#and that's perfectly valid

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

Why self-diagnosed autistics are valid

medical diagnosis can be expensive

humans are the experts on their own minds

family may prevent assessment

diagnosis criteria is a poor checklist of stereotypes

diagnosis criteria ignores gender, race, sexuality, culture & more

medical diagnosis confirms autism, but doesn't create it

discrimination within the medical profession may prevent diagnosis.

Assessment waiting lists often long

medical trauma may make assessment unfeasible

Neurodiverse Journeys

[turtleblogatlast]

I think a lot about Leo’s tendency to push his way into the spotlight despite clearly being a natural in the shadows. Hell, you could argue that his worst moments are when he’s forcing himself onstage, and his best are when he does things no one notices until it’s already been done.

[celelorien]

snuggle time~

[lolobizarreadventuresshatpost]

Shout-out to the daily life of girls!

[thatgirl4815]

When Only Friends is over and everyone has moved on, we will always remember that the fandom had such an outrage over a two second clip of a man touching another man’s hip tattoo that the director had to apologize and edit every version to put the scene back in

[sunlit-haruka]

I'm going to sound like such a smartass but I'm glad I'm seeing more people express that "Huh, maybe this girl who has an entire song repeating to herself over and over again that her murder was not her fault meanwhile she-

portrays herself as a giant grotesque bug in her headspace with her victim, who she clearly still holds a high opinion of, being the only human in said headspace looking at her with visible disgust and fear,

Making this expression upon realizing what she just did

These being the lyrics that follow right after, having a moment of reconsideration

Before jumping back to trying to convince herself that she was in the right, because she put her trust in us to tell her if what she did was right or not, and the answer that came out was yes... That maybe, just maybe. She thinks that what she did...

Might have been her fault."

[bottombaron]

I don't ship nandermo I just think that Guillermo deserves to get repeatedly nailed to the wall by the canonical biggest dick in the world attached to the 6 foot himbo who makes him call him 'master' that he's had a crush on for over a decade and that anything less is a hate crime

[shootingstarpilot]

A scene that will only be referenced in the next chapter, but I was overcome with the urge to write it out anyway:

Boil catches Stitch's entry onto the bridge out of the corner of his eye.

He elbows Waxer, grinning. The kid's got a pair of crutches under one arm, and they'd both noticed the way the Commander had been leaning on the holotable, stubbornly ignoring the General's not-so-subtle disapproving look and the chair Waxer had fruitlessly nudged into place behind him.

This is going to be a show.

Stitch scans the bridge, eyes narrowed, until he catches sight of the Commander. He walks forward, stopping a few respectful feet behind him, and--

waits.

Thirty seconds pass.

Then a minute.

More and more eyes are landing on him. Poorly-muffled giggling blooms across the bridge.

"Hi, Stitch," Waxer says cheerfully.

"Hi, sir," Stitch says politely, his gaze flickering sideways in acknowledgement before returning to Cody's back.

Cody's shoulders slump.

Eventually, the holocall ends. General Kenobi is the first to turn around.

"Hello, Stitch," he says, smiling faintly. "Can I help you?"

"No thank you, sir. I'm waiting for the Commander, sir."

There's only so long Cody can avoid turning around, and he knows it. With a long, deep sigh, he turns.

"Hi, sir," Stitch says brightly, and thrusts the crutches forward. "You forgot these."

"Those aren't mine," Cody says immediately. "I left mine in my office. I'll grab them after."

"These are yours," Stitch says patiently. "I put a sticker on them when Helix first gave them to you. See?"

He points. Cody leans forward, searching despite himself--

His expression flattens out.

"It's a lightsaber," Stitch says helpfully. "Needle made it. He said you'd forgotten your crutches before, and I thought a sticker would be helpful for you to remember which are yours. Helix says taking initiative is a good thing."

"I... see."

He still doesn't take them.

Stitch sighs. "Is this because Helix yelled at you for kicking droids again, and you don't want to prove him right?"

"No," Cody grinds out, and Waxer muffles a wheezing laugh in Boil's shoulder. General Kenobi's expression is carefully blank.

"Is it because--"

"They're uncomfortable," Cody sighs. He lowers his voice, conscious of their delighted audience, and there's a ripple of coughing and clearing of throats as people turn back to their assigned tasks. "They-- my shoulders keep cramping. I need to be able to fire a blaster, Stitch. I'm minimizing my movement as much as possible, I promise."

"Uncomfortable," Stitch echos, looking baffled. "Why didn't you say so, sir? Give me-- ten minutes, please. I can fix that. I'll be back soon. Can you sit down in the meantime, please?"

"I'll make sure he does, Stitch," the General interjects, and Stitch nods seriously.

"Thank you, sir," he says, and nods at them both before vanishing out the door.

"You're enjoying this far too much, sir," Cody hisses, as Kenobi carefully helps him settle into the long-ignored chair.

"My dear Commander," Kenobi says, laughing, "I'm simply glad it's not me this time."

Cody's glare could incinerate a Hutt. The General remains cheerfully unaffected.

When Stitch returns, he brings with him a painstakingly adjusted pair of crutches. Layers of cotton batting is tied carefully to the pads, and the grips have been adjusted a few levels upwards.

"Try these, please," he says, handing them over.

Cody reluctantly accepts them. "All right. Later, when I--"

Stitch is looking at him very expectantly.

He sighs. "Yes, Stitch."

He levers himself to his feet and takes a few halting steps. Boil watches, fascinated, as astonishment flickers across his expression before it settles into a quiet resignation.

"This-- is better," he mutters. "Very much so."

Stitch beams. "Thank you, sir! And you'll make sure to use them until you're cleared?"

"Yes, Stitch."

"And you won't forget about your follow-up tomorrow? You can have a juice box. Or a pudding cup. You can choose. Needle got some."

Waxer coos. Cody glares at him.

("That's KP duty for you," Boil whispers. "Just you wait.")

"I won't, Stitch."

"Good. Thank you, sir. And- Helix told me to tell you that you- that you're lucky you got me and not him, sir, because he'd be, um- a damn sight louder, sir, because he's got no patience for- for idiots, sir."

A beat.

"That's from him, sir," Stitch repeats anxiously.

Cody sighs. "That's all right, Stitch. Well done."

Stitch brightens immediately, rocking back on his heels. "I'll save you a chocolate pudding cup, sir, if you like. Those ones are the best, so they tend to go fast."

A smile flickers across Cody's face. "Thank you. I'd appreciate it. You're dismissed."

Stitch salutes-- shiny little tubie, small gods-- and vanishes out the door.

Kenobi has given up the game entirely, now, and is grinning broadly. Cody turns on him immediately.

"Stop that."

"Stop what, my dear?"

"The thing you're doing with your face."

"Smiling?"

"Smugly. Yes."

"I'm just pleased with our medics' professionalism, Commander."

"I've got two dozen witnesses to that for the next time you try to dodge them."

"Noted. Can I have your pudding cup?"

"No."

[maypersonne]

Shang Qinghua really does think that he is unlovable huh

He really thinks that he is of no value to anyone if he isn't making himself useful he will be disposed off and that will be it

He genuinely believes no would ever want him so he manipulate and posture as a lesser so to be seen as a necessary annoyance rather than the pest he believes himself to be

He hates all the work he has to do but he prefers exhaustion to the paranoia and anxiety that eat him up when he isn't showcasing his value

He is in a constant battle just to be acceptable rather than loved so he can just be in the presence of those who are dear to him

Like damn like father like son I can see where binghe got all his issues like airplane bro stop unloading it all on your OCs look you gave the poor dear anxiety

[jq37]

no but seriously the whole david thing was so fucked up, and it's especially wild how it comes right after book 19 and cassie's deal with aftran, where we are shown the "humanity" of the evil brain slugs, and then right afterward we get three books showing just how evil these kids have become just by virtue of the way they've been forced to fight (do you think they'd turned fourteen yet, when they exiled a kid their age, because they'd forcibly recruited him just as they'd been recruited, and he didn't handle it like they did?)

This has been sitting in my ask box for a bit because I wanted to fact check my memories but woof. I don't know that I would have handled David any better at 14 or now for that matter.

Especially after the Saddler incident. Like we saw some humanity from a Yeerk in book 19 and then some REAL Yeerk behavior in David choosing to steal this poor kid's identity and life--literally throwing him down an elevator shaft to finish him off. Not just any kid either--Jake and Rachel's cousin. Their obnoxious cousin who sucked but still. Their flesh and blood family.

The thing that really gets me about The Solution is, at the end of the day, it's Cassie's plan. Cassie, the kindest most empathetic member of the group, is forced to use that empathy with brutal efficiency to figure out how to play emotional chess with this fellow kid huge amoral liability and it works. It works exactly according to plan.

But she has to live with that. Cassie, the tree hugger, the vegetarian, the one who was willing to sacrifice her life for one stranger three books ago has to live with the knowledge that she did this (knowing full well what the lifespan is of a rat as opposed to a human boy) and she has to live with that knowledge for a long, long time.

Anyway I don't know about evil, but ruthless? Oh yeah.

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

I was talking to a client today about "how to identify masking" as part of the process of learning how to shift masking from a reflexive coping strategy to a voluntary and conscious one and I feel like it led to a really important shift in framework FOR ME about masking and social distress.

Paraphrasing, the ideas we came to are as follows:

One of the reasons masking can be so difficult to recognize is because, essentially, masking is the act of performing "yourself" as a mirror for the other person you are interacting with. It's this idea of "I will micro-manage my own mood, affect, behavior, mannerisms, and environment in order to reflect back to you whatever version of "self" you need from me because if I don't there will be consequences". So because masking is essentially performing "mirroring" as selfhood by amplifying or minimizing aspects of yourself based on what you think the other person wants to see in you, it varies significantly from one context to another. The major commonality is that it takes up an INCREDIBLE amount of energy, mental and emotional resources, cognitive processing power, etc. So you don't identify masking by specific behaviors so much as by the feeling of "having a significant amount of your mental/emotional resources be occupied by the act of social interaction" to the point that it doesn't leave enough left-over for other cognitive tasks, or leaves you feeling exhausted and worn out, or basically by the impact that masking has on you during and after.

In this framework, part of why we get so anxious about new or unfamiliar people or situations is because we don't know how to mask in that context yet, and so until we get there and figure it out, we're basically just terrified of what could go wrong since we don't know what we're walking into.*

*This is the underlying framework of anticipatory and obsessive anxiety as well. Anticipatory and obsessive anxiety functions as the mechanism by which we conduct both predictive reasoning-basd advance planning and review/self-correctionof our mental predictive model.

Autistic aversion to uncertainty has a lot to do with our need to be able to use predictive reasoning-based advance planning to cope with "social deficits" aka how much harder it is for us to interpret subtextual/nonverbal cues, learn/meet social expectations, and work through/around disordered sensory processing. That predictive reasoning requires us to be familiar, in advance, with the stable constant factors that influence decision making in social contexts. If we aren't familiar with the constant variables than we can't plan, if we can't plan than we are more likely to make noticeable social mis-steps, and if we take notable social mis-steps there are consequences. It becomes necessary for us to be hypervigilent to observable patterns in other people's behavior in order to try to reverse engineer the social interaction playbook on the fly. That ends up making us more likely to assume personal responsibility for predicting and managing the emotional regulatory needs of people around us at all costs, replicating the behavioral/cognitive impacts of chronic traumatic stress due to the activation of our sympathetic nervous system from chronic hypervigilence.

Essentially, masking is a cognitive defense mechanism to severe and/or persistant traumatic interpersonal stressors. As the neurological impacts of chronic traumatic stress heal, we mask less frequently. But in order to heal from chronic traumatic stress, the human brain requires a safe environment that does not trigger a retraumatization episode or replicate feelings of helplessness/fear for safety. In other words, reducing/terminating masking safely requires us as autistic people to have consistent access to social environments in which we are able to utilize autistic interpersonal boundaries without fear of consequence or chonically unmet need. This requires the people around us to be able to respect not only autistic interpersonal boundaries, but also autistic self-expression/advocacy modalities and mediums.

I feel like a lot of the pieces of this framework have been rattling around in my head for a while but the flavor of words hit just right today and all the connections snapped into place.

Anyway, I'm still sort of sorting through the clinical implications of this framework but I think it's a direction I want to keep exploring for sure.

[kaladinkholins]

yeah taimizu IS toxic and off putting actually ‼️‼️🗣️🗣️🗣️

EDIT: TO BE CLEAR THIS IS A POST IN FAVOUR OF TAIMIZU!!! I AM A DIRTY TAIMIZU SHIPPER!!!!!

[yuanology]

You write for jjk right? So tender/soft sex w Gojo ,like imaging him actually having scars yknow with this “I’ll kiss all the scars on your skin” ,I’m down bad for that man ,like he is secretly begging for someone to praise him in the way he deserves yknow ,that man needs someone to love the weak and hurt gojo behind his facade of the strongest 😩😩😩 im going insane 🐸

yes, i do write for jjk and yes, i do write for gojo satoru and yes, i am going fucking feral

gojo satoru who finds his scars to be a sign of his failure as the strongest, a reminder of all of the people whom he failed to protect. he treats each scar not as a trophy of his survival but rather as a sign of weakness. a foolish thought, truly, but even the strongest has his faults at times.

( and there is a reason, after all as you so often joke, why he is called the strongest and not the wisest )

it's rare that you have the time to simply exist together and so, you both try and take as much advantage of it as possible. on the times when you can linger, you always do. even as he begs for you to go faster, tells you over and over again that he can take whatever you give him, that he won't break, but you still go slow. you ensure that he stays still — not that it takes much convincing; all you have to do is ask and he's eager to be your good boy. wanna be your good boy. am i your good boy, yet? — and that he feels every inch of you all over him.

this is one of the rare occasions in which satoru is self-conscious of himself, and you're more than aware of that. so, you ease him into it. first, you keep yourself quiet — easier to be agreed to if you don't give anything to rebuke — choosing instead to focus all your attention on kissing him all over. his throat, his lips, his cheek, his eyelids, his chest, his tits, his stomach, his thighs, his calves, everything. satoru, ever the perfect, pliant boy that he is for you, never tries to stop you. his muscles strain from his efforts to keep still, to take everything you give him, but he's so good at it that you barely even notice. you're too busy peppering kisses all over, hands on his skin so that you can feel more of him.

only once he's calmed down, used to the feeling of your mouth on him, do you begin to talk. you've learned a long time ago that a man like gojo satoru may preen under the attention, but the lonely boy in satoru will always shy away from honest compliments. so, you have to find another way to appreciate him without having him shrink away from you.

so, you kiss his hips, turning a blind eye on the way his breath hitches as your thumb brushes along a dent on his skin there, and you softly murmur, "you're so pretty." right against his skin.

so, you kiss the scar over his chest, right above where his heartbeat echoes through his ribs, ignoring the way he squirms and his gaze averts from you, and you tell him, "your heart's pounding, baby."

so, you kiss at the inside of his thigh, pretending not to feel the way his thighs tremble when you press a little too hard on an old jagged mark on his skin there, and you whisper, "you're so damn perfect." and you forget to tell him that you don't mean it in the way that he's the strongest, but because he's your satoru, but you know that he understands it all the same.

so, you kiss the most recent scar on his throat, the one from one close call or another, and you catch his chin in your hand and force him to meet your gaze so that he listens when you say, "i'm glad you came home."

sex with satoru after that is never the rough, harsh tumble that you would often do when you're chasing after time and desperate to have each other one last time. it's never just a good fuck, one with greedy hands and very little devouring mouths.

sex with satoru after that is always slow, tender, as if you're trying to meld your bones with each other until your entire existence becomes one and the same. it's always nails digging into your back, satoru's low sobs echoing in your ears, and your mouth peppering kisses and gentle worship against his skin.

the world can have tough, perfect gojo "the strongest" satoru.

but you?

you'll have scarred, beautiful, vulnerable satoru, and that is all the more precious.

[kujakumai]

Fanfic and fanfic-adjacent writers have a reputation for "take historical accuracy seriously EXCEPT for homophobia which is handwaved away" and I know that is intended to be part of the fantasy but when I make gay headcanons I actually really like thinking about how that character in particular would handle or think about the views in the surrounding society they live in. Especially when you have characters from far past societies who simply would not conceptualize sexual behavior in the same "named orientation/identity" framework we have now. I think that's really interesting and worth taking seriously

[gangrel-pride]

reverse fake dating au where Wednesday and Enid pretend they’re not dating to mess with Esther, who they almost immediately realize is subtly trying to romcom them together despite the fact that Esther Sinclair is physically incapable of subtlety

[elstoy]

“bi lesbian” but if i tell u kys i’m the bad guy 🤨