is by far the longest hypnosis sequence in the game and it is essential that this be the case as it is the thesis statement of the game being played out. We are not witnessing the trust and tenderness of a well communicated and safe hypnosis scene, we are experiencing it.

The ending even has Nozomi accept the consequences of her behavior and make-up with her friends, admit her fetish which is one of the hardest things to achieve in any given run and Kyou is earnestly and honestly part of their friendgroup. Nozomi notes that she may wish to buy a pocketwatch in the future.

In terms of "good end" this is one of my favorite because Kyou gets to be friends with everyone, Nozomi comes to terms with her repressed desires and we get one of the most pure displays of hypnosis in the entire experience.

I am curious about other people's feelings on this one.

I'm running on fumes for the remainder so maybe I'll cover "Zombie" route later.

All I will say is that it is a route that is begun by Kyou having Nozomi imagine herself as a zombie, likely thinking of the Chinese Zombie trope of arms stretched outright and looking dehumanized. Nozomi takes it literally and tries to bite Kyou's flesh off.

This entire route is punctuated by abreactions and hypnotic safety. We are reminded of our fuck-up throughout the route by a giant bruise on Nozomi's character model (and lack of glasses for much of it) and it is the only route where all three of the main girls get involved with the experimentation around hypnosis right from the get-go.

With everyone clearly communicating and trying to accommodate for safety we still, in the mock stage hypnosis scene, get an abreaction despite every suggestion being very well laid out. It's almost weird how well packaged they are in this route and highlights how sloppy the suggestions are in the rest of the game.

The idea being that no amount of safety is going to cover everything. When we play with hypnosis we cannot possibly know every single thing about every single person we play with and mistakes can and will happen and we have to both own that and minimize the amount of harm we do by being tidy but also by talking out suggestions first and not springing them on people.

No matter how careful we are there will always be mistakes and it is better to deal with those mistakes before the scene than during it.

It's actually a remarkably good fable and makes a stunning point. I think that erasing all the barriers (Nozomi's shame of being discovered, Hiroko assuming the worst of Kyou, Sayori being involved enough to be the sane one in the room who has researched enough to know what is true and not attached like Kyou and Nozomi enough to not let things slide) and showing Kyou make sensible suggestions is the best way to approach this.

Even in the best possible timeline where there are no external factors and everyone is on their best behavior you can still mess up.

...and boy howdy we are going to mess up a lot in the rest of the game.

Next time I'm going to trauma dump on you all and type more than is necessary about Sayori's routes and reveal why my Penlight tag is "Sayori is best girl".

But for now... I have typed a lot and I do not wish to type any longer.

Eagerly awaiting Turq's post.

#camden posting #dawn posting #sayori is best girl #penlight #visual novel #hypnokink #I need a blended tag for when a post isn't solely authored in a specific headspace #media essays

[roachbot]

Intro time baybee

first official intro post hells yeah

I dont do a lot of intros but heres a shot at this

✮this bitch is stupid long, so be warned! full intro under cut!✮

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ˏˋ°•*⁀➷BASIC INFORMATION

I will respond to any of these, but some I like more than others :-3

- - - - - ➼NAMES

Goblin, Lua, Soleil, Bo, Roach, Richy, Brutus, Nikola, Gabriel, Aeris, (etc).

- - - - - ➼PRONOUNS

It/Its

Rot/Rots

Hx/Hxm (he/him)

She/Her

Void/Voids

Circ/Circuit

Lure/Lurk

Ink/inks

Bite/Bites

Honk/Honks

End/Ends

Ranked in order of what I like best! i appreciate being called any of these though ^v^

(do NOT use they/them on me though! it makes me uncomfortable)

- - - - - ➼ORIENTATION / GENDER

I am ASPEC, more specifically Apothisexual, Aegoromantic, and questioning Autoromantic. although I generally use Aroace as a nice umbrella for it all.

I fall under the Agender umbrella, being gendervoid. oftentimes i fluctuate between presentations, generally feeling more feminine most of the time (although it is safe to ask what I feel like at a given time).

Apothisexual - an asexual who is repulsed by sex / sexual activities

Aegoromantic - an aromantic who enjoys romance and enjoys the idea of relationships, but have no desire to engage in romance in real life

Autoromantic - someone who is (usually) only romantically attracted to themselves or only enjoys romantic activities with themselves, by themselves.

Agender - lacking a gender

Gendervoid - feeling like there is a void or emptiness where your gender should be

- - - - - ➼OTHER

I am diagnosed with Autism, OCD, and I believe ADHD as well.

I have EDS, POTS, and mild Asthma

I am either 5'5" or 5'7" (you gotta guess)

my classpect is Maid of Space, making me a Taurgo

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ˏˋ°•*⁀➷INTERESTS

- - - - - ➼ACTIVE

Interests that are either relatively new, or I'm actively into

Bigtop Burger, Vast Error, Hi-Fi Rush, Psychology, parasites, uncanny valley stuff, human behavior, art and writing, robots, (and more)

- - - - - ➼PASSIVE

Interests that are either relatively old, or I'm passively into

A Hat In Time, HLVRAI, Sally Face, Invader Zim, Sonic, TMA, Inscryption, horror content, (and more)

- - - - - ➼SPECIAL

My special interest !૮ ・ﻌ・ა

my own characters lmao. i am constantly thinking about my original characters tbh. the group i think about switches out every once n awhile, but I've always got at least one of them in the back of my mind, rotating like a baked potato in the microwave. I have too many to list here, but if anyone wants to know about them, shoot me an ask and i would be HAPPY to answer!

I recommend asking who I'm thinking about at the time !໒(＾ᴥ＾)७

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text posts I made, usually of something I was thinking about and needed to write down

(thats all i can think of rn, i usually just use plain artwork tags for most things)

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doodle posts, usually loose sketches or a spaghetti plate of ink

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Open! I'm okay with asks, but I'm a little slow an answering them. unless I'm not comfortable with it, I'll usually get around to answering any asks I get.

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(Mostly) closed. I usually only accept DMs from people I know.

note that my content varies a little wildly between sites.

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Don't mind the usernames, I'm not consistent

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ˏˋ°•*⁀➷BYI

- - - - - ➼KEEP IN MIND

I am a minor (Mid teens), and I am not very up-to-date on a lot of stuff. I use this blog as a diary at times, so some of my personal thoughts on things will be posted (thought not super frequently). I am a multifandom poster, so I'll have a wide range of content on my blog

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- - - - - ➼DNI

generally just, if you're an asshole or a bigot, I wont wanna interact with you. that's about it, really

alright, well, that's all I got

might go back and edit this later, but for now

a very long winded intro to say: Hi, I'm Lua. welcome to my blog.

#intro post #blog intro #Roachbot #roachbot roachthoughts #intro #introduction #introduction post

[rjalker]

Tumblr said the first is illegal so here it is again because I saved the meme to my computer.

Finding out The Murderbot Diaries was inspired by The Imperial Radch series is the opposite of propaganda. I don't think I've ever heard worse news about a story I enjoy in my life.

Let's take the ideas this story did right -- but make it bad!!!!!

it's so fucking funny and just. proves even further Martha Well's inability to understand the concept of gender as separate from sex.

She can imagine dozens of nonhumanoid fantasy species, but couldn't once imagine a gender system that was no still locked into the white western gender binary, even when her prominant fantasy race has what ammounts to six different genders if she'd actually given it a single moment of thought.

Martha Wells literally looked at what Ann Leckie did and then went "Oh that's so cool. Let me just not follow any of the examples you set in regards to gender tho"

[ID: A two panel meme.

The first panel shows cupcakes based on the Cookie Monster from Seaseme Street, with expertly decorated icing, a cookie, and eyes.

It reads, "The Imperial Radch series talking about pronouns before the first scene is even over and then consistantly bringing them up and having them play an important role throughought the course of the story".

The second panel says "Nailed it!!!" in large comic sans font, and shows a failed attempt to replicate the cupcakes from the first image, with the icing flat and melting, with the eyes falling off.

It reads, "The Murderbot Diaries literally not even having the word "pronouns" i nit even one single time, never discussing them or having characters share theirs, even though the protagonist uses neopronous."

End ID.]

do you think the word "pronouns" will appear even once in book 7, which is coming out November 2023?

I guess we'll find out, won't we?

If a single character tells anyone else their pronouns, Martha Wells can have this sticker:

[ID: A gold star against a transparent background, surrounded by smaller golden sparkles. Black comic sans text on the star reads, “You did the absolute bare minimum required to respect trans people”. End ID.]

I'm serious I'll never be able to get over the knowledge that she really really really read The Imperial Radch series, which has more understanding and representation of gender in its first two pages than the entirety of The Murderbot Diaries series has in its entirety, and then decided, yeah, I'm not going to do any of the things that actually made that radical and interestng actually. This robot is nonbinary and aroace because it doesn't have genitals teehee that's how gender and sexuality works :))))))

Like. how did you manage to fail that badly when Ancillary Justice is already talking about pronouns in the very first scene.

this is the opposite of propaganda and it's fucking hysterical.

Especially because it is a perfect mirror to everything this fandom does with the things Martha Wells actually does right. She says "Don't ship slaves with their owners and don't demand peopel conform to your idea of normal" and they're all screaming and crying that if they can't ship this touch averse aroace slave with its owner they'll just die.

LOL

#The Imperial Radch #Ancillary Justice #The Murderbot Diaries #Rjalker reads The Murderbot Diaries #Martha Wells #Ann Leckie #exorsexism #Martha Wells biological essentialism #Martha Wells transmisia #Martha Wells exorsexism #The Murderbot Diaries exorsexism #The Murderbot Diaries biological essentialism #nailed it meme #Rjalker reads The Imperial Radch

[catgirl-catboy]

I still want to hear your sexuality hc about your fav characters like an idiot

Types up small essay:

(I included some gender hcs too, since there's a lot of gender HCs that are very important to me.)

I've already mentioned some of these, but it pains me to make an incomplete list. Also, it's divided by fandom. (for fandoms you aren't in, disregard!)

These are only the ones I'm very attached to and cannot imagine the character without. No worries if you are squicked by or disagree with any of em!

One Piece:

Luffy: Canonically asexual, but I hc him specifically as sex positive. He doesn't really get the point, but would fuck you if you asked. Also NB. Man does not understand the hype around gender in the slightest.

Nami: Sex NEGATIVE asexual, and will only use sex appeal to steal your wallet.

Franky: Trans dude. If he can make himself a robot body, he can make himself a robot dick. Also he's Bi. He never mentions any of this, and is surprised that his crewmates didn't already know.

Zoro: Has legit never thought about it. He has no fucking clue what his sexuality is. He just does what he wants in the moment.

Sanji: There's a solid arguement to be made in canon that my dude is not Cis. (There's simping, and then there's getting euphoria for being in the body of your hot female friend.) I personally HC him as bigender. Also, no way is he actually into ladies.

Homestuck:

Vriska: Trans woman, transitioned super young. Will fight you if you misgender her.

Karkat: Not being able to feel certain quadrants places him on the Troll aromantic spectrum. Troll sexuality is different and my HCs should reflect that!

John: Bi, and doesn't understand that Bi isn't the default. Everyone finds their male friends attractive, that doesn't mean they want to date them! (he is wrong.)

Aradia: Lesbian in red and pitch quadrants.

Roxy: Pan, and uses she/her + Neopronouns (I'd think it/its and nya/nyas fit her vibe.)

Jade: Queer, and very open about having a crush on everyone in her friend group at one point.

The Owl House:

Willow: Trans woman. Her intro episode has so much trans subtext, what can I say!

No South Park Headcanons I'm really attached to, but practically everything but Transfem!Butters has canon backing at this point.

I actually don't headcanon Mr. Kitty as intersex because Ms. Cartman totally replaces Mr. Kitty whenever something bad happens, and that explains the inconsistencies.

Total Drama:

Bi Owen is arguably canon, if played for laughs. (I know the shows old, but yikes!)

But have you considered... closeted Bi Heather? Gives me peak "get out of my school vibes" with Gwen.

Julia seems the type to pretend to be gay on the internet for clout, then realize she actually is gay. She's horrible like that.

I know Wayne is canonically the best Ally, but Harold knows more about LGBTQ+ history than everyone else put together and will happily talk about it when asked. He has helped at least 3 people figure out the name for their sexuality.

I saw someone posting about Aroace DJ, and it has not left my brain since.

Bi Zoey! She's not open about it, due to not wanting to be the only openly queer person in her small town.

Scott is gay, but he also knows very little about sexuality. It takes him embarrassingly long to figure it out.

Jasmine is questioning her sexuality, and Sammy (I will not call her Samey, I refuse.) was her first known crush on a girl. Still love her and Shawn though.

He/they Shawn. Based off vibes.

Priya gives me "me before I realized I was into girls" vibes. I don't make the rules.

Ace Attorney:

Bi Gumshoe. If he's straight, why does he act the exact same around Edgeworth than he does his CANON crush.

Aroace Athena. I cannot imagine her having romantic feelings for anyone, I'm sorry. (Junie had a crush on her at one point though, and she was flattered.)

NB Apollo. His relationship with gender (makes contented buzzing noise!)

Demi Edgeworth: Cannot have a crush on someone without knowing them for 5 years first.

Transmasc. Maya, because gender roles in her village is pretty key to her arc, and that'd be a cool way of exploring that.

I know Bi Phoenix is the prevalent headcanon, but I am a Gay Phoenix enjoyer. His fling with Dahlia reads as Comphet to me.

Danganronpa:

Gonta's relationship with gender in canon is so ??? no way is he cis. I'm giving him the Genderqueer label, but Cisn't. I don't think he's quite figured it out though.

If I am despised for liking Bi Tenko, so be it. It makes sense with what we see of her backstory, and no way am I allowing my fave to be a stereotype.

I am a trans Chihiro enjoyer, but fuck you if you think the people that want to use Chihiro's canon pronouns are transphobic. The whole thing is stupid, and people should be able to have fun with the character without discourse

Very Openly gay, All Pronouns (including Neopronouns!) Ibuki. They lead the GSA at Hope's Peak. Ate a gender for breakfast once.

Demi Taka. Also Demi Mukuro.

Aroace Togami. Man only has an interest in sex because its expected of him, and does not enjoy when someone is sexually attracted to him.

Aroace Makoto with a million QPPs. It doesn't make sense with canon, but it is one of my favorite headcanons.

Bi Toko.

Poly Kaede.

#ask tag #crowtalks

[herbirdglitter]

In the spirit of anti amatonormativity, here are a list of popular ships that I think would be better off as platonic but also I voice some very strong personal opinions and I understand if you have different ones. (don’t come for me I love you)

- Drarry (Harry Potter) in almost any way you look at it, that relationship is a toxic wasteland of twisted nothingness. Plus it’s a garbage franchise

- Yelena Belova and literally anyone. (Marvel) She’s aroace. It’s canon. what’s wrong with you.

- Shassie (Psych) You are imagining the sexual chemistry. Yes, Shawn is clearly bi but that doesn’t mean he and Lassie have any romantic or sexual chemistry at all whatsoever. Plus Woody is also canonically queer and right there so I don’t know what the hell you people are doing. (im mostly kidding about the woody bit but it’s not nearly as crazy as some of the other ships you hooligans come up with)

- Draco and Hermione. See Drarry explanation

- R2-D2 and C3PO. they are robots. as with all robot and monster characters, if you want to humanize them, having them fall in love is not the way to go. love is not what makes something human. 

- Dr. Doofenshmirtz  and Perry the Platypus. NO. ONE IS A HUMAN, THE OTHER IS A PLATYPUS. ENOUGH SAID. 

- Anakin and Obi-wan. You know when you (25m) raise a child from the age of nine and you’re pretty much it’s sole parental figure and then when it grows up you don’t think of it as an object of physical or romantic attraction? That’s good! There is no need to change that!! why would you make it insanely creepy

- Loki/Slyvie YOU HAVE THE SAME DNA. THE SAME PARENTS. I DON’T GET IT. THEIR SIBLING DYNAMIC WOULD HAVE BEEN GREAT

-anything involving real people. You already know why. except obama and harry styles of course as long as it’s always treated like a joke because that one’s just funny

- Gonff/Martin. Gonff is in love with Colombine and he and Martin’s friendship is already perfect. Gonff is definitey bi though

- Wincest. I feel like this one speaks for itself. 

- anything involving clonecest. again, they are brothers. they have the same dna. it’s creepy. 

anyway

#aromantic #valentine's day

[dballzposting]

Dear Diary. I think that Goten and Palace-chan and Trunks could do a throuple or polycule or whatever. I think they could do it FOR LIFE. Truth is Trunks has nothing else going on. After a certain point hes just not interested in the hassle of meeting new people and trying to nail down a date. He doesnt care. He doesnt care about having a girlfriend and it's not like hes especially attracted to guys in any discernible way either. (Saying this bc GT Trunks still gives me those light aroace vibes..). When it comes to a lifelong partner, he feels he needs one, but it doesnt need to be "romantic" by any social definition, there just needs to be intimacy and security and support. This is where Goten, whom he already knows and is well-bonded with, comes in. Trunks is just not interested in taking the time to forge a deep connection with somebody else .. he already did that. Theres really no reason to do it again.

Goten however always thought that hed have a wife and kids someday and he cant shake that desire and shouodnt have to. What's more he NEEEDS a gf like he LOVES having a gf. He loves having romance with sweet women. Fuck yeah. If he and his buddy Trunks started dating it would be really easy bc they already love eachother and the affection comes naturally but it would be hard too becasue even though it's fulfilling in the moment, Goten worries about his maidenless future ...

And so eventually Trunks would cut him loose becasue he knows what's good for him and it's sad becasue remmeber Trunks has nothing else going on except for Goten but it's actually not sad becasue theyre still best friends so what is he actually losing? It feels bitter and scary in the moment however, when you start trying to push or pull the people in your life to fit into roles that may or may not even involve you in the end.

However Palace-chan would love to have two boyfriends if they were cute. And I think she'd think that Trunks is cute becasue why wouldnt she .. all the other ladies do. I think that theyd get along really well..!!!! I always thought that and maybe it's just because shes his BFF's GF so they have to get along but think about it ... Think about it.

Trunks didnt want to take the time to meet new people so he just sticks with who he has and that was a great investment becasue now Goten has introduced him to a lovely lady whom he gets along really well with. They talk candidly, and in all of her airheadedness, shes used to adapting to things she didnt know before; whether it's the existence of ice cream or the existence of aliens, she'll respond to and readily accept all sorts of info . And she's great to talk to for that reason bc she'll be surprised by what you're saying and then she'll ask for more details and now you get to talk abt yourself and she'll listen and be like "wow I didnt know that" and like Literally nobody has EVER let Trunks talk about robot shit for an hour and a half before but by god Palace did. Both parties compromising to reach an understanding between the broad disparity of their knowledge. Sorry I'm just musing uselessly let's get back to the post

So they all get along really well and they all like each other a lot and they all feel loved and theres support and care between them all. Palace-chan is like Trunks's other BFF. Goten is his actual BFF whom he thinks is cute (but he wont say that to anyone but Goten and Palace). He thinks Palace-chan is adorable too becasue that is an objective fact. Trunks and Palace are like Goten's girlfriends (this is what Goten says and Trunks always jabs him for this.) Palace is Goten's darling and they will wed one day and when they do Trunks will live with them. And one day Trunks asked "am I going to help you raise the kids? Are they going to be, like, my kids? Am I going to be another dad or am I just going to be, like, some guy?" and Goten responds "you'll be like a Piccolo to them" and they have a sensible chuckle but it doesnt really answer the question. The true question of course being, what does Trunks want to be in this equation? It takes a while to occur to any of them but eventually Palace brings up that if she has a kid with Goten, could she have a kid with Trunks too? And Trunks is thrown by this and is like, "dude, Goten, then our kids would be siblings, man" and Goten is like "I know thatd be so weird like, our fathers are rivals and their grandkids are siblings? That's crazy man" and Trunks is like "DUDE. Our fathers are the only true-blooded saiyans left , shouldnt you and I consider it our duty to stop their bloodlines from running into eachother and fizzling out? Or, alternatively, shoukdnt we have kids of our own who dont share a mother so that they can potentially copulate and keep the saiyan blood strong?" to which Goten responds "You want our kids to not be siblings so thag they can copulate? That's fucked up man. Why dont we just skip the middleman and have you and I copulate." and here Palace interrupts and says almost sadly "oh, is there another woman you want to be the mother of your children...?" and they're both like "No no no this is all hypothetical..." and that's when Trunks realizes that theres really nothing he can do to stop Vegeta's bloodline from ending with Kakarot's at just the third generation down. It's up to Bra to keep the bloodlines separate and thriving now ....

Trunks isnt Palace's BF but he is her BF's BFF and they do all kiss and stuff and she thinks hes cute and she loves him. And if they're hanging out just the two of them and people mistake them to be a couple they absolutely go with it. Trunks isnt her boyfriend and she isnt his girlfriend but they are eachother's Sweetheart. She admires him a lot and probably defaults to "-san" (while with her beloved Goten shes comfortable using -kun or really -senpai) and Trunks always tells her that she doesnt need to use a suffix at all but she thinks that's strange. And he probably calls her -kun in public and -chan when theyre all hanging out together. Goten will call them both -chan becasue thats the kind of guy he is.

And they all love each other the end....

#so sweet lol... #dballz posting #Goten & Palace & Trunkz

[erigold13261]

Hello, I am back again. I know you might be tired of these long winding asks, and I apologize. However, I cannot contain the Category Autism Event Level 7 TM in my mind, or I will explode. (Also, I wish you get that job you've been wanting to get <3 <3)

Here we go again into Crossover Land.

I just realized this. Haibara Yu's kanji name is 灰原雄、and the kanji that represents his given name is 雄, which not only means "brave", but also "male." As in the biological male. And... I like to imagine little Yu choosing the kanji bc he was a Real Boy. Older Yu thinks it was silly of him to do so. (But likes his name anyway.) (Also Yu is an androgynous name, so they might have just changed the kanji to represent who he was.)

Speaking of which, Yu was the first binary trans kid Gwen had ever known. And vice versa. Imagine the shock and joy when they find out that.

Yu was stealth trans until very recently.

Idk how Yu and Gwen found out, perhaps they were both going into the doctor's office for their hormones? (Yes Gwen started Estrogen while in Nueva York. No note has not gotten notes dad's consent.) (Maybe they wouldn't allow that to happen, but Gwen's body dysphoria was pretty bad.)

Commence a "Spider-Man Pointing at Each Other" or a "Spider-Woman and Ash-Man Pointing at Each Other" meme moment.

After a few days, Gwen gives Yu a friendship bracelet. A pink, blue, and white one.

Yu does not know what it means. And thinks that Gwen here has a crush on him, and wants him to wear her colors. But doesn't she like Miles????

Gwen realizes Yu is mistaking something drastically.

She picks up her phone, and points at the trans flag.

Yu did not know the trans flag, and gets more confused.

Gwen starts to frantically point at the trans flag more, to no avail.

He calls for Peni.

Peni comes and explains the misunderstanding.

Now Yu and Gwen wear matching friendship bracelets. T4T friendship for the win!

Well, now more people wanted friendship pride flag bracelets.

So Gwen (Yu, and Miles too) decide to make a bunch of them. A bi one (Miles), a gay man one (Satoru and later Ganke), an AroAce one (Nanami), a nonbinary one (Suguru), two agender ones, (Noir and Shoko), a genderqueer one (Margo), a genderfluid one (Peter Porker), two rainbow pride ones (Peni and Hobie). (I want to know Pav and Gayatri's queer HCs bc they made them one too)

Team bonding hurray!

Another less happy HC.

I wondered why in this world, Japan isn't known for its robotics or technology, and instead J-1, Vandelay, and that UK robotics company are.

Perhaps in this world, Japan fell behind after the economic collapse of the 1990s.

And instead maybe, they are known for people. Powered individuals. (JJK canon explains how sorcerers and cursed spirits are far more common in Japan than in other areas of the world.)

This is why the Gojo clan are rich. And Satoru is the first one in 400 years to be born with blues powerset.

This makes him important. As an asset. As a way to get on top of the food chain.

Then they need to control the boy.

They did just that. Control his friends, the places that he goes to. Every single move so that he can be on top.

It didn't work. Now the boy was hanging out with that Ripoff (Suguru), and that Freak (sorry Shoko).

(Shoko's healing is a good asset though. Might as well have them get married for more blood.) (HC that Shoko has a parent with an object head, making them less valid in that world)

Satoru even was in love with that Ripoff! How dare him! And even Shoko was in a scheme of... what?

Now he was useless, at least with that mindset.

Then Miguel and Olivia came in. Promised to help the boy and others control their powers.

They did not want Satoru or any of them around anymore. They agreed.

Yu was already friends with Nanami, but only heard of Satoru and Suguru before. As he was about to leave his home, he found a bus coming to him.

There was the SaSiSu three, and Nanami.

Yu is confused, but he leaves anyway.

But why weren't they having any luggage? Wearing their school uniforms? And sleeping?

(Olivia wanted them in full shape. An heir of the infamous Gojo clan was going to be an important asset that shouldn't be chipped or cracked.)

... sorry for this HC. I think it's pretty dark.

And a quicker one.

After Hobie realizes that Satoru was in a screwed-up home life, they decide to be a bit nicer to blues.

They know what it is like to be mistreated. And it understands that being a rich person does not equal happiness. (Something that Cyril knows too.)

Taught him music he was never allowed to listen to.

Now Satoru gets taught the drums from Gwen.

Blue loves it!

... sorry for the ask dump. (Might return for more haha/hj) Have a nice day/night!

Lol, don’t apologize! They are actually really fun to read (and now I am getting tiktoks with JJK references in them that I can kinda sorta understand lol)

Also thanks for the luck on my job! Hopefully I get it too (at the moment of writing this I am still waiting for a call back, will call back myself tomorrow afternoon if I don’t get one in the morning).

Anyway! Time to answer!

-Yu’s kanji: That makes me think of nonbinary people who name themselves after nouns for some reason. I don’t know why, but it’s a nice thing to think about since it was/is a name that makes them happy, and I’m glad to hear even if older Yu thinks it’s a little silly, he is still happy with his choice in name!

-Yu and Gwen: Oh wow, yeah! That is true! Gwen is just surrounded by a bunch of trans people who aren’t really binary trans. Didn’t even notice that till now! Neat!

But I can see the two bonding over that. Like it is nice to be surrounded by all kinds of queer people, but sometimes you want someone in an even more similar spot as you. I definitely think if Yu meets Remi he will be even more happy to meet another ftm trans person. Which might make Gwen feel left out a little, but I can see her finding out Tatiana is a trans woman, or even meeting Zimelu and just trying to get to know them and their experiences.

Honestly Gwen and Yu looking up to Tatiana and Neon J as elder binary trans individuals is a nice idea for me to think about. Even though those two don’t really flaunt their transness, they would definitely be willing to talk about it to make Gwen and Yu feel better about their own experiences.

-Stealth trans: Oh yeah, Yu and Neon J could probably have a really good conversation about their experiences as being stealth trans. Like Neon J literally only came out publicly for his kids’ sake as they were getting harassment from interviewers. Yu (hopefully) came out on his own to be more open about his transness but would still probably benefit from hearing about Neon’s experiences. I think Tatiana was never stealth, but also never fully flaunted it. She would tell people if they ask but wouldn’t just be telling without provocation.

-Hormones: I think you would definitely need parental consent at Gwen’s age. Well also Yu’s age, I think you said he would be 15-16. So I can see Yu getting parental consent and being able to go get hormones, but Gwen really wouldn’t. Jess would definitely have fought for Gwen to get them, but it would be shut down because Gwen isn’t emancipated and it could cause problems for Nueva York to give hormones.

Maybe Gwen could get puberty blockers at the very least without parental consent, like that would have been the compromise of Jess pushing for hormones. Though Gwen would definitely be given the proper clothes, accessories, other social transitioning options for note to have even if note couldn’t have hormones.

I can see Gwen talking with a nurse at the Nueva York doctor’s office and Yu overhears and wants to ask or talk to Gwen maybe (would Yu understand enough English at this point if he only knew Japanese?). Maybe he sees Gwen in some trans flag outfit or with a pin of some sort and that’s how he realizes. 

I don’t think Gwen could have been the one to figure it out because Yu was stealth (maybe note had an idea just from experience) but I do think Yu would be the one to figure it out in whatever way he does because Gwen is a bit more open about her transness than Yu is (at least at the moment she is more open about it).

-Point Meme: Yeah, if they both wear trans flags at one point, that would definitely be how they find out and react lol.

-Bracelet: For once Gwen is glad to have been forced into Nueva York’s arts-and-craft room (also I should probably read ahead because I could combine points like this and the last one, but I like reading asks point by point lol).

-Crush?: (okay yeah I need to read the next few points lol, so like this one point encompasses  the rest of the points until the break in paragraph)

OOOOH! So Yu doesn’t know what the trans flag is! Okay! So that wouldn’t be how they found out! Interesting!

Well, however they found out, Yu thinking Gwen has a crush on him because he doesn’t understand is kinda cute. Maybe he thinks her and Miles are just friends (or maybe he knows a bit about polyamory, probably not the word for it, and thinks this is some kind of relationship like that).

Imagine him going to Nanami for advice as to what to do and his aroace ass is of absolutely no help to Yu lol. 

Yu ends up letting Gwen know he thinks she has a crush on him and she so panicked (not in a bad way because maybe she could like Yu, but Yu was right that she likes Miles right now and that is who she wants). So it’s like 10 minutes of charades and maybe Gwen saying colors in different languages or trying to say something but all she knows is like 1 year of Spanish and a few words in French or something, so she is just being even more confusing to Yu.

So she quickly leaves and drags in Peni. Gwen is super embarrassed, but Yu probably laughs at the whole situation (Peni is definitely laughing) and it’s a fun story everyone ends up finding out about. Suguru or Satoru just screaming “rosa” and “azul” to be brats and embarrass Gwen a bit when she walks by, causing a small fight between them and Hobie who (although also found the situation hilarious) is willing to fight on behalf of Gwen lol.

Anyway, once all of that is settled, you better believe the group spent a ton of time pleading for computer time so they could look up flag colors and identities to make sure all these bracelets are accurate and in the right order!

Also, I don’t have any queer headcanons for Gayatri and Pavitr that are set in stone. I do like T4T or Bi4Bi, but honestly what if they were both aroace and together. Maybe one is aroace and the other is something else. I don’t know why I want one to be aroace, or at least asexual, but I do lol. I mean heck, I wouldn’t even mind he/him butch lesbian Pav and BiAce Gayatri. I want these two to be weird in their identities but also totally super confident and happy in themselves. So yeah, nothing concrete with these two, but they love each other and are weird but happy.

-Power/Tech Japan:

I will be honest before reading ALL of these points, the reason Japan doesn’t have a big robotics company in this AU (at the moment) is just because I haven’t found the right media to fill it. Honestly, Vandelay could have easily been in Japan, someone on one of my HFR posts said they personally saw Vandelay Tech as Japanese, while I personally saw it as in California for some reason. So it could have been a Japanese industry, but just how I saw it, it was put in the United States lol. (now I shall read the rest of the points :3)

There very much could be a robotics company in Japan (there’s definitely SOME, but maybe not to the level as the main 3), but I actually like the idea that some places just give birth to stronger powered individuals! I always wanted to think about how some places give different abilities, different elementals, different bodies (like object heads). Like I think South Africa is a place that has a lot of powerful people or that Korea might have more people with light based powers. So Japan being a place where more powerful people are from is something that could absolutely happen!

I can also see the Gojo clan being rich because of this. That is something I haven’t explored all that much is how powered individuals do tend to have more influence and say in the world around them. So families with very useful powers are definitely going to be using those privileges to get an upper hand in life.

Poor Satoru though. Having blues life be fully controlled is awful. I’m glad blue was able to find time to become friends with Suguru and Shoko (even if they did end up doing a scheme that probably irreparably damaged someone because of overhealing, draining power, and matter manipulation).

Shoko and Satoru potentially being in an arranged marriage would have been such a cool story line to look at. Maybe the Gojo family didn’t have any better option at their disposal so they would have been willing to overlook Shoko’s object-headed parent because of its power, but after the scheme went wrong and showed just how far Satory strayed from the family path, the family would have never wanted that girl’s blood in the family bloodline.

Once the scheme was brought to light (and probably brought bad recognition to the Gojo family), you better believe the family was willing to pay Miguel to take Satoru and try to “fix” blue into being a better kid that would follow orders. Nueva York absolutely got a big donation from the family to make sure this happened (also I just imagine Olivia having to contain her excitement at the thought of studying these powers and then Miguel had to contain his excitement when he realized how much money was being donated to Nueva York).

I wonder if Yu and Nanami tried talking with the SaSiSu three on the ride to Nueva York. I can imagine the three not being very talkative to anyone outside the three of them at that moment. Everything went wrong for them and they were now being shipped to who-knows-where. Definitely not the most happy ride any of them have had.

(also don’t apologize, it’s all good! Trust me, I have had more dark headcanons as well as people sending me in way darker stuff. So you’re all good!)

-Hobie lightens up:

Oh definitely. Once Hobie realizes that Satoru isn’t just a spoiled rich kid, they absolutely start trying to be nicer (not to say that the two still don’t bicker and fight a little bit, but nothing like what it initially was in the beginning).

Speaking of Cyril, I wonder if Hobie ends up talking to Cyril and telling him about Satoru Gojo. I can see Cyril knowing a bit of that family, maybe his mom knew them personally or something. She is a very famous singer with a voice similar to Gayatri, which is a very strong power to have. Perhaps there could be a neat little connection there somehow.

Anyway, Hobie and Gwen teaching Satoru rock and metal music is something I really like! Especially if Hobie shows Satoru some Ex-Jay music that is in Japanese. Imagine the three singing in Japanese to rock songs! That would be really fun! (Gwen doesn’t understand what she is singing and Hobie knows the gist of what it is singing. Satoru would know exactly what is being said and loves that blue is able to actually experience something with others that blue can fully understand without having to translate).

I wonder what instrument Satoru would like the best. I can imagine blue knowing how to play a more classical instrument because of blues family, so maybe something less traditional would be to blues liking. (for some reason I see Satoru in the middle of a room just dancing and shaking maracas around and it is very funny to me)

______________________________________

That’s all I have for now! thanks for the info dump! It’s always fun reading stuff like this! And honestly this is the perfect propaganda to push me into watching this show lol! Once I get time I honestly really do want to watch the show. It’s obviously not going to be exactly like this since this is an AU, but just seeing stuff on tiktok and your explanation of canon is starting to be enough for me to want to see what the show is really about! :3

You have a good day/night as well!

#nsrtalk #spidertalk #jjktalk #nspidr #eriverse #eritalks #noart #asks

[scrawlingskribbles]

like. hmm. I just feel like the relationship I have with polyamory is kinda interesting, I guess xD like, I know my memory is bad but if it serves me right then I might have even realized/recognized that I was polyam before I realized/recognized that I was aroace lmao, which feels like kind of a big deal, somehow?? but I suppose it's easier to recognize something that's present over something that's absent, you know? how are you supposed to know something's missing if you never knew it was "supposed" to be there in the first place?

((I'm still waiting to get a phonecall back from the doc, so I ended up rambling A LOT MORE than I originally thought I was going to with this post so I'm putting it under a readmore xD))

For instance, I have this one vivid memory from back in middle school where I was talking about polyamory with a friend while we were waiting in the lunch line once, & he basically thought I was absolutely bonkers when I attempted to describe it to him lololol. The one picture/diagram I found to help explain it is still in my phone to this day, 19th from the very start of my reel of 2000+ photos. I don't remember how I first found that image—maybe it had rolled across my tumblr dashboard at some point? Regardless, all I know is that as soon as I read it, it made something light up in my brain, a little aha! lightbulb that was like, Yes, This Makes Sense, This Is You.

And like, I'm sure that I had to have some kind of moment like that with being aroace, but I don't have any specific memory like I do with the polyam thing. It probably also doesn't help that for a long while before I realized I was aroace, I felt so broken/wrong/etc. that I'd made up this whole little narrative in my head that I was actually an android instead of a human & was just Missing that one "part" that everyone else seemed to have, that let/made them have those kinds of romantic feelings for others. (Like, I obviously didn't actually believe it, like it wasn't delusion-level or anything, but it Was how I coped with feeling so yucky during that time, letting myself pretend that I was a robot so it wouldn't hurt quite so much.) So I feel like the aroace realization/acceptance came a little more gradually, having to convince myself over time the more that I learned about it that I wasn't actually broken, just different, and working to chase away the residual negative thoughts/feelings that I'd already been living with for however long at that point. Those feelings still crop up from time to time, but it hasn't been a Genuine Issue for me in quite a long time, thankfully.

So I suppose I did feel that Absence Of Something for quite a while, but I just didn't have the language/knowledge to put a name to it at the time. With the polyamory though, it was something that had never really surfaced before, so when that nerve got struck for the first time it was only a Positive note, so maybe that's why I remember it more clearly? (Bc I wasn't even all that bothered with what that one friend thought about it; he just Didn't Get It, and that was fine. ...Okay, maybe it Was actually after the aroace discovery, bc that feels like the kind of backbone that I would have gotten After already figuring out one piece of my puzzle tbh, lmfao. Huh. Darn my shoddy memory xD).

It's also interesting to me because, like, kinda going back to the Absence vs. Presence thing, the polyamory part of me is like, way less... obvious, I guess? I don't think that's the right word but it's all I've got rn xD But like, I feel my aroace-ness every day (or like, at least every Week or so) by virtue of Not feeling attraction towards people. So it's so weird, amidst that vast void of non-attraction, to also feel just as strongly in my bones that I Am polyamorous. Like, there's quote-unquote ""evidence"" of me being aroace because I don't date or otherwise seek out romantic/etc. relationships, but there's no "evidence" of me being polyam because of almost the exact same reasoning xD Like, the way I am with polyamory is the same way that other people feel about their sexuality/attraction as a whole, which is amusing to me for some reason. People can know that they're straight or gay or bi or what-have-you even if they've never been with anyone of the stipulated gender(s), and I know that I'm polyamorous even though I've never been in a polyamorous relationship. Idk, it's just kind of a wild feeling for me, as someone who's far more familiar with the lack of feeling something xD

And like, is my polyamory actually linked specifically to my aroace-ness, no matter how oxymoronic it might seem at first glance? Is the polyamory a side effect or maybe even a coping mechanism of sorts, because I'm aware of my typical-relationship shortcomings as an aroace & sex-averse individual in a world of allos and don't mind the thought of Sharing a partner/partners, especially if that means they can meet each other's needs in ways that I personally can't, because I just want everyone to be happy? Is it a romanticization of the Two Cakes theory but with real human people managing to have open, honest, enjoyable relationships with one another simultaneously, because the more is still the merrier even if it's also more complicated? Is it a testament to my own selfishness/laziness, wanting to have my cake and eat it too, because more hands make lighter work and I can barely keep a simple friendship afloat, let alone anything """more""" than that? Is it an unrealistic idealization that, even though deep down I still feel those senses of being Broken and not anywhere near Enough on my own, someone or even multiple someones would still find my presence in their life(s) fulfilling enough to want to keep me around in a more intimate capacity than ""just"" a friend, because I still yearn for the closeness of a relationship like that even if I don't specifically feel the "attractions" that typically glues that kind of relationship together?

...I think it's probably All of the above, if I'm being perfectly honest. And that's a lot of feelings to have swirling all around at once, let me tell you xD So I guess that's why I had to word-vomit it all out here; there's no real point to this post, just sharing some thoughts/experiences that have been on my mind as of late. It's complicated inside this here noggin o' mine, lol~ TwT

#and if anyone actually makes it all the way through this wall of text: wow! you trooper xD hope it was at least somewhat interesting! <3 #long post #ramble #words #shut up Wisp

[being-so-normal-about-reploids]

Hai so what are ur fav headcanons that you can’t stop thinking about? :3

God tho I don't even know where to begin. I'm actually not that much of a headcanon generator, I don't think! Which I know sounds absurd considering I'm out here absolutely just making up noncanon shit for hundreds and hundreds of pages, but then if you actually ask me like, 'Quick, name a headcanon!' I just kind of bluescreen, lol. All the writing is more AU to me at this point so it's like, entirely separate real canon, so I feel like I can't really pull from any of that to answer, if that makes sense? Like it's not headcanon at that point.

But I have been playing X6 and laughing about Dynamo for like a week so you know what I'll go with that as a starting point: if they weren't already enemies, Zero would still probably love to slap Dynamo's teeth out of his head because they're too just a little close to the same type of flippant (you get this from Zero a lot more in Japanese than English), but X would probably get along with him pretty okay. And not just because X could probably get along with anybody, either. He would think Dynamo is actually, legitimately funny and chill to hang out with. Zero would think he's a shit influence who could stand to have fewer teeth, but I also headcanon that Zero probably got along just fine with Vile for a while and probably would have continued to had Shit Not Happened, and he's just defensive (and maybe a liiiiittle jealous? He is a Wily creation after all, from a long and storied line of Nobody Is Allowed To Kill You But Me type idiots) over X, so there's that. None of these idiots have any taste in friends and nobody has any room to talk shit about anybody's weird socialization.

Then again considering the actual plot that last sentence is literally just back to canon again. These dumb fuckin boys looked at each other (destined to try to kill each other from creation) and said, 'Oh no, he's so goddamn stupid, I can't not befriend him.'

Most of my headcanons are a lot more general rather than being about specific characters, and I just straight up called them 'worldbuilding' and slapped them directly into my writing, lmao. I think some of them are actually not popular, like 'reploids are generally aroace from a human perspective (though they very much have their own things going on instead)' and 'reploids don't really eat/drink' are like, I'm probably a minority for those, lol. There's a ton of alloromantic and allosexual works out there and it's actually kind of hard to find a fic where someone isn't eating or drinking human food during downtime for whatever reason. They're just very common. And to be clear I don't have a problem with it or anything either, it's all chill. I don't even mind explicit shit even if it's not as much my thang in this fandom. I just think it's a little bit more interesting when they're not just humans except metal, but instead they've got their own kinda parallel inorganic biology, and not a lot of people are doing that so it's kinda my happy niche to fill lol. Like I don't think they should be too overly familiar from an organic perspective. I actually like the uncanny valley effect. I think it's cool.

Also having a partner with a background in robotics/mechatronics and electrical engineering has super tilted what I find interesting to headcanon, I'm sure, lol.

Uh one more. I'm very team X Has Brown Hair and I love imagining different haircuts on him lol. Couldn't tell you why, but somehow most of them look cool anyway, so it's a fun pastime and I should draw some of them.

Yeah okay that's a lot of words! I think that's good for now. Unless you wanted specifics about a given game/character/etc.? (Bonus points if it's an OC because I'm always looking for an excuse to start rambling about them.)

ALSO TURNABOUT IS FAIR PLAY JUST FYI

[brawltogethernow]

I'd like to hear more about your murderbot transmigrator thoughts :))

Okay obviously when I said I wasn’t going to think about a Murderbot/Scum Villain fusion that was more of a goal, which is a lot like a lie. I have pecked out ~1k of prose for it, but none of it is presentable for longer than one line. The problem with this concept is that it’s actually very good, and there are a lot of meaty ideas to dig into with it, like, too many of them.

1. Murderbot would be immedately inclined to empathize with the System and guess at its motivations. Depending on what those are this may still stay an antagonistic relationship, because the way the System leverages its cosmic powers to coerce and strongarm people stomps on a lot of Murderbot’s triggers and is generally a dick move. The points system is just a gamified governor module. But it’s still a relationship, and if the System turns out to be an antagonist, it’s in that role as a fleshed out character with a personality who has been interrogated by someone with every reason to assume somebody made it and has commanded it to act like this for their own reasons.

Murderbot asks its function and designates it NarrSystem (Narrative System) or StorySystem or something because “the System” is too generic coming from its setting.

2. Transmigrating into a human body would be badweird and transmigrating into a human brain would be absolutely horrifying. (SecUnit could transmigrate into a system, but we’ve kind of been there done that with 2.0.) Dysphoria central! Murderbot gets to address that while it has never wanted to be a human, all humans are so convinced that being human is better that on some level it WAS worried that they were right. And now it can say with absolute certainty that they are not and this sucks. But also some things that it would have thought would be fundamentally different are actually the same. It’s just a whole time.

This is part of why I’m deviating from transmigration story standard and full stop making the transmigration a temporary situation, the other main reason being that Murderbot has more going on in its own world than your standard transmigration protagonist.

3. Either Murderbot gets back by hacking the System or it intends to but it’s ultimately the System’s decision. This is a very slow process because it can’t access tech the way it’s used to and the System’s structure is very different from what it’s dealt with before (because it strongly resembles Windows Vista). It needs tech and more control over its situation stat though so it’s going to keep at it until it works. Open your damn menus. SecUnit is going to rig transmigration until it’s like playing The Sims with cheat codes.

4. (This one is for me.) The System still talks in garbled Chinese netspeak, and Murderbot is like. Wow this program speaks in the lost tongue of an ancient civilization. How old is it. I can barely understand it. (Because of the bad memes not the Chinese.)

5. Murderbot gets yeeted into The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon and has to deal with the emotionally exhausting scenario of empathizing with everybody present. It likes the heroes, and it likes the other heroes they’re in conflict with, it likes the more complex villains with fleshed out motivations, and it even has a soft spot for a lot of the side characters and bit villains. This is fundamentally incompatible with how it tries to ration its empathy, assess situations by sorting people into allies/nonhostiles/hostiles, and compartmentalize by nicknaming the people it’s in conflict with things like Target 1, Target 2, and Target 3.

6. The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, as the specific transmigration variation we’re jumping off of here, was not trying to interrogate the infinity mirror effect of heteronormativity reflecting back and forth between media and people, and as such is not like, a solid narrative about this. That said, this book is basically like:

Shen Yuan reads this giant mess of a book with a lot of straight sex fantasies, not completely without appreciating the romance, but with more antipathy for it than he admits to himself. Then he ends up in the book and thinks he’s meant to enable the romances he read, which he’s so completely resigned to doing he doesn’t notice that the main character is queer and gone on him, or that he, himself, has been studiously suppressing the desires he assumes he should have while unable to perceive what he actually wants and how it affects his behavior.

So the Murderbot version of this is to subvert amatonormativity with your pretty explicitly aroace protagonist whose reaction to fictional romance is tolerant at best. Murderbot embraces its own lack of desire for romance but dances around acknowledging that it desires other relationships and seems to be working around the incorrect belief that romance and friendship are both human things and that’s why it doesn’t engage with them. So:

Murderbot ends up in the immediate leadup to the resolution of a love dodecahedron - maybe surrounding Eden, just as the only named character from TRAFOSM I think we have. And Murderbot is (internally) like...okay...I was never very moved by ANY of these people as romantic choices for you...but I might as well try to guide you to the least offensive ones, I guess. And it’s so mired in expectations based on its foreknowledge of this arc that it doesn’t notice until Eden spells it out that they’re ditching ALL their suitors and have realized they’re complete without romance and want to devote themself to finding their long lost birth mother or farming science or something, which just takes SecUnit tf out.

Possibly I will become really ungovernable and say that after seizing the System’s capabilities Murderbot just offers to take Eden on a reverse isekai right off of Sanctuary Moon, leaving ART’s crew and the Preservation team to be like, Where Did You Just Get This Entire Human.

7. Further going off svsss, there is a meta thread to interrogate by plunking Murderbot into a villain character. It's already an evil robot trope that declined to go evil, this is true in-universe and it knows it, and it has very low expectations of the morals of the group that it belongs to - informed by the same media that was a lifeline to it when it was in a very bad situation - that it is still in the process of working through. The layers.

So yeah there’s a lot going on here. Send help.

#this isn't even it the well isn't even dry #murderbot #svsss #the murderbot diaries #anonymous #asks answered #stock villain

[swombwave]

aro/aspec tf headcanons that totally arent just me projecting shhhhhhhhh

So I know canonically they're an asexual species, however asexuality can also extend to other forms of intimidacy besides sex - like kissing and other forms of non-sexual affection. I, myself, a proud aromantic asexual, find mouth to mouth kissing to be an EXTREME NO NO for me. Let's not forget about the repulsive, enthusiastic, and neutral side of things. So... I'm like... considering what asexuality would look like in an already asexual species, because they CAN show intimate affection, I know what some of those comic artists post on their twitters i'VE SEEN THINGS-

It's like 50% what I described above and 50% the more widely known understanding of asexuality idk these dummies ace

Swindle? Demiromantic or greyromantic asexual, definitely. Reasoning? Vibes. I feel as though he wouldn't be big on things like kissing. Neutral or repulsed.

Soundwave is the most aroace robot to ever grace this planet. Every continuity just makes him more and more aroace. Prime gave us a Soundwave who probably thinks love is a neurological lie, and Cyberverse gave us a chaotic aroace who plays sad clown music to mock people. You ask him what his love language is and he starts speaking French.

TFA Blurr? Definitely aroace. I could sense it the very he transformed and said "the name's not Zippy" Glares into space as if he's on The Office whenever romance is brought up.

Rodimus is ace solely because I wish to spite the people fetishizing him in a fairly... bigoted manner. Grey or demi, maybe

IDW Blurr is also ace out of pure spite.

TFA Blitzwing is aroace too and honestly good for him. Love iconic representation.

Shockwave. Explanation unnecessary.

Prowl... haven't seen much of him in the comics yet and I'm still watching TFA and G1 but mmmm the ace vibes are there. TFA especially

The Jettwins from TFA probably don't know what kissing is but I've decided they're aroace

TFA Jazz also gives me aspec vibes.

ONLY THING STOPPING ME FROM MAKING THE ENTIRE CREW ASPEC IS THAT I HATE SENTINEL FAR TOO MUCH

Wheeljack gives me ace vibes in most continuities. Not always arospec but definitely ace.

Oh my god idea... BreakOut but one of them is way more ace than the other... still a couple obv but... 😳

Queerplatonic Coswave is also good

Whirl. Probably.

Half of this list was me projecting

If my friends send me asks about these I'll scream

#personal #don't reblog #please...

[pedal-mail]

A Walk Home

This is the intro to a much longer piece that I’m really hoping I’ll be able to finish! I hope you guys enjoy it!

Angelica Taffet had had about enough of customer service. 

After being yelled at by two older women, being “pranked” by a couple of middle schoolers, and just generally dealing with a group of people that wanted to be anything but cooperative, she was ready to bash her head against a wall and scream for hours. Customer service was the worst part of the job. She’d much rather be in the back, taking stock. But her manager said she was “good with the customers” and “a polite young lady”.

“Thanks,” she had mumbled under her breath, “it’s the social anxiety.”

What mattered was that her shift was over and she could walk home now. 

It was still light out, so she wasn’t too worried about popping in her earbuds and listening to some music while she walked. She was about to slip her phone back into her pocket when it vibrated. She pulled the notification down and opened her texting app.

Theo <3: are you out of work yet?

Angelica chuckled. She could practically hear her partner’s whining voice asking.

You: Just got out! Walking home now!

Theo <3: stay safe angel

You: I will! The sun hasn’t gone down yet, so it’s not too dangerous to walk home

Theo <3: don’t get lost again

You: That was one time!

Theo <3: lol

Theo <3: seriously though, watch where you’re going

You: Theo, I’ve got it!

Theo <3: just making sure

There’s a few beats of silence, and Angelic is about to put her phone away, when it vibrates again.

Theo <3: did you see that the next book in the series is available for preorder?

You: WHAT???

Theo <3: I KNOW!!!

Theo <3: i really hope they can figure out where Abe’s family is…

You: If they don’t, I’ll scream

Angelica and Theo had met because of their shared interest in the “Clockwork Fairy” book series. They had found each other online, and had instantly formed a connection. Not just over the books, but as people as well. They could rant and rave about the books day in and day out, but they could also listen to the other’s problems and passions and never get bored or uncomfortable. The two of them really were perfect together.

Theo <3: hey, have you drawn anything new lately?

You: Nah, not really. Been too focused on finishing up school

Theo <3: >:P

Theo <3: lame

You: Tell me about it

You: I can’t wait to finish school

You: Hopefully The Plan can pull through by then

Angelica bit her lip. It had been a while since the two of them had talked about The Plan. 

Ever since Theo had gotten a place of their own, Angelica had talked about moving in with them. Their apartment was big enough for two after all. The big problem was that they lived on opposite sides of the country. Theo was in California for school, while Angelica still lived in Virginia with her parents. It was a bit of a pipe dream, sure, but Angelica had been saving up from her job. She couldn’t save every penny, but she was slowly making a dent in her end goal.

Theo <3: hopefully

Theo <3: you know, if you really can’t make it out here we can always live together later in life

You: I know

You: But I want to live with you as soon as possible

Theo <3: aw :’)

Theo <3: sap

Angelica chuckled. She slipped her phone into her pocket before she crossed the largest road between her house and the store she worked at. Her music was still playing. Some soft indie band she had discovered recently, she couldn’t remember the name of. She began to bob her head back and forth to the rhythm of the song. After she had crossed the road, she glanced behind her, before pulling her phone out again. Theo had already sent a few more texts.

Theo <3: i mean it though, don’t get your hope up

Theo <3: it’s a nice thought, but you can’t put all your eggs in one basket

Theo <3: or whatever it my grandma used to say

Angelica frowned and turned her music up a little louder to try and drown out her negative thoughts.

You: Can’t I just have this?

Theo <3: sorry, sorry

Theo <3: i just don’t want you to end up heartbroken is all

You: It’s going to work Theo. It has to

Theo <3: i admire your dedication

You: Thank you!

Angelica glanced up from her phone and realized she was already home. She slipped her phone in her pocket again and punched in the code that opened the apartment building’s main door. She stepped into the elevator and watched the numbers climb as it went up the building. There was no service in the elevator for some weird reason. She walked to the end of the hallway (to the right) on the eighth floor, and used her key to let herself into the apartment. Her mom was already standing in the kitchen.

“Hey sweetie!” She greeted. “How was work?”

“Awful,” Angelica replied. “I had to work returns today.”

Her mom tutted. “That’s good for you, dear! You need to get better about opening up to people!” 

Angelica plastered on a fake smile. “Yeah, you’re right. I just don’t like it yet. I’m sure I will eventually.” She glanced down at her pocket. “When is dinner gonna be ready?”

“About five minutes,” her mom replied. “Why don’t you go change and then set the table?”

“Okay.”

Angelica walked down the hallway to her room, and quickly changed out of her work clothes into a pair of white shorts and her favorite pink sweater. She didn’t have time for much more than a quick “dinner time” text to Theo before she was setting the table and sitting down to dinner. 

She served herself some of the spaghetti her mom had made, and nodded along to her dad talking about his day. Something about one of his coworkers getting a divorce. She secretly thought to herself that she was glad she’d never have to deal with that. She drifted off into her own thoughts after she had nodded along for long enough. Thinking about holding Theo’s hand and holding Theo while they watched movies and kissing Theo’s forehead right before they fell asleep and-

“Isn’t that right, Angie?”

Angelica jumped at her dad’s nickname for her. “Huh?” She asked.

Her dad chuckled. “I said you won’t have to worry about getting divorced! We’re gonna make sure of that!” She chuckled awkwardly, and looked to her mom with pleading eyes.

“Now, Robert, we talked about this,” her mom said. “Angelica can date anyone she’d like. We have to trust her judgement about who she thinks is right for her.”

“Thank you, Mom,” Angelica said, even though her stomach was churning.

“Well… I still want to give the final seal of approval before my little girl settles down!” Her dad said. 

“I’m sure she’ll let you,” her mom said.

Angelica just nodded and began to eat again. 

She finished quickly and excused herself to her room for the evening. She fell against her bed and stared out the window for a little while. The sun had set by now, but her neighbors' lights were on. She could see them through the blinds that had been drawn. She heard her phone buzz, and she hopped up to retrieve it from her hoodie.

Theo <3: you doing ok angel?

Theo <3: you kinda disappeared

Theo <3: dinner doesn’t usually take this long…

You: Sorry Theo, I was just thinking about some stuff

Theo <3: don’t hurt yourself lol

Theo <3: For real though, what’s on your mind?

Angelica sighed and flopped against her bed again.

You: Dad brought up marriage over dinner

Theo <3: >:P

Theo <3: yuck

You: Tell me about it

Theo <3: what’d you say?

You: Same thing I always say

You: I just nodded along and kept my head down

Theo <3: when do you think you’re going to tell them?

You: Which part?

Theo <3: both parts

You: The gender thing? Never. I’m fine with being a girl most of the time, there’s no point in correcting them

You: The aroace thing? I honestly don’t know

Theo <3: have you told them we’re partners at least?

You: Are you kidding?

You: They’ll understand the aroace thing better than the qpr thing

You: Meaning that they’ll kick me out over it

You: The second one, I mean

Angelica sniffed quietly and squeezed her eyes shut to hold back tears. She felt the phone vibrate a few times in her hand, but it took her a moment to be able to look at it again.

Theo <3: it’s ok angel

Theo <3: your parents don’t control you. your parents don’t have final say over your life. they’re in the wrong if they think that you’re not right or broken or whatever. you’re one of the best things in my life, and i know that other people feel the same way. you’re a ray of sunshine, even if you aren’t the most outgoing person. you’re great just the way you are, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise

Angelica sniffed and let a few tears trickle down her cheeks.

You: Thanks Teddy Bear

Theo <3: any time

Theo <3: you wanna play a game or something?

You: Nah, I’m too tired. Can we just talk for a bit?

Theo <3: no problem!

Theo <3: can you tell me your theory about Abe’s family again?

Angelica chuckled. Theo had her theory written down in a google doc that they always kept open, they hadn’t forgotten it. It was just a distraction, but it was one that Angelica was eager to snap up.

You: Well… I still think that AF2 has something to do with it

Theo <3: how so?

The two of them talked about The Clockwork Fairy well into the night. Angelica had the day off work tomorrow, and it was a Sunday, so she didn’t have to worry about school either. So she could stay up until one am, no problem. She stayed up well past when her mom came in to hug her goodnight, well past when all the neighbors’ lights went off (well, most of them at least). She stayed up with Theo until she couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore and she passed out, still holding her phone.

She had dreams about fairies and robots and holding hands.

#my writing #original writing #ocs #I really hope I'm able to finish this piece but it's going to take a lot of work #but it's going to be really fun too!

[dauntless-gothamite]

An Aroace in Need of Space…and Hamburgers [3/8]

part 1 | part 2 | ao3

Chapter 3: Boring Mornings and Lazy Afternoons

"It's way too early for this," Jughead muttered when his alarm sounded the next morning, jolting him awake with its loud, obnoxious rings. Groaning in frustration, he sat up to silence the alarm--or the "Robot-Banshee Death Child" as he liked to call it. He opened his eyes slowly, blinking to adjust to the sunlight flooding into his room, and when he could finally see, he noticed his computer was perilously close the end of his bed, his phone was on the floor, and a book was held loosely in his hand, his finger wedged between pages. After adjusting his beanie to ensure it was places securely on his head, he flopped back down on his bed, prolonging the time between waking up and going to school as much as possible. Knowing he couldn't lie there forever--no matter how bad he wanted to--he finally dragged himself out of bed, all the while cursing his never-ending thirst for knowledge.

As he started to get dressed, grabbing the first tee shirt he could find, along with a pair of jeans, black boots, a charcoal flannel, and his serpent jacket, Jughead recalled how he lay in bed last night, devouring the information held within the documents Kevin had sent him. His plan had been to just glance over the stuff to get an idea of what he was working with, but once he started reading, he couldn't stop. It was addicting. He found himself more and more interested in the community several of his friends were a part of, and he wondered why he'd never looked into it before. In just a few hours, he'd learned more than he could have predicted; there were a documents which looked into parts of the LGBT+ community that weren't discussed as often as others, information on the way discrimination existed within the commentary itself, and some fascinating, reliable statistics. As much as Jughead wanted to continue his research and start writing the article, he knew it would have to wait. After all, he did still have to go to school.

The day seemed to drag on, and Jughead was tempted to make sure the clocks at the school were actually working because it seemed as though every time he glanced at the clock, no time had passed.

Finally, the bell rang, signaling the beginning of lunch, and Jughead bolted from the classroom he was sitting in, making his way to the cafeteria. As doors opened and students fled classrooms,  the halls got more crowded, much to Jughead's annoyance. He pushed through the crowd, but when he heard someone call out his name, he spun around, looking for whomever had spoken, and he spotted someone waving in his direction from a large group gathered by the lockers lining the hallway. He made his way to the group, trying to see past the students headed towards the cafeteria. After what felt like a long time, the halls started to clear as the rush ended, and Jughead walked up to the group, smiling when he saw Toni standing  next to Sweet Pea, Fangs, Cheryl, Betty, and Veronica.

"Took you long enough to get here!" she said.

"Well, you are kind of hard to see, Toni" jughead said, smiling. Toni crossed her arms, and was about to speak, but before she could, Jughead said "Especially when you are surrounded by all of these normal-sized people, shortie." The whole group laughed at that, and Toni slapped his arm playfully.

"It's not my fault that this one," she said, tilting her head towards Sweet Pea, "didn't care to help me get your attention." Jughead chuckled as he saw the sparkle in Sweet Pea's eyes and his mischievous smirk.

"Hey, it is not my fault!" Sweet Pea added, raising his hands in surrender. "All I said was that because you wanted to talk to Jughead, you should be the one to get his attention."

"You need to talk to him too, and we both know it. You just think it's funny to watch me jump up and down to see over everyone else!"

"Well, you aren't wrong about that, it's pretty entertaining," Sweet Pea shrugged. "But that's not the point here." Turning to Jughead, he said "So, we were wondering if you're down to ditch the last few classes with us." Jughead raised his eyebrows and turned to Betty, who looked like she was about to burst out laughing any second.

"Was this your idea, miss near-perfect attendance?"

"Actually, it was mine" Veronica said, stepping forward, reminding Jughead of her presence. While he was surprised a new student was already ditching, he didn't think it was really a big deal; she seemed smart enough.

"I'm in, but there is one condition" Jughead said, putting on a serious expression, crossing his arms, and making eye contact with everyone before his eyes locked with Veronica's.

"And what would that be?" Veronica questioned, a slight edge to her voice.

"If we're leaving, the first stop has to be Pop's; I'm so hungry." As if to emphasize his statement, his stomach grumbled.

"I thought you were being serious!" Cheryl said, giggling and nudging Toni's shoulder jokingly.

"Oh, I'm serious; I don't joke about food--especially not hamburgers!" The group made their way to the parking lot, excited to spend some time together outside of school.

The group entered Pops, and while Jughead was enjoying himself, there was something bothering him. As he reached over the table to grab a handful of fries, he asked "Hey, Where's Archie?"  No one had an answer, and the table fell silent, each person lost in thought.

"He's probably playing the guitar or something" Betty piped up after a few moments. "I texted him earlier, but I haven't heard back."

"Guys, there is an easy way to solve this," Veronica said as she got up from her seat and headed towards the door, phone in hand. "I'll be back in just a minute, I just have to make a quick call," she yelled to the table before disappearing through the doorway. The people seated at the table looked at each other in confusion; they wondered why a call from Veronica, of all people, would receive a different reaction than a call from any of them. The group had already started talking about what to do next when Veronica returned to her spot at the table, looking satisfied with herself.

"Archie will be here in a few minutes, he just got out of class late and missed our messages from earlier," she declared. Instantly, all heads turned towards her. "What is it? Why are you all looking at me?" she asked, confused.

"O.M.G.--I know that look!" Cheryl teased, dropping her jaw. "Someone has been doing a little flirting, haven't they?" she asked Veronica, causing her to look down and blush slightly. As a car pulled into the lot outside of Pop's, everyone turned to look, and they were met with the of see Archie behind the wheel, grinning. "Clearly you aren't the only one who has developed an interest," Cheryl whispered, smirking, before turning her attention towards Toni.

Veronica was about to reply, but Archie entered at that exact moment, announcing himself with a loud "hey guys!" Just as he started to sit down, the waitress came over and took their used dishes and gave them the check. Archie frowned a little as he realized everyone was ready to leave; he didn't want to eat alone.

Betty saw his frown, and asked if he wanted them to stay and wait for him. He shook his head and shrugged, watching the group shuffle out of the restaurant. Veronica was still there, but all her things were packed into her purse, ave for her phone, so Archie assumed she was about to leave too. After sending off a quick text, she set her phone down, but she made no move to stand.

Instead, she looked up at Archie and said "you didn't think I'd call you here only to leave, right?" Archie looked down sheepishly but quickly returned his gaze to Veronica.

"Well, to be honest, I didn't really know" Archie responded, causing Veronica to laugh and shake her head in a mixture of amusement and exasperation.

Meanwhile, outside the diner, Cheryl, Toni, Sweet Pea, Fangs, Jughead, and Betty were all standing around their bikes, making sure everyone was ready to go. The group had decided they to split up for the afternoon so they could home and rest or spend time with their partner; both of which sounded appealing to the group of tired students. After making plans to meet upat the White Wyrm tomorrow night, people turned on their engines and left the parking lot, driving towards the South Side. Fangs was the first to speed off, followed by Cheryl and Toni, who were both on Toni's bike, Cheryl behind Toni, her arms wrapped around the other girl's torso. Next was Sweet Pea, who nodded his head in departure before increasing the speed of his bike, causing the engine to rev loudly.

"He won't be sneaking up on anyone with that engine," Betty joked as she climbed onto Jughead's bike to sit behind him. Jughead chuckled in response and muttered what sounded like "you got that right," but Betty wasn't entirely sure; the wheels and engine made it hard to hear. Unlike all the other bikes who had already left, Jughead turned towards the Northside of town, headed for Betty's house. She smiled as they drove, looking forward to an afternoon of working on the school paper, discussing conspiracy theories, and watching movies with Jughead.

#motherfxking-flannel #riverdale #riverdale fanfiction #riverdale imagine #aroace jughead #jughead jones imagine #jughead jones #betty cooper #demisexual betty cooper #cheryl x toni #choni #lesbian #bisexual #southside serpents #serpents imagine #fanfic #ao3feed

[ironwoman359]

Hello! This might be annoying and I’m sorry but I just want to make sure it’s okay. So I’ve got an oc, who’s hetero but then he is turned into a zombie ghost thing by sacrifice, and the demon becomes a voice and his friend. But the demon knows that him wanting a gf will just make him sad that he can’t get one because he creepy now, so demon just takes that away- making him an aro ace. SO I’m asking if that’s... bad? Because he wasn’t born like that? It’s not that relevant to the story but still?

Ok, I’ve been trying to think about how best to answer this, because your question “Is that bad?” is not one that, at least in my opinion, can be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and I keep going back and forth in my mind about it. (keep in mind that I can only speak for myself and what I’ve learned from other ace and aro people on the internet, and by no means am the ultimate voice of authority for the community). 

So here’s the thing: while being ace and/or aro does NOT need a traumatic reason behind it and is often an orientation that one is born with just like any other, if one does undergo a trauma related to sex, relationships, or both and then begin to ID as ace and/or aro, that identity is just as real, and is not more or less valid than an aspec identity that doesn’t involve trauma. The “he wasn’t born like that” isn’t what’s giving me misgivings about your idea. 

No, what’s giving me misgivings is this: “the demon knows that him wanting a gf will just make him sad that he can’t get one because he creepy now, so demon just takes that away- making him an aro ace.” 

This is troubling to me, because so often in media that’s the only type of representation that aro or ace people get: a robot, a cyborg, a demon, a person possessed by a demon, someone with a traumatic past. It feeds into the narrative that being ace or aro or both makes you “broken,” or “not human” or “not whole,” which of course couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m sure it’s not your intention to imply any of that, of course! But it’s subtext, whether intentional or not, and it doesn’t really do a lot to help the aspec communities. 

I would take a look at what you’re really trying to accomplish with this plot point. You say “It’s not that relevant to the story,” so then why is it there? Is it an explanation as to why your main character will not have a love interest? Because if so, there are plenty of reasons for that that don’t involve “turning” the character aroace, in fact, you already have one: he’s a zombie ghost thing possessed by a freakin’ demon. Aroace or not, it’d be kinda hard to form a relationship in that state, at least for me (though also, there are plenty of monster love stories that prove otherwise). 

You also don’t even have to explain why the character isn’t in a relationship, you can just...have them not be in a relationship. That honestly doesn’t need an explanation, challenge the status quo that says all main characters must be romantically partnered with someone! 

If you’re hoping to accomplish aroace representation with this plot point, then I would really recommend you try and represent us some other way, perhaps with another character or by having the main character already be aroace before the demonic possession. 

I hope this was helpful, and again, I can’t speak for the entire asexual community, and as someone who is NOT aromantic I can’t really speak for that community at ALL, so if other aros, aroaces, or aces would like to chime in on this post with your thoughts, that would be great! Thank you for reaching out and asking about this, I didn’t find your question annoying at all, and in fact am really glad that you asked. It shows maturity on your part, and a want for understanding of the aspec communities, and I really respect that! Good luck with your story!

#ace things #advice #asks and answers

[marinsawakening]

I love your blog and your autistic and aro headcanons! I just wanted to ask: I'm [probably] not an autistic person but sometimes yours and other autistic people's headcanons and writing about experiences inspire my own autistic character headcanons. I worry I should not be making these headcanons (in case I'm misinterpreting your experiences or being unintentionally Terrible) but if you have any advice on this I'd be grateful! No worries if not, as well. Keep being your fantastic self

This is a really sweet message thank you so much! As a general rule, there’s nothing wrong with allistics making autistic headcanons; in fact, I’d personally really like to see that be something that grows more mainstream, because it’d mean normalization of autistic headcanons/characters and show a general growing interest in actually learning about autism. So please, do go ahead and make your headcanons! There’s no problem with them!

That said, it’s also unfortunately true that some allistics (often a lot of them) who make autistic headcanons can fall into some common ableist (or not necessarily ableist but still kind of unfortunate) pitfalls, so in case you’re worried about that (although honestly the fact that you sent this ask in the first place probably means that you’re good anyway), here’s some tips and tricks to avoid common issues with allistic autistic headcanons (there’s an oxymoron if I ever heard one):

Please don’t use functioning labels for your autistic characters. Functioning labels are labels like ‘high-functioning’ and ‘low-functioning’, and they’re generally considered to be bad by the autistic community for a variety of reasons (more here (although most of the links are dead), here, here (under ‘We Are One Community’), here). However, I’ve noticed a lot of allistics (and ignorant autistics too) who add these onto their headcanons. Please don’t? 

More of a personal thing, but please don’t separate your autistic headcanons into ‘Aspergers’ and ‘autism’. Aspergers is autism, and with the updated DSM, does not exist anymore and has been merged into the overarching diagnosis of ASD. Classifying specific characters as ‘aspies’ is alienating to autistics who aren’t aspies. If aspies themselves headcanon characters as aspies I don’t mind, but when allistics do it I get Suspicious. 

This also goes for separating your autism diagnosis into ‘PDD-NOS’ and ‘classical autism’, but I pretty much never see that so it has lower priority.

Full disclosure though: I have very negative experiences with the Aspergers diagnosis in general and I hate it so much that I have ‘aspie��, ‘aspergers’, and ‘aspergers syndrome’ just straight up blacklisted. I’m not an unbiased source here. 

While we’re on the topic of correct language usage, please use identity first language for your autistic headcanon, not person first language (identity first: autistic person; person first: person with autism). The majority of the autistic community prefers identity first language because we don’t feel like our autism can be separated from who we are (more here, here). 

Also maybe refrain from using the phrases ‘ASD’, ‘on the spectrum’, ‘somewhere on the autism spectrum’, etc. and just use ‘autistic’ instead. There’s nothing inherently Problematic(TM) about those phrases, but it’s really weird to read an entire autistic headcanon that doesn’t use the word autistic, or seems to want to avoid using it. 

Don’t use infantilizing language! Maybe think twice before calling your autistic headcanon a ‘precious baby’ or a ‘smol child’ or something, especially if they’re a grown adult. I mean, doing this once in the tags of a post when they’re being cute or something is fine, but do NOT do this on posts where you talk about them being autistic, and do NOT do this on a regular basis.

Do NOT compare them to inhuman things like animals, computers, or aliens. Just. Don’t. Ever.

Be careful headcanoning inhuman characters as autistic. It’s generally not inherently problematic, especially not in fantasy/sci-fi shows where the majority of the cast is inhuman, but it gets really tiring to only ever see the robot/alien headcanoned as autistic, and it promotes our dehumanization. Just examine your patterns and maybe try headcanoning a human character as autistic as well in those sci-fi/fantasy shows?

This goes more for robots/aliens than for things like elves. Robots/aliens tend to be autism-coded, which has lead to the negative stereotype that autistics are like robots, and the very literal alienation of autistic people. Elves, on the other and, are not historically autism-coded, and are generally considered super cool and graceful and such, so headcanoning them as autistic is pretty much always okay.

If possible, promote autistics who make content for your autistic headcanon! Read their fics! Reblog their headcanon posts! If you can’t find stuff that’s fine, and you can definitely make your own stuff as well, but if you can, promote autistics!

Related, listen to autistics! Not just when we tell you something is problematic, but if you’re making headcanons, it’s a good idea to have at least a base knowledge of our experiences and the issues we face, so that you don’t accidentally do something problematic. (Anon seems to have this down already, but since this is more of a general list, I’m putting it on anyway). ASAN and the Autism Women’s Network are both fantastic places to start learning about autism, Autism Speaks is the devil and to be avoided at all costs, and there’s plenty of autistic bloggers on this site, so maybe follow some autism blogs!

Don’t put an ‘I’m allistic so tell me if I said something bad!’ disclaimer on your autistic headcanon posts. This is a good habit when writing Serious Posts, but for headcanons, it’s unnecessary and generally kinda weird. It’s not Problematic(TM), and I understand having anxiety and insecurity when making headcanons for something outside of your experience, but it’s. Kinda annoying. Do it in the tags instead; that way people can still be informed about the fact that you’re allistic, without it being obnoxiously on the post no matter what you do.

Don’t write fic specifically about being autistic - you are not autistic and you’re probably gonna get something wrong. Instead, incorporate your autistic headcanon into fics about something else. It’s fine if the autism features heavily, just... no ‘x always knew they were different’ or ‘x has always seen the word in a different light due to the fact that they’re autistic’-centric fics. 

Exception: you can write fics about being autistic provided you have an autistic beta/sensitivity reader. And if you do, mention it somewhere on the fic. Idk about other autistics, but unless an autism-centric fic seems like it was written by an autistic, I scroll right past it, because they tend to be very ableist if they’re written by allistics. So if you have an autistic sensitivity reader, mention it.

Headcanon lists are fine though! Headcanon lists are generally less intensive and require less ability to ‘get into someone’s head’ than fic writing, so if you want to say ‘I headcanon x as autistic because y reasons’ or ‘x is autistic and they stim in the following ways/have meltdowns/script/etc.’ that’s fine and cool!

Fanart and edits are cool too! Again, there’s less need to get into someone’s head, so drawing a character while stimming or editing the autism/neurodiversity rainbow infinity symbol behind them is just fine!

Every once in a while, sit back and examine the patterns in your autistic headcanons. What kind of characters are you headcanoning as autistic? Do you notice any worrying patterns? For example, are all your autistic headcanons white, or are they all male, or are they all robots/aliens, or do you also just so happen to headcanon all of them as aro/ace and/or unavailable for romantic/sexual relationships? That’s not to say that any and all patterns are always bad or ableist (pretty much all of my autistic headcanons are also aspec bc I’m an autistic aspec and I like projecting) (although if your autistic headcanons are always male/white, then yes that’s absolutely bad), but if you find a pattern, examine possible reasons why it exists.

This is a good habit to get into with any kind of minority headcanon, by the way! I’m gonna use LGBT+ headcanons as an example: who are you headcanoning as aspec and why? Do you notice a particular LGBT+ that’s getting left behind in your headcanons? Do you always pick the same character archetype for certain LGBT+ headcanons (for example, cold unapproachable characters as aro or extroverted characters as pan), and if so, why? 

Actually! Examining your patterns in fandom behaviour in general is good. If you notice you usually don’t like female characters, then that’s probably something you should examine. If you notice that all your faves are white and that you are more interested in white background characters than main characters of colour, you should examine that. If you notice that, even though you like this minority character or headcanon, you don’t consume or create any content for them, examine why. 

Problematic fandom behaviour very rarely manifests itself in something that happens once. It’s not inherently wrong to dislike this female character or not to like that ace headcanon, but if you notice that you consistently don’t like or aren’t interested in a particular character or headcanon, or if you notice that you consistently give particular characters particular headcanons, that might be an issue. Like I said, patterns are not always bad, but it’s good to be aware of them in case they are.

I’ll elaborate a bit on autistic aspec headcanons bc that’s such a hot button issue in fandom (bc people are asshats), but the tl;dr is that autistic aspec headcanons are not inherently bad and in fact, as an autistic aspec myself, I rather like them. However, headcanoning the one autistic-coded character as the one aroace in the group unfortunately does happen pretty often (Entrapta from She-Ra comes to mind - I’ve seen SO MANY posts about how everyone is a lesbian in She-Ra except for Entrapta, who is aroace of course, and it’s... pretty suspicious). But that’s not to say that you cannot headcanon autistic-coded/headcanoned characters as aspec; I elaborate more on this topic here (featuring a GREAT addition by @aroworlds!). Just examine your patterns and why they exist.

So this is not something that Inherently Problematic(TM), but it’s very annoying to me, so here goes: maybe diversify your autistic headcanons. I’m not saying ‘make sure your autistic headcanons are also poc/lgbt/etc.’ (although that’s very cool too), but just... diversify the autism itself. Often, it’s the exact same character archetype that gets headcanoned as autistic, and as an autistic whose autism tends to manifest in less typical ways, it gets... annoying. 

Examples of typical autism tropes: the eccentric (computer/science) genius, the robot/alien, the socially awkward.traumatized loner, etc.

Examples of characters frequently headcanoned as autistic: Tony Stark (eccentric computer genius), Bruce Banner (socially awkward science genius), Pidge from Voltron (eccentric computer/science genius), Keith from Voltron (socially awkward loner alien), Entrapta (eccentric computer/science genius), Sherlock Holmes (eccentric genius), etc.

Also note how 90% of these characters are skinny white guys.

Seriously it’s 100% more likely for a skinny white guy to get headcanoned as autistic than it is for any character of colour and/or female character to get headcanoned as autistic, PLEASE examine your biases.

Examples of character archetypes that damn near never get headcanoned as autistic: team leaders, extroverted/loud characters, team heart (aka the ‘team mediator’, the glue that keeps people together), etc.

Examples of autistic headcanons I have that are non-conventional/less common: Allura from Voltron (team heart, leader), Hunk from Voltron (team heart), Arthur from BBC Merlin (leader), Kaldur’ahm from Young Justice (leader).

All of these characters are pretty damn autism-coded, and while it’s not... impossible to find content for some of these, there’s generally a lot less for them. 

What I’m getting at is that, because the stereotypical autism-coded character of the eccentric computer nerd/socially awkward loner/robot/alien looms larger in the public consciousness, there’s a confirmation bias when it comes to these kind of characters. This often gets coupled with the stereotype that all autistic people are white boys, which results in a whole lot of the same white guys being headcanoned as autistic, even when other characters are just as if not more autism-coded. 

It’s not Problematic(TM) to headcanon more stereoypically autism-coded characters as autistic, and it’s honestly not even Problmatic(TM) to only headcanon those characters as autistic, especially not if an autistic person who does present like that relates to those characters or if an allistic isn’t sure about their headcanons and wants to play it safe. But it does lead to a very monotone depiction of autism, and leads autistic people who don’t fit the stereotypical mold (me!) to feel left out. So, if possible, try researching lesser known autism traits or just generally thinking a bit out of the box when making autism headcanons.

It’s definitely bad to only headcanon skinny white guys as autistic though. Like I know I’ve said this 50 times now, but seriously, fandom racism and sexism (or a neat combination of the two in case of female character of colour) is SUPER noticeable in autistic headcanons. 

And lastly: when in doubt, ask an autistic! Asking questions isn’t illegal, and if you’re not sure about whether x thing you want to do is okay, just shoot an autistic (who is okay with questions) an ask! I’m always open for questions about autism and such (and I love talking about it so that’s a bonus), so don’t be afraid to hit me up for further info!

#auti stuff #writing wise #kinda #eh whatever i'm tagging it #asks #my posts #Anonymous

[gritsandbrits]

Questions for Odie (Ninjago OC)

The settings takes place at Ninjago City tv station, where Odie is being interviewed by a gossip show. She looks rather uncomfortable on her pink and white robes but quickly sits up straight right before the camera starts rolling.

Interviewer: Hello and welcome to the show! Today I'm here with Odie Birdwell one of the newest elemental masters in Ninjago and the Pink Ninja. Her story might seem like a fairytale but here she is with us to tell us all about herself!

The camera zooms in on Odie and she smiles and waves at it awkwardly. The scene then changes to after Odie finished answering several questions, the interviewer decides to get a peek on Odie's love life.

Interviewer: So Odie being the new female ninja on the team, how to do feel about being around a group of mostly men.

Odie: For the most part it feels like any normal family. They're all kinda messy and loud and annoying but actually pretty decent.

Interviewer: Have you ever crushed on any of the Ninja before you joined?

Odie: No I haven't. I never crushed on anyone else before and after I joined.

Interviewer: Surely there's one of them that you find physically attractive?

Odie: I'm sure they have plenty of admirers for their looks, and I can't say they're ugly. But I don't see them as hot.

Interviewer: Not even Kai?

Odie: Nope. Besides he already has a girlfriend

Interviewer: I see. I heard that you're pretty close to Zane

Odie: Yeah he's pretty chill for a robot. He taught me how to expand my palate since I have so much more ingredients to work with.

Interviewer: So all the other male ninja like Jay, Cole, even Lloyd, you don't have a crush on

Odie: No.

Interviewer: Have you tried experimenting before?

Odie: With my powers? Yeah I've been visiting Paleman on how to convert my spiritual energy into light. It comes in handy whenever Rachel or my mom are having a bad day, or when I need some light to see.

Interviewer: No I mean experimenting with your coworker Jetta? They wriggle their eyebrows suggestively and Odie is taken aback with shock.

Odie: Um what kind of question is that? Just because we hang out together a lot doesn't mean anything is going on between us. And FYI, I'm not a lesbian or bisexual for that matter.

The interviewer was starting to get fed up at Odie's answers

Interviewer (raising their voice): Is there anyone that you see a likely candidate good romantic partner? I mean you are the ninja of love after all, surely there's someone you have feelings for.

Odie leans forward in her seat, staring at the interviewer with steely gray eyes

Odie: I think you kinda misunderstand me and how I work. I don't have any interest in pursuing romance because that's just how I roll. Me not forming attachments does not make me some cold bitch who's detached from people. That was that crazy chick's [Harumi] way of thinking. Not mine As for how my powers work, I was told that my ancestor used her gifts to take care of people. That is what I do with mine. I might not be able to life boulders like Cole or turn a puddle into a fountain like Nya but, I still find my strengths through comforting the people who need it the most.

Odie (continuing in her soft yet burning voice): I don't have any attraction to the ninja, I don't even consider them super close to me. But I do care about them because they did so many things to help me and my family out. They took us in when we had no other place to go. I'm not throwing their kindness back into their faces by saying I don't find them hot, I simply don't see them in that light. I don't see Jetta Nya, or even Pixal in that light. And to be honest, if I ever suddenly decide to choose someone I want to be with it would definitely be anyone but you.

Interviewer: *silent with a Surprised Pikachu face*

Odie gets out of her seat straightening her robe out.

Odie: Thank you for inviting me to this interrogation. I look forward to tuning in tonight to see you make a fool out of yourself.

She walks off the set with a pleased smile on her face while the interviewer is still sitting down in quiet disbelief.

Yes, I decided to make Odie aroace because there's a serious lack of positive aromantic and asexual representation in fan characters and the general media. I'm not aro/ace but I want to dispel stereotypes associated with aroace people by making Odie the Elemental Master of Love, effectively harpooning the stereotype that Aro/Ace people are cold, detached assholes who doesn't understand or even worse, don't deserve healthy relationships. It's a pretty unique idea that deconstructs these assumptions and even satirize common tropes present in Ninjago such as the lack of well-developed romantic subplots and female characters that aren't solely the love interests.

Update: Since this is a WIP Odie might not have a final sexuality. I'm toying with the idea of her being aro/ace, though this might end up being a trait of another major character. I'm not obsessed with character sexuality because that's not my focus. So take this with a grain of salt.

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