(no subject)

[clonecumber]

AKA: that time ordo got walloped in the face with cute aggression and proceeded to squish fi

under a cut because I can’t NOT ramble i’m sorry this is who i am

so everyone knows about dimorphous expressions of positive emotion aka “cute aggression”, right? Yale University has a whole paper about it from 2015 and everyone in behavioral psychology and neuroscience lost their minds about it for like three years or something? That thing that happens to you when you encounter something just...so unbearably cute you literally can’t deal with it and you probably get the weirdass desire to crush the thing between your bare hands but with simultaneously zero desire to do it actual harm? You don’t want to hurt it, you just want to squish it.

Apparently a popular hypothesis is this is an attempt by the brain to regulate itself when overwhelmed by a positive emotion, by like...slamming the big red button and hail-mary flooding itself with MAX FIGHT to try and counterweight the flood of sparkle hearts and emotional glitter it’s currently drowning under (i’m sorry sir...the cause of death...was adorbs) and it’s very likely to happen to people who are prone to sudden surges of intense emotion.

*stares meaningfully in null*

It's apparently most often a response to like...babies or something that our brains are wired to try and make us bond with as soon as possible so we don’t like...accidentally kill them, probably? With the more baby-ified you can make the thing, the stronger the response. But this isn’t always the case, supporting evidence: my own experience, and the Nulls are noted to have their own biological mechanisms for social bonding dialed up to over 9000 anyway, S O...

So I’m just saying that Ordo had to watch this happy commando bound over to him and stand there grinning at him all proud of himself and can’t be blamed for his following actions. He didn’t know what to do. HE DOESN’T WANT TO HURT FI HE JUST WANTS TO FULL BODY PRESS HIM INTO THE FLOOR AT MAX STRENGTH AND GIGGLE LAUGH GIDDILY.

Also please imagine the other Nulls loose in the galaxy also experiencing cute aggression at least twelve times per day. Imagine teenage Nulls on Kamino experiencing cute aggression, possibly in response to younger clones, sure, but also possibly in response to the Alpha ARCs, against the will of literally everyone involved. Possibly in response to a dumb fish. Possibly even in response to a really exciting academic paper. Ever heard a Null making that tiny excited breathy squealing noise humans sometimes make when overwhelmed with excitement to the point every single muscle in their body locks up including their rib cage? They mastered the ice cold non-expression when confronted with an emotion in self-defense of their ego.