#except i do all of this and i’m not autistic AT ALL what are you talking about i’m not even close to being neurodivergent no sir ask my dad | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

morgana-larkin · 18 days

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Me againnnn lmao I have another request could u do Melissa x reader where reader is normally quiet but someone brought up their special interest and everyone is kinda weirded out coz reader gets so happy and starts talking about it and sharing facts and stuff but no one except Melissa knows reader is autistic and someone says something mean to reader and she gets upset and Melissa comforts reader and also stands up for her (as always no pressure I’m so so so happy! u r the first person that iv come across who writes fics about Melissa and autistic reader I get so happy when I see a notification from u i literally jump up and down with happiness and your fics really help me to accept im autistic coz I’m still trying to come to terms with it anyway hope u r doing well🫶)

OMG YES! Info dumping! I love it. And I’m so glad my fics are helping you. Feel free as well to message me directly if you ever want. So my other obsession besides Lisa Ann Walter, is Doctor Who and Jodie Whittaker, so of course I chose to have the reader talk about her as the Doctor… I regret nothing 😊. I went a little extra at the end but I’m too gay for Melissa to care. Anyway, I enjoyed writing this so thank you for the prompt and I hope you like it! As always, not edited in the slightest.

For everyone, feel free to keep sending me prompts, and I was thinking about writing a one shot about Cheesy as there’s not enough imo. Let me know if I should or not.

Title based off the song from Shrek 3 and the Italian word stronzo means asshole.

Thank You for Letting Me Be Myself

Warnings: someone is mean to reader, reader struggling with having autism(small part)

Words: 2.3k

You’re sitting in the break room at the table with Barb and Melissa. You get up to get a coffee and when you do you hear someone starting to talk about Doctor Who and you perk up.

You turn around to see Jacob, Mr. Morton and another teacher talking about it. “You guys watch Doctor Who?” You say and they stop talking and look up at you. Normally you’re quiet and don’t really say much as you’re recharging before you go and have to teach your kiddos again.

“Yes, do you watch it?” Jacob asks you and you nod with a big smile. Melissa looks up at you and sees your smile and she can’t help but smile herself. She’s had a crush on you since about 4 months after you started and it’s almost been 9 months that you’re working here.

“Well come here and share your thoughts about it.” Jacob says and you walk over to them, coffee in hand.

“What exactly is your discussion about?” You ask them.

“About the first female doctor, the 13th doctor.” Mr. Morton says and you keep smiling.

“She’s my favourite doctor! Like she’s so enthusiastic and passionate and she just loves everything about what she does! And she’s so funny too, it’s just a joy to watch Jodie play her!” You start and they look at you confused, wondering why you’ve always been quiet but now you’re talkative.

The truth is, you're autistic and the only one that knows is Melissa and she promised not to tell anyone since it’s your secret not hers. You told her because you felt like you kept missing social cues or taking things too literally, so you wanted someone in your corner to help you and she had no problem doing that for you. She looks at you talking so passionately about your favourite show with a smile and heart eyes before going back to her phone, secretly still listening to you.

“And her Tardis is so amazing, oh and her companion’s compliment her so well, and her outfit looks amazing. Did you know that Jodie helped decide on the outfit to support the LGBTQ community since she’s a huge ally. And also…” and you keep going on for about 5 minutes about how much you love the 13th doctor and her era on Doctor Who. Until the other teacher, you don’t know their name, the one Mr. Morton and Jacob were talking too, says something.

“OMG! Would you please shut up!” He says and you quickly shut your mouth. “I preferred it when you didn’t speak at all.” He says, glaring at you. And you look down at the ground, embarrassed before running out of there.

Melissa looked up when he started speaking and is now getting up and walking over to them. “Hey! Don’t talk to her like that. You should count yourself lucky that I won’t contact one of my guys on you.” She says and looks at Jacob. “Why didn’t you say anything?!?” She says to him “or you?” She says to Mr. Morton.

“Sorry Melissa, it all happened so fast.” Mr. Morton says and Jacob nods in agreement.

“You should be ashamed of yourself!” She says to the teacher that was mean to you.

“Hey, we were just sitting here talking about it until she cuts in and starts talking about everything that we weren’t even discussing. And she wouldn’t stop talking.” The teacher says , only making a deeper hole for himself. Melissa glares at him.

“I don’t care what you think! There’s better ways to do that!” She says to him.

“She shouldn’t have talked so much and knew that it was too much.” He says, still trying to defend himself.

“She’s autistic you stronzo!” She yells at him and then realises that she just told your secret and has wide eyes. All 3 of them look at her speechless, now understanding that you got excited and were info dumping and didn’t mean to talk so much. Melissa turns around and walks out of the break room and goes to find you.

She ends up finding you in your classroom crying on your chair, hugging your legs. She knocks on the door, “hey y/n it’s me, just wanted to come check on you.” She tells you.

You get up and unlock the door then open it. Melissa’s heart breaks a bit when she sees you. Eyes puffy, red and watery, tear stained cheeks and red nose from you blowing your nose.

“Oh hun.” She says and you walk back to your chair hugging your legs again. Melissa walks in and closes and locks the door then walks over to your desk. “Hey, he was an ass, he shouldn’t have said that to you.” Melissa tells you and crouches down and you look at her.

“No, he’s right, I was talking too much. I shouldn’t have gotten involved in their conversation. I just got so excited,” you tell her and you sniffle a bit.

“Hun, it’s understandable, I know how much you love Doctor Who. You have nothing to be ashamed about.” She tells you and grabs your hand. “Btw I might have accidentally told them that you’re autistic. As in I told them and called that teacher a stronzo for you.” She tells you. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for it to slip out, I just got angry that he was mean to you.” She says, rubbing your hand with her thumb.

“It’s ok, they would have found out eventually. But this is another reason I don’t engage in conversations, cause I might talk too much.” You tell her. Melissa gets up and opens her arms out.

“Come here.” She tells you and motions to hug her. You put your feet down on the ground and then hug her waist since you’re still sitting in your chair. “Why don’t we go back in there, finish lunch. And then after school you can come to my place and I can make you some food and we can watch whatever you want.” She suggests and you look at her surprised.

“Really?” You ask her and she nods. “I would love that.” You tell her and she smiles. She helps you up and then unlocks the door and opens it for you. You both walk out and she sees you’re nervous about going back. She puts an arm wrapped around your back and her other hand on the arm closes to her and rubs it, providing comfort for you.

You get back in and when you enter everyone stops and looks up at you. Melissa can feel you immediately tense up. “What are all youse looking at?” She says and glares at everyone. Everyone immediately looks back down to their phone or food and continues what they were doing. Melissa leads you back to the table where Barb is and Barb gives you a comforting smile.

The teacher that was mean to you gets up and comes over to you. Melissa sees him coming over and glares at him, almost daring him to hurt you again. He has his head hanging a bit, looking embarrassed and stands beside you and you look up at him.

“Hey y/n, I just wanted to apologize to you. I shouldn’t have said what I said to you, I’m sorry.” He tells you and you nod your head at him. You’re too overwhelmed right now and can’t speak. You finish your lunch without saying another word and Melissa keeps glancing at you, worried about you.

You finish up the day quietly. You get the kids to work on their book report so that it’s silent and you don’t have to talk much. At the end of the day, when your last student was picked up you glance over at Melissa down the hall. You taught first grade so your classrooms are close together.

You can’t help but stare at her. She’s bending over and offering one of her students a high five before waving bye to them to go with their parent. You decide to leave now while she’s distracted, you think that maybe it wasn’t the best to get Melissa involved in your situation and shouldn’t have told her you’re autistic. So many people have had to accommodate you or help you and you feel like you should be able to do it yourself now that you’re an adult.

Melissa sees you look at her with a sad expression on your face before leaving. She can’t help but feel like maybe you won’t come over to her place now. When her last student is leaving with their parent a couple minutes later, she practically books it to the parking lot but sees your car is already gone.

She drives home and gets to work on cooking dinner, hoping you’d show. But then she gets a text from you saying that you won’t be able to make it tonight, and she sighs. She researched autism when you told her a few months ago and she knows that when autistic people get overwhelmed, they hide themselves away. She offered for you to come to her place to de-stress with food and tv, so she does the next best thing. After she finished cooking, she packed it into a container, and brought it with her to your place. She went and knocked on your door.

You answered it not too long later with leggings and loose shirt on. “Melissa? What are you doing here?” You ask her.

“Well since you won’t come over to my place, I thought I’d come to you.” She says with a warm smile and you now feel even more guilty for cancelling on her. “I brought over food I made. So either we can eat here or we can go back to my place. Choice is up to you.” She tells you with a shrug. You decide to go to her place and when you get there she gives you your favourite hoodie of hers and you sit on the couch. You’ve been to her place before and you told her that the plastic felt weird to sit on and she removed it the next day so that you’re comfortable when you go there. “Hey, you don’t have to speak but I just want to know that you’re ok.” She says and you nod. She gives you a plate of the food and you see that it’s her spaghetti and meatballs dish. Your favourite food of hers and you smile at her. She joins you on the couch, sitting next to you and then hands you the remote so you can decide what to watch, you decide on Shrek 3.

You watch the movie while eating, with Melissa right next to you, you in her hoodie, and you finally feel like you’re calming down. You put your head on her shoulder after you put your empty plate on the coffee table and she wraps her arm around you. You continue the movie, quoting some of the lines, and when it plays the ending scene with puss and donkey singing thank you, Melissa gets an idea. She guides you up and leads you to the empty space beside her couch and starts dancing with you. When the chorus comes on she sings it to you “I wanna thank you for lettin me be myself…again” She sings and you laugh. When she says the line again, she spins you while singing. The second chorus comes up “come on sing it with me.” She tells you.

The both of you sing it while dancing “I WANNA THANK YOU FOR LETTIN ME BE MYSELF…AGAIN.” You both sing at the top of your lungs. When it ends you’re both laughing and she hugs you.

“Thank you for letting me be myself.” You tell her and she looks at you with a warm smile and places a lock of hair behind your ear before cupping your cheek.

“It’s not a problem hun, it doesn’t matter to me that you’re autistic you know. You just think differently, and that's alright.”

You look in her eyes and you lean forward and kiss her. Melissa kisses you back and moves her hand from your cheek to the back of your head and places her left hand on your waist. You pull back and look at her with a smile.

“You kissed me back.” You say to her and she nods. “Why?”

“Because I like you. I have for a few months now.” She tells you.

“For how long?” You ask her and she thinks about it.

“Around the new year.” And you look at her in shock.

“But that’s after I told you I was autistic.” You tell her, putting the pieces together. “You knew I was autistic and you still like me?” You question her.

“How would you being autistic make me not like you?” She asks you, confused.

“Because I’m different than other people and have struggles because of it.” You tell her like it’s obvious.

“So? Everyone is different in their own way and everyone has their own struggles.” She tells you. “For example, I have trouble letting people in, because of trust issues. And I can have a short temper too.” She says and you look at her with so much love in your eyes. You kiss her again and she doesn’t hesitate to kiss you back.

When the person says “you may kiss the bride” , she doesn’t hesitate to give you a kiss then either. With a huge smile, she brings you closer to her and gives you a kiss, as wife and wife.

Taglist: @esposadejoyhuerta

@imaginesmultifandoms

@idonothingalldays-blog

@sexysapphicshopowner

@dvrkhcld

Let me know if you want to be added! 🙂

#melissa schemmenti x reader #melissa schemmenti x oc #melissa schemmenti x you #melissa schemmenti #x reader #fanfic

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 6 months

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AITA for wanting my mother to stop making so much noise in her own house when I’m staying here?

So me (22M) and my mother (62F) have a complicated relationship. She is very very toxic and always has been - she used to induce illness in me and make my pre-existing disorders worse so that she could keep me with her when she separated from my father, she never let me leave the house because she would tell me I would be harmed or something would happen to me if I was away from her, she would control everything I did and what I ate or drank, where I went, etc. The house she and I lived in was an incredibly bad environment for me. It’s not taken care of, it’s dirty and unhygienic, I was constantly ill and having allergies set off, she would try to feed me dirt-covered food I watched her pick up off the floor, the shower didn’t work and she wouldn’t let me go elsewhere to bathe. I kept talking about moving out, especially once I got into a serious relationship with my girlfriend (26F), but it would always devolve into an argument with her telling me I wasn’t going anywhere, that my girlfriend would leave me, that she’s the only person who’ll stick by me, and so on.

All of that is basically background context to counterbalance the (fair) preconceptions of “you’re guests you’re imposing on her you can just leave” etc you’re about to have.

So I finally moved out this year and in with my girlfriend and it was wonderful. However, my mother was blowing up BOTH of our phones 24/7 telling me to come back, and it reached the point she was contacting Other people (family, our friends) to get Them to tell me to move back in with her and asking where I was at all hours of the day, who I was with and what I was doing. I was ignoring her as best I could. Then a couple of weeks ago mine and my girlfriend’s house flooded after our upstairs neighbour burst a pipe in the building and water began fountaining through all our electrical sockets and lights and pouring from the ceiling. We had nowhere else to go except to stay with my mother until the house was repaired and made safe again, especially because so many of our belongings were ruined.

So we’ve been back here since. We’re forced to sleep on the couch together in the living room because in the time I was gone she somehow let bugs infest my old room and her cat pee all over the mattress of the bed.

Now, my girlfriend and I are both very non-confrontational and I’m usually super hard to annoy, but I’m also autistic and highly sensitive to noise. And my mother is. Very noisy. She blasts the TV at full volume all day even when she leaves the room and gets angry if you turn it off even if she’s not watching it, she’s a chainsmoker who’s constantly hack-coughing, she’ll have the radio playing OVER the TV, she shouts out the windows to her neighbours, she keeps all the windows and doors open, she’ll play music at full volume without headphones on, etc. I have noise-cancelling headphones from when I still lived here but she’s often so loud it doesn’t muffle it at all.

Recently it’s reached the point where she’ll wake up during the night, say 2-4am, come through to the room we’re sleeping in where the TV is, and just turn the TV on, turn the radio on, start singing along to music, slam doors, VACUUM. For the past 2 weeks she’s been waking me and my fiancée up every single night, often several times, and we’re at the end of our rope with it.

We can’t afford a hotel and have nowhere else to go, when we try to ask her to keep it down at LEAST during the night she says she can do whatever she wants because it’s her house and says we’re being ungrateful, and when we’ve offered to try to clean up my old room so we can sleep in there she snaps at us not to touch anything of ‘hers’ and gets mad because we’re implying her house isn’t clean, that we don’t want to be near her, that we must be telling everyone her house is shitty, etc.

Yesterday I got into an argument with her because I was having an extremely bad sensory day, my girlfriend said she had a migraine, and my mother responded by turning up the TV. When she saw I was holding onto my headphones and my girlfriend was near tears, she turned it up even louder and smirked at me. The argument basically ended in her screaming at me that if she was so bad we could leave, I impulsively said okay we would, and then she got physically aggressive and barred the doorway and told us I wasn’t going anywhere because she’d make sure of it.

It’s just. Exhausting! GF and I are constantly sleep-deprived, drained, grumpy, tired, and dealing with headaches on top of the stress of trying to financially recoup from the house flood and deal with getting everything fixed, and half of me is mad at my mother for not having even basic respect for us sleeping or our issues when half the time she is not even watching the damn TV or in the same room as it, while the other half of me feels conflicted because it’s her living room and we’re sleeping in the TV room and she’s putting us up when we have nowhere else.

AITA (/are we the assholes) for wanting her to accommodate us despite being guests?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

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cupcakeslushie · 4 months

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LITA MAY LITA MAY LITA MAY

Ok ok so I have like a bunch of questions feel free to ignore BUT

I) she has a tail. Is that a Kraang feature or do all the turtles in your universe have tails and hers is just extended?

II) Uh pink? Pink like Kraang? Did she choose her life colors, or???

III) Is. Is she. Is she autistic too

IV) Draxum-Hamato sooooo what does she call them? Did they argue about nicknames? Also was it Donnie’s choice to include Draxum’s name as well

V) Lita in the comics???

VI) Is there a reason her shell isn’t smooth like Donnie’s?

VII) What does she call Renet?

VIII) Ninpo question mark?

IX) Pupils! I love the way you draw her pupils. Is there a reason or is it just fun

X) Does she have a certain resistance to Kraang mind digging? Like that thing they did to interrogate Raph in the movie? To read his memories?

XI) So the cloak/scarf thing is Leo, the purple accents and stripes are Donnie, and the kneepads are Mikey. Any Raph references in her clothes?

Apologies if you’ve answered these before and I just didn’t see them! Have a good day and give Lita one too for goodness sakes girl’s had it rough already

1. It’s more of a Krang feature. I do love when the turtles are drawn with tails, but I didn’t do it from the beginning, and so for consistency sake in the EW universe I’ve held off. Maybe one day I’ll just say “fuck it” and give into the urge to give them all cute little tails. But even if I did, Lita’s would be much longer than any of the family’s (except Raph’s hypothetical tail lol).

2. Lita being albino and pink in the IDW comics pretty much made that Krang connection for me lol. I didn’t have to reach too hard with her design. She leans into it.

3. I have her personality very close to Leo’s canon personality, so she’s more on the ADHD side. She does have some sensory issues with sound, which a lot of ppl with adhd have (👋🏻). But being raised around the quiet and solemn Time Masters Sanctum it’s like really noticeable. When she visits the family, it can be very overwhelming, but rather than shutting down, she gets insanely riled up and can’t contain herself. It works though—everyone is more than happy to let her ramble on.

4. She never met either of them but Splinter of course would’ve been Jiji and Draxum would’ve been just Grandfather. Nothing too out of this world lol. And yes, Donnie chooses to embrace Draxum’s name.

5. Sorry idk what exactly this is asking. Like yes? Lita May is based off IDW Lita, from the comics 😅 sorry if I’m missing the question.

6. She is a spiny soft shell like Donnie, but yes, her spines are significantly more pronounced, thanks to, you guessed it!

7. Master Renet, or Aunty Ren in a more causal setting.

8. 🤫 we’ll see (I’m still trying to think of something cool and not too OP lol)

9. Her eyes are just for design fun, and to link her to Donnie some more!

10. That’s gonna be another big 🤫, but less because I haven’t decided and more just for the big spoilers! 😜

11. She’s kinda got two outfits atm and I think I might end up merging the two. Her simpler outfit of just her wraps and mask are very Raph coded, so I wanna figure out some sort of middle ground with the two.

#rottmnt #rise of the tmnt #rottmnt doomed future #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #baby mayday #rottmnt separated au #separated au #Sep!au infodump #sep!au doomed future #ask slushie #rise Lita

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thedvilsinthedetails · 2 months

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rosekiller microfic band au pt3

heyyy pt3 is here yayyy

I haven’t rlly read it thru again and I’m feeling pretty tired today so if there’s a quality dip that’s why but also we have some nice Barty POV which I find easier to write sooo balances out ig

also we have some Marlene in this one (u can thank @good-oldfashioned-lover-girl because I wasn’t gonna put her in but she loves Marls [not that I don’t] to and yk she’s the boss so 🫡🫡🫡 Marlene is in the fic and I’m actually glad bc I love her part in this)

oh also Reg is autistic in this [in my mind] so when I mention him wearing headphones it’s bc he wears headphones on public transport/often in public/during gigs to help block noise <3

oh also all the skittles have matching nail polish and little tattoos on their wrists (idk if I actually mention it here but just so u have it in ur mind)

Tags for ppl that (I think?) wanted to be tagged <3 : @depressedtheatrekiddo @blu3stars @picklerab23 @lady-stardust-incarnate @always-reading @no-names-work @y0url0verb0y @2bluetwo85 @idk-what-to-put-here-123 @weirdtinkerbellversion @lulublack90 @nikholascrow (please please do tell me if you don’t want to be tagged bc idm and obviously won’t be upset but I just don’t want to tag ppl that don’t actually want to be tagged so I’m just sort of guessing by who commented last time so um yeah)

Link to previous part

link to part one

link to next part

(Cw: lil bit of homophobia in here sorry)

***

By the time the train arrived at their station both Barty and Evan had dozed off. Arms wrapping around each other, bodies curled into one another like a jigsaw puzzle. Evan didn’t wake up as gently as he fell asleep though because he was woken by Regulus kicking his seat aggressively. Once he finally opened his eyes he turned to face him. He was wearing his headphones, big and black originally but covered in splodges of spray paint from when Barty had offered to ‘customise‘ them for Regulus. He’d pushed them back though, now that the majority of people has filtered out of the little compartment.

“Hurry up and get your stuff.”

Regulus ordered before following Pandora and Dorcas who had already left.

Evan turned and tapped Barty gently to wake him up. Then when that didn’t work he shook him till he opened his eyes with a start.

It took Barty a moment to realise where he was but even once he did he just grumbled.

“Ev don’t make me get up, please.”

He pouted, eyes wide and dilated in some kind of cheap attempt at cuteness.

“Come on you know you have to get up baby- Barty!”

Evan gaped, realising his mistake just too late. A slip of the tongue and he’d gone and fucked everything up.

“D’you just call me baby?”

A grin spread on Barty’s face and he poked Evan gently and laughed.

“You’ve been single too long Rosier.”

“You- you’re not mad?”

“Why would I be mad, baby?”

Barty winked, clicking his tongue as he got up and shuffled past Evan with a wicked smirk.

•••

Barty was going insane.

Evan had called him baby. Baby. And fuck his reaction had been visceral. But like…in a good way? It made him want to bite down on something hard but that thing was the muscles on Evan’s arms. Or bruise something but that thing was Evan’s neck…with a hickey or two.

Something about the way it had slipped out so naturally, so warmly. It just made Barty’s heart flutter. Made him want to grab Evan and shake the sense out of him enough to like Barty. Something along the lines of ‘kiss me, ruin me, dear God I’m begging you.’ Ah well, nothing you can’t really do about these kinds of situations except get on with it. Lying was something Barty had gotten very good at from a young age and not stopped since. Some might call it acting but those were the types of people who were just trying to convince themselves they were good and moral. Barty didn’t really care enough about that kind of stuff to bother. White lies this and how it contrasts with malicious lies that, like someone trying to section off a gradient in two. You can’t, it’s all the same monochrome blur in the end.

Barty was lost in this little daydream when he heard Pandora roar.

“WHAT?!”

Now Pandora didn’t often roar, maybe laugh maniacally every now and then yes, but yell? Scream? That was never her type of thing. Save for some rare occasions that Barty could probably count on one hand. Pandora yelling meant it was time to stop daydreaming about Evan’s curls or Evan’s hands with their chipped green nail polish or Evan’s fucking tight t shirts. Yeah time to stop thinking about that and listen up. So he did.

“I do not intend to offend anyone by it.”

Riddle raised his hands up defensively with a cheap sleazy smile that immediately made Barty dislike him.

“I’m just saying that this venue prides itself on a distinct lack of…untoward behaviour. It’s not a massive deal, I think your lead and backup singers can use separate microphones for two nights of a six month tour.

“What the fuck man?”

Barty stepped forward immediately hands curling into fists, Riddle was pretty short, he could definitely take him if that’s what it came to.

“Barty stop, that isn’t the right way to solve things. Come on let’s just- let’s come back later ok? See if we can talk to someone else, not this piece of shit.”

Dorcas spat out the last three words as she pulled Barty back to the group.

He was going to argue till he felt Evan put a hand on his shoulder, instead he just left Evan guide him away after the rest of the group.

“We’ll figure it out ok?”

“Fucking- Ev we can’t play there. They’re fucking homophobic.”

“Barty the O2 has been your dream since-“

“I DONT BLOODY CARE!”

“Barty shut the fuck up. I said we’ll talk about it and we will, we will figure it out but stop acting like a goddamn CHILD.”

Barty looked over at Evan who had his teeth bared, slightly wild look in his eyes. He was seething too, clearly. Just more mature than Barty.

“Ok, yeah.”

He breathed in.

“I’m sorry Ev.”

“Hey it’s alright. It’s just important the band shows a united front against this you know? We can’t split up or in fight because then, well then we all lose.”

“Yeah. Yeah you’re right Rosie. But we will do something.”

“I promise you they’re not getting away with this.”

Evan nodded. He tossed a hand over Barty’s shoulder, pulling him in just a little bit closer as they walked. Barty wasn’t complaining.

•••

“You don’t get it Marls, we can’t just not play the O2. We’d lose way too much money off it, probably too much to be able to continue with the rest of the tour. Plus venues will think we’re unreliable and might cancel or pull out. Riddle is such a fucking dick, he only told us when we went there for a tech practice literally today.”

“Fuck yeah that’s shitty.”

Marlene was sat next to Barty on the floor of his hotel room, helping him repaint his nails. The entire band had them matching, a bright toxic green, his had started to fade though.

“What if you just…ignore them? Do it anyway?”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s not like they can drag us off stage mid performance.”

“Not without exposing their homophobia.”

“Still…I wanna make a statement. Something big you know? Show them they can’t straight wash us.”

Marlene looked up at Barty, eyes twinkling mischievously.

“I might have an idea then.”

•••

Evan was sat in an alcove in the hotel corridor watching Regulus patiently braid and unbraid Pandora’s hair on the sofa opposite him. It calmed them both down whenever they were stressed. And Barty and Marlene, locked up together in Barty’s hotel room. Both raging homosexuals dead set on never following rules talking amongst themselves just before the biggest gig of the band’s history? Yeah that was a reason to be stressed. That’s when he heard the tell tale clump of Barty’s docs down the corridor. And he was walking with purpose.

As soon as he came into view Evan noticed the way his eyebrows were knotted together yet his eyes were glimmering with excitement. Evan had no clue what Barty was going to say next but it wasn’t that.

“Marlene thinks I should kiss you.”

Barty announced and Evan dropped his jaw, staring at him agape.

“What?”

“And I agree with her.”

“What?”

***

OK HOPE U LIKED IT

xxx BYEEEE

pt4 probs gonna come soon bc I swear this fic has a life of its own

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captainzigo · 30 days

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Welcome to me blog

If you are a mutual, DM me for an invite to discord server and subsequently to minecraft server

that’s a bunch of pictures of oc(/ponysona) Prickly Pear. she’s a cowgirl

FAQ below the break

i do take requests. i do not currently take commissions, but don’t be shy about sending requests. i can always say no. or fuck it up really bad.

you can send me asks and DMs at my sideblog @snapewife-divorce-lawyer any asks you send me should be like Strongbad emails. one paragraph. no attachments. unless you are sending me refs.

i reblog most stuff at my other sideblog: @3amgaypotion

you are fine to DM me, but remember i am not obligated to respond at all.

in any interactions, please keep in mind that i am a stranger on the internet and act accordingly

i am autistic. i say this because representation matters, but also because i would like to ask that you please be very frank with me. i don’t even really need your patience. just say what you mean and we will get along fine.

you most certainly can draw any of my ocs. i’d love that acually. tag me

you can redraw, dub or do whatever to my works with credit. i expect credit to include clickable links. also please try to keep the spirit of the original work. don’t add nsfw subtext for example. don’t redraw a ship art as a ship with an inappropriate age gap, and so on.

do not post my art on other platforms. do not repost my art period. I don’t really exist on other platforms since I deleted Twitter. So if you see my stuff on other platforms, it’s not me.

i’m in my twenties. i keep my blog SFW as a strict rule. PG13 except i swear a lot more. i do not keep myself that way, and i have no aversion to that sort of content, but i keep all of my posts SFW.

in my opinion, all romance real or fictional should be between people who are not related, similar in age, doing age appropriate things, all with mutual consent. i am not interested in witnessing or interacting with anything outside of these parameters.

i am a trans woman. i am also bisexual. i am also poly and demi since im listing things. i am out online becasue i know how important it is to know that you aren’t alone.

if you follow me and you post art, regardless of frequency or perceived quality, i want to be mutuals. shoot me a message or something

do i take constructive criticism? NO 🖕👹🖕 FUCK YOU!!!!!!! GET BLOCKED IDIOT!! unless you are a marginalized person who feels i have unintentionally made you uncomfortable somehow with my art or otherwise. in that case i am sorry and you do me a great favor by calling me out. OTHERWISE FUCK YOU DUMBASS IF YOU DONT LIKE MY ART GO DRAW YOUR OWN 🖕🖕🖕🖕

i don’t have a DNI list, but i am pretty left politically so you can probably imagine what’s on there.

“i hate bronies” i don’t necessarily hate you if you self identify with that label. i like to make myself off-putting to keep creeps away

i don’t hold a lot of nostalgia for old brony stuff. infact it’s quite the opposite

i like all generations of mlp including the new stuff. gen 4 is just the one i grew up with

why is my header aurora, bori and alice from the best gift ever? well that would be because i hate them like a mother hates a child. like the sun hates the moon. like sickly victorian child hates the slightest morsel of bread.

i often draw stuff about cozy glow x flurry heart. this is with the understanding that cozy glow spends about a decade turned to stone. nullifying the age gap.

i am dyslexic. i spell stuff wrong all the time and i type weird. please don’t bother correcting me. wooptydoo your brain is wired normally. sending you a medal.

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oldmanffucker · 3 months

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No but I really feel House - constantly saying how much he Doesn’t Care about stuff except for his job which is basically the one thing he’s Allowed to really care about.

This concept of earnestness being punished or frowned upon or struck down. The fear of being earnest, of letting people see how/how much you care, and knowing that the way you care is different from the way other people care. And being afraid that if people see the passion you have for the same things everyone else also has passion about, they’ll see you doing it Wrong or Too Much so it’s better not to care at all.

yes he can be passionate about work - no one else can do what he does, so his singleminded autistic passion and hyperfixation is okay, is safe. It’s weird but people accept it bc the results matter more than the method (basically). But caring about the smaller more every day things, the things that any and everyone else can also care about, means that the singleminded, over the top, autistic way he can approach things is more easily compared to the way people Should Act, and we know that not doing things as they’re expected to be done was punished growing up. Am I projecting? Shut up. Yes but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong!

#does this make sense?#and ever the Pisces Wilson is like. it’s. okay to see beauty in the world. and house is like shut UP you don’t know my life #but Wilson is like. doesn’t matter. it’s always okay to care. you’re allowed to care. it’s safe to care. and house is just gagging #and threatening to throw up on his shoes #text post #house md #house #gregory house #James Wilson #my post

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gerdy-sertorius · 1 month

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The Definitive Damsel Analysis (if I do say so myself)

(Disclaimer: I know it’s absurdly long, and for that I apologize. I apparently am more unwilling to make cuts than I am to present subpar work. I’m working on it. Only editing I do for my autistic ramblings is copyediting, baby! Whoo! I will be updating this for the Pristine Cut once it comes out and we get even *more* Damsel. Obviously, as I’m sure you can tell from the length, I really like Damsel. There will be all of the bias. It will be great.)

(Author’s Note: For the love of the most high God, it took me like twenty read throughs for me to standardize what I wanted to call the Scorched Grey. Here is a brief list of all the terms I used to refer to her: Scorched Grey, Burned Grey, Burning Grey, Fire Grey, Damsel Chapter 3. Sometimes but not always preceded by “the” or “The”.)

Alright, ladies and gentlemen. I have oft made the statement on here that Damsel is the best route in the game, and this began as me trying to definitively prove that, by microscopically going through the route, I could establish exactly why, it would seem, that Damsel has objective superiority. It sorta… evolved, though, so instead I will be going relatively chronologically throughout, and trying to point out a couple things that all of you know about and maybe a couple things you don’t about the best character in the game. With that preamble out of the way, let’s begin with the goofy stuff, the grab bag if you will.

This will certainly be more personal taste than anything else, but I do think there’s a lot of miscellaneous stuff that Damsel does better than the other chapters. For example, I am convinced that it has the third best music, behind Tower and her routes and then Thorn. I am genuinely obsessed with “It Was Always That Easy”. The basement has some *fantastic* art, and I think that really carries a chapter that is otherwise generally bland when it comes to actual visual activity. It’s really carried by its genuinely perfect dialogue.

Overall, and most importantly, this chapter is the undisputed master of the idea of positive ambience. You know elevator music? How it’s there to artificially increase the cheeriness of an otherwise dreary moment, like a hotel hallway or, yanno, an elevator? Well, this is the chapter that does it perfectly. Everything is designed to make it “nicer” than it actually is. The Narrator even takes that into account when describing the basement. The sound design is fresh and relaxing, the music is uplifting, the Princess’s voice is obviously fantastically done, but also the Voice of the Smitten plays a large role in making it feel “good”. It’s something that exists in order to communicate exactly the feelings it wants the player to feel, which is all warm and fuzzy inside. But let’s move on to the actual content, shall we?

Damsel has *the* best Chapter One and it isn’t even close. Certainly not in the horror department, where I think Beast and Nightmare shine, or even in the whole characterization bit, where the award can only go to Spectre and the masterclass that is her Chapter One. But Damsel has something else to it. Damsel has tragedy, almost Shakespearean in nature. Nobody else has it (except Witch, to some extent, but nowhere close to the same level), nobody manages to reach that connection, there and then broken, to honestly feel for both Princess and Slayer. Allow me to paint a picture of a playthrough.

You are on a path in the woods. At the end of that path is a cabin. In the basement of that cabin is a princess. You are here to slay her. But you don’t do that. That voice itching in the back of your skull, the one you quite literally call Hero, your moral compass even, raises some objections. You don’t want to kill *anybody*. That isn’t something you want to mark yourself with, especially not solely on the word of an individual you just met. For now, violence is a nonstarter.

You enter the cabin. And you hear her voice. And you see her. You even talk with her for a while. The moment is… hypnotizing. Despite the Narrator’s warning of manipulation, well, you cannot help but be manipulated. This is a genuinely nice, sweet, scared Princess who simply wants to be free. You have to save her. It is the right thing to do, it is the… only thing to do. Anything else marks you with the dirtiness of simply being unwilling to help someone in need when you had the full ability to.

You go to get a key. Unsuccessful. The door locks. Even worse. The Narrator is moving from irritating to downright malicious, clearly enjoying recounting the lock of the door. Disgust for Him has been present since you entered the cabin, but it shifts to anger very quickly. That shift continues with full force as you attempt with what little ability you have to save the Princess, even if you don’t quite know how you will get out. The question does not last long. For the shift to anger shifts once more, to a sort of incomprehensible fury.

For the Narrator has crossed a line. Not only has he taken away any semblance of choice, not only has he raised your own knife against an innocent, someone who has been nothing but kind to you, but you are the one who must bear the shame for it. You are the only one who is doing the foul deed in any eyes but your own. Speaking of, the Princess’s eyes are filled with genuine happiness at the moment, as you are finally giving her the freedom she has yearned for such a long time. Yet through no fault of your own, you raise the pristine blade, the one you refused to bring down to the basement in the first place. You scramble through the list of options, attempting to find anything that could provide a sliver of hope in the situation, anything without the grim finality of “Slay the Princess”.

At last, you find one, and are able to bark out a warning to the Princess. That happiness in her eyes is shifted to a look of fear, one directed at you alone, one condemning you with such a sorrowful betrayal that it almost hurts to see. She begs for you to stop, and then she says something that almost calms the internal storm of the player: “Please, I know this isn’t you.” She recognizes that it isn’t us that betrayed her, she understands that we aren’t trying to do this, that we are flat-out trying to stop it. But the eye of that storm is passing, and soon.

And as she takes the blade, as she prepares to do what she must to live, that same look of tragic betrayal crosses her eyes, this time not directed at us, but at herself. She hates that this is her only option, the only way that she can live is to kill another, one with every intention of freeing her and no intention of harming her. And in the end, she simultaneously underscores the tragedy of the moment while confirming our perception that she could never be a threat to the world. As she plunges the blade into our chest, she has failed to even do the bare minimum of making our death painless, something that fills her with even more guilt, tears streaming down her cheeks as she tries and fails to end our own agony. The last thing we see of her are her endless cascade of both tears and apologies, as everything goes dark.

This… is beautiful. A glorious tragedy, one with limited theming, simply two characters with emotions that feel natural. And, quite strangely, the first chapter has almost nothing to do with the second chapter. But it is still important. I’ll get to that later. Better things await now! For with the end of the tale of the Hero and the Princess, we have a new individual, everyone’s favorite buddy, the Voice of the Smitten.

I am certain I do not need to underscore just how popular Smitten is. Easily the most fan favorite of the fan favorites, especially solidifying his place within that roster with the Kiss from a Thorn. He is jovial, passionate, he is Don Quixote, complete with the unlimited self-delusion that comes with the territory. There’s a reason people love him. Romantic in a game entitled a love story, the largest of personalities in a game stuffed with them, he is the storybook hero come to life in a game that has just as much reverence for storybook heroes as the deconstructions of them. In short, he is the visage of likability itself, with all the bombast that comes with that. Yet that is only from a wholly external perspective.

For what I am certain I do need to underscore is just how sinister Smitten is. For all of his likability, the Smitten is also probably the single slimiest voice out of all of them with the possible exception of the Opportunist. This is not a new revelation – people have understood that since the beginning with his frankly disturbing behavior regarding the Princess. What is perhaps more interesting is his relationship with the player. For he is one of the two options that reflect the player at this point within the story. Either the player is trying to do the right thing and free an innocent, or they have somewhat… different motivations.

The former reflects the Hero. Somewhat naive, in many routes somewhat bumbling even, but first and foremost focused on the external. That is, “how can I make a positive impact on the world around me?” As contradictory as it may seem to how the Hero is presented, it’s something of an intellectualist approach. The Hero is trying to find the best possible world and working towards that with all of his might. It is, one could say, devoid of emotion except that determination to change the world, to make it a better place. While the goal remains the same, the path to get there is fundamentally continuously being calculated. The Hero is your conscience, and as such he must *always* work overtime for that.

The Smitten is not that. No, he has made no secret that he is the path of passion. Even when he is generally considered to be a better person, he declares that, “Whatever world would condemn two star-crossed lovers to a cycle of violence and despair isn’t a world worth saving.” His focus is internal, it is on ourself and our romance. There is no extensive study into what is the correct option, there is only what would assist in our relationship, which is somehow ordained by the universe. To put it into understandable terms, Hero is a modern hero while Smitten is a Romantic-era hero.

There’s an important line when going down the stairs that I think speaks volumes about the type of player and playthrough currently occurring. That is “We can still do right by her without all this over-the-top fawning.” *That* is the line of demarcation between the route of the Hero and the route of the Smitten. If you decide to embrace or repudiate the Smitten at that point, I think the route is sealed. I am convinced that the game will continue on in a fixed way based on that philosophy. The point where you must, internally that is, decide if you are doing this out of a desire for what is right, or an infatuation with the Princess.

Now, of course there isn’t anything wrong with taking the path of the Smitten, and it’s personally one of my top points in the game, but whether you admit it or not, you are long past morality being what decides your actions. That has come and gone. Now, the goal is to express the passion of the moment and delve into your romantic relationship with the Princess. I’ll be evaluating each of the routes differently, loosely organized with a focus on how it reacts to the player. After that, I’ll go on into theming of each route one by one and all that jazz.

The path of the Smitten first. The player embraces that he has been sent to save the Princess from her unjust and foul imprisonment above all else. So that is what he does. He marches downstairs, the blade being nothing but a passing afterthought as it is immediately dismissed out of hand. When it comes to the crucial point of “doing right by her”, the justification is made that two things can be done at once, that you can do this for her and do a little bit of fawning on the way. Doesn’t harm anyone.

And with that the basement arrives, and you see the Princess on the floor. She is perfect in all ways. There is nothing wrong with her. And that’s before you start talking to her. When you do begin talking to her, all of the kindness and innocence from Chapter 1 are magnified to the greatest degree possible. She can do no wrong. And, from a meta standpoint, there’s another thing that stands out – it is really, *really* funny. From everything the Smitten says to the “Then I didn’t end the world!” to the Narrator’s (a villain at this point) growing exasperation at your trust for the Princess, it endears you to the moment even more.

Because it’s not only that it’s funny. It’s not only that the Princess is genuinely nice to you. It’s something more than that. Something that I am loath to talk about but will anyway. The Princess is incredibly – *sigh* – **cute** within this chapter. This is objective, with science to back me up, I’m sure. But she is specifically designed to be as heartwarming as possible, and every line makes her more and more into someone who should be saved by you, into, well, a Damsel. While it isn’t explicitly stated, throughout the progression of dialogue, the need to protect her becomes more pronounced. You were already primed to like the Princess, you already internally committed to a romantic future. But after stepping into the bear trap willingly, you cannot escape.

And if you’re anything like me, you are perfectly fine with that. So you take in the moment, you rescue her from her chains and laugh at the way her hands slipped out of the chains and the Narrator’s comical anger at it. It’s all very feel-good, all cleanly written dialogue, and both the Princess and the Smitten are likable, they’re fun, and the Narrator is a fun enough villain for the Smitten and you to unite against. The Hero, if we’re being honest, barely registers, and if he does it’s usually as an extension to the Narrator, as a foil to yourself. And with her finally free, she embraces you, sealing the deal on her perfection.

And after that, something else happens. The deconstruction begins. You want to see if her dialogue has any more of that saccharine present throughout the rest of the chapter, and are immediately rewarded with the “The princess closes her eyes in deep reflection” and the follow up joke. Hungry for more, you click through some more of the dialogue, but something begins to happen. She begins to… unwind. The Smitten seems to reciprocate in turn, to a lesser extent. In fact, she really starts to return to the horror that this chapter was a nice respite from. So you cut your losses, decide to leave with her, and everything returns to normal. Bathed in the glow of your future, you immediately forget about the deconstruction.

After that, you finally get out of the basement, get a genuinely great moment opening the door alongside the Princess, never think twice about clicking “You’re not doing that.” as fast as humanly possible, and finally await the door at the end of the cabin. You finally get your fairytale ending. The princess goes out into the world together with you. You brought her out. And then she is taken by the Shifting Mound in a way reminiscent of her dying. Even if this wasn’t your first playthrough, it still comes as a shock. For the most part, you were being that Romantic hero, living in the moment with your passion. The thought of this happening was gone entirely. This wasn’t supposed to happen. And it *hurts*. And the chapter is over.

The route of the Hero has a different point of view on the whole situation. That’s not to say it’s not easy to get drawn in by the hilarious dialogue and sheer cuteness of the Princess – far from it. It is, after all, what drives the conflict within this. For the Hero, and the player that goes along his path, has one bit of information stand out. That the world ended after the Princess killed you. Now, you can naturally be skeptical of the information, but the Princess isn’t helping her case here. Entirely vague, entirely unwilling to mention anything about it. The only thing she seems to care about is getting on your good side.

Now, you still want to save her. That much is clear. You still don’t take the knife in the beginning, and you saw her Chapter 1 incarnation. She is still a good person, kind and loving. But there are questions raised, important questions. Which is why not all Hero routers get the same ending. There is a conflict between how far you’re able to go before the risk of the world ending eclipses your distrust of the Narrator and your trust of the Princess. If the whole world really does end if she’s free, is it worth it? And as such you get to the major points of the Hero ending.

The first is the Deconstructed ending. As you question the Princess, you desperately try to figure out what the best way to go forward is for you. And that starts with getting a straight answer from the Princess on what exactly she plans on doing. The operation… does not go well. As you try and push for anything, any sign that she isn’t going to end the world, the same rejoinder comes in, alongside a distorted track. “I just want to make you happy.” The Princess is not an individual anymore, and begins to change shape. But you are locked in with a horrified inability to look away, like one who sees a car accident. And with that, the Princess is a Princess no longer, and the Shifting Mound takes her away.

There’s also the option of taking the Hero’s advice when confronted with the scenario: to leave. You don’t like what’s going on and you try to do whatever you can to undo the doing. Perhaps surprisingly, it works. And then you’re forced to deal with the cognitive dissonance of the Princess and *that* being the same individual. But you, not without a healthy dose of skepticism, still head upstairs alongside the Princess. In the end, you can’t bring yourself to kill her. Throughout it all, she still has been the beautifully endearing picture of innocence, if a questionable one, and especially with regards to the knife on the table, there is no way you can take it to her chest with no warning, especially after everything you did in the first Chapter. So you leave with her, and the “end of the world” really does come in one fell swoop with the call of the Shifting Mound. You can’t help but wonder if the decision you made was the right one, not really. Like, you still believe she didn’t deserve to die, but maybe, just maybe, it would have been a better ending.

So what if you did kill her? What happens when love *truly* melts away into skepticism. After the continuous question dodging and whatever the… other thing was, this is clearly not an ordinary Princess, it is not the same Princess that you tried to save at the beginning. There is only a sliver of her, a shadow of her former self. Slaying her, well, slaying her is probably doing her a favor. It might be doing the world a favor, too. Maybe she is an individual with malicious intent. And as you take the blade and plunge it into her chest, you instantly know you made the wrong decision. She does not oppose it. She simply lets you kill her with a single tear hanging in her eye, saying “I think this is what you want.” It’s meant to feel dirty and it does, even heartbreaking in the moment, although it is immediately counterbalanced by the effect of the Smitten killing you over it.

I won’t exactly go over Scorched Grey the same way, I think there’s generally only two frames of mind going into it, and that’s either the standard “Hero-Skeptic” framework that I’ll expand on later, or simply a completionist mindset. Plus, it’s technically not The Damsel. Plus I’m lazy. But this is the point where I will try to expand on the theming of each and every route and mindset to go through within the Chapter, and that *will* include the Scorched Grey theming.

It’s made quite clear from the chapter that one of the primary themes is objectification, the making of the Princess into nothing more than a vehicle to live one’s fantasy into. The taking of an individual and making them into an it. The destruction of humanity by your own desire, and what that says about your desires in the first place. Ironically, this is merely one fourth wall away from the rest of the Princesses, each of them being a piece of fiction that many simply engage with *because* they are an object, but with the Damsel it is directly nodded to within the narrative. One meta-layer is peeled back, if you will.

Nothing hammers this more home than the entirely jarring line that escapes the Shifting Mound’s lips when you ask about the vessel she holds. Unlike the rest of the fragments, which are all given an indication that they have been fulfilled after the Shifting Mound takes them, the only note she has to say is that the Damsel has “served her purpose”. There is nothing that she wished for, as anyone who has obtained the deconstructed ending can attest to. But even in the more standard runs, she is simply a tool to be used and discarded. And there are three general reactions to this line.

The first is the hardcore Smitten route’s preferred choice, denial. “The Princess was far more than an object, she had character, she had kindness, she had motivations from the beginning! The narrative is what is wrong, there’s nothing wrong with the Princess. She. Is. Perfect. Not just from a narrative standpoint but a metanarrative one as well. She has depth, she *is* a character.” All in the hopes that if they insist on it enough, it will become true. The Damsel was not designed to be viewed in a vacuum. There are themes that run through her character, and including negative ones, and the denial of them is a far truer denial of the character than any sort of objectification could ever be.

Then the more moderate Smitten routers get a different response. A slap in the face. They did all of this, they had fun, they laughed with her, they cried when she was taken. They were connected to her, they had a real connection to what she was. One could even accuse them of… loving her. They honest to goodness cared about this Princess, they were invested in her story. Yet, in the end, they also formed her around themselves. They “molded her to love you”. As much as they loved the Princess, that was only because they cut out a piece of the Shifting Mound that they *could* love, a caricature of her true nature. They still took an individual, and despite truly loving her, made her into something that she was not so they could do that very thing. She is not a person. She is a plot device, an individual made to love and be loved with nothing beyond that. She is an object.

Lastly, those who went on the route of the Hero get that same slap in the face, that selfsame bucket of water poured over their heads, but in a different way. They didn’t try to objectify her. They didn’t want anything of the sort. All they wanted to do was the right thing. Right? Yet even in that desire to do the right thing, they still get that same chilling text from the Shifting Mound. They have built an individual just like those who went on the route of the Smitten. Just a different one. Not one who was built around your “glorious romance”, but rather one built around something of a glorious Romance. The need to be a Hero. The desire to do what was right, to save an unjustly imprisoned Princess. The Princess became a plot device in the end anyway, just one that needed to be saved rather than one who needed to be loved.

I want to continue off of that. The player is trying to do nothing more than the right thing, he is simply doing what a Hero should. And that determination to do what is right leads to him getting impacted the most by that line in the ending, the line that implies that whatever right he was doing, he was still being driven by selfishness, by that need to be a Hero. That hits the player right within where it hurts, it almost could be said to strike at the one emotional vulnerability of them. To have your hard work, your pain, your desire for what is right to be considered nothing more than the delusions of a Don Quixote tilting at windmills in order to fight giants, just as lost as Smitten, that doesn’t feel too great. It almost minimizes your struggle, and it is genius. You play as a Hero because you want to feel like a Hero, not because the morality of this world means anything to you. It is stripping that meta-layer down one by one.

But objectification is not the only theme present. While it may seem like something of a potpourri topic to throw in, earlier on the server we were talking about the Damsel in particular’s perceptiveness with regards to perception. When the door shuts and locks, it is the first and only time the Princess gets visibly **negative** in any way during the entirety of the Chapter. Even when you kill her, she still does so with nary a frown on her face. Even as a tear rolls down her cheek, she still smiles. But not at the door. The narration points out quite clearly that she frowns. This is, I reiterate, the only thing that happens. And her response is not “we’re stuck down here”, it is not “I’m unable to leave now”.

What it is happens to be “that’s not supposed to happen”. She recognizes the construct in a way very few allude to within the game. Adding onto that note, within the Scorched Grey chapter, she (correctly) determines the very nature of the construct and that inherent “cycle of violence and despair” inherent to it, even (correctly) determining that the only way to leave was to annihilate that very construct. This is shown even clearer at the other major event at the door. When you ask if the Princess can open the door, the sole question she throws back at you is “Do you think I can?”, and after a response in the affirmative, “Then I can”. In the end, it is quite clear that she is, *heavily* ironically, one of the more aware characters in the game with regards to your circumstance.

While speaking of the Scorched Grey, I think this route also exemplifies another major theme – the nature of the Princess as a being of perception. All routes exemplify one facet of the Shifting Mound: Spectre represents the gravity of her, Tower her divinity, Prisoner the very incarnation in and of itself of her within the construct, and so on. Damsel has something different, though, and that is that she’s just a slippery little fella. Far more than anybody else, Damsel changes throughout her chapters, in ways more pronounced than anybody else. The Shifting Mound declares that we “molded her to love you”, as I quoted previously. That molding takes stage front and center throughout all of our interactions with her.

The most obvious example is her deconstruction, which when her sole true motivation (to leave) is discarded, she begins to break down, unable to offer to the player anything beyond the only desire every other Princess has. With the compulsive need to love the player, etched into her core, there is nothing she can do other than try to add to that love, losing herself within the process. But that is not the only time she changes. Because she is willing to give up that freedom in, well, a heartbeat. Attempting to kill her does not lead to any sort of resistance from her. The one goal she had, staying alive and winning her freedom, is out the window despite being (questionably) willing to kill for it in the last chapter. Now, throughout the Scorched Grey, it’s made clear that she did not, in fact, want to die, that she just wanted to be free together, but the complete unwillingness to save her own life is a stark contrast to the first chapter.

In fact, that perpetually changing nature alongside her being so objectified means that it’s really, *really* hard to figure out her true character. There is very little in her that does not change and very little remaining that isn’t specifically put there by you. She is an eel, wriggling out of your grasp and impossible to pin down, in a large way like the Shifting Mound herself. But… for the most part, there are two facets to her character beyond the already listed themes. And a sharp divide between them.

Chapter One Damsel and Chapter Two Damsel are not the same person. That’s usually true for most of them, but they also usually have some semblance of similarity between their counterparts. The only exceptions I can think off the top of my head are Spectre and *maaybe* Stranger if you want to count that. The rest of them act as exaggerated versions of the existing individuals shown. Chapter One Adversary likes fights. Chapter Two Adversary likes fights. Chapter One Witch is built on the back of distrust. Chapter Two Witch is built on the back of distrust. Everything lines up nicely.

That is not the case for the Damsel. The only thing that you can say with both of them is that they are nice and do not want to hurt you. The Chapter One incarnation (henceforth Princess) is a tragedy of a character that doesn’t want to kill you but still must to secure her own life and freedom against a renegade puppeting you. The Chapter Two incarnation (henceforth Damsel) is a Horror-”Feel-Good”-Comedic-Tragic character that shows nothing about the emotional anguish she went through in chapter one. I love both of them, but they have an unmatched disconnect. And I think that sort of adds to the character. Now, there is absolutely a benefit from an emotional through-line (there’s a reason Thorn is my second-favorite chapter), but in this case, only brief touches to the beginning enhance the story.

The most striking thing is the sense of comedic horror that comes when Damsel just completely ignores any expected trauma from the Princess’s emotional destruction. It, depending on the route you take, either makes you love her character more and more as the humor begins to entrap you, or it begins the process of getting the player unnerved, exactly like the developers wanted. It is a key dividing point in the mindset of the player and the route that they have chosen. The Damsel says nothing about what happened, heck, she barely acknowledges it except to indicate that “You died!”

Secondly, it sets up Damsel as a sympathetic figure while still allowing her to begin establishing herself. Without the setup from the Princess, the player has no idea how to view Damsel, potentially even seeing her as a less on-the-nose Razor, with her comedically hiding her sinister intentions. The Princess allows the player to begin on a note that the Princess is *actually* friendly rather than simply pretending to be so. At the same time, it’s divorced enough that apart from that frame of reference at the beginning, Damsel is still allowed to shine within her own character.

Lastly, and most importantly, it sets her up for the Scorched Grey. The guilt at causing the death of an innocent and the belief that you would be unable to cause the death of an innocent yourself leads her to blame the construct and attempt to bring it down, which seals your fate in the third Damsel chapter, the only time where the two chapters meet in a beautiful climax of Passion going too far and causing pain, in attempt of running away from that very thing, morphing into something that not even the Smitten is able to remain devoted to in an awful tragedy of love being not enough in the end.

Wait, wait, wait. Did I hear “the end” being spoken? At this time of year? Localized entirely within this essay? Well then, it’s time to talk about what puts this saga at pure perfection, shall we? I probably could just use the awesome power of Ctrl + V to get the desired effect, but I still do want to offer my narration, so I’ll compromise and do a bit of both. “Your lover drives a stake into your body. And another. And another. And another. And another. Do I miss your heart because I cannot stand to see it go? But the stakes meant nothing to you. You had a desire, and you set that desire free, you lifting me and me lifting you, forever and ever and ever, consumed by true belief, there was nothing that could hold us back.”

Do I even need to explain why that’s so good? Definitively the best poem in the end, it isn’t even close, especially when coupled with Ms. Goodnight’s awe-inspiring delivery. Did I say that the Scorched Grey was the perfect synthesis of the Princess and the Damsel? I was lying. This is. Every word so lovingly placed, the language sounds like it comes from the pen of God Himself. It is emotionally resonant, the art is beautiful, I have not run into such a short piece of dialogue that outdoes it. Gonna be honest, mostly just wrote up this essay to gush about it. Even now, it is considered by most everyone to be one of the best lines of dialogue in a game filled with magnificent ones.

And the other one, that of the Scorched Grey. It’s simpler, ironically. “I kill you. You kill me. Back and forth we go, faster and faster and faster. I kill you. You kill me. Hollow eyes watch from the dry corners of a memory. A home built on all of the futures that were supposed to be, preserved until the moment of reunion. The fire of the heart sets it all ablaze. I kill you and me.”

This, this right here is one of the most slept on ending poems and it’s not even funny. So fantastic at expressing the heartbreak inherent to the Scorched Grey’s character. I don’t know how you can see the line “A home built on all the futures that were supposed to be”, especially with the Scorched Grey dead and charring in a wedding gown, and not feel *something*. It’s not as good as the standard Damsel stuff, but then again, nothing is. It’s still deserving of more praise than it currently receives, and one of my top three ending poems of all time, only edged out by Prisoner. Gosh, this game belongs in a museum.

Seems I need to debunk some stuff that happens to get a lot of traction regarding those who speculate on Damsel, too. First of all, her character motivation is not guilt nor gratitude. That sort of thing works incredibly well in fanworks, and I’m happy to see it ~~because that means I get to see Damsel in a fanwork~~. It has little to no backing within canon. Damsel is a chapter about the only motivations for the Princess being those put in place by the objectification of the player. There is nothing regarding anything beyond that, and it detracts from the existing, well-elucidated themes that are actually within the chapter. The only sort of substance to them is both Chapter 1 Princess and Scorched Grey indicating guilt for killing you, but that is almost entirely repudiated within the actual Chapter 2.

Speaking of the Scorched Grey, another thing I saw somewhat extensively is that you somehow “taught her” that killing is the way to love one another, and that’s why she kills you in Chapter 3, and I honestly do not know how that gained any traction at all. It’s pretty clear that she views all the death as a pretty terrible and messed up thing and only kills the two of you to escape the cycle of death. It’s spoken of as a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. I am genuinely confused on how this got started, because it really just… opposes the main *in-narrative* themes of the Chapter??? Like, you don’t even have to analyze it, it’s just within the text, plain and simple.

Anyway, I deeply apologize for the length of this once again, look forward to an appendix when Pristine Cut comes out. I’ve already played it because my uncle works at Black Tabby, but I don’t want to spoil it for you gents. If my opinions change massively after playing through the new update from today, I will change that too. Anyway, Damsel is the best character, literally does not do a single thing wrong within any of her chapters, has definitively the best Shifty stuff, and you should invest in her. As more people vocally become willing to throw money at anything related to Damsel, the likelier it is that we get Damsel merch. I need it so badly. Please. Anyway, if anything stands out to you or you disagree, I am begging you to tell me to get my act together and explain what I said wrong, so do that. Also please.

#slay the princess #the damsel #the princess #black tabby games #I spent an ungodly amount of time writing this up #But I honestly think this could be the be all end all work for this tiny character in a tiny game #Also #Seriously #Play Slay the Princess

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djarins-cyare · 2 months

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So it’s been a year…

One year since Disney released episode 1 season 3 of The Mandalorian

One year since I published chapter 1 of Be-All And Endor

I don’t really remember much of the first 20 weeks of that year, just that it was a flurry of proofreading and finalising and uploading (the hard parts) and comment reading and new friend making and massively appreciating (the wonderful parts).

Proofing and publishing 2 chapters a week with average lengths of around 10k words was exhausting. But for the first 8 of those weeks I had Din Djarin on the screen (intermittently *ahem* but this isn’t a post about the quality of s3) and for the rest of the year I had my readers leaving comments and sending messages, and it was… overwhelmingly the best year of my life.

I mean that. The best year. Ever. Because of you. Any of you, all of you, if you’ve ever even just clicked on my fic and given it chance, you’ve raised the hits on it. Even seeing that metric tick up has made me so thankful.

Because I didn’t think I could write. I always wanted to be an author but never believed in myself.

I did an English degree with writing in mind, but told myself nobody ever does anything with an English degree. I took creative writing modules, and when the published author who ran the class gave me scathing feedback, my dream fully died. I got an okay grade, hardly anything to be proud of, and I graduated and went to work in another industry.

I suffered from clinical depression.

One day many years later, I found a favourite author online and messaged him to ask when his fourth novel in a series was being published, and (emboldened by the anonymity of being online) cheekily offered to proofread it for him. Except he took me seriously and sent me the prologue to see what I could do. Like, for a real book you can buy on Amazon. After feeling sick for two whole days I went all Autistic Obsession on it and sent him back the most thoroughly proofed bit of writing anyone had ever seen. And I got the job. (I say ‘job’, I’d volunteered for free in exchange for the privilege of reading it in advance, so I can only ever call it semi-professional since I didn’t earn from it).

This, amongst other things, lifted me from my depression. I came off the pills and felt happier, more creative. Once the proofing was completed, the author encouraged me to write my own stuff, but whilst I’d gained some confidence… my brain was empty. I had no clamouring stories to get down on the page, no gems ready to polish.

Then in summer 2021, a friend sat me down and showed me the first 3 episodes of the Mandalorian. And my brain chemistry was instantly altered. I binge-watched the first two seasons, by the end of which I was unequivocally in love with Din Djarin, and then I binge-watched them again.

Around that time, I moved to a different country. Well, Wales is still the UK, but it’s a different country to England, and I was now 170 miles away from my friends. I went because as a single woman on a middling salary, London is too expensive to live in and having rid myself of an overbearing long term relationship, I was NOT keen to get into another one just to pay the bills. The pandemic meant I could work remotely, so I upped sticks and moved to Cardiff, resolving to visit my office in London (and my friends) once a month. It’s 2 hours by train, totally doable.

So what to do with all the spare time I suddenly had?

By Easter 2022 I’d started writing. 9 months later (yes, it’s my actual baby), Be-All And Endor was complete and I began publishing alongside season 3’s release.

Now… it has over 62.k views and 1.2k kudos 🥹🤯

Did I think it would be this popular? No way. I can’t even believe it now. I still see SO much wrong with it, which is why I’m still proofreading and editing it.

A professional proofread/edit takes a long time, and if you’re wondering what I’m doing to it, it involves the following:

Checking for things like clichés, non-inclusive language

Checking all adverbs to see if a better word can be used (e.g. ‘bellows’ instead of ‘shouts loudly’… adverbs usually end in -ly and it’s not good to overuse them)

Rephrasing any passive sentences (simply put: ‘the ship is flown by Din’ is passive; ‘Din flies the ship’ is active)

Reducing average sentence length (shorter sentences are easier to read)

Going through every single damn polysyllabic word (e.g. anything that has more than 3-syllables) and seeing if a shorter synonym can be found (this helps the rhythm, as too many long words slows things down and can make readers stumble… and I use them a lot 😖)

Checking the 50 most frequently used words and seeing if I can find synonyms for those (helps give more variety in the language)

Ensuring Din’s name isn’t overused or underused, and adding epithets (e.g. ‘the hunter’ or ‘your Mandalorian’) where it’s overused but it’s too confusing to just say ‘he’/‘him’

These are the big things, but there’s more too - I’m streamlining decisions I made to use certain phrasings throughout; tweaking Din’s word choice here and there to ensure his voice is captured the best way possible; revamping some of the photos. And with all the tiny tweaks, it’s slowly padding things out too… when publishing was done it was 393k, now it’s 403k, although it’s not extra content as such, just better described.

I’m up to chapter 13 so far, and I’ll probably be doing this for another 2 years to get through all 40, because (a) I want to write other things too so that slows down the proofing, and (b) I so badly want to be proud of this project… everyone’s telling me I should be, and I am in a way… but it’s more gratitude to others than pride in myself… and I feel like if I get this proofing done and finally have a story I’m truly happy with, I can at last let myself be proud of what I achieved here.

I confess, I’m so envious of those who can post something without obsessing over it. I know it’s a facet of my autism, and I’ve long since accepted that my neurodivergent brain will not let me be cool about things other people are cool about. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that I should turn it to my advantage, so okay… I’m gonna make this fic the same quality as a published book on your bookshelf. And meanwhile I’m gonna enjoy and love all the fics that people can write and publish with far greater speed than I can, because the greatest thing about this fandom is that every contribution is worthy of appreciation, no matter the author’s experience or writing method. Quality fic isn’t synonymous with proofreading, and I hope it’s clear that I’m describing my obsession with perfecting my own writing, not other people’s. I’ve read so many amazing authors on here, and I want them all to know how much I love their work (any recs are from the bottom of my heart).

So anyway, this long and rambling post has turned into something unintended… I guess you now have some insight into my mind and the origins of Be-All And Endor and the future of it. Not what I meant to do, but I’ll leave it in for context.

Because the real reason I started writing this diatribe was because I wanted to express my true and undying gratitude to everyone who has ever read, commented, or left kudos on my fic over on AO3, and/or messaged me, followed me, interacted with me, or reblogged my masterlist here on tumblr 🧡💚

I know I am insanely lucky to have received the level of support I have, and I don’t take that for granted at all. I want to give back to this fandom, and I love reading and reccing other people’s fics, meeting new moots, and hopefully soon I’ll be publishing new fics for you all to read too. Fresh material is percolating, so it won’t be too long now.

So thank you to everyone who reads this post, you’re the absolute best and I love you more than I have the vocabulary to describe. Please accept a grateful forehead kiss instead 💋

#well this was longer than intended #but we all know brevity isn’t my strong suit #cannot express how much i love you all #so i rambled and i hope my gratitude comes across in there somewhere #thank you for supporting me #the mandalorian #din djarin #din djarin x reader #mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #mando #mandalorian x reader #mando x reader

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destinygoldenstar · 2 months

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I Analyzed The Ninjago Movie Instead Of Sleeping

I have real mixed feelings on this movie. But not for the reasons you might think from a fan of the TV show.

The movie didn’t NEED to be connected to the show. And it clearly wasn’t trying to.

It was meant to be an AU in a way.

(If you look at the behind the scenes one of their original rewrites was a plot of them going back in time to save Lloyd’s dad from becoming the villainous figure he is in the present day.)

So I can forgive the inaccuracy so long as it could stand on its own as a proper story.

It doesn’t do that.

If you DON’T compare it to the show:

You got a movie with SOME good jokes, amazing animation, (SERIOUSLY THIS MOVIE LOOKS BEAUTIFUL AND VISUALS ALONE ARE A CHEFS KISS TO ME) but is so strangely paced that it feels like the movie starts at the middle of the story and never shows the beginning, and feels like a completely different movie halfway through, and is also very choppily edited.

(I even double checked a clip of the movie just to prove my point there: When Lloyd uses all his dragon mech weapons on Garmadon, they play the exact same sound effect and explosion, just with different angles, SIX TIMES. FSM WAS THAT EDITOR HUNG OVER WHEN DOING THEIR JOB THAT DAY?! And that’s just one example I’ve got. I think this was the first time EVER when I was in a movie theater and I distinctly remember asking “What is wrong with the editing here? Who thought this was good editing?? Who thought this was appropriate in any way???” So I thank this movie for giving me such a memory and making me value good editing.)

You also got a world that isn’t very well fleshed out, characters that the movie chooses to not focus on except the main character and the main villain. And you got a movie that tells its audience it’s okay to forgive your parents that neglected you and are active terrorists even if they earned or done absolutely no redemption whatsoever.

I mean Garmadon in this movie BETRAYS them and leaves them to rot so he could terrorize the city again at the end. Then gets eaten by the cat. Then Lloyd forgives him. Idk what more you want me to say.

I’m not gonna act like Crystalized did it any better though. Pick your poison.

But then you got fans of the show. The people who watched the show since kids (that includes me). Who are naturally bias towards the shows lore and characterization…

OOOOOOHHH boy…

I don’t hate EVERY portrayal of the ninja in the movie as much as other people. I actually think there’s some good ideas for an AU version of these characters here. Problem is the movie never does anything with them.

Well, I say I don’t hate every portrayal, the one I truly cannot stand is Zane’s.

There’s just so much wrong with how they portrayed Zane that it just does not work. Not as an adaptation of the character. Not in any way that makes sense for this universe and is actually kinda insulting.

There’s no other robots in this city. (Like there are in the show) Why is Zane the only one and why is he in high school? Why would Wu ever pick a robot to be a ninja?

In the show the reason is pretty simple: Wu didn’t know at the time.

But everyone knows in the movie. What’s movie Wu’s excuse?

There’s also in terms of personality.

Keep in mind later seasons of the show have the same issues, so I’m talking about what it was at the time of the movie.

Zane’s whole robot identity is crucial to his character. The show introduced him as ‘the strange one’. As he couldn’t understand social cues, took things very seriously, didn’t share the same sense of humor as the rest of the team, had a hard time displaying his emotions, and bonded with things the others didn’t and excelled at certain areas like cooking.

He’s a character that connected to a lot of neurodivergent people in the audience who could relate to him. No he’s not intentional autistic rep, but one that definitely mattered to the people that headcannoned him as such.

(Also helps that they introduce other robot characters later that clearly don’t have the same characteristics he does. So really it depends on what you see.)

So the reveal that he was a robot was such a huge deal to not just the plot but to him as he finally got a concrete definition of what he is and who he is. And the show NEVER decides to say “You know, it would be so much better if you were a human!”

“Why can’t you just be normal?!”

That’s part of why I personally can’t stand fics that make Zane human. It just doesn’t feel right to me and misses the point of the character.

While I absolutely did not expect the movie to cover his… really heavy backstory with his inventor/father and how he outlived him, then got his memory and sense of identity wiped by him moments before death, which was meant to be an act of sympathy but would actually harm Zane’s mentality for the entire show…

The movie didn’t need to adapt that. For all we know, movie Zane could have a very happy backstory. And that would be fine. All I wanted was for the identity-seeking aspect of Zane’s character to matter in some way.

It didn’t.

The jokes they use for Zane in this movie are that of “Haha, he’s a robot. Isn’t it so funny that he doesn’t understand humanity very well?”

You know, something that in one episode of the show was portrayed as a BAD THING for people to think that of him! And that those people needed to learn to respect him for who he is!

And that’s the ONLY thing they do with him. Just robot jokes. Very stereotypical robot jokes.

Again, later seasons of the show are guilty of this too. So I will not act like the show is perfect.

For the reasons I listed, these are actually far more offensive and harmful than you think. Especially fans of the show watching the movie. Him being the only robot in this movie world makes me think even more that this actually is autistic coding… and that makes it so much worse.

Zane being a robot being equal to autism is its own discussion. And has its own problems on paper alone. Whether or not this is your headcanon of him, and whether or not you think this is good representation either way is up to your feelings and experiences. (Personally I think it’s better than some live action shows attempting this)

The others don’t even seem to trust or want to be around him that much. The others seem annoyed by him half the time. Like they’re only tolerating him because he’s on their team. Yeah they don’t say that but simple looks and gestures are enough to get that impression. And not once does anyone ever express Zane’s value in their team. That’s the ONE thing that would’ve had me forgive this all.

But there’s my rant. The others?

Jay is mostly fine. I think this personality for the movie is a neat AU concept. Yes show Jay is openly terrified of things and awkward, but if there’s something he wasn’t was SHY.

Movie Jay is a shy and nervous wreck. And you know what? For a high school AU, I think it works. It doesn’t erase Jay’s essence entirely. They at the very least kept the detail of his character that he’s a fast learner.

I appreciate that.

Cole is actually a REALLY interesting concept to me with the AU idea they gave.

On the surface it’s just ‘He’s a DJ and willingly old school’

But if you see the show, this is actually an ODD approach. Because show Cole has a very complicated relationship with music.

In the show, Cole’s parents thrived in singing and dancing. His father specifically was a performer that won several awards with his band ‘The Royal Blacksmiths’. After Cole’s mother passed away, his father proceeded to push his ideals and his passions onto his kid and pressuring him to become another version of him. It got stressful enough that Cole ran away from home and resented music, something that used to be a bond of family for them, and that’s where Wu found him and made him a ninja.

Throughout the show, Cole would open up to music again more, but it’s pretty gradual and a very subtle bit of character development for him throughout the show. He doesn’t need to say “I hate making music” to get the point across. He only starts the music route again whenever it has something to do with making a family member, blood or not, happy.

So movie Cole is interesting to me for that reason. Because at the start, he basically IS a mini Lou. His whole thing is music and it’s heavily reflected on his personality.

To the point where his element in the movie isn’t even animated or portrayed as earth like it’s supposed to, instead it’s… sound waves?

Weird choice. Interesting one though cause maybe that’s just how movie Cole functions.

So it’s “Oh, what if Cole DID follow in his fathers footsteps and DID want to become a musician?”

Very interesting approach for a completely different approach of character development.

But the problem? Just like the others, not utilized.

But I do think this was an interesting AU idea. Is it accurate to the show version of the character? No. But that’s kind of the point I think.

Then there’s the RGB siblings. This is where it gets kinda weird for me.

Thanks to the movie, a lot of my friends mistook Kai and Nya for being twins.

They are not twins in the show. Kai is older.

I don’t think that dents their characters too much in the movie so long as the same points were across. They’re the blood related brother and sister who raised themselves when their parents abandoned them, and climbed out of the ashes to protect each other, and found a new expansion on their family that didn’t have to be blood related to count.

These two, in different ways, are the support of the team and especially Lloyd. They’re usually the lancer characters that Lloyd goes to when he can.

I still say that about Nya even though originally, she was NOT a ninja, but rather was a Samurai with a mech of her own invention that acted as a Tuxedo Mask for the ninja. She didn’t become the water ninja until Season 5.

Which… I know the movie takes heavy inspiration from the first two seasons, the beginning, so for those who haven’t seen the show watching the movie… yikes I feel bad about the lack of a spoiler warning. Same goes for Zane being a robot.

But I think that’s also a factor into Kai, at the former half of this show, (again I’m talking pre-movie with this). He was the first character we were introduced to and we’re following in the show before Lloyd ever showed up. So naturally he’d be the one with the most attention to supporting the Green Ninja. Something that was very vital character development for him individually as well.

He’s the old school one. He’s the cool one. He’s the one who looks out for you even if you don’t want them to. He’s the one that will jump to anything without thinking. He’s also the one with the most value in tradition out of the ninja, as a blacksmith instead of a techie and as a traditional sword fighter rather than a fancy complicated weapon. He doesn’t get involved in tech willingly till he learns Twitter is a thing.

And in the movie, I think they took this characterization and said “Eh, give it to the girl instead.”

So most of show Kai’s character traits are now movie Nya’s. She’s the cool one with the most passion for traditional stories, she’s the one with arguably the most talks with Lloyd to calm him, and she’s pretty loud and brash in personality.

Not saying show Nya is not those things, she is. But the difference in the show was that Nya was HUGE on independence and doing her own thing. Being the only woman and a younger sibling in the main cast is actually a big deal to her. Not wanting to have her destiny be decided by the world or her brother as a damsel in distress or a sacrifice, she took to tech to invent her own ways of helping. Her own character.

Until destiny told her “Actually no, you can’t be the person you want to be. You have to stick to tradition that your mother had and be the water ninja.”

That’s… honestly a very brutally honest message that not a lot of people I see give credit for. Cause yes, expressing yourself and being your own person and being able to make your own fate is amazing… but it’s not always possible.

Sometimes you can’t be the person you want. Sometimes the world just will not let you. That doesn’t mean your identity is worthless, though. If you go with the flow, you can actually find that fate has plans for you that might not suck after all.

Basically a ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ messaging there.

It’s part of why Nya’s whole thing throughout the show is her starting as a damsel trying to reinvent herself and her stereotype, and ending as a willing sacrifice and death of her whole identity that she doesn’t regret because she’s embraced the flow of life and purpose. Even if she forgets herself in the realm of spirituality, her loves one’s never will.

…Until Crystalized undid ALL of that. BUT LETS NOT.

Movie Nya just really isn’t any of that. She’s basically just her brother.

Which… I’m actually fine with. The show has some bumps in the road in execution of her story anyway. And they want the only female of this team to not be a background character cause that’s look bad. I totally understand that. And her being a sibling to Kai makes me forgive it a whole lot more cause it does make sense.

But again, we don’t know what their lives are like or if they have similar backstories to theirs in the show at all.

But where does that leave Kai?

Well his whole character in the movie seems to basically be “I’m the loud one and a complete klutz and meathead.”

Basically TD Tyler.

It’s a personality in the movie that bled in the show post movie. While I personally think it was not THAT bad in the show, Secrets of the Forbidden Spinjitsu made me go “Okay. I understand now.”

As for movie Kai, that’s really about it.

It really was an early indicator of just giving Kai’s character traits to other characters. Before the show was visibly doing it.

Cause movie Lloyd is also basically just Kai but with a different backstory and context to situation. But honestly, I DO see what they were going for here.

As the ONLY ninja to get ANY focus, this version of Lloyd is well explained on what his life is.

In the show, he’s an abandoned child in an abusive boarding school who heavily idolizes his father, Lord Garmadon, and runs away to become a super villain. Only for Destiny to tell him not to, and we see his true colors and that he just wanted his family together and to love him. Something that was… hard. Considering who Garmadon is.

That is actually carried into the movie. Just cut out him running away. Here’s the difference.

Show Lloyd loves his dad and refuses to hurt him until he has to. While he is the Green Ninja, he didn’t resent himself being Garmadon’s son. What he resented was the destiny that took them apart.

Movie Lloyd HATES his dad for abandoning him, terrorizing the city, making said city cancel him for EXISTING, and he wants every excuse to shut this man out of his life forever.

That does make sense. And to the movie’s credit, the movie logic DOES work to make this version of Lloyd make sense.

It makes the movie pretty mean spirited and kinda unpleasant at times. But it works for the story.

I described Lloyd as ‘The Emo Child’. In the show. But that’s two words.

Emo. CHILD.

He’s still a kid. He’s still the youngest. He still has his own child-like wonder of the world and the aspirations that of a child would.

Yeah he’s a lot of angst. But he’s also a sweet kid who deserves hugs.

That’s not very apparent in movie Lloyd. Not that it needs to fit movie context.

But because we never see how the ninja in the movie got together, we have no idea why Lloyd even accepted being the Green Ninja in the first place. He even says in the movie that he’d give it up if it meant he didn’t have to be Garmadon’s son.

Movie Lloyd is the only ninja in this movie with an actual character arc. He resents his dad, tries to be rid of him, only to get consequences for it, goes on a quest to fix his mistake, bonds with his dad to learn he’s… sympathetic? I guess?? And in the end forgives his dad and chooses to let him in his life again.

Simple. Fine. It works on Lloyds end just fine. And I have to give credit for the movie making Lloyd resenting Garmadon more logical than Crystalized ever did.

It’s Garmadon’s end that just makes the whole thing a bad message in the end of ‘forgive your abusers.’

Yes he’s funny. That doesn’t undo his actions.

No it’s not undone in the show either, but at least you can buy the forgiveness there because every character knew that he had no choice.

In the show, Garmadon is the Oni Child of the FSM. Thus all it took was for another Oni creature, the Great Devourer, to trigger his blood and FORCE him into the evil role without his consent. It forced him to do nasty things to his loved ones and the land his dad created, and by the time he became his evil form, he was forcefully stripped away from all of his loved ones and a chance at normal life. So the only way he could ever get that back was to turn the world into his own image, thus having the world become him too. A monster.

The show made it abundantly clear that most of Garmadon’s evil deeds are either out of ambition for what he deems as helping the family, or not his fault at all due to snake venom influence.

I THINK the movie also has this because they do address him getting bit and becoming the creature he appears as in both versions.

Better than nothing I guess.

But then you get his ‘sympathetic backstory’ which is pretty much just a love story between him and Koko-

Yeah Lloyds moms name is actually different in both versions. And in role.

Misako abandoned her child to try and solve the destiny crisis, then returned to his life to help her kid out.

Koko remained a mother to her kid and supported him even when everyone hated him.

These are very different characters basically, and which one you prefer is up to you. Personally… I actually prefer the movie. I do think the mom was the one character that the movie actually improved upon. Especially with a very interesting story for her.

In the show, Misako is a researcher and just the fair maiden figure that Wu and Garmadon fell in love with. To which she chose Garmadon because of Wu’s letter that Garmadon forged his name on… it’s complicated.

In the movie, she was actually a fighter as well and took a part of the wars Garmadon was in. She enjoyed the thrill of the fight and fell in love with her opponent in a pretty cute montage.

But then they had a baby and her reality changed, realizing she could not raise her child on the battlefield. And when Garmadon refused to change his mind, she took Lloyd and left him behind. So she could be a mother.

Explains her actions in the movie all throughout very well and I never got lost when it came to her. She’s probably the one character in the movie I felt the most sorry for. She’s such a sweet parent and her interactions with Lloyd are probably the best parts of the movie. I wanna hug her.

But that’s all that’s shown of Garmadon. Apparently Garmadon was oppressed, but that’s told at the end and not shown or been significant at all.

They don’t hate you cause you look funky. They hate you cause YOU TERRORIZE THEIR CITY ON A DAILY BASIS AND SHOOT PEOPLE OUT OF A VOLCANO

Yeah show Garmadon did similar stuff, but again, WASNT HIS CHOICE.

Here, it’s absolutely his choice cause nothing indicated otherwise.

Garmadon doesn’t even PROCESS his kids existence or his own negligence three quarters of the time. And you expect me to buy a redemption from him?

You know, I’d be fine with it if he was just a one dimensional villain and the story of the movie was about Lloyd putting his energy away from a family that doesn’t care about him and more towards a surrogate one he has.

But no. You gotta have Lloyd forgive Garmadon and have Garmadon redeemed.

Cause that’s what the show did.

Even though this is supposed to be an AU not connected to the show so we can do whatever we want.

The most they do for Garmadon’s redemption is force him to be the mentor after Wu got yeeted off a bridge by a butterfly, have him go “Oh yeah, I DID shoot people out of a volcano!”, teach his son how to catch, and tell his son his backstory.

(Speaking if, Wu to me is basically the same. Just different voice actor delivery. I got nothing to say on him)

And then if that IS redemption, then he failed it. Because he offers Lloyd to be his general when they take over the city again, showing he’s learned nothing. Then when Lloyd says no, he steals their magic weapons and ditches them in a temple leaving them to DIE. Then he goes to terrorize the city again.

What redemption. /s

Again, this was all HIS choice. If it was not and if it was snake venom, they couldn’t at least give a visual cue or address it?

And now LLOYD has to apologize?

NO. LLOYD WAS RIGHT. THERES ABSOLUTELY NO REASON WHY HE SHOULD LET HIS DAD INTO HIS LIFE. THE DAD HIMSELF PROVED THAT.

It just paints an unintentional bad message of ‘you have to forgive your abusers’

I’m sorry but Lloyd doesn’t owe this Garmadon anything.

I do like Lloyd’s VA delivery though, and the speech about green being the color of life. I actually like the idea of Lloyds power being his heart. Yeah it’s not flashy powers like in the show, but for an AU, it’s a really cool idea and I wish they used it more.

I have mixed feelings on the celebrity casting. Did I expect the original voice actors? No. But this casting wasn’t awful.

Garmadon’s VA is amazing in this movie. Jackie Chan as Wu is very subjective I feel, love it or hate it. Nya and Jay’s were really good too. I think the only one that didn’t work for me was Kai’s VA. Just… why does this teenager sound like a 50 year old man??

But honestly, I think the thing that got to me the most about the movie was something I praised about the show not too long ago.

The bond between the ninja.

I talked about how the show is a master class at character dynamics. There is almost no point where the characters are just standing there in one big clunk. Someone is saying something, someone is making a comment, someone is doing something, and it’s usually there for others to see and react to. It’s a very small thing, but it keeps the scenes alive and fresh the whole time and helps the audience be sold on the characters bond.

They don’t wait for the scenes of “Okay it’s time for characters to interact”. They just do it all the time.

And guess what the movie did? They’re just there in one big chunk all the time. With “okay it’s time for characters to interact” bits.

It’s one thing to not explore the other ninja at all. It’s another to ignore their bond.

In the show, they’re a found family. They all had rough upbringings in life and find a new sense of purpose in each other.

That’s NEVER emphasized in the movie except for one speech at the end Lloyd makes. Mostly cause we don’t know the other ninjas lives, and we don’t know how they even got together. Cause as I said, the movie starts at the middle, and awkwardly cuts after Garmadon is forgiven to be the end. We don’t know what it is about THIS ninja team that we should care about. It’s not shown.

All were shown is them being a team by circumstance only. Then Lloyd pulls out the cat laser and the cat nearly kills them. Then they hate Lloyd for it and spend the rest of the movie making fun of Lloyd.

Which yeah they make fun of each other in the show too, but where it ended in the show was playful teasing in the middle of moments that showed they cared about each other. And when one bond between two or more of them was broken, you felt it.

Here? I don’t know that and there isn’t anything besides the high school montage to show they cared. Just some comments about “Oh it’s okay Lloyd, it’s just awkward that your dad is a terrorist”. And then they make fun of Lloyds expense.

It’s mean spirited. It makes me think they don’t like each other. And it’s not like they ever apologize for it. They’re just teammates because Wu said so. They’re just tolerating Lloyd cause Wu said so.

Honestly the bloopers for this movie show more personality and more of this bond than the entire movie does.

…OOF that took awhile. I don’t even know why I did this, I just didn’t feel like sleeping. Uh… you read this, congrats. Idk why you did.

58 notes · View notes

xoxotifia · 2 months

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OCTONAUTS HEADCANONS + canon sprinkles

-ˋˏ ༻ ♡ ༺ ˎˊ-

CAPTAIN BARNACLES

— mid 30s or late 30s

— has been the Captain for 15–20 years; became Captain around the age of 20

— the tallest and strongest of the crew

— Canadian; seen from his room decoration where he had a banner called ‘MV Manitoba’ and his sister Bianca and her cubs—Orson & Ursa—live in Northern Canada (Arctic region)

— sometime after he graduated Polar Scouts he got a position on a ship— MV Manitoba; it is very likely that he met Tweak on this ship

— adding: the ship, probably, crashed during a big storm, and he moved back to the Arctic to train Tracker; if you look closely, Barnacles tends to become more tense during storms

— blames himself if one of his crew gets hurt

— autistic? probably

— polar bears shed their fur, so he sheds a LOT since his location changes all the time (headcanons here)

— very fluffy when his winter coat is fully grown, looks smaller when it’s fully shed

— adding: everyone on the Octopod has had that first summer when they are just in shock because the Captain suddenly looks so much smaller, and especially Peso freaked out

— the crew’s Dad™; everyone on the crew (expect maybe prof. Inkling) sees him as a father figure (especially Peso and Dashi)

— everyone but Inkling has slipped up and called him dad by accident at least once

— sees Natquik as his father figure (gave him a father’s day present as a cub once and they both cried)

— speaking of father’s day, the crew gives him a father’s day present every year (as a thank you, of course, nothing else) (he cries when he gets into his room, he loves his kids crew)

— too self-sacrificing for his own good; has given Peso a heart attack multiple times /hj

— scolds Kwazii for being reckless but does pretty stupid sh*t himself (see above)

— likes mint chocolate and mint-flavored things in general

— loves hot chocolate

— favorite flavor of kelp cake is chocolate

— so basically this man likes chocolate a lot (just like me fr)

— secretly a huge cuddle bug; when he visits his family in the Arctic and stays the night or two, he cuddles with Bianca and the cubs

— sleeps with a picture of him and Bianca under his pillow to not feel too homesick

— keeps a picture of the crew on him at all times, usually on his Octo-Compass

— would be the best father the ocean has ever seen and no I don’t take criticism

— literally has Dad Lore™; when he’s old, he might just drop some random facts or some stuff that happened that no one knew very casually and shock everyone

— this is canon, but I’m putting it anyway: claustrophobic and has PTSD

— in need of therapy (canon) and a break (canon²)

— mr. “hurt? no I’m fine, just doing my job!”

— basically it’s like “are you okay?” “I’m fine” *as he’s literally bleeding out*

— book smart but also street smart, yet also a little stupid (affectionate) at the same time

— understands most modern lingo but loves using it incorrectly just to mess with the rest of the crew (Inkling joins him sometimes) .

— adding: jokingly said “me-me” once in a super serious tone and earned the wrath of the crew (except Inkling who didn’t see the problem and it caused a whole argument)

— LOVES cold and snow and ice; that being said, he deals with a hot climate, but not for very long

— great immune system, but if he gets sick, boy he is SICK (Peso will literally have to tie him to the bed because he refuses to rest)

— is severely injured a couple of times a year, typically due to selflessness

— overall very reluctant to seek medical help and attention because he’s fine what do you mean

— polar bears are the most carnivorous of the bear family, so he eats a lot of meat

— very careful when helping small creatures because he’s huge and doesn’t want to hurt them; constantly worried he’d crush them .

— stands with his claws facing backwards and kneels down when talking to creatures smaller than him (both canon) to make them feel less intimidated, which he learned in the Polar Scouts (Tracker does it too)

— doesn’t know how to handle being flirted with (if he even realizes it, which he probably doesn’t)

— Peso and him are Cold Weather Buddies™

— Tunip is his Emotional Support Vegimal™ (either doesn’t know or realize)

— has a great singing voice and definitely sings in the shower

— has the deepest voice of the crew and in the morning it sometimes scares them due to how deep it is all of a sudden (Kwazii once joked Barnacles was being possessed)

— gives the BEST (bear) hugs

— maybe on the ace spectrum (no I’m definitely not projocting what are you talking about /hj)

— doesn’t really share his backstory, & only shares some of his more fond memories of the Polar Scouts

— Natquik is the only one who has seen him lose his temper / have a full-on breakdown

— loves playing the accordion (canon); though unfortunately, has trouble playing it well (he’s doing his best—also am I the only one who likes it??)

— his other (canon) hobbies include writing in his Captain’s log, exercising, making shadow puppet shows, singing sea shanties, dancing to music with the Vegimals, building models and drawing

— an oceanographer and a map finder (canon)

— his Octo-Compass, while a small device, is multi-functional; it was a gift from Tweak

— has many embarrassing stories from his youth that he WON’T share and he forbids Bianca from telling anyone from his crew

— chubby; when someone’s truly muscular, they are going to be a bit chubby, and with the density of muscle mass Barnacles must have due to his level of strength, he’s going to obviously be a bit more chubby

— big as in “Big Beefy Polar Bear”

— has GIANT fluffy paws; sometimes, when the crew compares paw sizes with him they are just... smol (& also generally compared to him)

— listens to The Wellerman a lot

— possibly the highest pain tolerance out of the crew and Octo-Agents

— knows Russian because of Natquik

— a part of his brain is always awake, causing him to be alert at all times (kinda reminds me of Mad-Eye Moody’s CONSTANT VIGILANCE)

— canon, but sees Octopod as ‘home’ 🩵

-ˋˏ ༻ ♡ ༺ ˎˊ-

KWAZII

— late 20s (he’s referred to as Kwazii Kitten)

— sleeps with a slightly worn teddy bear that has an eye patch (it was a gift from Calico Jack)

— has ADHD and Dyslexia

— also has heterochromia, a green eye and a brown eye, and the green eye is covered

— cannot stay still, literally has to move or he feels like he’ll explode right then and there

— the most acrobatic of the crew

— probably gay or pan

— FTM trans 🏳‍⚧

— adding: bonds with Tweak and Tominnow

— likes dressing up in costumes, especially dresses because f*ck gender roles

— half-Caribbean (dad’s side)

— was abandoned / disowned by his family because he wasn’t the “traditional” kind of pirate and was instead kind and such

— like already said, is not like the rest of his family ; but does look up to his grandfather, Calico Jack, a role model of his

— sometimes gets sad that some creatures get scared of him since he’s a pirate but it’s part of his identity and he doesn’t want to throw it away either

— one of Barnacles’ closest friends and would die for him (as if Barnacles would let it happen, but hypothetically speaking)

— sees Tweak as a sister figure and will go to her if he needs a quick pat on the back (here)

— sees Peso as a brother and teases him but if someone so much as looks at Peso wrong? he’s getting out his sword

— even if he doesn’t always listen when given orders, he looks up to Barnacles (both figuratively and literally) and has a lot of respect for him, just like the entire crew

— unlike Barnacles, Kwazii’s like: “are you okay?” “no I’m literally f*cking dying” *as he’s perfectly fine*

— is in the Sick Bay a lot; usually because he did something stupid/reckless and got hurt

— great immune system but still manages to get sick easier than, for example, Barnacles

— an orange cat (iykyk)

— very cat-like and out of the crew he acts most like the animal he is

— he loafs; once in the HQ on top of Dashi’s workstation and she just pushed him off (he hissed at her, in a playful manner of course)

— has a bad habit of chewing on stuff and accidentally leaving his stuff everywhere

— sheds a bit too and used to let Barnacles borrow his shedding brush

— adding: eventually just got him his own as a gift because lord knows the Captain needs it (it’s definitely one of the ones that release the brushed fur in neat circles) .

— used to curse but due to Barnacles’ wishes he came up with variations (‘shiver me whiskers!’)

— starts singing sea shanties out of nowhere; pretty good singer, actually

— has a music box that plays sea shanties

— writes the pirate stories he has heard down into one, big book of pirate tales

— likes telling stories and sometimes holds a story-telling night with the Vegimals

— adding: sometimes Paani joins them

— speaking of Paani, they sometimes bake together; it’s... a bit of a disaster, though

— quotes Vines on a daily basis (with Dashi finishing some of them for him)

— has a gold earring with the Octopod engraved on the back (see here)

— loves storms, exploring, general excitement and swashbuckling

— watches Pirates of the Caribbean movies

— one of the first to know about Barnacles’ claustrophobia

— the prank master; every april’s fools day is just everyone mostly trying to avoid Kwazii

— adding: the only one who manages to succesfully prank Kwazii is Tweak

— hot-blooded and considered to be one of the bravest of the Octonauts, but does have arachnophobia and has a soft heart for cute small animals, especially the babies

— hates the cold and thinks Barnacles and Peso must have lost their minds whenever they’re enjoying the cold weather; it’s the Caribbean side of him talking

— speaks with a Cockney accent and a typical sea ferrying dialect

— adding: was slightly insecure about being a pirate, and so everyone started also saying “aye!” instead of yes to make him feel better (it worked) and then it just ✨stuck✨

— has retractable claws, sharp cat teeth and paw beans coloured yellow like his muzzle

— knows how to pick locks with his claws

— has scars! likes to call them battle scars; basically it’s like *gets a wound* “sick, a new scar :D”

— definitely has some sort of trauma

— plays the recorder, drums and bass guitar

— hobbies include collecting treasures in his room, playing with / chewing on yarn, taking catnaps, watering his catnip plant, practicing cat-fu, lifting weights, & knitting / crocheting scarves (sometimes with the Vegimals)

— has a hair-ball collection (which he hides)

— knows how to find secret passageways and how to identify them

-ˋˏ ༻ ♡ ༺ ˎˊ-

PESO

— early 30s (like, c’mon, he’s a doctor and went to medical school, be fr)

— maybe more like a paramedic; he gives medical care in an emergency

— also the newest recruit on the Octopod

— shortest, if we don’t count the Vegimals

— Chilean (a part of Antarctica belongs to Chile) .

— knows different languages other than English, like Spanish and a bit of Latin

— as already said, him and Barnacles are Cold Weather Buddies™

— loves cold and snow and ice

— cannot handle heat for a long time

— from a large family of penguins; he likes having that kind of family because they all look out for each other

— adding: though it’s possible that growing up in such a big family / around many other penguins he got compared to them quite a bit and/or never fully got to shine

— sometimes mixes up names and gets everyone confused, himself included

— has always tried to be a good example for his younger brother, Pinto

— has a little round stone that he hangs on to ‘just in case’ (some penguins give round stones to the other penguin that they want to mate with—adorable)

— speaking of rocks, he collects them religiously

— has anxiety, but manages it just fine

— was very dependent on others and always compared himself to his friends / the rest of the crew (mainly Barnacles and Kwazii) .

— adding: has become more confident in his skills and himself overall over time

— best friends with Shellington and Kwazii

— idolizes Barnacles, but also looks up to Kwazii because of his braveness (even if it’s mostly Kwazii being reckless than anything else)

— Barnacles is like a father figure to him .

— gets really worried when one of the crew (*cough* Barnacles, Kwazii, Shellington *cough*) end up in the Sick Bay

— very shy and gets easily scared by Kwazii’s spooky stories but is brave when needed

— adding: bravery isn’t not being scared, it’s doing what you need to while scared—which is exactly what Peso does (“courage isn’t the absence of fear, but rather acting in spite of it” and Peso is the epitome of that)

— loves playing the xylophone & is good at it

— great listener and an awesome comforter; also the crew’s unofficial therapist™

— definitely a good cuddler, I mean come on, look at him! he looks so soft

— would (aggressively) support you if you came out to him

— preens sometimes, just sort of fixing up his feathers and some (Kwazii) of the crew are like ‘why are you stabbing yourself??’

— adding: Shellington explains it every time and Peso tries not to laugh

— super fast swimmer (“I’m fast as f boiiii—”)

— flaps when he’s happy and sometimes does a little dance too

— often studies when he’s not busy; sometimes with Shellington

-ˋˏ ༻ ♡ ༺ ˎˊ-

SHELLINGTON

— early 30s (younger than Pearl), older than Peso

— also collects rocks (though not as much as Peso)

— is not only allergic to sea urchins (which is, of course, canon) but also certain mussels

— autistic; one of his stims (besides “jumpin’ jellyfish!”) is shaking his hands excitedly

— Scottish (yes I know otters don’t live there but idc, he and Pearl were born there end of discussion)

— probably pan

— awkward and clumsy but very sweet

— is in the Sick Bay a lot; usually because he accidentally hurt himself in the Lab

— owns a pop-up bed in his laboratory, which he barely uses

— adding: messed up sleep schedule pt.1

— sometimes sleeps with the Vegimals like stuffed animals (they don’t mind)

— has a little plushie he holds hands with at night just like otters hold hands in real life

— sleeps with a picture of him and Pearl under his pillow

— facetimes Pearl and Periwinkle every week or Pearl facetimes him

— gives Tweak anxiety when he’s driving a Gup because as we all know, he can’t drive

— fascinated by the way Kwazii drives Gups and is determinded to learn how to drive

— besides marine biology, he also has an interest in linguistics which would be how he learned to understand Vegimalese and other creatures even when they’re like muffling or have their mouths full (see this post)

— knows Latin (bro’s a scientist, c’mon)

— when he finally learned Vegimalese, he cried and almost squished the Vegimals

— has a preference for kelp cakes and clam sandwiches

— likes to top his kelp cakes with hot sauce; however, too much upsets his stomach

— adding: the rest of the crew looks at him like he’s a madman everytime he does that, but then brush it off as “he’s a scientist, he knows what he’s doing” he indeed does not

— favourite kelp cake is watermelon

— some of his talents include playing the harp and the piano, golfing, drawing, being humorous, crashing the Gups (it is a talent at this point) and identifying different creatures

— his hobbies include drinking tea, polishing his clam collection, playing Table Tennis and Miniature Golf, discovering / studying new creatures and journaling his studies

— Tunip calls him “Shellydo” and sometimes Tunip and the other Vegimals call him dad

— gets both a father’s day present AND a mother’s day present every year from the Vegimals; he cries every time

— when the Vegimals were still learning how to cook Shellington was the one who taught them, and also ate everything the Vegimals made even if it tasted absolutely terrible .

— best friends with Peso and Dashi

— watches nature documentaries with Dashi and comments on the sea creatures

— often studies with Peso about different creatures and how to help them

-ˋˏ ༻ ♡ ༺ ˎˊ-

DASHI

— mid 20s to late 20s

— Gen Z and uses that to her advantage; enjoys messing with Barnacles (“hey captain, yeet!” “what? what’s a ye—” *almost gets bonked by something Dashi threw if it wasn’t for his reflexes*)

— adding: has somehow taught some things to Shellington, and now whenever she wants to ask him something, she just goes “science side of tumblr [insert thing]” and he answers the question like it’s a tumblr post

— quotes Vines almost on a daily basis (with usually Kwazii joining her)

— IT officer, photographer, meteorologist

— technically the Captain of the Octo-Ray (?) (atm watching what I can of Above and Beyond so idk)

— Australian

— definitely not straight, probably bi

— when she gets excited her tail wags really fast and she gets embarrassed by it

— writes a journal, though currently it’s more like a scrapbook with a hundred pictures and stickers and drawings (and some comments from the rest of the crew <3)

— best friends with Shellington and Tweak

— has sleepovers and Girls’ Night Outs with Tweak every week

— usually tags with Shellington on missions because while he has the knowledge on the creatures, she takes pictures for them both; also because she gets along with him well

— was taught about cave diving by Ryla

— loves surfing because it reminds her of Australia and the time she lived there

— embraces her femininity with pride and enjoys traditionally feminine things (go girl!)

— sees Captain Barnacles as a father figure and looks up to him a lot (basically his daughter)

— makes photo albums for the others on birthdays or if they’re sad; the photo albums usually consist of all their favourite moments and adventures (she has a few pre-made albums for each Octonaut in case she’s too busy to make one) .

— did and still does her best to be a good role model to Koshi (older sister responsibilities)

— loves reading

— LOVES Barbie and has movie nights / marathons with Koshi or Tweak

— adding: cried when watching the Barbie movie and was never the same after

— if she sees a potentially great place to get a photo of something, she will become worse than Kwazii in recklessness to GET THERE to take the photo, no matter where or what it is and it stresses the f out of Barnacles

— can sometimes be almost as daredevilish as Kwazii (see above)

— once, when she was having a bad fight with Tweak, she accidentally barked, which caused them both to freeze and then Tweak to burst out laughing, and they forgot about the fight entirely; they still laugh about it

— knows a lot of gossip but doesn’t spill anything if she knows she shouldn’t

— has a great fashion sense

— when she was a little girl, she wanted to be a mermaid (same) and she even bought one of those mermaid tails once but lost it

-ˋˏ ༻ ♡ ༺ ˎˊ-

TWEAK

— late 20s to early 30s

— one of Barnacles’ oldest friends and was the first recruited Octonaut

— engineer and literally does not stop designing and building things

— MTF trans 🏳‍⚧

— either lesbian or aroace

— messed up sleep schedule pt.2

— when she’s pissed off or frustrated, she’ll tap her foot really quickly and repeatedly

— has a Southern accent

— best friends with Dashi and Sandy the Leatherback Sea Turtle

— sees Kwazii as a brother figure

— enjoys being a lil sh*t towards Kwazii; it’s a hobby at this point (he does it to her too)

— hobbies include playing badminton and video games (“Turtle Tactic”), reading video game manuals / guides, building things and designing new things to build

— Minecraft player and a redstone engineer

— grew up in the Everglades in Florida with her father Ranger Marsh, and as a result of that, she’s a tomboy (also bc she’s trans)

— growing up in the Everglades Tweak started building gadgets and gizmos, and then eventually joined the Manitoba crew where she met Barnacles

— adding: after the crashing of MV Manitoba she returned to Everglades, before Barnacles recruited her to the Octonauts crew

— can play the banjo; learnt from her dad

— favourite kelp cake is carrot (obviously)

— eats carrots to keep her teeth healthy (and out of habit she’s had since her childhood)

— is somewhat camera shy

— filled with anxiety when Shellington is behind the wheel of any of the Gups

— also filled with anxiety when Kwazii drives

— doesn’t exactly like it that those two keep crashing the Gups so she has to fix them all over again but at least she doesn’t get bored

— Dashi once showed her the Florida Man™ memes and she couldn’t stop laughing for five minutes; she sent one to her dad

— owns so many Lego sets

-ˋˏ ༻ ♡ ༺ ˎˊ-

PROFESSOR INKLING

— around mid 60s, idk he’s just pretty old

— Uncle Iroh™ of the crew; the Octonauts frequently go to him for advice (and tea)

— knows his library like the back of his, uh, tentacles?

— if he reads a book about how to do something, he can do it

— adding: can memorize basically anything that’s in a book

— founded the Octonauts and when he met Barnacles, Inkling asked him to become the Captain; Barnacles of course accepted

— doesn’t actually have a bed because he refuses to sleep on anything but his chair.

— canon, but a good, old friend of Min’s

— kind of like a grandfather figure to Kwazii

-ˋˏ ༻ ♡ ༺ ˎˊ-

TUNIP AND THE VEGIMALS

— they’re aliens. periodt.

— at first Shellington tried to let them back into the ocean but no matter what they kept on coming back so the crew just adopted them let them stay (based on this post)

— they (especially Barrot) used to be scared of Tweak because of her carrot-eating

— they have a song and a choreography for almost every situation (no one knows how)

— sometimes bury themselves in the ground of the garden pod for fun or sometimes even to sleep ; have scared various crew members half to death many times by doing this .

— are actually quite smart due to them growing up with the Octonauts aka the biggest nerds in the ocean™

— the other Vegimals turn to Tunip when they need any kind of support or advice

— Tunip, on the other hand, turns to either Shellington or Barnacles when in need

— Tunip also mimics Barnacles and really looks up to him (both figuratively and literally)

— was already said, but Tunip is Barnacles’ Emotional Support Vegimal™

— Shellington’s adopted kids (canon)

— Tominnow is MTF trans 🏳‍⚧ and looks up to Kwazii (and sometimes even mimics him)

— the Octopod is their Habitat™

-ˋˏ ༻ ♡ ༺ ˎˊ-

THE OCTOPOD

— everything is waterproof. everything

— the screens in the bedroom pods can be customized with different apps + functions; everyone has completely unique settings, & the ones in the hallway work the same, but have preset settings (headcanons here)

— any screen can be used to communicate, play games or music, as a camera, a mirror and a TV; and also sound the Octoalert

— the metal cover thingies that cover the glass of the pods during a storm work like convertible roofs, and anyone in one of the bedroom pods can put them down only on their side if they need / want privacy

— there are similar metal cover things that Tweak can pull down over her loft room or her workshop if she needs to

— the glass is indestructible and the entire ship weighs like a million tons

— Barnacles’ and Peso’s rooms are colder than the rest of the crew’s (for a homey feel)

— the steering wheel being a traditional wooden wheel was a present for Barnacles’ first birthday as Captain; from prof. Inkling

— has its own unofficial time zone that the crew follows just because of how much they move around and thus switch time zones .

-ˋˏ ༻ ♡ ༺ ˎˊ-

NOTE : WILL BE UPDATED WHEN I FIND / COME UP WITH NEW STUFF !

#octonauts #octonauts headcanons #captain barnacles #kwazii #peso #shellington #dashi #tweak #professor inkling #octonauts tunip #octonauts vegimals #vegimals

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p1xelpc · 3 months

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Wait, You Exist?

[ Plain text: Wait, You Exist? ]

Recently I wrote about abled perception of (visibly) disabled people. I wrote of their disrespect and dehumanization. I thought that I had gotten all of my words about that out. Then I read some posts from my English professor.

I want to preface this by saying that I do not believe that he wrote these things with ill-intent. He just didn’t think about us. He forgot that we exist. Or maybe he just never learned that we exist. Maybe he’s never had our existence shoved in his face to prove that we are alive. That does not change the impact.

“If you are lucky and haven’t had a job.” This is probably meant to refer to people who are financially stable. Probably supposed to be about people that chose not to get a job. But they aren’t the only people that don’t have jobs. This man works at a community college. Most of the unemployed people there aren’t going to be rich. We attend community college because it is cheap and accessible. Take a guess at why we wouldn’t have jobs.

Visibly “different” people (whether race, gender, disability, whatever) do not get the same opportunities as people that fit the standard. As soon as we are noted as “different,” we have less of a chance to get a job. And that’s for those of us able to work. I am attending school in the hopes that I can get a job that is even close to accessible to me. Because currently? My heavily accommodated schooling is barely accessible.

“I assume you are taking this course online because you are all busy folks with lives.” This one is probably true for a lot, or even the majority, of his class. But that shouldn’t be his only assumption. I am taking online courses because in-person classes are a lot harder to accommodate for me.

I require a carer at all times outside of my home. I cannot leave the house multiple times in a row, and frequently I am only able to leave once or twice a week maximum. I can only shower once a week, peers would have complaints. I am unable to speak. I can’t walk safely. I can’t propel myself reliably. I need help to understand speech and to work out responses. Leaving the house is a rarity usually reserved for necessary doctor appointments.

I am not a busy person. I barely have a life! Almost 100% of my socializing is online. Same with shopping. And creating. Hell, I can’t even remember what an abled life looks like. Exercise maybe? Regardless, most of my day is spent in bed, in a mostly dark room, playing and socializing on my phone or laptop. Some days I may write or design something. But mostly I just play and socialize. Less emphasis on the socializing. I’m not complaining. I still enjoy the life I do have. It just definitely is not what he is talking about.

There are so often little bits like that in what I read and see. Wording that an abled person wouldn’t ever clock as ableist. Assumptions that ignore disabled people. It’s knives small enough to slip past shields and stab directly into me. They aren’t helped by context. Ableds just don’t like to pay enough attention to us to figure out what ableism looks like.

There are other little things too. Making everyone write using Times New Roman (I can’t read that font). Dropping late papers an entire letter grade (I have bad time blindness). Not allowing people to work ahead (yet posting everything on day 0).

The first assignment includes music and peer review. That seems almost fine, almost like nothing to complain about. Except that I cannot understand music that I have not intensely studied and I cannot intensely study music that hurts my ears (which is a lot of music). Also music and its meaning is so deeply personal that peer review is nearly useless for what he wants to use it for. My allistic classmates are not going to understand why I chose this song to connect to my experiences. Neither are my autistic classmates. I have to choose between authenticity and being understood to pass that assignment, which seems to go directly against what he is trying to teach us.

He describes his teaching as less “out-dated” and yet it is still incredibly exclusive. Then again, he didn’t even write his own description.

#pix writing #this one messier than others #thoughts are too big to organize right #ableism #disability visibility #wheelchair user #disabled #disability #high support needs #middle support needs #nonverbal #nonspeaking #unemployment #abled privilege #actually autistic #actually disabled #idk tags

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zebulontheplanet · 4 months

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I woke up with a lot of hate from anons so let’s clear some things up.

All that I talk about is professionally diagnosed except one diagnosis I have (which is POTs) is unofficially officially diagnosed. Which means the doctor hasn’t written it in the chart but is treating me for POTs.

I can talk about my PROFESSIONALLY DIAGNOSED BPD if I want too. Before I said it was probably a misdiagnosis. Now I’m saying that I might be wrong and I think I should hear people out about it.

Another thing. Having the amount of diagnoses that I have IS. NOT. NORMAL. it is not normal to have 10+ conditions. However, it’s possible. It’s REALLY POSSIBLE. Because I am here, and I do have 10+ diagnoses and I am professionally diagnosed, and I know people who have about the same as me or even more! Because being disabled has this wonderful thing called comorbidities. Which I have a lot of.

Another thing, me being able to type well doesn’t mean I don’t have an intellectual disability. There are many people who have intellectual disability who go on to do amazing things! Who have families, who have kids, who are married, who have successful businesses, who have done all these things! And there’s people with ID who have not. That’s ok. We need to stop lumping people with ID in one single category and instead realize it’s a very large spectrum of capabilities and strengths.

Another thing, i have a lot better things to do then come on here and fake having disorders. I have a life. I have family. I have 5 siblings living at home and I’m the second oldest so you can imagine how busy I am. I DO NOT need to come on here and fake having conditions and disabilities. I come on here and talk about disabilities I DO HAVE because I want to share about them in my free time and I enjoy it. I don’t have to, I don’t care what other people think. I’m just here to have fun.

One last thing. I’m laughing at all you anons that sent me hate because I could really not give a fuck. I’m gonna go on with my day and talk with my boyfriend and hang out with my aunt today. So…fuck off.

Also, being autistic does not excuse you from ableism. Have a nice day!

#zebrambles #autism #medium support needs #actually autism #semiverbal #actually autistic #intellectual disability #anon hate #long post

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andhumanslovedstories · 5 months

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I’m looking for a second career after working corporate. I’d like something away from a computer, workin with people, in demand, and more flexible. I do have some autistic traits though (one therapist floated it but never officially diagnosed). Do you think nursing would be a bad choice?

Here's a useless answer: it depends! I'll also give my usual caveat that nursing is a very broad field and a school nurse versus a dialysis nurse versus an ICU nurse versus a home health nurse vs a community health nurse are all going to have different experiences. You'll probably spend more time at a computer than you might like (documenting......), but if you get efficient at it, you can blast through it alright. Except when you can't.

And you will work with people! In any part of nursing, you'll be working with people, often in intimate and vulnerable ways. You meet a lot of cool people and get to be there for a lot of cool moments, cool and funny and profound moments. Working with people when they aren't at their best can be exhausting. Working with people when they aren't at their best and also you're understaffed and also someone is complaining of new onset chest pain at the same time someone else is calling to be cleaned up because they've been incontinent--it's really easy to exhaust yourself out of compassion. You have to care and actively engage with people's often tragic situations, but you also have to protect yourself from secondhand trauma. It's okay if this is not something you're comfortable or good with, but if so, you should probably think critically about whether nursing is for you.

And flexible--maybe??? Again, different jobs will have different perks. A lot of nurses work prn which means they have to pick up a certain number of shifts a month, but they aren't on the schedule normally. You just pick up as you want. Very flexible! But also a lot of these nurses are getting their healthcare elsewhere, usually a partner. Like any shift work, you can always swap shifts with a coworker if you can find one who'll do it. When I worked in home health, it was very hard to adjust my schedule because there wasn't necessarily another nurse that could fill in. And often units in the hospital will have various schedule stipulations--work every other weekend, work a certain amount of holidays, work night shift until you get the seniority to go to days or become a nocturnal little freak (me). I currently work in float pool, which makes it way easier to call out and adjust schedules because I'm not assigned anywhere specific until like ten minutes before the shift starts.

And with regards to the last bit, the autistic traits, I don't know exactly which ones you mean, but none of them are an inherent obstacle to being a nurse. We need neurodiversity in nursing. Some patients might find you cold or awkward or weird or whatever way you worry you might come across. Other patients will resonate with those exact same traits. No one's the perfect nurse for all people. Some people want to that extra care, some people want competent work and then to have space for themselves, some patients want to learn everything about their situation, some patients don't even want to know what pills they're taking. Think of yourself as a specialty nurse. An oncology nurse can take care of a variety of patients, but they're most well suited and situated to take care of cancer patients. There's a patient type that is a perfect fit for you. And the same way cardiac nurses deal with strokes, and orthopedic nurses deal with respiratory infections, you work competently outside your specialty because you have a good base for your practice, but you also know that you have specialties that you are uniquely equipped to handle. Specialties like cheerleading through physical therapy, calming down dementia patients, knowing the shit out of telemetry, making sure patients get a bed bath and clean sheets, using a machine to pump a patient's blood outside your body--whatever you most like, you're most good at, what gives you energy to work. I think mine are working well with "difficult" patients, managing pain, and stealing cranberry juice from the patient fridge. for me.

I'll say too if you're worried like a lack of empathy or easy understanding of other people will be an impediment to care--I'm not saying I'm autistic, but I don't think I'm particularly empathetic. I NEVER know what people are thinking or feeling. I struggle to tell when patients are like "talk to me more!" versus "I am being polite to you, but please leave." I have never once been comforting a crying person and thought, "I am NAILING this. I am making them feel better." But I don't think I'm a bad nurse. I reverse engineer empathy by finding a situation that I was in that's similar to the situation a patient is in, and I think about what I would have wanted and appreciated in that situation. I think about what evidence says is a good thing to do in this situation. I think about what experience tells me has worked in this situation in the pas. I also just ask patients what they're feeling and what they want and why they do what they do instead of assuming I know. (That last one is so choice, we should all do it more.)

The job puts you in a lot of Situations that are hard for anyone to manage. So you can study up for a lot of Situations. I read conflict resolution books and writing by sick people, I think about how adherent I am to my own treatment plan when I get judgy, I ask patients a lot of questions in part so I can understand them but also so I can understand the next patient like them, I practice difficult conversations I can predict before I go into rooms, and I make sure I have certain phrases and reactions in my back pocket in case I'm caught by surprise. I've figured out my safe topics of conversations that I can chat about with patients that are personable but not intimate (cats, how long you've been in the area, how hard it is to sleep in the hospital at night). I periodically try out new conversation styles and topics to see how those work. I find people I admire and I try consciously to emulate them.

I make a shitload of rules too that help me structure my behavior so I can act like a person I'm proud of. If I can't get something for a patient, I have to go back and tell them that instead of just never returning to the room. Whenever I leave a room, before I go, I make sure the call light is within reach and I ask if there's anything I can do before I go. If someone is sad, ask if they want hot chocolate, and if they say yes, ask if they want it with hot water or milk. If I have a patient that is very chatty and always on the call light, allot conversation time with them like I'm scheduling wound care in case they're lonely. Whenever I tell a patient that they can't do something, I explain the clinical reasoning for that. If the only reason I can think of to tell a patient why they can't do something except "it's against hospital rules", I reconsider the refusal. I've got so many rules and guidelines I've developed for myself so I can best act in a way that I think a good nurse should act.

(usual disclaimer that this does not mean I always accomplish this or that I always behave in a way I'm proud of. but I do think developing these rules and following them makes behaving like I want to more habitual.)

All this to say--I care tremendously about my patients when they're my patients, but I don't take most of them home with me. I feel often feel very distant from the emotions of the situation. I used to feel like I was watching the world through glass. Now I still feel like that, but not in a bad way. I don't get mad when patients yell at me. I can view their problems as quests to solve. I'm engaged but I'm not flustered by distress.

look alllllllllllllllllll that to say is have you considered making nursing a special interest? works for me. oh and YEAH. The job security is AMAZING. It's such a weight off my mind to know that if I don't like my current job, it's so easy to get another somewhere else.

#nursing tag

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