#I just think she’s EXTREMELY neurotypical and expects people to be just like her

[augustsails]

I think my advisor is so neurotypical she cannot even fathom other people not being as neurotypical as her. Because why is she mad at me for doing exactly what I was supposed to do? I just didn’t tell her I had done it because she never asked, I was supposed to just know?? That she wanted me to tell her I did it?? So now I have to do it again and she’s giving the subtle ‘you fucked up’ vibes when I literally did exactly what she told me to do!

[copperbadge]

Every so often I get an Anon ask where I'm not entirely comfortable responding in public with no cut or warnings ahead of the text -- it's not that anything inappropriate is being said, it's just sometimes the subject matter's a little rough. This is one of those, so I decided to copy and paste it and put it behind a cut; warnings for discussion of abuse and fraught familial situations.

You've spoken about having ADHD before, and i was wondering if you have any links to websites with resources for adults with ADHD that are more than the very generic "stay organised!", "eat healthily!", "avoid distractions!" things? like, something that explains ADHD and WHY getting organised is good, maybe? or how ADHD may intersect with anxiety? my mother finally went to a doctor and got (as i expected) an ADHD diagnosis, but the doctor told her medication wouldn't give her much at this point, which is fine, but she's just kept going as usual for her, which is not.

she has ignored everything i've told her before (like, to think ahead and prioritise, to make plans, to make lists, that she has to be systematic about it, to stay calm because if she has a plan everything should be done on time) but she ignores me. she just starts doing whatever, whenever, and then getting annoyed/anxious that "nothing" is done, and then she starts yelling at me.

i just want her to realise she MUST at least attempt to be organised, and that it's not just for work stuff, it's for everything, including every day stuff like chores. (also, i'd like to stop being yelled at. like, some of my first memories are of getting yelled at. it's been years and years of regular bouts of screaming. now i know it's her and not me, and i'd. like it to stop)

i apologize for the huge ask/rant, but yeah, do you know of any resources that explain the importance of being organised? i think if i show her something 'official' maybe she'll start doing it. or do you have any personal tips for talking to her about it? or a book about someone's experience with ADHD? anything. anything at all.

So there is...much to unpack here, as the kids say, both in terms of what you are asking directly and what you are not asking but what I'm going to address anyway. I don't have any great resources for what you're looking for, because neurodiversity comes in a lot of shapes and sizes even within a single diagnosis, and as you likely know I'm a big proponent of doing-what-works, and that's something a person has to figure out for themselves. A lot of people seem to find ADDitude very relatable and they are informative, but that's probably the best general resource out there to go deeper than surface, and a good place for her to start reading if she wants to.

But the real problem, Anon, is that she's never going to listen to you.

That seems like a real bold statement, but it is also extremely likely to be true. Most people who get a diagnosis start to work on themselves and learn more about their unique neurology; it's clear she's not going to do that, and you can't make her. I'm sure some of it is that she's been told her entire life, by people with much more power over her than you, to do those things: be organized, make lists, have a plan. They are the hardest things for people with ADHD to do, and she can't simply whip herself through them, and so she learned long ago to ignore anyone saying anything about it. Medication could help with that a lot, actually, so your mother's doctor really fucked you both by telling her it wouldn't do anything for her; whether she's taken that as permission to ignore the problem or whether she just believed him, he did a really shitty thing in doing that.

Your mother is neurologically incapable of forcing herself to do many things that neurotypical people find easy. There are workarounds, yes; some of us do extremely well if we decide that EVERYTHING has to be planned, and behave accordingly. Some of us find stopgaps. But that has to be a decision she makes, to find workarounds for herself. It's not something you can offer her with helpful websites or books, because she is also likely very deep in shame about it, to judge from her other behaviors. That's not your fault, which means it's also not your job to fix it.

And here's the other problem: you are in an abusive home situation where your mother is taking out her frustration with her mental illness by hurting you.

And that really really sucks and I'm really, really sorry. But the screaming-at-you, which absolutely should not be happening, is a result of decades of frustration at the world that won't accommodate her, combined with an inability to regulate her emotions. Unless she is medicated or learns better regulation or at least picks a different target, it's not going to stop. That's not your fault either. Some of it isn't even her fault. (Some of it is; mental illness is not our choice but it is our responsibility, and she is not behaving as either an adult or a parent should in abusing you because she can't find somewhere else to put all her emotions.)

Presumably you are either too young to leave or can't afford to, but the best possible thing you can do for yourself is get out as soon as you can, sever yourself from her financially, and then decide what level of interaction you want with her going forward. Honestly, may be the best thing for her as well, to realize that if she doesn't make a change, she will lose access to her child.

I realize that is almost certainly not immediately possible, however. Do not leave if you are going to a less safe situation, either. Be smart and strategic -- make your plans and prepare as much as possible ahead of time.

"So in the meantime, Sam, what the fuck am I supposed to do?"

Bearing in mind that we are going to assume you cannot help your mother, as she either doesn't want help or is in denial or both, the best thing you can do if you can't get out is to shore yourself up: remind yourself as regularly as possible that none of this is your fault, and do your best to protect yourself both emotionally and physically. IE, if she's not organized enough to buy groceries or cook, do what you can to make sure you are regularly fed -- do not concern yourself with whether she eats. That's her responsibility, she's a grownup. If you are likely to be yelled at for this -- well, she was always going to yell at you about something; it might as well be as a result of you caring for yourself first. As much as you can, spend time away from her if possible.

Given her past behavior, especially if you are an only child or oldest sibling, you may already be de-facto head of household; this may be simply a process of assuming actively that she can't fulfill that role, and doing what you can to care for yourself and any siblings. If you have other family who understand the situation, I strongly suggest tapping them for help. As much as you can, reach out to adults in your life you trust, and get their help in caring for yourself and your family without needing to depend on her for support.

I don't wish to stigmatize mental illness or addiction but living with someone in denial about the impact of their mental health on those around them is exactly like living with an addict: the best strategy is to expect nothing from them, remind yourself often that you are not to blame for this situation, look out for yourself first and foremost, and get out once you can. I'm really sorry it has to be that way, because it shouldn't be. But I'm concerned with you, not with her, and if you want to build a better life for yourself, it's going to have to be one that doesn't depend on you being able to change someone else.

I'm afraid I don't have a lot of books for you about that, either. I wish you all the luck -- you shouldn't need it, but unfortunately sometimes we still do.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for snapping at an autistic person?

I (28F) was invited to my friend and coworker "Anna" (27F) birthday dinner. There was around 15 people there, including her boyfriend "Josh" (late 20s M), some of our coworkers, childhood friends and Josh's best friend "Kurt" (late 20s M). She made a separate get together for her family, so there were only friends there.

At some point in the night, Anna asked why my girlfriend didn't go and, after I told her she was in her hometown visiting her family, Kurt asked if I was a lesbian. The question was a little blunt, but I only answered yes and thought this would be the end of it. It wasn't.

Kurt started to ask more and more questions, and they would be increasingly invasive. Have I ever experimented with men? Didn't my girlfriend and I missed "it" during sex (I tried to take it lightly and asked "Missed what, not having an orgasm? Not really" which, looking back, might have made him think I was okay with him talking about my sex life with me)? Do you use toys? I think it's important to note that's the first time I met Kurt, we're not friends and not even distant acquaintances, we were total strangers.

I was doing my best to not be reactive because that was Anna's birthday, but then he asked if I would like to do a threesome with my girlfriend and him, and I guess he was kidding, but I just exploded. I told him he was extremely rude and I was trying to be a good sport about all the nasty shit he was saying to me ever since he found out I'm a lesbian, but enough is enough and no, I didn't want a threesome with him, actually I wanted nothing to do with him, and if he could refrain from talking to me for the rest of the night, I would be grateful.

He was blushing out of embarrassment and tried to say it was only a joke, then I asked him to look around and see if there was anyone laughing. I finished saying we were merely strangers and if he thought it was okay to say those kinds of things to a complete stranger, then he should rethink his actions. After that I payed my part of the bill, left the restaurant and texted Anna apologizing for the scene.

The following day, Josh texted me telling my reaction to Kurt's jokes was extremely unnecessary and that Kurt is autistic and struggles with social cues. I replied that what Kurt did was sexual harrassment, that it was invasive and humiliating and being autistic doesn't excuse the way he treated me. Josh told me I was being ableist to expect Kurt to act like a neurotypical and I said he was being sexist and a homophobe to expect a lesbian woman to just shut up and accept sexual harrassment from a strange man she didn't even know was autistic in the first place. Josh stopped talking to me after that.

Anna agrees with me about the whole situation and she says Josh is overprotective of Kurt because they're childhood friends and Kurt suffered a lot during his teenage years, but that isn't an excuse to not take him accountable for the times he fucks up. I know this situation took a toll on Josh and Anna's relationship because Kurt's behavior is, apparently, the reason for a lot of their fights.

So, AITA for the way I treated Kurt?

What are these acronyms?

[aihoshiino]

Do you think Ai was emotionally numb? Or she was passive? I mean she is def not ok/stable emotionally but what do you think about her emotional state?

If anything, I would actually say the opposite - Ai's issue is that she feels things very strongly but after spending basically her entire life only able to express a very narrow band of her full emotional range, she has been left largely incapable of comprehending and contextualizing her own emotions.

This is likely something she would've had difficulty with regardless of whether or not she became an idol. Ai is explicitly a child of an extremely emotionally and physically abusive household and implicitly a person with autism. Both of these things individually can contribute to or correlate with the development of alexithymia, which is basically just the fancy medical term for the type of emotional blindness and struggles with organic empathy that we see present in Ai, both in the main series and the side stories.

The first chapter of Spica is quite telling in this regard, set as it is in the POV of a much younger Ai who is still fresh to being an idol and hasn't quite remade herself as a liar just yet. In fact, she is characterized here as being too honest, blunt and straightforward to the point of rudeness. But as Ai herself puts it:

All Ai ever did was say what was on her mind, plain and simple. It wasn't like she was going out of her way to make people either like or dislike her.

Not only is this fascinating from a perspective of contrast with her older self, it's also indicative that this alexithymia is something inherent to the way she behaves socially even outside of being an idol. This behavior is so instinctive to her, in fact, that part of her arc in Spica revolves around her having to literally, textually and explicitly learn how to mask and perform 'normal' behaviour like the presumably neurotypical people around. It's kind of funny how on the nose it is.

Now take all of that and add it to the fact that Ai spent all of her teen years, the period of her life where she would have been able to start working this shit out and forging her own identity, aggressively curating her emotional responses and performing a version of herself that is, by her own admission, simply inhuman. Always smiling, never showing any negativity or vulnerability. She must perform as a maximally enthralling and captivating version of herself, adhering to an ever-increasing and self-contradicting set of expectations. She is not just a person, but a product to be sold and one that must increasingly return the investments others have put into her. She has to be everything to everyone and even when she succeeds at doing so, she ends up being punished for it.

With all that in mind, it really is no surprise that she ends up relatively detached and necessarily distant from her own emotions as an idol, but that doesn't mean that she doesn't feel them as a person. At various points across the prologue arc, we even see her slip into spirals of negativity in surprising contrast to the assertions of characters later in the story that she never let any of it show.

Not only that but the biggest, most explosive show of outward emotion we ever see from Ai in the series is her spontaneous, authentic and goofy ass smile when she spots the twins performing their wota dance.

Definitely not the face of a girl who's emotionally numb!

[elacular-kink]

Poly-Techhic character sheet

For readers' reference, here's some descriptions and basic info about the main four characters of Poly-Techhic. (This may be edited later on).

Edit: This character sheet's formatting is completely borked. Go to this one instead, it's actually readable.

Susanna Jane Butler

Also called Susan and Susie

Appearance:

4'10" (147 cm)

Very average weight and build

Tan skin

Chinese

Adopted by American Catholics.

Short, straight black hair

Bangs can fall over eyes.

Wears baggy clothes

Almost always has on a baggy hoodie with the hood up.

Neurotypical (I think?)

(The author isn't, so...)

Extremely gay

Sophomore (AKA, 2nd year)

Loves and is studying music

Plays multiple instruments

Piano

Guitar

Sings well

Learned how to sing in kids choir in her church.

Is way less cool than she looks or acts

Is cooler than she thinks she is.

Is great at telling people off

Is terrible at telling people good things.

Has a hiccup fetish.

Has been like this as long as she can remember.

Has extremely big emotions and anxiety about it.

She's not able to get off without it.

Olivia Elizabeth Jones

Appearance

5'9" (175 cm)

Skinny

Isn't skinny on purpose, just naturally doesn't develop much fat.

Annoyed when people conflate thinness with health.

Very dark skin

Black (African American)

Nearly buzzed black hair

4C texture

Uses reading glasses

Keeps them around her neck on a chain for practicality

Everyone else says it makes her look like an old lady.

Wears very practical clothes.

All fabrics must be soft and/or smooth.

Clothes are generally tight. She dislikes having clothes that hang loose.

Doesn't care about how butch or femme it is.

Autistic

Very blunted affect

Sincerely emotes only for huge feelings.

Still feels things when not emoting, just doesn't move her face much about it.

Hates social niceties

Is overly honest with people

Aromantic

Does not feel or have a great understanding of romantic attraction.

Can still identify it in others

Bisexual with a female lean.

Considers Susanna her life partner, but does not consider her a girlfriend.

"See, this is why I explain it with 'it's complicated', Olivia."

Does consider Maya a girlfriend

"It means something different to her, and I can do that."

Sophomore (AKA, 2nd year)

Gets the hiccups all the time.

Doesn't generally mind them.

Has been shunned or punished for them in the past.

Thinks this is stupid.

This is part of why Susanna has been her best friend.

Almost nothing cures them.

No apparent medical reason, she's just very hiccupy.

Kind of a troll

People don't expect it from her since she seems so serious.

Primary victims are Susanna and Maya.

Extremely emotionally perceptive

Maya Heffernan

Appearance

5'4" (163 cm)

Feels taller because of her personality.

Also just often wears cleats

Both very muscular and very chubby

Built like a professional weightlifter.

Is capable of lifting weights like a professional weightlifter.

Is basically a physical freak with absurd strength, speed, and endurance.

Exercises constantly.

White

Ridiculously pale (Irish ancestry)

Covered in orange and brown freckles

Massive mane of curly red hair

Sheds red hairs everywhere.

Wears glasses

Including when playing rugby

Has prescription sports goggles

Hates getting things in her eyes=no contacts.

Almost always wears her rugby uniform.

She's number 7, the openside flanker

So she gets to tackle people!

A lot!

Dresses very butch outside of it.

ADHD

Takes adderall occasionally when she needs to focus

Does not like how she feels on it.

Solo-poly

Wants to avoid becoming overly dependent on someone or having them become dependent on her.

Still enjoys having romantic and sexual relationships with many people.

Keeps most relationships at arm's length.

Only forms closer relationships with other people with big poly energy.

Has gaydar, but for polyamorous tendencies.

Pansexual

Not all pansexuals are sluts. But she is.

Fucks lots of women, men, and other types of people.

("But where are the men?" They're offscreen somewhere, shut up.)

Junior (AKA, 3rd year.)

Gives people nicknames

Whether they want them or not.

Will relent if they genuinely hate them.

Eventually...

Susanna=Susie

Olivia=Liv

Kiran=Kiki

Chaos agent

Loves to disrupt people's lives.

Often for the better, sometimes for the worse, almost always for both.

Genuinely thinks this is fun and wants others to have fun too.

Actively trolls people

Frequently goes too far.

Extremely easily bored.

Will cause problems when bored.

If there's nobody to cause problems for, will cause problems for herself.

Really fucking stupid.

Under no illusions about this.

Has always struggled with academia

Has no common sense

Has no impulse control

Is still alive because she's impossible to kill

Kiran Mandal

Appearance

6'1" (185 cm)

Very fat

Deep brown skin

Indian American

One parent is first generation, one parent is second.

Long black hair.

Wants to do interesting things with it, is too nervous to try.

Always wears a dress or a skirt.

Has yet to figure out what her fashion sense is, has been fairly conservative thus far.

Autistic

Terrified of eye contact

Often makes it anyway due to masking.

Always tries to "win" eye contact.

Has a lot of difficulty socializing

Has very little experience doing so, which doesn't help.

Particularly with people her own age.

Extremely socially anxious and shy.

Stims and makes repetitive movements

Used to make a lot of sounds with her mouth, had that mostly trained out of her.

Has never been able to stop flapping when anxious or happy.

Is extremely embarrassed by this.

Sees it as a personal failing.

Trans

MtF

Is on hormones

Has not been on them long.

Not very secure in her womanhood

Is rarely accidentally misgendered.

If someone misgendered her on purpose, the other three would kill them.

Uncertain sexuality

Definitely likes girls.

Definitely really really really really really likes girls.

Freshman (1st year)

Really academically smart

Brilliant at the vast majority of what would be considered "nerd shit".

Particularly likes computer programming.

(Forgive me for my trans woman stereotype.)

Has studied under professional tutors all her life.

Speaks English and Hindi fluently, is proficient in Spanish

Currently being tutored and learning Mandarin.

(please don't expect me to know anything about any of these languages, German is super close to English and I'm still not learning jack shit).

Has very little "street smarts"

Very limited practical knowledge of the world.

Family is stupid rich

Probably some tech sector shit.

Dad may be an insufferable tech bro.

She has access to a shitload of money.

She has no idea what money is actually worth, but is self-aware about that.

Has been insulated from a lot of normal people's experiences because of that

[reptileofdoom]

Public PSA and Callout Of Hawkshadow/Luna: A Continued Pattern of Hurt and Manipulation Part 1 of 2

Hello, my name is Autumn aka reptileofdoom on Twitter & Tumblr. I debated whether to make this post for a long time and continually questioned myself; however, I've realized that if I don't, that guilt will sit with me for a long time. This post is directed toward Luna; known on AO3 as hawkshadow, on Twitter as @/dage_mingjue and on Tumblr as @/petesbubblebutt and @/hawkshadowwrites.

I am extremely concerned that Luna continues to be a big name in the community; her "big name" status gives her credibility that is, frankly, undeserved, and it makes people lower their guard, which allows her to take advantage of them better. Please, please be on your guard around her.

This isn't just my story. Other people have given me permission to use their names and testimonies as part of this post. I have done my best to provide proof and evidence of everything mentioned, and when unavailable, I encourage readers to question. Please reply if you would like additional information regarding any of the points in this post.

Since I will most definitely be accused of clout-chasing, let me be clear: if you follow me just because of this post, I am going to shatter your kneecaps. Do not follow me for this, I repeat.

Some screenshots have had information covered solely for the sake of privacy. I think she's dangerous, but I don't want to give her personal information to the internet, or involve unrelated people. That being said, due to the nature of the issue, sometimes it's impossible to cover without removing relevant information.

Additionally, due to who she is and how she operates, I have opted for the safety of posting conversations IN FULL; which means 5-10 screenshots for each conversation. I would rather be safe than sorry, because I WOULD otherwise be accused of concealing. So this will be a long read, which is why I am using a "read more" break.

So, here are the basic details, presented first from my own point of view:

Luna and I used to be quite close fandom friends, in the period of August 2022 - January 2023, when our big "breakup" happened. During that time, Luna created an extremely uneven dynamic within our friendship: constantly talking about her own problems, trauma-dumping, and complaining about various things. My own personal issues, when brought up, were either never addressed or I would be outright berated for bringing them up.

Additionally, and I am using this word with its full intended meaning: she would intentionally gaslight me, making me question the reality of our friendship, claiming that I was "emotionally manipulating" her, all the while trampling over my own boundaries and not being able to give even basic courtesies expected in friendship. She blatantly took advantage of my autism, gaslighting me by telling me that social norms didn't work the way I thought.

For full context: I am autistic. At the time of our friendship, I lived with my parents, who have for years emotionally abused me for said autism. There were many unsafe things about the environment I was in. On top of that, there is an 8 year age difference between myself and Luna. (She is older.)

I bring up my own age not as a "gotcha", but as important context to keep in mind for the conversations you are about to read as we get into the meat of this. I am aware that Luna is also neurodivergent but 1) that is not the same thing as autistic and 2) I gave her many, many benefits of the doubt throughout our friendship. Please keep in mind neurotypes are not an excuse for continued horrible behavior.

(About my own age: I am 20 years old. When entering Kinnporsche & Vegaspete fandom, I was under the impression the show is merely 18+ and it is labelled as such in most places. I did not even hear of it supposedly being 21+ until a few months ago. Nevertheless, I do my best to respect everyone's comfort and leave spaces not intended for me.)

One last disclaimer: I am not trying to frame this as a "cancellation post." Most of all, I intend for this to be a warning for anyone in a similar position to myself, easily taken advantage of. If, on the other hand, you read everything and see no issue with any of Luna's behavior, then I will not argue with you. I am not asking people to abandon their friendships with this person - merely to guard themselves from being hurt the way I was, over and over again.

Timeline of event (summary):

Luna and I first started talking in August or so. Unfortunately, due to the mutual blocks, a lot of our Twitter history is inaccessible to me; but I know the rough timeframe because at the end of August is when Luna and I sent each other our first DMs on Discord. Most of the events happened there; some others happened in her server, which I left after our breakup and have no interest in returning to.

In October is when the first concerning behavior popped up; on the 31st of October I attempted to pull away from the friendship, not quite realizing what was happening but becoming aware that every interaction I had with Luna left me feeling anxious and panicky. I was guilted into staying and feeling bad for ever trying to do that. Our worst interaction happened in November. After this things calmed down throughout December, precipitating again in January when we made the decision to work on and post fanfiction together. The posting of this fanfic became the straw that broke the camel's back.

A deeper dive into these events:

A lot of this is going to seem like very personal drama. Unfortunately, it is only through showing all this that I can show the horrible manipulative tactics she would use. Please bear with me.

As mentioned previously, the beginning of our friendship was on Twitter, where we have now blocked each other. As such, I have lost access to our DM history. I have tried downloading my Twitter archive and various other methods, but nothing I have tried has allowed me to regain access.

Proof that I can't message and/or look at DMs from her:

Proof that our DM conversation did, at one point, exist (yes, unfortunately I have to use vegetable porn here to prove my point):

Since we were not too close during the Twitter era, there thankfully isn't much that needs to be brought up from those days. However, there is one extremely critical fact in those conversations: It was there that I told Luna about my living situation and trouble with parents. Most of all, I very specifically told her I would get called "emotionally manipulative" just for having meltdowns.

It is now impossible to retrieve that conversation, unless by some miracle she unblocks me. I do not have high hopes for this happening. For now I ask: please just believe this happened and keep it in mind.

With that established, we get into when the manipulation started blatantly showing. It first came about as a result of... a GC, of all things. That Luna would frequently post screenshots of and I felt envious of. Perhaps it was my own mistake to not resort to clear communication immediately, but here is a conversation where I first brought up the topic, implying I would really like to join.

Her responses aren't.. bad, per say. Obtuse, more like. There is nothing incriminating here, but look at what she focuses on, what specific things she does not address - and where the conversation ends up, with who comforting whom.

(From now on, passages of interest will be circled in yellow.)

So Attempt #1 was a bust, right? Okay, no biggie, we commiserated a little over mutual insecurities, I just have to ask my friend outright so she knows what I mean-

Right. I am not quite sure how to commentate this entire exchange, even half a year later, but let me give it my best shot.

At this point, you're probably still giving her benefit of the doubt. "She is just really, really bad at knowing how to communicate" you might say. That is what I told myself at the time. (Note: I am hyper empathetic so please know that at every point I was primed to believe her and empathize.)

It's really, really awkward to have to make this point through conversation about people essentially unrelated to this, but this unfortunately became our driving issue. For context, this famed GC had all of.. 5? 6? people apart from her. So if you are imagining a massive server with strict rules? Nope.

Next, notice how instead of just. Admitting she can ask her own friends a question, she tries to make me seem unreasonable. "What, you want me to stop mentioning my friends?" basically. She then also, specifically, makes a point of saying "You are not being rejected." This will become important later.

At around this time, I came to realize: this friendship wasn't good for me. I did not have the words for it, nor could I believe any of the blame was on her, but I knew a few things:

I was always the first one to start conversations.

It would take Luna long amounts of time to reply.

When she did reply, it still ended up being an unbalanced conversation, with me doing about 70-80% of the talking.

Every time I talked to Luna or was waiting for a reply, I would feel horrible, anxious and, in short, like shit.

Now, I turned all these issues inward and looked for the root of the problem inside myself. Having been blamed for my autism all my life, it ended up being my justification for many of these things, sometimes in creative ways.

This is the message I sent Luna on October 31st and the ensuing conversation:

My first message doesn't fit the screenshot; full text is in image description.

She then proceeded to post MULTIPLE screenshots of her latest conversations with not only fandom friends, but real life people including HER ROOMMATES. As proof of her lowered capacity for responding to people. I will save my commentary for the end; Let us continue:

A screenshot of her Twitter DMs to show who she has responded to and when.

Interjecting that at this point she still had not done the extremely basic thing of just. Asking her friends if she could invite someone. And notice the use of the word "manipulative."

Let's take a pause here because I shit you not, that was the end of the conversation.

Did you see the immediate guilt-tripping? The language implying I am to blame for everything? "If YOU think our friendship is toxic" "if YOU think this is best for you"

There are many things she says here that are, in hindsight, INSANE. But chief among which is her insistence on hierarchy and social dynamics.

Do you see why I wrote that she took advantage of my autism?

"I'm not the one at fault, YOU are the one who is fundamentally misunderstanding how group dynamics work."

I talked to my friends about this. I vented to them about being so dumb and stupid I couldn't even understand a basic thing, without showing them the conversation of course. I felt immense self-hatred because she convinced me it wasn't her being weird and unreasonable - it was just me being dumb and disabled!

And a necessary reminder: She was very clear about the fact that she WASN'T rejecting me. She really DID want me there! It's just she had no options :(

Why did I make myself seem so pathetic as to practically beg her to let me join her group? Because at the same time, she'd tell me shit like I was her favorite person and encouraging me to go make friends with the other people and surely THEY would want to then invite me.

Last of all, please notice how the conversation ends. Two apologies and no response. But a prompt idea? Something fandom-y? Yeah, she'll engage with that and make no acknowledgement of anything before.

A lot of these conversations are so frustrating to look back on in hindsight. Obviously, she had no interest in me and did not actually care for a proper friendship. I was somebody to conveniently vent to and get fanfic ideas from; otherwise, I don't think she had much interest in me as a person. (Something further supported by the things we're gonna be getting into next.)

Now, where we last left off I was guilted into continuing this friendship. A friendship, I emphasize again: I had multiple times stated was unhealthy for me and was actively causing me frequent breakdowns.

The following conversation happened as a result of something in the server. As mentioned: I no longer have access to those records. In short, however: Luna and I had a short disagreement where she stated she didn't like something I was saying. Which was fine! I felt very apologetic and apologized. To which she responded "okay" and... nothing else.

So I sent a few message in the server chat. Waited. No response for hours. My anxiety went through the roof - I started having an anxiety attack and, in desperation, DM'd Luna multiple times privately because I had no idea what was happening: whether our disagreement was resolved, or if she was still mad, or what. I would like to make it clear the only thing I was looking for was just a confirmation of: "are we good?" If the answer had been "oh, yeah, I accepted your apology" there would have been zero problem. Instead, this is what happened:

This is the conversation, in its entirety.

Do you see why I used the term gaslighting? In its full, actual definition as an abuse tactic?

It is hard to write a commentary for this. Look at how many times she twists what I say and mean. To be clear; I am fully aware of how passive aggressive my language in this conversation becomes. I am not proud of it. But as mentioned, I had been worn down by months of constant anxiety; in a weird way, I do feel proud looking back, that I was able to stand up for myself in this moment. In the end, I put all the blame on myself again, which led to a.. small concession from her.

I hope it is clear from these images that I was never looking for more than 5 seconds of her time, whenever she was able to check her messages. The expectation with messages, in general, is that the person will get to them when they get to them. Her insistence that I was being selfish, messaging her while she was at work, comes out of nowhere and is especially strange because.. she would message at work all the time. It was not a boundary she had ever enforced before.

I am not coming here from a position of "we argued once and now I hate her." I am coming from a position of "this is a person who messed me up for months in a way that has required extensive therapy." THIS is why I am making a post like this, about how dangerous she is and how much I want people to be aware so that they can please, please protect themselves.

She would constantly come to me with more intense problems, all the time. She had me talk her down from panic attacks at work. (Not shown because 1 - image limit, 2 - it is very personal, and I still feel bad exposing her personal stuff.) But when I had a single time it got bad, when all I needed was "yeah, I'm not mad, don't worry"? This was the response.

There is more. It gets worse. Unfortunately, I have hit the 30-image tumblr limit: this will be continued in a second post, that is linked:

PART 2

[rustedskyprisms]

So I opened up to my mom about how I’ve been feeling for years, and initially, it went exactly how I expected it to. But that was both of our faults. We both, initially, approached this from an extremely emotional angle. 

The problem with so many people in my family, including myself, is that we really do take things way too personally. When I say that, I’m not referring to being “too sensitive”; I mean that when someone has a genuine issue with our behavior, we jump into the “I’m being attacked” mode, and then nothing ever changes or truly gets addressed. 

So what I did was that I made myself present this to her in a very calm, objective way. And it’s what I’ve known-she was never trying to actually hurt me. I’m aware of that. And I also don’t want to be angry at her forever for this. She made mistakes; it’s not as if she could actually know how this was going to affect me. 

I’m not making excuses for her with what I’m saying. My mom is not like my sister or her own mother; my mom is not, usually, intentionally, an ugly person. But I was so, so, so hyper aware of all of this growing up, because I think, deep down, I always knew I was “different”, even before the masking truly took over. So yes, it really had a big impact on me, to get teased, but that wasn’t something she did to actually hurt me. My parents are just those people who assume everyone can “take a joke”, and, you know, I really struggled with that as a kid. If I hadn’t changed myself so much to make them happy, I probably still would. But they’re not bad people for that-they’re just, honestly, like most neurotypical individuals in that they automatically assume everyone’s mind works like theirs (yes I’m very, very, very, very, very aware that not all neurotypical people’s minds are similar or alike, or that not all of them do this.  I’ve literally written about how I hate that assumption. But it’s relevant here.) 

I really don’t think parents should make fun of their kids, but I also know that it’s not doing me any good to be resentful over this. I really, really needed to get it out though, and I’m glad she finally heard me out. 

I just don’t know how to work on my self-esteem. I don’t know how to stop being so self-conscious. And the reason I don’t want to keep having negative feelings towards them over this is because it doesn’t accomplish anything. But I’m not going to pretend anymore that it didn’t have a tremendous impact on me. It doesn’t matter how uncomfortable that makes them, because it really hurt my mom to hear this. But she’s not the victim here. 

I can also acknowledge that I myself have been way too harsh towards a lot of other people. My standards for other people have been way too high. This is not in reference to my parents; this is about me being judgmental and critical of other people’s interests, harmless behavior, etc. And I am genuinely sorry for that, because it’s not right. And I don’t want to be a hypocrite. 

[sophiamcdougall]

I see people who truly believe that because he clearly thrives on being underestimated and because, to that end, he often pretends to be his opponents' intellectual inferior, and often chatters his way round to the point so they'll let their guard down that means the whole thing is an act. and no. No. No. Not only does nobody live like that, it is quite clear his symptoms idiosyncrasies manifest all the time and do frequently cause him problems because he cannot turn them on and off at will. He does ADHD things with colleagues. He does ADHD things with non-suspect witnesses. He does ADHD things alone. There's a bit in one ep where he's waiting for a snooty receptionist to call up data from a fancy new computer system and it is very slow (and it is very boring and the scene clearly was put in for padding and I feel you, Columbo) and yes a neurotypical person would be irritated too, but Columbo is clearly nearly dying because not only is he having to stand there and do nothing with no stimulation for seven minutes but also he knows there is a faster way to do it and they won't let him do the thing faster and it doesn't have to be like this and this isn't even necessary but they're making him stand there in living agony anyway and yeah, if you really want to torture an ADHD with usually well-controlled hyperactivity, stick them in an unexpected waiting pen, allow them to deduce an efficient way out, and then give them no power to enact that.

That bit a the end of one ep where he's just nailed a killer and he starts to put his coat on, and then slumps down to sit on a desk, dejected, with the coat hanging off one shoulder. I've done that. Well, found myself putting chairs away after a class trailing a half-on coat because I couldn't put my arm through sleeve 2 before my brain jumped tracks.

The calling people up in the middle of the night because a detail of the case "bothered" him so he couldn't sleep and he forgot that wasn't an everyone thing.

The car. Just: the car. (My mum has never been diagnosed as anything and actually passes as very neurotypical in most of life but you should see her car. Or you shouldn't. It once had stuff growing out of it and she decided she liked it.)

But above all this. This bit right here:

Lt. Columbo: Mrs. Peck? Mrs. Peck, I made a very poor introduction of myself to you. I know that. I'm a stranger in your house that you love and I'm here to do something that's not very pleasant so I don't expect you to like me. But I have feelings too, Mrs. Peck. Now I'm sorry about being untidy. That's something that I can't control. That's a fault of mine that I, I, I don't know, I just can't correct that. I've tried many years. I'm just very untidy, that's my nature. But I've never been un-, I've never been rude to you, Mrs. Peck. And, and if you keep on treating me like an enemy just because I'm here trying to find who killed the man you worked for for 33 years, well, then, well then I think you're a very unfair person.

So context, Columbo has just wandered into this fancy, extremely clean house where a man's just been murdered and promptly dropped cigar ash on the polished floor to the extreme distress of the victim's live-in housekeeper. Which is understandable! She's going through probably the worst moment of her life, and Columbo's soiling something that's precious to her -- something she's likely going to lose anyway. Right from the start, it's obvious Columbo not only has no motive to pretend to be "shambolic" etc where this woman was concerned, he has every motive to turn it off if he only could -- but he can't. And it clearly upsets him from the very first instance, both because he feels immediate empathy for what she's going through and hates making it worse, and also because this is making it harder to solve the case. It's And also because it's hitting a clear insecurity. "I think she hates me, I really feel that", he remarks plaintively, almost out of nowhere, (RSD sucks, but remember it passes, Columbo!) And worse, it keeps happening. He keeps apologising. And then does something else. And she goes off again -- and though her pain is obviously still real every time, she also gets meaner and more aggressive and more belittling. She calls him names. She stops him examining evidence: dude, if this was an act he would not let it jeopardise his work. If it's a disability: that's what they do.

This is not a guy who puts on a mask. This is a guy who's unlocked god-tier levels of not masking. This is a guy who figured out how to stand there and let people see exactly who he is and weaponise their inevitable failure to get it.

Columbo has done what the lucky among us do: he'd found a place where his liabilities become [enough of the time] a strength. He'd managed to turn his curse into a superpower. And yet, here it is betraying him all over again. Right in the place where it's supposed to not do that.

I don't just hear ADHD pain in that speech, I hear ADHD trauma. The years of straining to contain all your messy edges and not only failing but having no one believe that you tried at all. The years of begging teachers and parents to please at least believe you're trying with everything you've got to deliver what they want, so that maybe they'll find a crumb of mercy and stop hurting you so much. And I love that even though this has got to be the longest non-gotcha speech and definitely the most emotional and vulnerable speech I've seen from Columbo so far, it speed-runs a whole lifetime's journey from self-hatred to self-acceptance to pride to defiance. I've seen (uh, and been) a lot of middle-aged ADHD people who heal as they finally come out of decades of reflexive self-flagellation and it sloooooowly occurs to them that even if everything they've been told about themselves were true, maybe some of the people doing the telling had a flaw or ten worth looking at. Maybe the fact that despite our best efforts we objectively did inconvenience people sometimes didn't mean we deserved to be those people's permanent punching bags.

(TBF I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Mrs Peck and her intense need for tidiness wasn't some flavour of ND too: sometimes real needs really do conflict! And it's nice that though she probably hurts the hero more than any murderer manages to do the pair do sort of, imperfectly, figure it out, and the writing doesn't lose compassion for either one of them.)

Anyway I'm headcanoning Columbo's wife as autistic. They bonded via hyperfixating on cowboy films.

I knew Columbo was going to be ADHD but I did not realise he was going to be SO. ADHD.

[therealmaquaroonie]

Ik I usually don't vent on main but man is it bullshit that literally every part of my social and academic life was not normal since birth and yet my mom expects me to be normal

For context I was diagnosed with developmental delay issues and adhd (although I expect that i'm also probably autistic and didn't get correctly diagnosed due to being raised female), and due to this I wasn't able to communicate or be on the same level as other kids when I entered preschool. I had learned to speak at 4 years old, which is extremely late. I was in a special Ed class for preschool before being moved to a normal class because I 'behaved well enough'. In kindergarten, the only friends I made were two girls who would constantly use my gullibility to their advantage. In first to third grade, this trend continued. I then was realizing what was happening and tried making different friends, ones with the same interests as I had, and then my mom's questions started.

"Why can't you have normal friends?" She asks. "Why can't you be interested in things any other kid is interested in like sports?"

I know my mom doesn't remember asking this and therefore would never believe me if I asked her about it now.

And it's not like making friends was easy for me. I could find others with the same interests as me but I was still stunted. I had trouble keeping friendships up until highschool, and even then I am still pretty sure they did it out of pity.

I could tell that everyone knew I was delayed, that I wasn't normal, because I was never treated that way by other students or teachers. Yet my mother seems to think that I should have had a "normal" life.

It only got worse in the one year of college I took. Here I was, stunted socially, on campus, with no friends, in a room with a person I barely knew, forced to be in said room for more than 90% of the time due to the pandemic. I was one of the few students who actually paid attention and followed social distancing protocols.

My mom begged me to go to college. She said I needed that to have a better social life. She still thinks I should have "taken that opportunity to make friends" but we all know that was damn well near impossible. I was still stunted. I was scared I was going to die every single day. I put myself through so much pain for a year of college that I failed.

She still asks me to go back to school. My grades are so poor now that I'd have to go through rigorous testing to make sure I'm even able to read. I test horribly due to my anxiety and audhd.

I am still expected to be normal from her. I'm expected to be able to achieve things a normal adult is able to achieve. But I can't! I fucking can't! Because I'm stunted! And I will always be stunted! I'm fucking disabled!

And it sucks because I have seen literally everyone around me grow and change and I am just. Stagnant. As a matter of fact I've gotten worse.

So no mom I can't have normal friends because neurotypical people don't have the patience for someone as stunted as I am.

[shaaaaaaar]

also, since i’m rambling on tumblr a little bit i’m gonna continue to talk about thoughts and shit.

it’s kinda surprising to me how little i care about my comm class suddenly. it’s a requirement so that doesn’t help, but i also didn’t know that when signing up and it doesn’t really influence my lack of care.

i’m also surprised because my professor is genuinely really nice. i have some grief with her (which i will get into) but she’s like, genuinely very nice. she’s caring, and she clearly likes what she’s teaching. she dedicates a lot of energy to her teaching and her students.

but despite that, there’s a lot that feels… meh to me about this class.

firstly, my peers give even less of a shit than i do. like, our class is not active at all. it’s partly due to the class being required so many people just don’t care and partly due to the class being at 9 am, but the vibe of the class is kinda unnerving for me in a way that’s hard to describe. even the professor often comments about how quiet we are.

i also feel really bad for my professor due to how distant my class is. she genuinely cares about us and the topic and isn’t getting that reception. i remember i had to ask if i could do my first speech at the last day availible because i wasn’t able to work on it earlier, i had an essay to finish that was more pressing. and she replied that she gets it, a lot of kids put her class at the end of their priorities (and added its probably bc comm is required). and i felt so bad in that moment, firstly because her class isn’t at the back of my priorities at all (i just hadn’t gotten started because my mental health crashed for two weeks and that put me behind on work; the essay i worked on instead was a week late when i got it in because of that crash) and secondly because like holy shit that’s so sad to hear, especially with how much care she gives to us and to her job.

and i know i’m part of the problem, since i have fallen more into the “doesn’t give a shit anymore” crowd. wouldn’t be fair to hide that. but also, i really do feel like she deserves better. it’s not fun for anyone involved when our class is completely dead. it also worsens my lack of active present-ness in class because i end up feeling awkward as the one guy speaking up a bunch, so i shy away a little bit.

secondly, i don’t like the material of our class in a… very strange way. see, my textbook is actually insanely inclusive. it’s mindful of and highlights how different cultures communicate, puts effort into not being extremely eurocentric, addresses race and being respectful of that, and addresses a lot of topics relating to inclusivity. hell, there was an entire section about trans people and on several occasions queer people have also come up to challenge heteronormative beliefs. aroace people are never addressed (which i was looking for in the romance chapter out of curiosity and because i am aroace myself) but i kind of expected that anyway because aro/ace invisibility what’s new.

but it’s baffling to me that, despite how otherwise inclusive the book is, neurodivergent people are never brought up. neurodivergency can often impact the ways people communicate (it does for me at the very least) and i think it should be important to at the very least note that neurodivergent people exist.

i’ve often felt very isolated in class because of my neurodivergency making a lot of what we talk about more difficult for me. nonverbal communication was a strange unit for me because everyone had a much better read on stuff like body language than i did. and it’s so odd to me that the book can be so inclusive while also being focused exclusively on neurotypical people.

lastly, i think my professor is doing… not the best job at teaching us. not because she’s a bad professor, because she’s not. the issue is she’s extremely light on us. in some cases it’s extremely helpful, for example we all need to pass two speeches to get credit for the course and she’s letting people redo speeches if we get below a certain grade (either if you fail it or get a c or below). but sometimes she is way too coddling.

we have to do an interpersonal theatre paper. it was first a film paper, but she made it a theatre paper bc students often don’t turn it in. making it a theatre paper would base the essay off of our school play, which we got free tickets to watch, and the professor said we could work together on it. which is fair, and i appreciate the consideration!

but by working on it, i mean doing a lot of it in class. fine, but sometimes its a little much. i’m talking about figuring out the headers within the paper, structuring the paper together, gathering topic ideas all together, like a lot of the work is being taken out. which is still fine i suppose, maybe i’m just an overachiever by being bothered.

except one of the things the professor did is literally write an introduction for us, give permission to literally copy and paste it, and said it can count as one of our two sources. the theatre show counts as a source too. that’s WAY too much coddling for me, hell no. at that point, might as well write the whole damn essay for us.

i talked about it with my dad on the way home from therapy this week and he brought up that the help being offered is still way too much but it’s good for kids that really are just there for the requirement; it’s a case of “you get what you give”. it’s an easy a, after all. and he’s right, but this is both a literal college class and also retracting from a lot of the skills being practiced in this essay. i’m biased in being frustrated, after all i’m a writer (i hope), but i still think it’s a little excessive how much easier the essay is being made to be.

essay tangent aside, the professor is often very light when it comes to stuff in class in general. i cherrypicked an extreme case, but there’s still a lot of smaller instances of this same coddling. and i get it. she genuinely wants the best for her students. she wants everyone to succeed, she wants to accomodate for everyone and she genuinely cares about us. that is invaluable in a professor. but you can still be flexible and work with students in a way that’ll help them succeed, but also not make class into a walk in the park. while i appreciate what she’s doing, i think she’s leaning too far into being lenient, to the point where it’s detrimental.

though in fairness, an easy professor like her is something many students want. i’m just not one of those people.

i’ve been noticing that, across the course of the semester, i’ve become less and less inclined to speak and be active in class. honestly, i’ve been getting shyer too, i don’t like participating. and every time i wonder to myself “huh, guess i’m just having a day.” only to go to my english class directly after and be extremely active and talkative and present.

and as someone whos default in classes is to be someone very present and active in class, it’s… not a good sign that i’m acting so differently in my comm class.

[grison-in-space]

They didn't! In any way! Or for that matter, they didn't control for the potential associations that students might have with the format of content: every ADHD person I know is aware that sometimes you have to sit still and listen to someone talk at you and try to retain the information, and this is for most of us an inherently aversive experience, yeah? By contrast, the "preferred" experience with the movie--most of the time when I'm in a room with a movie I'm getting told to watch, if I zone the fuck out and do my own thing then there's no consequences for that.

The thing is, our experiences and the expectations we learn from are so powerful that they can literally affect the level of satiety hormones like ghrelin we express after consuming the exact same stimuli. I don't work with humans for a lot of reasons but foremost among them is that the idea of trying to control everything at once is just fucking exhausting. This is not remotely, I should add, an excuse for them to do shit like deliberately only sampling boys; that at least should have been an easy control to make. I just mean that experimental design and accounting for human experience is hard.

Especially since to my astonished horror there are surprisingly few people in psychology research who are openly neurodivergent and aware of it, and most of the out ones are still very early career: graduate students and undergrads. The only other person at or above my career stage I've observed in any discipline who is as open about things as I am is specifically a disability studies scholar, which--a) yeah, thank fuck she and her work exist, and b) good grief I should fucking well hope so!

I had perhaps naively expected that, given that obvious neurodivergence is so common in academia that I actively struggle to think of neurotypical people I've worked with, the people who actively study this type of human variation would be some level of self aware and use their own insights from personal lived experience to drive their work. Nope! That self awareness is astonishingly absent. It's not that psych research is full of neurotypical people, it's that there are strong social consequences for identifying yourself within the neurodivergent category (some positive, some negative) and this is treated as a singular and exceptional thing to be rather than, like. A really common phenotype of person to find in an academic discipline. Literally the only remarkable thing is my willingness to apply labels to myself. It's so strange.

And this partitioning of research experience away from the category in which research subjects fall into, that creates really stupidly crappily designed experiments all the time. It's really sad and extremely frustrating to watch.

Scientists once thought that ADHD symptoms were always present. But previous research from Rapport, who has been studying ADHD for more than 36 years, has shown the fidgeting was most often present when children were using their brains' executive functions, particularly "working memory." That's the system we use for temporarily storing and managing information required to carry out complex cognitive tasks such as learning, reasoning and comprehension.

Here’s full study: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/478386

If you enjoyed this post, please give it a ❤️ and check out @scienceisdope for more science and daily facts.

[the-one-to-show-to-my-therapist]

Had a really gross morning. I've been trying to detangle and rethread everything I was feeling into something cohesive because the only clear emotion there were a sort of imposter syndrome: I felt anxious and unhuman.

I usually work alone during my midnights, 9p-9a. The guys I care for are nearly entirely nonverbal, but they tend to sing some, even on days when they don't talk. It can be isolating, going in and not talking to anyone all day except the incoming and outgoing shifts, and my partner before I go to bed, but it's honestly really nice being able to let my guard down.

I know that these guys don't care if I'm weird or if I sing badly, etc., so I'm not as particular about hiding my weird characteristics. This is especially helpful because I'm also coming out of a midnight, and I experience chronic paranoia. Not having to maintain an image (besides being calm. I can't let them know I'm anxious or they will be too) helps me be less anxious, which, in turn, lessens the paranoia.

All I have to do is prep for interacting with a neurotypical coworker when they come in at 9a, and I know the other three people that tend to work this house, so I'm more comfortable with them, especially two of them. And if it's an odd person, I have my list of things to ramble off about the shift before I ske-dat-fast.

The problem this morning was that someone came in at 8am, and they were someone I knew, but had never worked with.

My day was prepped to be time-efficient for a one-person team, and I wasn't ready for interacting with others. I locked down. I could barely even talk to the guys I work for. I managed, but my throat felt tight, and I was tense all over. I knew I was being weird, but I wasn't ready to become anything else. She didn't really communicate either, so the day wasn't smooth like it should have been.

Don't take me wrong, typically this person is a good worker. She does really well with the population we support, and she can typically hold her own. And she did do well for what we had. Everything was done, and I was leaving by 9:07a, and that was with me rechecking that there was nothing else I could do twice. I was so thrown and anxious from being unready to see another person, that I know I wasn't holding up to my typical standards, so she honestly did a significant portion of what needed to be done.

I drove to the park around the corner after I got out of there, and I cried. I just... I knew I was behind when I was able to be reintegrated into normal society after all my years living in AR. I've spent 11 years figuring out my actual thoughts and beliefs, while also trying to understand all these stupid social mechanisms. I spend so much time thinking about what I should be doing. I have to hype myself into a new person for important events. It's exhausting!

To describe it in the best analogy I can think of right now: I just want to parallel play with the rest of the world sometimes. I want to be close. I want to show you my sandcastle or playdough figure or completed puzzle or whatever, but if either of us says one word, I'm going to implode.

I can't tell you how much better I felt when I went from 8.5 years of schooling to midnights, where I had to see no one. Such an infinite difference in weight. My anxiety slowly got better. My paranoia got better. Hallucinations? Better. Delusions? Better. I don't feel like something is coming to attack me as much. I don't feel like I'm being watched as much. I don't feel like the world is simulated as much. I still have my suspicions, but it's much easier to tamp down and ignore.

It's been worse since I took my promotion. I have to not only engage in conversation with coworkers and clients, but I'm still doing 2-3 midnights, during which I'm expected to do some of my paperwork, so my caffiene consumption is up, so my anxiety, hallucinations, delusions are up, just not to the same extreme as they were during college days.

I'll be back to this later. I'm at 14% and need to get back to work.

[subbyfoxelf]

[book review] star trek: discovery: the way to the stars by una mccormack (2019)

in a lot of ways, tilly is the beating heart of star trek: discovery. you don’t notice it at first but by the end of season 1 it’s just super obvious, and it just gets more and more obvious as time goes on. what you do notice right away is that she is such a mood. like, she’s got to be one of the most immediately relatable characters on the show to the average star trek fan.

one of my favorite things about discovery, and i think one of a lot of people’s favorite things about discovery, is that the crew isn’t nearly as… stuffy as in the next generation?[1] everyone doesn’t always have to say the exact right thing at the exact right time, and we see that this isn’t incompatible with the “elevated” humanity that is so central to the franchise’s appeal. it’s okay to get excited about things in messy, awkward ways! and tilly is basically a human-shaped avatar of this approach. on top of that, she’s a genuinely great portrayal of someone who is clearly neurodiverse.[2] she’s just so damn refreshing in a world where a lot of popular entertainment uses “brilliant but rude, not empathetic, and has trouble talking to people” as shorthand for anyone who isn’t neurotypical. tilly is amazing at connecting with people, and i don’t think anyone is going to accuse her of an underabundance of empathy.

… so, uh, yeah! all of that is to say that i was, you know, maybe slightly excited to read a book that’s primarily about her! this book expands on a lot of what we already got from snippets about her–overbearing mother who sounds like a huge asshole (she is), brilliant, had a “rebellious phase.” i also really appreciate the continuity between this and the 2019 annual with her father’s ship!

the book is split into three parts which are extremely unequal in terms of length but nevertheless pretty equally important. part 1 covers tilly’s transition from living on earth to living at boarding school, and takes up almost half of the book, dwarfing the other two parts. part 2 follows tilly’s brief exploits as a teenage runaway, and part 3 finds her aboard her father’s ship and is the beginning of her path to starfleet. although the other two parts are equally important and are maybe slightly more effective as page turners, part 1 is the part that i found myself relating to the hardest.

one of the big obstacles tilly faces is her inability to stand up to her mother, and how she keeps getting bullied into going along with whatever her mother wants. this is what led her to boarding school, and while she’s there despite her teacher feeling she’s excelling, her mother just refuses to be satisfied.

tilly ends up internalizing her mother’s expectations and dropping things that are genuinely fun and important to her to try to do the best she can to meet her mother’s impossible standards. she ends up obsessing over a major project and overworking herself to the point of exhaustion, and when the time comes despite all her hard work she ends up bombing the presentation because of all the pressure she’s put on herself. worse, she realizes she’s alienated all her friends and is left all alone by the end of the term.

i… found this aspect way more relatable than i wanted to. i find that i often get so focused on what i’m working on or making progress with something… chasing the next dopamine release, as it were. and as a result i end up not doing enough to maintain the relationships in my life which are actually drastically more important to me than whatever i’m working on. and that’s without the pressure of a parent or other authority figure! just the ghost of one, in the form of lingering trauma from childhood. so it’s just extremely easy to empathize with tilly here.

i knew i would probably enjoy this book, i really love me some tilly, but i didn’t expect it to be so personally meaningful and genuinely useful. yeah, there’s a lot about tilly’s life that i can’t relate to, and a lot that i’m frankly pretty jealous of! but there are equally important parts that i very much can relate to, and that made this an incredibly satisfying read.

a-rank

notes

1. i hope it’s pretty obvious from my reviews of the series that i do love the next generation. this isn’t a dig against it.

2. i’m not going to put a specific diagnosis in the show’s mouth, but as someone who is autistic and has adhd, i frequently feel very seen by how her character is presented.

[elacular-kink]

Poly-Techhic character sheet

Poly-Techhic is a serial hiccup story about a group of polyamorous college girls. This is a description of the four main characters and may be edited later.

Picrews of the girls.

Susanna Jane Butler

Also called Susan and Susie Appearance: —4'10" (147 cm) —Very average weight and build —Tan skin —Chinese —Adopted by American Catholics. —Short, straight black hair —Bangs can fall over eyes. —Wears baggy clothes —Almost always has on a baggy hoodie with the hood up. Neurotypical (I think?) —(The author isn't, so...) Extremely gay Sophomore (AKA, 2nd year) Loves and is studying music —Plays multiple instruments —Piano —Is actually better at pipe organ —Guitar —Sings well —Learned how to sing in kids choir in her church. Is way less cool than she looks or acts —Is cooler than she thinks she is. Is great at telling people off —Is terrible at telling people good things. Has a hiccup fetish. —Has been like this as long as she can remember. —Has extremely big emotions and anxiety about it. —She's not able to get off without it.

Olivia Elizabeth Jones

Appearance —5'9" (175 cm) —Skinny —Isn't skinny on purpose, just naturally doesn't develop much fat. —Annoyed when people conflate thinness with health. —Very dark skin —Black (African American) —Nearly buzzed black hair —4C texture —Uses reading glasses —Keeps them around her neck on a chain for practicality —Everyone else says it makes her look like an old lady. —Wears very practical clothes. —All fabrics must be soft and/or smooth. —Clothes are generally tight. She dislikes having clothes that hang loose. —Doesn't care about how butch or femme it is. Autistic —Very blunted affect —Sincerely emotes only for huge feelings. —Still feels things when not emoting, just doesn't move her face much about it. —Hates social niceties —Is overly honest with people Aromantic —Does not feel or have a great understanding of romantic attraction. —Can still identify it in others —Bisexual with a female lean. —Considers Susanna her life partner, but does not consider her a girlfriend. —"See, this is why I explain it with 'it's complicated', Olivia." —Does consider Maya a girlfriend —"It means something different to her, and I can do that." Sophomore (AKA, 2nd year) Gets the hiccups all the time. —Doesn't generally mind them. —Has been shunned or punished for them in the past. —Thinks this is stupid. —This is part of why Susanna has been her best friend. —Almost nothing cures them. —No apparent medical reason, she's just very hiccupy. Kind of a troll —People don't expect it from her since she seems so serious. —Primary victims are Susanna and Maya. Extremely emotionally perceptive

Maya Heffernan

Appearance —5'4" (163 cm) —Feels taller because of her personality. —Also just often wears cleats —Both very muscular and very chubby —Built like a professional weightlifter. —Is capable of lifting weights like a professional weightlifter. —Is basically a physical freak with absurd strength, speed, and endurance. —Exercises constantly. —White —Ridiculously pale (Irish ancestry) —Covered in orange and brown freckles —Massive mane of curly red hair —Sheds red hairs everywhere. —Wears glasses —Including when playing rugby —Has prescription sports goggles —Almost always wears her rugby uniform. —She's number 7, the openside flanker —So she gets to tackle people! —A lot! —Dresses very butch outside of it. ADHD —Takes adderall occasionally when she needs to focus —Does not like how she feels on it. Solo-poly —Wants to avoid becoming overly dependent on someone or having them become dependent on her. —Still enjoys having romantic and sexual relationships with many people. —Keeps most relationships at arm's length. —Only forms closer relationships with other people with big poly energy. —Has gaydar, but for polyamorous tendencies. Pansexual —Not all pansexuals are sluts. But she is. —Fucks lots of women, men, and other types of people. —("But where are the men?" They're offscreen somewhere, shut up.) Junior (AKA, 3rd year.) Gives people nicknames —Whether they want them or not. —Will relent if they genuinely hate them. —Eventually... —Susanna=Susie —Olivia=Liv —Kiran=Kiki Chaos agent —Loves to disrupt people's lives. —Often for the better, sometimes for the worse, almost always for both. —Genuinely thinks this is fun and wants others to have fun too. —Actively trolls people —Frequently goes too far. —Extremely easily bored. —Will cause problems when bored. —If there's nobody to cause problems for, will cause problems for herself. Really fucking stupid. —Under no illusions about this. —Has always struggled with academia —Has no common sense —Has no impulse control —Is still alive because she's impossible to kill

Kiran Mandal

Appearance —6'1" (185 cm) —Very fat —Deep brown skin —Indian American —One parent is first generation, one parent is second. —Long black hair. —Wants to do interesting things with it, is too nervous to try. —Always wears a dress or a skirt. —Has yet to figure out what her fashion sense is, has been fairly conservative thus far. Autistic —Terrified of eye contact —Often makes it anyway due to masking. —Always tries to "win" eye contact. —Has a lot of difficulty socializing —Has very little experience doing so, which doesn't help. —Particularly with people her own age. —Extremely socially anxious and shy. —Stims and makes repetitive movements —Used to make a lot of sounds with her mouth, had that mostly trained out of her. —Has never been able to stop flapping when anxious or happy. —Is extremely embarrassed by this. —Sees it as a personal failing. Trans —MtF —Is on hormones —Has not been on them long. —Not very secure in her womanhood —Is rarely accidentally misgendered. —If someone misgendered her on purpose, the other three would kill them. Uncertain sexuality —Definitely likes girls. —Definitely really really really really really likes girls. Freshman (1st year) Really academically smart —Brilliant at the vast majority of what would be considered "nerd shit". —Particularly likes computer programming. —(Forgive me for my trans woman stereotype.) —Has studied under professional tutors all her life. —Speaks English and Hindi fluently, is proficient in Spanish —Currently being tutored and learning Mandarin. —(please don't expect me to know anything about any of these languages, German is super close to English and I'm still not learning jack shit) —Has very little "street smarts" —Very limited practical knowledge of the world. Family is stupid rich —Probably some tech sector shit. —Dad may be an insufferable tech bro. —She has access to a shitload of money. —She has no idea what money is actually worth, but is self-aware about that. —Has been insulated from a lot of normal people's experiences because of that. Vegetarian

[ganymedesclock]

These are questions I've had for some while and it's hard to find someone who'll answer with grace. This mostly relates to disabilities (mental or physical) in fiction.

1) What makes a portrayal of a disability that's harming the character in question ableist?

2) Is there a way to write a disabled villain in a way that isn't ableist?

In the circles I've been in, the common conceptions are you can't use a character's disability as a plot point or showcase it being a hindrance in some manner. heaven forbid you make your villain disabled in some capacity, that's a freaking death sentence to a creative's image. I understand historically villains were the only characters given disabilities, but (and this is my personal experience) I've not seen as many disabled villains nowadays, heck, I see more disabled heroes in media nowadays.

Sorry if this comes off as abrasive, I'd really like to be informed for future media consumption and my own creative endeavors.

Okay so the first thing I'm going to say is that while it IS a good idea to talk to disabled people and get their feedback, disabled people are not a monolith and they aren't going to all have the same take on how this goes.

My personal take is biased in favor that I'm a neurodivergent person (ADHD and autism) who has no real experience with physical disabilities, so I won't speak for physically disabled people- heck, I won't even speak for every neurotype. Like I say, people aren't a monolith.

For myself and my own writing of disabled characters, here's a couple of concepts I stick by:

Research is your friend

Think about broad conventions of ableism

Be mindful of cast composition

1. Research is your friend

Yeah this is the thing everybody says, so here's the main bases I try to cover:

What's the story on this character's disability?

Less in terms of 'tragic angst' and more, what kind of condition this is- because a congenital amputee (that is to say, someone who was born without a limb) will have a different relationship to said limb absence than someone who lost their limb years ago to someone who lost their limb yesterday. How did people in their life respond to it, and how did they respond to it? These responses are not "natural" and will not be the same to every person with every worldview. This can also be a great environment to do worldbuilding in! Think about the movie (and the tv series) How To Train Your Dragon. The vikings in that setting don't have access to modern medicine, and they're, well, literally fighting dragons and other vikings. The instance of disability is high, and the medical terminology to talk about said disabilities is fairly lackluster- but in a context where you need every man you possibly can to avoid the winter, the mindset is going to be not necessarily very correct, but egalitarian. You live in a village of twenty people and know a guy who took a nasty blow to the head and hasn't quite been the same ever since? "Traumatic Brain Injury" is probably not going to be on your lips, but you're also probably going to just make whatever peace you need to and figure out how to accommodate Old Byron for his occasional inability to find the right word, stammers and trembles. In this example, there are several relevant pieces of information- what the character's disability is (aphasia), how they got it (brain injury), and the culture and climate around it (every man has to work, and we can't make more men or throw them away very easily, so, how can we make sure this person can work even if we don't know what's wrong with them)

And that dovetails into:

What's the real history, and modern understandings, of this?

This is where "knowing the story" helps a lot. To keep positing our hypothetical viking with a brain injury, I can look into brain injuries, what affects their extent and prognosis, and maybe even beliefs about this from the time period and setting I'm thinking of (because people have had brains, and brain injuries, the entire time!) Sure, if the setting is fantastical, I have wiggle room, but looking at inspirations might give me a guide post.

Having a name for your disorder also lets you look for posts made by specific people who live with the condition talking about their lives. This is super, super important for conditions stereotyped as really scary, like schizophrenia or narcissistic personality disorder. Even if you already know "schizophrenic people are real and normal" it's still a good thing to wake yourself up and connect with others.

2. Think about broad conventions of ableism

It CAN seem very daunting or intimidating to stay ahead of every single possible condition that could affect someone's body and mind and the specific stereotypes to avoid- there's a lot under the vast umbrella of human experience and we're learning more all the time! A good hallmark is, ableism has a few broad tendencies, and when you see those tendencies rear their head, in your own thinking or in accounts you read by others, it's good to put your skeptical glasses on and look closer. Here's a few that I tend to watch out for:

Failing the “heartwarming dog” test

This was a piece of sage wisdom that passed my eyeballs, became accepted as sage wisdom, and my brain magnificently failed to recall where I saw it. Basically, if you could replace your disabled character with a lovable pet who might need a procedure to save them, and it wouldn’t change the plot, that’s something to look into.

Disability activists speak often about infantilization, and this is a big thing of what they mean- a lot of casual ableism considers disabled people as basically belonging to, or being a burden onto, the able-bodied and neurotypical. This doesn’t necessarily even need to have an able neurotypical in the picture- a personal experience I had that was extremely hurtful was at a point in high school, I decided to do some research on autism for a school project. As an autistic teenager looking up resources online, I was very upset to realize that every single resource I accessed at the time presumed it was talking to a neurotypical parent about their helpless autistic child. I was looking for resources to myself, yet made to feel like I was the subject in a conversation.

Likewise, many wheelchair users have relayed the experience of, when they, in their chair, are in an environment accompanied by someone else who isn’t using a chair, strangers would speak to the standing person exclusively, avoiding addressing the chair user. 

It’s important to always remind yourself that at no point do disabled people stop being people. Yes, even people who have facial deformities; yes, even people who need help using the bathroom; yes, even people who drool; yes, even people whose conditions impact their ability to communicate, yes, even people with cognitive disabilities. They are people, they deserve dignity, and they are not “a child trapped in a 27-year-old body”- a disabled adult is still an adult. All of the “trying to learn the right rules” in the world won’t save you if you keep an underlying fear of non-normative bodies and minds.

This also has a modest overlap between disability and sexuality in particular. I am an autistic grayromantic ace. Absolutely none of my choices or inclinations about sex are because I’m too naive or innocent or childlike to comprehend the notion- disabled people have as diverse a relationship with sexuality as any other. That underlying fear- as mentioned before- can prevent many people from imagining that, say, a wheelchair user might enjoy sex and have experience with it. Make sure all of your disabled characters have full internal worlds.

Poor sickly little Tiffany and the Red Right Hand

A big part of fictional ableism is that it separates the disabled into two categories. Anybody who’s used TVTropes would recognize the latter term I used here. But to keep it brief:

Poor, sickly little Tiffany is cute. Vulnerable. How her disability affects her life is that it constantly creates a pall of suffering that she lives beneath. After all, having a non-normative mind or body must be an endless cavalcade of suffering and tragedy, right? People who are disabled clearly spend their every waking moment affected by, and upset, that they aren’t normal!

The answer is... No, actually. Cut the sad violin; even people who have chronic pain who are literally experiencing pain a lot more than the rest of us are still fully capable of living complex lives and being happy. If nothing else, it would be literally boring to feel nothing but awful, and people with major depression or other problems still, also, have complicated experiences. And yes, some of it’s not great. You don’t have to present every disability as disingenuously a joy to have. But make a point that they own these things. It is a very different feeling to have a concerned father looking through the window at his angel-faced daughter rocking sadly in her wheelchair while she stares longingly out the window, compared to a character waking up at midnight because they have to go do something and frustratedly hauling their body out of their bed into their chair to get going.

Poor Sickly Little Tiffany (PSLT, if you will) virtually always are young, and they virtually always are bound to the problems listed under ‘failing the heartwarming dog’ test. Yes, disabled kids exist, but the point I’m making here is that in the duality of the most widely accepted disabled characters, PSLT embodies the nadir of the Victim, who is so pure, so saintly, so gracious, that it can only be a cruel quirk of fate that she’s suffering. After all, it’s not as if disabled people have the same dignity that any neurotypical and able-bodied person has, where they can be an asshole and still expect other people to not seriously attack their quality of life- it’s a “service” for the neurotypical and able-bodied to “humor” them.

(this is a bad way to think. Either human lives matter or they don’t. There is no “wretched half-experience” here- if you wouldn’t bodily grab and yank around a person standing on their own feet, you have no business grabbing another person’s wheelchair)

On the opposite end- and relevant to your question- is the Red Right Hand. The Red Right Hand does not have PSLT’s innocence or “purity”- is the opposite extreme. The Red Right Hand is virtually always visually deformed, and framed as threatening for their visual deformity. To pick on a movie I like a fair amount, think about how in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the title character is described- “Strong. Fast. Had a metal arm.” That’s a subtle example, but, think about how that metal arm is menacing. Sure, it’s a high tech weapon in a superhero genre- but who has the metal arm? The Winter Soldier, who is, while a tormented figure that ultimately becomes more heroic- scary. Aggressive. Out for blood.

The man who walks at midnight with a Red Right Hand is a signal to us that his character is foul because of the twisting of his body. A good person, we are led to believe, would not be so- or a good person would be ashamed of their deformity and work to hide it. The Red Right Hand is not merely “an evil disabled person”- they are a disabled person whose disability is depicted as symptomatic of their evil, twisted nature, and when you pair this trope with PSLT, it sends a message: “stay in your place, disabled people. Be sad, be consumable, and let us push you around and decide what to do with you. If you get uppity, if you have ideas, if you stand up to us, then the thing that made you a helpless little victim will suddenly make you a horrible monster, and justify us handling you with inhumanity.”

As someone who is a BIG fan of eldritch horror and many forms of unsettling “wrongness” it is extremely important to watch out for the Red Right Hand. Be careful how you talk about Villainous Disability- there is no connection between disability and morality. People will be good, bad, or simply just people entirely separate from their status of ability or disability. It’s just as ableist to depict every disabled person as an innocent good soul as it is to exclusively deal in grim and ghastly monsters.

Don’t justify disabilities and don’t destroy them.

Superpowers are cool. Characters can and IMO should have superpowers, as long as you’re writing a genre when they’re there.

BUT.

It’s important to remember that there is no justification for disabilities, because they don’t need one. Disability is simply a feature characters have. You do not need to go “they’re blind, BUT they can see the future”

This is admittedly shaky, and people can argue either way; the Blind Seer is a very pronounced mythological figure and an interesting philosophical point about what truly matters in the world. There’s a reason it exists as a conceit. But if every blind character is blind in a way that completely negates that disability or makes it meaningless- this sucks. People have been blind since the dawn of time. And people will always accommodate their disabilities in different ways. Even if the technology exists to fix some forms of blindness, there are people who will have “fixable” blindness and refuse to treat it. There will be individuals born blind who have no meaningful desire to modify this. And there are some people whose condition will be inoperable even if it “shouldn’t” be.

You don’t need to make your disabled characters excessively cool, or give them a means by which the audience can totally forget they’re disabled. Again, this is a place where strong worldbuilding is your buddy- a handwave of “x technology fixed all disabilities”, in my opinion, will never come off good. If, instead, however, you throw out a careless detail that the cool girl the main character is chatting up in a cyberpunk bar has an obvious spinal modification, and feature other characters with prosthetics and without- I will like your work a lot, actually. Even if you’re handing out a fictional “cure”- show the seams. Make it have drawbacks and pros and cons. A great example of this is in the series Full Metal Alchemist- the main character has two prosthetic limbs, and not only do these limbs come with problems, some mundane (he has phantom limb pains, and has to deal with outgrowing his prostheses or damaging them in combat) some more fantastical (these artificial limbs are connected to his nerves to function fluidly- which means that they get surgically installed with no anesthesia and hurt like fuck plugging in- and they require master engineering to stay in shape). We explicitly see a scene of the experts responsible for said limbs talking to a man who uses an ordinary prosthetic leg, despite the advantages of an automail limb, because these drawbacks are daunting to him and he is happier with a simple prosthetic leg.

Even in mundane accommodations you didn’t make up- no two wheelchair users use their chair the exact same way, and there’s a huge diversity of chairs. Someone might be legally blind but still navigate confidently on their own; they might use a guide dog, or they might use a cane. They might even change their needs from situation to situation!

Disability accommodations are part of life

This ties in heavily to the previous point, but seriously! Don’t just look up one model of cane and superimpose it with no modifications onto your character- think about what their lifestyle is, and what kind of person they are!

Also medication is not the devil. Yes, medical abuse is real and tragic and the medication is not magic fairy dust that solves all problems either. But also, it’s straight ableism to act like anybody needing pills for any reason is a scary edgy plot twist. 

(and addiction is a disease. Please be careful, and moreover be compassionate, if you’re writing a character who’s an addict)

3. Be mindful of cast composition

This, to me, is a big tip about disability writing and it’s also super easy to implement!

Just make sure your cast has a lot of meaningful disabled characters in it!

Have you done all the work you can to try and dodge the Red Right Hand but you’re still worried your disabled villain is a bad look? They sure won’t look like a commentary on disability if three other people in the cast are disabled and don’t have the same outlook or role! Worried that you’re PSLT-ing your main character’s disabled child? Maybe the disability is hereditary and they got it from the main character!

The more disabled characters you have, the more it will challenge you to think about what their individual relationship is with the world and the less you’ll rely on hackneyed tropes. At least, ideally.

-

Ultimately, there’s no perfect silver bullet of diversity writing that will prevent a work from EVER being ableist, but I hope this helped, at least!

[autistic-paul]

Paul Matthews is autistic, a masterpost

It's been a while since I've made any sort of masterpost about the autistic Paul headcanon, so I think I'll give it another shot. It's a long one, so strap in! First off, none of this was intentional. Paul was not written to be autistic. Jon has always been supportive of how people view Paul, and that's wonderful, but please don't give Starkid credit for representation they didn't actually include. None of this is concrete, either, it's a collection of traits that can be viewed as neurodivergent traits if someone chooses to do so. I personally do, but at the end of the day, he's just a character that fans can perceive however they want.

- Paul struggles with anxiety. The source of his anxiety in the majority of TGWDLM stems from a change in his routine, of the world he knows drastically changing overnight. He had no reason to get so clearly distressed from what was clearly just a flash dance (That he knew of, at least), even considering his distaste of musicals. But it threw him off quite a lot.

- He's quite blunt and often rude. Whether you believe it's intentional or not, he has a tendency to shut people down when he doesn't want to do something, and makes no attempts to soften the blow or be polite. Telling Bill he didn't want to help him reconnect with Alice, turning down softball, getting worked up with the Greenpeace girl called him out and taking him off his social script. All of these things aren't ways that society expects people to communicate. It's not for lack of caring, Paul truly loves Bill and considers him his best friend, he's just straightforward and says exactly what he thinks.

- The social awkwardness isn't just him being blunt. He's only briefly in Black Friday, but there's plenty of evidence. In other filmings of the show, Paul attempts to shake Tom's hand, and hesitantly pulls it back when it's not taken, and then also tries to shake Tim's hand. He knows that's considered the social script, that's how you greet people in professional situations. He doesn't easily adapt to different social dynamics, considering he tries to shake a child's hand. He just does what he knows. Emma had to cut him off after the bumper cars line, he would have continued to escalate the situation otherwise. All of his parts in Black Friday showcase his difficulty in social situations.

- He's very reliant on social scripts. He repeats himself sometimes, like with the caramel frappe for Bill and also for Mr. Davidson. He says thank you for your service to Tom without hesitation in BF, because that's the thing you say. A small one, but worth mentioning.

- He has little to no ambition, and despite not liking his job according to Forever and Always, he has no intention of changing his path. Nick has said Paul has worked at CCRP for close to a decade. He's settled into the life he has, and change in any capacity is distressing to him. He goes to work, he gets his coffee, he goes home. Emma is the only change we've seen him welcome. In the bunker, Hatchetfield was overrun by aliens, and he said he still didn't want to leave.

- His reactions to stress are not particularly neurotypical. He seeks out familiarity and comfort, such as immediately making his way to Beanies to calm himself down after LDDDD, to indulge in his routine. When he was in the alleys with Emma, he brought up movies and board games, despite the fact that it was an odd time to try to discuss interests with someone he barely knew. If we count Jon's original audition for the character, we can easily infer that Paul has a special interest in film. At the very least, he has strong opinions on it, and wanting to discuss an interest even when the timing isn't appropriate is common for autistic people.

- The stims. Oh, the stims. He wrings his hands quite often, he taps his fists on top of each other, and he repeats words over and over. (The okays can be seen as a form of echolalia, which is a type of vocal stim!) Keep an eye on his hands throughout the whole show, they're moving very often, and particularly intensely in times of stress.

- His body language. There's the ever-present discomfort, of course, and the stimming, but there's more than that. He's extremely tactile, I can't count the times he touches people near him, or grabs them to pull them away from danger. He mimics other people's body languages, especially Emma's. His posture in CCRP at the start vs. His posture in the bunker with Emma are drastically different, and they reflect the people around him. In Black Friday, he touches Emma's back to support her, crouches when she does, holds her at the very end of the show. I'd argue that he struggles with a sense of personal space, honestly.

- As an add-on to the last point, he touches other people very freely, but when other people touch him, he flinches. All the touching in LDDDD have him looking disgusted, and doubly so in LIO, but it's not just that. Ted touches him by the trash cans, and he jumps and looks very uncomfortable. He's tactile, but only on his own terms.

- He's extremely expressive. He wears his emotions on his sleeve, and does not seem remotely adept at hiding them. Emma knew he had a crush on her the second they met. It's not just his words that are straightforward, it's all of him. He just doesn't hide things.

I suppose that's it for now. Honestly, if I started picking out every little thing about him, I'd be here all day. There's so much about the way he speaks, moves, and expresses himself that makes him seem autistic to me. Simply put, it's about the vibes, my dudes. He's autistic because I choose to believe he is.