aww yeah it's question meme time

[hackitude]

Time to bring back one of my old faves...

the QUESTION meme

Simple and easy! Here's how it goes:

1. POST a top-level with your character name

2. REPLY to other people's top-level with a question for that character

3. ANSWER the question you were asked

4. ASK a question of that person's characters in return!

We go back and forth like this asking questions in a thread until one or both of us runs out of questions!

QUESTIONS CAN BE ANYTHING. Serious or silly as you want! What does Jane think of (x)? What does Sarah have for breakfast? How many times a day does Alex masturbate? What's Tom's dream job? The only limit for questions is your imagination.

Replies can be as monosyllabic or as tl;dr are you want; it's up to you. Go wild kids!

Comments

[animalage]

Omfg this is so heavily laden with complete headcanon I am so sorry. also i so did not intend for it to be this long, and i had no motivation to edit this monstrosity so some if there's mistakes/if something doesn't make sense

Okay so. In his pre-hero days Gar put heroes of such a pedestal he kind of made this distinction in his head of being a hero as an identity separate from being human. To him, being a hero was a step up from being one of the many mere mortals. So, when Gar became Beast Boy he had to reconcile the two identities he suddenly found himself with, hero and human, which he’d thought of as mutually exclusive up to that point. He knew he identified with both, but wasn’t sure how to express that. He tried for a very short time, presenting himself only with animal forms, which was awesome and felt really right during missions, but it was really uncomfortable being that disconnected from people in day to day life. Conversely, when he tried being human that didn’t feel right either, which I’ll get to in a little bit. In either case he felt really anxious and disconnected from one part of himself or another, and his self-esteem was really terrible because he couldn’t figure out what he was. When Gar discovered that he could shift isolated parts of his body, Black Canary suggested that maybe using that ability was a way to make it so he could express both identities at once. He fiddled around with different human and animal traits before deciding on the presentation he uses how. The animally bits let him express his powers and hero-ness, which he feels is an integral part of who he is in his new life, but he’s still human enough to engage other people and be involved in the culture that he was raised in.

…basically all that is an allegory for gender dysphoria.

Moving on! Reason 2! Gar also feels really disconnected from his past. He doesn’t see himself as the Garfield Logan that lived in Qurac on an animal sanctuary; that all seems very far removed from who he is now. Especially since he doesn’t have anything keeping him attached to the life of Garfield Logan anymore; his mom’s gone, the sanctuary’s gone, Monkey’s gone(hell if I know what happened to Monkey). He has trouble grasping that that particular whimsical existence was ever part of his life, and he can thank PTSD for that particular symptom. He does try to hold onto it in small ways, ones that feel right, like watching Hello, Megan!, keeping pictures of his mom, and stuff because those will never change, no matter who he becomes that will always be his mom. But he can’t pretend to be that same person he was. And holding onto an appearance that isn’t him anymore is just too much pretending.

All that being said, he’s not lying per se when he tells people that he does the tail and fur thing because he just want to go all out of the weirdness. To some extent he does believe that’s a pretty good reason for why he decides to look the way he does, but it’s only a very surface level belief.

He doesn’t mind at all the looks that he gets in a crowd. He’s confident in the way he presents himself now, because he’s found who he is and thanks to an awesome support system(aka the Team) he knows that who he is is awesome. Whether people are looking at him because they’re scared or curious doesn’t really matter to him. He knows that what’s different is scary, so he doesn’t take it personally, and he figures, hey who wouldn’t be curious about a green dude. And actually, he’s a huge dork and really likes being green when he out with M’gann and she’s sporting the same hue. He knows it makes her uncomfortable to not look human in public, so he likes that he can be there and be moral support, like, “Shhhhhhh Sis, you’re not the only one! People are only looking at us cause they’re jealous of how totally cool we are.”

As for his powers, he doesn’t have any serious complaints. He even kind of likes some of the limits; like needing to see the animal doing their animal-y thing? He’s so down with that cause it means he can justify absolutely endless trips to the zoo. And that is great. Endless zoo trips is all he wants from life. He’ll always be hung up on the limit on being a dinosaur though. It doesn’t keep him awake at night, or anything but it’s a bummer because when he discovered his powers one of the first things he tried to shift into was a t-rex(and it’s probably a good thing he couldn’t because can you imagine SUDDENLY A DINOSAUR IN THE MOUNTAIN. This ain’t the batcave, you get outta here). But he’s got enough animals in his repertoire anyways, so he can live without a dinosaur. HE’S ALSO KIND OF RELEIVED HE DIDN’T GET ALL M’GANN’S POWERS. Mostly because telepathy is a huge responsibility and seems really intimidating to learn. So yeah, he’s happy with what he’s got.