let’s do some autistic meta knight headcanons!! over explaining my interpretation of meta knight yet again wooooo
this orb has NO idea how to talk to people!!! outside of work anyway. a lot of this is partially due to upbringing (suppressing his emotions all the time) but he does not know how to express emotions, like…at all.
this goes into a few things
1. yeah talking is hard. even after figuring out what he wants to communicate he will struggle. conversation can be so overwhelming, especially under pressure. he will need time lol
2. because of that, forming connections is hard. i really don’t think meta is much for shallow relationships, and certainly not early in the timeline. which also means he has very little experience with friendship. so a lot of the relationships he did have went kinda neglected, and issues that probably could’ve been worked on by talking became…*cough romk* escalated.
3. honestly i wouldn’t be surprised if meta convinced himself he couldn’t feel emotion (anymore) until like. katam-ish. he tried very hard lol
vulnerability is terrifying. (though this gesture here is also just comforting, like his little cape cocoon thing he does.)
unmasking—yeah im taking the mask thing very literally here—is a big deal and a very slow process for mk. i’m sure he has a lot of feelings on that lol. it served as a way to ensure no one could ever, y’know, see him.
i can’t say i think he’d ever fully ditch it—there’s always gonna be some days that are more stressful than others and if having it could help him get through it, it just makes sense. mainly when working.
it really is about vulnerability. granted, i don’t think he has the most expressive face (in my head every astral just tends to stare at things) but i doubt he has much control over it. can’t fake a smile but also can’t hide it. probably blushes easy because yeah, astrals; just look at kirby’s face.
just the idea that someone might be able to read his expression and know what he’s feeling before he’s ready for them to (or even understands it himself…) yeah he doesn’t want that
but emotional turmoil aside, i think his mask also hides a lot of his stims
remember that whole “suppressing your feelings” thing? yeah turns out that ignoring half your instincts isn’t a good idea. so in true meta knight style, he tries to stim as subtly as possible
1. he has the least control over his wings, so they will flick and twitch on their own. they’re usually a good indicator of how he’s feeling, not unlike the body language usually seen in cat ears and tails lol. flapping is also an extension of this of course, though he probably suppresses it more.
2. this also effects when he takes his wings out. pretty much every time he’s excited or nervous it just happens. kinda makes me wonder if his wing cape ordeal might also go into the suppression thing… (i’d say yes, but using a cape is also very comforting so it’s not necessarily a bad thing)
3. going back to the mask thing; he stims a lot underneath it. think like biting or pursing your lips. he bites his tongue and clicks his mouth. that sort of thing. his mask also makes it harder to notice that he is constantly sighing, humming, grumbling…all that
one nice thing about the mask though is that it helps a little bit with lights!!! woo
(look at him and his magically floating glasses)
sensory stuff—i think he’s mostly bothered by light and sound. maybe a bit of texture. he’s pretty sensory avoidant and perfectly happy standing off to the side not touching anything.
the one exception to this is physical affection, which is, despite all of this, most of how he shows affection. it’s a lot easier to hug someone than to try to explain your feelings for them, after all.
i think he would like pressure though. so that’s probably part of it. and i’m pretty sure there’s some connection in here to fighting (dang, is that the only way he knows how to get his energy out?)
anyway, pretty much all of this is in contrast to kirby, who i would gladly nominate as the champion of Doing Whatever He Wants. he might pick up a few bad habits, but he will never mask the way meta knight does. he might not understand how he feels, but he’s in tune enough to express it…usually.
this is a very good thing for meta because it helps him to do the same thing. kirby’s so energetic, it’s hard to not want to stim with him. it reminds meta to be kinder to himself and explore his own emotions. he can also help kirby understand themselves, so this connection is very important.
yeah, at the end of the day, everything kinda just boils down to kirby and mk as parallels
this is the conclusion i promise
to me, meta’s arc is about growing stronger by growing kinder, and this is mostly by learning to be kind to himself. letting himself be a person again, loving and understanding other people, and eventually, letting go of all the expectations placed on him and doing the things he’s always wanted to do…
autism headcanons are fun for me because it’s cathartic to write, but at the same time, it just makes sense in this sort of narrative. meta is, to me, inseparable from these things. and so is kirby! that’s a dynamic that’s a lot of fun to play with, and it’s at the heart of my kirby interpretation.
if you actually read all this WOW thank you
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The day had started pretty average all things considered.
Eggman had decided to attack yet another poor, defenseless village but at this point, that was pretty common (as depressing as it was to admit).
It was a peaceful little spot. The village was pretty small and had its own little beach a few miles away. Why the doctor had decided to attack this place out of any village on Mobius was beyond Sonic but hey, why question the bad doctor’s plans when he can just wreck them?
Which is exactly what he and his team, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy, were doing. Knuckles had decided to get off his island and pay everyone a visit for once in his life so when word got out about Eggman’s attack, Sonic had to bring him along.
Y’know, just for some fun.
The gang had managed to drive Eggman’s attention away from the village and solely onto them. Sonic, Knuckles, and Amy took care of the badniks on the ground while Tails handled a few of the larger flying ones in the Tornado.
At this point, they were just fighting on the beach. It wasn’t ideal for the hedgehog, but it was away from the village at least, and that’s all that mattered. He could begrudgingly sacrifice a bit of comfort in order to keep the people safe.
Didn’t mean he wouldn’t audibly complain about it though.
“Why’d you have to choose a beach to fight at, Eggy? D’you know how hard it is to get good traction on sand?” He charge up a homing attack and shot through three buzzbombers, “Actually, now that I think about it, you probably wouldn’t!”
“Aren’t you the one who led us over here?” Knuckles asked, punching a hole straight through a badnik and tossing it into another one which exploded on impact.
“Maybe, but Eggman’s the one who attacked the village so it’s ultimately his fault!” Sonic responded. Knuckles couldn’t argue with that.
Amy slammed her hammer into the ground, a shockwave taking out at least six of the robots. “Is it just me, or are there a lot more badniks?”
Sonic paused and looked around.
Yeah, there were definitely more than usual, but it was nothing they couldn’t handle!
He pulled up his communicator, “Yo Tails! How’s it going up there?” He asked his brother. The Tornado was flying over the ocean, keeping a lot of the flying badniks away from the ground fight.
“Not too bad!” He pulled on the yoke, driving the plane upwards as two bots crashed into each other. “What about down there?”
“Easy peasy!” He pulled his hand away to spindash through a bot before continuing, “Though it doesn’t exactly reach lemon squeezy criteria.” He held back a snort as he heard the kit groan.
“You sound stupid, I hope you know that.” the fox said.
“I second that,” Knuckles added, “though I’m not entirely sure what this fight being simple has to do with peas or lemons.”
This time, Sonic did laugh, to which Amy spoke up about, “Leave him alone, Sonic. It’s just a saying, Knuckles!”
“Once again, your figures of speech make little sense. Why do they all involve food items?”
Sonic opened his mouth to quip back at the echidna when an explosion rang out, echoed in the communicator.
“As much as I’d love to participate in explaining Mobian phrases to Knuckles, things are getting a little dicey up here! I’ll talk later!” Tails said, performing some tricky maneuvering around a few bots as they exploded.
The Tornado had been getting further and further away from the shore.
“Alright bud! Be careful!” Sonic said, taking notice of how far the biplane had suddenly gotten.
“You too, guys!”
“Don’t know the meaning of the word, lil’ bro!” The hedgehog responded as he lowered his communicator, bringing his attention back to the fight at hand. He could almost hear the kit lecturing him about his hypocrisy from the biplane.
The fight on the ground went on for about 10 more minutes. The three had started making a game out of it. Who could throw/smack Sonic into the most badniks in a row? Amy ended up winning when she sent him flying through five badniks in a row croquette style. Her reward was bragging rights, of course.
As Sonic was recovering from being tossed around like a ball for the past few minutes, he decided to have a chat with the old doctor.
“Ayo, doc! You’ve been a little quiet!” He yelled out, “Is this a defeat silence or a disappointed silence or-“
“Quiet rodent. I’m waiting for the finale.” The doctor said, pressing a few buttons on his control panel and muttering something under his breath.
Sonic laughed as Knuckles and Amy walked up behind him, the former keeping his eyes on the Tornado as it was still fighting off a few of the bots.
Were they getting more aggressive?
“Finale? You mean when I knock you on your butt and—!”
(It all happened so fast.)
There was an explosion, a big explosion. It was loud enough to echo through the entire area (or had it just been amplified in his mind?).
He didn’t register Knuckles cry out and bolt towards the shoreline. He didn’t register Amy pulling up her communicator and screaming at the person on the other end to respond. He didn’t even register Eggman’s triumphant laugh as he said words the hedgehog couldn’t hear.
The world moved in slow motion as he turned his head towards the water just in time to see the flaming body of the Tornado crash into the ocean, sinking to its depths.
Time froze. The world around him muted. He stared at the spot the biplane had crashed.
(It happened too fast. Everything just needed to slow down.)
He couldn’t breathe. A suffocating sense of dread blindsided him, smothering him alive and he didn't have the strength to fight back. His heartbeat pounded in his ear and his legs itched to run.
To run away from the entire scene. To run and not look back because maybe, just maybe, if he didn’t look back, that would mean it never happened. That everything was fine. They would go back to the workshop later and bicker and have movie nights and play fights. They’d complain about one another’s habits and laugh together.
He’d lecture the kit about his sleep schedule (or lack thereof) and drag him to his bed. He’d tuck him in and the kit would later wander into his room after having a nightmare and the two brothers would snuggle up together, fighting off the bad dreams that tormented the little fox in his sleep.
That would all happen. It would. It had to.
It had to because if it didn’t, that would mean Tails was really…
Tails was…
(He just needed the world to slow down. Just this once. He wasn’t ready to catch up yet.)
He didn’t realize he had walked waist deep into the ocean with Amy having to hold him back. Knuckles had tried to swim to the wreckage but soon realized it was a fruitless endeavor.
The crash had been too far out.
There was no way to get to Tails.
All Sonic could do was stare out across the body of water he feared so intensely. It was a fear that was ingrained in him.
The ocean didn’t care about who or what was in its depths. If it wanted to keep you there, it would, and there wasn’t much you could do about it. Especially someone like him who sank instead of floated.
The dark depths were always out for him, wrapping its hands around him and tugging him further and further down whenever the opportunity made itself known. It was like the ocean was determined to make itself his final resting place. It joyfully filled his lungs with water and never allowed him up for air.
There was one person he could rely on to get to him before the water did. One person he knew that could fight off the thing keeping him down.
But that one person had just had his small body grabbed and dragged under by whatever malevolent force lived in those waters. Never to resurface.
It was as if the ocean was laughing at him. Annoyingly tapping at his waist with waves as if to say, “Hey, look what I just did. Did you see that?”
Of course he saw, how could he have missed it?
How could he miss the sight of the biplane he took with him from Christmas Island, the plane that allowed him to meet the kit in the first place, crashing in a flaming wreck and sinking to the bottom of the ocean, taking his little brother along with it?
The waters laughed at him.
They bragged about how they were the ones holding the kit instead of him. That their hands were running throughout the fox’s soft, golden fur, surrounding him in his final moments.
They teased him about how he’d never be able to hold him again. His hands itched with the feeling of his kit’s fur beneath them. He wanted to find him, to rescue him from his captor. Even if he was taking his final breaths, he wanted them to be in the arms of someone the fox trusted more than life itself. To tell his kid how much he loves him and how much he meant to all of them. That he would be missed.
But the kit was alone.
And that’s exactly how the ocean wanted it.
…
Knuckles didn’t know how much time had passed and frankly, he didn’t care.
He didn’t want to think about it because if the kit hadn’t gone quickly in the initial explosion, then the alternative would’ve taken time. Minutes he could’ve spent swimming to get to him. He should’ve been able to get to him. He was an incredibly fast swimmer, he should’ve been able to get out there.
As the seconds went by, the already cavernous pit in his stomach grew tenfold. He tried not to think about the fox kit who was alone in the cockpit of his beloved biplane, possibly conscious and just waiting for his time to come.
He didn’t want to think about the youngest — one of his first friends, someone he had grown to consider to be a younger brother just as the hedgehog had — in that scenario. It wasn’t right, not after all the kit had done for them.
He had managed to pull Sonic a little closer to the shore. The blue hedgehog had fallen to his knees, no longer being able to carry the weight of what just happened. It was haunting, the way he just stared at the horizon. Never in his life did he think he’d see the hedgehog in such a state of despair and defeat.
Then again, he never even began to imagine something like this happening. Not to Tails.
He pried his eyes off of the grief stricken big brother and looked beside him.
Amy wasn’t doing much better, her head was in her knees, fist clenched and body tense as she cried. She was sobbing her heart out. He could only imagine the thoughts going through her mind.
He looked at the sand in front of him and closed his eyes out of respect for the kit, a few tears he didn’t even know had formed slipped down his cheek. His mind flashed with memories of the fox kit, from the one of him first arriving to Angel Island with his hyperactive yet silent blue brother all the way to the call just a few moments ago.
It wasn’t right, they (Sonic) had just been teasing the echidna about his lack of knowledge for common Mobians phrases. How could this have happened? Why did this happen? Why was there no heads up or warning? It was all so sudden and they didn’t even have time to process anything.
Knuckles knew it was foolish to question why people died, he was the last of his kind for crying out loud, he should be used to this.
Except he wasn’t. The kid may not have been an echidna, but he was still part of his tribe. His family. They all were.
And their tribe had just lost their youngest. Their little golden ball of sunshine. The kid who could brighten an entire area with his laughter and knock someone’s ego down several pegs at the same time. The kid he for the longest time just assumed was magical because of how skillful he was with machines, creating their communicators out of seemingly nothing just so they could stay in contact with each other. He created incredible defensive mechanisms and weapons just to keep people safe. He was only 8 years old.
He had done so much for them, and this was how they repaid him? How the world repaid him?
How dishonorable.
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