User blog:Jade Encrusted Bugs/Barley Headcanons

Because Bug wants to get hip with the cool kids, have some Barley-canons~

Ayyy
Person: "Oooo, love the rustic duds! You know, you'd make a GREAT model for my designs and shit."
 * Is chill with Cedar Wood because token brown synthetic-made persons, also they can be pretty artsy (Cedar being a painter/illustrator and Barley being into three-dimensional crafts). Truth-curse aside though, he worries that her fixiation with becoming human is a toxic manifestation of self-hate in some form.
 * Once mistook Alistair for the son of Dorothy with ridiculous/kind of embarassing results.
 * Is 100% sure that Milton Grimm talks down on him on purpose, and finds this really uncomfortable/honestly annoying. Is for the most part afraid of talking back at him though, and plus, the Headmaster isn't the only one at school who patronizes him for being "brainless"...
 * More than a few of Barley's friendships consists of him being the SpongeBob to someone else's Squidward.
 * Reeeeally likes giving hugs!
 * One of Barley's randomly assorted talents: making macrame/hemp-based jewelry! Sometimes he'll ask Cora to mold tin beads for some for his designs, and the two have been considered teaming up and opening up a little jewelry stand in Book End.
 * Is a countertenor as far as voice-range voice goes, and has learned to sing quite well as a result of Prof. Piper's Muse-ic lessons. His singing voice would be/resemble that of Mich Grassi from Pentatonix.
 * Was impaled by a unicorn once. Don't ask how it happened.
 * Is either oblivious when on the recieving end of flirting, or simply pretends that he is. If he happens to like a person back, sometimes he'll fake literal-mindedness/malaprop certain words/etc in an intentionally endearing fashin as his own (albeit goofy) way of flirting right back.
 * Likes to tuck in lavender leaves and other sweet-smelling herbs along with his usualy straw stuffing. He can't smell but can't help but feel "refreshed" when he does so.
 * Likes to look at neatly wrapped presents and culinary art, and as gross as it'd be to carry around a stale and moldy cupcake, he feels bad that they have to be torn up/eaten because they just look so pretty to him~
 * If there's any human sensation Barley would like to have, then he'd want to shed tears. Mostly due to theories/studies on the calming effects of crying (relieving stress longer-term, ect), because when Barley cries, he cries.
 * If asked if he's a boy or girl (or is either or is assumed of him, he'll generally respond with the following: "Actually, I'm a scarecrow."
 * Speaking of human-related things: he'd rather stick with his scarecrow form anyday. It's awkward enough that people assume he's a boy/a cross-dressing guy/a girl (because come on the homemade look makes him look  androgynous)/a scarecrow who sees himself as non-binary because "he/him are male pronouns" and he's "brainless", or  "he has nothing 'down there' so it i guess it makes sense". Human chromosones would just complicate things.
 * To display the extent of Barley's literal-mindedness, here is a conversation conducted by him and an unnamed yet soon-to-be-revealed OC of mine (language warning/baby-making talk in the fact that comes after):

Barley: "Er, I 'unno if I'd want to see that..."

P: "Um, hello? New clothes? I could work up a patchwork skirt to go with that tunic thingy."

B: "Oh no! I'd reallyreally love it, but the feces. I know I'm a scarecrow but are you reaaaally sure that's sanitary?"

P: "..."

B: "That was a figure of speech, was it?"

P: "Yeeeeeah, what you said."
 * On the contrary, Barley actually learns quite quickly after making such mistakes. He's even learned a lot about about human and reproductive anatomy ever since infamously calling a certain organ a "wobbly thing", but that's beside the point.  He has a tendancy to get confused over the usage of swear words however, of all things.
 * The stitches on the corners of his mouth cover up punctures that were made by a pair of roughousing Munchkin boys when they were throwing rocks at the farmers' cornfield. While fixing them up, this may or may not have lead to the discovery that Barley was alive.
 * Brown burlap/wooden skin, button blue eyes, and thick, synthetic blond(e) hair that manages best with afro-textured hair-care techniques. In terms of race, Barley is somewhat unsure where he fits. He knows that he's either seen as ambiguously brown, natural-haired black teen despite his hair color and eyes putting some people off, or as a white/blond scarecrow with "tan", and he worries about making other fairytales of color uncomfortable because of the latter assumption
 * Speaking of the above, it doesn't help that the farmer that he's living with is as white as an Ozian can be. Then again, from what Barley can remember, the other farmer who helped to make make him (the one who also used the Powder of Life on the scarecrow) was certainly not. Given that he's BFFAs with Cora along with Haruki's insistence on working with his hair type (Haruki being half black himself), he's starting to ease into considering himself black.
 * Were this to be reflected in a human AU, Barley would be biracial (specifically white/African-American, with his black parent possibly being multiracial in one way or another). Not visibly white-passing, yet posessing "white" features (light eyes/hair) due to some random result of resessive genes from both his biological parents. In any universe, others tassuming/alking over him regarding his ethnicity/race results in him being very uncomfortable.