Hey, Can Y’all Rb This If It’s Okay To Send You Messages Asking About Your Ocs, Cause On God I Wanna

HOPE THEY EXPLODE

some excerpts from the page i was concepting my amazo guy on! these 2 def hung out like. 1998-2003 and then amazo had to leave for some reason or another but they watched classic futurama together

(suggestive tweet under the cut)

hell yeah tweet on that 2002 flip phone king

I have caved. here is my pitch for why Shigeo "Mob" Kageyama needs to win the @autismswagsummit (or at the very least get to the finals)

people have already talked about his intense autism coding (difficulty reading social cues, low empathy/high compassion, strict moral code, flat affect, bluntness, hyperfixating, emotional dysregulation/emotions being all or nothing) but I'm going to put my English degree to good use and talk about the narrative importance of Mob's autism

the entire plot of Mob Psycho 100 would not exist without Mob's autism

first and foremost, the 100 in Mob Psycho 100? it's a symbol of Mob's emotional dysregulation. the narrative uses a percentage counter as a device to indicate Mob's emotional state -- the percentage till Mob's "explosion." emotions and psychic powers are directly related within the narrative, and because he fears the strength of his emotions/powers, he's been repressing his emotions since he was a child. however, as anyone who tries to repress their emotions can tell you, that only works for so long. the percentage meter indicates the build up of emotions until he cannot repress them anymore -- until he essentially has an emotional meltdown through a psychic explosion. these explosions aren't strictly negative emotions either; they can range a wide spectrum of emotions, from rage and sadness to gratitude and trust. any buildup of emotions can be overwhelming and trigger a meltdown

aside from that, the core thesis of the series is self-acceptance. Mob starts off the series with painfully low self-esteem, for a number of reasons -- he dislikes that he doesn't fit in, he feels massive guilt for allowing his psychic powers to hurt his brother when they were little. he wishes he didn't have these powers (which, I cannot emphasize enough, are a metaphor for autism) and he wishes he could just be "normal." over the course of the series, it is emphasized over and over that psychic powers are normal, they're just another trait a person can have. there's good parts of them and bad parts, but at the end of the day, they are a neutral trait. you can understand why "your autism is a normal part of you, not something to be hated or feared" is an important message

which brings us to the final arc of the series. Mob Psycho 100 does not end with a climactic battle with some big bad, but rather with a confrontation between Mob and the part of himself he's locked away. this other part of him symbolizes a lot of things, but most importantly it symbolizes his psychic powers and his autism. since he realized as a child that his psychic powers (autism) could potentially hurt someone if he's not careful, he's been shoving that part away from him and attempting to mask and be "normal." this manifestation of his psychic powers/autism is, understandably, pretty bitter and angry about this. at the end of the day, he just wants to be accepted for who he is -- not for the face he presents to the world, but for who he really is on the inside. the culmination of the whole story comes through his loved ones showing him that they love him in his entirety, even when he's volatile or upset. they love Mob as who he is, and because his psychic powers (autism) are part of him, they love that part of him too. the resolution comes when Mob finally accepts all parts of himself, even his psychic powers (autism) because they're nothing to be feared or hated. they're just part of him.

genuinely, Mob Psycho 100 is the best representation of autism I've ever seen. Mob isn't the only autistic coded character in the series (I could go on and on about Serizawa's adult autism or the relationship between Ritsu's gifted kid syndrome and his undiagnosed autism) but his autism is definitely the most important to the plot of the show. his autism is presented realistically, with kindness and nuance and, most importantly, with neutrality. even if you don't vote Mob in the autism summit (which, you should. come on.) if you're ever wanting a show about autism and self acceptance that is kind without being saccharine, I cannot recommend Mob Psycho 100 enough

also if this isn't a damning indication of the importance of autism in Mob Psycho 100, I don't know what is

@autismswagreblogs

I feel like a great example of The Duality Of Reigen is how he manages to take out an entire squad of Claw goons with charisma and Sakurai's cursed cologne, but the manga reveals that the reason he knows how the cologne works is that one day he got bored, sprayed it directly into his own face, and lost a client when they arrived for their appointment to find him passed the fuck out on the office floor.

I made a Detective WG OC and decided to post him, hopefully the wordgirl fandom is more active here pfft

Anyways a minor bit of info on him, I like to imagine he was moved from a gritty crime filled town (with more Gotham type villains and the like) to Fair City by his agency, it's just really funny imagining a more serious character being moved to a goofy environment. I also love the Idea of The Narrator being "local" and specific to the area (or the hero) Honestly can you imagine moving to a new city and the first person to greet you is a disembodied voice in the sky? Insane. I'll post more stuff about him later teehee

i kept seeing reigen edits with meme-y songs so i tried my hand at it 

Sobbing

Idk idk something about how broccoli arc is about looking someone you love in the face and seeing the best part of them and knowing they won't hurt you and confession arc is about looking someone you love in the face and seeing the worst part of them and knowing they will hurt you and loving them anyway. Mob stepping forward into the spear that crumples when he moves is one side of the coin and Reigen running barefoot through the hurricane that's battering him to pieces is the other, but the coin always has both sides. Everyone is simultaneously the best and worst parts of themselves and loving someone, seeing someone, is about accepting that totality.

so how’s everybody doing this week? me, not so well

I think alot about serizawa.

that he's so powerful and so sensitive, and how he's the very common Shonen anime trope of "villain with tragic backstory who just needed friends and is won over to the hero's side after the hero listens to them and shows them kindness" but like, his tragic backstory is so grounded in places others just aren't? like, he just didn't want to hurt anybody, so he hid himself away. that's so simple, yet so poignant and painful, so...normal. its such a common emotion, such a common solution. its not a healthy one or a "good" one, but its all he had...and then at some point, his self-imposed isolation became so hurtful to him that it caused him to become vulnerable to exploitation. to manipulation, and he became a weapon in a never ending cycle of violence, until someone was kind enough to listen to him, to want to help him.

and then i think about the fact that that person was just a child who had experienced the exact same struggle but was provided tools by people who loved him to help manage his problems....and it honestly makes me so emotional. because, like, it's a perfect allegory for how living with mental illness affects people.

serizawa is older than mob, so the society he grew up in didn't know how to handle his powers (mental illness/neurodivergency), but now, as times have changed and society has become increasingly more aware, it opens the pathway for people to find strength together, to have people in their lives that understand that they need kindess, they need love, that their mental illness isnt something bad or wrong.

but even more than that, they know that their differences do not make them bad people, they are not something to be shunned and hidden away, but just something to be worked through. just a unique aspect of how that person is, and it's neither good nor bad, just how they are.

and then i think about how serizawa didn't have anyone like that in his life until he was 30, and how those years of isolation and then manipulation (which caused him to do the very thing he was afraid of), how all of that could have broken him could have made him unloving, could have made him bitter. but instead, he overcame his fears, his guilt, his shame, and under all of that, he's just kind.

when i get really afraid, of myself, of the world, when i want to myself hide away and never leave my bed, my room, i think of him, and i feel so comforted, so much less alone.

what a wonderful man, written so gently, so lovingly. it's so rare to see a grown man with a stigmatized symptom of mental illness depicted in such a kind way, it makes me want to hug ONE through a phone screen.

anyway, uh. yeah katsuya. i think he's pretty neat.

LITERALLY THE PERFECT EXAMPLE REAL

black cat and golden retriever trope is cute but overused it's time for black dog and orange tabby to be a thing. for example:

something I love about the mob psycho finale was the implication of when Shigeo called Reigen a stranger, dismissing absolutely everything he had ever done for him, but the thing is, he was not wrong at all. the point is that both Shigeo and Mob are right, Reigen has helped him through so much, he doesn't see him any differently despite his powers, but he also is a liar and a fraud. a stranger, even.

using the word stranger is actually such a powerful thing to mention at all because it implies that they both showed sides of eachother that they regarded to be their "fake" selves, the persona they put up to mask their true feelings and intentions.

when Reigen says "this is the real me", he's not referring to just anything. he's saying he's not putting up that mask he always puts around everyone and that he's letting Shigeo, all of him, the good and the bad, see him for who he truly is, just like how Reigen saw all of him now. he's saying he's letting him see all of him instead of hiding it like he used to before, without Shigeo having to pry it out of him. they both know eachother so well, but at the same time, they don't know each other at all. they're the closest person they have to one another and yet they also don't know a fucking thing.

and that's the point. they'll learn about each other and themselves as they go along, trusting that the other will accept all of them, because that's what it's all about. it's all about trust and making connections, relationships that help you develop and become a better person, and I think that's beautiful. I just... love this story, man.