#i honestly think my autism plays a part in it and that makes it worse

[thatdude-noah]

both aromanticism and asexuality are identities and labels that i feel could apply to me to some degree, but i struggle to wrap my head around what it means. i think it's just the autism talking, but both identities feel like they're dependent on the opposite end of the spectrum if that makes sense? like. you're asexual because you're not allosexual. and the reverse applies as well, obviously, but we live in a society where it's just assumed everybody is allosexual. the problem is, i have no idea what being allosexual is supposed to feel like. i don't know what sexual or romantic attraction feels like to most people. so i can never fully grasp the aro or ace labels, because i don't know what that identity feels like. maybe i'm on the aro spectrum, or maybe this is how romantic attraction feels to everybody else. maybe i'm on the ace spectrum, or maybe this is how everybody else experiences sexual attraction. i can never figure it out.

[astraltrickster]

I want to introduce a disability concept that I've been calling paradoxical stigma.

What is paradoxical stigma? It's the stigma against:

1) The actually disabling traits of a disability that's in the spotlight for the parts of it that are convenient to accommodate, and/or

2) The diagnosis of such a disability itself,

Due to the assumption that the spotlight renders it "destigmatized" and no longer in need of support.

As of right now, at least around this corner of the internet, the most obvious examples of this are autism and ADHD. It's become disturbingly common for people to treat those like Diet Disabilities That Don't Actually Count. It's been really interesting to watch the popular attitude about these disorders shift from "autism is either a tragedy or an excuse depending on 'severity', and ADHD is just a myth used to drug kids into complicity instead of teaching them actual skills", to "actually these are real disorders that affect people in all aspects of their lives", to "I GUESS they're real disorders but honestly EVERYONE has them can't we worry about more SERIOUS ones?" and...not in a good way.

It comes up...partially as a legitimate backlash to people with these disorders who think that invisible disability and/or neurodivergence begins and ends at their experience, and...yeah, that's a problem all right, in fact if I had a dollar for every asshole who looked at my struggles with things like keeping my space clean or not fucking up my medication doses DUE TO ADHD and went "well I have the same diagnosis and I don't have THAT problem to THAT extent, obviously you're just lazy and careless", or saw me having an AUTISTIC meltdown and called it "bullying" or worse because I get loud and insisted that I NEED to CONTROL that CHOSEN BEHAVIOR if I want to not be a Bad Person, or heard about how AUTISTIC overstimulation defense measures play into my trouble with cleaning and insisted that well THEY'RE autistic too and don't have that specific problem so this is clearly weaponized helplessness because I just don't WANT to learn to do better, I'd...probably have a lot more assistive tech. I also get really, really frustrated and upset when people use RSD to mean "if you ever criticize me that's the height of ableism, no matter how much I'm actually fucking up and hurting you" - especially since it's so often invoked as a defense against being lightly criticized for ACTUALLY harmful behavior and as much as it sucks there IS no substitute to make that more emotional-dysregulation-friendly beyond basic kindness in criticism. That attitude exists. It's bad.

And yet, theoretically, I think we could all agree that the response to that should NEVER be to reinvent the old "ugh, those aren't REAL disabilities, those are just EXCUSES that LAZY PARENTS make for kids being kids, what they need is DISCIPLINE" stereotype of the 90s-2000s, just now aimed at those same kids as adults, in ostensibly supportive spaces - or arguably worse, to revert all our understanding of support needs to the externally judged high-functioning/low-functioning dichotomy.

What really sets this apart as paradoxical stigma, rather than just garden-variety lateral ableism, is that 1) we CAN theoretically all agree that reinventing those stereotypes is a terrible response, yet many people do it anyway, and 2) these stereotypes are invoked not only because of that intracommunity misbehavior, but both within and outside of disabled spaces, because of the illusion that you can bring up those disorders and have them taken seriously because fidget toys and stim videos and weighted blankets are popular now. An event having quiet rooms, or backlash to Autism Speaks being visible outside of autistic spaces, will be taken as "proof" that autism stigma is over forever and anyone who complains about it is just a whiner who doesn't know how good they have it...even when what they're complaining about is, say, being barred from migration. Paradoxical stigma is enacted by people who think that they, alone, are standing up against someone who's throwing others under the bus to continue to progress their own limited agenda...when in fact they're speaking a very popular shitty opinion, that MANY of the people making that claim would disagree with HEAVILY once separated from the "crab bucket reflex".

As a personal example, the result is that when I'm looking for assistance, I'm...hesitant to bring up those diagnoses, because I know I'm going to be written off as "obviously a high-functioning low-support needs scammer who just doesn't WANT to CONTRIBUTE TO SOCIETY and EARN things" - even by people who otherwise agree that people should be allowed to survive even if they truly are the living strawman lazy bum who has nothing wrong with them but just WANTS to lay around eating junk food and doing drugs all day, AND that disability deserves to be respected, isn't black-and-white, and affects everyone differently; somehow when these combine in the context of my diagnoses that have had a very sanitized version of themselves "destigmatized" on TikTok, they cancel out into blatant reactionary sentiment indistinguishable from what I'd hear from my shitty token Republican uncle.

So, that's paradoxical stigma. Feel free to use the term if you find it useful.

[do-you-know-this-adhd-character]

Do you know this (noncanon) ADHD character?

SPECIFICALLY THE VERSION FROM DUCKTALES (2017)

Evidence below the cut!

There were two submissions for this one!

Submission 1: honestly i'm surprised dewey hasn't been submitted yet bc he's like. "classic adhd personality type". he's hyperactive, impulsive, easily distracted, and HATES being bored. the official character bio describes him as "quick to throw himself into dangerous situations without thinking" and in the pilot episode gets distracted mid-conversation ("stop! scrooge was trying to keep me out of trouble, but i was so caught up in- why is there a lamp on the floor?") what REALLY sealed the deal for this headcanon, however, was the rsd he displays, bc this kid desperately wants to be loved by everyone and is absolutely crushed when that doesn't happen. his dream world is a high school musical-type high school where he's the mascot and star (nightmare on killmotor street); he had a panic attack because he tried playing a heel in a wrestling match and the crowd kept booing him (rumble for ragnarok); and in one episode started crying bc he thought he disappointed his mom (raiders of the doomsday vault). (speaking of his mom, there's loosely enough evidence to point to her being adhd too, and you know what they say about it running in families.)

Submission 2:

i could go on for AGESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS about dewey and the adhd headcanon. i am going to write a bunch of stuff, but it probably won't turn out very well (i write worse when i'm passionate about something lmao) why i see him as adhd: he has EXTREME rejection sensetivity dysphoria, which to me is most apparent in the money tree and boxing episodes (which i have inconveniently forgotten the names of). he requires attention and love to feel fulfilled, and will go to great lengths to be praised. he hates failure and the idea of being a dissapointment, so he goes to great lengths to prove his worth. he tends to be stupidly stubborn, not backing out of something even if it would put him in serious danger. he's also very impulsive -- jumps into dangerous situations without thinking about the consequence, all that matters is that it's exciting! he's SUPER energetic, and a small detail i noticed is that he doesn't seem to fall asleep easily? he's very chatty, there's an entire episode where he gets involved in a gang of sky pirates because he really, really wanted to talk about a hat he found. a lot of his decisions are irrational or generally just based on strong emotions?? he's definetly more of a thinker than a feeler. ("stop assuming i know things, ok? baseline, assume i know NOTHING!") he exaggerates his emotions or the severity of situations a lot. very easily distracted (or at least pays attention to the wrong thing? like, when they're offered to test out godhood, when they're told they're going to do "god auditions", dewey seems to miss out the "god" part and just does a dance routine (his reaction to realising he messed up is too funny to me, and his dance was actually really good imo) he's constantly breaking into song, uses his name as a pun almost constantly, and has a catchphrase he uses regularly. it's his 'character trait' (i'm not entirely sure how this relates to adhd but like. it makes sense to me) WAY too curious for his own good. generally just really hyperactive? goofs off when it's not really appropriate. i feel like there has been moments where he's been shown stimming before. (ik huey has for sure i'm not totally certain about dewey tho) also he's voiced by BEN SCHWARTZ. that guy seems to want to voice adhd-hi characters that are represented with the colour blue. ICONIC anyways that's all for my silly rambling. dewey and huey are the ultimate adhd autism solidarity duo btw

[jordosprout]

Howdy! It's @stars-n-spice with asks for the Bad Batch Ask Game :D 1, 12, 22, 24, and 40! 🩵💫

Hii! Thanks for sending asks I've been needing to explode about Bad Batch all day

Favorite thing about the show?

I am super indicvisive so there's a few-

I really love the familial dynamic with the Batch it's very comforting

I enjoyed seeing how they changed their armor throughout the seasons

I loved researching the armor modifications they have

The community is very creative and skilled

The humor was well written and so was Crosshairs growth!!!

12. Which Batcher do you think would be your best friend?

Best friend would probably be Tech (not just cause he's my favorite) because I love listening to people ramble. Also because he is blunt and direct which would make interacting with him easy for me. I'm relatively quiet and enjoy calm people and parallel play. But on that note I can see Wrecker being up there too. Physical touch is a huge part of my love language and he definitely shows it's his as well. I can imagine him giving big hugs after rough missions. Honestly I'd love to play games with Wrecker, he has amazing reactions and such a sweet personality.

22. Which Batcher inspires you the most?

Crosshair absolutely. He shows that people can change for the better, and that if given the opportunity, you can heal. I hope someday we get some sort of media showing his healing process/journey.

And Tech (lotta these answers are going to be Tech I'm so sorry). He shows that autism isn't evil. That someone can be successful, strong, and smart while being autistic. That someone can be loving, and that expressing emotions differently doesn't mean they aren't felt. I love hearing his point of view on Crosshair joining the Empire, how you can understand why someone does something without agreeing with it.

24. Do you have any hot controversial takes?

I personally don't think Tech being brought back would lessen his sacrifice. I dunno if that means he simply finds his way back to the others or something else. But I don't think someone needs to die in order for their sacrifice to mean something. Hell doing something knowing you could die is already enough. I will always always believe he's alive, even if he canonically isn't. Personally as mentioned in other posts, I am not diagnosed with autism, but online screenings and outside opinions lead me to believe that I am autistic. And with that said, I related to Tech. Him being shutdown when he was excited or wanting to say something, him not displaying emotions in a way that others understood, and so much more. Him 'dying' was a huge betrayal to me. I finally found a character I could relate to in Star Wars, and he was taken away so quickly. And it felt like there was not enough talked about on that part. It could just be me feeling hurt by it and wishful thinking. But losing Tech was awful.

40. Favorite scenes?

TAY-0 getting obliterated

Tech's little head tilt when TAY-0 says he repairing him wrong

Tech and Omega's cave scene

Crosshair meditating

Big hug with Cross, Wrecker, & Hunter

Wrecker showing Omega her own place on the Marauder

Cross, Hunter, & Omega's hug

"You're as bad as Hunter" "Oh, I'm much worse"

"That's not her ugly side?"

Tech getting excited while a zillo about to kill him

"It is an unscheduled study break"

"My left femur has been fractured by approximately 150 kilograms of pressure... so no"

Most of it is Tech and all of the soft sides of Bad Batch, and there is a lot. But at the end of the day, this show has made me so happy (and sad) on so many different occasions.

Sorry for all the extra yapping

[7h3m4n9l3]

do you have any bad feelings surrounding your Happiest Day? a similar thing happened to me and i have really mixed feelings about it, so im curious how you feel

yes i do!

going foreward i just try really hard not to think about it, i find these unhappy memories can intrude what the rest of happiest day represents and that sucks. oh my cups got thrown out? ok well i literally met jasper irl so who cares jasper is so epic and i love him so much my #1 obsession my Tennis Ball and ohhh [microwave noises coming from my head. my eyes light up and a tiny jasper can be seen inside slowly rotating ]hgggggghhhsssnnnn............jaaaapperrr..... ♡♡♡♡

also what has helped is putting a widget on my home screen that plays pictures from happiest day's photo album. its making my brain forget the unhappy stuff for realsies cuz i had to think kinda hard about the stuff i wrote below :0P

i havent been to a CEC since i was probably 10 so i had no idea how you even get inside. we walked up, and the staff asked "are you here to play or for a birthday party" and i said "uhhh.... to hang out? like, get lunch?" and then she was like "oh, you're all adults" LOL and it was fine but umm. i was not expecting my only options to be Play or Birthday Party .....

i was shaking pretty much the entire time (excitement) even just talking to the staff and this was really embarassing. it also made a lot of my videos turn out bad

general embarassment from being a big fan (autism style) in a sea of .... regular consumers. a lot of little kids stared at me and i dont know if its because im an adult at chuck e cheese or because crutches LOL. tbh kids staring at me doesnt bother me that much but i was not prepared to have such an unusually large audience

i accidentally made 2 seperate bills at the prize counter because i asked for extra paper cups, to collect them, after i already paid for my jasper plush. the extra cups were really expensive and i didnt know that. this kinda just makes the next part worse LOL

the saddest/worst part: they threw out my special cups. i collected 3/5 of the cups they had including a special refill one (paid extra for the 3 cups and special one) and when we were taking pictures at the stage, a staff came by and threw all of them out. i got another special cup and 2/5 paper cups but i felt horrible bothering this staff who seemed to already be irritated (reasonable. if i worked cec on a saturday i would also be irritated lol) and i was also disappointed to not have a full cup of lemonade for the long drive home. honestly this was really upsetting and i cant even display the cups i have now cuz i just get upset thinking about the cups they threw out :0(

salad bar was um. well, it was there. it certainly Was There. i did Get a salad bar pass. and um... well i sure did use it. and then i made a pact with my mom to finish it together cuz it was... unexpectedly not fresh

like i said the photo album widget on my home screen is really working wonders on my brain. the only photos i have are obviously happy ones and if those are the only things i really remember... well :03

[cyndrastic]

ok so y’all seemed to like the first part of the Fairly Odd Parents AU so here’s more characters!!

Tolkien and Jimmy are AJ and Chester!! They’re Clyde’s best (and only) friends at school! As I was making this au I realized how oddly well Tolkien and Jimmy actually match AJ and Chester character wise, so not much has to be changed for them honestly. Meanwhile I needed a character to be Vicky so I figured “hey Clyde has a sister doesn’t he?” so boom there she is.

more in depth character descriptions under the cut for those who want them!

Tolkien is the smart rich kid who tries and generally fails to talk sense into Jimmy and Clyde, and is the only one of the three with any brain cells. Also probably the only neurotypical one of the three. He’s also the only one in school who will point out when stuff randomly changes, usually in benefit of Clyde. Like, he’s the one who always notices when Clyde suddenly has a new super expensive looking bike, or he’s suddenly the most popular guy in school for like 3 days before everything just goes back to how it was for no reason. Tolkien is the only one who notices and is concerned with this.

These changes are obviously Clyde making wishes, and it scares Tweek that Tolkien will eventually figure out that Clyde has fairy god parents. Tweek wants to wipe Tolkien’s memory every time he notices a spell, but Clyde and Craig stop him. Craig thinks it’s hilarious because in all his time being a godparent, no godkid’s friends have ever noticed anything wrong until Tolkien, so he’s automatically Craig’s second favorite human (second to Clyde).

He rewards Tolkien for this by letting him be the only human that can hold or play with him when he’s in his pet form (like how Cosmo and Wanda become goldfish, Craig is a guinea pig) without getting bit when the trio hangs out at Clyde’s house.

Jimmy, for the sake of this au, will not be as dirt poor as Chester is in the actual show cause idk what good that does for this au lol. Otherwise Jimmy is the wisecracking friend who has a good heart and pure intentions most of the time but covers it with crude humor and kinda offensive jokes. Also he sucks at reading a room (me coded) and can never tell when his comedic genius won’t be appreciated (the deleted scene of him making a joke about Clyde killing his mom to Clyde like the day after it happened lives in my head rent free it’s so funny) His hair is also wavy cause I said so and that’s just how I like to draw Jimmy, i do what i want.

Also, just like how Tolkien is Craig’s second favorite human, Jimmy is Tweek’s. Most of the time when Jimmy cracks a joke, even if it’s a supremely unfunny one, Tweek laughs at it. Tweek’s pet form is a parrot, so that means if he’s chilling as an animal he can still talk and laugh. Jimmy thinks it’s hilarious that Clyde’s bird finds him so funny and Jimmy will frequently go to Clyde’s house to write and test out new comedy routines for Tweek because he’s “such a terrific audience.” Craig kinda hates it but won’t object because Tweek genuinely enjoys it.

Clyde and Craig don’t understand how Tweek finds Jimmy genuinely funny all the time, but it’s literally only because Tweek has spent the majority of his life around Craig, who is incredibly blunt, sarcastic to a fault, and so unfunny it hurts. Craig is only ever funny by being overtly honest when he doesn’t need to be (autism moment), and couldn’t make a normal joke if his life depended on it (if i may remind anyone of the Craig clip: “i got a good one: why do girls wear makeup and perfume? because they’re ugly and they stink” this man would not know a joke if it punched him in the face)

Lizzie is Clyde’s older sister. Shes a good bit older than him, Clyde being around 15 years old and her being around 22. She’s a massive bitch and has always been mean to Clyde, but it got worse once their mom died and she blamed it on Clyde (Betsy died the same way in canon as in this au, so it is kinda Clyde’s fault but still, he was 8). Luckily with her being way older than Clyde, she lives at college, but he has to deal with her whenever she goes home and during her school’s breaks. She takes Vicky’s role in this au so even if she isn’t an evil babysitter, she acts similarly to Clyde as Vicky does to Timmy.

She’s one of the reasons Clyde even gets god parents: abusive older sister, dead mom who’s death was because of him, crazy teacher (Garrison is his own level of traumatizing just as he is in the canon of the show but i haven’t decided if i wanted him to be exactly like Crocker yet), and Roger (Clyde’s dad) is ok but he’s kinda neglectful cause he’s mourning his wife and has to work double to support his kids now that Betsy is dead.

[confessions-official]

idk what 2 warn this as. abuse?? grooming?? toxic relationship probably, sry. also the r, n, and f slur

when i was 13 i entered a long-distance "relationship" with (at the time) an australian 15 yearold and it was sososo great from what i can remember. my memory is shit so i cant remember very much from then but i remember it being very nice. we had a conversation about her feminity (at the time she didnt know she was trans) and i said some shit (HEAVILY paraphrasing) reminding her that she could just Be a girl if she wanted and then she Did. and then i had a girlfriend it was a very nice year. anyway.

few months after that it was fine but then everything kept dissolving into arguments. and idk if i'm just kinda fucked up and neurotic (i tend to react badly 2 rejection of any kind and that wasnt her fault whatsoever) but i think most of the arguments were about me being upset that we werent playing a game together or me feeling left out. we both had a mutual friend and we did so much shit together.

and then it just kept getting worse! the arguments escalated (or they were getting more direct i dont think it was ever about the games) and instead of games the arguments were about how she was treating me. i repeatedly accused her of ignoring the uglier parts of me in favor of my "caring nature". idk how to describe it. i strongly felt, and still kind of feel that she just wanted me to be her mommy who would shower her in endless affection, because whenever i would get into a gloomier mood (because of her or not, mostly not) she would take offense to it.

i also have. anger issues? idk i'm very reactive sometimes and it also forced a lot of arguments out over useless shit

i also sent her a package at some point with a hoodie and some fucking thigh socks she encouraged me to buy when i was eleven or ten. unfortunately it took like 4 months to show up and it felt like every single moment of our time together was her asking about the package. When was it coming has the status changed yet is it in australia yet? it pissed me off so much because it felt like she was just!! using me for clothes!! but i also understand because her family is a crock of shit who wouldn't accept or support her wearing or buying more feminine clothing, and this was one of the only ways she could feel girly.

it eventually bubbled over to the point where i blocked her on all social media platforms and we began arguing heatedly over email. and she sent me this wonderful string of emails where she was kissing/asking to kiss me (something that i fucking HATE – i do not want to be flirted with or called petnames while we argued, i nake this very clear), telling me that we both loved each other, and sent methis fantastic fucking email about how she was excited to see me hang myself on facebook whilst also calling me an unlovable neurodivergent retard.

i have it saved on my phone and it honestly makes me laugh now because of how fucking weirdly its worded. like a bad 4chan copypasta. but anyway lol

that hit especially awful at the time bc i was researching autism because i was 99% sure something wasnt clicking in my brain AND i was having ongoing issues with my mom. i had a massive breakdown in which i stopped speaking to her for 6 months which were the most miserable points of my life. i had to switch emails bc she just kept spamming me while i was having a meltdown!

i think i just got overbearingly lonely at that point bc sometime in 2023 iirc i reached out to her again and we got back together! somehow.

the arguments got even worse and we were on-and-off for a Long time. i was regularly blocking her and arguing with her every other day-ish and jesus fucking christ it was awful! Bad!!!

then our mutual friend turned out to be transphobic and she continued being friends with him ?! and this still really confuses me bc.. i remember being in a voice call with him and he was repeatedly using the incorrect pronouns and did not respond seriously when i corrected him. and i brought it up with her multiple times and she was like Naw dont worry about it??? idk man maybe theres something i was missing???

there was also this time that i told her about how i got groomed twice when i was younger because i trusted her to not tell anyone about it. and then she turned around and Told Our Mutual Friend about it. >_>

AND THE WHOLE GENDER SHIT i'm someone who uses every/all pronouns interchangably and is somewhat genderfluid. i came out to her multiple times because she. kept forgetting i wasnt cis!

at the time i was just using "all pronouns" but my gf kept using feminine terms for me and she/her prns for me and i kept asking her to stop doing that. but she did not. so it turned into an argument where i was telling her that i didnt want her to cherrypick the parts of my identity she liked the most and that i wasnt even a woman. it took her multiple months afterwards to even Begin using masculine terms for me >_> altho it is mainly my fault because i didnt really specify what i meant by "all pronouns" (but she also never asked !?)

recently, about 3~ weeks ago, like a week before my bday, we broke up again. this time it was way messier because i'm not moving my email again. its also permanent i would rather someone put me down than make me go back to talking to her

i finally realized that a newly 15 year old Shouldn't be dating someone who was going to turn 18 in the same fucking year! i blocked her on everything, bur she still had my email so we were arguing over Email again. she went on a racist tangent, repeatedly calling me a stupid white girl and refering to me with the n-slur in the same sentence (i am of mixed race). she also told me it was fine because she was also mixed race and "i'm calling you my homie" which is. yeah! i think she also said something abt me being a fag or whatever but maybe not. i deleted most of her emails as they came in so i dont remember >_>

i also said some awful transphobic shit to her about her pretending to be a girl so she could get closer to me which i. cannot say how much i regret saying that awful crap! it's definitely not reflective of my opinions and my morals, i was trying to get under her skin at the time and more some fucking reason that seemed like the best thing to dig my nails into. it was fucked up with me and if things werent like how they are i would apologize for it immediately.

i havent talked to her since the racist shit nor do i really want to but shes began spamming me with different accounts on another social media platform we're both on. and idk what im going to end up doing about it other than blocking.

these last like 3 years have been Dog Shit i tell ya! sorry 4 the long ask also DEAR GOD ??

 

[thechangeling]

Regarding the fight over whether masking is a privilege or not, I wanted to add my thoughts.

First of all, I honestly think one of the biggest issues we as a community run into is our inability to imagine and understand perspectives other then our own. This is a problem with a lack of theory of mind and obviously it's severity is different in every person, but when I see this discorse that's what comes to mind. Because of our autism we are kind of notoriously bad at understanding other peoples points of view. I know I personally struggle with this a lot.

But I am attempting nuance.

See on the one hand yeah I as a relatively low support needs autistic don't know what it's like to have to rely on a care taker 24/7 or experience ableism and abuse from that. I have had employment opportunities, I'm currently doing freelance work, I can live sort of independently as in I can go out and do things on my own but I need people to remind me to eat and shower.

And I can mask exceptionally well. So well that nobody ever suspects I'm autistic, even doctors will try to argue with me about the diagnosis I've received. Therapists will tell me I'm just sensative and I feel everything too much.

I am ridiculously good at playing their game. I can make their jokes and use their cute expressions and metaphors and similes, I can dress like them, walk like them, talk like them, flirt like them, but I will never be them.

And to say it takes a toll is putting it fucking mildly.

I have no stable sense of self. I've spent so long creating different versions of my self to please different people, different parts to play to appease the crowd that now I have no idea who I really am. When I look in the mirror I see a face, but have no connection to that face. Is that me? I have so much trouble figuring out my gender and sexuality or even choosing a name that feels right because when I try and look inside myself (metaphorically) all I can find is a gaping black hole of swirling fuckery. It's impossible to make sense of it.

People say "just do what feels right" but I have no concept of that anymore. I've spent so long ignoring my bodies signals and my internal... well everything basically that I don't know if I have sensory issues or if I can tolerate certain foods or if I actually like certain people because I just can't tell. It all feels numb.

My entire life has been about pressing and molding myself into different shapes to please other people. And as a result I've been through so much abuse. I just let it happen because I thought it was what I deserved. I told myself that I was lucky to be getting any kind of love, even love that came with mockery, insults and violence. I've had many friendships but almost all of them ended badly due to my extreme depression and anxiety or my relentless paranoia over being left behind. And then my fears would become a reality and my paranoia became even worse.

See the thing is, at the end of the day nobody wants to love a scared insecure self loathing shell. So even though if I wasn't masking they would still find things to criticize, just different things, they leave.

I've tried to kill myself four times, self harmed all thought my teens and I've struggled with substance abuse. My kidneys actually kind of don't work as well as they're supposed to now probably because of my abuse of painkillers and vodka. My most commonly used phrase in the world is "I'm fine." I say it automatically without even thinking now. It's like I've completely lost my ability to tell when I'm in any kind of pain or discomfort.

I'm not writing all of this to try and get sympathy or pity. Absolutely not. My point is that masking is inherently traumatic and violent. I have quite literally destroyed my psyche and I don't know if I can fix it. That's why I flinch when I hear someone calling masking a privilege, because believe me you don't want this. You don't wanna feel like this. Like you've lost everything and now you're just a hole.

But, if I put my feelings aside I can recognize that the fact that I was able to mask in the first place did afford me certain privileges that other autistics don't get. Beyond the job stuff and the "adulting" stuff, I know that when the allistic people I know say they love and support autistics they are talking about autistic people like me. People who seem "normal." People who they could see themselves dating or having a laugh with. And that's a privilege.

But how I got there was not fucking pretty. And I don't think people who havent been through the trauma of masking should get to talk about how harmful it is. There needs to be a place where we as masking autistics can talk about our pain while still acknowledging the privilege we hold in this society for being able to mask.

Because yeah, masking did protect me somewhat, but it didn't protect me fully.

[wawawawawawawawawawawawawa]

anon who doesnt have aspd and taught myself empathy here yet again! i am Now Thinking and remembering that a huge part of why i've never tried to go to therapy or anything is coz like i Know i'd use what i learn to like, manipule ppl better and shit. i enjoy playing w ppl Too much and coz Fun Childhood i've been good at it all my life, but cognitively i recognise its bad so it would be bad and not fair for me to go to therapy and get even better at it and manipulate ppl i love for my own fun. and like even i dont do illegal shit or even like drink alcohol or smoke coz then i can keep the moral high ground in arguments w ppl and i can say whatever i want and call em out on shit and create a fuss for them and stir the pot and they cant call me a hypocrite. like so much of what i do is about making sure i have a level of ability to manipulate and control ppl and situations. so many behaviours which arent explained by autism, idk why i've just brushed all of them aside except that i've gotten bored by overthinking abt them, and ive mostly gotten to a point where they're under control and im content w life

but back to remorse and empathy i honestly just think they're not really necessarily useful things and ppl place so much importance on "oh im such a good person i have so much empathy" but will also use their empathy/remorse to control ppl? like i know ppl w bpd who use their genuine guilt and worries and stuff to get ppl to feel sorry for them and indulge them instead of confronting and working on it. like even ppl w/o mental illness will sometimes try to use the fact they feel bad abt smth to erase their culpability instead of actually fixing their mistakes. it can be confronting for them that some ppl can be like "oh shit i made a mistake. fuck. oh well" (and sometimes fix their mistake/take responsibility) w/o remorse or other emotions to it coz i think it makes them realise their emotion doesnt absolve them

thanks to listening to me ramble!

man i feel that, im also obsessed with having the moral high ground, except i think my view of morality is the best one and everyone else is stupid. also i'm a hypocrite. i also hate hypocrites! yes this in of itself is hypocritical i am aware. do something morally reprehensible? shame on you! doesn't matter that i do the same thing with no intent to stop. its over anakin i have the moral high ground!! i have Standards and Morals and also i'm correct all the time. if i had the death note there would be no story and everything would be okay. i simply would not go mad with power and i'd only kill people who are deserving of it

also yeah i hate the empathy = morality thing i hate it so so so so much. i do think cognitive empathy is a useful tool and remorse can be useful as like, the emotions equivalent of getting spritzed with a water bottle and also you are a cat. do something shitty? feel remorse? my cuck ass is NEVER doing that again!! because remorse felt so bad the first time, why would i risk doing it Again and feeling remorse Again? its just not worth it. but then again if you get more and more used to its presence it wouldnt work all that great and also would suck balls

and i've known a dude w bpd who was like that, and ive known people with good ol fashioned Anxiety Disorder that were like that- worse, even! they thought that bc they had anxiety, they were these cutesy little waifs and anything they did could be rebutted with "but i have anxietttyyyyyy" and everyone was just expected to pity them because of it- no matter what they did! people put too high of an emphasis on emotion as the standard of morality- if you're a scared abuse victim, thats Moral and you are Pitiable, which is Good. however if you fought back, you are Immoral and you are Secretly Probably The Aggressor, which is Bad. (consequently, if you're too scared, that's Moral, however you Didn't Fight Back, which means you were acting Illogically, and Had It Coming, therefore you are Bad) which is hypocritical as fuck! ive taken responsibility w/o remorse and i've takne responsibility with remorse and remorse is Not the important part of this argument, it's emotional intelligence.

[bandofchimeras]

okay this is a long shot but wondering if anyone can help me, a brain dramaged autistic person, work backwards on how to change this dynamic (as in be willing to talk me thru this)

so posting ANYTHING on facebook fills me with horrific anxiety. i don't know where it comes from or who exactly i am afraid of. suspect its that there are too many different kinds of ppl from different parts of my life on there. i once tried sorting them out into audiences who would be comfy with specific topics and themes but its a messy system & didn't work for long. so there are people who i've had added for a long time, that i worry about how they'll interpret what i say (like because of autism, i make faux pas a lot and people get hostile and misinterpret) but i don't exactly want to un-add them, which signifies end of friendship. or like we don't get to see eachother's lives. I also have a few family members left on there which leads me to selfi -censor sexual posts which all the lefty shitposters share openly. i'm probably overthinking this but i get very little engagement on fb despite having a lot of friends on there and that makes posting feel even worse (like people are seeing it and not commenting/reacting) and i see plenty of other folks with large, robust, supportive followings of friends and family. so my brain goes into overdrive like how do they manage that. i guess they don't give a fuck? or what? i understand i can't control if people like me or engage with my content. and that i could just stop posting

but facebook historically has been where i post fundraisers and when i need help. i'm slowly building irl support system but i wonder if there's any way to salvage this. i don't like who i am on there it throws me into mega mega anxiety mode and i overexplain and feel bound to my past selves. but if i stop posting entirely when i do have something important to share the algorithm will kill it dead. like...maybe starting a page would help instead of having everything associated with my personal account? i still don't know what to do with my FB. it is a log of my entire life since i was 13. exes, pre transition pics, people leftover from toxic leftbook days. just everything is on there. i don't want to delete it. i don't want it accessible to everyone. i honestly wish i had stayed on livejournal or something. fb became where i performed myself. i don't talk with a lot of people via DM bc again, anxiety about approaching people. it feels like going up to a dude in the mall, who you have known for years bc he sits at the mall playing songs and yelling about his life. but if you go up to him will he even know who the fuck you are? I think some of the anxiety is related to being plural. some of it is parasocial relationships. idk. i just hate that it exists and i still feel bound to it. and want to talk to someone about it who has a similar relationship with social media...

[tokidraws]

To The Parents On This Website And Others In General:

I don't know if anyone on here needs to here this, but this is going to be a really long post regardless, because I'm going to try to fit the topics of my family dynamics and my almost suicide attempt and pair them together in some coherent way. So, in this post, I'm going to try and address some of the things that led me to that point, and things that my family (specifically parents) did to make it worse. And I'll admit I'm mostly posting this for my own benefit and peace of mind, but, to any of my family who might see this (you know who you are), don't take offense to this, because this is mine to share.

So, onto the main point of this. When I was 14 one o the school counselors called me into her office on 9/11 (which will never not be funny to me as an American) to talk about a free spoken word poetry assignment in English with some worrying content. We talked about it, had a couple of laughs, and then she asked if there was anything else I wanted to tell her. I'm still not sure why I told her that I was planning on going home and downing a thing of pills, but I did. latter that same day i was admitted into a psych hospital. (although, it got me out of the rest of the school day and my seminary class, so, there's that. (yes, my parents are Mormons, but I'm not here to talk about religion, and while I know it plays a part, its not quiet universal enough of a cause to make me feel like I need to talk about it in this post specifically.))

But anyway, I was there for just over a week, blah, blah, blah, life changing experience, blah, blah, blah, we get the drill, I'm not going into detail about my stay at the hospital other than it was really good, according to my friends from what I've told them its one of the best they've heard of, and that is it, as I do not want HIPAA after my ass.

After that first stay there, things where okay-ish, but it really only got worse again, just a bit more murdery this time, and I ended up calling 911 on myself and riding in the back of the police cruiser to the hospital, which was fun, cause i had road in the wee woo van and now the car, or, well, truck. This time I was there for a little under a week, and just barley discharged in time for thanks giving. But, despite me having said that I don't know if I really needed to go to the hospital again (I did, I just called the cops on myself for vividly thinking about patricide, it was like a compulsion, don't worry bout' it.) the second time I was there was honestly more important. The moment I was there and not in my house anymore is what allowed me to really think about everything that had happened in the past several months. (my family had just moved after what was arguably some of the est years of my life, if you did your math right, yes, I am infact saying that 8th grade was really good for me, don't stress it, the point was I had a lot of friends I was leaving half way across the country.)

I'm not a parent, I don't really ever want to be one, or at least I don't want any biological kids of my own, and given that I'm pretty much AroAce (explaining it is hard), I don't think I ever will. But, as someone who still very vividly remembers what this was like, let me talk about it, and what I think my family (parents) could have done differently;

Not enabling my siblings: now, I know one of my sisters has autism, my younger brother adhd or also maybe autism, and my other two older sisters have there own issues with depression, but, this doesn't excuse any of there actions or how they treated me, and I'm still trying to learn that. I am aware that having issues like these are difficult, but that doesn't invalidate what I went through on the reeving end for a lot of my families bullshit.

Listening to me: My family, my parents especially, where really shocked when my school counselor called the to tell them I was in danger of killing myself (that day to end of the week). But the thing is, its shouldn't have been, they just never listened or cared enough to look close enough. I had had many conversations with them about my siblings and them and how I wish that they would do something. (Not really physical abuse anymore, but a lot of emotional abuse, and I flinch at loud noises, when people raise there hands and crap abuse my little brother used to hit and none of us where really aloud to fight back, even though they wished we would punch it out instead of calling each other mean things, but whatever.) But, lo and behold, because I didn't have the answers to how to have are family not be like that, I was brushed off, a typical 'there's nothing we can do' thing, even though they very well could have said to my brother to stop hitting his sisters and for my sister with autism that the fact that she verbally abuses us all isn't okay, especially when after that she threatens suicide so we cant talk about her behavior (also, we were told to like, never engage with her at all cost, we just made it worse, etc.) But anyway, if someone tries to talk to you, no matter how stupid it may seam, and especially if its your kid, let them, cause you don't know whats going on in there head, and if you don't let them tell you, you'll never know. Don't invalidate there feelings, don't but in when there talking, don't make yourself the victim because that moment is about your kid and not you, and if you cant see that, then you shouldn't have had children in the first place, not sorry.

Pay attention to all your kids equally: whether that equally is not at all or a lot, it doesn't matter, because I got barley less attention than my other siblings, and all it did was teach me that to get attention I have to make a scene, and I buried my feelings to the point were now I'm borderline psychopathic, just, don't do it to the best of your ability.

Dont say stupid shit: This includes, but is not limited to - 'So im an awful parent?' saying this when your kid is just tring to tell you soemthing that could be better is stupid, it invalidates them and it's just bad. 'I raised yoy, clothed you, pit a roof over your head' or other variations if this, cause, gorl, your job is to do exactly that. There are othe things, but these where some of the biggest for me.

Going through your kids stuff: don't do it. Call me naive, but honestly, if u don't go through your kids stuff, there going to trust you, then they'll tell you things,, and if they still dont tell you something, leave them be, and let them have there secrets.

[lord-of-the-margins]

This Blog

So what I think I’m going to do with this blog is discuss my thoughts on having DID and being a system. A system is someone with dissociative identity disorder - someone made up of multiple personalities. I’d also like to talk about trans issues because I identified as trans for a long time before I discovered I had DID. I did feel and suffer from gender dysphoria and learning that I had DID has made the pain of gender dysphoria recede to a remarkable degree.

You know the funny thing is I could legitimately use they/them pronouns. But I’m not going to.

When I first heard of multiple personality disorder/DID in a serious context, I thought it was a load of shit. I thought this woman supposedly flipping through a slew of personalities on YouTube was just starving for someone’s attention. This was an embarrassing cry for attention. A few steps short of playing pretend.

When I realized I had DID, it felt so incredibly surreal. As if my actual life were a cheap B movie. I had overturned everything, sacrificed everything, just to learn this cheap twist?

I was sitting on some steps smoking a cigarette, rolling the idea around in my head, and I wondered – if it was true and there are other people inside me – could I hurt them? And I felt a cold pang of fear from the center of my chest. Completely unrelated to my current train of thought, or rather, it was opposed to it, rather than accompanying it. That was scary and I was scared.

Trying to talk to other personalities was embarrassing. I felt like I was playing pretend. Why not have a tea party with some stuffed animals while I’m at it? I felt very silly. I…talked to the voice in my head and we decided he needed a name. Something short and Greek or Roman. Fine.

I did a bit of research, found a few good options, and slept on the matter. Later, while on a walk, I chose a name, and was awash in a wave of gratitude and ecstatic love. Overcome to the point that I felt weak at the knees. It must have looked really funny.

So what I can tell you is that if you feel someone else’s emotions, you may have DID. Maybe. Or something else entirely. Guess I’m not telling you much.

The personality who is writing to you right now – me – I’m the host. Every system has a host. This is the personality you’re likely to meet if you ever meet a system. We’re usually the sensible, reliable ones who need to handle everyday life. We pay the bills, we make the appointments, we go to work. At least I do. Other systems could be different, but usually the host is the responsible one.

The host isn’t necessarily the original self. I’m not. I was created to be a protector. And honestly, knowing I’m a part of a system and I have…people(?) within my being to protect has endowed my life with a lot more meaning than it previously had. I felt very empty for a long time and now I have them. For better or worse, I’m never really alone. And I like the idea of providing for them. It’s deeply fulfilling.

When I hear aphorisms like “the answer lies within,” I suppose that is what I’m doing. Going within. But I’m so dissociated that it feels like reaching out to people I’ve verified are me. They feel like other people and I have mistaken them for completely separate beings before. Going within feels like reaching out.

Also, some of them have autism and I don’t? I do have a fair amount of ADHD. Always have. But I’m not autistic and yet they are. So…make of that what you will. The mind is truly a remarkable thing. I try not to dwell on the existential ramifications for too long.

 With all that said, I’d like to talk about trans issues.

I felt the pull of masculinity from a young age, but I really began leaning into being a transman sometime around 2014. I really tried to dress and act in a masculine way. Even so, I never felt compelled to get bottom surgery. Top surgery, hormones, sure – I was tempted. Anything to display to the world how I really felt inside. But messing around with my genitals? My legacy? No. Absolutely not. Whatever I had down there had to be respected as the vessel of my progeny. Learning that testosterone can in fact impede pregnancy (shocker) is what made me set my dreams of transitioning to rest once and for all.

I may one day get top surgery, but only after my breasts have fulfilled their true purpose of feeding my children. Even then, I’m not going to be completely flat. Probably an A or B cup. That’s as low as the system will let me go.

I do explore some strange terrain in my life, but there is an unspoken part of me that is quite conservative and holds me to conservative standards. And I abide by those standards.  

Where did this instinct to be a man come from? Easy. It came from my true self sometime around the age of four. She was being horribly abused and wished her Dad was there to protect her. I am the product of that wish. Of course I was also the same little girl and it took a lifetime to fulfill that wish.

Systems often do this – become families for themselves. And so I became my Dad.

I didn’t know that for a very long time. But I’m the designated man in a woman’s body and it was excruciating. I hated it. Every time I came close to definitively deciding to transition, some little part of me would say “no,” even though I craved to be recognized as a man. So around and around we went. Back and forth for years.

It probably doesn’t sound healthy to a normal person, but systems are encouraged not to get too attached to the body. The body is a clown car shared by all of us. The body is a lovely temple we all inhabit and it rarely reflects who we all are. Most of us won’t feel adequately represented by the body. But we should take care of it and keep it in good condition as an expression of love for our family.

Crazy, huh?

So the gender dysphoria has receded as I’ve come to accept that I’m part of a whole and cannot impose my one identity on a body shared by many.

 What I’d like the youth to understand about my queer ass is that I am a product of severe abuse. My gender identity, my sexuality, my fractured memory and sense of self, all of this is a product of horrifying abuse. In fact, I don’t think I’ve met anyone belonging to the LGBT community who can say they weren’t sexually abused.

I thought there were LGBT individuals who weren’t abused because I was one of them. But that’s not true. I have DID and DID likes to hide the abuse.

Because of this, I don’t want to normalize the LGBT community and I don’t think they’re valid like heterosexual couples because they appear to exclusively be a product of abuse. The Right was indeed right. It’s true.

 I never plan on living my life openly as a system. Even if the stigma of mental illness wasn’t there, I see no reason for it. I get by just fine when people assume I’m like everyone else. I plan on using she/her pronouns until the day I die. It just doesn’t bother me like it used to. I don’t feel like I have the right to tear societal conventions to shreds to reflect my inner state. I think it’s a pretty selfish thing to do. Conservative conventions are healthy and a good fit for the vast majority of humanity. I want to uphold a healthy society. While I may try to explain my condition to be better understood by others, I do not want to restructure society about my mental illness.

 I’m going to continue to share my thoughts about the trans movement because it honestly feels like a nightmare at this point.

[jeff-from-marketing]

So... tabletop roleplaying games, they’re pretty good!

As tempting as it is to just leave the post there and refuse to elaborate, I actually do want to talk about ttrpgs, both in general as a hobby but also some specific systems. Why? Because fuck you, this is my blog and I’m going to continue to make that your problem, that’s why! As will become the norm, I make absolutely zero promises on cohesion or this making sense. You have been warned.

So yes, ttrpgs are pretty great! It’s a wonderful combination of escapism, and just doing some silly shit with friends, and for my autism brain it’s great because the rules of the world actually make sense! Usually at least, but I may or may not get to that. Real talk, I genuinely believe that for most people there is some style of ttrpg for you out there. Obviously not everything appeals to everyone, and that’s okay, but there’s so many different styles of play and so many different systems to play that there’s a good chance there’s something out there for you. It goes far beyond just Dungeons and Dragons.

Though I guess that’s probably something worth talking about. I mean to be fair it’s hard to talk about ttrpgs without talking about Dungeons and Dragons specifically, as it’s kinda the “face” of the hobby. Heck, it’s the one I started with many years ago, and to be fair it’s much easier to go “hey, wanna try out D&D?” as opposed to any other system, just due to the sheer presence it has in popular culture. For something that’s somewhat a niche hobby, it’s actually fairly impressive come to think of it. But there’s some elements of D&D (and Wizard of the Coast’s handling of it) that kinda makes me wish it wasn’t the face of ttrpgs.

To preface: if you enjoy D&D fifth edition as it is, keep enjoying it! Do not let anyone shame you for what tabletop games or similar that you enjoy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still grateful for D&D for getting me into the hobby, without D&D and the sheer staying power it has I probably wouldn’t have gotten into the hobby to have some good times. But, especially with the trajectory it’s taking, it’s hard to go “but why are you like this” sometimes. For starters, man does WotC absolutely fucking hate DMs and supporting them at all. Not only does basically every supplement they release lately seem to be almost entirely player focused, to the point of some books being like “I guess here’s some rulings for the main draw of the setting, but you probably shouldn’t use them,” but even the prewritten adventure modules (y’know, the things meant explicitly to make a DM’s life easier and give them something to run out the box) require so much work and messing around with to get to an even functional level. The prewritten modules for D&D 5e give the person running the damn thing very little to actually work with, and basically mandate that the DM effectively do WotC’s job for them and just finish writing the other half of the module before you can run it. Compared to something like Pathfinder Second Edition, where Paizo gives you basically any detail you could possibly want when it comes to running a module, and it’s kinda shameful honestly. Especially since the DM is the most important part of playing a ttrpg. Without a DM, you have no game. And yet knowing this, WotC seem to shaft them at every turn. 

I suspect this is a part of why it’s so hard to find a DM for tabletop games. Even ignoring the fact that it is definitely a different style of play than being a player, if their only experience of DMing is with either incomplete materials or having to write out huge chunks of the adventure (potentially to just set that writing on fire later) then I don’t blame them for not looking forward to doing it more. I know that doesn’t apply to everyone, and that many DMs absolutely love making up entire campaigns, but that shouldn’t be the default expectation of someone coming into the hobby. They should have something they can fall back onto. 

Making matters worse is WotC’s latest approach to lore and worldbuilding. Namely, their stance of “there can’t be controversy if there’s nothing that can be controversial!” They have been on one heck of a warpath to gut out as much existing lore of their setting as possible, with entire chapters now simply just being a vague paragraph or two instead. Exemplifying this behaviour of “no lore = no controversy” is the controversy with the Hadozee, a race introduced in one of the newest (at the time of writing) books that had some questionable lore (with what little it had). Instead of addressing this in any way, WotC’s response was to simply delete the offending segment and swipe it under the rug never to be spoken of. Again, not a problem for those who would rather make their entire world to begin with, but it absolutely sucks for a newer player or for someone who would rather have a world to get immersed into out the box. Compared to so many other ttrpg systems like Cyberpunk, Lancer, and Pathfinder, all of which are so rich and full of life and a lovingly detailed setting, D&D just saddens me. I mean sure, the Forgotten Realms were never my favourite setting of all time, but it was at least a setting that had a decent amount of fleshing out and things to work with. Now there’s basically nothing, but not so little as to be truly setting agnostic. 

And I’m not even going into other issues like martial classes being incredibly dull, spellcasters overshadowing everyone, the action system being difficult to balance around, etc.

I guess what I’m getting at with all of this is: D&D has a lot of power to wield, and I feel like it’s squandered. It doesn’t look after DMs at all, making them more likely to burn out if they’re not interested in massive amounts of worldbuilding, and even players it does a poor job of catering to sometimes. Sure, most people may not even realise this when first getting into it, but that almost makes it worse. 

But like I said earlier, D&D is not the only system in the world. I myself have largely moved onto Pathfinder 2e for my fantasy fix as it does many of the things I wanted from D&D. Though they are very different games, I probably wouldn’t recommend Pathfinder to players new to the hobby since there’s a lot more rules covering a lot more things, and it is a bit crunchier, but that’s also why I like it myself. I like the crunchy rules for my autism brain. Plus all the rules are available for free, and oh my god it’s just so gay and full of actual rep... I may have to make a separate post on it. If you want more sci-fi, there’s also Cyberpunk for, well, cyberpunk dystopia, or there’s Lancer if you’re more into giant mechs. I could have whole rants onto those on their own... and I may do that if I feel like it.

But holy shit this has already gone on too long. Let me reiterate: if you enjoy D&D 5e and don’t feel the need to change, then keep enjoying it. The hobby is a lot of fun, and there’s many ways to have that fun! And hey, it’s still the easiest way to get people into the hobby, and if you’re like me who’s a bit jaded on it then it works as an excellent gateway drug to go “well if you like that, wait until you try this!” 

[solarishashernoseinabook]

I'm currently writing a lot so I was wondering if you had any advice about that make your stories better. If that sounds weird don't worry about it I guess <3

*cracks knuckles* okay SO!

Dialogue! Actually, come to think of it, most of my tips are gonna centre around dialogue. Dialogue is huge, but tricky. You want it to sound natural...but make it too natural and, conversely, it ends up sounding fake instead. And there's a reason for that! We don't actually remember what we say, or what people say to us, exactly as it was said. Our brain smooths out the false starts and repetitions and stutters and filler words that are part of regular everyday speech. (This is a good thing, trust me. I've done transcription work before and nothing, I repeat nothing, makes people sound dumber than writing down their words exactly as they're said.) So here's where I found a balance between natural sounding dialogue and readability (but these are not hard and fast rules and uou may find something else works better for you):

It's super common in English to either leave out the subject of a sentence, or half the verb. If you're inviting your friend to dinner, for instance, you might say, "You coming to the restaurant with us?" instead of "Are you coming to the restaurant with us?", or even just say to them, "Hungry? I'm going to a restaurant." I end up doing this a lot in my writing. It's actually a subtle character quirk of Finn's in TRR to leave off the subject of a lot of his sentences

Contractions! Obviously your characters should be saying things like "don't", "won't", or "can't" - "do not", "would not", or "cannot" are unusual enough that a character should really only be saying them if they're really emphasising the not part or if they're especially stuffy. But I also regularly have my characters say things like "y'know" or "wouldn't've". Even things like 'cept or 'specially instead of except and especially can add flavour to your writing. But also, contractions can get really over done - we typically use way more contractions in real life than we'd be okay reading in text. For example, when my cat gets overly goofy and runs into something, I'll ask him, "Y'okay Smokes?" instead of, "You okay Smokey?" - but "y'okay" looks weird enough when written that it's likely to trip someone up when they read it, so I'd recommend against putting it in your dialogue. Also, leaving the "g" off an -ing ending can be a way to indicate casual speech, but honestly in real life it's so common that if you were to do it every time a character would realistically do it it can get super annoying to read (try reading some archives of the newspaper comic For Better or For Worse - Lynn Johnson has her child characters do this almost every time and it gets old after one or two strips), so I use it really sparingly, mainly for side characters or super young kids

Think about how your character's personality, background, etc. affect their dialogue. In TRR, Ferris is stuck up and obsessed with coming off as sophisticated, so he addresses his parents as "Mother" and "Father", he calls people by their full names, and his dialogue is slightly stuffier than Halt's. Halt's autism means his dialogue is a lot more direct (like bluntly asking people what they're doing or not saying things like "hello" much), but he's also less concerned with appearances than Ferris and shows affection for people by referring to them with nicknames. Skipping over to The Ward Ghost, Will and the other Ward children, who were all well-educated by Baron Arald, have good vocabularies, but Tuck, a career criminal, is way more lax with his grammar. Will's time on the run means he's got a low opinion of the Watch, so he refers to them as "the bully boys", while Horace, who works for them, always uses the proper terms. Basically, if your sixty year old king and your twelve year old street urchin characters sound the same, you might have to play with their dialogue a bit. How a character says something can be just as important as what they say

People typically don't speak in full sentences. Run-on sentences and sentence fragments are super common! Look at this bit from chapter 16 of TRR, which has a few run-on sentences:

[The other person who could read] was Patience Jennings, she ran the inn with her husband. She’d moved to town about a year before they got married. They had a daughter, Little Patience, she liked being read to, so her mum got the fairy tale book I mentioned.

If we were to write that out in formal English, it would look like this:

[The other person who could read] was Patience Jennings. She ran the inn with her husband. She’d moved to town about a year before they got married. They had a daughter, who they called Little Patience. She liked being read to, so her mum got the fairy tale book I mentioned.

The "proper" one sounds kinda choppy, doesn't it? Because people don't speak that way. People start sentences with conjunctions and use sentence fragments and run-on sentences all the time, and there'll be times when maybe technically you need a comma in a sentence but someone wouldn't necessarily pause when actually saying it out loud, so be prepared to be flexible with grammar when you're writing! Also feel free to play with this to indicate your character's emotional state. There's a part coming up in a yet-to-be published chapter of The Ward Ghost where a character says a longer-than-usual run-on sentence to indicate they're currently on the verge of panic

Sometimes you're gonna write some sentences that just...don't seem to work. They fall flat, or feel awkward. For me, this happens a lot with transition sentences between scenes, or between parts of a scene. Write them even though they feel bad, and move on to the part you actually want to write. Later - at least a day later - rewrite the awkward sentences from memory. Remember when I said our brain don't remember what's said to us exactly the way it's said? I find that goes for the things we've written, too! After a bit of time, our brains smooth them out so they sound better. Like the final lines for chapter 13 of The Ward Ghost - they initially sounded much different from how they are now (though they conveyed the same information) and when I went to read them again when I was coming off hiatus I was shocked at how they were written because my brain had changed the lines to something else in the intervening months, so I edited them to be what they are now. Personally, if I'm having trouble with the transition sentences, I close down my computer and continue writing by hand in a notebook, including a couple of the sentences that I write down from memory. That way I don't get distracted looking at the sentences I don't like and can move forward with the scene, and my brain works on them in the background

Reread your earlier chapters until you're thoroughly sick of them. You'll pick up on details so you can avoid inconsistencies, or you'll realise you have to set something up, or you'll remember an earlier detail you included that you can go back to. Chapter 20 of The Ward Ghost starts with Jenny writing a letter to George because I remembered establishing that she did that in chapter 5, and I was having trouble beginning that chapter anyway, so starting with Jenny let me put something down so I could move on to the rest of the chapter. It'll also serve as a way to introduce George later on :D

Speaking of setting things up, I find it a lot easier to work backwards than forwards. I'll start with a scene I want, then think about what might cause that scene to happen, and what might cause that to happen, and then how to set that up. As an example: I got pretty attached to Sawbones/Travis after writing his scene in chapter 10 and wanted to bring him back. But why would he come back to Araluen when that would result in him being hanged? It would have to be super important. So maybe something put Will in danger. But what would do that? Well, maybe Will ran into someone who recognised him who could hand his description off to Keren. But who would do that? No point in setting up and introducing someone new just for that, so let's bring back Tuck. Why would Tuck pass information on about Will to Keren? Wouldn't that put him in danger? Yes, it would, so Tuck would have to be working for Keren - Seige of Macindaw establishes that Keren hired criminals for his little coup, after all. But then how does Tuck find Will, and what reason would he have for turning him in instead of just letting him go? He had to catch Will in the act of sabotaging Keren’s plans. Why would he catch Will when Will's so sneaky? Well, Will isn't trained in unseen movement because he never got his apprenticeship, so he gets impatient and blows his cover when spying and Tuck spots him. Will gets away, but Sawbones/Travis finds out what happened from Tuck and doesn't want Will to get in trouble, so he risks his neck to warn Will about it. Then, not being able to abandon him to face certain hanging, Will and the gang bring Sawbones/Travis along with them, and voila, he's part of the plot again! (This also provided the set up to bring in Erak, which I also wanted to do, and the conversation Will and Travis had let me establish Will's lack of surname - which is going to come back in the final chapters)

Kill your darlings. It's hard, but sometimes there's no way to establish something without it getting convoluted and awkward. When you finally lay it to rest and go with a simpler option, it'll be a huge relief, which is when you know you've made the right decision

Finally, beta readers. Beta readers. Beta readers! I can't emphasise enough how important they are. Having another set of eyes exposes things you overlooked, and good ones are prone to asking questions about why you did something or where you're going with it. They'll point out weak points or things they think need to be set up better. REALLY good ones will tell you what they think works, too! And they're great at being the metaphorical rubber duck for you to talk to about your problem so you can work out how you want to solve something

[werevulvi]

You know how often I ask myself, why can't I just be normal? It's quite a lot. I wanna talk about something I've never told anyone before, aside from a few strangers online. I've suppressed this my whole life, since childhood. I've acted with anger towards others with the same thing as me, told them how it's offensive and awful. Refused to allow myself to even think about my own urges and desires. It worked for a long time, until I wrote my book this summer, a fiction story about a couple who end up disabled from their dangerous work as assassins. My intentions were just... to try to give good representation and explore something I knew very little about.

So I did a lot of research into my characters' disabilities, and even briefly pretended to have those specific disabilities at home alone, just to get an idea of what it's like to manage daily life with them. It was just a writer's thing, just being a dedicated writer, I told myself, as I researched those disabilities far more in-depth than I did about assassins...

At one point, I would cover my eye with a makeshift eye patch, as one of my main character's loses an eye, and I... it brought forth what I had suppressed my whole life, and I can't suppress it anymore as a result of that. The bottled feelings have escaped and I can't put them back in again.

I think I have Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID.) There, I said it.

It's a very rare mental illness that makes you want to become disabled, usually in some very specific way. Most are males, and most desire amputation, but it can pertain to wanting blindness, deafness, or I guess, any conceivable disability. There's only been a few thousand reported cases, but it's also said to be a very secret disorder, so numbers are probably not accurate. It's very poorly researched, poorly understood, and still not recognized as an actual disorder. So you can't be diagnosed with it currently, and there are no set criteria for it. However, it will be in the upcoming ICD-11 (the International Classification of Diseases.) It will then also be re-named to Body Integrity Dysphoria (BID) as it's being recognized as a form of dysphoria, and as a neurological condition.

And now for the obligatory life story:

I don't remember when it started, but as a child, I'd say roughly age 5 or 7, I was obsessed with fictional characters that had a distinct scar over one eye, and either blind in that eye or entirely missing it. I would on occasion play around with a hand covering one eye, and wished I could have that for real. For a long time, I didn't know why I was so obsessed with that. If I was just admiring that kinda physical feature, or wanted it myself, or both. Throughout my teens and adulthood thus far, I've made a lot of drawings of people with only one eye, and scarred faces. I wrote another book back in 2013 with one of the main characters being a woman with a large scar across half her face. I've always been a little too fascinated with facial deformities, having only one eye, and facial assymmetry. And I've tried to express it with assymmetrical makeup looks (not made to look like I'm injured) throughout my teens and 20's.

So it's been with me for a very long time, even though I've tried super hard to suppress it, and tried to tell myself that I should just be happy to have a mostly abled body. But that wish/urge/whatever it is, has never gone away.

When I first heard of BIID, back in 2016 or so, I was angry, and thought of people with it as despicable. I was in deep denial of how much I could relate to them. Didn't want to think of that. But since learning more about the condition, and listening to others who have it, and learning it is actually a real condition... I guess that has helped me eventually come to this point that, well fuck... it me.

Up until recently, I thought it was just a self-harm desire, as I used to be a cutter, but now I understand that the self-harm was not the intention behind what I want with that, but merely the means to achieve it. Kinda like how I wanted to cut my own tits off before I had my double mastectomy. It wasn't about specifically wanting to injure my chest, but to not have tits anymore, and I much preferred the much safer way of doing it, through proper surgery. However, wanting half my face re-arranged is a little bit harder to achieve through elective surgery, even if surgeons were allowed to treat BIID through surgery. So I do not think my desire to get rid of my left eye and surrounding tissues is about wanting to harm myself. It's about wanting to have and live with the result of such an injury. Although I get that might be very unimaginable.

So then, have I ever made any attempts?

Yeah... I have. Once, I think it was when I was 22, I took a blade to my face, but chickened out, and ended up only making a very superficial cut on my cheek, which I was then extremely ashamed of. I didn't want for people to find out I had made it myself. Since then, I've stopped self-harming and have no desire to make a second attempt. I'm scared I'd fuck it up and cause damage I don't want, or... not enough damage. And I'm worried I'd be beyond myself with shame if I would take out my own eye and then other people would show sympathy for my injury, knowing I'd have caused it myself. I just kinda wish it would happen accidentally somehow.

So, to clarify, my BIID targets my left eye and left side of my face. Why left? Honestly because I'm deaf since birth on my left ear, so it would be extremely inconvenient to be deaf on one side and blind on the other. Much more manageable to have one side be blind-deaf and the other fully seeing and hearing. But at first it didn't matter to me so much which side of my face would be affected. I have no desire to become an amputee or fully blind. I also don't have a fetish for disabled people.

Would I date a disabled person?

Yes, but that's because some attractive people just so happen to be disabled, and I wouldn't think I'm particularly judgemental, not that I find their disabilities in and of themselves attractive.

I try to quell this desire, to lose an eye and half my face, by on occasion wearing an eye patch in secrecy. I know it can worsen my vision, but why on Earth would I mind that? It's kinda what I want. But my mom almost caught me wearing it today as she came by for a quick visit, and I have worn it at the grocery store, and out and about in my village. It feels so damn right, yet so fucking wrong...

Let's tackle this question as well: Do I feel like an ass towards disabled people?

Yes and no. Thing is, I'm already disabled myself. I'm not an abled person to begin with. I live on permanent sickness compensation, classified unable to work, for life, with little to no chance at improvement, due to my autism and adhd. I have the energy levels of an old cellphone that drops to 2% battery ten minutes after being fully charged every time. And I hate it. I hate that there's so much in life that I'll probably never be able to do. So disability, is already part of my life, and always has been. So why then would I want to become more disabled, instead of less? Well, yeah that is what I want...

I've faced a shit ton of ableism since childhood, and I actually think that's why I got BIID. Because my actual disability is invisible and not taken seriously in society. And I think that's what I deep down want: to just have my disability be visible and taken seriously. Physical disabilities are taken more seriously. I've even heard that straight from the mouths of people who have both mental and physical disabilities. How often have I not been called lazy for something I've been literally unable to do, just because I "look" capable? How often do I get to hear I "don't seem autistic?" How often do I get told that autism is not even a disability, but merely a personality trait and being socially awkward? How often do I get told I would be able to work if I just tried harder? All. The. Fucking. Time.

I think that's why, ever since I was a child, I've wanted to have a physical disability, which is fully visible, and cannot be ignored. And what's more visible than the face? We interact with it the most. Because I don't really want to be less capable or lose a lot of movement, I just want for my already disabled existence to be visibly disabled.

So that's a big reason for why I think I have BIID. Which is to say, I don't feel like I'm being an ass towards disabled people, because I'm already disabled to begin with, merely wishing I was more disabled and in a more visible way. Had I been abled to begin with, I think that would have been different, but even abled people with BIID don't choose to have this condition. I read a quote from a person with BIID, who got the amputation he wanted, and he said basically that he didn't know what's worse, having BIID or being disabled. I can relate to that. And I think that is the irony here, that simply having BIID is like being disabled in and of itself already.

That said, however, I do understand why disabled people would be greatly offended, angry, or otherwise insulted, by people with BIID. Honestly I cannot understand why they would not be. I'm greatly offended by people who say they wish they were autistic! And I'm offended at myself for wishing I had a facial deformity and only one eye. Why do I want this!? I keep trying to shake sense into myself. It's what's causing my shame and wishing I could just be normal. No disabilities, and no wish for disabilities I don't have. That'd be great.

There is one more aspect I also feel the need to tackle: Transabled.

BIID has recently been rather often labeled as "transabled" in the same vein as "transracial" (wanting to be another race) and transgender. As a transsexual, this comparison is of course something that I have not missed. I'm painfully aware. This is how I see it, alright: Although I do feel like my body integrity dysphoria is incredibly similar to my sex dysphoria, I feel like it would be extremely rude and tone deaf to identify as for example vision impaired, deaf or an amputee, without actually having those disabilities. And I do not know if anyone actually does this. As far as I've seen, some people with BIID may pretend to have the disability they want (like with me walking around with an eye patch despite having no medical need for it) but they don't lie about it, or they try hard to avoid ending up in a situation where they'd feel pressured to lie. So I dunno how much validity there even is in anyone with BIID genuinely identifying as transabled. But regardless of that, I think it's absolutely abhorrent to identify as disabled in ways you are not. And I'd never tell anyone that I'm missing an eye when I do not.

So, I really do not like the term "transabled" and much prefer the BIID and BID terms. I do not like BIID being conflated with being transgender, although I want to very carefully say that the two conditions are so incredibly similar, that... I think that's another big reason I ended up with both. That I've always felt a strong disconnect from my body, which has merely expressed itself in a wide array of ways, ranging from sex dysphoria to body integrity dysphoria, dissociation and even having previously identified as otherkin. I don't think that's a coincidence at all. But then what caused all of that? I don't think there is a simple answer, but a multitude of reasons, and it may even connect with my autism as well as my trauma.

So, I'd say most likely it's caused by a cocktail of neurological and social issues. I was just clearly meant to be a broken person, making the most of my life with the sucky cards I was dealt, and on good days... I guess I'm kinda okay with that. At least it's not boring. Let's end on that not super tragic note. Feel free to ask me anything, if you’ve got any questions.

[lonelier-version-of-you]

That... was pretty mediocre for an anniversary episode? Although 35th anniversaries aren’t usually very big anyway, so. I suppose that’s justified. It was better than last week’s ep (to be fair, that’s a VERY low bar, it would’ve been pretty much impossible for it to be worse than last week), but the show is still on shaky ground for me. I honestly don’t know if I’ll keep watching past this point. If I do keep watching, it’ll just be for Jade, ‘cause she’s brilliant.

Anyway.

I only tuned in tonight to see Noel one last time, and in that respect, I’m pretty satisfied. I know a lot of people were saying the same about Cal, but I’m not particularly familiar with Cal, I started watching a few months after his death and haven’t seen that many older episodes with him. It was nice to see him again, though. But my focus really was on Noel.

He actually got more screentime than I expected, and it was lovely, if also painful, to be reminded of what a great character he was. To see his compassion, the way he went above and beyond for the patients and relatives in the ED, even though he was only the receptionist. To see him laughing with Big Mac, showing off his friendliness and sense of humour.

And then there was the “grandpa Noel” line. OW. Casualty got me right through the heart with that one.

I miss Noel so much. But I’m glad his final scenes got to be here, rather than in the COVID episode, which pretended to be about him but was actually just about Connie and her feelings. (I love Connie. You know I do. But it did Noel a disservice, focusing his death episode on how Connie felt about it.) And he’ll forever live on in my heart. Noel, my beloved. <3

Indeed, the flashback scenes in general were probably the best part of the ep. They did a very good job making it really feel like 2016 Casualty - to the point my mom, while watching the episode with me, commented “This is just making me think ‘Oh, it was so much better in the old days!’. I don’t think that’s what they’re going for.” For once, my mom is right and she should say it, lol.

I particularly loved how Jade was tied into the flashback. I wasn’t expecting that at all, and I was very pleasantly surprised. If you all haven’t figured it out yet, I really love Jade. She’s one of the very best characters Casualty has at the moment, and she has to be one of my personal favourite fictional characters ever. The more screentime and storylines she gets, the more I enjoy an episode.

Poor, poor Ethan, eh? His life just really, really sucks. His brother was brutally murdered. He has a terminal illness that will eventually rob him of his ability to be a doctor. He’s lost both his biological and adoptive mothers. Now he’s lost the woman he loved, on the day they were supposed to get married. Now he’s been left as a single parent, knowing that, even in the most optimistic scenario, even if his condition can be managed for a long time, he’s still not going to live long enough to see his son become an adult and start a career and have kids. God, that poor man. No wonder he’s having a breakdown.

And now Stevie is about to cause more trouble for him. I like Stevie so far, and find her an interesting character. I am curious about how the storyline with her sister is going to play out. But oof, her arrival sucks for Ethan, given she blames him for what’s happened to Emma. And she’s definitely a very flawed character. (And please, fandom, stop hating on her this soon and let her be flawed. You’re allowed to dislike her, but you can’t deny she’d be getting a lot more interest and sympathy if she were a male character behaving in exactly the same ways. There are plenty of male characters on this show who aren’t very good people but we love them anyway.)

Anyway, speaking of Stevie, we’re all agreed that she’s definitely not straight or neurotypical, right? She just gives off strong sapphic vibes, she’s probably bi. And she hasn’t been around long enough and doesn’t have a defined enough personality yet for me to figure out quite what I think is going on in her brain, but she’s definitely some kind of neurodivergent. My first thought, being me, was autism - I’ve seen other people suggest ADHD or bipolar. I guess we’ll have to see how her character develops, in order to see what fits best.

And Stevie is also polyamorous!!! That one’s canon!!! Okay, the line about her going out with 3 different guys with the same name at once could mean she was cheating on all of them. But I’m taking it to mean she’s polyamorous! And no one can stop me! :D

Uhhh, what else is there to talk about... oh yeah, I like Theodore so far (even if he - and the other paramedic from the trailer - does look about 12, lol), I literally don’t care about Charlie or Robyn or Paul, we got some good Dylan content tonight, and last but not least I have no sympathy for Faith. Sorry not sorry, she treated Lev like shit. I don’t care about how she feels now that he’s dead.