#but neurotypical people... hmm just. bad vibes to me

[katya-goncharov]

i wonder if it's just me who kinda gets bad vibes when neurotypical people use the term "on the spectrum"

[strawberryamanita]

Alright, it was a bad idea to go into the neurosparkly tag. People are chill in the neurospicy tag, but it's just hatepost after hatepost after hatepost in the neurosparkly tag.

I was gonna keep my mouth shut, but now I'm pissed. Y'all really know how to make a person's skin crawl.

Rant below.

Listen, this reeks of one person pulling "neurosparkly" and "neurospicy" out of a very obscure conversation and going "hmm, this gives me the willies, so it looks like an acceptable target to me!", and I'm already sick of it. This gives me the exact same vibes as that one famous post about transmeds vs transtrenders -- this idea of pinning one form of self-expression against another, in the name of dunking on fellow marginalized people that are giving your demographic "a bad name". To that end, I'd like to remind y'all that the original artist of that post admitted they weren't acting right about trans people that aren't like them, and so I'm hoping we get over this and get over it soon.

Because we cannot keep doing this.

Every. Summer. Every fucking Summer, this website has to put a spotlight on a new group to punch down on. First it was just about every LGBTQIA+ group outside of cis gay men you could imagine -- lesbians, bis/pans, trans people, ace people, non-binary people, people who identify as queer (we're literally all queer, but that's another convo all together), you name it. It literally never stops, you people have to be taught over and over again that, no, this one group isn't okay to target either, that's your family too, you're not better than them for being a different flavor of weird.

Now we're doing this to neurodivergent people? Neurodivergent people. The overwhelming majority of this website. You're gonna try and clown on other neurodivergent people for, what is it, being cringe? After we just agreed that embracing cringe is a huge step towards self-acceptance and self-love? tumblr is THE cringe website. We don't do optics here, we don't clean our metaphorical rooms when guests are over.

Like what, we have to take every moment of our neurodivergent lives seriously? It's ridiculous enough that we have a "normal" model for how a brain should be, compared to all the different ways a person can develop. Are we such tragic figures that we can't take the smallest delight in calling ourself a fun little nickname? It's not self-censoring, it's not like "handicapable vs disabled", let's not treat this thing like a gust of wind on the house of cards that is our (quite necessary) camaraderie.

Are we gonna start zeroing in on specific neurodivergent conditions next? How long are we gonna play this stupid game of Who Is It Okay To Bully on this website? If you wanna look like a mature and poised and respectable lot, you can't be doing something so petty, whether it's for fun or "for the cause".

Y'know what? I support neurosparkly. I support neurospicy. My neurotype is glow-in-the-dark. It's glittery, it's color-changing, it's metallic and covered in rhinestones and smells like artificial fruits. My neurotype is crayon drawings and old kids' meal toys and bubble machines and getting bleary-eyed over Muppet songs. My brain is covered in holographic stickers and playing 8bit videogame music on loop. I am Cringemeister General. You could only wish to be as cringe as me.

Now cringe. Cringe and cope and seethe and mald. Dig up everything you can about me to attempt to punish me for disagreeing with you, and let your confirmation bias run wild. Post me on r/cringe, make a YouTube or TikTok video about me, pick me apart on a livestream, make me the poster-boy of your disgust, print out a screenshot of my blog and throw darts at it. Dance the dance of self-hatred, and then wait in the wings until you get to dance it again.

Eugh.

I'm gonna close this rant using every argument that I've seen effectively shut down these yearly attempts at putting eachother in the pillories, because I don't know if I can take another Summer of this:

If you start picking on people for using "neurosparkly" or "neurospicy", I'm assuming you're a fed. Infighting only helps the oppressors, and if we spend our energy trying to police eachother we're not going to get anything done. Kill the cringe cop in your head. There's as many ways for a person to live as are, have been, and will be people on this planet; there's a good chance you're gonna hear about some people who give you the ick, but you're gonna have to swallow that ick and respect them anyhow.

Every ounce of energy you spend rolling your eyes at people you consider beneath you can be spent chipping away at a person in power. Every minute you choose to spend tsking or turning up your nose at "weird" kids can be spent advocating for that weirdness and normalizing being fucking nice to people. You punch down or punch across because it gives you quicker, more visible results; if we're all punching up, they'll have no other option than to listen to us.

There is enough room for everybody. Even the neurospicies, even the neurosparklies.

PS: Any attempts to make fun of me or the people I talked about in this post are just straight-up gonna be ignored. I don't see why you'd want to convince me to think less of others, so trying to sway me is gonna be difficult on your part. I'm not debating anyone's rights, and I'm not gonna conserve spoons to argue with a stranger. I have Anons turned off already, so if you wanna get up in my virtual face you won't have a disguise to protect you.

Thank you for your time.

[random-thought-depository]

@soulvomit​

Continuation from my last post, I’m thinking some more about how a 3+ sex species might work...

If you’ve got a species with four sexes where only one sex actually incubates/gestates the offspring, in terms of demographic implications that’s equivalent to having a species that 75% male. This is true regardless of the other details of how reproduction works, it’s an inevitable consequence of a set-up where there are four sexes and one sex does 99.9...% of the direct work of reproduction up to birth.

So that means replacement rate reproduction for this species is going to be 4-6 children per “woman” (incubator sex), instead of 2-3 like with humans. That’s with modern medicine, in primitive times when average lifespan was 25-40 and about half of children died before adulthood it would be more like 8-12 children per “woman,” as opposed to 4-6 children per woman for humans.

I suspect the tendency of the sex that incubates the offspring also doing a disproportionate amount of the post-birth child-care would also be stronger with this species, because with a four-way chromosome split paternity is going to be even more of a best guess than it is with humans (I suspect women’s disproportionate contribution to child-care is partly a selection pressure consequence of women being able to be much more confident that the child they’re raising actually shares their genes).

So I expect a Star Trek forehead alien species (well, antennae and blue skin alien in this case) like this would look like kind of like a 75% male 25% female society with normative MMMF polyamory and a rather tradwifey feminine gender role. If Andorians are like this they might have a bit of a IIRC Space Japan vibe, being an accepted member of the twenty-third century equivalent of the WEIRD club but lagging behind on a lot of conventional feminism metrics (especially economic ones) and struggling to maintain a long-term sustainable birth rate. “I’m going to be real with you Prime Minister Shran: this will not reverse Andoria’s declining birth rate!” (of 3.2 children per woman, but that’s sub-replacement-rate for them! No doubt many of them feel seeing these memes coming from a species that’s doing just fine with a TFR fluctuating around 2.2 rubs salt in the wound).

Don’t know if that’s the sort of society you want to depict (I get the feeling maybe, maybe not). If not, some suggestions for alternatives:

------------

Rather than thinking of sexes with each sex being an essential component of the reproductive process, maybe think of genders with gender being a reproductive strategy.

For instance, maybe there are two physically distinct female genders, one similar to human women, and one that goes more the spotted hyena route. The latter sort of women might be less fertile and less behaviorally inclined to get pregnant, but have similar size and strength to men (or maybe even be bigger and stronger), so in primitive times they’d be a way for the community to have more flexibility in shifting between investing in reproduction and investing in strength-intensive manual labor and military power. And in primitive times for individual females there would be obvious potential safety and other advantages in having a man’s size and strength (but also potential disadvantages in increased caloric needs, reduced protection by “benevolent sexism,” and being less attractive to high-status men as a potential wife or concubine due to lower fertility). With this set-up there’d be two physically distinct genders that can both get pregnant, so you don’t get the “this is demographically equivalent to a species that’s 75% male” issue. Combine those two ideas and you could have a species with two sexes but  physically distinct genders, plus the sort of rainbow of gender outliers and intersex people humans have.

For an alternate take on a species like this, you could take inspiration from Humon’s animal lives comic about side-blotched lizards. I think realistically side-blotched lizard behavior wouldn’t map that straightforwardly onto a more human-like species, but I could see a human-like society that works sort of like this with some modifications. For instance, maybe the blue males act similar to human men, while the red males are promiscuous and mostly don’t even know or much care who their biological children are but have a sort of worker ant social reproductive strategy, guarding and tending the children of their female relatives (who will share some of their DNA no matter who their fathers are). In primitive times a typical community might have been matrilineal, consisting of females, their red male relatives, blue male husbands assimilated from other tribes, and a few yellow males. The yellow male reproductive strategy probably wouldn’t rely on being literally mistaken for women but on women finding them attractive in a sort of lesbian-adjacent way, blue men often being like “me and my wife both think you’re cute, want to be our boyfriend?” and red men just not caring much who their female relatives are having sex with. In this set-up the actual sex ratio would probably be similar to humans, so reds, blues, and yellows will together only add up to about half the population. Since we were talking about incest, you’ll probably get a lot of that with that set-up as the red males might have rather bonobo-like sex lives (NSFW warning for that link) and are mostly hanging around with women who are at least their cousins (if it works like this the blues will just have to put up with their wives occasionally having fun with one of the stronger and more dominant reds, but with human-like beings I expect there’d be various social arrangements to make that go down smoother). But plausibly steady exchange of blue males with other tribes plus occasional conceptions between females and red males of other tribes would keep the inbreeding from getting too bad.

Combine those two ideas and you could have a species with two sexes but five physically distinct genders, plus the sort of rainbow of gender outliers and intersex people humans have.

That doesn’t really get the “triplicate chromosomes and their consequences” thing you were interested in though. Hmm, maybe...

-----------

I don’t remember where I read this, but I think there are some species that have females, males, and hermaphrodites? In this case theoretically the species would be fine with just males and females or just hermaphrodites, but I’m guessing they’re different reproductive strategies and one isn’t clearly better than the other?

This might work well with fun with triplicate sex chromosomes! A species with more than two sexes will likely have more than two sex chromosomes, allowing for various possible combinations! Let’s say we have a species with triple chromosomes, with sex chromosomes that work like this:

YXX gives you a male ZXX gives you a paramale XXX gives you a female YXZ gives you a hermaphrodite

(YYX, ZZX, YZZ, etc. are not possible in the same way you don’t get YY humans).

Without a hermaphrodite, you need a male, a paramale, and a female to reproduce. However, since a hermaphrodite has all three sex chromosomes, a hermaphrodite can make all types of gametes, and also a hermaphrodite can get pregnant and make a baby like a female. So a hermaphrodite can reproduce with a female, or with another hermaphrodite, or with a male and paramale, or possibly just with a male or a paramale if they can do a partial self-fertilization (hermaphrodite provides two gametes and male or paramale provides one). A hermaphrodite might also be able to fully self-fertilize and get itself pregnant too, it would depend on whether it’s physiology was set up to allow that (though I’m guessing that would be, like, super-incest and not a reproductive strategy the species would rely on much).

The hermaphrodite strategy would probably need to have some sort of cost to explain why males, paramales, and females are still around (honestly, I’m kind of puzzled why hermaphrodism isn’t the super-majority reproductive strategy of animals even IRL, it seems obviously more flexible and efficient than having males and females). Maybe it suffers from “jack of all trades, master of none” problem and hermaphrodites are less fertile than the reproductively specialized sexes.

I’m not sure what gender ratio this sort of sex chromosome set-up would work out to? Even fourths assuming no sex chromosome segregation distorters are present?

So, there you have a stable set-up for a species with triple chromosome and gamete sets, four sexes, and a medium to high ratio of womb-havers to non-womb-havers! Please feel free to use this concept if you like it, I’m not doing anything with it (though I might do something with the human side-blotched lizard concept, I don’t know)! If you want to make it more interesting, you could make males and paramales have different reproductive strategies and by implication significant physical and possibly neurotype differences. Like, maybe you could take that human side-blotched lizard society concept and say the blues are the males and the reds and yellows are the paramales.

[mszegedy]

30 Days of Autism Acceptance: Days 17-26

This is a list of questions by @autie-jake (full list here), where you’re supposed to answer one per day for every day of April. I keep forgetting to do these daily, so here’s all the days since my last post. My last post is here.

April 17: Have you experienced ableism before? If so, how did it feel and how did you handle it?

Yes! Actually, it made my childhood so bad that my brain decided to forget it. So, clearly nothing to write about here.

April 18: Discuss how you felt when you felt when you first learnt you were autistic vs how you feel now.

I’m not good at the whole “remembering how I feel” thing. My memories of my feelings are all semantic memory. I know as a 6th grader I thought autism was super cool and I read a whole autobiography of an autistic savant because I wanted to find out more about it (Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammett). After a lot of intense research, I decided that I couldn’t conclusively self-diagnose, and regretfully slinked away back into not understanding or advocating for my needs. Sometime later, an actually autistic coworker of mine looked at me for like five (5) minutes, and was like, “Hey, have you been diagnosed with autism yet?” I’ve since adopted her as my second mom, for that and other reasons. I’ve had very few moments in my life when I was sad to have an autistic trait, and I got over it fairly quickly.

April 19: Talk about scripting. Is scripting something that you normally do? What kind of situations do you have a script for? Does it help you?

People don’t like my apologies, so I have a couple apology scripts saved. Otherwise I tend to just wing it and fail spectacularly. The apology scripts tend to sound… scripted, but they’re better than just doing it myself, I think.

April 20: Discuss stimming. In what ways do you stim? What does stimming mean to you? What do individual stims that you do mean? Do you have any stim toys? What would you like people to know about stimming?

Pressure stims are the most important stims for me. I’m more likely to be squeezing a part of my body than not. If nothing else, I can cross my legs tight and squeeze them together. This doesn’t have any specific function; it’s just something I do that makes me feel better. When I’m stressed, I do it more.

I also do motion stims. Often my way of locomotion is more like dancing. This is a little strange, because I don’t otherwise dance. I always feel happy, relaxed, and in control when I do that. When I’m sad or tired, my feet are too heavy for it. I am also very animate with my hands when I talk. When I taught English in Hungary for the first time, the first question I was asked whether all Americans talk with their hands as much as I do. (I don’t think they do. I have it on good authority from at least one American I trust utterly that the way I use my hands is rather unique.)

I have two improvised stim toys for pressure stimming (a scarf for wrapping very tight around limbs, and a butterknife for applying waves of uniform pressure). I also recently found one of those head scratchy thingies, and now I use it every five minutes or so. It’s a little inconvenient with headphones on, but I’m rather creative with it, anyway. I don’t actually like light touch or tickles, but generally the head scratchy thingy can be given enough pressure to provide a substantial stimulus.

April 21: Give a shoutout to some of your favorite autism blogs/autistic bloggers

UM. HMM. Like 10-50% of the people I follow are autistic, but hell if I can remember any of their handles.

I reblog from @nonbinary-hawke and their native issues-related sideblog @finding-my-culture like multiple times a day but I’m pretty sure they kinda just tolerate me? I’m mostly cut off from the actual native community I’m supposed to be part of (the Siberian one), so I try to follow American native issues with kind of a “not my lane but I’m still sympathetic” vibe, and their blogs are most of my way of keeping in touch. But we have a lot of other random things in common too; similar age, similar neurotype, similar fandoms, etc. So I’m pretty much always gonna have a platonic tumblr crush on them, given that and how much I respect their principles.

@autisticadvocacy is ASAN’s official blog, I think, and it’s always posting useful and relevant articles.

@autisticjoy and @autismisaokay are two blogs I’ve followed for most of my time on tumblr. I get the majority of my autism-related content from them.

@autistic-noodle is the first autism-related blog I ever followed! I highly recommend her; if I haven’t unfollowed her after all this time, then that means that they’ve never reblogged anything that’s triggered me, which is pretty darn impressive.

@bogleech is my favorite webcomic artist, which is a vaunted honor coming from someone with ¾ of a special interest in webcomics. I’m not actually sure if he’s autistic, but he posts enough autism-related content to justify being on this list one way or another.

I’ve definitely learned at least one useful thing from @autisticlifehack. What was it? Who knows?

@autistic-flirting is very cute, if not very active.

Shout out to @tikibats and @dreamfriend, who I actually know IRL.

April 22: What are some social rules that do not make sense to you/that you don't understand?

I’m, uh. Actually not sure? I can usually explain stuff if I think hard enough. There’s some stuff I’ve never bothered to figure out, but none of it’s so pressing that I can actually remember it.

Oh! Actually! One night during freshman year of college, I went to the computer lab to do my homework in a not-at-all-revealing bathrobe. I’ve received several explanations on why this was wrong, but I don’t remember any of them.

April 23: Do you have any internal rules? What are they?

LOTS, wow. If I didn’t have them, I wouldn’t have any shred of consistency whatsoever. I am nothing but these rules. Some of them feel more like strong opinions that can be taken or left, like the ones pertaining to writing style, but even those I follow 99% of the time. They range from really foundational moral ones like, “Everything with a mind intrinsically deserves your friendship and understanding,” and, “Every neurotype deserves to exist,” to, “Always wrap code to 80 columns (unless it’s highly nested like Lisp, in which case consider 100 columns),” and, “When mixing fruit flavor tea, always pour the syrup before the tea.” It’s quite the hodgepodge.

April 24: Talk about community. What does the autistic community mean to you? Is it important? How does it feel?

I haven’t had much of a chance to actually participate in any autistic community yet. I don’t even really participate in the tumblr autistic community. It’s just sorta me, my second mom, and a couple random people I get to see occasionally. (Also, my dad, but we don’t talk about my dad.) Most of my friends are neurodivergent in some way, though, so I’m happy with the people I have. (Not that I don’t enjoy hanging around neurotypical people, too. But it feels good to not have to work to make yourself be understood.)

April 25: Do you know any other autistic people off the internet? Is anyone else in your family autistic or are you the only one? Do you wish you knew more?

See yesterday’s answer! I wouldn’t do this if I were doing these day by day, but I’m totally justified here, because it’s literally the previous paragraph.

April 26: In what ways can allistic people better accommodate you and other autistic people? What would you consider helpful?

It’s a broad question. My mom has been getting better at not punishing me for my autistic traits, but the other day she still antagonized me for stimming at the dinner table. (I’m 22. Nearly 23.) So it’d be great if she didn’t do things like that. Not even gonna talk about what my dad could do better. (The ways he does accomodate me seem unintentional.)

Outside of that, I appreciate it when people give me very clearly-worded instructions, broken down into small steps, with every possible detail specified. I appreciate it even more when those instructions are in written form, because I can only remember two or three of those when they’re spoken aloud.

I appreciate it when food places with complex menus have the option to just sit down with the menu, without a time limit, and make up your order. Sandwich and wrap places, like Subway, make me very uncomfortable for reason; Subway has an extremely combinatorically complex menu, and you’re expected to make up your order while they’re making the sandwich. I’d like to spend some time staring at a sheet with each sandwich ingredient listed and explained, and the ways they can be combined, first.

The current switch to online classes has been great for my ability to understand lectures, and terrible for my ability to do classwork and homework. Hearing the lecture through headphones circumvents most of my auditory processing issues, and seeing the lecture slides clearly circumvents most of my attention issues. But when it comes to doing classwork and homework, executive dysfunction rules me. I do wish my executive dysfunction were better accomodated for even in the case of normal classes (and probably careers), but it’s hard to guess what form that would take. I’ve run out of brainpower for good ideas.

For the rest of the month I will do these questions daily, one at a time. Hopefully.

[mariposalass]

Say Something, My Love

Summary: Philip Hamilton has no idea of how modern Valentine’s Day works and is bad in confessing his romantic feelings for a modern day girl like her. And yet, he seeks out help in Mari’s siblings and friends to set up a date they will never forget. He didn’t expect that she is also feeling the same way too.

Setting: Mari and co.’s house in Daly City, California; February 4 to 14, 2019

Notes: Valentine’s Day story with Philip and Mari finally discovering that the other have feelings as each other big time! Inspired by @plucky-belmondo’s Valentine’s Day Imagines Prompts (namely the first 2 prompts) with my own spin. The stuff I used here include the recipes in the dinner (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), the tablescape inspiration, flowers, and the outfit Mari/me wore in this story. I’ll release a playlist for me and Philip some time after this.

Tags: Tons of crushing and gushing, Philip needs help in decoding Valentine’s Day, the feels!, romantic vibes, brief mention of character death

Philip Hamilton is in a loss for words right now. He has no idea of what he is feeling in this day and age, but for the last few weeks since he got revived back to life, these unspeakable feelings of love in one of his hosts, Mari, have grown exponentially. Still, it feels like alien territory for him to fall in love with somebody trying to help him out that he has kept his mouth shut whenever Mari notices him trying to get her attention that doesn’t involve help in adjusting to the 21st Century or just wanting to hang out with her and her family & friends.

For weeks, he kept silent on the matter, hoping that it will just fade away and he could just move on and probably find love in another woman too. Even Valentine’s Day is a foreign concept he couldn’t figure out. But these feelings and thoughts were too much for the eldest child of Alexander Hamilton to resist and he now wants to finally confront them big time, except that his father is no longer with him anymore and he is dry of ideas to court this lovely Asian woman on this ominous day.

Which is why he had arranged a last-minute meeting with Harry, Kairi, Issa, and Kirby at the basement one February night (Feb. 4 to be exact) to find a good idea while Mari was still on her way home from work. The aforementioned 4 had no idea as why they are dragged into this at first, but they know well that Philip needs some help in the matter of modern day dating. Everyone else in their group couldn’t come over though for various reasons (being sick, being out of town, work, school, etc.), but they do appreciated the offer though.

“So… You’re telling us that you, you want to date my sister?” Kairi started off the meeting with a question, sounding rather lost.

“Why, I, I, I could explain...” the young Hamilton sputtered in his words, his cheeks flushed hard.

“Philip, don’t be afraid to tell us,” Harry tried his best to reassure him, having to deal with a bad luck in dating women before Issa, the half-blood wizard can sense that Philip needed some help on the world of modern day ‘courting’ per say, “I’ll admit, I didn’t have anyone to teach me how to date a lady when I was a dumb teenager, and I ended up with two relationships that ended up badly. Yeah, I may be that big of an overprotective of a brother, but I can tell if a guy likes either one of my sisters and tries to be a respectable human, I’ll try to be supportive in any way I can.”

“You don’t say, Harry,” Philip began to sound less obnoxious upon hearing of Harry’s poor teen dating history, “I’m quite amazed that you and Issa don’t look like you’re going to fall apart.”

“Thankfully, my sisters were there for me even during my roughest time, especially when me and Issa started dating full time,” he replied, “I couldn’t thank them enough… Anyway, is there anything you want to surprise Mari this Valentine’s Day?”

Issa then stepped in, saying, “Yeah, Philip. Please tell us. We’re all ears now.”

“Well, actually, I have no idea of what to do to spend some time with her on that day!” he admitted much to their shock, “I don’t even recall celebrating it back in my old time. I guess I’m a little too old fashioned to do these strange modern day courting things you guys are doing.”

“Poyo!” Kirby’s mouth opened up in shock, dropping a bit of Strawberry Shortcake on his plate.

This confession left them a little surprised to put it lightly, regardless, Philip began to calm down from being too nervous to be in-depth and explain that he has set up this emergency meeting as to get some ideas as to make an unforgettable Valentine’s Day for Mari since she wasn’t that lucky in finding a guy who will love her unconditionally as she feared that a guy (and even a neurotypical one at that) will reject her because of her Asperger's diagnosis. This raised the alarm for the adopted siblings and friends that they wanted to help out even more than when they were earlier.

“Perhaps we can start by telling you what Mari likes and what her dream date would be like,” Issa suggested Philip a really brilliant idea.

“Alright then, as you say so, Issa,” he responded with a great approval.

“Me and Kairi will go first on this,” Harry began the dialogue, “Since we know her the longest, it’s best for us to say that she has a lot of things she likes and has in mind. First off, she likes her some literary and geeky stuff, she will devour them up like it’s breakfast. And the flowers, good Lord, flowers and butterflies are what gets her rolling. Not caterpillars though, she just finds them icky.”

“Okay, I’ll trying to keep track of what you guys are telling about,” Philip told him as he began to take notes.

“She also likes perfumes, especially those with floral scents: she’s head over heels with them,” Kairi stepped in, “It’s best that you can put one of her favorite scents on the drawer for her to see. Speaking of the flowers, she likes nearly all kinds of flowers, including Sweet Avalanche roses and baby’s breath. She just love the simple but sweet combination of the two combined.”

“You want to know what her idea of a romantic date is: having dinner out under the stars, chatting about interests (even if she knows there are those she can’t catch on), and having a nice walk to wrap things up,” Issa added in to the nuanced discussion, “Mari can be quite a picky eater, If there is something she isn’t wanting to eat or try, she will not eat that thing at all or it will take a long time for her to adjust to it. She would also love to hear some nice music from various genres playing at the background.”

“That picky?” he asked her and got a nod as an answer, “Hmm… I wonder how we can put in some music into play”

“There’s Spotify, YouTube, and SoundCloud, though we can make a playlist for that in iTunes as well,” Kairi replied.

Then Kirby has his turn to add to his chat, which is mostly composed of Poyo Speak, saying “Poyo, poyo. Popoyo, yop, poyo, yoyopo, poy, poyo!”, but everyone (but Philip) knew that Kirby was saying that they can host this date in the backyard and get it prepared for the special day of love and hearts. From the look in his face, Philip has a long way to go when it comes to understanding Poyo Speak.

“Okay then, now we gave a you basic rundown what turns her on, what are you considering to do for the day?” Issa then questioned him as the meeting nears its end.

It then became crystal clear that a dinner date at the bunch’s house backyard would the name of the game for Valentine’s Day with flowers and music involved into the mix. Everyone joined in to make the day special for both parties: grocery shopping, rummaging through storage for something to use for the al fresco dining experience, dealing with flower bouquet arrangements, going through iTunes for playlist ideas - All being done while keeping Mari out in the dark of it. Philip knows that he and everyone else in the bunch can’t risk spoiling the surprise for her in the plain sight so they would take turns distracting her whenever she notices something in their weird ‘chores’ within the next week and a half.

Meanwhile, she has her romantic feelings for Philip growing out of control in her head and it’s freaking her out! How did the world match her with him and made her falling fast for him up until this point? She has secretly keeping them away from most of the people and creatures she knows out of fear that she’ll be mocked for dating a now ex-dead guy. It just so happened during a Saturday afternoon when Mari and Kairi were sitting on a bench at an open-air strip mall in Daly City while waiting for Harry and Issa to pick them after they have finished doing the regular weekly groceries.

“Mari… You seem to be a little off in recent weeks lately,” Kairi asked her older adopted sister, her tone being of concern and worry.

“Oh, it’s nothing, Kai,” she sighed in dismay.

“Let me guess: it has to do with you being all fuzzy whenever Philip’s around?” she began to suspect something funny with her head.

“Unfortunately, yes, Kairi,” Mari’s eyes widened in horror when she heard those words.

“It seems for the last few weeks since we accidentally brought him back from the dead, you’re blushing like crazy when he’s in your line of sight,” she tried to reassure her in vain.

“Kairi, I just don’t know what to do with those feelings,” the assistant librarian wept as she facepalmed herself in anguish, “He’s cute, smart, and nice and all. But I’m worried that he won’t take me seriously in the romantic department. Plus, I never thought of really wanting on a serious relationship this badly before. What kind of an idiot am I for going all mushy over some formerly dead guy from 2 centuries back?”

“So… Okay, that was awkward. Anyway, Valentine’s Day is coming closer everyday, huh?” she reminded her of the day incoming.

“Yeah, it sure does,” Mari nodded in agreement while looking at the calendar in her smartphone.

“Sis, you can’t keep those strange feelings for long though. It’s hard, but if you want, perhaps this incoming Valentine’s Day can help you out a bit in helping you confessing them to Philip,” she advised her on the matter on hand, “Who knows? He might like you that much as much as you like him a lot.”

“Really?” Mari questioned her sister again.

“Mari, I get that having Aspergers does suck and it is not giving you an easy time at all, but you never know about falling for someone until you try,” Kairi explained to her on the matter before remembering something that she can relate on, “Remember the time when I was struggling to deal with my feelings for Sora becoming more romantic over time?”

“Still do to this day, why did you need to bring it up again?” she remembers the moment well, “You two still are dating each other though.”

“We still do, sis. It may be a long time ago, but I’m still grateful that you’re supportive of both of us early on,” the younger sister noted, “You are a great supporter all the way, now I want to pay you back by being there for you all the way. I’m pretty sure that Harry, Issa, and the others will be there for you too.”

“If you say so, Kai,” Mari sighed as her little sister did her best to give her support.

The final days leading up to Valentine’s Day are of a frantic nature as couples scramble to plan their dates out across various activities and places; meanwhile, single either try to stay away from any sign of sickening sweet love or spend some time with other loved ones and friends instead. In Mari’s crazy bunch, there was so much to do to make the best date experience for her and Philip possible. At those days, she couldn’t be allowed to go venture to the backyard for some ‘reason’ as everyone else set the place up for the night: from preparing the menu to untangling string lights and paper lanterns to putting up the tulle curtains on PVC pipes.

When the day arrived shortly after work, Mari got herself ready for the night with a little help from Issa, Karina, and Kairi, nothing too fancy since this was a date set in her own backyard anyway so she could easily get away with just a nice casual dress, jacket, and boots; whereas Philip spent the last few minutes helping Harry, Moana, Kirby, and Ahk in arranging the table properly. His mind was racing wildly as he wondered if he had done enough to make her amazed by his efforts or if he has gotten too far as those feelings for Mari grew exponentially.

Mari just finished doing the final touch-ups when she overheard Kairi calling her that Philip has something waiting for her at the backyard. She proceeded to race down the stairs in her camel-colored ankle boots to find Philip waving back at her with one arm hiding behind his back. Unlike with their first meeting at the exhibit where in he was in his old fashioned coat and cravat, he is now dressed in a crisp white and blue striped button-down shirt with long sleeves, dark wash blue jeans, and black/white sneakers Harry was able to get from a co-worker at the newspaper company he was working at.

“Wow, such a quick improvement from what we had at your revival day,” she spoke up upon seeing the new look he was sporting on that night.

“Your compliments are much welcomed,” he blushed back before he then unveiled a bouquet of blush roses and white baby’s breath in front of her, “This… This bouquet is for you.”

“Oh, why thank you, Philip,” Mari felt her cheeks to blush in response as she received the bouquet with her hands, taking a quick sniff of the flowers before she then asked a random question, “There are no caterpillars, right?”

“Made sure that there is no single one hiding behind the petals,” he answered in a reassuring tone.

He guided her through the kitchen and dining area before they stopped at the doors leading to the backyard which have been covered by curtains. Kirby floated on by and waved at them with high energy, acting as the waiter for the night. Mari then peeled back the curtains and doors as she walked down to the back porch with Philip following after her, smiling for what would be for her at the time no concrete reason other than possibly trolling her.

But it’s when she looked at there that she was struck by how much effort Philip and her friends & family had put into to make the night memorable: delicate tulle fabrics draping the small area of a lower tier patio where a small square table was residing (dressed in a cream tablecloth and lace topper), two wooden outdoor chairs waiting on standby, ordinary dishware and vintage cutlery & crystal glasses she rarely recalls her family using unless her grandmothers pull them out for special occasions, a glass-like pitcher of water, plants around the area, string lights lit from behind the tulle curtains, a vase for the bouquet in which she placed them into, and a smaller side table for the other food, serving items, and a carafe of a drink near and dear to her heart that is the Arnold Palmer. The vibes was giving her some alarms when she soon realized something she showed to Philip 3 weeks ago: film about being surrounded with nature, gorillas, and possible concerns towards colonialism.

“Channeling Tarzan, huh?” she questioned Philip’s logic behind the inspiration which hes replied back in a smile.

“That Disney interpretation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs jungle books was one of the first films you introduced me to modern day entertainment, so I thought why don’t I repay you back with this?” he politely answered back to her when she overheard songs playing out from a docked iPod beside the small side table.

“You got music playing out here too?” she asked him again which he nodded positively while she was pouring the iced tea/lemonade hybrid into the vintage glasses.

As the two took their seats, Kirby arrived waddling in with a tray holding the first course: the earthy umami taste of wild mushrooms in broth form with scattered button, shiitake, and portabello mushrooms floating on top and toasted baguette slices. The little puffball poured the soup carefully into the soup bowls with a ladle despite having no visible fingers in his stubby arms and stayed by them after he was done, because he’s quite a morbidly curious baby. Not a word was spoken as the two partake in sipping the soup, Mari used some of her baguettes to dip into the soup and eat them partially soaked which amused Philip quite a bit.

Once done with the first part of the meal, Kirby took the bowls from them and dashed back to the kitchen for cleaning and to get the next course. As the music kept on playing, Mari was twirling some hair strands anxiously, her mind was going all over the place as to whether or not she should confess her feelings for Philip now. She still remembers that talk with Kairi back at the strip mall less than a week ago, but that pondering soon abruptly ended when Kirby waddled back with the entree of orange-glazed salmon, quinoa mixed with olives & pine nuts, and a salad of baby spinach & arugula, peas, and orange segments. About midway of savoring the food, Mari suddenly stopped and looked at Philip at the eyes, taking a deep breath as she was readying herself for the big moment.

“Philip, I have some words I’ve been meaning to say to you tonight,” she started the conversation, “My head has been plagued with these feelings that has been scaring me to confess anything. I highly doubt if you’re that interested to hear it.”

“Oh no, don’t feel bad for telling me this thing,” he begged to differ, willing to listen to her (which understandably surprised her a bit) along with having those same unspoken feelings at the same time.

“Well, here goes nothing...” she muttered to herself, taking another big deep breath before she began her confessions while poking the plate with her fork, “Ever since the accidental revival more than a month ago, I’ve been developing these thoughts and feelings out of nowhere. The thing is, I’ve never dated a guy before until now. With me being an Aspie, I’m a total hot mess in the inside, my quirks can annoy some people for too long. I was scared that a guy, and a neurotypical one especially, will not date me because of it, because they can’t seem to be willing to put with me, my quirks, my stims, & my disability, and still love me even if I have meltdowns. Philip, I’m sorry if I’m rambling like a motormouth right now, I just don’t know how to put these words lightly. I… I can’t believe I’m saying to you now, but… I, I, I have fallen hard for you so badly...”

Tears were soon escaping from her eyes as she briefly looked away from Philip, bracing for the rejection or heckling and with no idea of reacting to it properly. What she didn’t expect however was what came out of his mouth being completely different from she was thinking of hearing, and it went like this:

“Mari… Please don’t get too upset right now,” he spoke up after hearing ever word she said, feeling really bad for her plight, “I can’t imagine you having a rough time with your impairment, I can’t help but to feel sorry, genuinely sorry to hear that.”

“Huh, you what?” she gasped upon hearing those words.

“Yes, I truly do,” he replied, “I just so happen to be lacking in the… dating world as you can call it in my old time as well. My Papa was determined to let me continue the family legacy into my studies and work. I was so busy with a lot of work then that I just have a few days & brief periods to myself and I couldn’t just idle so much. Then that Eacker made that wretched speech against him, it led to the duel between me, him, and a friend of mine. And…”

Philip was starting to cry, feeling choked the moment he was about to bring up his first horrible death that it snapped Mari from crying. She didn’t thought that he would break down like that in front of her, yet here they are: feeling unusually tense and still there for each other: her being an uncertain socially awkward Aspie and him being a revived overworked kid who feels burdened to keep up with his father’s own legacy only to have his life ended first in a gun shoot and return to the world of the living again.

He then mentally calmed himself down so he can get a grip on himself before he traded in his part of the tense moment, “You see, Mari. In other words, I never courted a girl, never kissed one ever… Then nearly 218 years later, there is you and your family. For all the first months, you guys are there for me regardless: your brother was able to get me a job in the newspaper company he and Issa are working at, you guys showing everything the modern world has to offer from these interesting technical devices to how much America has become into a cultural melting pot. And you’re just the most lovely woman I have ever known outside of Mama. One more thing as well: I actually start to like you more than a mere friend.”

Mari’s jaws felt as if they were about to fall off as soon as she heard those words, locked into suspended disbelief as she began to talk again, “Huh, really? Are you this serious?!?”

“Yes, I am,” he responded quickly, “I’m not kidding. In many ways, you’re quite an amazing woman: smart, witty, kind, unafraid to take risks and be yourself, creative. Even with those faults you have, you still keep on trying to live life well. My folks would’ve like to meet someone like you if they are here today. They really would. And yes, I really do love you...”

The last world sounded more like a jumbled up mess as he spoke, yet Mari can hear it clear: he really likes her regardless of how much Philip blushed as he tried to speak to her without sounding too cheesy. She giggles in between the last remaining bites of her plated meal and sips of her Arnold Palmer while he was trying to snap himself out of his slightly messed up previous words. She then told him, “Geez, I can’t believe that I just met my match, in someone from a different time period, like you. Still, I guess we just need somebody else to lean on...”

“You can say that again, Mari,” he too smiled back as he finally finished his food too.

The two kept on talking more even as Kirby took out the entree plates to the kitchen and returned with a skillet chocolate chip cookie with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce for the two to share. Mari split the dessert into two servings for herself and Philip into the new plates. As the two chatted over melting ice cream and chewy cookie parts, Harry, Issa, Kirby, and Kairi watched from the inside, gushing about as they witnessed a new relationship formed from different time periods and worlds, knowing too well that it was just the beginning.

The End