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coffee-bat · 3 years

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Hi! I saw in one of your posts that you headcanon Heisenberg has neurodivergent/autistic traits. I was just really curious to know what he does in Canon that is neurodivergent? I love the idea of an autistic Karl! 🥰

i don't have any solid proof, but a few things that point towards autism/neurodivergency i've noticed are:

- trouble with social cues/understanding how his words and behaviours are interpreted. the first instance that comes to mind is his "it's not a trap" line when ethan is about to enter his factory - it really WASN'T a trap, and karl wanted him to know that and feel safe, but the way he said it (as well as the fact alone that he did say it) made him seem suspicious. he meant well, but due to not understanding/predicting that his words can be interpreted in a non-direct way, made him have the exact opposite effect on ethan. the same goes for his wording when describing his plans to ethan - it would have likely worked if he hadn't said he would "use" rose. his wording was off, too direct, he probably didn't think that he should be more gentle with explaining it. while once again, his intentions were mostly likely good, the way he conveyed them verbally was what ruined it. using straight-forward/very direct language is a neurodivergent treat, too.

- anger outbursts. while in his case they could be caused by something else (like untreated trauma/unattended mental illness), they still are an autistic trait, specifically the way one can jump from calm, to yelling, and back to calm in a matter of seconds (think his "SHUT YOUR FUCKING HOLE! sorryaboutthat"). he does this a lot in-game. his outbursts are sudden, unpredictable and violent, but he goes back to calm immediately after finishing his sentence. i imagine his outbursts are so frequent because they're a result of multiple things (both neurodivergency and trauma/mental illness).

-info dumping, oversharing, trauma dumping. mostly seen in the scene where he explains his plans to ethan, and then when ethan is in the factory. despite ethan being pretty much a stranger, with no reason to care about karl's issues, karl literally dumps all his trauma on him the second fucking time they see each other. ethan doesn't care about neither his personal problems nor his family drama, and says it to him directly, and yet karl just rambles on about them (be it face-to-face or over the speakers). he either doesn't entirely perceive/understand rejection, or just can't stop himself from infodumping on ethan no matter if the latter wants it or not. also, BIG oversharing - they literally don't know each other, but karl has completely no issue telling ethan personal details, telling him about his trauma and deeply personal feelings (like feeling humiliated by being forced to serve miranda). comparing his conversation with ethan, a stranger, to his personal diary entries, there's literally no difference in how much he discloses/the intimacy of things disclosed. he doesn't see the issue in oversharing to someone he just met.

- one chosen area of fixation, and being incredibly talented/skilled in it. he's a genius in engineering and partially biology/medicine, but aside from this one special area of interest, is pretty average. (i'd even risk saying he's not very bright, i mean, how do you intend on 'using' an infant in battle??). screams "aspergers" to me. (saying this as an aspie).

- introversion to the point of almost complete withdrawal from society. the only person he's said to regularly (and willingly) interact with is the duke, and that is also likely to only be because the duke visits him in his factory. he's unhappy and annoyed with all other interactions and being forced to leave his safe space.

- on that topic, he seems to get easily overstimulated by being around more than one person at a time, if the council meeting is anything to go by. the moment two people are speaking at once, he loses it and yells at them to shut the fuck up. also, seems to have the same issue with being interrupted/even slightly bugged when talking to someone (which is the same problem as two people speaking at once). seems to instantly trigger a sensory overload for him, even though it wouldn't affect most people much (it would be a minor annoyance at most, meanwhile he immediately yells). this connects back to the possible source of only leaving his home/safe space when forced.

that's all that comes to my mind at the moment- it's not solid proof in any way, but those are some of the reasons i headcannon his as nd. that, and i just get vibes from him, y'know? those are harder to explain, but i hope the points i made are enough of an explanation for why i see him as autistic ^^

#ask #resident evil 8 #resident evil village #karl heisenberg #headcannons #long post #i also headcannon him to use the compass around his neck as a stim toy (messing with it using his magnetic field) :)

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heloflor · 3 years

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Me : “I don’t think I should write characters that are explicitly neurodivergent because I don’t know that much about neurodiversity and I never take the time to know more. If I were to make a character who happens to have neurodivergent traits and call them neurodivergent, I might get it wrong and I don’t want to give a fic with bad or stereotypical representation in it, it’s unfair for those who can and wish to identify with the character. So if I write about a character that the fandom sees as neurodivergent, I will simply try to write them close to their canon personality; and if they happen to have traits that people can identify, I’ll just let other people do their own headacanons around it without touching on the topic myself.”

Also me : “So :

- Vinnie Dakota absolutely adores animals. In the future, all animals are extinct, so in order to see animals, you either get a robot pet or you pay to have some time in a “place simulation” room and order it to simulate a field with holographic animals. Dakota learned about animals through books and often went to the simulation place or bough some stickers and other stuff from the rare places that still sold animal merch. He never got a robotic pet or never kept it for long because it’s too dull compared to a real animal, or should I say his thoughts of real animals.

- During his first mission, Dakota was ecstatic to see animals for the first time and, after the mission, spent a few hours looking at and petting the ones he could. In his house in the future, he has a room in which he displays animal-related stuff he got from his missions through time, like art or figurines or ornaments or even plushies etc. He might also sometimes take pictures of animals and put them with the souvenir he got from the same mission. He takes extra care of the stuff he has in this room and organizes it a certain way. He has the money to have a place with several rooms : as we see in “Picture Day”, once they got fired, Cavendish and Dakota had the money to go to Hawaii for an entire week and without knowing when and how they will get a new job, since Bob Block met them as they were about to leave for their vacation. Also Cavendish mentioned studying for 20 cycles, so this job doesn’t seem like a given. So being a time traveler seems to pay well.

- When he and Cavendish started dating (I headcanon them as starting to date 2 years after meeting a marrying 3 years later, so 5 years after meeting), everytime they went through a century they never or barely visited, Dakota would get a random souvenir, not always animal-related, along with a picture of either him, Cavendish or both of them. He puts these souvenirs and pictures in a different part of the room. The picture we see in their car in “Fungus Among Us” is from a mission in a place they visited before, but Dakota found the situation too funny to not take a picture.

- Every celebration (holidays, birthdays, dates important to them), Cavendish and Dakota would give each other gifts. Dakota always tries to find something related to Professor Time while Cavendish forces himself to break a few rules and go back in time without being ordered to so he can find something animal-related to Dakota. Dakota is always genuinely happy about these gifts, though he learned not to tease Cavendish about the whole “breaking the rules” situation. Those gifts are either stuff like fossils or skulls/bones or they’re stuff related to the culture of the time-period like watching tournaments in ancient Rome.

- When the two get married and buy a place together, Dakota makes sure it has a room large enough to put his growing collection. As time went by, it started to be less about animals and more about what they find during their missions, though the animal part is still very much there. Dakota refers to the room as “The memory room” while Cavendish calls it “Vinnie’s room”. Cavendish doesn’t spend that much time in it, though he absolutely loves the feeling of reminiscence the collection gives him. If he has guests at home, he tries to keep them away from the room. He knows how important it is for Dakota and doesn’t want it to be disrupted. Cavendish tried to get into Dakota’s passion but, while he found some stuff to be interesting, he’s not really into it compared to Dakota.

- After the events of the episode “We’re Going to the Zoo”, Dakota brought back tickets for his collection, along with a picture of him holding squirrels in his arms while another one has its head coming out of Dakota’s pants, near his feet. Dakota went back to the zoo several times and ended up learning what every animal was and in which section of the zoo they were.

- When the two are fired and banned, they only get like an hour to pack all their stuff. So Dakota uses some future deus ex machina technology, making their house surrounded by a barrier that only the two of them can open. That way, nobody can touch the house and, if they were to be able to go back to the future, which seems to be the case if season 2 was already thought of when “A Christmas Peril” was made, Dakota could find his collection intact, along with the rest of the house.

- Once stuck in the past, Dakota kind of gave up on doing a collection. They don’t have enough space and the realization that Cavendish could now die anytime put a lot on stress on him and most of his thoughts were on Cavendish. This stress started to dim out after the events of the second half of the season, when Dakota realized that maybe the world was done trying to get rid of Cavendish, given how the man was able to survive alone for about a month. During the first celebration they had since getting banned, Cavendish bought something animal-related as usual and it led Dakota to wish to start a collection again. Given the space and their current situation, this collection would mostly be pictures that he can keep in an album in a drawer. Cavendish would probably be the one to buy the album after realizing that Dakota started taking random pictures again.

- At some point, Cavendish learns that there’s a petting zoo in Danville and decides to use it as a birthday gift/surprise. Dakota has never been more in love with him than during the moment when he stepped out of the car and saw the place’s sign (with the exception of their wedding and honeymoon).

…aaaannnd I just made Dakota have an hyperfixation, didn’t I ?

Though, to be honest, I really do want to write characters that are diverse, not only in terms of sexuality like I already do but also in upbringing and neurodiversity. Thing is, to write a neurodivergent character, I need to have the answer to these questions : How often do they stim ? What are the most common stims and what is and isn’t considered as such, aka what does the character does in the show that seems to be a stim ? How does the character acts/should act with others ? Which social cues do they understand ? Which ones do they not understand ? How to write a character that you can tell is neurodivergent without having to make them scream ‘I’m not neurotypical’; with instead having the only ‘confirmation’ of it being in the tags ? How to make them very excited about something without falling into the ‘autistic people are children’ stereotype ?

As long as I can’t answer these questions, I refuse to be an idiot and try to write about something I know I will mess up. And while I do have the curiosity and will to learn more, if not simply because I’m curious about neurodiversity, don’t expect me to write about it anytime soon. Right now my priority is to ‘digitalize’ all the dozen fics I wrote on paper (two of them had been in my writing pile for two years, and several for a year) while making the eventual post that comes to mind like this one.”

Edit : So a few weeks after making that post, I started to learn more about neurodiversity because being autistic makes you curious to know what kinds of behaviors are due to you not being neurotypical. And, as it had been pointed out, I’m not using the correct term here. I didn’t give Dakota a hyperfixation but a special interest. From what I understand, the difference is that hyperfixations stick to you constantly for a while (a few weeks or months), leading you to easily hyperfocus on the topic, before you suddenly start to get less invested in that interest. On the other hand, special interests can stick for months or sometimes years. And even if you’re not constantly thinking about your interest, it’s still there in a corner of your mind and you never get tired of it and keep the knowledge you accumulated to talk about it anytime.

So yeah, I gave Dakota a special interest. The reason why I thought it was a hyperfixation is because I see this term be very often associated with ADHD and a lot of people see Dakota as having ADHD. But still, my bad for mixing up the two. And the reason I didn’t edit the post sooner is because it kind of slipped out of my mind until I made a new post today that mentions this one. Sorry for that too.

#Milo Murphy's Law #Vinnie Dakota #Dakavendish #long post #I guess ?#headcanons #bonus headcanon : Cavendish has a mug collection #but never uses mugs #so Dakota uses them #sometimes taking a certain mug depending on his mood #so that Cavendish knows if he's mad or something #me : I don't know shit abour neurodiversity #also me : *was literally diagnosed as autistic*#though that might actually explain it #maybe I want to know more because of my 'collecting info' side #on top of wanting to be respectful #and curiosity

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kingofthewilderwest · 3 years

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This hasn’t been a good year for me first I was stalked then I lost someone who I thought was a friend because my mental health issues caused me to impulsively lash out at people I been apologizing and apologizing they refuse to listen to me all they told me was get outside help. The thing is I was there for them when they needed me but when I needed them they abandon me I am autistic and have trouble regulating my emotions I explained that to them when they told me that I keep lashing out at people even after I apologize for it. :( what should I do? Should I just just keep spamming how sorry I am and that I will keep my mouth shut and not lash out at people anymore I just want them to like me again I don’t like lashing out at people I have no control over that why can’t they understand? How many times do I need to cry in their inbox until they realize how sorry I am and that this time I won’t lash out impulsively.

Hello, friend. <3 I'm really sorry for the struggle and pain you are going through. That's tough. My heart reaches out for you. I was in an extremely similar experience once (I'll talk about the experience and results below), so I both care about your situation, and I hope my message can help you with your choices moving forward. My phrasing might sound blunt, but every word is written with love, and I will give comfort through the end, so bear with me. Sorry that I suck at brief. XD

From the way you’ve described your situation, you’ve already been messaging friend(s) repeatedly explaining your actions, giving apologies, etc. My answer is under the assumption you’ve been sending repeated messages. Here’s the unfortunate kicker.

You need to stop messaging them. Period.

If you want them to feel better and feel better about you, you need to give them space for a decently long period of time without breaking that silence once, it doesn’t matter if your desired topic is helpfully explaining how you tick, apologizing, or talking about something entirely unrelated to the drama.

I know that's probably the hardest thing to do. I know for me, when I was in a situation like this, every fiber of my being *SCREAMED* at me to try to make things right by messaging again. I was so terrified I couldn’t leave it alone. I understand how scary it can be for someone to not listen to your apology. I understand the drive to get someone to understand your circumstance for why you messed up. I understand the overpowering pressure of guilt for having done something wrong and the itch to keep acting until I make it right. But you can't make it right by messaging someone repeatedly.

While your intent is reparation, your result is harassment. I'm so sorry to say this, but if you’re messaging like that, you are continuing to inflict pain and make matters worse because your constant messaging gives them no relief. It’s like constantly picking a scab to make it bleed again rather than letting it heal without touching it. If you pick that scab too much, you’ll lose more blood and you’ll get a scar. Lots of people, after being hurt, need time to process their emotions before they can be comfortable resuming a chill conversation. So long as you keep acting like this, they aren't going to want to listen to you, and your actions are going to make them wish they weren't around you. They’ll see you in a worse light because if you can’t give them time and space to heal themselves and you can’t stop fixating on past events, then they see that you’re not handling the situation well.

Now. If you do talk to them again, after that *LONG* break, there are several things you have to do. Ask if it’s okay to talk first and be clear it’ll be a one-time event. Be rational, be calm, be objective, accept responsibility for yourself without trashing yourself or sounding desperate for their response, and make sure you acknowledge their feelings and experiences as much as your own. Accept responsibility for yourself in your words. Make sure you listen to them, too, and respect their thoughts.

I know that’s hard to do. I can get scared, tongue-tied, and emotional in conversations like this. The way I get around that is writing down what I’m going to say beforehand. That way, I can spend several days carefully tweaking my words so they’re optimally diplomatic (and have someone else check me if I need a second perspective). Now I have a script I can follow that can prevent me from tumbling into babbling emotion. “I’m sorry, I’ll keep my mouth shut, I just want you to like me again” will turn more people away, unfortunately. People don’t trust that because it sounds like you don’t have control of yourself, which makes them think more bad things could happen. Level-headed but kind discussion of the issue is essential; it shows you are *capable* of handling the situation. Showing capability helps engender trust. Also, please make it clear to your friend(s) that once this convo is done, the goal is to move on.

Note that your friend can say “no” if you ask to talk. And that’s okay. If they say “no,” leave it at “no,” and don’t try to get a “yes.” Your friend can still say “no” to points you make during your conversation. Those aren’t the words you want to hear but you have to accept them if they come. Stay humble. Do not try to get them to fully be in sync with you because that may be impossible and only hurt everyone more. All you can do is present yourself at your best; after that, it is their choice how they respond, and their responses must be accepted. If they are bitches, that’s on them, and you’re better off not being friends with shitty-ass uncaring bitches. If they choose not to be friends with you for understandable reasons, it hurts, but it’s valid; we do not have to be friends with every person we meet, even if they’re cool. And if they choose to forgive you, which they could too, then you guys have a basis to move forward again without reopening cans of worms. I do want to reassure you: I’ve had plenty of conversations like this go well and friendships get repaired. <3 It can be done.

Now. You said you feel your friends aren’t helping you at your time of need. I understand the pain of supporting a friend but the friend doesn’t reciprocate at the time I need them most. This was hard for me to learn, but: a friend is not obligated to help you. Yes, good friends will help when they can. Yes, if you’re only helping them and they’re nevvvvvvver helping you, that’s a one-sided relationship and that’s a bust. But healthy relationships also have boundaries and “no”s. It’s not a contractual obligation to help a friend through everything. Plus, not everyone has the skillset to help you for every need. Friends who are not used to neurodivergence might not know how to handle neurodivergent-specific challenges (that’s what I’ve experienced with my own support networks). You can explain it and hopefully they’ll get better about understanding how you tick, though. There’s even types of friends who understand how you tick but still not want to be around it, and sometimes that’s because they have to protect their own health. They can understand you lash out but still need to leave to heal themselves because lashing out hurts them, and they don’t have the energy or emotions to help or listen to you right after. They have enough on their plate trying to keep themselves going without assisting someone else too. Those things can happen. You may find out what type of friends yours are later.

And I know it’s really hard to regulate emotions... I’m saying this as someone who had extreme issues regulating my emotions due to neurodivergence and mental illness, albeit of different kinds... but ultimately mental health is an explanation, not an excuse, and you are still responsible for the results when you are cognizant enough to act well enough. You are valid for being autistic and that is not a problem, that is who you are period, and if they don’t respect that, that’s their issue. Explaining why you act like you do is a first step. It’s good to communicate and I think it’s good you want to your friends to know why it’s hard. But you do have to work at getting better with your treatment of people, too. Sometimes we do things outside of our control. Sometimes these will never be in our control. But some things will be in our control. Part of our responsibility as a friend is to not just admit we hurt someone in the past when we’re at our worst and least controllable, but make an effort, as we can, to prevent these things in the future, as we can. Figure out prevention tactics. Figure out ways your friends can be equipped and prepared if something happens. Find professionals who can help you with emotional regulation. And so forth.

Your friends do have a point about getting outside help. I love supporting my friends and helping them through emotionally dark times, but sometimes a friend’s mental health struggles are out of my abilities and I can’t be expected to be the one to handle it. I cannot help my friend with heart surgery because I am not a heart surgeon; likewise, sometimes I can’t help my friends with mental illness ailments because I am not a professional psychologist. If it is within your budget, this may be a valuable resource for you that will help you, your friends, and more.

If you’re anything like I was, what I said may make you want to go into another round of apologizing, but before you do that (you shouldn't! you can't!!!!), I want to explain what happened to me. This involves me talking about the worst period of my life, the worst mistakes I ever made, and the worst legacy I'll have to contend with. I haven't talked about it on tumblr because I haven't wanted people to misread me or judge me, but the truth is, those old mistakes are a defining characteristic of my everyday life because of how thoroughly I fucked up and hurt someone else by my desire to "make things right."

I was eighteen and sharing a dorm room with my high school significant other. We broke up several months into the school year. At first things were okay, but then our friendship started to slide. We both did foolish things and wrongdoings against each other. The result was my ex needed breathing space to heal, whereas I felt I needed to heal by coming closer to them. As you can see, these are opposites, and it... didn’t work. It resulted in me pestering them and them wanting to get further from me.

I was also suicidal at the time. I had undiagnosed ADHD and rejection sensitive dysphoria and maybe more, and all that put me in the worst psychological state of my life. My emotions were more powerful than I could control. I had no coping mechanisms yet. My diary entries sometimes don’t sound... sane... from that time period. Being suicidal, I begged my ex for help, and my ex said “no”. My ex was rude and cold (understandable... hard to be polite when you’re stressed), but still, she had a right to say “no.” No one is obligated to do anything, but I was extremely emotional at her denial. Terrified for my life, I tried telling my ex that I had helped HER through HER problems when SHE was depressed, why the fuck wouldn’t she help me with my low point? I felt like she abandoned me and I told her so. I was intending to suggest she was breaking a promise and being an uncaring, unfaithful friend... but my words came out sounding like I was guilt tripping. My friend felt emotionally abused, forced into a situation where someone was threatening their life if she didn’t do what I said.

That’s a lot of pressure on someone, a roommate screaming at her that she had to do X or someone would die. It’s a cruel thing to shove someone into. I did that. I did it accidentally, my only intentions were making amends and saving my life, but I’m still 200% responsible for the results. It destroyed her psychologically, and ten years later, I don’t think she’s fully recovered.

When I recovered from the worst of my mental illness lapse, I felt sick to my stomach about how much my emotional responses harmed her. Thus began my rounds of apologizing. At first she coldly “tolerated” it, but I couldn’t leave it alone because it didn’t feel like closure. She outright told me she would never forgive me and that made me more desperate. About once every six months for the next three years, I tried talking to her. She felt harassed. She increasingly hated me. Soon, she thought I was stalking her, and sent the start of what could’ve become legal action against me. One time, I tried talking to her about something entirely unrelated (I was trying to save a friend who was having panic attacks and my ex was unknowingly responsible for the panic attacks), I panicked, I grabbed her arm, she threatened to call the police on me, had the teacher drive her home from class, and the next thing I knew, we were both in the university’s Office of Student Conduct. Oof.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

For the rest of my life, I will have to contend with the fact I fucked up the person I loved the most, and that the best thing I could ever do to help her was... to... leave... her... be.

If I had let my friend breathe after my first apology, if I had given my friend space to process through her hurt emotions until she no longer felt hurt, we might have been able to rekindle a friendship. But I never gave her the time to heal. I never respected her “no, stop talking to me.” My apologies were intended to make her feel better because I knew I was hurting her, my apologies were intending to say “I’ll never hurt you again!” But instead I kept digging a deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper hole.

I realize this is a dismal story. I don’t want to scare you. I want you to read this private story of my pained heart to understand what happens when I let desperation do all the talking. I want to share it to show how much I care for your situation. And I want you to understand that... after I learned taking a step back... I had radically better results with the friends I got into conflicts with. It took a ton of effort and work to retrain my conduct, but it worked, and I’ve found stabler and happier and relatively drama-free relationships. And if I fuck up for some reason mental-health-wise, it’s usually a single conversation and done to get us back on track.

I fuck up, but I’ll never fuck up like that again, never ever EVER, nowhere CLOSE. And that’s a... happy ending in its own right, yeah?

I do believe in you. I believe that not every story has to end like the one between my ex and me. I want to give you that hope. I believe you have a good heart and you definitely want things better. You wouldn’t have messaged me (and I believe... others... on tumblr?) if this didn’t matter to you. And anyone who wants to do something about a problem has the starting kernel of Betterness happening. I believe you can find more peace. Maybe it won’t come right away and maybe there’ll be rocky points, but life can become better, relationships can become better. There are ways, even with mental health struggles, to find that comfortable equilibrium again.

I wish you the best, friend. Take care. <3 Rooting for you. I apologize if any of my words ended up coming out wrong accidentally. I really do hope you find some relief in this situation. <3

#long post #ask #ask me #non-dragons #don't mind me

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arcadialost · 3 years

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Chrysalis, Consequence : Max’s Journey and Choices

Strange men walk around Isolated With a chip on their shoulders They are looking for a smile From you or from me But instead I find myself leaving

Preface: Some of the choices listed here are not in the game. They may not be canon, but they are in character for my interpretation of Max. This is only meant to reference the game’s story alone and give some insight into Max and her choices, some of which tie intimately into other characters’ reactions and fates. Please don’t take this as me pushing my interpretation onto your characters. If you have a muse who features in the game, you are more than welcome to come plot with me about how characters like Nathan, Chloe, Victoria, and Kate may handle things differently/took a different route than what I have described. Episode 1 - Chrysalis one. Shaken from watching Chloe’s death and subsequent resurrection, Max confesses to Principal Wells that she saw Nathan with a gun. two. In lieu of rigging the paint can, Max instead messes with the sprinkler system to soak Victoria’s cashmere. A guilt-ridden Max then does her best to comfort Victoria after ruining her afternoon. While searching for a way to prove to Juliet that Dana didn’t cheat, she refuses the opportunity to reorganize Victoria’s selfie wall. Dana’s pregnancy test remains untouched, with Max only aware that Dana and her ex-boyfriend Logan had falling out. three. Max erases the crude insult on Kate’s slate. She intervenes on Kate’s behalf upon discovering security guard David M.adsen harassing her friend. four. Ever the nosey one, Max snoops through David’s surveillance system and files. Her sleuthing skills aren’t quite up to par, though, as she leaves evidence behind. When Max’s impromptu reunion with Chloe is interrupted by David, she takes her friend’s advice to hide. But Max’s anxiety skyrockets as hostilities between parent and child escalate, leading her to come out of hiding and take the heat for Chloe. five. Max saves the bluejay outside of the lighthouse, something that brings her comfort after learning that Chloe has stolen her step-father’s gun. Episode 2 - Out of Time one. Another day, another instance of victim-blaming shenanigans; Max erases the URL to the V.ortex C.lub video in the girl’s bathroom. After a nerve-wracking confrontation with Victoria, Max returns a borrowed book back to Kate. With her friend clearly depressed over the bullying, the photographer gently questions her about what had happened the night of the video. Fearing that Kate has been assaulted, she urges her friend to report her experience to the police. Kate’s mention of Nathan’s involvement, coupled with Chloe’s previous experience with the Prescott heir leads Max to view him with increased suspicion. two. After using her powers to befriend Taylor, Max is faced with an even more daunting task---saying no to a man. Despite Warren’s insistence, she refuses his invitation, feeling sick from her previous discussion with Kate. three. Max taking the blame for Chloe earns her an earful from Joyce at the diner. While waiting for breakfast, Max convinces her estranged friend that she has powers. Max takes a call from a distraught Kate before they leave, much to Chloe’s chagrin. Her attitude causes Max to reflect on the value of their friendship, questioning whether Chloe is still the same person she loved. four. The presence of Chloe’s gun stirs up Max’s anxiety. During “target practice” Chloe is accidentally shot, prompting Max to rewind and ask to stop. After experiencing a combination anxiety attack and vision, Max and Chloe are confronted by Frank. As tensions rise and Chloe demands to know where Frank found Rachel’s necklace, Max pulls out the gun to defend her friend. Whatever bravado she has in the moment fades instantly; Frank rightfully calls her bluff and swipes the gun. Chloe’s resentment is keenly felt by Max long after she saves her friend’s life on the train tracks. five. Freezing time allows Max to reach the rooftop before Kate jumps. She convinces Kate to live by appealing to the strength of their friendship, promising to bring the culprits behind the assault to justice, and asking Kate not to jump for the sake of her sisters. Pulling Kate into a tight embrace, Max and she cry together in the rain. six. Going off Kate’s earlier testimony, Max chooses to blame Nathan for her friend’s s.uicide attempt. Having previously reported Nathan for having a gun, he is suspended, and Max leaves the office emotionally strung out but triumphant. Episode 3 - Chaos Theory one. Max argues passionately against Chloe taking money from the school’s accessibility fund for disabled students. Having borne the brunt of society’s ableism as a young autistic woman, Max comes away convinced that Chloe does not appreciate the value of accessibility and inclusion. The disgreement drives a wedge in their relationship, with Max left depressed and alienated from her former childhood friend. two. The morning after their great escape to Chloe’s house, Max kisses Chloe after she dares Max to do it. The decision comes out of Max questioning her sexuality, and a desperation to reconnect in some significant way with her childhood friend after their argument. Feeling discomfort after having kissed Chloe in Rachel’s clothes, Max trades in the flannel and torn jeans for her outfit from the previous night. three. Unbeknownst to Joyce, Max deletes the message on her answering machine about the break-in. After yet again snooping in on David’s business, Max sides with Chloe during the M.adsen family’s argument. four. While looking for a way to gain access to Frank’s RV at the diner, Max takes the time to warn a homeless woman about the storm and save Alyssa from minor disaster---again. Having lured P.ompidou out of the RV with a bone thrown in the parking lot, Max does what she does best: snoop. five. Max leaves Chloe’s confiscated gun untouched, choosing to let Frank keep it after Chloe’s near-fatal stunt in the Junkyard. Episode 4 - D.ark R.oom one. Max refuses to Chloe’s request to die, asserting that Chloe needs therapy to see that her life has value. After returning the timeline to its original state, Max resolves to stay by Chloe’s side until Rachel’s return. two. Max frees the bluejay from the confines of the M.adsen family home. At the hospital, Max makes plans to go on a tea shop tour with Kate after she is discharged. three. After snooping around Nathan’s room, Max and Chloe are confronted by the Prescott in question, and Max fears she may have to rewind...until Warren steps in. Feeling nauseated at the thought of more violence, Max stops Warren before the beatdown turns serious. four. Having come to the meeting with Frank unarmed (albeit without the money) the girls leave the beach having peacefully gained Frank’s trust and his list of clients. five. The discovery of the D.ark R.oom and Rachel’s body sends Max spiraling into a severe depression. Convinced that her powers mean little in the face of so much corruption and violence, Max prepares to get revenge on Nathan in the present. six. At the party, Max saves Alyssa (for an exhausting fourth time) and warns Victoria to stay away from Nathan. Episode 5 - Polarized five. Awakening in the Prescott’s bunker, Max discovers that Victoria had heeded her warning---and it led her directly to the D.ark R.oom. This revelation coupled with Victoria’s breakdown and Nathan’s death leads Max to seriously question why she was given powers at all. four. Fun and wholesome things happen that aren’t upsetting. Victoria’s sobs echo in Max’s head. Puppies and kittens. Jefferson threatens to hurt Kate as many times as he needs to break her spirit. It’s fine! Max’s nightmares will have nightmares. This is fine! It’s fine! three. Weary of the violence, Max chooses not to tell David about Chloe’s death, leading to Jefferson being captured alive (for the moment). two. In Max’s initial rush to get to the diner, she saves everyone she encounters, including Alyssa for the final time. one. Upon exiting the nightmare, Max is confronted with one final choice: sacrifice her hometown, or sacrifice Chloe. Max, predictably, takes a third option. Epilogue - The Golden Hour On a rain-soaked clifftop overlooking the destruction of everything Max and Chloe hold dear, Max realizes that Warren was incorrect: the storm was about the life she hadn’t saved, the injustice that had started this entire chain of events---Rachel’s death. Max’s epiphany leads her to use her focus power on a certain photograph to go back to the Prescott barnyard. Upon discovering Jefferson’s portfolio of Rachel, Max slips the binder into her bag before running after Chloe to find Rachel’s body. Following a screaming match and a much-needed cry session, Chloe agrees to head back to the M.adsen household instead of rushing over to the V.ortex C.lub. Max gathers as much evidence as she can---including Frank’s list of clients---before using her focus power on a photo taken the summer before she moved away to S.eattle. Leaving William to his fate, Max befriends Victoria years before attending Blackwell, sticking by her side as they claw their way to the top of the “it crowd”. But being popular isn’t easy; Max is forced to mask her neurodivergence hard, navigating the capricious moods of her peers, and walking the thin line between try-hard and just ambitious enough. There are casualties in every timeline, and this one is no exception. Max’s relationship with her parents worsens to the point where they can hardly stand to be in a room together. Her mother misses the shy daughter who took pride in their shared neurodivergence. Her father misses his kind baby girl, the one who knew her roots and wasn’t afraid to embrace them. Rejecting her identity and giving her parents lip aren’t the only problems. Booze and drugs are the bombshell no one wants to touch, both parents scared shitless that this will be what buries the last dregs of filial affection for good. Max’s mental health is another sacrifice in the rectified timeline. She just thanks the universe that overdosing and drinking to excess gives her much-needed pretext for her breakdowns. But partying and pissing her family’s good faith away has a purpose; each connection gets her ever closer to finding Rachel. And when Max gets that full-ride scholarship to Blackwell a year early, she knows her sacrifices will pay off. There is a pile of photos, notes, and evidence shoved underneath her bed, waiting for the right moment to surface. Rachel deserves to know the truth, and to live the life that was so cruelly stolen from her. Max won’t fail in her task.

#[ max ] ⊱ headcanons #[ verse ] ⊱ the butterfly effect #[ verse ] ⊱ m-theory #[ verse ] ⊱ the golden hour

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bardqueenofgallifrey · 7 years

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I didn't have a tumblr account in 2013, so I have no idea how the fuck a 53-year-old Sci fi show became part of something as cringe as "superwholock". I mean, I watch Sherlock but damn this match makes no sense. Could you explain to me how it happened please???

Honestly? I don’t know exactly.

I was never really a part of SuperWhoLock, and I don’t think I was on here for the origins either, but whenever it was that I did get on here, I was just a passionate Whovian who also watched and liked Sherlock (these days I’m pretty indifferent about Sherlock one way or another, and give as few shits about Supernatural as I ever did).

BUT, I’m gonna see if I can try and work out/theorise how SuperWhoLock rose and fell, if only to try and make the point that Doctor Who never deserved to be lumped in with it. Feel free to challenge any points I make, because I’m guessing here.

although, frankly, this idea of cringe culture is kinda snobby and gross. let people like shit, damn, if they’re not hurting anyone or trying to say Supernatural is the best show ever, who gives a fuck, honestly

Firstly, the thing about Doctor Who is that it has been around for literal multiple decades. Almost fifty four years. It has been around since before some of our parents were born.

Doctor Who fans were around long before the internet was invented. They were here before, and will be here long after everyone has forgotten what the hell Supernatural ever was. Doctor Who fans are now the ones making Doctor Who. They were the ones who, when it got cancelled, created an entire thriving Audio Drama business through the love of it that still existed everywhere, and they are the ones who brought it back and now create it. They’ve never let it die.

You know why? Why Doctor Who’s endured, and is so passionately loved by so many, and before all this mess wasn’t any more cringy than being into Star Trek? Because it’s good.

It is a flawed show, of course (always, somehow, in some way, in ways that vary across different eras), but one that is good in a reckless, nonsensical, optimistic way. No matter the ups and downs of its objective quality, it’s never really lost its heart.

It is a show with a protagonist that uses words/intelligence/compassion over violence to fight, a show that focuses on telling hopeful adventures that can be watched by children and also inform them of some of the harsher aspects of the world in an interesting way.

Also, it’s always been quite progressive. It had the first female drama producer at the BBC, and a gay Indian director. No one wanted it to succeed and it’s a miracle the show ever got off the ground.

People like to talk about the “screaming Classic companions” but you know what? Fuck that. The Classic ladies were all wonderful, including the biggest screamers. Susan? The Doctor’s granddaughter, genius, with telepathic abilities and a whole lot of heart. Mel? Computer programmer aka fucking smarty pants, who once flipped the Doctor over her shoulder, and was such a genuinely nice person that it was genuinely impressive. Zoe? Adorable 60′s companion who canonically had a higher IQ than the Doctor.

Doctor Who ladies have been awesome since the beginning, and calling out misogyny from the beginning.

(It ALSO had errors of its time, especially an Orientalism issue that is pervasive through a lot of older sci-fi, that can’t and shouldn’t be forgotten either. But that’s for the most part irrelevant to this discussion other than the general whiteness which is still obviously a problem albeit one the show is slowly working on.)

The reboot then brought in (some, not enough) queer characters and main characters of colour, etc, and its general diversity has only been getting better and better on that front for the most part, especially in the last couple of years.

But anyway, how the hell did it get mixed up with the whole SuperWhoLock mess?

Well, the reboot brought in a whole new generation of fans, and only got bigger and bigger and bigger, and was peaking RIGHT about when Sherlock aired.

The Doctor Who and Sherlock crossover is easy enough to work out; they had the same headwriter(s), and they’re both about neurodivergent (coded??) genius white guys that theoretically have a kind of unconventional attractiveness to them. You can see how they drew in the same crowd.

Now, how the hell Supernatural became a part of that, I’ve no idea. I’ve never been a Supernatural fan (even if I did watch the first four and a half seasons once, more or less enjoy them, but also not find them massively interesting).

But I’m going to assume it’s because it again involved white guys with Big Emotions, that the fans could thirst over, who were undertaking some larger than life shit.

My theory is that it, at least partly, was the White Male Slash Fandom.

You know. That group of mostly straight girls who treat shipping conventionally attractive white men like a fetish and a kink to explore, who will ship basically any two CAWM under the sun if they so much as look at each other. I imagine the Johnlock crowd overlapped with the Destiel and Wincest crowd, and Doctor Who, since it had Ten/Simm!Master (and Eleven/Rory to a lesser extent) as well as some nice hetero ships, kind of got dragged along because almost everyone in the Sherlock fandom was probably in the Doctor Who fandom too.

You can kind of see how it fits. The Supernatural gang and the Team TARDIS are big damn heroes with a lot of heart, while Sherlock fulfilled the ideal levels of pretentiousness that we all go through in our teenage years.

Of course, then everyone realised that Supernatural kinda sucks because it’s an incredibly white, incredibly male, incredibly STRAIGHT show that just queerbaits its audience and doesn’t know when to call it quits, and so everyone started jumping ship.

Then everyone looked at Sherlock, either went “this has its issues but it’s still fun”, “this is QUEERBAITING TOO, WHY WONT JOHNLOCK KISS, FUCK MOFFISS”, or “this is also incredibly white, incredibly male, and incredibly straight, so fuck this also”, and that was it for Sherlock and general opinion too.

(For the record: Johnlock was not queerbait. Johnlock was an expression of Steven Moffat’s own very intimate, but platonic, friendship with Mark Gatiss, and they explicitly told everyone they were not gonna make it gay. And then the toxic ass fandom, deluded out their minds, started sending Gatiss - an actual gay man - abuse about being “an honorary straight” for not making their fetishised fictional relationship canon, at one point literally the day after the Pulse massacre. Seriously. What the fuck. Never speak about it being queerbaiting ever again and leave Mark Gatiss the fuck alone.)

Now. Doctor Who had meanwhile been dealing with the changeover of the showrunner.

Series 5 went down pretty well for the most part, but a lot of people had their issues with Series 6 and Series 7. The fandom had kind of gotten too big, for a show this unconventional. To the point of a lot of people not being able to deal with the distinct change from the style of Russell T Davies, because they weren’t really aware of how the show needs to reinvent itself constantly even on a stylistic level. Because they were treating the show like any other show, when one can’t really do that.

It was all kind of a mess of:

very mixed fan reception on Series 6

Series 7 being on the weaker side (not as weak as some people who missed the whole point of Clara’s storyline make it out to be, but weak nonetheless, though Moffat has admitted to this and explained it was because he was under so much pressure about the looming 50th anniversary, and like, fuck, fair enough)

people being pissed at Moffat for Sherlock shit

Russell T Davies having done quite a few things in his era that are questionable from a wider Doctor Who standpoint, which Moffat as the Ultimate Who Fan didn’t go along with, only to then receive hate from people who were convinced that if RTD did something it must be right, because they haven’t seen Classic Who or apparently bothered to do a couple of google searches to educate themselves

plus, a few of Moffat’s quotes around 2012ish got taken out of context because he’s a sarcastic little shit who runs his mouth

and so people got the idea that Moffat’s a narcissistic misogynist who “loves white men”

also people confused “plot hole” with “is going to be explained later” and complained about him having plot holes in series 5-7 when really it’s just that he was waiting to tie up all the loose ends in Matt Smith’s finale episode

Anyway, thus began the popular - to this day! - sentiment of thinking that Moffat is one of the worst things to happen to television, or at least Doctor Who (and Sherlock Holmes).

And so, that was the “downfall” of Doctor Who and SuperWhoLock, so to speak, as all three shows were written off by the wider Tumblr/nerd community as being incredibly cringy.

Now, to examine it from today’s view, in light of recent series/opinion about the series/the female Doctor reveal.

The problem is, the general attitude about Moffat - who don’t get me wrong, is far from a flawless writer, or person - has literally reached the point of mass delusion. It’s very clear that literally thousands of people have a completely fictionalised version of him in their heads.

How do I know this? I saw someone say that a female Doctor was a “defiance of everything the Moffat era stood for”.

As in, the same Moffat era that, in the last three seasons:

explicitly made the genderfluidity of Time Lords canon (Dark Water/Death In Heaven, World Enough And Time)

changed the Master into a woman (Dark Water)

had the now female Master refer to becoming a woman as an “upgrade” (The Witch’s Familiar)

had a companion’s whole storyline be about “becoming the Doctor” in her own right, with her getting a whole episode of her pretending to be the Doctor, and her flying off in her own TARDIS with a companion of her own in the end of her final episode! (Flatline, Hell Bent)

had ANOTHER companion’s storyline end with her immortal space girlfriend at the console of the TARDIS, offering for her to travel through all of time and space with her in a direct parallel to the Nine/Rose offer from the first episode to the reboot (The Doctor Falls, Rose)

had a Time Lord regenerate from a white guy to a black lady onscreen just to FINALLY shut up people who said race/gender changes couldn’t happen (Hell Bent)

had the Doctor positively reacting to the suggestion that he could be - or had been - a woman, multiple times (Death In Heaven, World Enough And Time, The Doctor Falls)

Moffat’s era has been statistically proven to have shifted public opinion in favour of a female Doctor (ask @scriptscribbles, if you want proof), thanks to the above.

Simm!Master: “She? Is the future going to be all girl?”

Twelve: “We can only hope.”

Also, Moffat wrote Lumley!Doctor in The Curse of Fatal Death in 1999. He’s been pushing for a female Doctor for 18 damn years.

So, the idea that anyone thinks he’s against it, as opposed to having explicitly worked to help make it happen for years, shows that the general opinion of him is literally a mass fictionalisation/delusion.

(It’s just one example, but there are hundreds of others, like how everyone seems to think he thinks of himself as The Greatest Ever and having a huge ego, when he’s literally one of the most self-deprecating people ever, if you watch him in an interview. He’s openly admitted to mistakes he’s made on his time on the show, such as the way he handled the scene at the end of Flesh and Stone, and how Series 7 wasn’t his best because of the pressure he was under about the upcoming 50th anniversary; he is aware of his fallibility.)

He’s not a perfect person, or writer, and no one knows that better than him. There’s a lot of critical discussions we could have about his writing, and there are a fair few actual problems with it, just as there are in the RTD era, and every damn era of Who that has existed. I’m not saying everybody has to like it, because every era of Doctor Who is down to personal preference, and that’s fine. There are plenty of rational, well-informed people, fans and otherwise, who have their -often sound - reasons for not liking Moffat and/or his era of Who in general. I am friends with some of them.

But those rational, well-informed people are like, 5% of the people who otherwise make up a sea of loud, ignorant delusion that condemns Doctor Who under Moffat’s direction and downright refuses to acknowledge some of the amazing stuff it’s done in the last few years.

(Like, Series 10 featured a black lesbian co-lead who got a happy ending, leaving the Moffat era finishing strong on six canonically sapphic women, four of whom are still alive, none of whom died pointlessly or without agency, and three of whom are immortal or close enough, in a time when all other TV sapphics are dropping dead like flies. It also had the Doctor punch a racist in the face and comment on how history is whitewashed, and had an episode slamming capitalism. Plus, the finale canonised that Time Lords don’t view gender the same way, reinforcing canon genderfluid Time Lords.)

Between his second and third seasons of DW being divisive and/or a bit weak, all the Sherlock shit going down, and the fall of Supernatural, and the issue of people taking RTD Who as the baseline for everything Doctor Who when they really shouldn’t have, anti-Moffat sentiments got so big that masses of people fell off the show, and continue to refuse to acknowledge that he might have done anything worthwhile with it since they left. That he might, as a person, have developed and improved.

And so, that is potentially how Doctor Who got lumped in with SuperWhoLock, labelled “not progressive”, and considered “cringy” to this day.

Or at least, that’s my theory, as someone who wasn’t really paying a lot of attention, but knows her Doctor Who.

#doctor who #steven moffat #fandom theory #dw fandom #fan theory #i say shit #fuck this became an ESSAY #my god #I might be totally off base here but these are my Thoughts #anon asks #I spent HOURS on this god #i edited it more than I've edited essays for uni lmao

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