coraloctopus - Tumblr blog

[coraloctopus]

i'm not wrong: every second you waste making toothless moral demands of the wrong people (because the people who actually need to change will never listen to you) is a second you're not actually creating shit that people might actually enjoy and this counts for me, too, so i'm logging off

this racist is making the world's most random hilarious assumptions about me it's very entertaining

[coraloctopus]

you're not writing any stories, you're issuing snide diktats over the internet because, in the bucket of crabs that is YA culture, that's the only way for people without industry or elite university connections to get attention

you probably don't (yet) know the struggle to create anything at all when you're living paycheck to paycheck and your social network is limited because you're neurodivergent & working class

thanks for all the free publicity by the way

"mentally-tormenting 16 year olds" by writing stories that aren't racist and have actual well thought out worldbuilding? Sarcasm: totally something people who aren't racist say.

[coraloctopus]

Scrupulosity

Thought-terminating cliche

"I'm autistic and I feel isolated, almost like I'm a different species, so I'm going to write a story about someone who literally is a different species and that's why they don't fit in!!!"

Okay, cool, sounds fun. But are you prepared to deal with the resulting statement you're making that different people shouldn't live together?

Are you going to provide specific problems that arise from this scenario that make cohabitating an actual problem, (temperature incompatability, dietary requirements that can't be met, overstimulation from having different levels of hearing or vision) or is it just going to be that the problem is they're different kinds of people, and that means they shouldn't live together?

If you want to write being a completely different species as a metaphor for being autistic, you need to make sure you're not accidentally arguing that segregation is a good thing.

Because you can very easily slide from point A (being autistic is socially isolating because you're different from everyone else) to point E (different people shouldn't live together at all because there's no way to be happy unless you're around people who are exactly like you)

How to avoid this with your "different species as a metaphor for autism" stories?

Assuming your setting has many sentient species, have very specific problems that prevent specific different species from living together.

Do not make it a general problem of "no species can live together"

Show us different species living together, even when there's no "real" advantage to doing so (like living in a port city with lots of trade passing through). Make cohabitation a casual thing that lots of people from lots of different species do.

Show us accommodations that species make for eachother when living together. Species X has incredibly sensitive hearing that can cause them pain? Species Y adapts their local dialect to soften what would normally be loud pronunciations to convey specific meanings. Species A has strict mating seasons where they lose control of themselves and start attacking anyone they view as a rival? Species B, and anyone else who doesn't want to participate in the fighting, moves to another site for the season and gets to come back in a few weeks to everything being nice and tidy.

Make it so there are specific problems that specific individuals have with certain situations, not the entire species at large. Even with your metaphor being about being autistic, you should still have some characters, of every species, who are literally autistic. And include other neurodiversities too, like mental illnesses.

And while we're at it, give people physical disabilities too, and not just as a result of cohabitation with the "Well species J are mermaids and Species K are land-mammals, so if you think about it, Species K are disabled in the water" thing. Have characters who are amputees from birth and injuries. Have people with allergies. Have people with migraines. People who are deaf and blind and hard of hearing and struggle to see and any other physical disability you can think of. Your species shouldn't be monoliths, not mentally, physically, or culturally.

???? IDK

Just try not to let your "being autistic is like being a different species! I must find my people!!!" thing turn into "segregation is good and are we even really sure those other species are even people"? thing.

because it's a lot shorter of a slide than you think it is.

And again. cannot stress this enough. You also have to show literal autistic characters existing in your setting in these various cultures. Even if it's a fantasy setting so you make up another word to use instead of "autistic".

Otherwise your story might accidentally have the moral of "autistic people are literally not human and there's something Wrong With Them™ that we need to try and fix or else we have to cast them out of society altogether".

Don't let biological essentialism ruin your fun autistic story.

[coraloctopus]

log off tumblr & start writing if you want to get read

or do a creative writing masters if you want to be a 'real author' (i.e. get published)

otherwise the only audience you'll ever have is 16 year olds with moral OCD

i promise you that when you're 30 years old you'll regret mentally tormenting 16 year olds with this garbage when you could have been actually writing

"I'm autistic and I feel isolated, almost like I'm a different species, so I'm going to write a story about someone who literally is a different species and that's why they don't fit in!!!"

Okay, cool, sounds fun. But are you prepared to deal with the resulting statement you're making that different people shouldn't live together?

Are you going to provide specific problems that arise from this scenario that make cohabitating an actual problem, (temperature incompatability, dietary requirements that can't be met, overstimulation from having different levels of hearing or vision) or is it just going to be that the problem is they're different kinds of people, and that means they shouldn't live together?

If you want to write being a completely different species as a metaphor for being autistic, you need to make sure you're not accidentally arguing that segregation is a good thing.

Because you can very easily slide from point A (being autistic is socially isolating because you're different from everyone else) to point E (different people shouldn't live together at all because there's no way to be happy unless you're around people who are exactly like you)

How to avoid this with your "different species as a metaphor for autism" stories?

Assuming your setting has many sentient species, have very specific problems that prevent specific different species from living together.

Do not make it a general problem of "no species can live together"

Show us different species living together, even when there's no "real" advantage to doing so (like living in a port city with lots of trade passing through). Make cohabitation a casual thing that lots of people from lots of different species do.

Show us accommodations that species make for eachother when living together. Species X has incredibly sensitive hearing that can cause them pain? Species Y adapts their local dialect to soften what would normally be loud pronunciations to convey specific meanings. Species A has strict mating seasons where they lose control of themselves and start attacking anyone they view as a rival? Species B, and anyone else who doesn't want to participate in the fighting, moves to another site for the season and gets to come back in a few weeks to everything being nice and tidy.

Make it so there are specific problems that specific individuals have with certain situations, not the entire species at large. Even with your metaphor being about being autistic, you should still have some characters, of every species, who are literally autistic. And include other neurodiversities too, like mental illnesses.

And while we're at it, give people physical disabilities too, and not just as a result of cohabitation with the "Well species J are mermaids and Species K are land-mammals, so if you think about it, Species K are disabled in the water" thing. Have characters who are amputees from birth and injuries. Have people with allergies. Have people with migraines. People who are deaf and blind and hard of hearing and struggle to see and any other physical disability you can think of. Your species shouldn't be monoliths, not mentally, physically, or culturally.

???? IDK

Just try not to let your "being autistic is like being a different species! I must find my people!!!" thing turn into "segregation is good and are we even really sure those other species are even people"? thing.

because it's a lot shorter of a slide than you think it is.

And again. cannot stress this enough. You also have to show literal autistic characters existing in your setting in these various cultures. Even if it's a fantasy setting so you make up another word to use instead of "autistic".

Otherwise your story might accidentally have the moral of "autistic people are literally not human and there's something Wrong With Them™ that we need to try and fix or else we have to cast them out of society altogether".

Don't let biological essentialism ruin your fun autistic story.

[coraloctopus]

haha ok. how old are you actually. actually

i used to be like this, it's one of my biggest regrets 10 years later

instead of actually creating, i worried over what i should create. and wasted critical time and opportunities

i am diagnosed neurodivergent

"I'm autistic and I feel isolated, almost like I'm a different species, so I'm going to write a story about someone who literally is a different species and that's why they don't fit in!!!"

Okay, cool, sounds fun. But are you prepared to deal with the resulting statement you're making that different people shouldn't live together?

Are you going to provide specific problems that arise from this scenario that make cohabitating an actual problem, (temperature incompatability, dietary requirements that can't be met, overstimulation from having different levels of hearing or vision) or is it just going to be that the problem is they're different kinds of people, and that means they shouldn't live together?

If you want to write being a completely different species as a metaphor for being autistic, you need to make sure you're not accidentally arguing that segregation is a good thing.

Because you can very easily slide from point A (being autistic is socially isolating because you're different from everyone else) to point E (different people shouldn't live together at all because there's no way to be happy unless you're around people who are exactly like you)

How to avoid this with your "different species as a metaphor for autism" stories?

Assuming your setting has many sentient species, have very specific problems that prevent specific different species from living together.

Do not make it a general problem of "no species can live together"

Show us different species living together, even when there's no "real" advantage to doing so (like living in a port city with lots of trade passing through). Make cohabitation a casual thing that lots of people from lots of different species do.

Show us accommodations that species make for eachother when living together. Species X has incredibly sensitive hearing that can cause them pain? Species Y adapts their local dialect to soften what would normally be loud pronunciations to convey specific meanings. Species A has strict mating seasons where they lose control of themselves and start attacking anyone they view as a rival? Species B, and anyone else who doesn't want to participate in the fighting, moves to another site for the season and gets to come back in a few weeks to everything being nice and tidy.

Make it so there are specific problems that specific individuals have with certain situations, not the entire species at large. Even with your metaphor being about being autistic, you should still have some characters, of every species, who are literally autistic. And include other neurodiversities too, like mental illnesses.

And while we're at it, give people physical disabilities too, and not just as a result of cohabitation with the "Well species J are mermaids and Species K are land-mammals, so if you think about it, Species K are disabled in the water" thing. Have characters who are amputees from birth and injuries. Have people with allergies. Have people with migraines. People who are deaf and blind and hard of hearing and struggle to see and any other physical disability you can think of. Your species shouldn't be monoliths, not mentally, physically, or culturally.

???? IDK

Just try not to let your "being autistic is like being a different species! I must find my people!!!" thing turn into "segregation is good and are we even really sure those other species are even people"? thing.

because it's a lot shorter of a slide than you think it is.

And again. cannot stress this enough. You also have to show literal autistic characters existing in your setting in these various cultures. Even if it's a fantasy setting so you make up another word to use instead of "autistic".

Otherwise your story might accidentally have the moral of "autistic people are literally not human and there's something Wrong With Them™ that we need to try and fix or else we have to cast them out of society altogether".

Don't let biological essentialism ruin your fun autistic story.

[coraloctopus]

lmfao, are you aware that moral scrupulosity is a form of OCD, not autism

i think, given the creature comforts and social stability that allow anyone but the socioeconomic elite to write fiction are on borrowed time (against climate change, ecological collapse, and escalating economic inequality..)

and given that generative AI is shitting up the internet and making it more difficult to get read or published..

i think perhaps, rather than walking on motivation-sapping eggshells around hypothetical sensitivity readers, working class people can and should write whatever they're inspired & motivated to write.

also men already do this by the way. you're making ridiculous demands of people who are already too anxious (i.e. people who go on fanfic tumblr), while dudes who get millions of views for rapping about pistolwhipping hoes (if black), or making thomas the tank engine say the N word (if white), will never see this post or know you exist

besides, if you truly are autistic, then hardly anyone's going to read it anyway (i have learned this from hard experience)

"I'm autistic and I feel isolated, almost like I'm a different species, so I'm going to write a story about someone who literally is a different species and that's why they don't fit in!!!"

Okay, cool, sounds fun. But are you prepared to deal with the resulting statement you're making that different people shouldn't live together?

Are you going to provide specific problems that arise from this scenario that make cohabitating an actual problem, (temperature incompatability, dietary requirements that can't be met, overstimulation from having different levels of hearing or vision) or is it just going to be that the problem is they're different kinds of people, and that means they shouldn't live together?

If you want to write being a completely different species as a metaphor for being autistic, you need to make sure you're not accidentally arguing that segregation is a good thing.

Because you can very easily slide from point A (being autistic is socially isolating because you're different from everyone else) to point E (different people shouldn't live together at all because there's no way to be happy unless you're around people who are exactly like you)

How to avoid this with your "different species as a metaphor for autism" stories?

Assuming your setting has many sentient species, have very specific problems that prevent specific different species from living together.

Do not make it a general problem of "no species can live together"

Show us different species living together, even when there's no "real" advantage to doing so (like living in a port city with lots of trade passing through). Make cohabitation a casual thing that lots of people from lots of different species do.

Show us accommodations that species make for eachother when living together. Species X has incredibly sensitive hearing that can cause them pain? Species Y adapts their local dialect to soften what would normally be loud pronunciations to convey specific meanings. Species A has strict mating seasons where they lose control of themselves and start attacking anyone they view as a rival? Species B, and anyone else who doesn't want to participate in the fighting, moves to another site for the season and gets to come back in a few weeks to everything being nice and tidy.

Make it so there are specific problems that specific individuals have with certain situations, not the entire species at large. Even with your metaphor being about being autistic, you should still have some characters, of every species, who are literally autistic. And include other neurodiversities too, like mental illnesses.

And while we're at it, give people physical disabilities too, and not just as a result of cohabitation with the "Well species J are mermaids and Species K are land-mammals, so if you think about it, Species K are disabled in the water" thing. Have characters who are amputees from birth and injuries. Have people with allergies. Have people with migraines. People who are deaf and blind and hard of hearing and struggle to see and any other physical disability you can think of. Your species shouldn't be monoliths, not mentally, physically, or culturally.

???? IDK

Just try not to let your "being autistic is like being a different species! I must find my people!!!" thing turn into "segregation is good and are we even really sure those other species are even people"? thing.

because it's a lot shorter of a slide than you think it is.

And again. cannot stress this enough. You also have to show literal autistic characters existing in your setting in these various cultures. Even if it's a fantasy setting so you make up another word to use instead of "autistic".

Otherwise your story might accidentally have the moral of "autistic people are literally not human and there's something Wrong With Them™ that we need to try and fix or else we have to cast them out of society altogether".

Don't let biological essentialism ruin your fun autistic story.

[coraloctopus]

literally numbered

not given names

[coraloctopus]

"yo dawg, we heard you like prison, so we put a call centre in your prison so you can do things that feel like prison to people on the outside while you're in prison"

[coraloctopus]

where many of our grandchildren will end up when the externalised costs of capitalism start to compound and the rolling ecological-->economic-->geopolitical crises start to pop off

and i wonder what kind of strange ideological positions the law-abiding citizens of the 22nd century will contort themselves into to rationalise it

especially in america, where prisons at this point are basically high-tech indentured labour extraction facilities, and which appear to be a few very bad years away from actually becoming auschwitz

how will they rationalise what has been and is being done to them

Vincent van Gogh. Prisoners Exercising, 1890.

[coraloctopus]

if they were born 150 years ago, the people who create this anti-human garbage would be ordering little boys up chimneys & and little girls to scrub floors 5AM to midnight

they'll do it again as soon as they can, and in the third world, they're still at it

everyone knows this, it's the most obvious thing in the world

but most of us are too beaten down to say it, or even think about it very much

also because, even if you do say it, they have a million jedi mind tricks to shut you down and demoralise you ('it's human nature - look what happened in russia and china'). they have all sorts of dweebs and wonks writing stupid books they can point at

but they're still wrong