#this is the very definition of neurodivergence

[stpansy]

what’s up with Patrick’s fashion evolution this past year? And his aura?? It seems like he’s finally completely comfortable with himself.

smth i have always loved about patrick is that he goes through these periods where he finds a style that he likes/is comfortable in and sticks with it for anywhere from months to years. neurodivergent king i see you. and real ones know that patrick has been slaying since pre-hiatus--thinking so fondly of his funky sneakers + all over patterned hoodies era circa ioh/folie--but i agree that he looks particularly good in the clothes he gravitates towards right now! i adore when he's more visibly punk. patrick stump battle jacket debut 2024 you changed my life forever fr

and yeah i know what you mean about his aura and how he just seems so confident and self-assured these days. it's definitely been building since srar era but something about tour/2ourdust... he came back from their little break with such a palpably strong belief in the art they were making, and then that just skyrocketed over the past year as the audience reception to their entire catalogue was overwhelmingly positive, which we know because he and pete have both talked about it. but i think with patrick specifically, even beyond his obvious confidence/pride in fob itself, he has level of confidence in himself as a performer that eclipses what we've seen from him before. he just seems SO happy. it's so lovely to witness and he couldn't deserve it more! even like. just thinking back to his very affected soul punk persona where he was going through the motions but clearly miserable compared to how he was strutting and growling and beaming at riot fest the other night. having fun on stage (and serving unfathomable levels of cunt while doing it) seems to come so much easier to him now because he's brimming with joy over what he's doing. and so so so much love for who he's doing it with :') obv i don't know patrick or the details of his personal life but he does seem to be completely comfortable with who is and how he's living and it's so lovely.

also i mean. he's a bear now and he's hot as fuck. i hope to god somebody is telling him how hot he is every day and that he believes them because it's insane that he just walks around on this earth looking like that

[quibllyfish]

welcome home : curfew — part 1

every day in the neighborhood was a perfect day, but when the sun went to rest. . . what festered in the dark of night?

julie joyful has trouble getting some shut-eye! hey hey hey! this is a minific series im making as a teaser for an upcoming welcome home discord server!! if you have questions, or are interested in helping, please leave an ask or contact me in DMs. Also! Im unsure about how long this series will be. It honestly may only consist of two parts! cw :: insomnia? this is just a small drabble, so not much to worry about

[ masterlist ] [ next ]

01. the sheep wont count themselves

Everything about Julie’s life had to move fast, fast, fast in order to keep up with her. No time for second thought, no time for a breather! The biggest waste of time—in her eyes, at least—was more than a moment spent in boredom.

Whilst this philosophy often served as bewildering for other neighbors, it was tried and true for Ms. Julie Joyful! Never had she been woefully betrayed by jumping from task to task. Sitting in silence, on the other hand? Why, she just couldnt grasp how Frank could simply hunker down with a book for hours on end, nor how Wally could be satisfied spending his day gazing at a canvas.

It was nights like this one where her desire for non-stop action would almost get the better of her.

If there was one thing she (begrudgingly) knew to respect, it was the sanctity of a rulebook. In a world where the quaint neighborhood of home was nothing more than a game, being sure to get in bed by nightfall would be at the tippity-top of the rule-list! That was simply the way things had always been. Now that Julie thought about it… She didnt actually know why.

The neighbors had all speculated, jokingly, bringing reasons up in passing. Sally Starlet’s tall tale about things that go thump in the night; Barnaby’s remark about bears that resided deep in the woods (that ultimately spiraled into a drawn out practical joke). 

Tossing and turning under the covers, her mind spun into senseless tangles and knots. Perhaps she hadn't gotten enough energy out during the daytime; maybe she had indulged in one too many sweets after dinner. The fact of the matter was: she simply could not keep her eyes shut. With a drawn out huff, along with a groan, she tossed all caution and warnings to the wind.

Julie threw herself haphazardly into a sitting position, legs kicking layers of sheets and blankets away from her. 

The only thing left to figure out was: just what was there to get up to at this time of night?

[adhd-mode-activate]

Okay so I just saw the new Dungeons and Dragons movie

gotta say from the moment they went with the "let's dive out the window onto the Aarakocra" plan even as the council was like "WE PARDONED YOU" I knew it would be great because that is the exact kind of stupidity a D&D party would get up to

[viiinz]

autism be damned my boy can do calligraphy and knows a lot about capital punishment

[falconfate]

Inspired both by the recent solar eclipse and this post by @otiksimr, an art piece I’ve never been prouder of, my WoF oc Sunkiller!

Born under a total solar eclipse (ask me about my temperature-based nightwing hatching headcanons. and also my headcanons about how sunlight affects nightwings.) and blessed with the ability of perfect knowledge of the past, or at least the past where dragons exist. This of course makes her an invaluable resource to historians everywhere, which she is absolutely sick of, and so has gotten very adept at the hermit lifestyle. For pity’s sake, you solve ONE cold case murder as a hatchling, and suddenly EVERYBODY wants your attention…

(if tui has declared anything canon about nightwings and solar eclipses, like she has for blood moons, which are lunar eclipses, i haven’t seen it)

[littlemizzlinguistics]

It’s very kind of people I speak other languages with to assume that my slow comprehension and endless requests for repetition are as a result of us not speaking my first language, when in reality, my auditory processing is just complete shit.

[birdricks]

every member of the smith/sanchez family is autistic and queer. see my vision

[oh-meow-swirls]

i think this was funnier in my head.

[naranjapetrificada]

This is going to be long so the short version is this:

I convinced my therapist to watch the 🌟Gay Pirate Show🌟 and now I have to confront a previously unidentified and terrifyingly deep emotional wound that could be as transformative to heal as it is terrifying to approach.

My therapist and I have a lot of let's say...demographic things in common that have made this the most successful therapeutic relationship I've ever had, but also that just made me think he might like the show. It's no secret that ofmd has been a deeply moving experience for its viewers, and queer, neurodivergent, and/or people of color have written at length about the special ways it touches us (or doesn't). Those are three categories both he and I fit into and it feels relevant to say that for context.

So yes I thought he might like it, but I also wanted to pick his brain about Big Feelings it was giving me that I hadn't experienced with the same intensity with other media/fandoms. Y'all, he gave me a completely unexpected reading on the show (and its story and its fan works) and why it makes us feel So Much that I haven't seen anywhere before.

When I say Big Feelings, I mean like I've literally had to swear off a couple of pretty innocuous categories on AO3 ("Growing Old Together" and "Domestic Fluff") because they would devastate me in ways that I couldn't attribute to anything specific. Growing Old Together comes with the possibility of death separating them, which is heartbreaking, but that didn't feel like it was the thing that was gutting me. Domestic Fluff could probably be called the most innocuous tag ever, but anything that saw our blorbos settling down and watching the Revenge sail off into the distance was fucking me up as well.

There are plenty of reasons why OFMD makes queer people feel so much, but when I say this was fucking me up I mean like, well, remember when people outside of classical music started learning about appoggiatura? Like intellectually knowing why I was crying but at a loss how intense everything felt. And my therapist (who is as good at analyzing a text as he is at being a therapist) was like "oh, it could be all the grief."

The grief.

The audacity of this motherfucker (affectionate).

It's a romcom! It's a romcom that we were explicitly told would have a happy ending! It's a romcom where the characters will get to sail off into the sunset together like they want and like we want for them! Stede and Ed, after four decades of self-hatred and trauma and fear and isolation, somehow find each other. And one of the sweetest things about their story is that it's a late in life love story, because it's incredibly inspiring for someone to get to experience a part of life they thought wasn't for them. The inescapable fact that their time together will be shorter than any of us would like is sad but not unaccountably sad to me, because of how much joy they'll be able to cram into the time they have left. I could be wrong but I don't think that alone is the source of what's been overwhelming me.

Grief is a constant presence in the world-building and the storytelling because grief is a natural response to well, so many things about being alive. Grieving is some of the hardest shit any of us ever have to do, but it's also so universal and so many of the things that make us uniquely human also make grieving well, maybe not easier, but something we can endure and process through ritual, community, and the example of those we've witnessed grieving their own losses. Many kinds of grief come with narratives that you can accept or reject all or parts of, but the narrative exists.

But have you ever heard of disenfranchised loss? Loss that's not easily labeled or classified or given the time or space or understanding it deserves? Have you experienced a loss like that? Can you imagine how much more difficult it makes the grieving process?

Well what my therapist suggested, the thing that knocked me on my ass hard enough that I had to come have Online Feelings about it, is that eventually, we all have to mourn ourselves. Not necessarily in a "mortality is inevitable" way (that happens to everyone) but in ways that are often unique to people like him and me (black, ND, queer). Even if we work on ourselves, if we grow and heal our trauma and feel at home in our identities and our bodies and build beautiful lives, eventually we will be forced to mourn the selves that we never got to be in the societies in which we live and the selves we once had to become to survive this long.

And that mourning is a kind of disenfranchised loss, with no clear path forward. Obviously this conversation happened within the context of everything my therapist knows about me as an individual, but I thought certain things might resonate with other fans as well so I wanted to talk about it. The story of this bizarre little man and his remarkable second act and his lovely little found family and his incredibly beautiful love story (that we've been guaranteed will end happily) is still haunted by the specific kind of grief that comes from learning what's possible, and regretting that you didn't know it was possible sooner.

And does anybody have more delayed milestones, later-in-life discoveries, and/or need to invent places for themselves than those of us on the social fringes? Than those of us in societies unequipped for (or actively hostile to) the ways we exist and the things we need to survive and thrive? Than those of us who have to create our own narratives or be saddled with inaccurate or harmful narratives created by others, or even no narrative at all?

And narrative is so much. Narrative is everything. Narrative is the story we tell ourselves and each other and that literally shapes our reality. So those story beats where we discover something better than what came before are inherently stories with loss and will require mourning, because we mourn loss.

Even when the story has a happy ending. Especially when the story has a happy ending for someone who never thought they would be allowed to have one.

I mean just like, FUCKING HELL. I can't blame anyone for this but myself. I know my therapist. I know how insightful he can be. I did this to myself and now I have to live with it. But my god is it a massive mountain I'm about to have to climb now. My therapist and I have always found it helpful to discuss media that makes me Feel Things (see all the trauma work that came from Life is Strange) but if you had told me that I'd be looking into this new dark cave of unprocessed shit thanks to what I thought was just gonna be a harmless little gay pirate show starring fucking Murray from Flight of the Concords I would probably just have assumed you were in the middle of having a stroke and taken off to get you the medical attention you desperately needed.

[heir-of-the-chair]

You know, when they said “you never stop learning things about yourself” I don’t think they meant five consecutive years of having a new identity crisis.

[swordsonnet]

maybe i'm missing something here, but it always confuses me when i see things like "some autistic people are disabled by their autism and some aren't" or "not everyone sees their autism as a disability". because... autism very much is a disability?! if you're autistic, then your symptoms must be present in a way that is disabling to you in your everyday life. it's literally in the diagnostic criteria. of course the extent to and areas in which you're disabled can vary greatly depending on the individual, but disability is part of the basic definition of autism, regardless of your personal feelings on the matter.

don't get me wrong, it's still much better than "autism is only a disability because of capitalism" because at least it doesn't make sweeping generalisations that aren't even remotely accurate to the lived reality of most autistic people. but it still perpetuates incorrect assumptions under the guise of personal choice, and honestly feels like an attempt to distance autism from disability in general. being disabled is nothing to be ashamed of, and i wish people wouldn't twist the meaning of autism to remove disability from it.

(and yes, that goes for level 1/low support needs autistics as well. i would be considered level 1 (though i wasn't diagnosed that way) and i'm still disabled by my autism! not to the same extent as many other people, sure, but i'm still disabled. if i wasn't, i wouldn't be autistic.)

[queseraphita]

I had the bling-bam song stuck in my head so i decided to watch that mashle anime associated with out of morbid curiosity, its uhh its meh a less funny saiki but with a meathead and wizards. Feel like I'm too old for this kind od show

[sysig]

VUXisms (Patreon)

[lookingforcactus]

I have a lot of Feelings about the way that people talk about autism being "just autism" and act like being ""only"" autistic automatically excludes people from being physically disabled.

Yes, the shit that physically disabled people have to deal with is different than the shit people who are able-bodied and neurodivergent have to deal with.

You know how I know that??? Because my ""just autism"" has made me physically disabled for years at a time.

A lot of autistic people are physically disabled, especially but not exclusively people with level 2 and level 3 autism.

A ton of autistic people have motor issues to a level that makes them physically disabled. If you don't have the motor abilities/physical ability to do things like tie your own shoes, or use a regular fork, or shower yourself, or be stable and safe while walking, is that not a physical disability?

Now, none of that is how my autism sometimes makes me physically disabled - I'm level 1 autism, and aside from some fine motor skills I'm personally mostly fine on those fronts. (For people who don't know, "level 1 autism" is more or less what a lot of people would term ""high functioning,"" but that is problematic and outdated terminology.)

So, you might be wondering "Well then how the hell does being autistic make you physically disabled??"

Well, first of all, it's genuinely not that rare for masking to be so, so hard on and physically stressful for autistic people (yes including and specifically level 1 autistic people) that they just fucking. develop chronic pain. sometimes so severe they're regularly in and out of emergency rooms. Because stress hormones are literally toxic/cause tissue damage, and because being completely tensed up and sensory guarding and in sensory pain all the time causes a shitton of muscular dysfunction and chronic pain.

That's happened to me somewhat/occasionally - there are other people it impacts a lot more.

My main problem?

Autism significantly affects your ability to regulate sensory and nerve input.

Meaning when I have a significant injury, between that and all the tension/distortion/related pain, that injury can last for literal years.

I spent three years with on-and-off Significant mobility restrictions because I got an ankle injury.

I just finished two years of chronic pain/sensory pain and a big reduction in functioning/cognitive everything, which was so bad it left me housebound for the first six months, as the result of a surgery that is super common and super does not do this to most people.

Does that not count as physically disabled??

People also tend to treat physical disability as something that by definition never goes away, but people move in and out of physical disability all the time. Our society just tends to use really restricted definitions of what "counts" as a disability, due to stigma, rather than looking at it as a significant and/or long-term impairment in your ability to do things. If you have a severe injury, it can leave you unable to move normally/walk/walk unassisted for months or years. And then, eventually, hopefully you heal and do a lot of physical therapy and then you may not count as disabled after x amount of time.

(I'm not just making this up btw, this is a major tenet of a lot of modern disability studies. I could cite a bunch of texts for this but tbh I'm not investing that kind of time.)

Also the mind-body division is fake, which is why a lot of disabilities and disorders that affect the brain/nervous system (you know, like autism) also affect the body. You know, the thing your nervous system runs through basically all of.

So, yeah, I'm not trying to tell anyone else how they can or should identify, but I personally describe myself as "previously physically disabled" and/or "intermittently physically disabled" because that is the most accurate way I've found to describe my own experience.

Okay, rant over, thanks for coming to my ted talk.

[trans-cuchulainn]

hi! we dont know each other but ive stumbled upon your posts in which you describe your anxiety brain and borrowing trouble from the future and i can totally relate to that. and it sounds a lot like ocd, which i know i have... idk if this would be helpful

sometimes i do see things about ocd that i relate to. i think a lot of the underlying thought patterns and fears are probably similar. i don't think i respond to them in the way that somebody with ocd does, though -- i don't experience compulsions and don't find any relief from behaving in certain ways or performing certain rituals, i just experience profound dread and physical discomfort until i'm able to forget about the thing that triggered the anxiety or i move on to something else

my sister has ocd, which i only learned recently (we don't live together and aren't super close), but again, although i see overlap between our experiences, i think we respond to those triggers differently and find different things helpful/harmful. obviously everyone is different so that doesn't rule out the possibility that i'd also have it, but i think it makes it less likely

generally i think my issues are largely attributable to generalised anxiety disorder, some kind of brainweirds (not sure if autistic or have adhd or both), and a solid dose of complex trauma that contributes a fair amount of hypervigilance and fear to the proceedings which make standard anxiety tactics less helpful

i think all mental health diagnoses are labels we give to certain groups of symptoms rather than like. firmly grouped Conditions between which there can be no overlap, though. some aspects of anxiety and ocd are very similar, and some are different -- the same stars in different constellations. i think i score more points in the anxiety chart, so that's where i am for now, but doesn't mean i'm not experiencing some of the same things, if that makes sense (and it also doesn't mean that some coping mechanisms designed for one condition won't work just because i don't think i fit under that label -- sometimes they do)

[lesbegays]

sometimes i remember the time that a professor told me my essay was the most interesting and insightful in the class and then i started skipping that class and couldn’t bring myself to turn in any more essays to her and i’m like damn i should go back to therapy and deal with that