(no subject)

[il2]

PERMISSIONS

out of character

BACKTAGGING. Yes!

THREADHOPPING. No.

FOURTHWALLING. No.

OFFENSIVE SUBJECTS/TRIGGERS. No graphic eye/nail/dental injuries in threads, no tornadoes (other natural disasters are fine), no dog/horse death. I'm not interested in having Nikolay get high-tech or magical improved prostheses that more or less make him functionally ablebodied—amputee characters, and characters who use canes/prostheses, are a rarity, and I like playing him that way. He is not his disability, but the fact that he's able to operate a very complex aircraft and maneuver really well in his day-to-day life on very simple, "low tech" prostheses is a mark of determination and a great deal of skill, which I find interesting in a character. I also find it enjoyable and interesting to write characters who have their own unique limitations!

in-character

PHYSICAL AFFECTION. Yes! He's not going to be super touchy with women he doesn't know/isn't in a relationship with unless he's trying to reassure them, but with men he's close to, Nikolay will readily offer embraces to say hello and goodbye, etc. He likes to be touched and to feel physically close to people.

INJURING. Yes. I prefer to discuss first so we can figure out the extent of the damage.

KILLING. No.

TELEPATHY/EMPATHY/FORCE READING. With discussion.

SHIPPING. Yes! M/F or M/M (open to discussing M/NB but it would require some plotting out given the time and place he's from). He's really fun to ship, although I have a strong preference for slowburn and things that build gradually—he needs time to get to know people and establish a baseline of trust. Poly/triads are a firm no; emotionally monogamous/sexually open is preferred for sexgames and off the table for other games/PSLs.

SMUT. Yes! See kinklist/sex info/prefs here.

disability info.

Full disclosure: I'm writing Nikolay from the perspective of a disabled person, but I myself am not an amputee and am going off what I've been able to research/ask people who are amputees, so I may get things wrong! Please don't hesitate to let me know if that's the case, and for those who aren't disabled, please don't feel like you have to walk on eggshells around the topic of disability to interact with him or something; I'm not going to jump down someone's throat over benign mistakes or anything and can definitely tell the difference between actual malice and lack of exposure by now.

I'm not interested in writing him as an Ideal Disabled Person, a model minority, or playing him based on how society today thinks disabled people "should" think about/talk about our bodies and other people's disabled bodies as opposed to how he canonically is - that's not authentic and it's not in-character. If ic negativity/grief about disability bothers you, it is best that you do not interact with this character - while he's not mourning and down on himself 24/7, and eventually is able to do the thing that is most important to him, things are worse for him overall and he'd rather be ablebodied.

HIS EXPERIENCE WITH AMPUTATION. In general disabled people aren't a monolith, everyone's experience with losing a limb is different, etc. For Nikolay personally, it was an extremely traumatic experience, a negative change in his life, and the cause of a lot of pain and hardship - he canonically is not in camp "disability is negative because of lack of accommodations, not the disability itself" and he'd take personal offense to a modern character pushing that view at him; if speaking to him on an individual basis as opposed to generalizing and being like "I'm fine with being disabled and it's lack of accommodations that impacts my quality of life, not the actual disability" he'd just kind of be like "well, good for you, not sure why you're telling me that".

That said, he's very much not "oh, my life is so terrible" around the clock, and he can do the things that were most important to him just as well as he could do them pre-amputation by the end of the film, but that doesn't mean that he wouldn't prefer that his legs be intact without prostheses. It's not an ideal situation and his daily life is very much still impacted, he's just not constantly grieving 24/7. He won't react well to perceived pity, and wants to be treated and regarded no differently than he was pre-disability - he is fundamentally the same person, and he wants to be treated and seen as the same person as he was.

Depending on canonpoint, he's dealing with a lot of horror directed at his own body and perceived undesirability - he completely expects his girlfriend to leave him when she learns he's lost both feet and is shocked when she finds out and doesn't. He's more or less come to an uneasy acceptance by the end of the film, and has made strides toward emotionally recovering, but he's not quite there yet. ~2 years isn't a lot of time to adjust to a dramatic, life-altering change to one's own body.

It's also important to note that Nikolay's prostheses are era-typical, meaning that his ankles don't bend, they don't really absorb shock, and they're quite heavy. By the end of the movie he's very skilled with them, but there are limitations - he can't land from a jump, for instance, and his strides are shorter than they used to be; he still uses a cane when he's not flying.

IC/OOC LANGUAGE. Era-typical though the word may be, Nikolay won't react well to the c slur. On an ooc level, I'm fine with it being used if it would be out-of-character for the other party to suddenly know modern expectations on how to respectfully refer to disabled people. He also tends not to refer to himself as an amputee - generally, he goes with a more vague "people like me" - and refers to his residual limbs as such, not as stumps (unless speaking to someone he's very emotionally close to), and while it's not nearly as inflammatory to him as being called things with louder derogatory connotations, he certainly doesn't like it when strangers refer to them as stumps. In moments of particularly strong revulsion with his own body, however, he may think of them as such.

A few ooc notes: it's fallen out of favor with some people and that's okay and a very personal thing, but I'm speaking as a disabled person myself when I call people who aren't physically disabled ablebodied. In my world that's just the shorthand for people who aren't disabled in a specific way and I don't find it offensive. Similarly, I don't have a problem with the word "lame" as a descriptor of things that are uncool or a veterinary term - I have a horse who is basically constantly lame lmao - but I do find it dehumanizing when used to refer to people with a limp because that, to me, is a word used to talk about livestock and not human beings. I ask that people avoid euphemistic terms like ""differently abled"" or reclamations to refer to anyone other than oneself (ex: "cr*p") in our conversations. If you are also disabled it's well within your rights to use those two terms, but if it's not a necessity I'd be more comfortable if you didn't.

misc.

WARNINGS. Nikolay's canon deals with a prolonged, severely traumatic survival experience that ends with the amputation of both of his feet, and to him, amputation/disability are a horrifying thing and a personal loss. At varying points in canon he is shot, develops gangrene, and starves.

He also comes with warnings for dramatic canon changes in his weight, and his introspection may occasionally reference that where body image is concerned. He starves for 14 days, then is bedridden in a hospital and barely eating, so he ends up really, really not being where he should be—and during his time, people would read that as unattractive and a sign of ill health. He's definitely aware that he's not doing so great, but it's low on his list of priorities. In longterm PSLs/game settings gradual weight gain as deliberate recovery will probably come up, and he may show issues around food based on the nature of his trauma.