#Its just implied in the first book and the ED and SH in the second and third book is... not handled that well

[tallysgreatestfan]

and

GIFs by @adamsvanrhijn

That is the core of the series for me.

Sure, the beauty culture commentary saved me from falling as deep into hating my body as most other girls my age (and unlike a Hollywood movie a book is actually capable of going as deep into that as it wants), and the technological worldbuilding in the books absolutely amazing and made me understand just how much you can do with science fiction settings, and obviously I love the characters.

But this, this is what I kept reading for.

Bit personal story, but at the time I first read the series, I was in autism therapy for around four years already. Luckily, I was too old for it to be ABA, but it still pretty much consisted of pointing out everything I did wrong and how to do it the right way and all the ways I am lesser than neurotypicals. My parents said they supported me and I know that they truly love me, but they also said that this therapy helped me so much and pointed out that it is boring and impolite to talk about my special interests too much.

I never before had anybody or anything tell me that it is okay to be different and actually mean it. That it should be okay to be different, but also it is so horrifically painful and lonely and you would do anything to finally be how you should be, and that is not pathetic or makes you a bad person. And finally, Tallys choice at the end of "Specials". You don't need a cure.

Tally is routinely called selfish for doing things that end up harming her friends, not because she prioritizes herself consciously, but because she is bad at choices and bad at relationships. One of the most awful, damaging things you hear all the time as an autistic person is how selfish you are for existing.

And Shay understands being different, but also deals with it in the opposite way of Tally, accepting it and rebelling against the system while Tally tries to fit in. They get each other and they love each other, but that also means that they are the most capable of hurting each other. Which mirrored pretty much every friendship I had to another weird girl.

Beauty culture critique is important, but that is something other books and series and movies do as well. Good sci-fi, or human feeling flawed characters, amazing, too, but also something other fiction does. But it took until around 2018 for me to finally come across another book saying that being different is okay and meaning it, "Failure to Communicate" by Kaia Sonderby, an actual queer autistic author.

I was blessedly naive as I first read these books. I was an outcast, sure, and I was lonely, but I wasn't yet abused so intensely by other students that I don't even remember most of these years, I didn't had several different mental illnesses yet as a cause of that, so I didn't yet understood the sheer scope and desperation and self-destruction both Tally and Shay show in the second and third book. I didn't yet, like Tally already in the first book, have to learn that the world is so much more awful and hopeless than I thought.

I didn't know that I was bi yet, even though looking back I definitely had first signs reading these books, but just conveniently shoved them aside.

I am not sure what would have happened hadn't I read them so early. Even by now I feel lesser than and I hate myself, but it is not as intense anymore as back then, and I think these books definitely planted the seed for that.

Maybe my sense of identity? It's hard to have an identity when you're literally in therapy trying to get you to give it up.

And knowing that despite being different, despite being autistic and queer, I don't deserve to be treated like this. Which is something social justice would have taught me eventually, but I would still have needed another impulse to start searching for it, and who knows how many years later this would have been.

It is so sad to me how other than the ~10 other people in my discord server for the series and me, nobody seems to get this message from the series or even notice it