the stimmies and the shimmies !
hi i wrote a self-indulgent drabble about kuni (wanderer) where u do some happy stimming and he wants to know why!!
ᴄᴡ. written with a neurodivergent reader in mind, but anyone can read and relate as stimming is not at all exclusive to neurodivergency :] i do not at all wish to encourage harmful stereotypes or put this behavior on a pedestal—this is simply a silly happy drabble building from my own personal experiences and i wanted to share it for anyone to enjoy!!
ᴀ/ɴ. happy flappy happy flappy flip flop flappy pap :D also this actually turned out to be really cute and doesnt only have to do with stimming—its very fluffy and funny and i really like the dialogue!! not super proofread and im very proud of myself for not hoarding this in my drafts for months!! im really happy that it only took me an evening to write this!! WEEEE
“…why are you flapping your hands?”
you stopped moving abruptly, staring at the wanderer with a blank face, expression unreadable.
it took you a moment to get the words out (because he was staring at you expectantly with his arms crossed, and that was rather intimidating), but you managed to squeak them by after some self-encouragement.
“well… im happy.”
kunikuzushi seemed to scrutinize you for a moment, and you were afraid that this had only given him another reason to dislike you. “happy? why would you be happy? i hate happy people.”
(…that’s what you imagined he would say.)
though, you obviously didn’t know him perfectly well, because what he said next was far from the venomous reply you’d feared.
he simply hummed, gaze softening a bit. “alright then.”
alright then.
you had finished your happy flapping due to the interruption, no longer feeling the urge to happy flap, but you still felt calm and content, and maybe even more so thanks to his almost… sweet response. sweet for him, at least.
the expression on his face made you feel a bit warm all of a sudden—he wouldn’t stop looking at you. it wasn’t hard to tell that his eyes were boring into your own even if you weren’t meeting them yourself. you felt like a little pot of boiling water under his gaze. a little soup. a soup of happy and confused feelings. happy soup.
what was it that had made you so very happy, kunikuzushi wondered? he kept replaying the past couple minutes in his head, trying to remember what had occurred just before this, but the only pictures in his head were of you, all bouncy and flappy and so very pleased.
perhaps he should’ve just asked you, he mused.
perhaps he would just ask you.
“what made you so happy?” he inquired, as blunt and flat as ever. but you knew him just enough to know that he would never ask such a thing if he didn’t really care—and the tone of his voice was irrelevant. he always sounded rather uninterested with anything.
you grinned, meeting his gaze. it looked as though you were holding yourself back, buzzing with a chained excitement again.
“kuni, i was happy because of you!”
a most incredulous expression crossed the wanderer’s face.
“me?”
what could kunikuzushi have done to make anyone so happy?
he studied your smile, your hands, your eyes—and he could not figure out how he could possibly be a reason that all of those lovely features of yours contained such absolute joy.
you nodded confidently. “do you want me to explain?” you could tell from kuni’s horrified expression that, firstly, he did not really believe you. and secondly, he held a deep-seated loathing for himself, which was why he could not believe you. he could not accept that there was anything good about himself.
“knock yourself out,” he murmured, still seeming dazed.
you motioned for him to sit next to you, looking like you would start jumping up and down at any second. seriously, why were you so happy?
“i was just thinking about how far you’ve come, kuni,” you began. you already looked like you were in the middle of one of your long spiels that the wanderer was so often obliged to listen to. “and it makes me really happy.”
he had to hold himself back from scoffing—not because he thought anything bad about you, but because he thought badly about himself.
“remember when nahida first made you come work with me in the nursery?” you grinned. “you were so mad. it was hilarious.”
kunikuzushi averted his gaze to the ground with a grumble, suddenly finding his shoes very interesting.
“okay, i was not mad.”
“yes, yes you were! oh my archons, you were so grumpy, kuni! you-”
“no, you are so delusional,” he retorted. “i was just-”
“grumpy?”
“no.”
“ooohhh, yes, kuni was feeling a bit grumpy, i think. you were a little grumper.”
the wanderer opened his mouth to retaliate—but he faltered, a new hint of amusement smothering his gaze.
“…you are incredibly annoying, did you know that?”
in any other situation you would’ve taken that very literally, but the faintest of smiles itched at his lips, and you knew for certain that that was his way of conceding.
you probably should’ve stopped there, but something inside you just couldn’t continue in life without saying this one last thing.
you feigned pity with a pout, widening your eyes and clasping your hands.
“...did nahida forget to give you a juicebox that day?”
kunikuzushi thrust his hat onto your head, shoving you and your hysterical laughter aside. if you could’ve seen from under the big ass hat, his glowing cheeks and sheepish grin likely would have sent you into a fit, and the wanderer just couldn’t have that.
“i am so funny,” you cackled, very obviously pleased with yourself (but you were still trapped under his hat, so your voice was very muffled, and it was much more difficult for him to take you seriously this way).
“yeah, yeah. whatever helps you sleep at night, flappy.”
“flappy?” you knocked off the hat with one sweep, an incredulous smile dancing on your lips. “you jerk!”
“yes, i know.”
“oh, you are so mean,” you grumbled, though your expression said the exact opposite.
“i’m well aware, flappy.”
“you just make me wanna—wanna—oh, why i oughta-”
“oh, please, do tell!” kunikuzushi drawled, resting his chin in his palm.
when you couldn’t seem to say anything at all, mouth agape, he closed it for you—pushing your jaw up with his pointer finger—grinning smugly like he always did.
“as auntie nahida says,” the wanderer murmured, “if you have nothing nice to say…don’t say anything at all.”
and with that, he grabbed his hat from the floor, exiting the nearly empty nursery with a dramatic flourish that was so characteristic of him. you were left sitting there for a few minutes, aghast at what had just happened, until you came to your senses.
you did a bit of happy flapping after that.
thank you for reading :)
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god that post made me mad. "humans just CAN'T be persistence hunters, because persistence hunting doesn't make any sense to me personally! no i'm not going to cite any sources, just trust me, i read about it in school!"
okay, mmhm, sure...except it does work. it does work, and we know it does because it was still in practice by modern humans in the central Kalahari until AT LEAST 1990. some of those people have even explained some of the challenges and nuances of the practice as well as the knowledge they use to make it easier. it's not the only method of hunting humans have used over the years, but it is definitely one of the methods in our repertoire.
"humans can't run for multiple days without food and water (which is how i assume persistence hunting works, for some reason)! and they're not fast enough to chase an antelope without losing it! and tracking is a stupid concept that doesn't work, and i'm going to scoff and ignore it!"
you don't have to run for days. you don't have to be super fast. you just have to be fast enough to not let your quarry rest long enough to recover, and you do have to be able to track-- which is absolutely a real thing that people can and do learn how to do.
(i suspect the OP ignored tracking as a possibility for the same reason they tried to discredit any information about the indigenous peoples of the Kalahari as basically being (1) all noble savage bullshit from the 60s or (2) irrelevant because it's not what their forefathers were doing-- their anthropology course probably taught them about the challenges these bands are facing with colonialism, and probably also taught about the rampant misinformation about them, but it did not teach any actual respect for their cultures or knowledge. or for them as, you know, people. whose grandparents remember the way their grandparents hunted, and can talk about it, even if they are no longer able to continue the practice.)
(knowing the noble savage stereotype is bad doesn't make it less racist when you still talk about people from a stance of "but my modern ways are better than their hungry primitive ways and i'm going to talk as if they're already extinct and have no expertise worth discussing.")
"there's no POINT to it! we have tools! and weapons!" the point is not getting gored and kicked to death by a wounded animal four times your size that didn't die when you hit it the first time. the point is that an exhausted kill is an easy kill where you don't die. it's a decent point. it's fucking reasonable. also, afaik there's decent odds we learned hunting before we learned tools.
and yeah, i get that the OP was just upset and yelling in the initial post. i do understand that. and I understand their frustration at hearing a theory misrepresented as fact. but their subsequent reblogs and responses are equally thoughtless pseudointellectual posturing, and i'm sorry, it's garbage. someone pointed out modern pursuit hunters exist, and they basically went "mmmmyeah, all of that is just outdated, cherry-picked misinformation and you're very stupid and i'm very smart, look at me i know lots of tribe names and i'm going to link some articles about why these people no longer matter, isn't that sad and TOTALLY relevant to this conversation." someone else mentioned tracking, and they ONCE AGAIN basically said if you lose your line of sight, that's it, you're done, you've lost your quarry. tracking isn't real, don't even bring it up. hoofprints in wet ground in the rainy season? those are fake. doesn't happen. broken brush where a panicking animal has run? lol, that's not real. you can invent tools, but learning to follow an animal? bullshit. total malarkey. it's all just guesswork. you can GUESS where the antelope went but that's the best you can do.
🙄
anyway, i don't know enough about human evolution to guess why we're shaped the way we are, and i'm not going to speculate on it today. but what i DO know is that i am willing to believe the G/wi and the !Xo when they say, hey, if you drink a lot of water and then chase a large ungulate through the hottest part of the day in the fucking Kalahari at a steady jog, it will probably overheat and collapse before you will. because one, i kinda figure they know what they're talking about, and two, it does actually make sense when you stop and think for thirty fucking seconds. sure, you need to be physically conditioned to run distances in extreme heat, and you need to be able to find your quarry again if you lose sight of it. but conditioning and tracking are both things you can learn, no matter how badly certain clowns wish it wasn't because it doesn't support their bias. 🙃
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