#all boiling down to his experience with autism* 'oOoh-'

[lukasadss]

Oh pod Sherlock is making me bawl,,

[qoldenskies]

I just finished binge reading your fanfiction and WOW. I have no words. (Actually I have a lot of words but I digress.)

First of all, objectively speaking, the writing is PHENOMENAL. I feel like this is just standard praise but I truly do mean it when I say that it’s GOOD. Like—good-good. There’s a nice use of evocative language and a blend of “complex” (rather I’d argue descriptive) verbs and adjectives, and also, the speaker tags are AMAZING. I personally struggle with using the “said” speaker tag too much and I notice many fic authors do too so it’s not a major grievance of mines (if any grievance,) but when it came to reading caged lungs the speaker tags were always new and very very (that’s two verys,) contextually sound. Like you did your research. I was on call with a friend praising your work and it really truly does stand strong after finishing the whole thing (as to date. you know?) . Not sure if this was intentional but I did notice the speaker tag “crowed” show up a lot, and it’s really ironic considering the motifs of being a bird in a cage, (I LOVED the analogies by the way, about how a caged bird was better than a dead bird and -oh my gosh!!! It’s just SO good!!!!!) and crows are..well…….birds. Also find it nice that you use CROWED out of all of them in the context of things—yes, I do know why—to make a comparison to a crows cawing and their vocal inflection HOWEVER, crows, as the animal, are clever and smart but social animals. They’re very quick witted and remember when they’ve been wronged. They’ll let their crow buddies know and it’s just a whole thing. I just really liked that detail even if it was completely unintentional. Also the tonal shift really hit me in the SHIN here. Going from Leo saying “peedrunner.” With no hesitation to —the absolutely heinous stuff (/pos) that I read is so JARRING but it works well in your favor. Speaking of jarring!!! REPETITION! You used repetition so masterfully in your work it was making me ANXIOUS to read it. It’s so. Tastefully done. Well done. I love this.

That’s in terms of writing though, in terms of the STORY!??? AWESOME AS WELL. Holy shit. You really just boiled Donnie down right to his bare characteristics, his weaknesses, it was . CRAZY.(in a good way.) the juxtaposition of everything with Donnie v. Which town and this whole fic is. So good. Good feels like such a redundant word to use. Spectacular? Stupendous? Prodigious? Savant-esque? You get the gist.

This is also a more personal reason why I like this, but autism is depicted so so so well in this. Idk if you’re autistic YOURSELF and it would honestly make so much sense but either way—thank.you. This is such an amazing depiction of how debilitating autism can be and it really spoke with my own experiences. 10/10 fic. I only have minor criticisms but otherwise this is beautiful. You are an insanely talented author and I can tell you put in the EFFORT to perfect your craft and it is worth it. I was up till 4 am reading it and it was well worth it.

AWHHHH THANK YOU!!!! some repeating words/phrases are intentional and others arent, im just an amateur writer and i notice stuff like that happening accidentally, but i will accept happy accidents!!! o7 i love when people read into my work and talk about the metaphors/symbolism mwah mwah mwah (i also do love that line about how caged birds still sing and dead ones dont...... oooh that says so much about how donnie operates in CL imo)

and ive mentioned it before but *TO MY KNOWLEDGE* i'm not autistic!! i have a brother that is (who is very similar to donnie actually) and i have a lot of overlapping behavior as someone with adhd, so i put a lot of personal experience into the way that i write neurodivergence (particularly in the fear of being too sensitive, or being unable to take jokes, since i grew up with a lot of that kind of bs leveraged at me) and made sure to be tactical when i wrote things i dont personally experience. its really good to hear it resonated, im glad!!! ^w^

this is such a nice ask thank you so much!!!!! was an absolute joy to wake up to haha