coldflasher

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I would like to Enter your bloodstream and Eat away at you slowly from the inside out If thats okay Or if it isnt

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Barry modeling S.T.A.R Labs apparel

#’can i keep the tshirt too?’ #for serious tho #how much STAR labs gear do you think barry has collected by now

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wait do you guys actually carry purses/bags everywhere you go i really need to know

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Yes your blorbo is tortured and pathetic and slutty and pretty and suffers more than jesus and all that but never forget that your blorbo is, first and foremost, a loser.

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Leonard looking adorable (｡・//ε//・｡)

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The Birth of the Rogues

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superheroes are fun because they have so many things to struggle with...secret identities, supervillains, bisexuality, just to name a few

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hey guys have you ever heard of THE CHARACTER. i’m thinking about THE CHARACTER. honestly can’t even get shit done because i’m thinking about THE CHARACTER. i’m listening to a song and imagining THE CHARACTER. all i know and love is THE CHARACTER

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I realized the other day that the reason I didn't watch much TV as a teenager (and why I'm only now catching up on late aughts/early teens media that I missed), is because I literally didn't understand how to use our TV. My parents got a new system, and it had three remotes with a Venn diagram of functions. If someone left the TV on an unfamiliar mode, I didn't know how to get back to where I wanted to be, so I just stopped watching TV on my own altogether.

I explained all this to my therapist, because I didn't know if this was more related to my then-unnoticed autism, or to my relationship with my parents at the time (we had issues less/unrelated to neurodivergency). She told me something interesting.

In children's autism assessments, a common test is to give them a straightforward task that they cannot reasonably perform, like opening an overtight jar. The "real" test is to see, when they realize that they cannot do it on their own, if they approach a caregiver for help. Children that do not seek help are more likely to be autistic than those that do.

This aligns with the compulsory independence I've noticed to be common in autistic adults, particularly articulated by those with lower support needs and/or who were evaluated later in life. It just genuinely does not occur to us to ask for help, to the point that we abandon many tasks that we could easily perform with minor assistance. I had assumed it was due to a shared common social trauma (ie bad experiences with asking for help in the past), but the fact that this trait is a childhood test metric hints at something deeper.

My therapist told me that the extremely pathologizing main theory is that this has something to do with theory of mind, that is doesn't occur to us that other people may have skills that we do not. I can't speak for my early childhood self, or for all autistic people, but I don't buy this. Even if I'm aware that someone else has knowledge that I do not (as with my parents understanding of our TV), asking for help still doesn't present itself as an option. Why?

My best guess, using only myself as a model, is due to the static wall of a communication barrier. I struggle a lot to make myself understood, to articulate the thing in my brain well enough that it will appear identically (or at least close enough) in somebody else's brain. I need to be actively aware of myself and my audience. I need to know the correct words, the correct sentence structure, and a close-enough tone, cadence, and body language. I need draft scripts to react to possible responses, because if I get caught too off guard, I may need several minutes to construct an appropriate response. In simple day-to-day interactions, I can get by okay. In a few very specific situations, I can excel. When given the opportunity, I can write more clearly than I am ever capable of speaking.

When I'm in a situation where I need help, I don't have many of my components of communication. I don't always know what my audience knows. I don't have sufficient vocabulary to explain what I need. I don't know what information is relevant to convey, and the order in which I should convey it. I don't often understand the degree of help I need, so I can come across inappropriately urgent or overly relaxed. I have no ability to preplan scripts because I don't even know the basic plot of the situation.

I can stumble though with one or two deficiencies, but if I'm missing too much, me and the potential helper become mutually unintelligible. I have learned the limits of what I can expect from myself, and it is conceptualized as a real and physical barrier. I am not a runner, so running a 5k tomorrow does not present itself as an option to me. In the same way, if I have subconscious knowledge that an interaction is beyond my capability, it does not present itself as an option to me. It's the minimum communication requirements that prevent me from asking for help, not anything to do with the concept of help itself.

Maybe. This is the theory of one person. I'm curious if anyone else vibes with this at all.

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It’s truly mind boggling that some people use AI to make fanfics or fanarts… i thought the whole point of making them is because we’re obsessed with said media??? enough to voluntarily spend time and energy to write stories and draw artworks of them??? weird

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generative AI literally makes me feel like a boomer. people start talking about how it can be good to help you brainstorm ideas and i’m like oh you’re letting a computer do the hard work and thinking for you???

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I think mostly what young fandom types (and I guess younger people in general) who are very very invested in the idea that “20 is still basically a minor” need to understand is that the feeling of “I’m just a child pretending to be an adult, and everyone else around me is a REAL adult” is DEEPLY universal (and won’t stop, ever, by the way, sorry!) and also is not, like, praxis.

Believe me, I get it, but the self-infantilization needs to stop, especially when you’re trying to engage in conversations about actual children and the harms they can face. Yes, it is scary to wake up and realize you’re 22 and you still feel like you’re 15, but it happens to all of us. You’re an adult. You have to deal with it.

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every person ive ever suggested to that going through your partners phone not only invades their privacy but also the privacy of all the people who have possibly texted very personal things to them have acted like they genuinely never thought of that before

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So many people who love generative AI don't have a creative bone in their body and can't imagine anyone actually enjoying the time and effort it takes to write something or draw something.

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you can start anytime.

you can brush your teeth in the middle of the day. you can wash the dishes at 2am. you can do things outside the normal times assigned by society.