You know, beta!Roxy’s parenting style suddenly makes a lot more sense in the context of her having seen the specific ways that Jake Harley was a shitty parent and deciding to avoid all of his mistakes as hard as possible.
That’s the point, really. You can’t really build a functional relationship with another person, let alone a person who is dependent on you, by focusing on not doing things. Even if the things you’re not doing are objective negatives. Not being a specific flavor of shitty parent doesn’t automatically shake out to being a good parent.
I’d definitely agree that Rose was neglected, but she was neglected in an entirely different way than Joey and Jude were neglected. Rose self-isolated because she was showered with so much generically positive attention that she stopped trusting it, and Roxy either didn’t understand why Rose was withdrawing, or didn’t know how to fix it, so she just doubled down. Roxy hid a lot of aspects of her life from Rose and presented an empty caricature of domestic motherhood as hard as she could to try to compensate, and all it taught Rose was that she ought to hide anything she cared about at any depth, too. Roxy kept the house so spotless that any area that isn’t Rose’s private space seems almost sterile, and the constant senseless housekeeping made Rose uncomfortable moving around her own home. None of these mark a healthy relationship! But they do all read as reactionary overcompensations for Jake Harley’s behavior toward his kids – the frequent extended absences, the passive exposure to his “trophies” which Joey, at least, seemed deeply upset by, the complete emotional distance with which he treats them, the lack of concern for their living conditions.
(And sidebar, but with how Joey doesn’t know anything about her long-term babysitter’s family and doesn’t feel comfortable asking but suspects that it’s not a happy situation? Yeah, I agree with Joey’s suspicions; Roxy probably didn’t have a lot of good parenting role models at home, either, whoever was raising her.)
The point isn’t “not being Jake justifies Roxy’s parenting,” it’s "a lot of healthy interpersonal dynamics are learned skills and the new canon contextualizes why Roxy doesn’t seem to have learned them despite appearing to have good intentions.”
The year is 2042. Your daughter is awkwardly silent as she eats her dinner. “Something wrong sweetie?” She sighs and puts down her fork. “I was digging really deep in AO3 last night…Why didn’t you finish that coffee shop au?” It happened. Your past has come back to haunt you. Nay, it never truly left.
U CANNOT OUTRUN UR CRIME
OKAY BUT WAIT. This has happened to me. Recently. Because I am old and I have things out there from previous fandoms with previous pseuds and one day my teenager begins a rant at me about people never finishing any WIPs on the pit of voles (which he does not call the pit of voles because he has No Knowledge of such a thing but yet he still reads on which I didn’t think anyone did any longer) and he points out an example to me of something I WROTE AND LEFT WIPing for ages and he has NO IDEA #1 that his mom wrote this and #2 How much it still haunts me to this day that it will. sit. there. for. eternity. because I am too lazy to pull it down.
this… this is really modern art. this is a level 1 shiny dialga in an event ball is on the gts and the only thing this person wants in exchange for it? a… male… ditto.
once, on my copy of X, probably like 5 years ago, i wonder traded away a much beloved, level 100 shiny mewtwo named Biohazard. In return, i recieved a level 1 Giratina, named Dave, knowing only the moves Scary Face and a low-power dragon type move. I was so stunned and pleased by my new friend that I vowed to raise him from level 1 all the way to 100, but shortly afterward i misplaced my copy of the game and lost him. Fast-forward to the present, after cleaning my old backpack out i discover my old copy of X, and delightedly bring my old friends into my copy of Moon, including Dave. Literally as I am doing this, I hear my little brother yell ‘holy shit its HIM’ and come running up the stairs. He opens the door and shows me that he had, in fact, just wonder-traded away a baby starter and had recieved Biohazard, the original boy. Five years later. He hadnt been released, or altered in the slightest, except for the countless ribbons he now proudly wore. I am now raising Dave, who is level 25, alongside my trusty old friend, Biohazard.
okay so this is something that I never see anywhere and idk why? because it is something that I am absolutely certain of and nothing can convince me otherwise. but I bet that y’all are here for some evidence, so I should probably do that thing.
1) ADHD AND DYSLEXIA. okay, so this isn’t really a proof of autism thing, more something that I would like to make a note of that fits in really well with the whole him being autistic thing. ADHD and dyslexia are very common in people on the autistic spectrum. it’s just one of those things, if you have autism you should get checked for those as well.
2) HAND GESTURES. this one is pretty simple, autistic people use a lot of body gestures and waving hands when they talk, and it’s stated in the very first book that Nico is in that him and Bianca both use their hands a lot to talk. (autism tends to run in families and it would make sense for Bianca to also be autistic, but I have not analysed her nearly as much as Nico, so I couldn’t give commentary on that.)
2.5) THE HAND GESTURES are bought back up again in book five, when it says that Nico was following around hades waving his arms around as he talks. on a related note hand gestures tend to get more wild when talking about things they are very interested in or are important to them (or at least as far as my experience extends) and well, anyone who has read the book will probably agree that Nico was undoubtedly very involved in that conversation.
3) STIMMING. this one is not as obvious as others, but when you know what to look for, it becomes pretty apparent. for example, when we first meet Nico Percy describes him as doing a weird sort of dance when he gets excited, which to me sounds a lot like excited stimming. also jumping around?? while yes, Nico does this much less in later books, this isn’t necessarily because he doesn’t want to but rather because he has trained it out of himself, but if I go into that this post would get pretty tragic and much longer pretty quick. so ima leave that alone for now, if you wanna hear more then hit me up in my ask box.
3.5) MORE CASUAL STIMMING is still pretty apparent later in the books, but it is much for tame and less wild. the most prominent of these is Nico twisting his ring. this is like, one of the most common and classic stims. there are actually stim specific rings you can get which are meant for spinning them.
4) SPECIAL INTERESTS. yep you heard it here folks, Nico hardcore has special interests. one word, mythomagic. do you guys remember in book 3 when Nico collected almost the entire mythomagic collection in just one year because he got really into it? because I sure as hell do. also pirates, Nico loves pirates.
5) SOCIAL INTERACTION. oh boy, this one’s a goldmine. Nico is fucking clueless? he has difficulty reading social situations, (often ending in him assuming the worst) he can’t figure out people and what they mean, often takes things very literally, doesn’t know the appropriate anything in social situations, and doesn’t realise how what he says might affect another person because well, he hadn’t intended for it to sound mean, and doesn’t see how it could anger/offend the other person. (see the time when he asked Percy that if Annabeth is so smart then why didn’t she know better than to fall off a cliff) in early books he is overly friendly with people (yes that is the flip side of autistic people being extremely asocial) but when people push that away and see him as annoying, he becomes the Nico we know today, and starts not speaking to people much and thinking out his words a dozen times before saying them. but once again if I go into that this will become depressing af. also something I just remembered, theres an entire scene where he makes a joke and hades cant tell if he’s joking or not, hades make the same joke back and Nico in turn cannot tell if he is joking.
6) PHYSICAL CONTACT. okay, so this doesn’t need much explaining, but a lot of autistic people really don’t like being touched, especially by people they arent 100% comfortable with. sound familiar to you? good.
7) this one is little and kind of hard to explain which is why it doesn’t get a capitalised headline, but there’s this one scene where Jason’s glasses are wonky, and Nico resists the urge to reach out and straighten them. this just reeks of autism to me. there are some things that autistic people just can’t stand, and they often come across as being OCD because of this, a common one is where thing are slightly wonky or askew, or just generally not how they should be. for example, it kills me if people have sleep in their eyes.
im sure that theres a ton of other stuff that im forgetting, but honestly its one am and I have other things to do before sleep so that’s all from me for tonight.
n word (video) (this is a cover, but they could have chosen to censor it or change the word – knowledge that the n word is bad isn’t confined to the US lmao)
i don’t suggest googling it as op suggested, because a lot of the results are kpop stans blindly defending their idol
wait, is that an actual swastica? there’s the sanskrit/Hindu/Buddhist symbol for peace, which is turned a different way (but still called the swastika fyi)
edit: yeah, it’s the version where it’s turned the Nazi way, that’s really not good omg
It was also taken at a fucking Holocaust memorial and it’s got the iron eagle carrying it. It was very, very intentional and very, very antisemitic, there’s no two-ways around that.
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