#some of such cute designs I’ve never shared them because they use an old deviant art base that i dont remember the creator of

[marzely]

I was tagged by @cadetzarneki to talk about my oc’s and oh god I’m going to stick to IF oc’s because its already a long list in itself and were not going to dig into my anime/game oc’s from back in the day…..

Anyway it’s all below the read more. If you’d like to answer these about your own oc’s take this as a tag and go for it.

FAVORITE OC: This is a hard one because it's between Soile (SHOH), Valentina (Vendetta), or Freya (Disenchanted). They’re some of my favorite character designs, and they’re my more thought out character’s. If I really have to choose, I guess it would be Soile because she’s just overworked badass with a heart of gold. She went through a lot of shit but kept her head high because she grew up with so much love that she wanted to honor those who helped her be where she is now.

NEWEST OC: Echo (Infamous) is my newest oc. I stayed up one night, played Infamous, fell in love with it, and automatically went to Pinterest and started pinning clothes and tattoos. I love Echo’s design with all my heart, and I wish I knew how to draw tattoo sleeves because mine does not do her justice. A little about Echo is that she was left heartbroken by Seven and doesn’t know if she’ll ever get over him. Seven got her into music, and at first, it felt wrong to continue their dream solo she couldn’t help but feel the call of the stage.

MEANEST OC: Nova Tesla (Zombie Exodus) as a disclaimer there was a time back in the day I would just use the same few first name and just change the last name for characters. So I have a few Novas… This Nova, in particular, was a combat medic, has a child dependent, and is the leader of their survivor group. So she knows to survive and make sure her nephew gets to live a long life she has to make the hard choices. You can only be kind for so long in a zombie apocalypse.

OLDEST OC: Nova Peña (Heroes Rise), so this one is kinda an exception on the none IF oc because she’s a superhero oc I made that I than used for the Heroes Rise series. Heroes Rise was the IF that got me into IF’s. Nova was made because I love DC comics and wanted to make my own superhero’s given they have some of the most basic powers I did have a whole bunch of lore made up for them and I actually still have Pinterest boards made for them.

SOFTEST OC: Gotta be Kyra (AMR) Everything with the strikethough is spoilers for A Mage Reborn, so please check it out if you haven’t because it had me crying none stop at like 3am If you don’t care about spoilers, hopefully, it makes you want to read it. Girl was burned at the stake to save the same people who wished for her death. She holds no ill will towards them and forgave and still loves Leon even after he made the call. And she would do it all again if given the chance.

MOST ALOOF OC: Probably Freya (Disenchanted). After everything she’s gone through, she pushed herself to be more disinterested in everything and keep her emotions in check. She refuses to give anyone the reactions they seek from her. Though in the presence of Theo and Viktor and others she sees as family and friends, she's more expressive and playful.

DUMBEST OC: I’d say Salem (Attollo) shes an artist who stumbled into an entirely new word. She probably gives Operator chronic heartburn from stress from watching Salem run around making the worst decisions in existence, including the willingness to fight some of the most dangerous people in Attollo.

SMARTEST OC: I’d say it’s Valentina (Vendetta) since she set on becoming the head of the Morozov Criminal Family. She is cunning and careful. If there was a term to describe her, it would be femme fatale. She knows how to use her image to her advantage and look helpless, but it is quite the opposite.

OC’S I’D BE FRIENDS WITH: It would be Theodora (Novaturient) and Inez (Emberwood). I would get along with Theo because she is a giant nerd, and so am I, so we would have a lot to talk about. Inez is a chill person who is just trying to deal with her own bullshit just like anyone else, so i feel like she is the most “normal” I guess you could say. (As normal, you can get with someone who can manipulate minds…)

I’m so sorry this is so long. I didn’t think I would end up writing so much. Anyway, check out the IF’s my mc’s are part of they’re all great IF’s. I enjoyed looking back at some oc’s and I think I need to chill on making them……

#I have too many oc like i have like over 30 if oc’s and i have way more older oc’s from other stuff…. #i should just intergreat my old oc’s into these ifs i mean some of them have if i think they work #some of such cute designs I’ve never shared them because they use an old deviant art base that i dont remember the creator of #I usually used it for myself to get an idea of a character design but maybe ill share them #okay ill stop talking down here now #tagged #oc #oc: solie #oc: echo #oc: nova #oc: kyra #oc: freya #oc: valentina #oc: inez

[gaiatheorist]

Atypical/Elliptical.

There was a tweet highlighted yesterday by one of the Neuro-Divergent accounts I follow, building pace on the back of a compare/contrast photo of an autistic female, and an autistic male. If you haven’t seen it, you can guess how it went, she’s all cute and ‘sailor suit’, he’s in a cluttered room, overweight, in food-stained clothing. Lazy stereotyping at best, offensive and dangerous in reality. The dangerous tweet I reported was one from a contentious incel, stating that females don’t have autism, further down the page of “Would you like to report any other tweets?”, we have that other old favourite “Autism isn’t real.” Yes, I’m shaking my head.

I’m not going to go into in-depth analysis of incel beliefs and values, I’ll just hover over the suggestion that this particular variant was whipping up his followers that ‘Women don’t have autism’, based on his interpretation that the female whose picture he was using was conventionally attractive, and neatly presented. If you tell someone the sun’s 93 million miles away, they accept it, but if they see a sign saying ‘wet paint’, they feel compelled to put their finger in it to check, then complain that they have paint on them. (I know, I don’t touch wet paint, I lick it, it keeps life interesting.) ‘Everybody knows’ that a common feature with autism is the special interest, that we will fixate obsessively on a certain topic, or subject, and woe betide any mere mortal who can’t escape before we get into full flow, what with us not always picking up on non-verbal cues, like snoring. It’s entirely possible that the ‘girl’ had a special interest of dressing and presenting herself in a certain way, even ‘normal’ people do that, hanging their entire identity on presenting a certain way, designer clothes, certain styles of dress, Angry Bird eyebrows. Step back, and absorb that, the girl wasn’t ‘properly’ autistic because she didn’t have food in her hair, wasn’t wearing a Star Trek uniform, looked ‘normal’. Specifically, she looked the kind of ‘normal’ that incels have experience of being rejected by, because they expect to have nice-things handed to them on a plate, and then blame everyone else when they’re denied. There’s a certain example of a petulant, pouty individual, who sulks when they don’t get their own way floating to mind.  

Using the newfangled terms neuro-divergent, and neuro-typical, and pausing just for a second to point out that no, we’re not ‘all a bit autistic’ any more than we’re a ‘bit vegetarian’ or a ‘bit left-handed’, neuro-typical people are assumed to be the norm, anything else is deviant. I’ll hold my hands up to that, I don’t iron my laundry, or peel my vegetables, you can stop clutching your pearls, I’m not going to steal them, what would I want pearls for? People with neurodevelopmental disorders are atypical, outsiders, outliers, ‘other’, and it’s more than a little annoying that ‘everyone knows’ that, specifically autistic people, have a tendency to see themselves as different from others. (You started it, telling us we were wrong and weird for our plethora of sensory aversions, and routines, just because they don’t make sense to you.) We’re atypical, whether that’s because we’re genuinely distressed if our ‘usual’ brand of socks, or cereal, or soap is discontinued, or because we won’t cross the road if the light isn’t green, even if there’s nothing coming. Other examples are available. 

I’ve spent vast chunks of my life being bounced between “Why are you doing it like that?” and “HOW do you do that?”, I don’t have any savant-skills, but I’m on an elliptical axis, I do some things differently. (The axis isn’t just elliptical, it’s occasionally highly irregular, I have multiple other medical issues, autistics are often blessed like that, to the untrained eye, it might appear I’m neurotic, or hypochondriac, or do my shopping on NHS direct. I’m an unfortunate combination of chromosomes and chronology.) You neuro-typical types bimble along happily enough on your spherical orbits. Yes, you have spikes, too, I know, but it seems that they’re the exception rather than the rule, your orbits appear far more regular than mine. I’m deviating from all-autistics, to ‘me’, there are common factors, but we’re not a one-size-fits-all contingent, I don’t get upset if different types of food touch on my plate, but I can’t use oven-gloves, and I’ll go all day without a drink of water rather than share a drinking vessel, we’re all different. 

I’m sometimes envious of the spherical orbit, the regularity of being able to remember to prepare and eat three meals a day, not being afraid of bridges, being able to choose a direction and travel in it without sensory overload, it might as well be necromancy or Olympic level athleticism, it just isn’t ‘there’ for me. When my orbit is within ‘yours’, I’m highly efficient, that’s the “HOW do you do that?” phase. I just do. There isn’t really much of an alternative, but it’s not very healthy, I have all of your weird scripts and rules tumbling around my head, like that stage where you’re learning a new language, everything has to be double-processed, and checked, it’s clunky, not fluent. I’m 43, and I still don’t dream in your language, I can concentrate for periods, but remembering all of the verb endings tends to kick the tenses out of the window, we’re no longer congruent, and I don’t make sense to you. 

When I’m within your orbit, I take short-cuts, as verbose as I am here, I omit the unnecessary, because I don’t have the cognitive or physical energy for all of it. I’m a flat-pack item of furniture, I don’t need ‘all’ those screws and fixings to be functional, do I? I unintentionally infuriate and antagonise, because I don’t want to stop for a cup of tea, or chat about TV programmes, I want to complete the task set, before I run out of energy. (I know, but the externally imposed sanctions for non-completion generally have a ripple-out impact on others. My intense bursts of activity alienate other people, because they want to slow down, and chat, but that’s not the task in hand, and I know that my brain and body are temperamental, I *need* to finish within time, and properly, in case I’m less-functional the next day, I always stacked/banked work to make sure I was ahead of myself, to avoid letting other people down if I was ill.) 

When our orbits converge, it’s phenomenal, on a ‘work’ level, a life-admin level, or, that holiest of Grail, an interpersonal level, those brief instances are stellar, apart from me freaking people out by my intensity sometimes, I’m an acquired taste. I’m really good at some things, a large proportion of which have yet to demonstrate a particularly useful potential, but there’s time yet. I’m steering very firmly away from the lazy stereotypes of ‘special talents’, I’m resilient and resourceful because I have to be, I often view things from an alternative perspective, and connect-the-dots that others don’t. I still can’t use oven-gloves. 

When my orbit swings outside yours, it’s difficult, sometimes impossible for aims to be reconciled, That’s the kick in the teeth on a regular basis, last week, or last month, or yesterday, or earlier today, I might have been functional, or even brilliant, then, all at once, I’m not. “You were fine yesterday!”, yes, I know, I was there. 

Chromosomal and chronological factors sometimes spin me out of orbit. I might have been able to walk to Tesco one day last week (Coincidentally, I wasn’t, but that’s not the point.), that doesn’t mean I can do it every day, it’s a cross-over complexity with my telephone directory of other ailments, as well as the autism. When I’m out of orbit, whether it’s sensory overload, burnout, or just my day-to-day ‘wrongness’, I process differently. A ‘normal’ action, like parking a car (I don’t know why I use driving analogies, I’ve never taken my test.) becomes a pantomime of a driving test, where the instructor speaks a foreign language, it’s an unfamiliar car, on unfamiliar roads, and the car’s on fire, and full of wasps, with an angry pig in the back seat. I don’t have muscle memory, or subconscious competence for a lot of functions people take for granted, not just oven gloves, sometimes events conspire to throw me out of spherical orbit, and everything becomes far more complicated than it needs to be. The elliptical orbit makes ‘just’ my ultimate four-letter word, and I know plenty of others. Some instances of being out-of-orbit are predictable, sensory overloads, other illnesses, compounded difficulties around other life-events, my toe having poked through my sock, and being strangled in my boot, it can feel like being an adult-sized toddler, and the temptation to throw down and scream on the supermarket floor because I’m tired is an unwelcome, but regular occurrence. 

“Oh, we all get like that sometimes! Can’t you just...?” If I could have ‘just’, I would already have ‘just’, wouldn’t I? 43 years of having been chastised for being difficult, or ruining everyone else’s picnic feed very firmly into the ‘masking’ phenomenon. Charlatans and snake-oil sellers, and Gwyneth Paltrow, as well as even more insidious practitioners are always trying to promote some thing or another that will make us fitter, healthier, more productive, then, to continue the Radiohead theme, many medical types throw back “You do it to yourself.”. 

Autism is a lifelong developmental disorder. I can’t consistently ‘try to be less like that’ any more than I can try to be less right-handed, or biologically female. (Yes, I *could* attempt to alter both of those, but to what end?) I’ve had a lot of medical interventions since the brain aneurysm ruptured, and 99% of them have tried to un-autistic me. That’s normal, because autism is abnormal. It’s also normal because autistic females broadly present differently to males. Broadly, I have observational experience from working in education, the ‘old’ perspective was that boys were more frequently autistic than girls, and, more-autistic. Slight tangent on the common misconception of the autistic spectrum, if I may? “We’re all a bit autistic, haha!”, no, no, we’re not, any more than we’re all a bit epileptic. The autistic spectrum isn’t a continuum-spectrum, from 0-100% autistic, while it is clear that some people are severely autistic, and others are not, it isn’t actually a point-scoring exercise, unless you’re UK benefits agencies.

Males and females are conditioned and socialised differently, after millennia of girls-do-this-boys-do-that, humanity is cautiously asking why. I’ll leave my wonky femininist soapbox under the desk, apart from the fact that females are ‘supposed to’ be quiet, and kind, and compliant, and all the gubbins that the incels say. I’m 43, I was raised pink-for-girls-blue-for-boys, there were a lot of things Girls Didn’t Do, it’s OK, I’ve done most of them now, don’t tell my Dad. Much like left-handed children in days gone by were forced to write with their right hand, there has been, and still is, to some extent, pressure on males and females to behave differently, as if keeping our reproductive paraphernalia in a more-or-difficult-to-kick location is an absolute-for-everything. I don’t think it is, but we’ve already established I’m atypical. Not all 40-something-year-old people, with, or without autism had the same childhood experiences I did. There’s no place for detail here, some of the embedded lessons weren’t kindly taught. That Pavlovian response system stuck, be quiet, be pleasant, be demure and train that flinch into a smile. (Various parties ought to apply for funding for having ‘tamed’ this particular shrew. I’m not tamed, I’m barely even domesticated, but I have a shed-load of coping mechanisms.) 

Females shouldn’t feel the need to be less-than, to defer to males, but, in a disturbing number of arenas, that’s the norm. I spent the largest part of my life being afraid of men, because of what some men had done, and hating myself for holding a belief that was anathema to the absolute core of my being. (Chapter whatever, fundamentally knowing that males were not ‘better’ than females, but feeling obliged to concede, to avoid disturbing the peace.) The #MeToo disclosures and discourse picked that metaphorical scab, I’ll never go back to that half-life.

I’m atypical because, after decades of excruciating path-of-least-resistance masking, I’ve managed to mask proficiently to a point where I can ‘act normal’ for short stretches. I shouldn’t have to. I’m not suggesting I should be allowed to climb on top of the curtain poles, and throw things, but I don’t see why not-acting-feminine should be seen as disturbing or threatening. It hurts, not just the bras, and the stupid shoes, and the sitting-all-cramped-up, but the emotional and physical toll of carrying oneself ‘female’. When I had the full spectrum cognitive functioning assessment after the brain injuries had settled, the neuro-psych pointed out that a consideration was always ‘At what cost?’. The popular analogy for physical or cognitive energy is a ‘battery’ (A cell, doofus, a ‘battery’ is a number of cells together- behold, I’m reaching my cranky-pedantic cut-off stage.) In order to do anything at all, you need enough ‘charge’ to complete the task. Yes, given, BUT, with autistic masking, there isn’t just the ‘charge’ for the task, there’s the additional charge involved in keeping everything else running, without breaking down, or burning out, the energy overdraft. I’m virtually constantly in my ‘overdraft’, and it’s a bitch to pay back. 

I’m elliptical because I frequently swing inside, or outside a typical orbit, I can be ‘miles ahead’ at some points, but ‘miles behind’, and struggling to keep up at others, it’s not a reliable pattern, I can’t predict all of it, and I am SICK of well-meaning “Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself!”. I’m rarely being ‘hard’, I’m usually being practical, if I do x and y on one day, I won’t be able to do z as well. (”Don’t call yourself disabled!” can be a blog for another day.) 

This has been an attempt for me to shake myself out of a fog of not-writing. Autism is opaque and oblique, it can be brilliant at times, when things ‘click’, but it’s almost-always difficult to articulate in a way that’s palatable, let alone digestible, I know, it sticks in my own throat enough. The ‘experts’ trot out their theories, sometimes without consultation, and the organisations that set out to ‘cure’ us are pedaling the myth that autism is a disease. It’s not, it’s a divergence. Take this as ‘A Portrait of This Autist’, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I do think it’s important to speak.                

#Autism