#alright back to my essay

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

The ''Are you trying to romance me?'' meme but with Barnaby and Howdy

i belted this out in like a half hour flat <3 bc Yes

[enka11]

big man big fan

[bleue-flora]

Why I think c!Dream is Autistic - Part 2

[Part 1] - [Part 2] - [Part 3]

If you haven’t read part 1 (eventhough I did try and write these as like separate things) I do recommend you go do that...

Did you do it? Hi hello, welcome back. :) Okay, now having gone over general traits, let’s talk more about the second part of my original statement [post]: “c!Dream is autistic and the consequential misunderstanding and miscommunication is a root of all the problems and conflicts” which I have covered a bit already [here].

So, because we think differently, communication and social interaction is often at the heart of a lot of our struggles (after my diagnosis at 20 I realized just how many of the conflicts in my past came down to this). Me and my therapist like to make the comparison that because autistic people’s brains are structured differently it is as if we are speaking a different language and as a result it ends with things being misinterpreted. Because as we all can recognize, when a language isn’t someone’s first, there are times when things don’t come across properly. Both because of perhaps a lack of words, different slang, tone, culture… etc. When you don’t take translation into consideration, it leads to miscommunication and misunderstanding as a lot of poor assumptions are made and conflict is often the result, especially because our inclination is to think the worst of people. [funnily enough here’s a great example between some anons about translation and communication 1 -> 2 -> 3]

As such, while autistic people have issues communicating with neurotypicals, we often don’t have issues communicating with each other - we speak the same language. So, it isn’t that we are any worse at communication in general than everyone else (in other words Dream is not the sole one to blame here), it’s that we are struggle to communicate with the neurotypical like we are speaking two different languages without even realizing it, so of course we struggle to understand each other. 

I think (hopefully lol) we can all agree that the root of the dsmp conflict is miscommunication and not understanding each other. But the thing is, miscommunication in the standard sense, in our day to day life or in the climax of a romantic comedy is about the absence of communicating, like Quackity not talking to his fiances. It is to have information, an opinion, view or assumption that goes unsaid and then leads to struggle just because it was never talked out. However, in Dream’s case it isn’t that he doesn’t talk it out or not share his side of the story, because he does. He does a lot, he does communicate, how else could Dream apologists understand him even before the finale without his own pov detailing his thoughts. 

He does talk about it but his autistic mind is using logic and facts against an emotional response leading to him being unheard. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether tyrant is the right word, they are just expressing their feelings of being controlled by a larger power, but Dream is too focused on pulling out the literal definition and the facts to see the real issue at hand - that they feel controlled and overshadowed by him. So they think Dream doesn’t care, and Dream thinks their points don't matter because their facts were wrong and no understanding is reached. Dream can use logic all day - Why would someone not want to escape a prison they were being tortured in? Why would someone make a prison and then plan on putting someone in an unfortified 1x1 hole in the wall? How can I be the tyrant when Eret is literally the king? How can I steal the discs if they were literally given to me after a fair duel? - but against people just spewing words out of anger, hurt, feelings of abandonment it isn’t going to make a difference.

Perhaps one of the most notable and tragic examples of this is George’s dethronement, in the aftermath of Techno’s attack and the Spirit speech, where Dream meets Sapnap’s and George’s emotions with logic and facts.  (See [here] for full transcript, the following is trimmed down from two different vids)

[18:54] George: “Why—why do you think- why do you think I shouldn’t be king anymore?” Dream: “I think that… you would be safer if you were not, right?”

[23:56] Dream: “You’ll just be targeted if you’re the king, and you wanna be able to like, get revenge on Tommy and stuff, right? So, we can like work to—We can work together. Me and you.” George: “Hm. Sounds like you’re sugar-coating it.” Dream: “No, nono—I mean, it’s a little bit sugar-coated, but it’s also like… it’s just better because you don’t get attacked by everyone, and you can do whatever you want without having to worry...”

[25:37] Sapnap: “George, Dream said he didn’t care about anything on this SMP which… That just means he doesn’t care about us.” Dream: “Okay, I’ll have you say, I was—Okay, I wasn’t—I wasn’t—I didn’t actually mean I don’t care about anything.” George: “Why did you say it then?” Sapnap: “Yeah?” Dream: “Listen, listen! The reason I’m even saying George should step down as king is because I care about him. Because I—He’s been getting attacked, and I care about him, and I don’t want him to get attacked.”

[27:28] Dream: “What did you do as king? Like you didn’t do anything as king like decree or anything...” George: “I’ve been the best king this server has ever had!” Dream: “Yeah, I agree. I agree. But you’ve also been the least safe king because you just get attacked all the time because people don’t like me. And therefore, they don’t like you because you’re behind me, and you’re my friend.” Eret: “By association.” Dream: “Yeah. By association. So, like that’s the same reason, like, Sapnap’s got into some, you know, drama and stuff too, but…”—“Sap, stop pointing the damn bow at me.” George: “Just say—Just say you hate me.” Sapnap: “Yeah, just say it.” Dream: “George! *laughs in disbelief* George, I don’t—Listen to me. I care about you. That’s the reason I don’t want you to be the king.” Sapnap: “First—first—Listen to this. First, he says he doesn’t care about us, and now he’s demoting you as king.”

In this conversation over and over he reiterates how he cares and is trying to keep them safe from being targeted and attacked and yet after everything is said and done, his friends somehow leave that conversation thinking he doesn’t care about them. Why? Because what Sapnap really needed was validation for him feeling hurt, but instead Dream kept reasoning with his emotions with the concrete actions, details and facts, essentially saying that what he feels doesn’t matter because it’s not truth, which was never going to get through to them. They are listening but they aren’t hearing eachother, both think they have made their point and the other side has poor intentions for not reacting appropriately. 

It took Tommy to literally experience Dream’s point of view to understand him and realize his intentions weren’t inherently malicious. Because only then could he shatter his assumptions and misconceptions about intention and motivation. Only then did he know which questions to ask Dream for him to get Dream to answer in a way that made sense to him. Before Tommy experiences Dream’s pov in limbo and after, Dream’s arguments and his answers for why don’t really change, he talks about peace and family so many different times, but it’s only after Tommy goes into his head that he’s able to actually translate what Dream was saying so he can hear him, understand him, see him.

It’s the assumption that the way you understand someone is what they meant to say that causes these issues in communication. Me missing social queues or body language that’s sending me a message and you assuming I don’t care or have a certain opinion on the matter because of my response or lack of response when in fact, no I just did not get the message after all. And as such as an autistic person it often feels like neurotypicals expect us to read their minds because they are sending messages, communicating how they feel just not in a way, not in a language we understand.

So, why do they ask that for the snake and not for people? - because people don’t speak snake, but surely people do speak people, so they assumed they don’t need to ask because they assumed that they can follow the train of thought because it's just like theirs. They assumed they understood each other but it’s like an American and a Brit arguing about jumpers without realizing they are two completely different clothing items.

[averlym]

ghostwriter (their grandma would tell them she'd lose half her soul)

[hivepixels]

.

[babacontainsmultitudes]

[just venting a bit into the void you understand you understand 😌] Lately I've been feeling very caught between "I have a lot of thoughts on Sparrow and Normal and all that with the ending and teen talk and feel like I need to get them out and voice them for my own piece of mind and resolution" and "I am lacking the strength and energy to actually sit down and write it all out and kind of really just want to fully move on to other things (AUs, fics, anything else)" but my brain can't seem to commit to either and that's quite frustrating cause it's just left me very restless. *Sigh*. Idk! Just needed to complain about that a bit ig, it's silly but this is what has been ailing me as of late.

[dinitride-art]

Okay, yeah. I understand what’s going on in season four with Mike and Will. I get it, now.

I get it, now.

[charlesleclerctv]

what's ur fave one direction album.. cant believe we've never discussed this before

FOUR !!!! not a single skip 🫡 something about 2014 albums hits like crack

[cringefailfagcat]

the way one of my friends offered to get people drinks. one of the others asked for a rum and coke, so i asked for a vodka lemonade n then they stood right behind me and went 'is olive allowed to drink?' it killed something inside me a little bit. like i wasn't episoding i've been responsible about my drinking recently don't take away my autonomy when i'm capable of looking after myself please. i know i barely can but don't. don't make this one of the few things people will actually talk to me for

[bonestrouslingbones]

have officially hit the point where i kinda wish people i would like to call friends drifting away for the millionth time in a row actually WAS personal so that then i wouldnt feel so fucking stupid for getting so upset about it every time

[vinnyandthephenomena]

do you ever wanna like un come out to your mother

[welcometogrouchland]

Absolutely fascinating to be in the middle intersection of knowing that Thing is really popular, and that because Thing is popular there's a fair bit of vocal backlash to thing (because people are very mad Thing is popular when they don't like it) and you find yourself running through the unpleasant takes (not bad, just not what you're here for) from people who don't like Thing like snow white running through the scary fucked up forest until you finally find the fucking cottage where people who like Thing talk about Thing. Then you pass out in the cottage and when you wake up a bunch of small and opinionated creatures still carrying their burdens from the content mine arguing about Thing and also now your presence in relation to Thing bc you were clearly fleeing from the bad takes forest. This metaphor isn't what I wanted it to be but you get the idea

[crymeariveronceagain]

heeeyyyyy still awake. paper's close enough to done. i've studied latin. i've read my homework that needed notes. i've got more to do tomorrow. but then again, when do i not?

[froggi-mushroom]

TO add to the corset post

Women wore them daily, from a young age, they mould and fit to the body. So sick of tired of the ugly anti-corset propaganda making them sound dangerous, the reason so man specially man complain over corsets was being of the Anti Tight lacing movement (I argue one of the few things Victorian men did right)

Tight lacing was small fashion trend engaged in by middle class women, that resulted in most of the bad things associated with corsets, Faintness, abdominal organ compression, bone malformation, permeant spine damage, reduced breathing, Lung damage, liver damage.

Note you'd never see the local fishwife wearing a tight-laced corset, but an upper class, hat sporting, fancy skirt waring lady.

I could write formal Essay about the blatant "I can't breath" bullshit shoved down everyone's throats about corsets. No that woman from Pirates of the Caribbean, shouldn't have fainted, She'd not have been struggling to breath, in her everyday wear corset she'd have been used to wearing.

Also stop wearing underwear over your clothes and then bitching about not being able to style your wrongly worn underwear.

Right? Like I could really go on about this for ages, and I probably will one day, but for now I’m gonna a small pet peeve of mine when people shit on corsets: that doctors at the time consider them bad so they must’ve been bad!

Now, I’m not gonna deny that there were doctors at the time who were critical of corset, but almost definitely was, but what gets me about this argument is that we, with our wealth of modern day medical knowledge, know that 19th century doctors are far from a reliable source, we recognise that prescribing opium and cocaine for minor ailments is ridiculous and frankly more harmful than not, we recognise this and openly joke about and mock them

until we mention corsets

Because suddenly, these 19th century doctors— who, I’d like to mention, often believed that the womb was floating freely and therefore could fly out of a woman’s body if a train went fast enough, as well as believing that hysteria was an actual thing— are an undeniable source of fact, suddenly these crude drawings of the supposed effect of corset on a woman’s body, drawings like this from 1884 (which, side note, I seriously question the validity of because, and maybe I’m missing something, but how would a 19th century doctor know this?) are reputable sources in the argument as to why corsets are clearly a horrible torture device used to oppress women! 

Like, lets ignore the lack of evidence of women complaining about something as severe as pictured above, lets just blindly believe some 19th century doctors instead because clearly, the women were too oppressed to ever complain about something detrimental to their own health! 

It annoys me 

[jasontoddiefor]

Yeah sure we’ve all binged a long fic, but have you ever read a WIP and followed someone’s life?

Tidbits of information - (“I graduated today!”) - and small joys (“It’s my birthday!”) and you get to be there to say “This chapter made me cry, happy birthday, thank you for gifting us this”.

I remember reading this fic of someone at the end of high school, older than me then. They seemed infinitely wise, spoke of their future career and getting into the college they wanted. I remember them posting on days they felt like nothing could bring them down - and on days the whole world did and it’s the aftermath of a hospital visit. Cancer, I think it was, their father. I got to the end of the story, I know their father was fine, but also they got to finish their WIP. I graduated three years later than them, still dutifully wrote thank you notes in every comment. I wonder if they remember me, or just the collective of people reading the story as it updates.

Four years ago I was into my first year of university, my first year of figuring out being out in public spaces. I made excuses as to why my name didn’t match my paperwork and read a fic on the train, the same five chapters over and over again for the next years as I thought the story abandoned. It updated this week after such a long hiatus, I left another thank you comment.

There’s an author I love, they update their stories like a clockwork. When they don’t, I check their blog, just to see if their doing alright, not because I feel like they owe me, just to ensure whether I better get out my laptop to write that really detailed university level essay chapter analysis to get them smiling when their day sucked.

And then, once, when I was 17, I read a fic that hadn’t updated in over a decade. I wasn’t even in primary school when it started posting. On the last chapter, I left a comment that, in retrospect, was horribly rambly and most likely full of grammar mistakes. The author replied and though I couldn’t see their face, I thought of them crying. They were married now, had children, and hadn’t thought about this fic in years. They went through their files again, found another half written chapter and an outline. I got two new chapters to read that year.

And then, recently, someone told me they got back into writing original fiction because of my comments. I get to read nearly weekly chapters.

I love binge reading a finished fic, but nothing is ever going to top the feeling of anticipation of waiting for a chapter, the pure joy when someone tells you I was done with this, but you made me think of it again, so this is for you.

Anyway, I think we should romanticize reading WIPs more, growing up alongside the authors writing the stories we love.

[exopelagic]

if I have to do one more thing on my own today someone is going to die