#though it may help my autistic spectrum ass to have someone who will point out when i might be pushing myself too hard

[winteryserpent]

Spent most of today sleeping and resting because going to the pride festival apparently just wore me out so much.

It was nice that even though I went by myself and am single, I didn't really feel sad or negative about not having a partner or friends to go with. That was a problem I had years ago with going to my city's pride festival which resulted in me not going for years.

But now it's just nice to be around other queer folk and interact with them even if I don't make lasting connections.

[skeetusmcyeetus]

I’ve making headcanons about all of my hyper fixations for a while now and just dumping them on my friends so I’m gonna also dump them here.

If you’re into All For the Game , My Hero Academia, ATLA, The Raven Cycle stay fuckn tuned my doods bc I have a loooot of stuff rattling around my empty skull.

Not all of these are 100% mine some of them are already pretty popular and I’m expanding on them or I heard something similar and edited it to my own tastes

I’ll separate them by series,,,

Theres like one canon that’s mildly nsfw

TW: drug abuse

Mha/Bnha

pro hero kirishima’s Red Riot™️ merch is insanely size inclusive bc he wants fatgum to be able to wear the hoodie that kiri’s pr team sent him but that’s not all,,

If he wasn’t super gay and in love with Bakugou he’d be very Into BBWs so again his merch is super size inclusive bc he wants everyone to be able to wear it

The company that makes the merch also takes requests for special made merch for people who’s quirks interfere with a “normal” size or dimension

ALSO ,,,,this man(kiri) is built like a fuckn MACK TRUCK OKAY he is 6’7” and cannot fit through doorways without ducking and turning a little to the side ,,, he is broad And still wears no shirt™️ ,,, this being said ,, bakugou is still around 5’8” and pretty slim don’t get me wrong he’s extremely strong and toned but he’s not huge,, it makes flying easier if he stays a little lighter ,,,,,,, the point is,, sometimes kiri will pick up bakugou with one arm and bakugou can’t even pretend to hate it anymore

Also,,,, fatgum has to use special pens and keyboards because of how big his hands are,,, he’s literally 8’2” I won’t take criticism on this

Fatgum actually loves wearing red riot and sun eater merch

Allmight and Inko start dating and one day when they’re out someone comments on how much all might “looks like a skeleton” and she absolutley lets loose on them for being so vapid and shallow and how “he’s risked his life to save people like you more times than you have ever even thought about being helpful in your life and it would serve you well to treat someone who’d die for you without even knowing you with more respect”

All might had to gently pull her away bc the guy was crying and she wasn’t anywhere near finished with him

Midnight is Asexual and aggressively pretends to be horny on main™️ because for one, it works with her quirk and two, nothing sells better than sex especially when you’re a woman.

Bakugou and kirishima use sign language to talk shit at Public events

Dabi is addicted to painkillers because he’s been on them his entire life,, he wakes up with the shakes and sometimes toga has to help him take his meds in the morning because he’s already in withdrawal

Tensei was the first one to realize that iida was autistic and immediately did copious amounts of research on ASD and how to be a good brother to him

ATLA

sokka grows his hair as long as Zuko’s (except the sides obvi) and sometimes he’ll wear his hair in the fire nation top knot and zuko loses it every time

Azula gets help and now sometimes when she wakes up with the sun after a night of fitful sleep she goes to the courtyard to have tea with iroh. They never talk, but then again they never need to.

Sometimes after a hard day sokka falls asleep in the bathtub and wakes up to zuko warming the water back up and washing his hair for him

Suki lounges in zukos throne while zuko gets worked up about stuff and paces all around the room

Mai is on the ace spectrum

When sokka and zuko visit the southern water tribe zuko will firebend for the all of the kids in the village,,, they love him so much and sometimes sokka gets a little teary eyed watching him

Sokka braids zukos hair water tribe style and it’s the hottest thing maybe ever

Zuko takes sokka on shopping sprees pretty frequently and sokka fuckn loves it

One time someone has the nerve to call sokka “the fire lords sugar baby” and sokka just flips his ponytail over his shoulder Ariana style and says “and what about it?”

The Raven cycle

Ronan has 100% killed Robert Parrish in his dreams and when he wakes up to see Adam next to him he almost immediately wants to go back to sleep and do it again for all the pain he’s caused Adam

Gansey is oblivious to the fact that he is indeed shredded,, when he gets really worked up he moves his arms a l o t like rolls up his sleeves, crosses and uncrosses his arms and The gang’s favorite is when he puts his hands on his head and subconsciously flexes,,,, literally entire gangsey will group swoon at him and he genuinely thinks they are marvelling at his passion for whatever he’s worked up about

Ronan watched broke back mountain once when he was like 16 and now all he can think about is being a gay cowboy ,,,

Adam will read people’s tarot wrong if theyre douchebags

Don’t you think it’s funny that the ganseys don’t have any straight children?

Blue has a T-shirt from each member of the gangsey (except Noah,, rip Noah) and shes created a terrible Franken-T-shirt by ripping them up and sewing them all back together in an extremely ugly patch work thing

Adam talks in Latin in his sleep and it really freaks his roommate out,, like a lot,, not to mention the fact that Adam already creeps him out to begin with bc he’s got that other vibe that comes from being tied to cabeswater and lindenmere ,, 6 out of 7 days his roommate is convinced that he’s a witch or a fairy or something

Ronan teaches opal how to bake and opal burns everything on purpose

aftg

Neil has definitely killed multiple people to survive

Neil’s mom definitely made him kill someone at least twice to make sure he could kill to survive on his own if they got separated

he probably definitely still has nightmares about each one

Matt and Dan both had a crush on Neil for like 30 seconds and absolutely talked to each other about him

Ppl always talk about how hot it is to crush a watermelon with your thighs,,,, Andrew could do it with his arms

Aarons ass is so flat and Andrew has an absolute dumptruck

Kevin started out as one of those annoying “obsessed with WWII” history guys and now he’s actually very into queer history and will rant about the lavender scare for an hour if you let him

The foxes lounge room(?) has a dart board with riko’s face on it to this day,, they literally have a drawer full of copies the same image of riko and every time one gets worn out they put a new one up. It’s more of an inside joke now but wymack still hates that little puke even though he’s dead so it stays up

Post-canon Neil gets drunk and teaches the team how to steal a car by hot wiring Matt’s truck

Matt does drag for halloween one year and Dan liked it a little too much *cough cough* she pegged him while he was still in drag

Someone once asked Renee if she was “saving herself for marriage like a good Christian girl should” and Allison knocked them out cold and stepped over the body

Neil calls Aaron ugly to his face literally any chance he gets (I feel like this one might be canon but I actually don’t know What’s real anymore)

Andrew Unironically wears a pink apron that says “kiss the cook” that Nicky got him for Christmas when he bakes

Okay I think that’s it ? For now?? Let me know if y’all want more,,,,, I’ll separate them next time I just really had to dump these and I didn’t want to make multiple posts.

I made this at 5:30 in the morning sorry if it’s riddled with typos and errors.

[bookishbea]

Black Friday Reaction

Okay so I’ll be live tweeting Black Friday but none of it will have any sense to it but it’ll just be my reactions

1. The Paul thing is really bothering me

2. I really love the mention of the other characters

3. If Jane is mention is the story about the mom mentioned some more

4. Is the delivery man ted (cause he’s also a sleazeball

5. It’s weird seeing Cory not play a pure bean

6. I love California MIA

7. The little sister (Im sorry I’m bad at names) I self project as autistic and she something else idk

8. Did anyone else noticed Robert’s Australian accent come out?

9. Like I said this is out of order so yeah but I personally think the second song in the show was very shocking as I’m not used to very serious starkid songs

10. When Robert gestures smoking i think its lowkey a refrence to the smoke club

11. I have a crush on lex

12. I love Lauren’s charecter so much

13. I love the name linda becuase it could be like a karen without using that name

14. Not to get poltical but i choose to belive they made an antivax joke

15. Also the marvel nerd in me loves the name becky barnes

16. I know its probaly not on purpose but joeys charecters costume in line looks like the homeless guy’s one

17. Jaimey is great as always

18. The conversation is so cringe i love it

19. I kinda hope torture porn is a fanfic refrence (i know most people would want me to say spies are forever but nope)

20. I love Lauren but shouldnt her accent be included when she sings

21. I love Jeff’s reaction

22. I may get some hate for this but what was bothering me in tgwdlm and i notice in starkid is lack of fan comments in the captions

23. As a theatre fan i love the toy zone song (i am not sure if thats the right name) espcially the do wop becuase it reminds me of older musicals

24. Also since i watched tgwdlm and black friday a day apart its weird to come from songs happening because they are infected to songs happening cause its a musical

25. i love the love the line we are not relaibly to anyone who dies becuase they clearly show in the trailer that someone will die (this is not a spoiler if you watch the trailer for Black Friday)

26. I love Corey but when he dances i notice a bulge (i am not a perv he makes it very obvious)

27. So i rewinded it to make sure i wanst going crazy and realized something as lex says the pepper spray line. She would be good as janis ian

28. I love the touch money part its so cute even if its not supposed to be

29. Jaime plays a perv really well

30. I love Jon’s charecter its hilarious

31. Also i love jon and lauren interactions so it was cool seeing them together not as paul and emma

32. I love seeing more of Jon because although hes reaally good at playing paul paul doesnt have any flavor and its cool seeing jon do something diffrent

33. Jeff’s fuck you

34. Okay I was right it was the homeless guy and i bet the money is paul’s money

35. And this is not a sterotpye as i am jewish myself but i bet Laurens charecter is jewish

36. Its sad that the price thing is true

37. So i am a theatre fan and do not watch got but that music kinda reminds me of got

38. Cant tell if jeff’s charecter is gay and a perv or just a perv (i realzie this could be mmisinterpreted as homophobic i just mean to say that jamie’s charecter just seems like a full out perv where as i cant tell with jeff’s)

39. Obviously you shouldnt be that insane but i do like the lines about how you are in charge of life and dont care about what others think. its goood life advice

39. Looks like Paul’s boss got his wish

40. They are all idiots for holding up the doll when everyone wants to get it

41. Corey’s charecter is like shit, money isnt that imporant

42. Becky why are you a part of this you have moral high ground (yes i am ignorning the fact that cast usually join in dance numbers even if their charecter isnt a part of it)

43. Shouldnt tom get ptsd (see above)

44. Lex you already have one (see above)

45. So i may be overthinking things but how curt says never should settle is in the tune of spies are forever

46. Is it just me or did anyone else notice when the security guard comes in the tune of show me your hands comes in

47. I dont know why but i do love soft bullies because hes like hey im punching you but only for the kid

48. Some may say its schizo or something hannah has but its anxiery or something from how shes expressing it

49. I feel like hannah has a superpower and can tell whats happening

50. Maybe webby is actually wiggly

51. Baby (both hannah and robert)

52. Please tell me my babies not dead

53. Jon’s eee is adorable and silly

54. Wait hes alive

55. Wait no hes dead, im sad liek starkid is supposed to be fun and happy this is the darkest star kid yet. Even oregon deaths were silly

56. I love starkid but this is making me anxious i cant tell if its good anxious or bad anxious

57. Also i relate to the black and white thing not fully but liek whenever i dont feel well sometimes my brain is overstimulating but only in my head its very hard to explain 

58. Also i think sometimes kids on the spectrum and im not an expert but i do have it kind of make a friend in their head and i do that too sometimes just to give me advice

59. Also i hope they dont get rid of the black and white as sometimes people go more crazy without the figurative voice in their head

60. Like i said this is going to be random order so i like that emma adopted paul;s Okay and no im not making a tfios refrence

61. Poor Tim

62. Poor becky but even less

63. i thought they were supposed to be mad at g-d but in this and tgwdlm they like g-d

64. I cant tell the other pins on joey’s jacket but the first two i notice are mr wiggly and paul

65. I love Lauren’s acting you can see the very sublte sadness in her

66. Lauren and Joey together ahhhh

67. I know its probaly not a big deal but they should give a seziure warning before the tv scene

68. Did they reuse curts spies are forever outfit

69. Really starkid the obama refrence seriously, i cant tell if im mad or laughing 

70. How did Bob get one

71. I do realize they are talking irl but i cant help but wonder if the nazis were a spies are forever refrence

72. Does wiggly have a special power or something 

73. I think its similar to the metero the closer you are the more power it has over you

74. The starkid special effects we all know and love

75. Also is that mcnamara

76. Also maybe shooting it (the doll) does the same thing that shooting the affceted does. Give them no power

77. I cant tell what the music reminds me of exactly but the tune does kinda refrence a diffrent star kid song

78. Jeff looks so proud of himself for the peeps line

79. I love the purposeful i presume reuse of lines

80. Is peip like men in black

81. Also hatchetfield kind of reminds me of night vale

82. Is the black and white like the upside down?

83. I wonder if the point was purposeful since someone was filming or just choreographed

84. Yes Jon Singing!!!!!

85. I love the act two opener

86. Did his parents really name him christmas?!?

87. Oh hes literally related to santa

88. I love lauren and joey as eleves

89. Noel another christmas name

90. Isnt the little dance move like a genie move or something

91. Its so cute that she insitincitvely went to their seats

92. Also carving is goals

93. Even though its a penis its still goals

94. I know what you are, say it, santa clause

95. Tom dont yell at your girl

96. Poor Tom

97. But also dont make this about you

98. They probaly werent the head of the school since they were nice, i am sorry but thats true

99. Yass girl fight his ass

100. Also the theatre kid in me is picturing all that jazz

101. he ran into my knife he ran into my knife ten times

102. Yes Becky’s husband (i forget the name sue me) is bad but i feel like becky is more sinister then we realize

103. Becky’s line even if it isnt meant to be is so funny

104. The girl who plays Becky could play Barbara

105. I love how Joey and Lauren look into the camera

106. Jamie saying santa awww such a pure bean

107. The person in the wiggly onsie is goals

108. Matrix glasses for the win

109. Is wilbur a refrence to Charelots Web?

110. Its a cult a cult of wiggly

111. I feel like Sherman young is around 30-40

112. I love how its mommy to sound less pervy

113. Oh wait never mind Linda is mom

114. Shit thats fucked up they killed him

115. I am right a jew no non jew says mensch

116. To quote jared klienman kinky (shoe kiss scene)

117. Also i love this song the adore song

118. Why does them picking up Lauren give me Draco vibes

119. Wait he isnt dead?? im so confused

120. Wait he is dead???

121. Also ethan is creepy now

122. But Roberts expressions are goals

123. Robert your proffesor hidgens is showing

124. What the how does he know her name

125. Savage Wiggly

126. Wiggly is more funny than scary

127. But my poor baby dont be scared

128. What the fuck tom

129. Also poor baby number two

130. At first you think becky is made about him hurting a child but no its about the doll

131. What the fuck Becky

132. Also I wonder if thats the same serum that Hidgens used

133. Tom yelling at the audince is hilarious

134. Also Becky singing is giving me little shop vibes

135. Becky are you drunk or something you so stupid

136. But yayy my baby doesnt get hurt

137. More starkid special effects

138. Also the lighting nod to tgwdlm

139. Also why did they take my baby (see i told you random)

140. So the perv is wiggly

141. Also if he can appear in regular formation on earth why does he need to be the doll

142. Oh wait never mind he explains it

143. Joey talking to the audience and making them hold the apple is goals

144. I love Joey’s song

145. MIA = Missing in Action = Made in America

146. Wait im wrong Joey cant be Wiggly unless he has super powers he cant be in two places at once

147. I know they dont mean sex but still wtf

148. Lauren looks so done i cant

149. Seziure warning after mr presidnet leaves the black and white

150. Unless it was purposeful they should have hidden the dolls better backstage

151. Wait didnt hannah say something about two doors earlier?

152. Seriously Sherman ponies

153. I love the going back line

154. My poor baby lex

155. No Lex dont die not you too

156. Haha throwback to tgwdlm

157. Yes baby you got the gun

158. Also die perv die

159. Eagle screeching is goals

160. Yes lex use that logic

161. Also it makes sense only the adults can be brainwashed

162. There were only adults no children, scary (not sarcastic i promise)

163. Seriously starkid Fortnight

164. Thats why you should never fully grow up

165. Woah what Lex says is deep

166. Yessss Tom

167. Wait Tom dont hold the gun

168. Wait is Charolette alive or just a reuse of costume, if so why would they have jaimie wear it

169. No dont take her magic hat

170. Haha stupid hats cant be magic only dolls obviously

171. Does lauren say something like fucking knife in another show too?

172. Lauren screaming gives me my father will hear about this vibes

173. Also give my baby her hat back

174. Yass Lauren get it girl (i do realize shes playing the villian but still)

175. Yass Robert get it

176. Even though shes a viilain i dont like seeing Lauren get killed

177. But also how did they get the bullet wound on her so quick im impressed

178. Haha the way Gary stops everything to talk to gerald is goals

179. Like hes like oh shit money

180. And then hes like oh wait i have to pretend to care

181. I love how exagerated their dying is

182. Thats an impressive quick change

183. Yess Emma Hidgens

184. But also no hell fuck up again

185. Also Paul interupting is goals

186. Haha hannah you go girl

187. First off I love the song

188. Song off Hannah’s voice

189. Is paul scared normal or because of the hive

190. Wait all the tgwdlm charecters are back like nothing happened im confused

191. Haha the Hatchfield band is back

[arabellaflynn]

The Eccentric has started a non-profit. It is not going well. He has hired me as one of two "operations managers", but won't let either of us handle any of the actual operations. Which is unfortunate, because it turns out that he is rubbish at small business administration. His main issue is that he has no relationship of any kind with the linear flow of time, and consequently no useful time management skills. He has no idea how long anything will realistically take, and, per the famous equation, no idea how much it's going to cost. This is bad under most circumstances, but ruinous when running on a shoestring budget. He is going to flame out spectacularly. It will be very sad. He has resisted every piece of advice everyone has ever given him about how to avoid this, so there is nothing I can do. I have resolved to let him pay me an hourly wage to watch the desk of his beloved debacle until our current engagement ends or I find a better job, whichever comes first. The two of us are friends for unconnected, mainly bachata-related reasons, so I'm not worried on that front; it is going to hit him very hard, though, and I'm well aware that I'm now part of the support system that will have to help him pick up the pieces. A lot of people who have known him for a very long time have come out to give him moral support, which is a good sign for the aftermath. One of them hugged me and told me I was "doing God's work" babysitting him and the project until it imploded. Ah, well. More interesting, and considerably less depressing, is the other ops manager the Eccentric scared up when the job was originally slated to be full time, and I said I could not do 40+ hours a week by myself. I keep wanting to call him the "new kid", which is really unfair of me. He is an adult, albeit a young one -- old enough to buy liquor, not old enough to rent a car. The Novyi is a newly-minted film school grad who turns out to have a number of quirks in common with the Eccentric, although mercifully he is far more laid-back in conversation, and seems to have a mailing address on Planet Earth. He also turns out to have an Asperger's Syndrome tag from before that diagnosis was revised out of existence. I've been giving him the tl;dr guide to Dealing With The Eccentric, which is mostly down to 'I love him to bits but he is not neurotypical, best be as blunt as possible when talking to him, and here is a handy quick-translation phrasebook'. A lot of the things I have brought up that other people find difficult to deal with are things the Novyi sees in himself, although in much milder form. This bodes well for the Novyi being part of the interface layer between the Eccentric and the outside world, assuming the Eccentric ever stop hoarding all the contact info for everybody and actually lets us do that. One of the most surprising ones was when I mentioned that the Eccentric had a friend radius of about five inches, and the Novyi basically just nodded and went 'yah, it me'. That got me curious. I had a hunch while I was stuck on the train home that night and typed 'autism spectrum disorders personal space' into Google, and holy smokes, I did not know that was a thing. Interpersonal distance is an important social signalling channel. It stands to reason that if one of your symptoms is a difficulty deciphering social signals, you'd be irregular in your handling of personal space. I had no idea that the skew was that consistent, though. There's one particularly striking study where the relative differences between comfortable distances for various conditions were almost identical between variable-matched autistic and non-autistic participants, but the absolute distances reported for the autistic participants were universally much closer. It's marked in the trials where the experimenter walked toward the participants, but even more so in the trials where the participants controlled the distance between themselves and the experimenter. The data for one autistic participant were discarded as an outlier when they literally got nose-to-nose with the experimenter without reporting any discomfort, which is a little bit yikes. [Similar results have been reported for trials measuring comfortable clearances around inanimate objects like coat racks. The experimenters spin that into a hypothesis about miscalibration in the amygdala-controlled 'let's maybe don't run into things' warning system, but that honestly just sounds like they're slapping around for a plausible guess. The results are interesting enough without the ass-pulls. Also not doing anything to dismantle my argument that the Eccentric has a really solid case of Weird Brains.] This may never come up with the Novyi again, outside of random chit-chat. It's only been a couple of weeks, and I've no idea how much friending he is interested in doing with a co-worker who is 15+ years his senior. On the other hand, I've already been asked point-blank whether we were at 'handshake' or 'hug'. If he does work substantially like the Eccentric here, he will give at most 2% of a shit about social convention, and the other 98% will be given over to figuring out where he wants to be standing vs. where I have given him permission to stand. I am inclined to think it is probably okay, question mark? I find the idea of an environment where people hug me and are glad that I show up to be quite pleasant, which automatically makes me suspicious, on the grounds that nothing I want could possibly be a good idea. It seems to work out all right with the Eccentric. Hanging on him like a fashionable scarf has never stopped me from saying no when he's being unreasonable, and I can honestly say that my 'no' has never prompted him to withhold affection. It may be an odd dynamic, but seems to be functional. The Novyi has seen me do it, so he knows I do have platonic friends who get clearance. I feel like I'm supposed to be skeptical of the Novyi's ability to know what he's about on the grounds of his youth. That seems unfair as well, especially inasmuch as he's got a good grasp on the 'ask first' part. He got a handshake the first time, which passed without note. The next time I saw him I reconsidered and decided hug was fine; I found out later, and then only in response to a comment I made about it, that he's pretty much always on the side of 'hug', to the point where it is a running joke among his friends. The implied universality of that is reassuring. It seems to be a class feature rather than a targeted thing. I gather from what he's said that it's not that he wants to loll on specific people so much as he kind of wants to do it to everyone in the 'friend' category. The ones who are actually subject to it are just the ones who have given him permission. People who zero in on me make me nervous, especially if they ask over and over and are obviously disappointed when I decline. So far the Novyi is on solid ground. I'm sure I'm overthinking this times a million, but the Eccentric took me by surprise, and to be honest, these are things of great significance to me. Affection was not really a thing my family got into, and I had to learn it from scratch as a teenager when I finally made some decent friends. I have a special sympathy for the idea of someone going through life knowing that standing on someone else's shoes is what feels like friendship, and also knowing that they can't ever do that, or their friends will feel crowded and run. It sounds like a special kind of hell. No wonder I got the Eccentric's attention so quickly when I decided to quit standing so far away. from Blogger https://ift.tt/2Vac7P9 via IFTTT -------------------- Enjoy my writing? Consider becoming a Patron, subscribing via Kindle, or just toss a little something in my tip jar. Thanks!

[your-posts-are-schist]

In regards to a previous post

I reblogged a post very recently where I talked about my experiences with meet ups and what's needed for one so I thought I would make a separate post for anyone who wants it.

This is tagged in discourse tags mainly because I see people against enbies, queer folk, and aspec(ace/aro spectrum, not autistic. As an autistic person, this isn't the post's point so don't make a fool of yourselves and hone in on a useless and harmless bit.) people complain about there being ace/aro, queer, and/or enby meets but not lesbian/gay/bi/trans meets in their local communities or clubs or in general.

So as someone with a little experience, I'm gonna give all of you a very simple breakdown on how these work and what you can do to get a meet up that you would like to see. Then you can be proactive instead of crying over people who were proactive having meets on the internet. And yeah, I think I'm allowed to be pissy at people whining about others making their own spaces when they themselves do nothing irl to make the spaces they want. I understand the frustration of not having a space and how mental illness or other things like availability get in the way, but most people I see complaining blame others for what they don't have and make no effort. No one will give you something when you don't say you want it and most people won't waste resources on something if only one person speaks up. So listen up and if you want something, try to use this to help get it. You do deserve a space to meet others like you after all.

There are a lot of variables to running a meet up, so let's stick to the basics or this will be longer than it already will be. Feel free to take your time reading this too. There's no rush and it is a lot to process.

People. You need people who want a meet. If you want and think people would want a lesbians only meet, find some other lesbians in your area and ask them. Go to existing community gatherings and ask around. If you feel more confident, procceed.

Chances are, the reason there's no meet for the group you want is because no one or very few asked for one. A lot of people tend to believe they're the only ones who want something and that no one would come if they tried themselves so they avoid the risk of failure all together. Another group having a meet just means they took the risk and it paid off, not that any group they're under or working with favors them over you. Some people will settle for what they have too, so they may be happy just using the general community spaces because they served them well enough so far. When you see aces/aros/queer people/trans people/enbies having meets it means put they effort into getting them, that's why they have them. Put in the effort to make what you want.

Try to find others who will help you with the process. It can be lengthy and time consuming. Do not start a meet up alone if you aren't absolutely sure you will have the time and money to spare.

Planning. It's a pain in the ass, I won't lie. You have to pick a venue, a time slot, possibly spend money, offer refreshments and possibly branch off into conversation topics or activities. You also need to listen to feedback and manage poor behavior.

I say venues but using free, public places like parks will work. If you want a pavilion though, you will probably need to rent one. You could also hold them in your own home or talk to people in schools/colleges about providing a room.

Time slots are necessary if you're planning on renting a venue, so make sure you have a time picked before hand. Some venues only have limited times available. If you aren't renting one, still plan a length for your meet and take your own availability into account. I would suggest to hold it for an hour, but maybe see how long other meets run in your area and base it off that. Also keep your time consistent. Always try to have the meets at the same time(and place) it will seriously help in the long run.

On the topic of time, if you're holding a meeting that lasts an hour, offer drinks and snacks if you can afford it. Definitely have water, people will get thirsty.

Conversation topics help break the ice. You can have an introduction on the first day, but plan some for following meets because it does take time for everyone to be comfortable with each other. Activities can help this as well, it doesn't have to be a game either it can be like, Flannel Friday or something like that.

Feedback will help you improve the meets. Always keep a notebook handy during them or an email open to the members so they can share their opinions with you.

Managing poor behavior is tough and runs on a case-by-case basis. On one hand, you should confront bigotry in your meets and explain why that was wrong of them. On the other, it can be easier to just ban someone. In most small meets I help at, there's a three strike rule, with exceptions for very extreme cases or outright violence like sexual harassment, verbal abuse, and physical violence. Someone saying something ignorant or displaying inappropriate behaviors like shitty bigoted jokes, can probably be taught better and could be given a warning and a chance to learn and grow. If you do decide to give them a chance make an effort to separate the person from those who were asking your help. If they keep it up and don't show any improvements they should be booted, there's only so much time you can put into helping a person.

Advertising. Bolded because it's the most important part. A lot of meets fall through because of poor advertising. Make a page for your meet and print out copies. Put them in places where you might find people with similar interests. Since we're talking about LGBTQ+ specifically, aim for any currently running community meets or organizations. If you have an LGBTQ+ center near you, get in contact with them. They may be willing to help you. When you make your advertisement make sure you put the date and time of the meet, the address, and contact information, whether it's yours, someone who's helping you, or multiple can work.

Be on top of announcements. Sudden, last minute cancellations are a terrible thing and should be reserved only for emergencies like injury, illness, or sudden persobal matters. This is also where having help comes in handy.

Don't be afraid to ask questions or get some help. Running meets is a difficult, time consuming task and you will have your hands full. But it can be very worth it when the payoff comes around. Being able to meet people like you can make it feel worthwhile and the accomplishment is also nice.

Local orgs should be willing to help you set these up or advertise your meet and community groups should too, if they have other meets. Get in contact with group, club, or org leaders and send them a message asking for what you want to see. If you are willing and able, offer your time to help run it because then they won't have to spend the time looking for someone to run it.

And I think that's about it! So if you take the advice and try to make a meet for yourself pr get one started, then good luck and I hope it goes well! Unless it's for something bigoted, then I hope it burns down on the first day.

[nygmobbleblog]

Hey I have a funny thought : Ed made two very good friends in this half season during which our sweet murdering bird struggled to make one and it reveals it's not even a real friend (oh and he kicked the ass of his previous allies who wanted to be real friends, like Ed or Ivy). So Ed is the "dumb" with (supposedly) an autistic condition ? Well, good job my boy

I have to admit, I’m not 100% clear on the question or to what it’s referring exactly, but I still want to try and answer. So please everyone, bear with me in case not everything comes out the way I mean it to.

(Buckle in kiddos, because this could get long lol)

So. Right off the bat (ha, Bat), I want to say that I myself am not educated enough about autism to decide whether a character is or not, so I do not try. I have a friend and a cousin (who I don’t see very often) who are both on the spectrum, but that in no way makes me an expert.

So while I am perfectly happy agreeing with people who do identify or interpret Ed as someone on the spectrum, none of my headcanons or assumptions or analyses necessarily come from a place of “because he’s autistic”. It isn’t because I don’t think he could be, but because I don’t have the experience with it myself from which to draw it. So yeah, just putting that out there first and foremost.

Now onto your first point about Ed’s “very good friends”. I absolutely love the dynamic between Ed and Lee and Grundy. I think it’s adorable and sweet and a ton of fun to watch. HOWEVER. Ed didn’t actually do anything to make these friends, they sort of became friends by circumstance and determination. Ed didn’t want to be Grundy’s friend. Like, at all. The only reason it ended up happening was because Grundy stuck around long enough that Ed found an opportunity to exploit him. That isn’t to say they haven’t grown closer over time, but it’s still a friendship borne out of necessity and advantage.

His friendship with Lee is a little more complicated. They already used to be friends, but she hated him at the beginning of this arc, and rightly so. He killed her friend and framed the father of her child so that that man would be in prison when their baby died. That is heavy, heavy stuff. She had every right to never forgive him.

But their friendship has come out of a place where Lee realizes that Ed needs help, serious help, and that the person who hurt her and hurt Kristen isn’t necessarily the same Ed Nygma she was friends with at the beginning. She’s softened to him because he’s softened in general. Again, this wasn’t Ed doing anything himself in order to make a friend, this was him mellowing out enough for someone to try and reach out to him and try to help with his mental condition, which is very real and very scary and not linked to whatever autism he may or may not have. And it was revealed he wasn’t actually dumb at all, so there goes that argument lol.

(It just occurred to me you might have been talking about my post regarding Ed’s tendency to “fall in love” with women who show him any sort of kindness. If you are, I never said he was dumb, or that it stemmed from any autistic condition again that he may or may not have. It came from a place of the Riddler canon that I know of at the moment: His narcissism, his massive, fragile ego, his history of latching onto Kristen and Isabella, his possible bad history with his family, as far as what I’ve heard happens in the comics, etc. I go more into depth in that post about my reasons for this theory, if anyone else wants to check it out lol. It basically says that, despite the theory that Oswald only fell in love with Ed because he was nice to him which I still think is a stupid theory but whatever, Ed is actually much more likely to do so, based on the evidence above and more.)

Now onto my jackass bird boi.

Oswald’s experience with making friends is on a whole different level than a normal person’s, or Ed’s, simply because he is the most powerful man in Gotham. Look how often people turn on him. I’m not saying they aren’t always justified, but it still stands that in his position, he cannot afford to make friends. He is naturally suspicious, and rightfully so. If he wasn’t suspicious and paranoid and therefore perpetually irritated, he wouldn’t be alive.

So when someone actually does want to be his friend, Oswald is COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY unused to the concept. Ivy is different because while she latched onto him, I don’t think he ever fully reciprocated. But when he grew attached to Jim and Ed, it was a wholly different story.

The thing with Oswald for me is that while Oswald is sane and intelligent and shrewd, he doesn’t always understand the boundaries of what is and isn’t appropriate. He absolutely fails to get the hint when Jim continually shrugs off his attempts at friendship, he grows possessive enough of Ed that he kills his girlfriend in an attempt to keep him.

I am not saying these are good or right things. And even though I love the character with all my heart, I am perfectly willing to admit that he has done some truly awful things. A LOT of truly awful things. I’m not excusing them. But I also don’t hold him to the same moral standard as I would a normal person, because he’s not only fictional, he’s a fictional villain . I knew what I was getting myself into. And frankly, given their history, I’m surprised Ed didn’t. Not blaming him, just observing.

Oswald didn’t struggle with making a friend this season, he actively struggled not to make friends. He knew from the beginning Sofia was against him, he just couldn’t prove it. He was right not to trust her, not to let her get too close.

Martin, though. My sweet little baby antichrist. Their friendship wasn’t a struggle, not in the way you mean. Not in the slightest. They understood each other. Their relationship is far from perfect, but it was born from a real place of mutual understanding and care and commonality. Was Oswald a perfect father figure? Hell no. But he was trying, and when he realized he made a mistake, he immediately learned and adapted and tried to atone for it. Something he actually learned from his experience with Ed.

This rant probably doesn’t make as much sense as I would have liked, but I could go on for a lot longer, so I’m going to stop now. I just have a lot of thoughts and feelings regarding my boys’ relationships, and for some reason this ask hit me in a weird way. I wanted to try and answer it if I could. If I said anything that was in any way insensitive or incorrect, feel free to message me and let me know so we can discuss it, because I assure you, I didn’t mean for it to.

Hope this clarified a little, anon!

[plantanarchy]

do you think you could talk a little about being autistic? im wondering if i might be autistic and im still not sure bc i like pass as neurotypical rlly well so far and i thought it would help to hear about actual people's experiences. you don't have to though and im sorry if this is weird!!

This has been in my inbox for a bit, I’m sorry! But yeah, I can talk about it. Keep in mind that everyone’s experience is different and its less of a “spectrum” from mild to severe/low to high functioning and more of a complex where different people have different experiences. A lot of people use functioning labels to dismiss the experience and opinions of “high functioning” folk when it comes to being autistic because tjey “don’t seem autistic” or “aren’t like those other low functioning autistic people”, but really “function” is relative and can even change day to day… on someone’s bad days they could be totally nonverbal rocking back and forth and on good days pass better at neurotypical than I do…

Ok so, I was diagnosed with Aspergers when I was ~10. I was essentially non-verbal in school and other high stress social situations and had been since I was very very young. This was interpreted as “very shy!” despite me having severe difficulty from a young age in saying anything at all to teachers, doctors, church people, even many of my peers, etc and often feeling like i was physically unable to speak but you know… because I spoke at home and with my neighborhood friends, I wasn’t considered non-verbal at all. Or I guess selective mutism is the correct term which is something I definitely still struggle with. Like when I was in middle school, I spent a few years literally being known by my mom’s friends and by some people at school as “Meep” because thata fuckin all I could physically say when somebody tried to talk to me haha

BUT ok that got away from me, point being: i was diagnosed with Aspergers at a young age which is a diagnosis that no longer exists/has been absorbed into the greater Autism diagnosis. Aspergers was separate for a long time because it was basically used to say “these kids are high functioning and different than those low functioning non communicative kids!”. Basically because I had most of the “cool and good” autism traits, my “not as cool and kinda crippling” autism traits and needs got shoved aside and essentially ignored for a long, long time. Which I think happens to a lot of kids! Even to the point of not getting a diagnosis at all or getting a wrong diagnosis and only realizing later in life what may be going on and what was missed.

Whoops before this becomes a bitter tangent, back to my experience of autism I guess. Ok, so on top of still being selectively verbal/mute (some days are worse than others and sometimes it isn’t even directly anxiety related it’s just a mostly mute day), my other symptoms include 1) it’s almost physically painful to make eye contact with anyone 2) formal social situations are beyond me, I never know what is correct or what’s coming next and usually I survive informal social situations by cracking jokes and making weird references to shit or being obnoxious and just accepting the label of “weird ass obnoxious kid but that’s just bre” 3) usually feel like I’m just two steps away from understanding what’s going on in some social situations lol like sometimes i have good intuition, can read people, can guess at what they’re thinking and then something happens that makes me question my entire interpretation of the situation and I realize maybe I wasn’t reading them correctly the whole time!!!! It’s the social equivalent of being the only one to get a wrong answer on a math problem and frantically rechecking your work lol 4) sensory overload yayyyyy when too many things happen at once (which can be like… 2 thing), I zone out and feel like my environment is unreal or blurry (fun and cool dissociation) and I can never predict what will cause that overload or when but also a lot of people have the very dramatic “autistic child screaming from sensory overload” image in their brain and thats not always accurate… my overload results in shut down 5) also along with that, I have sensory issues such as texture, sounds, etc. Certain fabrics as a kid would legit make me cry if I touched them or if my mom made me wear them (WINDBREAKERS ARE SENSORY HELL) and that still happens lol also with stuff like… chewing sounds, shoes that touch my toes in any way, loud music/bass, etc 6) along with that and with sensory overload… stimming. Stimming is basically a self-regulatory response to overwhelming stimuli and plenty of non-autistic people also do similar things when faced with high anxiety situations. Like foot jiggling, pencil tapping, nail biting, pencil chewing, etc it’s basically a soothing compulsion and not always something many autistic people can control without great effort and that control comes at the cost of not regulating anxieties or sensory overload well. I’ve got and always have had a lot of verbal/language stims and am very reptitive in my speech and writing patterns (y'all and lad anyone???) which is kinda self soothing. I have literally always had catchphrases. When im on my own i also do rock baxk and forth and other repititive body motions, also fidgeting with objects, especially cool round objects 7) catalog all the useless info in my brain!!! I can memorize information very well (not numbers though) and when I was a kiddo that got me labelled as #gifted and I was “savant” level in reading and writing but that is less cool and fun to people than beinf a math or science savant or something. 8) anyway related to that, as evidenced by this blog, I get VERY INVESTED in certain topics/ “special interests” to the point that it eclipses all other thoughts in my brain yay!!! Which isn’t a bad thing, I mean it gets me through and also if you have “good” special interests, people think you’re smart and interesting and ask your advice about stuff lol

Symptoms I don’t have that a lot of people think of when they think of an autistic person 1) I am horrendous at math I fuckin hate it numbers are the devil!!!!!! 2) 99% of my humor is sarcasm and I can understand it and figures of speech lol though sometimes i do get it wrong if i can’t read you otherwise 3) I don’t have “zero empathy”, I can feel for the plights of others VERY strongly, and can usually see any (most) POVs if it’s explained to me

There are others probably and there are certainly autistic people who have thise traits and who have different traits than I have. There are LOADS of different ways to be autistic. But also, there’s a lot of overlap between autism and between other things like ADHD, anxiety disorders, etc! So keep that in mind. Some people are strongly anti-selfdiagnosis of autism but knowing how easy it can be for kids who don’t present 100% stereotypically to slip through the cracks, I am all for it. I pass a lot of the time as neurotypical and can do most society things ok, though I have a steep learning curve compared to others… and with passing as neurotypical comes the frequent dismissal of my opinion on autism related topics and the lack of acknowledgement that actually I often DON’T pass as neurotypical and at those times my lack of passing is interpreted as rudeness, deliberate lack of effort on my part, stubbornness, lack of intelligence, lack of professionalism, an assumption that I’m angry with someone or don’t like them, etc etc. It’s an endless, awful cycle!

And I don’t really have too much personal advice for figuring out if you’re autistic or not… I did go through a point in time where despite being diagnosed I strongly denied that I was autistic and kind of had to come back to that as a near adult and realize nope… definitely autistic. And then knowing what to do with that info once youve figured it out is just… I mean there’s not much. There are little to no resources for autistic adults, very few support groups made up of autistic people and led by autistic people, very little resources directed at autistic people themselves in general, usually the focus is on the parents or guardians and talk aboit autistic people as abstract concepts… whoops, can you tell I’m bitter haha gonna end this before I go full “mental health professionals failed me and I’m a mess” etc

[thesffcorner]

The Bride Test

The Bride Test is the second book in a series of companion novels that started with The Kiss Quotient written by Helen Hoang. It’s an adult romance that follows 2 perspectives: Khai, a Vietnamese-American autistic accountant, convinced he’s incapable of experiencing love; and My or Eseme, a Vietnamese bathroom cleaner, who comes to the States at the behest of Khai’s mother to be his future wife. She is to spend the summer with him and seduce him in the three months; if they marry, she gets a green card, and Khai may learn, he can love after all. So, the premise of this book is… interesting. Arranged marriage/marriage of convenience are a pretty common theme in romance, but this is the first that I’ve read, and if I have this to go by… I’m not a fan. I really liked Hoang’s first book; I found the relationship between Stella and Michael sweet and very healthy, enjoyed a lot of the family dynamics, and thought the Aspergers rep with Stella was excellent. I did have some issues with the pacing and plot, and one of the main things that annoyed me in that book, was that a lot of the final conflict between Stella and Michael hinged on a miscommunication. I regret to inform you, that this entire book hinges on miscommunication;90% of Khai and My’s conflict is their terrible communication, which especially irked me considering the power dynamic of the relationship. While I liked both as individual characters, their romance just didn’t work for me, and it might take me some time to properly explain why. 

The Plot: I’m not Vietnamese; I’m Macedonian, and in Macedonia, arranged marriages, or mail order brides are not exactly a thing that’s done, or looked at positively. So the fact that this whole plot revolves around Co Nga and My conspiring to have My seduce Khai into marriage or potential “accidental pregnancy” was just... bizarre. Don’t get me wrong, there is some humor in the situation, and if Khai were a different type of character, I’d probably have been a lot less squeamish about this conceit. But Khai is autistic, and he’s a lot further on the spectrum than Stella; he’s a lot more closed off, specific, has more severe sensory issues, and generally seems less, for lack of a better word ‘adjusted’ than Stella. It doesn’t help that his autism is rarely mentioned or even acknowledged by the other characters in the book; Co Nga doesn’t even tell My that Khai is autistic or even explain what that is until way into the third act of the book. A lot of things in this book are like that; they hinge on deception or half-truths. Like sure, maybe Co Nga shouldn’t have told My that her son is autistic, but she should have explained to My that he’s different, that he has issues with communication, touch and expressing emotion. Telling her ‘you have to specifically ask him for things’ isn’t quite cutting it, since understanding why he does things and acts the way he does requires a much deeper and more nuanced explanation. It’s unavoidable that I talk some SPOILERS for this next part, so if you don’t want to know, skip to pacing. Khai not explaining his condition to My, is small potatoes compared to her entire story and motivation. My has a daughter, that she is raising by herself with her mother, and she HAS to make it in the States, because it’s not just her own future that’s on the line. When the book starts, she HAS to seduce Khai and have him marry her; it’s her only way of staying in the country. But she hides having a daughter from Khai, until literary the second to last chapter of the book. This isn’t something I can overlook; having a child is a burden and commitment that shouldn’t be sprung on anyone, let alone a person who already struggles with intimacy and affection, and barely had any say in the whole ordeal in the first place! If My were to marry Khai, then Jade would be his daughter too, and My never consults or discusses this incredibly important decision with him. There’s never any care in whether he would want to or even be capable of being a father! She tells Quan, his older brother who is magically really ok that My lied to Khai for moths about something this important, and he too magically forgets to share this incredibly vital info with Khai. And when Khai does find out, he just… accepts it without question? There’s no panic, no insecurity, he’s just ok with being a father now, when a day ago he was barely ok with someone moving his socks around. What? The really annoying part is that, this could have been an actual source of genuine conflict between Khai and My; if My had told him earlier about Jade, then there could have been some exploration of Khai’s feelings on having a family, having to learn how to show affection and communicating with a child, how to be a parental figure. Instead, we have genuinely one of the dumbest reasons for a falling out I’ve ever read. That Khai can’t accept that he is capable of emotion and love makes some sense; he’s never learned how to recognize and deal with his emotions. He’s repressed them his whole life, to the point where he can’t even distinguish between them; he conflates love with addiction, and the physical symptoms of grief for an illness. It’s understandable, since again, his family seems to be rather intent on never acknowledging or addressing his autism, or teaching him how to manage processing things differently. But the fact that even after she was told, and explained to what autism is, by both Khai and Quan, and living with him long enough to realize that he processes and expresses emotions differently that she, or most people, My is STILL intent that Khai doesn’t love her, unless he VERBALLY SAYS IT. Quan, knowing all this comes up with the brilliant solution of throwing together a fake wedding, in order to make Khai jealous enough to crash it, and say I love you to My. Not, locking them in the same room and telling them to talk to each-other, not explaining to My why he’s like this, no; he has to be SO extra, to make a fucking wedding. What if Khai didn’t show up? What if he was too late? What if instead of coming to the wedding he hurt himself? So many things could have gone wrong, and the blockbuster rom-com ending made it that much more aggravating. The other subplot having to do with My’s dad was unnecessary and a waste of time. It doesn’t have any effect on the main story, it’s dropped for really long stretches of time, and the fact that it ends up WORKING OUT PERFECTLY was just insane to me. It was the most convenient part of the plot, even more so than Quan’s miracle-cure-for-all-wedding. Pacing: I would like to say the pacing has improved from the Kiss Quotient but it really hasn’t. I do have to give props to Hoang, in that the sex scenes are paced much better this time; it takes much longer until we get to the first one, we know the characters by that point and are invested in their love life. However, the rest of the book was kind of a mess. My is supposed to spend 3 months with Khai, but the way events are laid out, it’s impossible to say how much time has truly passed. She enrolls and graduates from night school, gets a job at the restaurant, they go to 2 weddings and a memorial service, and it feels like very little has changed in their relationship. The only thing that changes is the amount of sex they’re having Characters: Easily the best part of the book were the characters; as individual people they were great and I almost wish they were in 2 separate stories. The side characters this time were strangely wasted here, unlike in the previous book. Michael makes an appearance in an admittedly funny scene where he and Quan try to do damage control on Khai’s terrible sexual expertise (or lack thereof). Quan is present, but he’s much less interesting; he’s a lot more into boobs and ass than I recall him being, and though he has a few touching scene with Khai, there wasn’t a true familial dynamic like there was with Michael’s family. Co Nga, Khai’s sister Vy, Angelica, Miss Q, My’s mother and Jade are all characters that were in the book, but they had barely any presence or personality. I found this a real shame because one of the best part of The Kiss Quotient was the family, and I sorely missed the bond Stella had with Michael’s mother and sisters here. Khai, I liked less than I liked My. He wasn’t a bad character or badly written; he just wasn’t very compelling. It’s difficult to write characters who are routine oriented and hyper focused, even less so when the hyper-focus is something like accounting or exercise like it is for Khai. His interactions with My weren’t nearly as endearing as the interactions between Stella and Michael; he’s a lot less lovable, and I didn’t get an impression that he was in love with My, more that she bullied her way into his life and he got used to her. There were also many moments where his coping mechanisms were needlessly rude or cruel to her; leaving her alone at the wedding, reading a book, not bothering to ask her how she is, what she likes, taking her on a date. It’s not that he does any of those things intentionally, and he does improve as the book goes on, but he doesn’t take initiative until the very end, and I just failed to see why she liked him as much as the book tried to tell me she did. The language issue between them is also never resolved. My never speaks English to Khai, only Vietnamese, and he responds only in English. Other than the very end and the only time he speaks Vietnamese to her, I didn’t really understand why this was a thing, and why Khai constantly notes it. My was a delight and I wanted for her to be happy and to protect her. I instantly loved her; she was a ray of sunshine. She’s incredibly kind and good, she makes tough choices, and never gives up, even when it seems like her situation is hopeless. I don’t approve of or like that she hid Jade from Khai for so long, even if I understood why she was reluctant to tell him. It was a bad choice, and it tainted what was otherwise a great character. Outside of that, I loved how determined and capable My was, how self-sufficient she ended up being by the end. She pursues her education, she works, when things go south she finds her own apartment and learns the public transit. As soon as she realized that Khai needed things done a certain way she would adjust her behavior, and when he crossed a line and hurt or insulted he, she called him out on it. She was honestly, too good for Khai; I think Hoang agrees with me, because a lot more love radiated from the way she was written as opposed to Khai. In her afterword, Hoang talks how she wanted to represent the immigrant experience of people like her mother truthfully, and it was really sweet and illuminating, but it also made me feel like this book was a missed opportunity. The best parts of this book were My trying to make a life for herself, and I almost wish the book had been about that instead of a romance. As is, both parts felt too short, too rushed, and too uneven to be successful. Conclusion: This is a mediocre book, with an iffy premise that never quite raises beyond the superficiality of a fake dating plot. I was mostly disappointed by how it developed, and though I liked Khai and would take a bullet for My, I don’t think it’s as good as Hoang’s previous work. I still urge you to check it out and see for yourself; Hoang is a much needed voice in romance, and I’ll continue to read whatever she puts out, though I wasn’t the biggest fan of this.