crows use tools and like to slide down snowy hills. today we saw a goose with a hurt foot who was kept safe by his flock - before taking off, they waited for him to catch up. there are colors only butterflies see. reindeer are matriarchical. cows have best friends and 4 stomachs and like jazz music. i watched a video recently of an octopus making himself a door out of a coconut shell.
i am a little soft, okay. but sometimes i can't talk either. the world is like fractal light to me, and passes through my skin in tendrils. i feel certain small things like a catapult; i skirt around the big things and somehow arrive in crisis without ever realizing i'm in pain.
in 5th grade we read The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-time, which is about a young autistic boy. it is how they introduced us to empathy about neurotypes, which was well-timed: around 10 years old was when i started having my life fully ruined by symptoms. people started noticing.
i wonder if birds can tell if another bird is odd. like the phrase odd duck. i have to believe that all odd ducks are still very much loved by the other normal ducks. i have to believe that, or i will cry.
i remember my 5th grade teacher holding the curious incident up, dazzled by the language written by someone who is neurotypical. my teacher said: "sometimes i want to cut open their mind to know exactly how autistics are thinking. it's just so different! they must see the world so strangely!" later, at 22, in my education classes, we were taught to say a person with autism or a person on the spectrum or neurodivergent. i actually personally kind of like person-first language - it implies the other person is trying to protect me from myself. i know they had to teach themselves that pattern of speech, is all, and it shows they're at least trying. and i was a person first, even if i wasn't good at it.
plants learn information. they must encode data somehow, but where would they store it? when you cut open a sapling, you cannot find the how they think - if they "think" at all. they learn, but do not think. i want to paint that process - i think it would be mostly purple and blue.
the book was not about me, it was about a young boy. his life was patterned into a different set of categories. he did not cry about the tag on his shirt. i remember reading it and saying to myself: i am wrong, and broken, but it isn't in this way. something else is wrong with me instead. later, in that same person-first education class, my teacher would bring up the curious incident and mention that it is now widely panned as being inaccurate and stereotypical. she frowned and said we might not know how a person with autism thinks, but it is unlikely to be expressed in that way. this book was written with the best intentions by a special-ed teacher, but there's some debate as to if somebody who was on the spectrum would be even able to write something like this.
we might not understand it, but crows and ravens have developed their own language. this is also true of whales, dolphins, and many other species. i do not know how a crow thinks, but we do know they can problem solve. (is "thinking" equal to "problem solving"? or is "thinking" data processing? data management?) i do not know how my dog thinks, either, but we "talk" all the same - i know what he is asking for, even if he only asks once.
i am not a dolphin or reindeer or a dog in the nighttime, but i am an odd duck. in the ugly duckling, she grows up and comes home and is beautiful and finds her soulmate. all that ugliness she experienced lives in downy feathers inside of her, staining everything a muted grey. she is beautiful eventually, though, so she is loved. they do not want to cut her open to see how she thinks.
a while ago i got into an argument with a classmate about that weird sia music video about autism. my classmate said she thought it was good to raise awareness. i told her they should have just hired someone else to do it. she said it's not fair to an autistic person to expect them to be able to handle that kind of a thing.
today i saw a goose, and he was limping. i want to be loved like a flock loves a wounded creature: the phrase taken under a wing. which is to say i have always known i am not normal. desperate, mewling - i want to be loved beyond words.
loved beyond thinking.
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saw a take so fucking rancid on twitter i almost deleted the entire app from my phone jesus fucking christ
first of all ao3 is an archive site. this is like going to the library and saying "oh i dont like this" on every piece of media you find that you dislike and thinking they should be stamped with some sort of a marker just cause you didnt like it
you can always click back and leave. fic writers owe you nothing to explain themselves and their creations. if they have mistagged or miscategorized fics, then i understand, however there are report tools for that instead of yelling at the artist tbh
im not saying free works arent necessarily above criticism. but this is just. fucking wild. its common courtesy to just enjoy stuff (or fucking leave if you dont, the back button is free) and if the artist specifically asks for critiques, then give one - constructive that is, shitting all over someones work is not proper criticism, mind you
i just find it fucking wild people are treating art and archive sites as social media these days like this and everything needs to be policed and ~catered to the algorithm~ like. no. ao3 doesnt have an algorithm. you should be able to fucking tell what you like and what you dont like and steer away from that kind of content and let people fucking be with their art. they dont owe you anything (except trigger warnings i'd argue, but i know some people disagree with that as well for some reason), and imagine how much more energy you'd have if you only engaged with things you liked and spent time looking at instead of going to places where you dont enjoy yourself. let alone spending time telling other people you dont enjoy what they enjoy. what a fucking life
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"why are you here?"
the january cold may have been harsh on suna's skin, but your words were harsher on his heart.
he's standing at the doorstep of your apartment, and in front of an irriated and groggy looking you, who he may have awoken at three am in the middle of the night.
you cross your arms and lean on the doorway frame, waiting for his answer.
he may have expected a bit of a warmer greeting, though he's not sure if his expectations are valid — not anymore, not since you've broken up with him.
"i, uhm," he trails off and pauses, looking around everywhere but at you, "i need somewhere to stay at."
you frown at him, "suna, are you drunk?"
you might as well have taken a knife and stabbed it in his heart when you used his last name as he replies, "no. maybe — a little bit."
you know he's lying, you've known him for three years to know when he is, and you've known him for three years to know when he's drunk — and the red that taints his cheeks say that he may have had more than his fair share of drinks.
"can i come in?" he asks, finally looking at you, you can see the way he slightly shivers with the chill that stings in the air.
you don't know what to say, you don't know if you should let him in — no, you know that you shouldn't let him in and he knows that he shouldn't be asking this question, he knows he shouldn't even be here in the first place, and yet here he stands at the doorstep of your apartment.
you stay silent, for a moment, and then two before you finally answer him, "i guess i can't just leave you at the mercy of the january cold." you say quietly as you step away from the doorway and let him in — it's a snowy and crisp night, and you can't send him out on the streets where the biting winds would get him.
and besides, against your bitter will, you may have missed him.
suna navigates his way around your apartment as though it's his second home, you presume that it is or at least it used to be as you watch him make his way to the couch and slump on it.
"make yourself comfortable, i guess." you mutter under your breath before you disappear into your room.
suna knows that he shouldn't be here, not when he's intoxicated and drunk on martinis, not after he went to the bar to do so just to get his mind off of you, and yet he still found himself circling back to you, first with a phone call, then two, then three, all which you didn't notice until he decided to finally go to your place, his feet dragged him there as though it was second nature and it might as well have been his lucky day when you let him in even though your break up ended with you saying that you didn't want to have anything to do with him.
but suna can't help it, he really can't, he can't get his mind off of you and his heart still longs for you but he thinks he's exaggerating, at least now he does with the alcohol settling in his system, his mind a daze with the only thought on it being you and the fact that he's at your apartment, and his eyelids now feel heavier.
and so when you come back with a pillow and comforter for him, you find him laying on the couch, head facing the ceiling.
a small smiles stretches at your lips as you make your way over to him, "sleepy already? i guess you've had too much to handle." you chide as you begin to cover him with the comforter, his eyes are still open but droopy.
"y/n," he calls out your name and you can't help but pause at it as you answer him, "yes?"
"i love you." he says, it's quiet, a bit intimate and almost innocent as he looks at you, waiting for your answer.
you may have not noticed how eloquent his tone was, how heartfelt his words actually were, or maybe you did, maybe you just chose to ignore it or maybe you just didn't believe him no matter how honest he actually was because you frown at him with a slight pout at your lips.
you say quietly, "you're too drunk, suna."
you tuck him in, your heart beating dully in your chest, maybe you can't hear his heartbeat but you can see the way his eyes dim as his chest throbs at your words.
the january cold may have been harsh but you don't realize how much harsher your words are to him as you speak once more,
"maybe tell me that when you're sober."
prequel
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