new meme format just dropped

Rocket raccoon has one of the saddest backstorys in the mcu, and y’all look right over him and don’t give him the love he deserves :(

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

(The images have brief captions. Detailed captions, as well as more images, can be found on this older Tumblr post.)

Did you enjoy the Guardians of the Galaxy films, but want approximately 200% more Gamora? 

HAVE I GOT THE BOOK FOR YOU.

Connectivity test, blah blah blah.

I stole Groot’s datapad. Just kidding, I’m upgrading his software and decided to check out this “Autism Speaks” that Groot n’ Drax are all fired up about. 

What a bunch of losers! How the hell is lighting buildings up blue helping anybody? Autism Speaks sounds like a cult to me. BRB a sec, I’m gonna research some more and finish typing this. Groot can delete it later if he doesn’t want it on his blog. He knows I’m gonna do a test post. BRB.

ETA: Whoops, forgot I started this. The research took longer than I expected. I thought it was gonna be funny. It’s not. I’m pissed off at all you stupid jackasses that are lighting it up blue.

Don’t feed me the bullshit line of “what about really severely autistic people?” or “The lower functioning people NEED a cure!”

First off, shut up. Second off, you’re a douchebag.

Autism Speaks assholes: “Lower functioning people aren’t smart!”

Where did this functioning crap come from? What’s that got to do with intelligence?

Is Groot stupid? NO! 

I mean, yeah, sometimes it’s frustrating to discuss plans with him. It’s a guarantee that you can give him instructions and he’ll only retain some of it. Usually, it’s the bits I’d call the least important. 

Don’t get me wrong– Groot understands words. He understands what you say to him. Telling him to repeat a plan back lets me know what he hangs onto and what he doesn’t. Sometimes he scrambles up the words in his head and remembers a plan out of order. You shoulda seen the time I put him in charge of a bomb with a “kill everything” button. I’m the dumbass for putting a “kill everything” button on it in the first place.

First off, Groot works best with direct instructions. Describe whatever thing you want him to do or get in as much detail as possible. Tell him to wait until you say ‘go’ and he’ll stand there all day until you say go, but he’ll execute his part of a plan immediately if you don’t give him a cue to wait. That’s the mistake I made in the Kyln. I didn’t tell him to wait until I said go get the battery. That was on me. 

Secondly, Groot depends on prompts and cues. Some are internal, some are external. He messes up if a prompt or cue isn’t clear or obvious enough. He messes up if there’s an environmental prompt or cue that looks like the one you tell him to watch for. And if that ain’t complicated enough, what constitutes obvious to him can go totally unnoticed by everyone else. 

Humies call it autism and I call it Groot being Groot. You’ve gotta be patient and go at his pace. I ain’t the most patient guy out there, but I try to be for Groot. He can’t change how his brain works; I can change my approach when I lay out a plan. 

So, to reiterate, sometimes it’s frustrating to go over plans with Groot. That doesn’t mean he’s stupid. It means you have to be patient and keep explaining until he gets it and knows what cues and prompts to watch for.

Autism Speaks assholes: “Lower functioning people are like little kids in adult bodies!”

Ugh. Stop. The only time Groot is a baby is when he’s actually, ya know, a baby. 

Raising tiny Groot was a riot. Nothing’s funnier than a ten inch tall angry baby tree who thinks he’s eight feet tall….then he knocks your block off and you remember how strong Flora Colossi are.  

I know what an intellectual disability is. (Drax just told me to replace the r word. Whatever.) Groot doesn’t have one. Even if he did, he still ain’t a baby unless he’s actually a baby.

We all kinda amassed an arsenal of sensory stuff for Groot. A lot of it is what people consider toys that kids play with. Baby Flora Colossi that are big enough to run around need stimulation. Being exposed to a lot of stuff early kinda helped Groot be able to tolerate a lot more chaos now than he could before. He’s still got a limit, but I think it’s higher now than it used to be. 

The toys help and Groot still plays with them. He puts stuff in his mouth a lot. That doesn’t mean he’s a kid in an adult body. He uses his teeth to figure out the texture of surfaces. If it works for him, it works. 

Oh, by the way? Swearing baby Groot is the funniest thing you’ll ever hear. You’d crack up too if you saw a tiny tree smile innocently while he calls somebody a bag of gaping buttfucked assholes.

Autism Speaks assholes: “Lower functioning people can’t communicate!” 

From the mouths of people who aren’t autistic. They’re the experts, right? (That was sarcasm, btw.)

Can you douchebags quit the function crap?

Groot communicates loud and clear if you know how to listen to him. He moves around. He makes noises. He gives off scents. Those damn huge eyes of his are like a book to me and they’re full of his bleeding gold heart. There ain’t nobody I know with a bigger heart than Groot. He’ll give you his arm if you need it. 

He lets me know he doesn’t like somebody by growling in the lowest register of his voice. You can feel the vibration if you stand next to him. Anybody who earns that growl is ‘special’ because Groot ain’t somebody who hates other people without a good reason. So if he’s growling about you, you did something shitty. Guess who’s been making him growl lately? Yep. Autism Speaks.

He’s also got this “centering” noise that’s sort of a droning groan. Kinda reminds me of monks chanting. He’ll walk around the perimeter of a space and do that over and over. Groot has a weird sense of depth perception when he’s inside enclosed spaces like ships or buildings. He said pacing a room and groaning until he hears his voice bounce off surfaces gives him a sense of its size. I…don’t quite understand how it helps him, but I ain’t gonna make him stop doing what works for him.

It still weirds me out that other people don’t understand Groot when he talks. Yeah, yeah, I hear the syllables “I am Groot” just like anyone else does. It’s less about the syllables and more about the meaning in them. I understood what he was saying before I knew language was a thing. Then all the mutilation started and… well I don’t wanna go there.

I guess listening to Groot is like listening to an orchestra play some dead guy’s music. All those flashy instruments in the orchestra work together to make the sounds we call music and that music means something. It makes you feel things that go beyond words.

Groot’s voice has all kinds of overtones and undertones. The closest thing I can equate to what I hear when Groot talks is that throat singing thing monks do, but at really high or low frequencies all happening at the same time.   There’s a lot of layers to the sound and they get more complex if there’s a lot of information. His mood affects his voice. His overtones get louder when he’s scared and the undertones get louder when he’s pissed off. I still know what he’s saying because those tones don’t change pitch.

So like I said before, Groot’s voice has a lot of layers and complexities to it. Hearing him do the equivalent to recite a ten page sonnet by some dead guy –I think it’s Britney Spears?– is gonna have more harmonics to it than hearing him tell someone to go fuck themselves. 

A lot of what he says is based on context, too. He could say something outside that sounds exactly the same when he says it inside and it’ll mean two totally different things. That’s something I figured out from getting to know him. It’s experience.

I learned something really interesting when Groot was a tiny pissed off twig. All those overtones and undertones happened at a higher pitch…and kept the same configuration. Same open fifths or major sevenths or whatever those intervals are. I ain’t a music buff, okay?

Groot’s communication doesn’t end at his voice. You’ve gotta take note of the scents he gives off, his body language and facial expression. If I talk to you, you get my words as syllables arranged in a specific sequence over a period of time depending on how much I’m saying. You’ll be paying attention to my gestures, tone of voice and the look on my face. Groot gives all the same meaning to you almost simultaneously. 

Heck, sometimes Groot only has to make a gesture and it’ll say a lot. To him, two people exchanging an emotion is a conversation. He’ll look at me and smirk, I’ll laugh because I know he’s smirking about whatever bullshit we pulled on Quill, Gamora or Drax, and in Groot’s mind that’s equal to us saying “hey, remember when..?” out loud. He looks right into my eyes once in awhile. That’s something really personal for his species. I don’t take those looks for granted, ever. 

People get so stuck on ‘talking’ being words coming out of mouths. Apply those rules to Groot and you miss out. There’s a lot of meaning in just about everything he does. He makes perfect sense to me about 90% of the time. 

I guess all you ape-based aliens can’t hear what I hear or smell what I smell. It’s a shame that the really funny stuff he says doesn’t translate too well into text. 

Now, after saying that, it doesn’t mean I pretend I’ve got a total understanding of Groot-speak or that I know him better than he knows himself. I’m not gonna go all Autism Mom™ and detail all his rough times for the internet to see. Not my stories to tell anyway. 

I know Groot well enough to tell when something’s wrong. Groot has a behavioral baseline and he doesn’t veer off it unless there’s a problem. It’s up to me to figure out what’s wrong. He can’t localize pain, so that’s when I prod him until we find the source. He can’t turn off his stress response when he’s triggered, so it’s up to me to figure out what triggered him and get rid of it to stop the flashbacks.

The SIB is hard. Groot knows what he looks like when he’s doing it. As bad as it feels to watch Groot go through it, it ain’t close to how bad he’s feeling. We figured out how to deal with his SIB together. There’s a standard procedure for his everyday freakouts. That’s how I know a regular freakout from him telling me something’s wrong. The standard procedure calms him down quick if it’s his usual sensory issues.

It’s always necessary to stop or redirect him when he’s beating the hell out of himself. Groot gets real sick if bacteria gets into his cambium tissue. He needs help to not bite himself and, like I said, we figured out what works for us to keep us both safe until his freakout blows over. I think you humies out there call them meltdowns, don’t you? Yeah. Meltdowns. Groot and I get through ‘em together.

I never stop at controlling his behavior when something’s wrong. I go through the checklist of known sources of trouble and go from there. Getting to the bottom of the issue is gonna take longer than usual because Groot can’t always tell me the exact problem when his brain is all scrambled up. He doesn’t flip out for no reason. Stuff nobody notices makes him go through the roof or triggers the crap out of him. 

Since some stupid asshole is gonna ask: NO, he doesn’t ruin my day if he flips out. It’s not like he decides to act like that. I’ll drop everything to get Groot through a bad day. He does the same thing for me.

Same Autism Speaks assholes: “Really severe low functioning autistic people can’t form relationships!”

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. I’m getting tired of this function crap. Seriously, stop it.

How many people can say they’ve known their best friend all their life? No matter how far back I look in my memory, I see Groot smiling at me. You wouldn’t be reading this if I never met him. He understands me because he was there going through his own hell while I went through mine. I’m a dickhead at him a lot, and he doesn’t hold it against me. He knows why I’m such a dickhead and he calls me on it when I go too far. We call each other horrible names all the time, but we stay away from the shit said to us on Halfworld.

We bonded through our trauma. As shitty as my memories of Halfworld are, Groot is in almost all of them. He was the only person there that didn’t treat me like dirt. He was the first person to show me what compassion looks like. He was the one good reason I kept fighting to stay alive and escape. 

Groot saved me from turning into the mindless weapon they were building me to be. I swore I wasn’t gonna leave him behind when I blew that place. He’s too nice for that dump. I’m glad we did that together. We both figured out what a great team we are. Me and Groot against the universe.

Halfworld messed my head up. I’m a certified nutcase, and you know what? So is Groot. We’re mentally ill and messed up. I think Groot takes care of me more often than I take care of him. He’s good at it. He looks out for me.  

Groot scoops me up when I get drunk, cleans my puke and piss off me and pretty much babysits me until I sober up. He never complains or bats an eye. I hate being drunk, btw. I drink to shut off the flashbacks and panic attacks. So Groot makes sure I don’t hurt myself when I drink myself stupid. It ain’t any different than me pinning his wrists behind his back and patting his neck to tell him it’s gonna be fine while he’s face down on the floor screaming. 

I had to lose Groot once to realize how much he means to me. A universe without Groot ain’t a universe I want to be in. I’m the luckiest bastard alive to have a friend like him. He died for me. No hesitation at all. He died while looking into my eyes and wiping the tears off my face. He took care of me to the end. I’ll never forget that.

I asked him why he was doing it. He said I’m his forest. Technically, he said ‘we’, which meant Quill, Drax and Gamora, too… but Groot called me family. Flora Colossi identify themselves both as individuals and by who they call their forest– their family. He sees me as part of him, like you might look at your arm or leg as part of you. I’m not gonna get all sappy and tell you what part of me is his. I think you jackasses already know.

He was smiling…he was fucking smiling. Then I got KO’ed and woke up to see my best friend reduced to a pile of sticks. 

I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do with myself without Groot. I kept a piece of him to talk to because I figured he’d want that. Then the twig I kept yawned. I realized Groot was growing back because I (unknowingly at the time) planted that undamaged twig in the right kind of dirt. Hearing that yawn was the happiest moment of my life.

So all you wannabe “autism advocates” who suck the blue sack of Autism Speaks can go screw yourselves. You don’t know jack about autism beyond stupid facts. 

You’re not celebrating your kids, you’re parading around hoping to earn a gold star for showing the world you want a replacement for what you see as a defective child. 

You see the protesters all over the internet. You see what autistic people are saying. You ignore them when they’re right in your face. Then you get mad at them for getting in your face at all. 

Ignorance isn’t an excuse anymore. You’re hurting autistic people like Groot when you support Autism Speaks, and you expect Groot to be grateful? Fuck off. I hate two-faced people like you.

I’ve done worse things than any of you jerks. I don’t deserve a friend like Groot, but he sticks around because he’s loyal like that. The autistic people you blue-wearing losers live with deserve better than what they get from you. I don’t care if that’s mean! How about you research Autism Speaks before you give me crap for saying what I’m saying? 

Groot doesn’t need fixing and neither do autistic people. You can teach ‘em how to do a lot without squashing their identity away. 

I remember hearing Halfworld employees argue about whether or not Groot is actually conscious. They didn’t think he could do much more than sit there and stare off into space. 

Guess what? I taught Groot how to read traffic signals. I taught him how to fly a ship. I taught him how to play card games. I taught him how to disable security systems. There’s a lot that he can’t do without some help, but he can do a lot more with aid instead of having it done for him. 

Teach him based on how he learns and he soaks it up like a sponge.

By the way, he’s usually dissociating when he’s staring at nothing. That’s not a bad thing unless he’s triggered. Sometimes he has to ‘disconnect’ from his body for awhile to stay calm. 

There’s a corner in the Milano he can go to if he needs to do that and everybody leaves him alone when he’s in there. Drax helped us put it together. There’s soft lights that don’t hurt his eyes. All his toys are in a set of cubbyholes hidden under a floor panel. The walls in that corner are decorated with mandalas and fractal art printed on exercise pads so he can bang his head into stuff without cracking himself open. Groot loves that corner. 

Autistic people say Autism Speaks sucks at listening. They’re right. Autism Speaks and its cult following make me sick. So you want autism gone? You want people like Groot gone?

I’ve got six words for you:

Fuck every single one of you.

Shove the blue up your collective ass. I accept Groot exactly the way he is and won’t change him for anything. 

P.S. Light it up blue, you say? Okay, I’ll light it up blue. I wish this was Autism Speaks headquarters.

#REDInstead

Rocket demonstrates how to talk about an autistic person who needs a lot of help without degrading or humiliating them. He’s very “that’s how it is with Groot” about it.

My Guardians of the Galaxy: Collect Them All author copies arrived today. A year ago, I had no idea I’d even be writing this book, and now I’ve got a stack of hardcovers by my side on the desk.

I am just going to stare at them owlishly for a while.

Get your baby Groots, messed-up teenagers, and angry raccoons here, people. In comic stores April 5, in bookstores April 18. 👌

If you’ve got questions, my askbox is open.

(captions to come)

Photo 1: Selfie of the author Corinne Duyvis, ie. me, with bright pink hair dye and wearing headphones. I look delighted. I’m holding up a hardcover copy of the book. The cover features the five Guardians of the Galaxy - Star-Lord, Gamora, Groot, Rocket, and Drax - holding guns and looking pretty badass. Above the title, it says, “An original novel of the Marvel Universe.”

Photo 2: A closer look at the spine and front cover, as well as a photo of the book minus the dust jacket, revealing an all-black book with a golden silhouette of a dancing baby Groot on the cover.

Photo 3: A page of the book. The text reads: 

Photo 4: The inner flap shows in large letters: “A GROOT DIVIDED CANNOT STAND!” The description underneath says:

Photo 5: The back cover of the book. A blurb by Strange Horizons says, “Every aspect of Corinne Duyvis’s work is nuanced, thoughtful, and three-dimensional.” Underneath, it says “WE ARE GROOT” in massive letters, with several twigs branching off from the word “Groot.” The description underneath says:

Beneath is an illustration of Groot.

Photo 6: Three hardcovers are stacked, all by author Corinne Duyvis: Otherbound, On the Edge of Gone, and Guardians of the Galaxy: Collect Them All. Leaning against the stack are two paperbacks: one of Otherbound, and one of the Dutch edition of On the Edge of Gone, titled Op de rand van het niets. A computer screen and keyboard are visible in the background.

End captions!

(P.S.: There will be an audio edition of the book releasing in late May from GraphicAudio. Full cast and sound effects. It’ll be cool as hell.)

Have a gander at this headcanon!

Soooooo I headcanon Peter Quill aka Star-Lord as having some serious asthma. He normally wears a medical Esonophite* patch that needs replacing once a month. It controls his symptoms and his asthma attacks never proceed past feeling tight and wheezing a little. The catch is he has to put a new patch on ASAP when the old one dissolves, or the asthma issues come up full force. He’s pretty good about taking care of that, although there have been rare instances where he left the box on the Milano by accident and had to deal with the repercussions until he he could slap a new patch on. 

His asthma attacks get intense and potentially life-threatening if they’re triggered by respiratory infections or allergies. Sometimes steamy bathrooms after showers can do it too. Even with a patch in place, every cold or flu he gets turns into nasty chunky-cough bronchitis and he’ll need to keep his rescue meds close by in case of a breakthrough asthma attack. His attacks start as tightness with wheezing and coughing that get higher in pitch as his airways shrink to the size of a small drinking straw.

Sometimes an intense asthma attack makes him panic a bit. He’ll often assume the classic tripod posture of sitting and leaning forward with his hands resting beside him on whatever surface he’s sitting on.

His knapsack has a false bottom that hides an alien-looking inhaler that releases a mist if he puffs on it and small self-contained nebulizer canisters that break a stronger medication into smaller particles for easier inhalation during severe attacks, but he rarely needs them. He also carries quick-dissolve lozenges that release oxygen directly into his bloodstream to minimize his “I need to breathe now!” panic while he puts a nebulizer canister together.

Quill sometimes says he never knew what unhindered breathing felt like until he got those Esonophite patches. They changed his life. He had more stamina and became a bit of a terror among the Ravagers because holy shit he could breathe.

Ironically, Quill got his swanky new asthma care stuff from Yondu, who I also headcanon as dealing with asthma issues. Yondu tried Quill’s Albuterol inhaler, choked on it because he didn’t get the whole depress-and-puff part right, and after he stopped coughing he declared it shit. He pretty much slapped a medicine patch on Quill and said not being able to breathe isn’t an excuse to lay on the floor like a pussy. (Cuz Yondu is an asshole.) So he gave Quill the supplies he now carries in case of breakthrough asthma attacks.

Yondu’s attacks are so severe they close his airways down to a pinhole. They start with coughing, then go to tightness and scary high-pitched wheezing. He can tell when one is going to start before it hits because, in his words, “my lungs itch when I cough.” Sometimes the mist rescue inhaler stops it there and sometimes it doesn’t. When attacks progress to total airway obstruction, he has to inject himself with an combo anti-inflammatory/muscle-relaxant/decongestant to make his airway open up the tiny bit necessary to inhale nebulizer medication. Anything that irritates his airway sets asthma attacks off if he doesn’t have an Esonophite patch in place. 

He mastered the art of staying calm during his asthma attacks– he’ll sit still and lean forward with his eyes closed and his hands on his knees as if in meditation with the nebulizer mask strapped to his face. The only panic you’ll see is from somebody else witnessing an asthma attack in progress.

The patches control his symptoms a bit better than Quill’s, he never gets so much as tightness unless he takes too long to slap a new patch on. His symptoms return gradually rather than all at once. He can wait about four hours after the old patch wears off and then he’ll start to cough/wheeze and reach for an inhaler.

*Made-up drug name. Esonophite patches control esonophils, a type of white blood cell that increases in number and trigger the inflammation during an asthma attack. There’s also Neutrophite patches for people whose neutrophils go haywire during asthma attacks.

Omg XD Tag yourself I’m Elsa.

Also Elsa!!!!

#foreshadowing

Get ready for Marvel’s PAM.

Who’s Pam? Doesn’t matter. Pam will make three billion dollars.

Awesome Mix Vol. 1 songs + the scenes they were played in

A TMS contributor discusses how Rocket Raccoon (sort of, not really) fixed their mental illness.

Awesome Mix Vol. 1 songs + the scenes they were played in