#this should more or less answer the question of why autistic people struggle to make decisions

[idkimnotreal]

i think it is a product of my autistic brain that i never really “know” things, that is, i never feel that a thought i have is right, i’m never really sure about stuff; what i would describe my thoughts as instead (or my process of arriving at a conclusion or decision, which is what most thoughts are about) is having a map of information laid out and being able to access all the pieces of information about something whenever i think about it (every thought i think about has several other thoughts connected to it, it’s about perspective, if i focus on one of those other thoughts then it will have other thoughts connected to it too), but it never becomes more than that - a map of displayed information. 

it’s not that i can’t connect the dots (or thoughts, or pieces of information), but there are so many dots that i can’t ever connect all of them at once, and once i’m done connecting two dots, some other connection is already undone, left behind, and i can’t make out the entire picture. medication (stimulants) helps with this, but then i’m always afraid it makes me have so much tunnel vision that i am finally able to connect all the dots available to me at the time, but i’ll miss out on dots i might otherwise know of when my brain is unmedicated (what i would describe as unmedicated “horizontal thinking” vs. medicated “vertical thinking”). in other words, it makes me able to conclude/decide, but leaves my thinking “incomplete”, which is why i prioritize thinking some things in advance before taking my meds, and think about other stuff while on it as it suits me.

[nacricissa]

asking as a scifi writer myself: how do you avoid the scifi trope of "OHHHHH THE A.I IS EVIL NOW BECAUSE OF A BUG OR PARADOX OHHHHHH"? I don't want my broken a.is to be evil! I want them to be more or Less..just broken, both literally and emotionally

not sure if this is really my question, since I don't think of myself as an authority on sci fi, nor have intended to portray myself as one, but

I do love answering questions. So!

I think the most important distinction is defining a.i. Whether the a.i. in your story is meant to be a conscious intelligence with an experience of reality at least comparable to our own, or whether it's a series of commands being executed with methodical precision with no conscious choice and thus no moral imperative.

In the first case, the way is simply to do a bunch of research/ exploration of disability rights. So depending on how the bug is seated, it could be impairing your a.i.'s cognitive function, in which case learning disabilities would be worth checking into, or it could make it harder for the a.i. to communicate, in which case finding autistic advocates for autistic issues might be a compelling path, or it might make your a.i. struggle with differentiating false returns of their code from reality, in which case you want to find out what kind of problems and solutions people who experience psychosis have found, or maybe your a.i. has an experience similar to people with memory loss or dissociative disorders. The key with all of these is to highlight the ways in which they are the same and also the ways in which they are different. Bad news to say an autistic person is directly equivalent to a robot, but many autistic people do find that robot characters are as close to genuine rep they've seen. In this case you should also check into resources about how to delicately handle coding in media, to avoid putting your foot in your mouth unnecessarily.

In the second case, the key is to highlight the fact that the a.i. has no choice. You could have a paradox leading it to try to execute to mutually incompatible commands and it turns out the harmful one only got executed over the helpful one because of a quirk of how the internal machinery assigned processing power, or because it required fewer checks to a given function. The a.i. could be spending the whole story trying to execute a command to for example send water to aid in a draught, but a broken gear or lever means that all the water spills into waste instead of making it into the aqueduct, to the despair of the people who have made the trek up the aqueduct to see why their evil a.i. overlord has allowed them to go thirsty. A faulty sensor, a bad input, something that means that the rest of the a.i. is functioning properly, is trying to help to accomplish the task for which it was meant but simply can't and it's not the fault of the a.i.

[invadernurse]

Catching Flies (Revised) Ch. 2

Chapter 2: Weirdo Club

Fic: Catching Flies

Overall Rating: Teen

Summary: You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. That’s what they say anyway.

Teacher!Reader makes the mistake of trying to help the two most troubled kids in your class. This leads to forming a science club, learning some childhood psychology, adopting an alien older than you, and somehow catching Professor Membrane’s interest.

Non-binary Reader; The reader does have a last name: Nemo-- which means no-name.

Relationships: Eventual Professor Membrane/Reader. Mainly platonic found-family between Reader and Zim and Dib.

First Chapter

"What are you going to make us do after this?" Dib asked less than a few weeks later.  The lab was nearly done, with the totes piled high against one wall along with the broken computers and projectors. There was a bin full of some of the half used chemical samples; but only the ones with legible labels, however. The questionable ones you had destroyed yourself once you caught both boys trying to sneak some away while mumbling about experiments. 

With the way things were going, you wouldn't have been surprised if some turned out to be radioactive.

You shrugged your shoulders, "I could send you both to the detention hall for the remainder of your detentions…" Both boys blanched at the thought, making you feel...something. You probably shouldn't be happy about the fact they preferred you over the typical after school punishment. "Or I was thinking about maybe doing some kind of club or something."

"Clubs are for primitive beings who can't make mighter weapons!" Zim exclaimed, waving a broken tripod leg around like the aforementioned weapon. "Zim is far too advanced for such things!"

"Not that kind of a club, Zim." Both you and Dib answered nearly simultaneously, earning a small smile from the boy. He was obviously trying to make an attempt at being friendly with Zim. Granted, he had been trying a little too hard that first week or so to the point you were even cringing. You even heard him ask for help on one of Mrs. Knight's infamous history essays, and everyone knew English and history were the boy's weakest subjects.

Thankfully, he realized that the drastic change was a bit too obvious, so he had tuned it down to just being civil. Zim, to his credit, was still mildly suspicious. But you swore you could tell he was slowly letting down his guard. 

Zim frowned, looking rather confused. "What do you mean? What other kinds of clubs are there?"

And that was probably why he was struggling with your English class. How could he excel so much in some subjects and be completely oblivious in others? Some kind of learning disability? Was he autistic maybe? "A club can mean several different things, but in this case it's a group of people gathered together for a common interest. I know you both are more science types versus book-nerds, so maybe some kind of science club?"

"There should be a club on the paranormal," Dib muttered more to himself. You found that he thought aloud a lot. Mumbling that sometimes grew louder the more excited he became until he was talking as loudly as Zim, with the occasional maniacal laugh that sent shivers down your spine "For Bigfoot. Ghosts. Aliens." There was a side glance towards Zim, who glared back at him. 

You knew a fight could break out any second, and you wanted to save the somewhat amicable mood that had fallen. "We could include, uh, the fringe sciences,” you quickly blurted out. “I'm rather curious about alternate realities and all that." For some reason both boys shuddered for a moment, piquing your curiosity, but neither seemed to want to divulge their thoughts so you continued on: "Besides, I think it's possible life has developed on other planets in the universe. I mean, it's kinda stupid to assume we are the only living being in the entire universe. Isn't it one of Jupiter's moons where they found some organic molecules? And then there is that theory that earth may have been insulated with life from a comet, so it's not complete lunacy."

You were not expecting the reactions that followed; Dib was looking at you like you just handed him definitive proof that confirmed aliens existed, and Zim's assessing look was far too serious for the manic child you were used to. It creeped you out for the few seconds of silence that existed. 

"YES! Thank you!" Dib erupted, a grin on his face as he pumped his fists.  "My dad thinks I'm nuts for claiming aliens are real! Even with all my proof! But you believe they're real! You believe!"

Before you could debate telling him that while you believed in the possibility  of aliens, it was not the same as believing they were visiting earth to probe people, Zim hummed thoughtfully: "You do seem rather intelligent for a disgusting human worm.” 

Your eyes narrowed, mood shifting quickly. "Yeah...that’s one extra night of detention for calling your teacher a disgusting worm."

Zim narrowed his eyes in return, returning your dark look. “You dare give the mighty Zim detention?! I gave you a compliment!"

"Calling me a disgusting human worm is not a compliment,” you said calmly, reminding yourself Zim’s social skills were severely lacking, and he probably wasn’t meaning to insult you. “It is an insult." 

"But you are!"

"Two days of extra detention." Part of you demanded more of a punishment, but the utter confusion in his face convinced you he really didn’t understand.

“ARGH!" Zim growled, throwing his hands up. "I take back every nice thought I had about you, you-you horrid flea monkey!"

Okay. Nope. Everything was off the table. "Three nights of detention and a three-page essay on how to address people civically due on Monday."

--+--

You were glad that when you allowed Zim and Dib to leave, Principal Meyers was still in his office, bent over a desk filled with papers. Of course, it was his phone he was paying attention to, sniggering like a school boy at something until you cleared your throat to announce your presence. The grubby man jumped, displacing his toupe briefly and quickly fixed as he glared at you. 

"Miss Nemo," he sighed before he picked his nose unabashedly, staring you right in the eye as he pulled a long piece out and wiped it on the underside of his rumpled blazer. You swore he misgendered you on purpose, but had given up that fight long ago. "What are you doing here this late?" He grumbled when he realized you weren't going to run in disgust. 

"Why don't we have a science club? Or any clubs for that matter?" You repeated for what seemed like the millionth time that week. You hadn't wanted to go to the principal when you first realized how lacking the school was in extracurricular activities outside of football and baseball. Nothing else. Just those two sports. A school this size should have much, much more for kids to do. 

So you asked just about every other teacher or staff member, even the ancient janitor in hopes he would know, but he didn't. Everyone simply shrugged and went:

"I dunno," Meyers repeated the exact phrase as everyone else. "What would be the point? Besides wasting precious money."

"Point?” you repeated, appalled. You had expected a better excuse from him of all people. Your decorum went out the window as you scoffed in annoyance. “I don’t know, how about enriching the kids' education? Giving them something productive to do after school? Helping those that are at a disadvantage?"

"That's their parents' problems, not mine.” he waved his hand carelessly. “Once that last bell rings those brats are no longer my problem."

For a long moment you were too stunned to speak, and just gaped. Not his problem? Not his problem?! "This is why we have schools!" You erupted once the shock faded and anger quickly filled its place. "To teach children! To help them grow and flourish! It is completely your problem!"

His beady eyes narrowed in annoyance. “What do you expect me to do? Who's going to do these after school activities? We don’t exactly have money to spare, and no one is going to put up with these brats for free. It’s out of my hands.”

"I want to start with a science club to help keep certain students out of trouble,” you started. “There are a few that have been causing trouble because I don't feel like they're being challenged enough. I don’t expect to be paid or anything. I just want the okay to use the school after hours for something other than detention."

To your surprise, Meyers laughed. It wasn't pleasant and it wasn't humorous either. It was a laugh that fitted the man itself: disgusting, fake, and left you feeling very unpleasant. "Oh please, the whole faculty knows of your little pet project with those two dweebs. You're keeping them out of our hair, so no one has said anything but we know you favor them." 

"They're not dweebs," you defended quietly, your heart aching for your students. Granted, they were definitely the odd ones out, but you would think that your fellow teachers wouldn't be like the students and see that being different wasn't a bad thing. They were special --gifted-- and just needed a little extra attention. 

After all, it was like you told Dib: honey caught more flies than vinegar. 

Meyers only huffed at you. "Those two are pathetic nerds that will never amount to anything. You go do whatever you want to keep them entertained as long as it doesn't cost me a cent."

You were pretty sure you cracked a tooth as you clenched your jaw and fists in anger for your students as well as holding back the impulse to rip into the fat man. Zim and Dib were probably the most gifted students you had taught so far in your short career.  In a way, they were probably smarter than the sad excuse for a man in front of you. 

But if you voiced your thoughts right now, you might not just lose his favor, but your job that you desperately needed. “Thank you, sir,” you spat out instead, sure he was going to call you out for the total lack of sincerity in your tone. 

“Yeah, whatever. Just get out of my hair,” he waved you away, already focusing his attention back on his phone.

You obliged after casting a slight disgusted sneer at the video he was watching. Besides, you had won, right? It wasn’t quite what you had been asking or hoping for, but a win was a win no matter what. 

Now onto the next challenge: just what exactly were you going to do? After all, you were an English Teacher, and neither Dib or Zim seemed exactly interested in literature unlike yourself. 

-+-

"Dib!" Zim shouted as he found his former-but-yet-still-somewhat-of-a-nemesis Saturday afternoon. Which had required a lot of mental anguish, sending Gir on a five-hour-reconnaissance mission (which the small robot had actually yet to return from) before he had given up and dragged himself to the Membrane house. Of course he wasn’t about to belittle himself by using the front door, and ended up climbing over the fence surrounding the Membrane's back yard. As he suspected (and told Gir to check first, and the little bot obviously didn't) Dib was tinkering with the ruins of Tak’s ship. After Peace Day it had stopped working all together, and occupied a lot of the Dib-worm's attention.  "I require your… assistance." 

"If you're going to use me as a Guinea pig again, the answer is no." Dib crawled out of the engine space and faced Zim. There was a pause and he narrowed his eyes as he saw Zim flash a look of being caught red handed. "That was it, wasn't it."

"No!" Zim defended before pausing. "Well, I was debating using you for a subject on my next experiment, but I may wait until after this stupid essay is complete before I attempt to turn you into one of those yappy dog beasts."

He completely missed the dark look Dib shot him. "What, the mighty Zim can't write a paper on how to act civil?"

"I can write a hundred papers on being civil!" He shot back rashly before pausing, raking his mind for an excuse. "But, uh, your human language is far too primitive to express such things correctly! After all, Irkens are the most civilized species in the entire cosmos!"

"Uh huh..." The doubt was evident in the boy's voice, and he opened his mouth to express his question on why the most civilized species were self proclaimed invaders seconds before there was a sharp snap crackle and pop from the Irken ship, making both boys jump and hide out of reflex, fearing an explosion. 

Except all that happened was a small trail of smoke lazily drifted upwards. Dib frowned as he stood up from behind the work table and Zim's pak disengaged the protective shield it had formed around its master. "How about this: you help me with Tak's ship and I will help you with the paper."

"Ha!" Zim grinned, showing his sharpened teeth, "I have a better proposition! I will fix her ship and you will write the paper for me!"

"What? No! You'd probably put a bomb in it!"

"No, I would never!"

"Liar! You totally would!"

There was a beat before Zim grunted; "Okay, yes. I totally would."

"Ha! I'll help you and you’ll help me."

"Okay, fine," Zim groaned in defeat, his face twisted in revulsion as he spat out: "Just help me, Dib-worm."

Dib grinned in victory before grabbing a nearby fire extinguisher that his father always had stockpiled around the garage ever since he started to work on the Irken ship. There had been more accidents than Dib cared to admit as he tried to figure out the alien technology enough to fix it. "And we can start there." 

"Start where?" Zim asked, confused. "The hyperspace compressor or the inertia dampeners that you've completely botched. Honestly, what did you think you were doing trying to bypass the swevdle switch and plugging the jindle into the main power source? No wonder the circuits overloaded."

"Does it look like I'm an Irken Mechanic?" Dib protested, "And I meant we could stop with you not calling people ‘worms’."

"I've called you Dib-worm since I landed on this disgusting planet!" Zim shot back. "You never had a problem before."

"Because we were enemies, duh." Once Dib was sure the ship wasn't about to catch fire, he motioned for Zim to follow him back towards the house. 

"Oh. Hmph." Zim hadn't missed the past tense. He had noticed his enemy hadn't been acting so...hostile lately. There had been multiple times where Dib  could have tried to expose him, or at least goaded him with his failures, and...he hadn't. Dib had even covered for him. 

Zim was still waiting for Dib to spring a trap. Surely his greatest enemy wouldn't just give up. Even if things had...changed, and the invader was strategically taking a hiatus from conquering the earth. Dib had made it plain that he would never stop trying to expose him to the rest of the human race, and yet that seemed to be exactly what happened. 

It warranted more investigation. He ignored that odd voice that echoed from his pak that told them this was not how invasions were won, and listened more to the voice in his squeedily spooch that said it was a nice change of pace for once. Just like the odd teacher that seemed to actually pay attention to what was going on. So vastly different from the other fully matured beings on this planet that seemed so focused on their own sad pathetic lives they failed to see anything beyond their own  noses. 

If the other humans were more like you, his mission would be vastly more difficult. 

-------

Next Chapter

[macncheesenketchup]

things you should avoid, know, or do if you support autistic and adhd people and why: a list for allistic, non adhd or neurotypical people

TW FOR AUTISTIC/ADHD PEOPLE READING THIS: DESCRIPTIONS OF ABLEISM, MENTION OF R-SLUR, MENTION OF AUTISM $PEAKS

People often don’t realize why what they say or do is offensive, and want to do better but don’t understand how. So, for those of you who want to be less ableist/stigmatizing, here’s a list of things you can do to help autistic and ADHD people live more easily. If someone has a question or an autistic/adhd person has something to add, please feel free to do so in the notes/reblogs and I’ll most likely answer you or add it to the post!

1. Never, ever support Autism Speaks. Autism Speaks is an organization that has never been on the side of autistic people. There’s plenty of research on the wrongs they’ve committed, but off the top of my head:

- Supported the Judge Rotenberg Center, who are known for using shock therapy on autistic people.

- Supported and made their own version of ABA therapy, a form of therapy designed to stifle/“cure” autism. This therapy form is traumatizing, often forces autistic people not to stim, to word things in an uncomfortable way or do things that are physically painful to them.

- Tried to look for a ‘cure’ to autism, for the longest time didn’t have a single autistic person on staff, and had influential members who had said and done horrible things (what comes to mind first is the member who was shown on camera with their autistic child in earshot saying that they hated having an autistic child so much, they had more than once considered getting in the car with their autistic child and driving the both of them off a cliff, leaving their non autistic child alive)

2. When an autistic/adhd person says they’re autistic/adhd, it’s okay to ask questions. An autistic/adhd person won’t usually be offended by innocent questions designed to better understand us. With that said, if an autistic person tells you a statement or question is offensive, just take their word for it. Examples of typically offensive things to say as a person without the disorders include “you don’t look/act autistic,” “oh, like Einstein/The Good Doctor/Rain Man/Sheldon,” using autistic/adhd like a slur or adjective, or using autistic/adhd as an adjective for yourself or for derogatory purposes.

3. If you respect neurodivergent people, you respect their behaviors, too. If someone with autism/adhd tells you that something they do is because of their disorder, please don’t argue. And don’t make fun of behaviors like having ‘weird’ interests, stimming, laughing inappropriately, not knowing social things, etc.

4. Never use the R-slur. The R-slur refers to the word “r*tard”, and both this word and variations of it are extremely harmful. Don’t say it, don’t write it, don’t Morse code it or sign it. Don’t. Not even as an example.

5. Don’t victimize yourself for knowing an autistic or ADHD person. Just don’t. It’s a horrible and disheartening thing to see as an autistic/ADHD person.

6. Don’t use functioning labels. Functioning labels are most common for autism, and consist of words like ‘low functioning’ or ‘high functioning’. Terms like these are harmful and don’t give a full sense of what autistic people are like because it makes autism seem like a scale where you either can’t do anything and are incapable or you can do everything a neurotypical can and don’t deserve accommodations. Instead, view and explain it with the ice cream bar analogy, which says that autism is more like an ice cream bar with various symptoms as flavors and toppings that can be mixed in any way.. You don’t have a high functioning autistic child, you have a child who, using the ice cream bar analogy, doesn’t have social issues in their sundae, but DOES have educational barriers in their sundae, and they don’t struggle with loud noise but they do struggle with COMPLICATED noise. It’s more effort, yes, but it’s more kind to autistic people.

7. Don’t tell someone with autism or ADHD what their experiences are. Don’t tell them they’re using their disorder as a crutch. Don’t tell them they don’t experience a certain symptom when they say they do. Don’t tell them what they don’t need when they’ve told you what they do. Just listen, and accommodate as much as you can. You do not know them better than they do.

8. Autistic people often experience nonverbalism or selective muteness. This means sometimes they can’t talk, and it physically harms them to do so. Don’t force them to speak. Let them write down what they have to say, or put it into a text to speech, or do what they must.

9. People with ADHD often experience hyperactivity or an inability to focus. Don’t tell them to ‘just be still’, because often doing so can be painful. Don’t yell at them for not being able to focus, because the result will be them forcing themselves to focus and not actually hearing. Rather, if someone with ADHD can’t sit still, allow them to stand up and pace back and forth in the room, or step outside or go for a walk. If they can’t focus, ask them what you can do to help and DO YOUR BEST to do that.

10. People with autism and ADHD come in every shape, size, color, ethnicity, and personality. Don’t dwindle them down to a ‘type’. You’re harming them by doing that. There are POC, trans, female, male, non-binary, and lgbt autistic/adhd people, there are autistic/adhd people who can sit still, who can mask well, who don’t show specific symptoms, or who like things that aren’t autistic/adhd in nature and they’re all valid and deserve representation. Don’t act like they aren’t, don’t act like they don’t, and give them what they deserve whenever you can.

11. Not every symptom of autism and ADHD is well-known. ADHD people can experience impulse lying, horrible intrusive thoughts, and RSD (rejection sensitive dysphoria) that can take extreme forms. Autistic people can experience using extremely offensive language or dogwhistles without being aware that it’s offensive or bad, selective muteism that isn’t complete nonverbalism but still makes the autistic person incapable of speaking without harming themselves, and harmful stims like slamming their head against things or biting their skin. These are only a few examples of things people don’t seem to consider when meeting a person with autism or ADHD, but they’re easy to fix without being harsh, discriminatory, or ableist. If you ever don’t know how to address a symptom or behavior, ask an autistic/adhd person for help! You can find many of them in tags like #autism, #actuallyautistic, #actuallyadhd or #adhd.

12. Please don’t claim autistic/adhd culture, terminology, behaviors or otherwise things that are theirs for yourself. Don’t use #actuallyautistic or #actuallyadhd if YOU, YOURSELF are not autistic, even if you have an autistic family member. Don’t say you stim/have self-stimulatory behaviors. Don’t say you experience special interests or hyperfixations. Don’t say you’re ‘so autistic’ or ‘so adhd’ based on a stereotypical autistic/adhd thing you did. Don’t use fidget toys, stim toys, or chewing toys if you aren’t an autistic/adhd person who needs them, especially not in places like schools or workplaces where abusing necessary accommodations can lead to the people who need them being refused them. If you think something MIGHT be an autistic/adhd thing that you yourself shouldn’t use, do or say, ASK.

13. Self-diagnosis is valid. Autism and ADHD are severely undiagnosed because of the diagnostic requirement and bigotry in psychology. You can have autism and ADHD and not be diagnosed simply because you’re POC, or don’t ACT autistic/adhd enough, or looked for diagnosis late in life, or even just because you’re a girl. Don’t tell someone they aren’t actually autistic or ADHD if they are self-diagnosed because many people with these disorders CAN’T be diagnosed due to things outside of their control.

14. Don’t spread false or unchecked information about autism and ADHD. You can fact check things you read online or hear by mouth just by asking an autistic/ADHD person, and it’s best to do such before saying something that isn’t true.

15. Possibly most importantly, listen to autistic/adhd voices and support people with autism/adhd. Allow people with autism/adhd to have jobs. Reblog when autistic/adhd people speak out. Correct people who show ableist behaviors online and if they argue with you, tag or otherwise get ahold of autistic/adhd people who you know would be willing to help you. Block and report ableists who refuse to cooperate when their ableism is pointed out. Buy from autistic/adhd businesses. Don’t go blue for autism, use red instead. Follow tags like #actuallyautistic and #actuallyadhd in order to familiarize yourself with and validate their voices, but if they don’t want neurotypical or allistic people to reblog or comment, don’t. It’s not difficult to let our voices be heard, and you can do so without supporting corrupt organizations or using non-autistic people, non-adhd people or neurotypical ‘autism/adhd moms/dads’ to get information. Ask autistic/adhd people questions, check in with them, make sure they’re okay. Treat autistic and adhd voices like biblical word on the matter because they ARE.

[spectrumed]

2. voice

As a child I could not pronounce the letter R. I once complained to my mother for being so careless as to give me a name that had two R’s in it. Fredrik. Or as I pronounced it back then, “Fledlik.” Cute, right? I was a cute child, all blonde and with big blue eyes. At one point, I got surrounded by a group of older girls who forced me to pronounce my name, even though I really couldn’t. They laughed and laughed, teasing me for my inability to pronounce even my own name correctly. If I ever had a reason to develop a fetish for femdom, I think this would have been it.

Like it or not, in speech, there is no room for individual quirks. No, we’ve all got to learn how to speak properly. Historically, that has led to some pretty heinous attitudes towards regional accents, any tongue that was the standard was seen by default as being less or developed and intelligent. Regional accents were seen as practically unhygienic, the worry being that if people just got to speak as they wished, they might end up potentially thinking dangerous thoughts. While I understand the importance of being understood, it’s clear that the stigma that exists around speech difficulties stems from a place of prejudice. If a person has a lisp, do you really struggle to understand them? And while stammering can be quite debilitating, it should be blatantly obvious that shaming people who stammer, suggesting that they are bereft of intelligence, is not the way to help them. Humans are social animals, and language may be the one thing that distinguishes us as a species, it is natural that proper elocution should be treasured. But some people do struggle with their speech, and that should not cost them any respect or kindness.

As a child, I didn’t speak nearly enough. As an adult I am speaking too much. That’s the problem with you, Fredrik, you’ve never understood that there is a middle ground between two extremes. There is a way you can speak that is neither too quiet, nor too loud. It is how normal people speak. Why can’t you be normal, Fredrik? Are you going to spend this whole blog post talking about how difficult it is for you to simply learn to be like everyone else? Self-pitying yourself, much? Back in my day people pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, if they had something they struggled with, they learned to sort it all out, and they didn’t start complaining about society being all mean to them. You’re just spending too much time inside your own head, go take a swim, take up a hobby that requires you to step outdoors, it will serve you well. Don’t be a freak, Fredrik. Be normal, for once.

On a side note, “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” is meant to be understood as an impossible feat. You can’t possibly pull yourself up by your bootstraps, it’s ludicrous to even suggest that such a thing may be feasible. While, yes, there are many things you can do to help yourself, ultimately, you can’t profoundly escape from a sorry situation you’ve found yourself in without some outside help. There is no shame in requiring help. To guilt someone into thinking that if they can’t do it alone, they are weak, is frankly sociopathic. Humans need each other, we take care of each other, we are there for each other. Self-sufficiency is great, but let’s not take it to levels of absurdity by suggesting that needing help from others is anything but normal. No-one succeeds in life without others there to prop them up. Instead of telling someone to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, you might as well tell them to go and swallow the sun, which is clearly another impossible task.

Most people will never in their lives experience what it is like to go through a neuropsychological evaluation. Turns out that it is not always such a pleasant experience. Though, considering the popularity of pseudo-scientific nonsense like the Myers-Briggs test, I am sure some folks would lie and pretend to love it. Certainly, there is a charm to being there and talking about yourself for several hours near-uninterrupted, but the exhaustion that you will feel at the end of it cannot be understated. Naturally, it does vary between who does it, and why they’re doing it. But if the stated goal is to find out whether you’ve had a neurodevelopmental disorder since you were but a young babe, then of course, there are going to be some pretty long conversations happening about those early days. Lots of stuff you may not have considered or thought about in a very long time will suddenly become very relevant to your current situation. And at the end of it all, you get some papers detailing your fashionable new diagnosis. Your entire life, all written down. Can make you feel rather wistful. And there’s really quite a surprising amount of typos included in the text, and barely any jokes.

Still, as part of my official diagnosis, there is a reference to my speech at being at times “stilted.” Though, the diagnosis does take very good care to mention that I appear intelligent and thoughtful, exhibiting a wide vocabulary and a good sense of the right words to use at the right moment. It’s flattering, for the most part. Yet, it does irk me that I could be perceived as being stilted. I know that at this point, I am being petty, because who cares if I sometimes come across as maybe a little robotic. I’ve got Asperger’s. Of course I am a robot. The closest role model we folks with Asperger’s ever had for the longest time was Star Trek: The Next Generation’s android named Data. God forbid anyone like me ever turned out to be the protagonist of a series, we’re all doomed to play the part of the robot, the alien, or the socially awkward geek. I should just be delighted that I am high-functioning. I know how much worse some have it. I should be grateful and pleased that I come across as mostly normal, mostly neurotypical. But… I really just don’t want anyone to think my speech is stilted. I don’t want to be Data. I want to be Riker.

It is never enough, you’ll never be good enough. If you fake it, they’ll see through it. If you struggle and if you work honestly to appear more normal, they won’t recognise it. As soon as they get an inkling you may be an imposter, looking like them, but having a neurologically deviant brain, they’ll single you out. For you, normalcy is an illusion. To attempt to be normal is to remake yourself only to receive nothing. Sure, you can be disingenuous, pretend you're not yourself, but it’ll never fool them. In the end, you’ll only lose yourself. Maybe I should just own the fact that my speech sometimes comes across as being stilted. Maybe I should own it. Be proud of who I am. But… sometimes I just don’t want to be me.

I want to be ignored. Sometimes, not always. But that goes for everyone. But most of all, I’d like to be able to go unseen whenever I’m not trying to impress anyone. When I’m just off to buy some milk. When I’m sitting on the bus. When I’m walking through the park. I know it is partly paranoia, but I can’t help but feel like I stick out. It’s always been like that with my friends growing up. The metaphor I used with my therapist is that I felt like a thumb. That they, my friends, were the fingers and I was the thumb. Sure, we’re similar. In many ways we’re the same. You could even say that I was crucial to making the social dynamics work. Who doesn’t like the thumb? What would you do without your thumb? But still, I was different. Some people would do anything to be different like that, to feel special. Some folks feel all invisible and forgotten in the crowd, and I’d lie if I told them that I didn’t envy them sometimes. The ability to go all invisible? That seems swell! There’s this question people like to ask as a sort of personality test. If you could choose a superpower, would you rather be able to fly, or would you rather be able to go invisible? The answer is obvious, as far as I’m concerned. Of course I’d love to be able to go invisible. To be able to exist without anyone seeing me. Without anyone judging me. Without ever having to worry if someone is going to treat me as different. For a moment to feel what it is like not to be some big, dumb, stupid, thumb.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not too anguished. Nowadays, I feel like I am in a relatively good place. But I would be lying if I told you that I still don’t get frustrated at the plethora of difficulties I face just trying to blend in. Even with family members, people who are supposed to know you the best, even then I have to go out of my way to behave a certain way, to exist a certain way, because fundamentally, they just don’t seem to get you. Not in that way. They have an image of you that you need to try and match. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell them that sometimes you need to be more direct in your communication to truly reach me, I don’t pick up on the many smaller little social cues they may throw my way, it’s still just me being silly and looking for excuses for why I didn’t understand them the first time around. And I am deathly afraid of hurting anyone’s feelings. A very prevalent misconception about autistic individuals is that we don’t care if we’re being rude. That if we are rude, our rudeness can simply be overlooked because, y’know, we’re autistic. While this sort of thing is commonly represented in media that is supposed to depict autistic characters, in real life, things don't quite work like this. Believe it or not, readers, being autistic is not a free pass to act like a dick. Autistic individuals still very much have to modulate our behaviour if we wish to fit in and be accepted. No-one will ever excuse you for being autistic. To be autistic is living with extra hurdles in your way, thinking that it’s anything but a social handicap is romanticising a diagnosis you clearly know very little about.

When I was a kid, I didn’t speak much. As far as I was concerned, I merely spoke whenever I needed to speak. It took until adulthood for me to learn that my parents and teachers were actually concerned about that. I was made to see a specialist, under the guise of learning elocution, but I’ve later come to realise that those meetings were about more than just learning to pronounce the letter R. Like, what does testing my memory have to do with diction? Yes, her job was partly to help my speech develop more in line with the other kids, but she was also there to evaluate whether or not I was intellectually disabled. I have come to learn that I had teachers at the time that were adamant about me going to a different school, more equipped to handle kids like me, but my mother vehemently defended my right to stay in the school I was in. After all, I did have friends, and to anyone who really knew me, they knew that I was a bright child. Sure, I wasn’t as communicative as the other children, but I clearly had no issues processing information, and it’s not like I was disruptive in some other way. But that was also part of the problem. The teachers that thought that I may need specialist schooling were concerned about the fact that I was too placid and too agreeable. They wanted me to express frustration at my lacking pronunciation, to see me get mad at others for not fully understanding me. That amazes me, if anything. The fact that I was a happy kid they took as some indication that I wasn’t quite right.

My mother delights in a memory of me as a kid once slamming my fist on the table and declaring that “now, I am speaking!” May I remind you that I was a cute kid. Sure, it is the sort of behaviour that parents of the old times would have spanked their kids for. Kids in the past were supposed to be quiet. To be seen, but not heard. I wonder if there’d be any kind of hubbub about my early development if I lived back then. I’d probably be seen as the ideal child, all pretty and docile and never too loud. Still, it was a moment my mother cherished, because for once, I really proved that I did have the capacity to speak. Though, I still couldn’t pronounce my R’s. But it was time for Fledlik to speak.

[againstshame]

A small interview with autistic author Sarah Kurchak

She’s celebrating the release of her memoir, I Overcame My Autism and All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder, this week (actually a while ago but has anything this year happened on schedule? Better late than never, right?) I offered to interview her for this blog, and she agreed!

I wanted to talk about her book on this blog because one of the big topics this book deals with is the self-annihilating impulse that we talked about in this post, the shame-related desire to remake yourself into a fundamentally different (non-disabled) person. Kurchak describes her book as a cautionary tale about how harmful putting on an act like that can be.

[ID: cover of the book, a photo of Sarah Kurchak, with pink-dyed hair and a black shirt.]

Please give a brief summary of the book.

I Overcame My Autism And All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder is a collection of moderately connected essays that use moments from my life as a minimally successful late diagnosed autistic person to highlight bigger issues that face many autistic people. Basically, I didn’t want to write my own story and leave it at that. Nor did I think my life was interesting enough to merit an entire book. But I seem to have a facility for writing about autism in a way that intrigues non-autistic people, so I wanted to see if I could use that talent for the greater good in book form.

My basic and slightly muddied thesis is that my life is decent enough, but it hasn’t been without hardships, and that some of those hardships could have been remedied with better services for autistic people, and greater acceptance and understanding. And if someone like me, who has had a number of advantages in life, is struggling as much as I am, how much harder is it for so many other autistic people? And how much more are we currently failing them?

What's this book's origin story? How did you end up writing this memoir rather than some other book, and how did you find your publisher?

“It’s in the book!” feels like such a dick answer to me. But if anyone is interested in a longer (or, arguably, too long) explanation for how I wound up getting an agent, writing this book, and finding a publisher for it, you can find it in the introduction. Along with references to Cronenberg’s The Brood and Balloon Okada.

The short version is that an agent liked a story that I’d published in a literary outlet, and asked if I wanted to write a book. I tried to talk her into repping a novella about slash fiction and pro wrestling that I wrote in my early twenties. Somehow that did not put her off and she gently guided me toward non-fiction ideas. I’d had the title in mind for years at that point, so I threw that out. Then I started to flesh out what kind of book I’d put under it. I still don’t think it’s a proper memoir, but that word’s on the cover, so I guess it is?

(I realize how lucky I am to have found myself in this unlikely situation. But I always feel the need to point out that it took me 18 years of professional writing to find this “overnight” “success.”)

What's one thing you wish you had known about or had access to when you were younger and undiagnosed?

I wish that I could have grown up with a more wholistic idea of myself. When I excelled in school but struggled on the playground, a lot of well-meaning adults who were just trying to help a suffering child get through the day started to tell me that the other kids were jealous of me because I was smart, and that’s why I was being bullied and couldn’t make friends. And that’s a very easy narrative to cling to when you’re a scared and lonely child who is desperate for any sense of self-worth.

It helped me survive school, but I don’t think it benefitted me at all in the long run. It took me a long time to come to terms with how ableist and racist the very concept of intelligence is. I’d grown up thinking it was the only thing I had going for me! I didn’t want to give it up! I wish I could have figured out how harmful the concept was much earlier in life and established a sense of self that was more aware of — and cool with — my strengths and weakness. And more rooted in the idea that my worth came from the fact that I was a human being, and not because I was ostensibly “special” in some way.

A while ago I did an event on this blog where people sent in examples of fiction that helped them feel better about being neurodivergent or disabled, stories that showed them what their future could look like or made them feel less alone. Was there a story that did that for you?

Community premiered a few months after I was diagnosed and I can’t even begin to put into words how much Abed helped me during those early years. And how meaningful Abed and Troy’s friendship was.

Strangely, even though there is nothing at all autistic coded about her, and not a lot I’d consider neurodivergent about her, George in Dead Like Me really spoke to me, too. I think I was just really into the idea of someone getting a late start in life where they could make up for what they hadn’t done before, even if they could never really go back to what their original life was. (This is the only way in which I’d ever view my diagnosis as analogous to death, by the way. It was really quite a positive and helpful experience!)

And a bonus special interest question: Was there a specific match, storyline, or wrestler that made you into a wrestling fan instead of a casual viewer? What was it that caught your attention?

It was Chris Jericho.

In late 2000, I decided to try watching wrestling. I had always hated it, but my new boyfriend (now my husband) was really into it. And he seemed to have good taste otherwise, so I figured I should at least try to understand what the hell had gone wrong with him on this one thing. So I tuned into Raw, and there was this little lippy Canadian causing all sorts of shit. And that was it! All I wanted to do was watch this bratty asshole with a sharp tongue and a hair trigger crying reflex antagonize his opponents and then get flustered if and when things didn’t work out properly. And that’s exactly what I did for about 18 years. Even when I lost interest in wrestling in general, I still loved Jericho.

But it ended as suddenly as it began. Jericho attacked Tetsuya Naito in New Japan in 2018. Other members of LIJ jumped in to protect him. There was a split second where I thought Jericho was going to hit Hiromu Takahashi. And I involuntarily squealed “DON’T YOU TOUCH HIM” at my laptop screen. Friendship ended with Jericho. Hiromu Takahashi is my best wrestler now. (Well, one of the best, at least. Tetsuya Endo forever.)

[hellyeahtrickster]

It occurs to me that I have friends here that I don't have contact with in other spheres, so ... life update: my mother passed away unexpectedly last Friday. I'm doing as well as one would expect. Been going through her things as both a walk down memory lane and a goodbye. I keep coming across things she never got around to using, and it hits hard that now, she'll never have the chance. And I can't stop thinking of the stories we watched together that now she won't know the ending to, or shows I wanted to try with her. And then there's all the things we used to do together on the regular -- all the places I can never go with her to again. And all the places we wanted to go to "someday", but now she never will.

We were two weeks out from our second COVID shots, and 4 weeks from being totally vaccinated. We were finally going to get back to EPCOT, to see the Flower and Garden show. Finally going to get back to the Florida Mall. Going out to lunch. That I won't be doing this things with her anymore ... it's unfathomable. I can't wrap my head around it.

Thanks, anti-mask / anti-vaccine Covidiots, for prolonging the presence of this pandemic -- basically stealing the last year of my mother's life. She was anxious to see her elderly mother again, because we don't know how long *she* has left ... and now she never go to see her mother again. I knew losing my mom would happen someday, but my mother was relatively young yet, so I thought it would be a while ....

It doesn't help that she died after the second night on a new bed. See, she slept on her side all the time, what with the couch being narrow, but with a twin mattress, the bed was much wider. She snored a lot -- I highly suspect she had sleep apnea. When I found her the next morning, she was on her BACK. The doctor agreed that her cardiac arrest could have been caused by sleep apnea. In trying to make my mom more comfortable .... Yeah, I know, it's not my fault, but I cannot shake that thought away, that she's not here anymore because we tried to do something nice for her. How cruel the humour of the universe can be.

(I'd put the rest of this behind a cut, but I don't see that option anymore? Sorry!!)

And it REALLY doesn't help that, not only have I lost the person I was closest to, but now I am stuck alone with the person I least want to be with: my dad. I'm pretty liberal, and he's pretty conservative. We fight a LOT. We haven't really since mom died (things got a little tense here and there, but not like we usually are) ... but I know it won't last. It can't -- not when he believes BLM are terrorists, or that gays have an agenda. And now he keeps wanting to do things with me, like watch my shows, and a petulant part of me is like, no, this is mom's territory -- stay out. I don't want to do anything with him. (Especially since I know he'll start ranting once the shows start talking about racism and homophobia.)

My parents always had a volatile relationship. Mom didn't know you could get pregnant the first time, and when she found out she was pregnant, her Catholic family bullied her into marrying him.* And he cheated on her at LEAST once (with a girl who was only a few years older than me at the time -- I was 15, she was 19, he was 33). My mother was far from perfect, so I don't blame all the marital problems on him. But my point is they were married "in name only" for about the last 25 years, so it's ... offensive to me now that he would dare to act bereaved.

I know he can be hella manipulative, make himself seem generous so as to be loved, and then turn on you like a viper, getting irrationally angry. I can't drive, we live in a very rural area with no public trans, there are no friends or fam less than an hour away, I've had next to no job for the last 17 years, I barely feel like a functional human being (am coming to seriously suspect I have ADHD and Dyscalculia; I have diabetes and suspect have PCOS and a thyroid problem; all these things having strong interconnections; and I have no insurance, nor do I qualify for aid, thanks to living in Florida), and I feel utterly trapped. There's a reason Rapunzel is my fave princess. I've had bad experiences with cabs, so using Uber / Lyft kind of terrifies me. Plus, he'd want to know where I'm going, and likely either insist on coming too, or insist I can't go, because his house, his money, his rules. The ONLY time each year I get away is when I go to Dragon Con (and I'm worried he might forbid that in the future -- he has once before).

And then there's the problem of ... he has no one. As much as I can't stand him, he lost his job because of COVID, he's lost his wife, he has no real friends (total homebody), and like it or not, he has supported me financially for so long. Even if someone else were to take me in, or I can get a job and save to leave ... how can I leave him (a person with severe rheumatoid arthritis / in not-great health)? I owe him too damn much, and I feel like it would be entirely callous of me. Yes, I realise that that's the abuse talking, but ... it's also true?

Anyway, I feel like I'm on Sliders, and keep stepping into progressively worse timelines.

* Let me mention that I have long suspected my mother is -- was -- on the autism spectrum, but when I mentioned it to one of her sisters, the sister seemed skeptical, saying that if anything, mom had a penchant for reading out loud, so they thought maybe she had a reading disability, and took her to a specialist, but "that's it". (Mom was in "remedial" classes through high school, so it doesn't sound like they did enough -- and maybe couldn't because the science just wasn't there.) I explained that mom frequently seemed to have trouble grasping concepts, especially humour. Like when a radio ad featured someone reciting a love-letter to a tomato, she was all, "That's stupid -- tomatoes can't read!" Try as I might, I could not get her to understand that the love letter was a playful way to tell US about what makes the tomato so good.)

Anyway, when I talked to my grandmother recently, she said that my mom "always had a special way of looking at things," and that she guessed mom was "what do they call it -- neuro-something? 'Aspie'? High-functioning, but still." And I told my cousin about it, and he said, "Wait, I thought it was common knowledge in our family that your mom was autistic?" (Note: we have other, officially diagnosed family members who are on different areas of the spectrum.) People always commented when I was growing up that it was like my mom's role and mine was reversed -- like I was the parent, and she was the child.

But to think my family had *recognised* that something was up, and left me, a child, to deal with it on my own?? To think they *pressured* someone who was "special" into having a child?

I know my mom loved me, but my whole life, she said she wished I'd never been born, and so she'd never have married my dad -- I know both can be true, that she loved me but wished she'd never had me (she'd have never known what she was missing). She only survived her marriage because I was there; I've always felt she'd have had a better life if she hadn't married him. When she tried to leave him, her mother would not take her in, because divorce was against her mother's Catholic beliefs (never mind that my uncle divorced twice)

I loved my mother, but were fought a lot, and she frequently exasperated me as we struggled to communicate. She frequently left words out, but did not believe that she did; when we met her last PCP the first time, he looked at me and said, "Is she always like this, or is she having a stroke?" And she would always angrily proclaim that I wasn't listening, when most of the time, it's that I couldn't get her to understand that she was working from a misconception or misunderstanding in the first place, because she would focus on ONE THING, to the exclusion of all else.

An example of an exchange (copied from a letter I wrote to a friend): We got into a weird argument yesterday. She had asked me for pain reliever, a glass of tap water (you're supposed to drink a full glass of water with the pills), and a "cold water" from the fridge (it's too cold to drink it all at once, but we both prefer ice water in general). Later, I was picking stuff up from her table-tray, including a bottle of pain reliever, and put a bunch of stuff away. When I passed by again, she asked for more cold water. I happened to look as see that she had the tap water glass still full, even though she had asked tor it half an hour before. I asked if I needed to bring the pain pill bottle back, because she hadn't drunk the tap water yet -- had I taken the pill bottle too soon, or had she forgotten to drink the water? She was all, "no, I said I need COLD water!" I said I knew that, and I would bring it; I was just asking of she had taken her pills already, or if I needed to bring the pill bottle back too. Her (again): "I said I need COLD WATER!" Me: "I know, and I will bring that -- I just want to know why you haven't drunk the tap water yet? Did you take your pills?" Her: "No, I'll take them at bed!" Me: "So I should bring back the pill bottle? Did I put it away too early?" Her: "YOU DON'T LISTEN! I SAID I NEED COLD WATER!" Me: "And I said I will bring that -- I'm just asking if you also need your pain pills?" Her: "You already took the bottle!! Did you forget that already?"

And then I finally spotted the white pain pills on the napkin under the tap-water glass, so I knew that no, I didn't need to bring it. But it's a frequent struggle to figure out how to phrase questions so I get the answer I need -- nearly every time, I get her screaming at me that I don't listen.

She loved me, but she was never mothering. She hated to be touched, so never hugged me; I was pretty touch-starved. I learned to read because she was a very slow reader when reading me stories; I got impatient and learned to do it for myself. She couldn't help me with my homework. She resented having to take me to school recitals and science fairs. She wasn't someone I could get advice from. I admit I was often envious of characters who had physically-loving, compassionate, wise mother-figures (who weren't so binary about morality -- and so weren't always screaming that this or that character should die, no matter how small the transgression).

But I wish she were still here to frustrate me -- that's so much better than not having her at all. And I wish I had been better at keeping my temper.

She was an atheist, and firm in that belief. Maybe she's right, or maybe her firm belief is affecting me, because I would dream frequently about others I have loved and lost, and swear I feel them, but with her ... nothing. Just a gaping hole in the fabric of my waking life, threatening to suck all the light and hope into it.

[regrettablewritings]

May I ask for 11, 14, 22 and 28 for Benoit Blanc if you don’t mind?

Certainly! Stuff below the cut!

Disclaimer: I personally headcanon Benoit’s s/o as being somewhere on the spectrum. I know not everyone identifies with this so I’ll also be including snippets of otherwise when I deem it necessary for accessibility. Happy reading!

11. What do they hide from one another?: Benoit isn’t really secretive about himself. He may avoid being upfront about his intentions (most often with regards to a case), but even then he tends to come out with the truth eventually, and with such a sense of calm that it’s more like he simply went along with peoples’ assumptions of him. But when you two start seeing each other more seriously, he does feel a tiny bit embarrassed of the fact that he may not be as up to date on all manners of slang, pop culture, etc as he would like to be. It’s not a hidden thing, really; it was a given there would be a bit of a gap there, what with the slight age difference going on. But he’s supposed to be one of the greatest detectives out there, isn’t he? He may not take the title seriously but he surely has some vagueness of an image to uphold, right? He has to have tabs on everything. Besides, deep down, he wants to seem impressive to you. Like I said, it’s not so much hidden . . . but the tab to Urban Dictionary sort of is. You hadn’t even meant to find it, you just needed to use his laptop for a quick moment when -- “. . . Ben? What, uh . . . what’s up with --. . . Why do you need to know what ‘guap’ is?” “It’s for a case, darlin’!” He has since become a little less afraid of asking you what certain terms mean. You, on the other hand, aren’t exactly as candid as your other half . . . (Spectrum Option) You weren’t exactly sure what possessed you enough to think you could skirt by without him noticing. The man was a detective after all; surely he would’ve noticed at some point that there were some things . . . amiss about you. Sure, he could chalk up your difficulty holding eye contact to shyness; everyone used fidgeting devices now, so that you had quite a few on your desk as well as on your person wasn’t anything spectacular. But surely he noticed that whenever things got too loud or rowdy at the station you disappeared; that you seemed to get particularly upset when your system was thrown off; how certain textures were enough to completely rattle you; that you had a speech pattern that could, in a word, be described as  . . . “unique.” Besides that, you knew it was silly to hide the fact that you were autistic: It was nothing to be ashamed of! It was simply how your mind worked and you were doing the best you could with it. And you wanted to say you were doing pretty well in most regards, but past social experiences had a way of convincing you otherwise. Particularly in the romance department. Potential date mates would get thrown off by your seemingly stony expression or occasionally flattened tones; they didn’t always find themselves impressed by your preference of going slow; sometimes your methods of stimming threw them off; and that was if they could even get you to stop being so anxious about certain social interactions. You knew deep down that Benoit wouldn’t be like that; he was far too kind to. But also, what if?! Eventually, before the courting got too, too serious, you felt it would just be better to be honest and open with him about it. You owed yourself that much. Thankfully, you never really needed to know what the “what-if” could be, as it turned out that you were right: Benoit already kind of knew you were somewhere on the spectrum after his first few interactions with you. Having more intimate encounters during your courtship honestly all but confirmed it. This isn’t his first, fifth, or even tenth rodeo wherein he’s encountered and befriended someone who’s neurodivergent, after all. He understands to a point why you wouldn’t necessarily jump to telling him, however, though he’s glad you felt comfortable enough with him to confide that. (Non-Spectrum Option) Honestly, it’s hard to hide anything from the last of the Gentleman Sleuths. He’s so perceptive that even if it meant hiding snacks from him, you’d eventually come back to your desk to find him eating your stash of Craisins. The one thing you have managed to keep a secret, though? Your old fanfiction identity. In your teens, you were scribbling down fics anywhere you could get them: Fanfiction.net, Quizilla, Blogspot . . . On one hand, you thank the experience for giving you practice with proper writing skills, which is part of what earned you the job you have. But on the other . . . they just weren’t the greatest showcase of who you were, young or not. And Benoit does not need to know about the shipping wars you started on accident. Thankfully, Quizilla is gone and nobody really uses Blogspot anymore . . . But sometimes he asks you if you’d ever read or watched books and movies you just so happened to specialize in, or what your thoughts were, and you can’t help but wonder if that blond bastard is on to you.

14. When one has a cold, what does the other do?: The moment you appear to be under the weather, Benoit’s already activating Mother Hen Mode. He summons the Mama Blanc in him and already has you laying down in bed or propped up on the couch with some quiet music playing or a court procedural drama playing while he’s in the kitchen making homemade chicken soup. If you put up a struggle eating or are too tired to feed yourself, he’s not above feeding you. He’s going to make sure that you eat at least enough to be able to take half a zinc tablet without getting sick, and make sure you drink plenty of water and vitamin C. And God help you if you think you can just do work from home because even if you’re not experiencing the worst cold, he’s not convinced you should be up and about instead of resting. At most, he���ll let you sit on the couch instead of staying cooped up in your room all day. He’ll even join you, often times sitting next to you and reading through files he brought home from his own casework. He doesn’t really mind the close contact in spite of your protests. Which is annoying because when he inevitably catches your cold, he’s more fussy than you are. Not in the man flu fashion, but he’s a lot more stubborn about resting. He knows it’s what’s best, but he’s so used to handling himself over the years that he’s gotten into the habit of doing as much work as he can before dropping, with self-care just happening to take place between his illness naps. You have to actually scold him and hide his files for a bit until he eventually falls asleep thanks to his exhaustion and the medicine you make sure he takes. Because of this, you’re more task-oriented when Benoit is sick. Certainly, you make sure that he’s eating the proper things and taking the right vitamins and medication and getting enough rest, but between all that you’re also making sure that he has less to worry about. You quietly clean around the house, you do the laundry, you run as many errands for him as you can (groceries, dry cleaning, etc), you even meal prep. That way when he gets better, he’s better in a cleaner house with next to nothing to worry about besides the paperwork he’d had taken away from him earlier. As much of a fight as he puts up at first, he truly does appreciate your generosity and kindness. He’d kiss you if it weren’t for the fact that he’s still a bit sniffily.

22. Where does their first kiss happen?: In the filing room. Sexy, right? You were technically still courting at this point but it was undoubtedly clear that things were getting serious. Nobody said anything about it, though. After all, was now, in the middle of a potential scandal, really the best time to talk about going steady? Probably not. Though you’d be lying if you said the thought didn’t buzz around in your head all day and all night. You had to be professional about this. Just as Benoit is, you reminded yourself as you watch him reading through the files you’d given him moments earlier. His brow furrowed before slapping the manila folder shut. “Well, that’s a crock of shit,” he muttered. “Hm?” you questioned, perking up. Maybe he needed input? He certainly seemed to be seeking yours more often as of late. You tried not to shiver when he focused those icy blue eyes of his on you. “This doesn’t make any sense,” Benoit explained, giving the file in his hand a gentle flap. “Carters doesn’t even have a history of violence; I sincerely doubt he suddenly became overwhelmed with the temptation to attempt fratricide all over some rather tacky jewelry. Which therefore begs the question. . .” He paused dramatically. “What do you suppose would cause a man to jump from petty theft in high school to murder in his mid-thirties?” You shrugged. “Bad friends,” you half-joked. It gave Benoit further pause. “. . . What ever happened to that accomplice of his? From the petty theft?” he questioned. Obviously, you didn’t have the answers; but the department filing room most likely did. Somewhere amongst the many boxes and cabinets, lined up in crammed and musty-smelling aisles, lay the answer. And, to your dismay, it appeared to be on a shelf a little higher than you were tall, serving as a load-bearing wall against other boxes of files. You grimaced as you arched your feet once more, attempting yet another lurch forward to reach. You weren’t sure who let this section of the filing room get this bad but whoever it was (you were sure it was Debbie; it was probably freaking Debbie), you were going to wring their neck. “(Y/N), really, I insist --” Benoit began, but you were quick to cut him off. “No, no, Mr. Blanc,” you insisted. “I got this.” You couldn’t see him press his lips into a thin line. “You know, it’s perfectly fine to call me by my name,” he said. “Mhm,” you grunted. “’M just . . .keeping it professional.” Dammit! Your fingers had just brushed the edge! Just a bit more -- “This isn’t a situation for HR, I technically don’t really work here,” you heard him chuckle. “And anyway, stop being so stubborn, and let me help.” “It’s fine!” Really, it was: You managed to nudge the box closer. “(Y/N), be reasonable.” You suddenly felt warmth against your back. Oh. Oh, God. He was pressing up against you as he leaned forward. You felt your cheeks burn at the stimuli. With far more ease, he nudged the box close enough to the edge to where it could easily fall into your waiting hands. Unfortunately, any relief was short-lived: Truly, the box was load-bearing. You yelped as the threat of musty cardboard and decades worth of paperwork threatened to fall on you . . . only for it not to actually be carried out. You glanced upward to find Benoit, once again, leaning forward. Just enough to shove the materials further on the shelf. You hear him huff and chuckle. “See? I bet you’re real happy now that I came along, aren’t you?” You turned just enough to glare at him. It didn’t last: Nobody can really find themselves glaring at Benoit Blanc for long whenever he had a smile on his face. At the very least, you couldn’t. He had that effect on you and you wanted to despise it so dearly, at the very least now you did. But you just couldn’t. Nor could you bring yourself to turn your face away as you noticed him leaning in closer. You had to be honest: You never took Benoit for the sort of man capable of performing such a strong liplock. Strong, warm, yet sweet and enticing -- “BLANC!” The sudden cry was more than enough to make you part. There, in the threshold, stood your less than amused superior, arms crossed and glowering. “Do you really think that this is the place to be making out?” Lt. Elliot demanded. You whimpered, hiding your blushing face behind the box still in your arms. He didn’t wait for a response. Instead, he scoffed and stormed off, feeling his point had been made. As you began your walk of shame out of the room, you hissed at your newly acquired boyfriend, “This is why I wanted to keep things professional!” To your dismay (and deeply hidden amusement), however, Benoit appeared to be unfazed. If anything, he seemed quite pleased with himself. He chuckled as he placed an arm about your lower back. “Oh, admit it: You didn’t mind being a little unprofessional.” He didn’t need to use his smarts to deduce that, and you hated that.

28. Why do they get jealous?: Benoit rarely gets jealous. He trusts you enough, and he trusts the bond you two share a great deal. But on the rare occasion he exhibits what would be called jealousy, it’s usually because of one of two things: Either A) someone manages to best him at wits or glamor and it appears to impress you, or B) someone younger (and hungrier) than he approaches you. The reasons why these are rare occasions, though, are simple. For the first bit, Benoit is mighty smart. He won’t go as far as to consider himself a downright genius, but he’s aware enough to know that his mind thinks a bit more broadly and rapidly than the average person’s. Sometimes, though, the lifestyle he runs brings him to circles where he must interact with great minds. And sometimes, as you are often his companion for certain circumstances, you may meet, say, an Ivy League alumnus who isn’t afraid to kiss you on the hand as a greeting or give you a grand tour of their vast estate while Benoit has to hold interviews. And as for the second bit, Benoit knows and accepts he’s no spring chicken. He also knows he may not be fast and furious in terms of romance, and some younger folk may find that tedious. The worst case is if that Yale graduate with the big fancy mansion is also around your age. But he also knows you. In the end, any insecurities he might have about his lifestyle or age are squashed because he knows you’re not the sort to just grab onto anyone just because they’re rich, shiny, and new. You’re honest and know what you do and don’t want, and he also knows that even if you’re having internal battles with your thoughts and feelings, you eventually come out with them. That’s how he knows you thought that one heir to the Havington Spa empire was a bit of a pompous douchebag, or why you were bored listening to that one poet who many saw as a prospective Nobel Prize winnter. You try not to get jealous yourself. Maybe you put him on a pedestal, but you certainly see a lot of value and endearment in the likes of Benoit: He’s smart, handsome, understanding, kind . . . Maybe a bit ambitious and odd, but nothing too terrible. He was, without a doubt, one of your favorite people to be around. But sometimes, you worried if he could potentially be another’s favorite as well. There had been the occasional case where his gentleman charm appealed to a woman involved, usually suspects but occasionally they were just vaguely related the the situation and decided to throw their two cents in, if only to have more of a chance to be around Benoit. You couldn’t tell if maybe you were reading too into it, or if Benoit was ignoring them or even flat out oblivious to their efforts, but come on: There’s only so much ignoring a man can do when a lady has her bust pressed up against his arm! But what really drove you nuts was whenever she’d initiate banter with him. One of the best ways to the detective’s heart was wit. And sometimes, to your dismay, these cases would include women who could make hogwash sound like Shakespeare. And that they made it look so easy drove you insane! But luckily, that was about as far as the women would get: The best way to Benoit’s heart was embracing the unusual, which was startling against the backdrop of a prim and proper gentleman they assumed him to be. They’d quirk a brow when he found himself making odd little rhymes, stand by awkwardly as he monologued to himself, and assume he was joking whenever they came upon him singing showtunes or making references to musicals. You, however, responded accordingly: You’d echo his limericks to feel them for yourself, listen and take notes of his allegories so you could contribute your own thoughts, and joined in on whatever song he brought up. In the end, you needn’t really be jealous because he’s already made up his mind: You’re his favorite person. And there isn’t a pair of doe eyes and a thesaurus mouth that’s going to change it. But still: You’d rather not take that risk!

I got carried away in some areas I think . . . But hopefully it turned out okay!

Character Ship Headcanons

[onthevirgeofdestruction]

35 Q’s for Fanfic Writers

From this post

I’m having a shitty, rude alter-y, crap night so I’m just going to answer all of these to distract myself and focus and to not bother anybody just making my own post and putting it under the cut btw, notice to anyone not aware: since I’m moving I won’t likely be updating anything until I’m done doing so.

1. From one to five stars, how would you rate your writing?  (No downplaying yourself!) 3/5? Could use more editing and description and can be weirdly paced.

2. Why do you write fanfiction? Because it’s better than focusing on pain 24/7. 

3. What do you think makes your writing stand out from other works? I don’t seem to have a specific narrative voice that people recognize but I’m pretty proud of mostly organic dialogue. 

4. Are there any writers that inspire you? as a rule i never look up to anybody for inspiration but there’s some stuff in my ao3 bookmarks I fawn over.

5. What’s the fic you’re most proud of? Right now, none of them. It changes normally, anyway. If get too proud then I’d get my ass kicked by RSD if someone didn’t like it so it’s safer this way

6. What element of writing do you find comes easily? Dialogue. 

7. What element of writing do you struggle with most? Organic description, poetic language kind of stuff. I can paint a scene but I’m not so great with bring out out a feeling with description alone.

8. Which character(s) do you find easiest to write? Janus and Virgil are probably tied. They both have things I struggle with but I don’t have to go back and do much adjusting of language and tone with them. Though admittedly my Virgil is signifigantly more foul-mouthed than canon and I tend to prefer pre-AA feral asshole Virgil.

9. Which character(s) do you find most difficult to write? Patton. I write him the least, so people can probably tell. I love Patton, I really do, but it’s so hard to keep away from fanon Patton. 

10. What’s your favorite genre to write for? Angst w/ H/C obviously. Or if you’re talking about regular book genres, Fantasy. I fucking love fantasy world building.

11. Who or what do you find yourself writing about most? Trauma. I blame Daeram. As if Ayri isn’t a giant Angst Demon.

12. Tell us about a WIP you’re excited about. Slopes. I’m really into it. I’ve got three one shots running right now. Patrons can read the first part of the unnamed cat remus one, there’s also a coffeeshop au tropey nonsense one like eglantine & lycoris, but Slopes is addiction angst. Mmmmm. Virgil is addicted to coke and alcohol and will listening to his friends even be in time? Who knows, especially not me, but there’s already over 30k. 

13. First fandom you ever wrote for? InuYasha. Or was it Harry Potter? Or shit, The Blue Sword? Fuck, I’ve been writing for a long time, I really have no idea.

14. What’s your favorite fandom to write for? Sanders Sides. The characters are the perfect dynamic for writing since they exist in balance of each other and the popular, easy to project on archetypes featured are incredibly fun to do basically any scenario with.

15. What’s the weirdest fandom you’ve ever written for? Weird storywise? Kingdom Hearts? I can’t even follow the plot anymore. Weird Fandomwise? Sanders Sides. Its simultainiously the fluffiest and angstiest nonsense at the same time.

16. Any guilty pleasure trope(s)? Vampires. Gay ones. Gay Vampires. I also love calm tol and angy smol.

17. A trope you’ll never, ever write for. Any tropes that normalize incredibly toxic behaviour or tropes that are inherantly ableist, but I can’t think of any.

18. Wildest fic you’ve ever written? Incorrigible continues to be complete nonsense.

19. Do you prefer canon-compliant, AUs, or something in-between? AUs. I mean closest I even have is canon-divergence other than a single short.

20. Gen fic or shippy stuff? I like it when there is gay nonsense along with a plot that is treated as more important than the relationship the most. But I like both. There’s more shippy stuff in tss so i read more shipping action by default.

21. Favorite pairing to write for? (platonic or romantic!) Anxceit/Sleepxiety, but in general, give me darksides or give me death/j

22. Do you listen to anything while you write? Almost everything I write has a special playlist I listen to to help me write it, but otherwise I listen to my Nyan playlist, an alter is picking the tunes, or a voidfam playlist. I never have music off. When my internet is down I just listen to the songs I own or Anxiety’s theme on loop.

23. Do you prefer prompts and challenges, or completely independent ideas? I’m fine with all of them. I love working with prompts but I tend to deviate. And I’ve never done a challenge since I can’t do deadlines and bad things happen bingo never sent me a card and I applied three times.

24. One-shots or multi-chaptered works? I am generally multi-chaptered stuff, but I’ve been working on a few one-shots lately that are much longer than most one shots.

25. Have you ever daydreamed about side adventures/spin-offs from your fic? Tell us about them! I was originally thinking of doing some little 13-year-old Dreaming!Roman (y’know, the one with a job) shorts but it turns out I just had an alter of that little bastard and that’s why I inexplicably know more about him then I ever even considered. I still might do them after Dreaming is done. But that’s paced so slowly who knows when that might happen. Otherwise I put stuff in my notes and just do shorts of it if I’m like “oh you know what’s cool???” but since I can’t daydream maybe this question doesn’t apply to me.

26. Is there anything you’ve wanted to write, but you’ve been too scared to try? I want to do more autism stuff, and I’ve had it demanded a few times, but I’m scared of being that explict about it for some reason. Possibly because I might be, possibly because I’m scared of doing it wrong even though I’ve accidentally coded multiple characters autistic. I’m scared of explictly tagging them as such, too. 

27. What’s the nicest comment you’ve ever received? That I can remember off the top of my head? I’m going with one from @a-genz-with-trauma-and-kins. It really helped me out and was just so kind and literally the best christmas gift I got in 2020. 

28. How well do you handle criticism when it comes to your writing? I can handle it alright but Daeram is a little fucking pissbaby about it. Constructive criticism helps people get better, so I appreciate it. I can’t handle critism that is incomplete, though. “i just don’t get it” or “I don’t know I don’t like it” kind of things. If I can’t understand the why to fix it then things get out of control. And then I spiral and RSD for like four days minimum. If it came from an anon or a troll, too, It might not bother me for as long. Things that are just like “this is shit and you should feel bad” just make me laugh. Couldn’t even bother to read it long enough to insult me proper? I don’t care.

29. Have you ever gone outside of your comfort zone for a fic? How did it turn out? I have a few times. Mostly in shorts and prompts, I think. I think they turned out okay. They’re not particularly inspired or anything.

30. Tooth-rotting fluff or merciless angst? Depends on my mood. Am I triggered? give me the fluff. Am I vibin? Angst. 

31. Do you have any OCs? Tell us about them! Fuck, fam, no, I can’t, I have so many. I have multiple original stories and some of them have very large casts and like holy fuck. Or do you mean in Sanders Sides fandom? Um, Morgan and Thorn in PD. The lesbian and her himbo dynamic. I love them. They’re dorks. Morgan is strong person with sharp tongue and soft romantic heart and Thorn is just so kind and so dumb and so exciteable he’s like a puppy. They were just filler characters and I got attached to them. Felton even gets redemption for being an ass later in PD, like oof i never intended to include so much OC content, especially for names I just picked randomly. 

32. Summarize a random fic of yours in 10 words or less. nope I’m doing all of them because these are fun plea for my new self: 2 gay vampires, 4 humans, 1 braincell dreaming while I wake: trauma child needs therapy and so do you break: big oof, oh dragons, oh why, go virgil go rebuild: virgil is so not okay there’s more virgil to deal painful death: gay teens drink themselves into a new religion stargazing: whoops we didn’t realize people actually cared whole castle: everyone will throw down for kid!patton, even you incorrigible: found family with a shot of psychological horror and crack dangerous instincts: wholesome crime syndacite action  slopes: addict gets mugged and thinks that’s just fine with him conflagration: logan avoids everything ever like a champ cat!remus: bored fae shifts gay pining from one person to another  caffeine cyptids: caffinated gay panic goes faster than regular gay panic eglantine & lycoris: more tropes than you can toss a shoe at storytime: overpowered virgil also overreacts literally always

33. Is there anything you wish your audience knew about your writing or writing process? an alter and I write together and I have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen, what I’m writing about, or even what year it is. I often don’t even remember what I wrote. There’s no outline. I have an idea and I pick things at random for it. There’s just notes and an evil gleam in a demon’s eye. The only reason I know more than readers is because I take a long time to edit and some of these stories have fucking alters up in my head who can tell me things. Daeram tells me nothing. The writing demon supposedly has all this knowledge but I have absolutely no clue because he does not talk to me, he just fronts and slams out 9k in a few hours or we cofront to write and I’m like “oh no she didn’t” while typing 

34. Copy and paste an excerpt you’re particularly fond of. i’m fond of the entire painful death series and I tried to find something I really liked without spoilers in stargazing and I couldn’t so here’s a random thing from incorrigble: “So, what do you do with your friends?” Patton continued on with a megawatt smile. “Grand larceny,” Virgil deadpanned and glared at Patton, who was taken aback. Remy and Andy just broke out laughing while Virgil tentatively sipped his still-too-hot-cocoa. 

35. Ramble about any fic-related thing you want!  slopes my dudes slopes i have learned so much about cocaine! like wow! I thought for a minute it was going to end with MCD around 30k but it swtiched from whump to hurt/comfort and I still don’t know if it’s going to be MCD but look at that funky little coke/alcohol addict go, it’s a medical wonder he’s alive! It’s not like there’s what seems to be a little talked about interaction between alcohol and cocaine that causes a toxic chemical to build up in the liver which can result in liver failure and sudden death at basically any moment! Which is part of why it may result in MCD but this time no ghosts! maybe it’ll be h/c with whump elements or maybe it’ll be whump with h/c elements we can’t know for sure

[adamgeorgiou]

Arthur, My Cousin and Me

I don’t know how to detangle Arthur from myself enough to write dispassionately or accurately. Instead, what follows is something like half him, half me. It’s more journal entry than elegy. To a general audience, that might make this less interesting than it otherwise could be, but it’s what I’ve got. Remember this if and when you get to the end. 

Anyway…

I feel like I knew Arthur. Then I heard what others had to say and saw what others had to feel. Following his death, I still feel like I know him. In certain ways better than most or all. But there’s a part of me that’s often strained to believe that I was in more of his inner circle than I actually was, and his death exposed the truth of my position.

It’s a practical observation, not a dramatic one. I’m not saying he had a dominating and hidden alter ego or that he pitied me. It’s simpler: his death revealed my confidence in our bond as an illusion innocuously leftover from being kids together, from back when we actually spent serious time together. I want him back now like I’ve continuously wanted back what we lost long ago, but now it’s double-permanent and legible. Before it was remediable and blissfully hidden — embarrassing in hindsight, like most nostalgia. 

But he also had that same nostalgia and held onto it, too, which makes me feel better. That mutual thread to our shared past was strong for both of us. It gave us a lot to lean on, but we leaned on it a little too heavily. Without that crutch, our adult lives were mostly opaque to one another, but also we were getting close again, involving each other again. Building anew. The left hook following the right. It’s a shame we weren’t closer than we were, when he died. It’s a shame our getting closer was cut short. 

I guess it makes sense, generally: as adults, we’re all doing niche things, and niches are small and excluding, so everything else trends towards becomes small talk. (And that’s fine and right, because focus is necessary for growth. Just try and stay loyal, which Arthur did and my cousins do.)

Maybe it wasn’t so much that I was uniquely outside of Arthur’s confidence, but more that we had both (or all) grown a bit into our own isolation. In any case, I mourn the loss and its new finality.

So that’s him and I as adults, apart. Who was he, though? What can I tell you?

Well, I’ll briefly start with me, for context. Who I am is still him, the result of his influence, for sure. Of growing with, then adjacent to him, then apart, then converging again (more on the converging, later). If you distilled me down and got rid of all the litter and trivia, the rare and potent stuff remaining would be similar to what I knew of Arthur. We had the same essence, as I saw it. So I can show you that reflection, and you can tell me if it’s accurate (See: first paragraph’s disclaimer). (Also, note my calling out our similarity is carefully placed right before I go on to flatter him best I can — tactics, baby — but don’t read my ego into this. What follows is all my cousin.)

Arthur and confidence. Old saying: the pro fails more often than the amateur tries.

The subtleties of his personality were sophisticated and complicated. He could spar at an exceptional level from an early age. But he started out lazy and overthrowing a lot of his punches, gassing out quickly. 

As a kid, he was autistically independent, preoccupied and hyper focused, but without any of the social hangups. He could talk to anyone and impressed everyone. He was adored, and rightfully so, but he also marched to the beat of his own nunchucks, exclusively. You couldn’t bullshit him, and you couldn’t placate him unless he was genuinely fascinated with what you offered. This is how kids should be, insatiably curious and wild. It was my favorite era of his, and where we spent the most time together. I was such an asshole to him, and he still always hung out with me. And we followed each other into a lot of similar interests.

Then he got his first hit of testosterone, and followed a phase where he literally held a fist up in every photo taken of him. Ha. Puberty’s a bitch. That didn’t last long. Reality checked and he stabilized. The important thing is that he knew he wasn’t going to watch, he was going to play. I loved him here, jealously and from a further distance. I couldn’t hang.

Then maturity: The firm handshake, the direct eye contact, the bright teeth, the smiling cheeks. Approachable, but not daffy. If anything his charisma was a prank and shrewd tactic; a car salesman during the first act, a playful subversion before the intellect and wit made their debut; or, worse for you, they didn’t. You’d start talking to Arthur and think you were walking in on a frat-boy breakfast table, then he’d go on to tell you why your problem was really because of what Robert Moses did back in ‘56, or he’d ask if you thought the The States were in a similar stage of decadence as Rome before its fall.

To him, your reason was more important than your choice, which is an axiom of all good conversation, one that most people are afraid to admit because doing so requires the ability to tread water. It’s easier to talk about the weather or watch sports. But Arthur wasn’t afraid of going deeper, and he had the tact to know when it was the right thing to do.

He was a man of appetite. A true traveling gourmand. He could scoff at you from within a seersucker, but he never compared oysters. If a menu offered Seattle’s or Rhode Island’s, he’d reply, “keep ‘em coming” and demand littlenecks or (and) crawfish to follow. He was less interested in varieties of wine, more in varieties of tomato and whether you had a good coarse salt.

He was spoiled rotten — as we all were, and mostly by the same sources — but he lacked pretension, except for that deliberately wielded for ironic effect. Underneath all his developed and developing taste was a lot of comical stoicism — laughing at gross injustice and absurdity, but also doing something about it, literally. His principles were conjured up from experience with the trappings of pleasure, with readings of history, with a variety of surprisingly worldly stories. I always wondered where and how he got it all. The guy had seen things, but not that many things. How was he always so versed? I don’t know, but if you’ve ever watched him eat a box of clementines straight up, wide-eyed in a wrinkled rugby shirt, then you would also know he was more pensive than pleasure seeking.

Entertainment was a defense, one he was growing out of as he realized it interfered with his goals and their requirements. A defense against what? I don’t know for sure, but I suspect the typical. On one hand, a lack of patience and a petulant refusal to be bored. On the other, the existential and solipsistic. A defense against the subconscious shame and pain of cynicism. Was love real? Was wealth worth anything? Was the world bogus? Was anyone authentic? Ethical? Himself? Others?

Look, I’m not saying he was overwhelmed with this gooey crap. He was a thinker, not a navel gazer. I don’t know if he even said any of this stuff out loud, but anyone with a brain is going to ask some questions about the life they’re living and the society they’re in, and most of us don’t like the first obvious answers we come up with. Then we do something about not liking those answers. We put fingers in our ears some of the time, we do what’s easy some of the time, and we do what’s difficult some of the time. And also, anyone with any talent is going to find themselves bored among the average, and falling short of their own standards. These were Arthur’s struggles, I think. At least, they’re kind of my struggles, and Arthur seemed to harmonize with me when we’d commiserate. Or maybe we were both pompous assholes, wannabe aristocrats from the suburbs. Or maybe that was just me. Ha.

To some, it might seem appropriate to haunt him here in this postscript, as if to justify his death as the terminal approach of a depression into cessation. Let me be clear: this was totally not the case, from my vantage. Instead, the above attitudes are more like the required cost-of-entry to a great show. If the unexamined life isn’t worth living, it does not mean the examined one is easy to live. The alternative is Judge Judy and a monogrammed armchair. Not for Arthur. Caulfield eventually quits his bitching, but he has to eat a lot of shit first. Siddhartha finally leaves the brothel, but he had to walk in that door in order to walk out of it later. Hard times are the prerequisite to epiphany. Painful and confusing; but hopeful, not despairing. 

And you could tell Arthur was among this company because the personas he employed became increasingly sophisticated, useful, attractive, and comfortable. From the brawling, pack-leading, indulgent, jokester/show-off into the relaxed, independent, luxurious, conversationalist who wasn’t as afraid to let his guard down, who was increasingly responsible. He was cultivated. He had a tamed self-consciousness (as we all aspire). It was impressive to watch him pull his own strings, to compare that with your own attempts and be humbled.

And thus, as I see it, the irony, hard to swallow, is that Arthur was finding answers to life’s hard questions in fistfuls. Love was possible. Work was worth it. Viktor Frankl was right. And he was learning patience and conviction, already better at their practice than most (e.g. me). As Dan put it, he was just taking off. He jumped and then a hand reached up from the almost escaped gravity and cut him by the heel.

A complete, but simple tragedy.

Complete, because the good guy lost. 

Simple, because Arthur’s life was not some melodramatic airport novel. His death was a lightning strike, a deus ex machina in reverse. A two sentence accident, not an assassination. Not much more to be read from it. Mortality is hard, right? (See: Genesis).

And for all my elaboration, I don’t even think Arthur was all that noxiously introspective or exceptionally self destructive either. The guy knew how to love and be loved. How to let his hair down, appropriately. How to shift gears and drive forward. How to resist temptation. How to find and be good company. How to stare at a fish tank. How to sit and read. How to eat fruit in the sun. He was typically bright, with a lot of flair and personality. I know he was grateful.

Or I’m wrong. Maybe I’m inventing a story to make sense of something more concealed or of pure chaos. I don’t know. I don’t think so.

In any case, it’s a tragedy. And regardless of what is true, I’m still glad I got to hear his story and be part of some of it. He was and remains a good influence to me, a fellow bright eyed boy attempting to sustain himself in the body of a straight-backed man. He’ll live on for a long, long time. And I keep talking to him.

That’s some of what I knew of him. And given this is my catharsis, forgive me further, but more about me:

Sadness, gratitude, and disappointment. 

I’m sad. Still? Yes. Always? Probably not. The inevitability of death hits a certain emotional bedrock after enough love is lost. I’m probably not there yet, still more distance to fall, but things are tapering off, in the aggregate. Maybe I’m just cold. 

Sadness is the least interesting. I am separated from someone I love, and that sucks. We all have people we’ve loved, and we are all damned to lose them. But yes, I get those black bile clutches to the chest as I’m reminded that Arthur (et al.) is gone. And I wanna hold your hand, if you’re feeling it too.

It’s a curse that requires gratitude. Time keeps on slipping, and the portion of time that one spends with good people is shorter still. I’m thankful for Arthur’s good company. From childhood to peerdom. This is what I’ll try and focus on. It’s the mantra I’ll repeat. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Then there’s the sulking disappointment. My head slowly shaking, my eyes unfocused contemplating the loss of the unpredictable conversations, the refreshingly interesting trivia, the uniqueness, the independence, the honed never impersonated taste, the great breadth of knowledge, the artful ball busting, the avoidance of cliches, the shared recommendations, the belly laughs. Obnoxious mutual indulgence — food and talk — during Thanksgiving at Stacy’s table, the shared past at Everit Ave, the just started planning. The feeling of a just missed answer to the question of how to get it back, continuously nagging.

More on that: I’m dealing with a huge mess of unanswerable questions and impotence. There’s so much broken by his leaving, least of all in me, and I can’t fix any of it. No way to organize it. I can’t even help others fix it. Acknowledging the impossibility of the situation seems better than ignoring it, so I will (…acknowledge that death breaks the world and makes inconsistent a lot taken as granted). Arthur’s death is an oily surreal void in the middle of the road. A portal to nowhere. And sure, life will go on. We will preserve. Time heals all wounds. That’s all true. But any schmuck can offer a platitude. I want to be responsible for what he’s left behind, in precise detail. I want to pick up the slack, fill in the blank. But what was his remains his, locked up behind whatever door his soul is now shut. It’s maddening.

I went so far as to tell Olivia that I was her brother, too, and that I would be there for her. Idiot. I love her, she knows I love her, I know she loves me. Yada, yada. I need no pity for my vomiting on the rug. My point is: I can’t be Arthur. I can’t even be close to Arthur. Adam — while still pretty good — isn’t a substitute for Arthur. I apologized for being so naive and sloppy, but the moment taught me what I was trying to say above: that I am ignorant of so much of Arthur’s life, and in ways that can’t be remedied by interviewing his friends or reading his book or wearing his shoes, sort of speak. A lot of it isn’t just unknown, it’s unknowable.

This requires more thought. Surely something can be done. Entropy can’t be rewound, but duct tape can keep a plane in the air. So here’s something I’m going to try: I’m going to be more vulnerable. I’m going to expose myself the way a brother or a son might, and see what happens. It won’t transform me into a replacement, and I’ll probably make a clown of myself. But it’s worth a shot. To build different connections, instead of replicas. I can already see that the cousins have been hammered stronger by this. Now it’s time to be deliberate, and keep that train going, if possible. And yea, I’ll do the practical stuff. You can’t call Barb, enough. And I���ll call Liv, too, but with finesse, without overdoing it. And the rest of our family, as well, because we all lost something. For some a spleen; for others, more vital organs.

Moving on.

It’s further maddening to have Arthur’s death aligned and intertwined with so much of my pleasure. I’m a week into marriage. I’m ecstatic and overwhelmed by the potential of my future. I’m also newly terrified of losing a child not yet even conceived. That’s a fun one. Probably a lot more neurosis to come. But, yea… it’s a violent set of waves to endure and ride. It’s exhilarating and crushing, and guiltily I’ll admit, more of the former. I’m pronoid.

The guilt compounds as I realize that I’m only comparing the conflict between my pleasure and pain, when the actual accounting includes my pleasure, my pain, and all the pain of all the others he left behind, those we both loved. What about Alexandra? Barb? Liv? Dan? A dominating, trailing factor; ego-hidden and selfishly deprioritized. What would Jesus do? Not have a wedding during shiva, although I appreciate all the encouragement and insistence from the also mourning invitees.

Back to Arthur and I having grown apart and then, more recently, back together:

There exists a line separating most relationships. On one side of the line you have people who have a reasonably complete model of you in their head. (See: Theory of Mind.) On the other side of the line are people who have a functional model; they know what they need to know to get the job done, but they don’t know, perhaps have never seen, the whole thing. For ex., a spouse vs a colleague (most of the time). 

The line is called intimacy, and relationships on both sides of the line can be valuable, but the intimate ones have more potential in both directions, fat tails; the intimate ones can yield fortunes and bankruptcies. Acquaintances are tepid.  

I described it above, how Arthur’s and my relationship moved from the intimate to the distant. I’ll skip further detailing that transition, and just get to the thing that hurts now: we were getting markedly closer, again. I could see the trajectory of our friendship and would bet on our returning to intimacy and confidence.

If the isolation of vocation and growth drives most bourgeois adults apart and into impersonal silos, then eventual mastery and plateau allows room for a focus on humanity, again. And humanity is universal and objective. People can stand on it, together, and get to know each other (again). That’s where I felt Arthur and I were.

I felt like Arthur and I had taken two separate tracks at a fork 15 years ago, and just recently those two roads started to merge back into the same path. We had stories to tell each other, of our time in the wild. It was the basis for a new bond, perhaps stronger than the old one.

Unsolicited phone calls. Talks of marriage, health, wealth. Suggestions of books and podcasts that were actually followed through with, instead of disappearing into the void like most cocktail party prescriptions. We’d follow back. Not rushing each other past awkward silence. Being patiently invested in one another. Showing up. Talking about vulnerable topics, like fears and aspirations for careers, and relationships, and family. And then, right during the peak of this rekindling, this jubilee, he died. And I doubt that I was the only one whose newfound growth and compatibility were cut short. You’re not alone.

So I hurt for the spent love, yes, like that of most grief. But I hurt more for the lost potential. I had so many fresh dreams that included him. It’s disappointing and sad.

To be clear, I’m disappointed in what’s lost, not disappointment in him. I blame him for nothing, even if maybe I should or others do. But any of his mistakes could have easily been mine, and so I sympathize. I’m not angry. Ambition implies risk. Vice is vice is inevitable. Growth means growth from something. Different contexts, need not apply.

Anyway, what else? The thing I linger on now is a weird faith. I have little faith or rather I have difficulty finding faith. I scrutinize faith until it’s demoralized. And yet, the discontinuity introduced by Arthur’s absence gives me faith, illogically but compellingly. I don’t strive for it, it’s simply there, point blank. I can’t explain it, but I can describe it.

Arthur is gone forever, and Arthur is part of my future. Both irrevocably true, yet incompatible. What to do about it? Apparently, not much. My mind absolutely and happily refuses to budge. The feeling that Arthur is part of my future supersedes the knowledge that he’s not. Knowing he’s gone does nothing to my belief that my future includes him. So it continues to. Sue me, I can’t help it.

See you in the funnies, Arthur. (More trivia: I never called him Artie or Art or Archo. He was always Arthur to me.)

Lastly, some good, more recent memories (skipping some that have already been shared):

The last thing I spoke to Arthur about was extensive advice, over the phone, on how to structure a prenup. “Don’t put anything about kids in there, because the courts won’t accept that you understood what you were agreeing to, prior to actually having the kids.” Smart. “Everyone should get one! The courts encourage it! Helps ungunk the works.” Ha. Kelly and I never got a prenup, but the candid advice on such a touchy subject makes me laugh.

Eating a whole pig at a communal table, biergarten style, at Saxon and Parole, in New York. Arthur talking the whole table’s ear off about everything, and then after discussing eating brains, we asked the chef to bring the pig’s over, and he did. Afterwards, walking to our trains, jolly, drunk.

Visiting Arthur in Scotland. Going out to some Uni warehouse party, and me getting lost with some bird. I didn’t have a working European phone, and so when I got home at dawn, seeing him and his big bravado looking like a worried mother goose made me laugh and proud, like a big brother again. Him cooking the two of us mussels and linguine with three whole heads of garlic. Delicious. Steak in Edinburgh, and him showing me the castles like he was himself a duke, personal friends of Hume and Smith.

I wished we went on more walks together.

Us planning on going to Joe Beef, in Montreal, with Alexandra and Kelly.

Him calling me to tell me Anthony Bourdain had died, and subsequently talking about it. “If he can’t make it, who can?” There’s that cynicism again. But it was a candid moment. And we ended that talk, more or less, believing we could make it, even if Bourdain couldn’t.

Discussing whether we were fated to end up like our parents. 

Him shooting the .38 up in Gilboa.

Legos, spanky, ice box bedroom, V8-turbo toilet, the pool, the trampoline, the screen porch and its green furniture, endless chicken rolls followed by cold pizza, karate in the basement (no shoes on the mats), rolling on the carpet (i.e. roll mosh), forts, the Barbie game on the gateway computer in Izzy’s room, Snood, army men in the mud ripping up sod by the square foot unit, jealousy listening to Timberlake camp stories, the suburban with 100 blankets in the third row and Don McLean on the radio, toxic farts, the Pokemon store, the Pokemon cards I’d steal from him after going to the Pokemon store, a million cups of Lipton at Barb’s table, Rage Against the Machine in Dan’s car, lanyards, fishing in the Hewlett Bay, Harry Potter, him never sleeping over my house and getting rides home at 2am after attempting to (me pissed), hiding in that lone pine tree in the front yard, making window art out glitter glue, salamanders, watching him attempt to ride a bike in the driveway.

A menial history, but ours. Anyway…

Arthur, you were great. It’s not for me to say that you’re now resting in peace, because I think you were pretty zen while you were alive, in your own pastel-colored kimono kind of way. So instead, I hope you’re as satisfied there as you were interested here. I’ll see you soon, and until then, I’ll try and hold the line for you. Love ya’.

[currantlee]

You mentioned awhile back that you think Felix has some autistic traits. I'm curious to know what traits you think he has? And, to make it interesting, how you think that would affect his relationship with Sylvain?

Before I answer that, I want to clarify for people who don’t know me and might read this that I am an autist myself (Aspie to be completely clear), so I know what I am talking about here. Also, please keep in mind it’s a spectrum. No two autists are alike, not in regards of their symptoms or personality. I know several other people with my diagnosis and some of them show symptoms I don’t while others don’t have symptoms I’m showing.

Update as of the current day: it seems that I have been misdiagnosed with Asperger’s and actually suffer from hospitalism (which does have some of the same symptoms as Asperger’s does) due to years of emotional manipulation and abuse from my mother. I sincerely apologize for falsely saying that I have Asperger’s. I didn’t know any better.

Alright, buckle up, because this is going to be a long post.

Felix’ Aspie Traits…

First up, I think Felix shows signs of Asperger’s Syndrome. Americans will likely know this as high-functioning autism, since it’s as far as I know not an official diagnosis in the US (it apparently used to be, but it was merged into autism spectrum a while back). In Europe and Asia however, it still is it’s own diagnosis.

As for the signs of the syndrome Felix shows: the most obvious one is his dislike / inability to make direct eye contact, which he even admits himself. This is a very common trait of especially aspies and everyone has a different way of describing how it makes them feel uncomfortable. I personally find it impossible to focus on what a person actually says if I do make eye contact. That is because making eye contact for too long actually freaks me out a little, for reasons I can’t explain. It’s just… Scary.

Another obvious trait is Felix’s focus, which borders obsession, on swordfighting. You can clearly see that he is hesitant to do anything, unless it benefits his swordsmanship in some way. For example, he asks Byleth why he should learn magic. If they reply that it will benefit his swordsmanship, he will regard that as a good answer. Another example is Flayn asking him to chop wood and vegetables for him. He only does it once she points out how this would serve as a great exercise for him.

This ties in with another thing about him: dissociation. No, I don’t meant the personality disorder. It is merely the process of getting completely absorbed into something (like a task or a daydream). It is a way to deal with all the information that floods our brains because our perception filters don’t work properly.

You can clearly see in several of his supports that Felix gets so lost in training that he doesn’t realize when people try to address him anymore, even if they are standing right next to him, most notably his support with Dorothea.

A less obvious trait is the fact that Felix can possibly not tell if someone is joking or not (and yes, that actually takes me some time as well every time someone in that game jokes). While he plays it off with his snarky attitude, which makes it seem like he is simply annoyed, there is more than a few examples in which he takes a joke deadly serious. An indicator for that is that Sylvain is always quick to tell him that he was joking with something, possibly because he knows how hard it is for Felix to recognize a joke (I mean, it is kind of obvious if you have grown up with an Aspie even if you didn’t know they have this condition - at least I have been told so by a childhood friend of mine). Yes, he does it with others as well, but he is never as quick with it as he is with Felix.

This also shows in the fact that he is unable to understand metaphors. A great example of this can be found in his support with Bernadetta, wherein she tries to explain him why she isn’t scared of him anymore by telling him that ghosts are only scary because you can’t see or talk to them (however that is supposed to explain it…). Felix immediately mistakes this for Bernadetta thinking he is a ghost.

A far less noticable result of this trait is the fact that he tries to make sense of anything. While this may not be seen as a result immediatly, let me explain. Aspies have two ways of dealing with their natural non-understanding of social stuff. They either back off and isolate themselves (mostly children do that) because they are scared or they start to observe and ask questions.

In Felix’s support with Annette for example, Annette just sings something because she feels like it. Felix however immediately tries to find the logic behind her lyrics, questioning them because they don’t make any sense to him (since he doesn’t understand Annette is just singing for fun and not trying to put a message into her lyrics).

This also shows how Felix finds it difficult to empathize with others. Unless something is very clearly explained to him, he just can’t make sense of it because his brain works different from others. Another example for this is his support with Lysithea: when he catches her eating cake, he just thinks nothing about it. Lysithea however immediately starts interpreting his reaction (like… “Normal” people do this so often and I cannot state how confusing and annoying I find this) and thinks he might go tell everyone. Therefore she gives him the cake in an attempt to keep him from doing so (even when Felix never intended that), which is something he finds absolutely confusing. First up, he doesn’t understand why she thinks he’s going to tell everyone (showing that Felix has no idea how a complex social concept like reputation works) and second, he doesn’t understand why she gives him the cake and assumes she wants to annoy him. Which is not the case: to Lysithea, her cake is something really important, even precious. That is why she gives it to him and it is also why she tries to teach him the value of cake later on. Anyone else, even if they hate cake, would probably acknowledge this gesture as something very sweet.

Another thing this support also shows is how Felix also has problems adapting to a new, sudden situation. He absolutely refuses to try her cake, which she made for him and him only. I mean, he gives in eventually, but before that he is pretty insistent. I know he doesn’t like sweet stuff, but out of being polite, anyone else would probably at least have it given a try without all the arguing. While this is also a good example for how Felix doesn’t understand the concept of politeness (I mean, he is very blunt anyways), it also shows how he finds it hard to adapt to new situations. I mean, he probably tried cake before, but never Lysithea’s cake. Also, she made it specially for him, so she probably thought about how he doesn’t like sweets.

Speaking of politeness though: I often hear that all Aspies / autists in general are very, very polite. This is not true though. Many of us are indeed more polite than “normal” people because first, basic rules of politeness (like not talking with your mouth full of food) is something you can easily learn. Most autists will be happy to, because those rules are actually very, very clear and not open to interpretation. It means it is something we can easily do right. Some other basics (like you don’t tackle people in the subway) are also something that comes naturally because… Ever tried tackling an autist? Please don’t.

However, as I mentioned before, it is a spectrum. Not every autist is alike. There are also enough autists who do either question or not understand those rules. As for bluntness… I think almost every autist will agree that we don’t get lying for the sake of being polite. Which results in the famous pointing out how terrible you friend’s new hairstyle looks (and not even understanding what you did). Felix’s bluntness is similar to that.

Felix is also shown to not interpret additional meanings into words and therefore come up with unconventional things in his support with Ingrid: aside from the fact that he leaves early (another example of him being unable to understand social rules as long as no one explains them), he suggests stuff like stealing the enemy’s horses (which is actually a logical thing to do), meaning something outside of the battlefield. Everyone else apparently assumes they are talking about strategies on the battlefield, when actually only strategy in general is mentioned.

There is something I want to make clear about all of this: autists, and it doesn’t matter if high-functioning or not, are not dumb. They simply lack the instincutal knowledge about social interaction normal people have.

A little quirk: Aspies tend to collect things, even if it is absolutely senseless or even very, very strange from a rational perspective, even to themselves. For example, I know someone who actually collects DLCs, including those they don’t even own the game for. I used to collect soaps because I liked the smell, but never used them. Eventually they got bad and I had to throw them away, but recently I started collecting Copic markers (don’t worry, I actually use those). Felix has a little more of a sensemaking collection: he collects swords. And yes, not all people collecting stuff are automatically aspies. It is just a quirk that is very present within the spectrum.

And now another quirk: Felix is bad at harmonizing. This is actually a common thing: aspies do not have a good control over their voice. While this doesn’t mean we’re all bad singers, it means we tend to talk too loudly, too quietly, very monotone (though this mostly affects Aspie children) and yes… It is hard to talk and sing when others are doing it as well. For example, I never had a problem with singing in front of a class and always had great marks on that. But as soon as it came to choir singing or choir speaking (baaaaaad memories of some language classes here by the way), I really struggled with it. Because while I’m not exactly bad at singing or speaking, I absolutely suck at harmonizing. Funny thing: it is the same with most Aspies I know except one who has sund in the church choir her entire life. So yeah, I can feel Felix here.

Also, Felix is a great example on how autists are never the same: he can keep it short. I obviously can’t.

… and how they could affect his relationship with Sylvain

Alright. You asked for headcanons, you get headcanons.

Getting Together

I think Felix and Sylvain might have a hard time getting together to be honest. Like… It is a constant dance around each other, constantly backing off as they try to adjust to each other.

I think the biggest issue in any autist-nonautist-relationship is recognizing and adjusting to each other’s wishes, needs and boundaries. For example, you can’t expect an autist to cuddle with you every day, just like that. On the other hand, “normies” usually yearn for exactly that: physical affection, be it in form of handholding, cuddling or sexual contact.

So at the end, both sides need to make compromises. Sylvain would have to come to terms with the fact he can’t (immediately) get what he wants, while Felix would have to metaphorically descent into the cold water, meaning doing something he isn’t exactly comfortable with (at first). If you have ever stepped into a cold lake or pool, you know you should rather take the stairs than jump… At least, that holds true for me. You have to adjust to the temperature, which takes a while. It’s the same with adjusting to new situations for Aspies, really.

Like… Once they are actually together for the first time, the first thing Sylvain does is dragging Felix away from the training grounds since Felix doesn’t quite understand that being in a relationship doesn’t mean being alone next to each other. Which leads to Felix breaking up for the first time because “I don’t need a relationship then”.

I think he comes to Sylvain again after like a week because he wants to give it another try. But only if he doesn’t have to spend all of his time with Sylvain. He spends more and more time with Sylv than with his sword though as time goes by.

So yeah. I think it would be a very slow burn between them, a constant dance around each other. They might also break up a few times because Felix isn’t ready or Sylvain notices he is getting too impatient before getting together for good.

Being Together

I think each of them still has their own room at the Officer’s Academy and also when they’re in the army after the timeskip. Doesn’t mean they don’t sleep in the same bed though. However, Felix absolutely refuses to let Sylvain enter his room in the beginning because Sylvain always, always puts something where it doesn’t belong in Felix’s opinion.

Felix is a side sleeper and also refuses to not sleep with his swordhand free. Sylvain usually sleeps on his back and takes up way to much space on the pillow for Felix’ taste, so Felix usually abuses Sylvain as his personal pillow when they share a bed. I think Sylvain likes that though.

Also, when they’re sleeping in different rooms, they usually swap their pillows around, so they are at least able to smell each other. I think that one develops from Sylvain stealing Felix’ pillow as a joke when the latter refuses to sleep in his bed once - Felix actually breaks up after that once more because he feels pressured. Once Sylvain has cleared the misunderstanding and they’re together again though, Felix decides to respond to Sylvain’s joke by stealing his pillow as another joke.

When they’re doing stuff together, they are often comprimising or trading favours. Like… If Sylvain trains with Felix, they go into town together afterwards.

Or they snuggle under the starry sky together because Sylvain wanted to cuddle while Felix just wanted some quiet time for themselves and maybe talk a little. They speak about different constellation’s names (Sylvain probably knows them all because he used to impress girls with those) and how Felix thinks constellations are an absolutely stupid thing because he sees different things in them. In the end, they end up thinking of their own constellations (like the Sword with a Strange Grip or the Horse that Feels a Little Nausy).

Another headcanon: Felix actually hates other people laying hands on his hair / head, because he is pretty sensitive there. However, Sylvain practices to be carefuly only for the chance to do Felix’ hair. So sometimes, he lets him and just grits his teeth while Sylvain is busy. However, I think Felix loves Sylvain washing his hair.

They also like to take each other out for lunch / dinner or spending time at the library in the evenings once the training grounds are closed. Also, Sylvain is a romantic sap who likes to drag Felix to watch the sunset at the fishing pond. He might even get Felix to play some boardgames.

Alright, the next section is something I’m usually not so fond talking about and I really went back and forth on if I should add it to this post for quite a while, but I decided to give it a go because this is something normal people might actually find a little comedic (note: I don’t really mind if Aspie traits are used in a comedic way in media, as long as the figure having those traits is not warped into a total joke through that or heavily stereotyped. If you are, then that is fine, everyone feels different about it). I personally didn’t understand the comedy of this until it was explained to me by some frineds. I think I can empathize a little on why people think it’s funny by now, even though it’s definetly not my kind of humor, so I decided to give it a go.

Basically when Sylvain suggests having sex with him, Felix is like “Why? If you want to have a baby, you would need a girl to do that!”

The background of that is that while many Aspies gain some understanding of the emotional component of sexual contact, most Aspies I know (including myself) struggle with understanding this nature, especially if they have zero personal experience. Rationalized, it is merely a tool to get babies and that is exactly how many Aspies I have met think about it, at least before gaining experience.I figured Felix might share this view at least initially, before he gains some experience.

Alone Together

However, I think that they not only have separate rooms, but also live separate lives. Like, they never really get married. That’s not entirely a Felix thing though. I think both value their independency too much to make themselves depend on someone, Sylvain perhaps a little less than Felix.

I think there would be countless examples of being alone together, like when both are reading books in the library. They’re technically together, but they aren’t interacting.

Felix does especially need space when he experienced a sensoric overload or after he was arguing with Sylvain. I think when either is the case, Sylvain always finds him at the stables later on, where his horse is. Sometimes, Felix is asleep, sometimes he is awake but barely approachable. I also think Sylvain’s horse often lays down next to him and Felix likes to pat it. In any case, Sylvain always gets him a blanket and waits until Felix comes to him again (because he will, it merely takes him some time).

Due to this, Sylvain probably gets him a cat some time. Felix mentions in his support with Bernadetta how he “doesn’t dislike” cats, so I think he is fine with that. The cat usually also follows Felix if he needs space.

Animals and autists often get along very well. We have a natural or developed liking for them, as they are easier to communicate with than humans and know when to leave us alone. Also, they actually communicate to other humans when to stop, which is often helpful for both sides. So yeah, I think the cat would do that as well. And of course, it would take up the entire space in the bed when Sylvain wants to sleep there (which might actually be something they argue over).

And yeah… That’s actually all :3 Thank you for the ask!

[phantom-le6]

Episode Reviews - Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4 (6 of 6)

To round of my look into season 4 of Star Trek: The Next Generation, here are my reviews of that season’s last two episodes.

Episode 25: In Theory

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

Lt. Commander Data and Lt. Jenna D'Sora are in the torpedo room configuring several probes with which the Enterprise will explore a nearby nebula. D'Sora explains that her ex who she just split up with has asked her to dinner, prompting Data to remind her why they broke up as part of a standing agreement between the pair of them. Later they play together in a chamber concert along with Keiko O'Brien. D'Sora complains of her abilities as a musician, but Data insists that he could not hear anything wrong.

 Later, on the bridge, Data is reviewing the information from the probes sent into the nebula. He theorises that life might have evolved differently in the nebula because of the volume of dark matter detected. Captain Picard orders the ship to the nearest planet within the nebula. Data and Jenna configure further probes, when she kisses him on the cheek and then on the lips, before leaving the room. Data seeks the opinion of his friends, specifically Picard, Guinan, Geordi La Forge, Commander Riker, Counsellor Troi and Lt. Worf. Data decides to pursue the relationship and goes to Jenna's cabin with a bunch of flowers, where he informs her that he created a romantic subroutine for the relationship.

 Meanwhile, the Enterprise is approaching an M-class planet within the nebula. Picard enters his ready room and finds his belongings scattered on the floor. He calls in Worf, who cannot explain their displacement. Jenna arrives at Data's cabin where he is painting. She tells him to continue, but is then annoyed when he does so, causing him some confusion. The ship arrives at the coordinates for the planet but finds nothing there. Then it suddenly appears as the ship's computer warns of a depressurization in the observation lounge. The crew investigate and find all the furniture piled in one corner of the room.

 Data visits Jenna, but she seems unhappy and he is acting erratically in order to find an appropriate response to make her happy. It becomes evident to the crew that the nebula is causing distortions in space; Picard orders the ship into warp to leave the nebula as quickly as possible but this speeds up the distortions. Whilst investigating them, Lieutenant Van Mayter is killed when a distortion embeds her into the deck. Data discovers that dark matter is causing the distortions. The ship can detect the pockets at short range, but not in enough time to move out of the way. Worf proposes using a shuttle to lead the Enterprise out, and Picard insists on piloting it alone.

 Picard pilots the shuttle through the field of distortion pockets; he is initially successful, but the shuttle is damaged near the perimeter of the nebula. Chief Miles O'Brien transports the Captain back to the ship before the shuttle is destroyed. However, the Enterprise is now near enough to the edge of the nebula to no longer need the shuttle to scout ahead, and they quickly depart. Afterwards, Jenna reveals to Data in his quarters that she broke up with her boyfriend because he was emotionally unavailable and then pursued Date because he was the same. Data realises that she is breaking up with him and explains that he will delete the subroutine. Jenna departs and Data is seemingly unperturbed, although his cat, Spot, jumps into his lap as if to comfort him.

Review:

This episode was Patrick Stewart’s directorial debut on the show, following on the heels of fellow cast member Jonathan Frakes taking a shot at directing during the previous season.  Like Frakes, Stewart was handed a Data episode to do, and in some respects it’s a good episode.  In others, it’s less brilliant, specifically having a techno-babble B-plot thrown in because TNG was very much enslaved to the idea that the character always had to have an enemy or an anomaly putting them at risk, regardless of whatever else might be going on.  This plot doesn’t inter-connect with the A-plot except for both things happening in the same episode, and it includes Picard playing shuttle pilot when he’s not really the TNG character of note by way of piloting skills.  In fact, TNG and DS9 never really had a definitive helm officer in the way that the original series had Sulu and Voyager had Tom Paris, which when you have to do an episode with this kind of B-plot is a bit of a must.

 However, the meat of the episode is Data making forays into the world of romantic relationships, and to some degree I appreciate how some of his behaviours in this area are quite autistic.  His asking around the majority of the main cast and Guinan for advice, his inability to pick up relationship skills ‘on the fly’, and his emulation of stereotypical romantic interactions rather than just being himself are all things I can see someone on the spectrum doing.  Hell, I’ve done them all in my own unique way, and I can’t help but cringe a little reflecting on that.

 However, Data is only able to go so far both with his relationship and with his representation of the autistic mindset in this scenario because he lacks emotion.  I understand that this was meant to be the point; according to Memory Alpha, a lot of original series fan mail for Spock was from women who felt they could reach the character’s suppressed emotional core.  This episode was born of a fascination with this aspect of fandom, only it was written to see if a romantic relationship could work with a being who was hard-wired not to feel any emotion, to really explore the ‘ghost in the machine’ concept through Data.

 This, for me, is where the episode’s main plot really loses efficacy, because by definition a romantic relationship requires emotion, and as such Data was never going to succeed.  Frankly, I’d rather have seen them hold this plot off until the films when Data is finally given license to have emotions.  It would have been great to see Data have a romantic relationship then, because it would have been a more complete, well-rounded exploration of his status as an autism metaphor within the world of Trek.  As it is, characters like Voyager’s Doctor and Seven of Nine end up serving better in this capacity.

 It’s also disappointing to see that, not unlike some of my own early experiences in romance, Data isn’t being approached out of a genuine romantic interest on the part of Jenna.  To her, he’s basically a re-bound fling; she’s struggling with being single again, keeps having to be reminded why this is so, and tries to make something happen with Data to ‘fill the void’.  It’s not unlike how some girls used to pretend to go out with me to test, and mock, my gullibility, and for me it’s right up there with people who go out with someone just to avoid being single (done that), or to get something else like a roof over their head or cash.  To my mind, no one should ever do anything like this; if you want a romantic relationship with someone, it should be real romance or nothing.

 If you want a fling, a rebound or anything similar, then you seek out something more casual like friends-with-benefits, and you say that’s what you want up-front.  Leading people on is never ok, and it seems to me it only happens because of neurotypical selfishness and unwillingness to talk about you want before anything happens. The model of discussion-first-action-second is something that already exists within certain forms of sex play, and it’s probably going to gain wider and wider use over time for consent in general, and it’s exactly the kind of thing that would not only make all relationships more autism-friendly, but it would also vastly reduce the potential for being misled.

 What would have improved this episode, aside from Data actually having emotions, would have been to see the female guest character seek him out just from general attraction with no recent ex being mentioned, and perhaps having the B-Plot put the A-Plot characters in danger more directly.  That would have helped the B-Plot gain some additional worth and would have created a dramatic scene that would have more conclusively answered the ‘ghost in the machine’ question around Data.  As it is, it’s a middling episode and a poor showing for something Data-centric; I give it 5 out of 10.

Episode 26: Redemption (Part 1)

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

Captain Picard and the Enterprise are asked to attend the installation of Gowron as the Leader of the Klingon High Council, as it is Picard’s final duty as the Arbiter of Succession. Gowron intercepts the Enterprise en route and informs Picard that the House of Duras will challenge Gowron's position, which may lead to a Klingon civil war. Picard states he cannot intervene beyond his role as arbiter, and asks Worf to escort Gowron to the transporter room. There, Worf informs Gowron of the truth about his discommendation; Gowron thanks Worf for killing Duras, but explains that he cannot clear Worf’s name because he needs the support of the council, many of whom are loyal to Duras. Worf then requests a leave of absence from Picard to visit his brother, Kurn, who controls a small fleet of Birds of Prey, and to urges him to back Gowron. Worf plans to use this support as leverage so that once installed as the Leader, Gowron can reinstate their family name.

 Interrupting the ceremony, the Duras sisters present their deceased brother's illegitimate son, Toral, who has the lineage to challenge Gowron. Picard is called on to determine Toral's candidacy. Relying on Klingon law, Picard comes to the conclusion that Toral is too inexperienced to be Leader, and secures Gowron's candidacy. This, however, prompts a majority of the council members to abandon Gowron. Gowron returns to his ship to meet with Worf, who offers his brother's fleet's support in exchange for the return of his family name to honor. Gowron initially refuses, but they are attacked by two ships loyal to the House of Duras. Worf and the arrival of Kurn's fleet dispatch the attackers. Picard completes the rite and installs Gowron as Leader; Gowron restores Worf's family honor.

Gowron and the Enterprise crew learn that the Duras sisters are assembling a fleet to incite a civil war. As the Federation cannot get involved in internal affairs of the Klingon Empire, Worf resigns his commission from Starfleet to assist Gowron and Kurn. As the Enterprise evacuates the area before fighting begins, Toral and the Duras sisters consider Picard a coward, but their Romulan ally, a woman bearing an uncanny resemblance to the late Tasha Yar, emerges from the shadows and warns them that Picard may return.

Review:

Apparently, this episode was originally planned as the season 3 cliff-hanger finale, but had to be delayed because those working on the show who wanted this episode really had to fight for it.  Apparently, Gene Roddenberry didn’t want to do any kind of war stories, even if that war was internal to the Klingons and not something the Federation got involved in.  Granted, I don’t think this episode could be as good as it is without everything leading up to it, and part of that groundwork lays here in the fourth season as well as the third and second.  Nevertheless, it seems that once again Roddenberry was taking his idealism one step too far, and I’m guessing him having to step back from production of the show due to increasingly ill health around this time was the only reason we got this episode.

 Being only one part of a larger story, of course, the episode loses out a little for not being quite as self-contained as it otherwise would be as a one-part episode.  However, it delivers a lot for part 1 of a two-part narrative; we finally see Worf get his discommendation lifted and Gowron take command of the Klingon Empire, only to then see Worf resign his commission when Picard won’t wade into the civil war, even though we all know by now Picard should realise it’s not even remotely an all-Klingon affair.  Picard and Worf are well aware that the Duras family are thick as thieves with the Romulans, and they’ve had the recent events of ‘The Mind’s Eye’ to illustrate to them that dividing the Federation and Klingon Empire is high on their agenda.  Surely Picard should have been able to put 2 and 2 together in this part and sided with Gowron outright, rather than appearing to cling to the Prime Directive.

 This is where TNG, and Trek as a whole, falls down a little; it can’t seem to come up with a consistent approach to the Prime Directive.  Some episodes it gets broken, others it gets adhered to, and at times you’ll get a non-adherence for a situation that in a later or earlier episode saw the rule being upheld. Back in season 1, Picard was willing to dare the wrath of the Edo’s ‘god’ to save Wesley Crusher from execution, but in this episode, Picard won’t act to save Worf when Gowron’s ship gets fired upon. Both times someone from the Enterprise was in danger, so surely Picard should take the same actions, but he doesn’t. I can’t tell if this meant to be a follow-on from ‘The Drumhead’ and they stupidly cut out some exposition where Picard says ‘we have to be extra careful now to avoid another Satie-style witch-hunt’, or if it’s just a lack of attention to continuity.

 For me, this episode really relies on Worf and Gowron to carry it, as Picard’s so-called ‘tightrope walking’ just makes him look decidedly unheroic and not a little ruthless.  Honestly, this episode would have benefited from a more Kirk-ian/Sisko-esque style of captain.  Overall, I give it 7 out of 10.

[aroworlds]

Those With More, Part One

When Mara Hill's magic results in her brother's impossible, wondrous transition, of course Suki wants to know how she did it! What if Sirenne's magic workers can help others find euphoria? What if this magic can heal Suki's hands—or at least lessen her pain? But Mara, distrustful of priests after their failure in protecting Esher, won't share her power.

A senior priest must bear responsibility, but Suki suspects her problems lie deeper than lack of oversight, and her reluctance to discuss her aromanticism with a woman who needs support only proves it. Would she have preserved Mara's faith and Esher's health if she hadn't first avoided revealing herself to her aromantic kin? If she'd faced their expectations that she shoulder their pain and grief as well as her own?

Suki has lived her life by the Sojourner's second precept, but how does she serve when she doesn't have more to give—and never will?

Contains: A disabled, non-partnering allo-aro woman struggling with the expectations of her young, fledgling aromantic community; an autistic, aromantic priest reconsidering their expectations of their community's leader; and an allo-aro woman in need of support as she struggles with her non-partnering, aro-ace brother's illness. 

Content Advisory: Please expect many references to or depictions of aro antagonism, allo-aro antagonism, amatonormativity, familial abuse, mental illness, suicidal ideation, death, gender dysphoria, chronic pain, ableism and ageism. This piece contains non-detailed, non-specific reference to a character's past suicide attempts. 

Length: 4, 409 words (part one of two). 

Note: This is the last story in my Suki mini-series, but it refers to characters introduced in The Sorcerous Compendium of Postmortem Query and is best read following the stand-alone story What Makes Us Human. You can find links to all on my pinned post or on this Tumblr master post.

Non-romantic love, to Suki, serves a similar role as the Sojourner or any other god: a fine concept in theory, but while she respects others’ need for a guiding framework, she can only nod vaguely at love’s existence.

***

They talk in a west-facing corner of the inner gardens, the sun edging towards the valley’s cradling ridgelines. Suki sits with careful stillness, resting her bony wrists and fingers in her lap. Her companion, Mara Hill, twirls a lock of dark hair around her finger with the ease of a woman unaware of her movements’ toll. Few people reach the ends of their lives untouched by disability, but Suki still aches to watch others take their youthful ability for granted … even if Mara’s restless fidgeting suggests anxiety as much as mind-type.

Suki was an artist once, albeit not the kind of craftswoman draped in the world’s renown. She built wonder from bare ingredients. She made the needed and the practical from scraps of thread and fabric. She took her hands’ ability to knead and shape for granted, revelling in others’ appreciation, until the pain built to a degree even she couldn’t deny. Given the option, she’ll always sit in her garden with her knitting needles or workbasket, making.

She can’t reconcile herself to hours spent halting her fingers and wrists in too-often-futile hope of preserving later use.

“Must I explain, one trans woman to another, why we want this?” Suki works to ease her voice, to sound possessed of patience and released of jealousy. “We … dabble, in spells and medicines, parlour tricks to lessen anguish, but this … it can be freedom. When wrought correctly.”

Now, Suki sees little sense in seeking such a transition: she’s had time to forge an accord with her body and gender. If said accord holds a touch of the defiant, rebellion nonetheless sheltered her through aching moments of feeling her body less hers than a chafing suit she’ll endure for this life. Gender, though, only began the war of Suki’s selfhood separating from her own blood and breath, and it long ago won second place on her list of impossible wishes.

What if Mara’s magic can do more than change a body’s sexual characteristics?

What if it can ease Suki’s hands, heal her knees, return to her the gift of unthinking movement?

Mara shifts her hands to twist the untied lace dangling from her bodice. She’s a handsome woman: tall and long-limbed, her cheekbones sharp enough to slice hard cheese. Full lips, wide skirts and a waist-length sable braid soften the flat planes of her face, shoulders and hips. Suki can’t call Mara beautiful, but she may have used the word “ethereal” if Mara didn’t also bare her haphazard humanity: hair falling out of its pins, scores of grass stains marking her petticoats, a waistcoat absent any matching buttons, a dress ten years out of style knotted up to bare clashing stockings and scuffed boots. Life with Mara, Suki suspects, is no small amount interesting, but one needn’t fear from her airs or pretentiousness.

This conversation, regardless, comes none the easier.

“I know you understand,” Suki says, attempting a beseeching gentleness. “How can’t you?”

“It’s a secret.” Mara stares at Suki with a distressingly direct gaze, as though hoping to emphasise her sincerity through eye contact. “Handed down from witch to witch. I’ve sworn oaths to the living and the dead. I can’t. And I won’t.”

Mara Hill is also a terrible liar.

“You insist this isn’t sorcery. It’s witchcraft—a type of magic that can be taught! Why, then, can’t you teach us? Can’t you imagine what we could do, if we could study and understand it?”

Just as Suki regrets such desperation-fuelled bluntness, flashes of brown, red and grey show through the eucalypts and fern-encrusted rockery dividing the outer garden from an interior courtyard. Only two other people in Sirenne stand tall enough to be seen over said wall of rocks, and neither looks towards her. Moll, their face set in their accustomed expressionlessness and their iron-grey hair scraped back in a braid, walks close by their companion: a man with Mara’s cheekbones, his gaze distant and his face cavernous. While health warms her sienna skin, even when moistened by anxiety and dappled sunshine, his sallow complexion provokes no kind adjectives.

Esher Hill is the gaunt, walking embodiment of the nightmare Sirenne’s priests struggle to dispel when discussing medicines and spells—a man who appears drugged and ensorcelled into a puppet-like lifelessness, a state absent all vitality.

His sister caused, provoked or necessitated most of it.

Most.

Like too many guests, Mara brought her brother to the monastery when absent solutions in her home village’s offerings of lay priests, physicians, magic workers and well-meaning family members—a last, desperate resort. Esher wasn’t happy or healthy, but he had muscle and energy enough that Suki decided his taciturnity somewhat intentional. He stopped to pet Sirenne’s horses; he allowed their cats to settle on his lap. He scowled when faced with chattering acolytes. He reacted.

Mara’s power stripped his bones of flesh and tissue in the quest to craft him an almost-cis body. New organs, somehow, grew; others withered and sloughed away like an unused cocoon. Such impossibility should be a miracle, but can one fairly call a tempest that devoured his body and hammered his mind miraculous?

What if, though, this transition becomes a goal identified and worked towards with desire, preparation and consent? What if a patient understands what lies ahead? Can one then cope with magic’s trauma, a difficult moment endured in travelling a chosen road? Or what if they narrow the scope to one change, one part of the body?

Will she then see a butterfly, bloodied but eager to take flight?

Will she then be able to live her last years still wielding her pastry brushes and knitting needles?

“It’s dangerous!” Mara follows Suki’s gaze towards the rockery, her lips pressed together in pale, thin lines. “Can’t you see that? Shouldn’t you?” Her husky voice sharpens like a blade on a grindstone. “And what makes you think I should trust you with it? Or would?”

Suki bites her lip while counting backwards from ten. Her tongue runs to tart even when voicing second and third thoughts, and she fears she offers little sympathy when she finds something worth speaking: “But less dangerous in better circumstances? If he knew, was prepared, agreed, expected…”

If a witch doesn’t work her magic behind the priests’ backs, but that’s less Mara’s fault than Sirenne’s.

The question remains: if a witch fears dysphoria's ache the cause of her brother’s depression, why didn’t she offer this magical transition weeks or months earlier? Why didn’t she gain Esher’s prior agreement and approval? Why did Mara bother to take him to a monastery? That she wrought this after Sirenne’s failures dashes Suki’s hopes: Mara’s supposed witchcraft is sorcery, unpredictable and unreachable. Nothing more than a panicked, desperate deal made with demons, a grave power Sirenne can’t replicate ... even should a priest be fortunate enough to make the same bargain with the same brace of demons.

If demons routinely offered such vast power, how many trans people wouldn’t sell their soul for a body suiting their nature?

“Prepare? After you made me—” Mara’s voice cracks like thick, shadowed frost under morning’s first footstep. “If there were anywhere else, if I thought … we wouldn’t be here!”

Suki shifts in her chair, her hands and feet aching as though a purple-black bruise engulfs her joints. Is it a wild, ridiculous joke that her body throbs as if beaten while showing no wound to draw sympathy? Why must a black eye or nasty scrape provoke sorrow while injuries or illnesses unable to heal garner, at best, a mute acceptance? Why do people following the Sojourner’s path lack comprehension in the second precept’s broadness? Why must a priest spend her day asking questions lacking comforting answers?

Because Amadi’s ideal became her god: question.

Mara’s desperation, too, deserves an answer.

“We failed,” Suki says, her own throat roughening. “We failed to serve Esher’s needs. A man who has too long had those needs unmet, and believes he has failed in even wishing his needs met, reacted to this lack in despair. There’s nothing irrational in that.” She wants to smile, because she can’t not know the rationality behind such a conclusion, but Mara won’t understand. She doesn’t know about Mama Lewis. “We went over our changes with you, for we can’t allow this to again happen. I ask you sincerely: are we now doing something inadequate? Are you unhappy with Moll or Thanh’s service? Within the limits of our resources and ability, what aren’t we doing that you think we should? How can we better help Esher? Help you?”

Suki didn’t assign Esher’s first priest. She didn’t speak or condone the words that gave him reason to lose the last shred of a trust abraded by too many authoritative people. She didn’t know why he needed consideration in the priest given to guide him; the unasked question wasn’t hers to speak. Ignorance, nonetheless, rings like an intimate, personal failure.

Not a failure Sirenne’s priests share as a collective whole.

A failure, terrible and tragic, in Suki.

Could she have tried harder to serve as an aromantic priest?

Mara purses her lips, her green skirt clenched in tight-knuckled hands. “He’s … always been. A little. But only in the last few years was he so distant, and I don’t think … he wasn’t bad like this until after the Thinning and Benjamin.”

Suki takes Mara’s non-answer as indication that, at least for the moment, she has no objection—and perhaps that’s a victory, but what good is winning when the war shouldn’t be fought? Suki sighs, shaking her head, as Moll and Esher move past the gap in the trees, vanishing behind canopy and granite outcrops. Only her garden, in its art-defying muddle of ferns, trees, mushrooms and bright-coloured orchids, remains—and while, ordinarily, such clashing shades appeal to her, today those greens and reds feel another mockery, a symbol and privilege undeserved.

Even when Moll gave her the opportunity to address her neglect, she took retreat in her brusque manner and authority, confident that a conscientious priest wouldn’t examine the shallowness of her answer. She offered reassurance, solved a problem, revealed herself in the most cursory of ways and fled with fears and feelings still buried within her aching bones.

Question.

If she considers god her ideal and Amadi’s ideal her god, why didn’t she?

“Benjamin is your partner, yes?” Suki shifts her left ankle, thinking even a circumlocutory attempt to build rapport better than another futile attempt at questioning. “May I ask what happened at the Thinning? You needn’t answer.”

Mara’s body softens, although she doesn’t ease her grip on the skirt. “Have you had … family, friends, come visiting? After they … pass?”

For all that belief in the Sojourner’s path embodies the human struggle to conceptualise, negotiate and accept death, hir followers still deal in euphemisms. Family come visiting. Bad like this. Suki, in the outspoken rebelliousness of a would-be priest, spent a year into her novitiate chanting “death, death, death” at her mirror before bed, just to prove that death isn’t a black-cloaked reaper summoned upon saying hir name.

Such boldness failed her, of course, when Mama Polly passed.

“There’s always spirits flickering about, but few speak.” Suki barks a hoarse laugh. “A man who desired me and told me that he’d never have broken his neck if I’d first wed him. Both my mothers. Mama Lewis talks too much.”

Such events aren’t for Suki as unusual an occurrence as they are for the non-necromantic laity, but the conversations between the returning dead and the priest who offered guidance on their paths through the life now history aren’t for outsiders. There’s always a few, often those who died in the last year and haven’t yet had their connections to this world stretch thin, who come back to speak rather than observe. Sometimes those spirits come burdened with regret and recrimination; sometimes they express gratitude or relief. Death, drawing closer with every breath, grants the living a night a year where one must look into hir shadow and fearlessly accept, even celebrate, hir company.

She’s none too fond of Mama Lewis’s bitter postmortem moaning, but a salt circle and poker at least puts paid to that nonsense.

Respecting the sacred covenant of life and death doesn’t mean tolerating abuse.

“Really?” Mara blinks, shaking her head. “She came to me, with other dead relatives and villagers—my Aunt Rosie. I think she knew I needed to talk to her. She told me that I don’t have to romantically love a girl to want or love a girl, and they told me all the ways they didn’t love, which made me feel that … I could talk to the woman I wanted. So I did.” A sweet warmth softens and curves her lips, but the speed with which Mara flattens them suggests she isn’t easy with smiling in current circumstances. “And we’re together, now. But Esh … he doesn’t want anyone, and that should be fine, but maybe … it wasn’t good for him to see me and Ben happy.”

She leans forwards, coughing, before wiping her palm on her skirt.

Suki clenches her hands, fighting to ease her expression before Mara catches her face. It rankles, to say the least, when someone happy in an intimate partnership—however non-romantic!—suggests that those without must be broken in their loneliness. How can she ignore the reflections of Mama Lewis, one shape of expected love or partnership replacing another in the same unyielding structures and assumptions? Mama Lewis cut and hewed the shape of Suki’s illnesses, not another’s possession of something she doesn’t want!

Non-romantic love, to Suki, serves a similar role as the Sojourner or any other god: a fine concept in theory, but while she respects others’ need for a guiding framework, she can only nod vaguely at love’s existence.

Anger, though, doesn’t explain the terror stiffening her body.

“Or after seeing you find a less-conventional form of the coupled happily-ever-after,” she says in a voice perilously close to “glacial”, “your kin and village increased their expectations that he should find the same?”

Mara stares, her lips parted as if in surprise or hurt. “I … Uncle Sascha would say that, I guess. So would the Fisher sisters.” She sighs, frowning. “I don’t know. Just that he got worse after Benjamin … right when I thought he’d get better, because Aunt Rosie said that we’re … real, human. Just a less-known ordinary. Even if we didn’t know the specific word before Moll said it.”

“Only your brother knows why,” Suki says in the mild, self-evident comment a guiding priest says to people having difficulty observing—or permitting themselves to observe—the truth before them. The mild, self-evident comment a priest, who doesn’t fear the direction of this conversation, may say to a guided guest. “So why bother yourself with if I didn’t non-romantically pair up with a girl, maybe he wouldn’t have tried to kill himself drivel? Can you go back in time to not pair up? No! Nor should you halt your life just in case it may be the reason!”

Mara’s half-raised eyebrows suggest that she doesn’t agree.

“Girl, the world tells you in so many ways that you shouldn’t non-romantically partner. After all that repetition, you’re inclined to find excuses to obey that! Keeping my brother from attempting suicide feels more reasonable to you than most puerile objections, but is this reasonable? Are you helping him by thinking this? Or are you obliging everyone who thinks you shouldn’t exist by undermining your partnership with misplaced guilt?”

She refrains from mentioning the insult in anyone’s assuming that depression must be provoked by the existence of someone else’s intimate partnership, as though such relationships are so fundamental one must sicken in witnessing another’s contentment! She refrains, unable to think of anything that doesn’t sound like an observation based in betraying knowledge. Shouldn’t they focus less, anyway, on Mara’s limited understanding of non-partnering people and more on the real issue at hand: her trying to craft another impossible?

Even if it means making herself the cause, Mara seems set on wishing together a world possessed of perfect assurance that her brother won’t again attempt suicide.

Sorcery is by far an easier art, but that’s no comforting truth.

Mara glances at Suki’s belt, as if in need of reassurance that she talks to a senior priest. “Are you, uh … well...”

“Am I what, girl? Don’t cluck!”

Mara swallows, stumbling over the word likely strange to her voice. “Aro … aromantic? Because you sound like…”

Aromantic.

A word in a book, discovered by accident.

A word feared, weighted down by her obligation and pain.

A word unsaid, a man nearly dying of its absence.

“Aromantic and allosexual. I like men for bedding. I don’t like partnerships.” Suki speaks with the casualness that shaped her words when speaking to a distressed priest in a vegetable garden, words said now as if they’ll make up for their silent past. Words said devoid of her terror. “I have enough of one with myself.”

She waits, wondering if Mara will subject her to the young, abled trick of past tense, as though sexuality must be Suki’s history and not her present or future. Something accessible only to the hale and young, presuming her sense of another’s sexual attractiveness withers along with her body? Or will Mara grimace, disgusted by the notion of an elderly, disabled woman whose sexuality hasn’t “decently” become distant memory?

She waits for the accusation: why didn’t you say this before?

“So you understand … why it’s … hard, to live unknowing who you are and what you want, what the words are?” Mara’s brow furrows, her hesitant speech giving way to a spurting rush of feeling: “That’s what Aunt Rosie gave us that night, but it came so late. I lived for so long not knowing, without a word, without knowing it an option! That it had a name! And that hurts, even now I have what I didn’t know I wanted or could want. For so long, I didn’t know! Maybe … that’s it, for Esh, the hurting? Or part of it? How can’t it be…?”

How old is she? Twenty-five? Thirty at most? One needn’t own precision in telling another’s age to know that Mara’s adulthood, outside of accident or illness, stands years distant from death’s shadow. Suki draws a sharp breath, fighting to swallow the tart, quill-bristled question clogging her throat: And when do you think I found the word, girl?

Amadi gifted her the other-shape-of-normal permissiveness, but ey died unknowing of the word describing them both.

Ey died, leaving her alone in a world where she feels outdated and unwanted, where everyone sharing in the known power of the word aromantic can’t comprehend her pain but expects her to, immediately and easily, carry theirs.

Mara needs her pain acknowledged, to have someone confirm that possession of a happy non-romantic partnership can’t and shouldn’t erase ignorance’s lingering hurts. Someone who acknowledges that such bruises are long in the fading but one can still build a life worth living. Someone who reflects understanding and the vital, powerful sense of aromantic siblinghood. Someone who can give what she needs and deserves.

Why must Suki provide it? Why not Moll? Why not anyone else?

“Yes.” She swallows, shifting her throbbing hands, fighting to keep the growl from claiming her voice. Another failure! “We all feel the … betrayal, the years lost to ignorance. Why didn’t I know? You’ll have times of hurting, of struggling, of wondering what could have been if your family knew, your friends, your neighbours. When something isn’t yet recognised or accepted, despite being extant and common … pain, for those of us ahead of that coming, isn’t optional. You aren’t alone in that.”

Suki isn’t gentle. Increased social permissiveness towards the crotchety manner discouraged in children and younger adults stands as one of age’s rare benefits. Mama Polly joked that Suki was set to be a grandmother while still a maiden, but Mama Lewis—curse her long-dead soul—didn’t laugh. Even after half a century gone, Suki can still recite her clipped lectures, delivered in the hope that decreased acidity and increased sweetness will help her daughter find the happiness packaged in a loving, romantic partnership.

Mama Lewis’s shade, returning for her once-yearly lecture, still hopes that her now-elderly daughter will soften enough to allow love into her heart.

It should amuse Suki that such gentleness is now demanded whenever she dares reveal herself as aromantic.

Mara nods, her lips pressed together, her jaw tight, her glistening eyes angled towards her lap.

“It could be part of your brother’s feelings. It could be something else. But this second-guessing of his motivations doesn’t help you or him!” Suki changes the subject for Mara’s sake: for a woman fighting to keep from breaking down before a near-stranger. “Where does this get you but exhaustion? You’re only going to chase your guesses around and around until you’re a dog barking at a rat behind a grate—only to finally spot a different rat gnawing on his brain, realise you’ve been barking at this one for no reason, and there’s actually a score of invisible rats feasting on his poor, bloody brain. Does this help you see those invisible rats? Does this barking help your health, girl?”

She absolutely, assuredly isn’t changing the subject because Suki fears the explosion of her own anger and hurt while discussing aromanticism.

Question. How can she?

Mara’s eyes meet Suki’s face in the bulging stare had by someone imagining rodents chewing on grey matter. “R—rats?”

“Chewing brain rats. You want pretty metaphors for a bloody illness? Don’t talk to a priest, then. Pretty metaphors leave people telling themselves depression isn’t illness, just something that can be shouted, shamed or pressured into abeyance. I don’t hold for that.” Suki sighs and attempts to ease Mara’s shock, hating her bluntness’ sharp, gleaming edges. Is she trying to hurt Mara, wounds delivered in return for those unintentionally given? “I know you want to help your brother. You’ll do more for him by asking what he needs, and listening to what he tells you even if it’s ‘nothing’, instead of chasing every rat in the hope they’re the ones eating him. There’s too many rats, girl! When he’s able to cope with your asking, ask. Leave handling the rats to us—because that’s what we’ll teach him.”

If only they’d thought to ensure Mara realised this before she attempted to bludgeon the rat labelled “dysphoria”, but who imagined a village witch owning such power or ability?

Mara nods: perhaps accepting such advice, perhaps planning to avoid future commentary on what she thinks provoked her brother’s attempt. Her silence is, though, more honest than immediate agreement. Better that than false approval or out-of-hand rejection, especially when she hasn’t agreed to a guiding relationship between priest and guest. Especially when Suki has already stepped further over that line than is wise for a priest struggling with herself! Anyway, hasn’t she gleaned enough to make a solid guess—that Mara sold her soul to purchase Esher’s transition? What more need they discuss?

She isn’t a powerful witch keeping her magic a solemn, oath-bound secret.

She’s a frightened sister doing everything she can to hold her brother into life.

Is that another rat set to gnaw on Esher’s brain? Is that, as much as distrust or fear of priestly reaction to sorcery, reason for her denial? Does she seek to keep this secret from Esher and the priests involved in his care to avoid making yet another rat? Does Moll realise this?

Is Mara all that different from Suki herself?

“I’m sorry that I can’t help you.” Mara stands and bows in the abrupt, jerking movements of a woman looking to leave before the conversation leads them anywhere uncomfortable—and Suki feels unreasonably relieved. “Thank you for your advice—and wisdom.” She hesitates, leaving Suki certain that “wisdom” is nothing more than politeness. “I’m glad, I suppose, there’s more people like us here. Maybe … maybe that will help Esh, if things go better.”

“If you think a priest’s guidance may be useful for your own sake,” she says, falling back on well-worn script in the surety that her own words are far too confronting, “please know that our service extends to all. And I hope, one day, aromantics are so ordinary there’s no need to comment.”

Mild, facile, trite.

Her hands throb, and Suki fights to unclench them.

Mara’s face shutters. “You’ve more than enough work with Esh.”

She bows again and, in a frenetic, long-paced stride best described as “hurrying”, heads down the garden path towards the guest quarters.

Trust.

Can she blame Mara for not trusting her when Suki has none to give?

She sighs and stares at her orchids, at the stone rising behind the tangle of shrub and ivy, at the blue-tinged mushrooms threatening to take over the lawn, at the green grass beneath her chair and the cloudless sky overhead. She stares at the rocks and leaves of her sanctuary, thinking about Mara, thinking about Mamas Lewis and Polly, thinking about the conversation with Moll in the vegetable garden, thinking about words unsaid and feelings concealed … but as the sun ebbs lower, she finds no course of action but the obvious.

Question.

Why has she, for so long, chosen avoidance over service? Why has she refused to face her pain, even while knowing the impact her absence has on others? If she preaches the sacred power in guiding another to a better road, why does she refuse another’s gift of the same? Will she leave this world as Mara is now? Or will she trust her own kin, her own ideals—the only god worth her wholehearted belief?

“Aziz!” Suki waves a hand at the acolyte reading on the lawn just out of non-shouting earshot. “Tell Moll that I’d like them to attend me here at their earliest convenience. Please have the kitchen arrange sweets for both of us and my afternoon tea.” She pauses, considering, as Aziz scrambles upright and straightens hir brown robe. “My shawl. And ask Thanh for an additional dose of my pain medicine. Thank you.”

Question.

If Moll is good enough for Esher Hill, they ought to be good enough for Suki of Sirenne.

[witchsheartbooks]

Hiya! Could I request Claire and the boys with a autistic s/o 👉👈 sorry if this seems a little weird but I'm curious 👉👈

As someone who is on the Autistic spectrum, I felt the need to write this one personally. Please don’t feel embarrassed at all, I’m glad I was able to write a set of head canons for this considering my own position on the spectrum. I’ll be answering two prompts in one here. The old request was an S/O with Autism on a date with the boys and Claire. I do hope you enjoy.~

Wilardo:

The two of you are out and about. Wil decided to take you to a botanical     garden and specifically over to a vast section of flowers that you were     quite interested in.

You happen to see one of your favorite subspecies of flower and begin to flap your hands.

Wil always found your little quirks endearing so any time he noticed you     stimming in a positive manner he couldn’t help but crack a subtle smile in your direction

His good mood is interrupted however when he notices a group of passerbys begin to point and laugh.

Tears start to brim in your eyes as your stimming is interrupted and you hide behind Wilardo, utterly embarrassed due to the people poking fun at you.

Wilardo is silently fuming but he was reluctant to leave you since you were going into a crisis mode.

Instead he pats your head briefly before calling out, “Hey. Mind your own business or go somewhere else. I know the owner of this garden and they’d gladly kick you out with a simple word from me.”

He flashes a smug triumphant grin in their direction. 

The ableists whine like the little snow flakes they are and leave.

Wilardo then turned his attention to you, his tone softening. 

“Come with me.”

He gently takes your hand and leads you to a secluded part of the garden that had been roped off. 

He continues to lead you even further inside, weaving through a rose hedge maze.

Roses were another flower you enjoyed so you focused on them as the two of you walked. 

When you both reached the center of the maze there were several cherry blossom trees cusping over a large koi pond. 

The two of you sit in a small wood fixture that was suspended partially over the pond. 

He had brought you here mostly due to how easily overstimulated you could get especially while in crisis mode.

You nod, letting your leg bounce so you could stim.

“Just because they said those things. Doesn’t mean I’ll even judge you for stimming, [Y/N].”

You nod eagerly and scoot closer to him while the two of you watch the swimming Koi.

“Next time I see ‘em though I’ll kick their teeth in.~” He quipped at you     with a grin.

Sirius:

He had brought you both to one of those public tea rooms.

Usually the lavender was the type to enjoy such pleasantries with you at home.

But regardless of spoiling you himself with his own skills he was not one to avoid spending atleast some of his earnings on his partner.

So as a change of pace he brought you out today.

And as nervous as he often was with going out into public, he felt confidence when bringing you.

Sirius held great admiration towards you, namely your ability to be yourself even considering how unique you were.

Which is why when hearing an odd comment from the member of the wait staff who had been attending you both his softer expression with you hardened.

Turning to the waiter in question, he stood.

And this was deemed odd considering Sirius was not one to make a scene in public. Perhaps at home should something happen but never when the two of you were out.

With a smile of which that you could only assume put the waiter in his place, Sirius stated this. “I do believe I’ll have a word with your store owner. Now.”

The waiter froze, attempting to mumble protests but Sirius was having none of it. “ I don’t believe I asked for your input on the matter, Did I? No I believe you over extended that yourself a moment ago when saying what you did about my partner. Now. If you don’t bring your store owner to me I’ll gladly find them myself. Considering I’m a regular and we know eachother quite well.”

 Defeated, the waiter scurried off and into the back prep room.

Neither of you saw him again for the rest of that evening but instead you were both attended to by the store owner themselves.

They had set down one of those slow rise sweet shaped stim toys for you after having taken your order.

The rest of the afternoon was lovely, and the store owner had been sure to speak in length to Sirius concerning proper preparations for you both next time.

 And you may have heard correctly but the earlier waiter seemed to have been dismissed from service entirely.

You talked about how much fun you had to Sirius on the way home.

Info dumping about the little things and that you liked that place because it wasn’t loud!

You had also explained again that most time you couldn’t go out for public outings since it was so loud.

Sirius had known your reasonings but listened again none the less.

Upon returning home the two of you sat in the library and picked out a few books.

Sirius would put off his duties for the day just abit longer in favor of some more time with you.

Noel:

He often struggled with the idea of public dates, namely because of how many would give him attention and it would detract from his time with you.

So today Noel had decided to bring you to a star gazing observatory.

You both arrived late in the evening, not many people were here other than the occasional maintenance staff for the equipment and the building itself.

The building itself was beautiful.

After only entering in the bottom floor you were enamored with all the stars littering the walls and ceilings.

You stimmed with your hands as you moved from one location to another.

The blonde only smiled, remembering a place like this one himself.

When his mom was still around, she’d wisp them both away to an observatory that she’d privately reserve just for her, and her son.

Noel would fall asleep in her lap on these visits while she would point out the constellations and talk about star names that would make up each constellation.

He had retained a lot of this knowledge from both hearing it and brushing up on it himself later in life by reading those same books again.

Approaching your side, he directed your attention to some of the mimicked constellations on the ceiling.

Softly stating their names and which stars made up each one.

Your eyes lit up, listening to him talk. He knew so much and it amazed you!

He continued his explanations as the two of you ascended the narrow spiral stair case to the tower itself.

Helping you to the top, he then lingered by the telescope and gestured for you to come closer.

“ Y/N I want you to look through the lens. “

Your head tilts but you do so anyway.

Shoulders dropping as countless numbers of stars dance across your vision.

You pull back and stare at him, mouth agape.

Noel only smiles, laughing softly once before encouraging you again. “Go on. It’s ok. Look as much as you like!”

It wasn’t often that Noel could share his passion like this with another.

In fact it was difficult for him to downplay his own interest like this in favor of feeling he may scare you off.

But to be proven wrong, it had his chest swell, looking at you like this now.

Perhaps he could share more with you than he had first imagined.

Ashe:

As boyfriends go, Ashe was protective, to put it lightly.

It wasn’t that he was possessive, no.

He was just paranoid when it came to not being in charge of certain situations.

You equated this to his trauma and did your best to be understanding of his situation

And you both have been quite good with communication especially when you felt he was being too cautious.

So after a lengthy discussion, Ashe caves and takes you somewhere he had often wanted to.

The two of you arrive at this small charming little café off the side of town.

Pastries, sweets, sandwiches, teas and even hand crafted sweet drinks were a specialty here.

The expanse of the menu was nearly overwhelming.

Ashe having expected this, had spoken to the wait staff ahead of time in asking to be seated in one of the quieter corners and to be given more time to look things over.

Though Ashe would often get the same thing from this location,he didn’t want you to feel pressured or rushed.

You were aware of your boyfriends hobbies so you asked him about the menu, he gave his own recommendations as well as stating which items he could and would make for you at home should you ever ask.

You settle on a softer mousse cake, and lavender milk tea.

Ashe orders a strawberry mousse cake for himself, and hibiscus tea.

When yours arrives, you try a bite and melt in place, eyes lit up as you simply stare at it.

Ashe laughs softly, “My my, Y/N is it truly that amazing?”

He made a mental note to make some for you himself at a later date.

Ashe enjoyed making sweets and meals for you, and as nice as it was to take you out.

There was a sense of pride for him with being able to make such things for you completely by himself.

On the way home you chattered about the cake and about how cute the location was.

All Ashe could do was watch your smile.

There was, a bittersweet nostalgia present here.

But he chose to keep it to himself.

For perhaps one day he’d choose to stop burying it.

Claire:

As bubbly as Claire was, she was often focused on doing things you wanted to do.

You both played off of each other well considering you both had sensory stims.

So, Claire understood you best or atleast that’s what you felt.

She took your hand and you both walked together to the farmers market.

She wanted to get some ingredients to bake with you today but you had no idea that she was bringing you here for another reason as well.

You pause and perk up once you both reach one of the corners of the market.

A petting zoo. There were so many animals, bunnies, small puppies and kittens, chickens, llamas, goats, and even a few baby calves.

You bounce in place turning to her and giving her the largest pair of puppy eyes you could manage.

Claire laughs and rubs your shoulder, “I didn’t only bring you here to shop! Let’s go see the new friends we can meet, ok?”

You throw both your hands up briefly and do a little skip as you take her hand and bring her along with you.

You both enter the small little zoo and you fixate on the bunnies.

There were so many and most all of them were bundled on top of each other in one corner of the open top enclosure.

They seemed to be sleeping so instead of interrupting you only chose to try to count how many were there sleeping.

Hopping from each enclosure, you’d either gently pat some of the animals there or you’d count all the ones that were sleeping.

A high pitched meow resonated near you and you looked down to see this tiny black kitten curling up on your foot.

Flapping your hands, you rub at your eyes briefly so not to cry over how cute it is before scooping it up.

You turn to Claire and stick out your lip.

She pauses and says, “Oh! That ones, cute-“

Then the realization resonates, “Ooooh, you want to bring it back with us huh?”

You nod, having gone non verbal. You gently squish the kitten in both of your arms as it chooses to nap there.

“Hm….ok!” Claire steps aside to talk to the owner and after some brief haggling you both walk away with a new small friend.

Later the two of you arrive home and you’re glued to the little fuzzball for the rest of the evening in between helping Claire with dinner and dessert.

~Mod Sirius

[pennemac]

walk through fire for you (just let me adore you)

Chapter 1 ▪︎Even At 3am

Series Summary- This is my first attempt at writing with criminal minds characters! The show has recently become one of my favorite things to write and ramble about. This is a series of works that are written around an autistic Spencer Reid, and his journey's of finding comfort and joy within his team.

Chapter Summary- Spencer finally reaches out when he's struggling with a bout of sensory overload. It takes a whole lot of courage on his part and a good dose of platonic love from his boss to calm him down. (ft. Spencer's stuffed axolotl)

Warnings/Topics- Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Talk of sensory issues, Crying, The beginnings of a panic attack, Platonic cuddling, A good dose of Hotch being a dad through and through :)

I post these on ao3 first! my ao3 is here

Word Count- 1.9k

There's a light pattering of the beginning of a storm outside of the hotel room window, and Spencer is so tired. He has been, in fact, for the last two days, 16 hours, and 43 minutes. 

If Spencer was any semblance of normal, he thinks, he would probably be soothed by the little sounds of rain, but he's not. In fact, it's angering him. It's a constant white noise sound, like television static, but worse, because it can't just be turned off by the click of a button. He isn't even entirely sure why it's making him as mad as it is. 

The sound itself is even making him acutely aware of the way unfamiliar sheets feel against his legs, and the way his hair won't stay out of his face. It's alot, honestly. With every second that passes, the rain makes him more and more upset. None of his usual tactics of calming down have worked so far, either. 

He hasn't been able to read, because his brain felt like it was being drowned out by the sounds of rain against various outdoor surfaces. Music, though he'd never been a huge fan of anything other than soft piano, had also felt as though it was simply accompanying the rain, assisting it in it's attempt to make him breakdown. 

It starts out like this, usually. The discomfort, leading into being easily aggravated, but from then it's everything setting him off. Rain, the constant chatter of a room filled with busy police officers, the ticking of a clock, the texture of his pants, or sheets, or any unfamiliarity. 

He's been trying to sleep for days, but he hasn't been able to. To combat this, he'd been consuming copious amounts of coffee. This had made him more twitchy, antsy, than he had been before. His hands now, even, shake as he throws the blankets and sheets off of his legs. 

The frustration reaches it's peak though, when he has to struggle to pull his socks off of his feet, and tears fall from his eyes as he leans back onto the bed. As he tries his best to just breathe, he remembers how Hotch had separated him from the rest of their team, pulling him aside and out of the crowded room, as if he'd had an innate sense that he hadn't been doing well. 

"Do you need to leave, Reid? I won't make you stay here if it's not going to be beneficial for others or for yourself." 

He hadn't managed to give a complete answer, just nodding, hands curling into his pant legs. "Go with Morgan to the mortuary. I was going to send him alone but the quiet of a car will do you good." 

His boss had moved to lay a hand onto his shoulder, deciding not to when Spencer had visibly flinched. "I am completely serious when I say that you have to stop over exerting yourself. It does nobody any good when you render yourself useless to others." 

Spencer had frowned, not exactly happy with being reprimanded, but he knew that Aaron was certainly correct. 

"Beyond that, though, I understand. I made an agreement when I hired you into this team that I'd be here when you need me. You have to reach out to someone when it's necessary." 

So now, as he sits in the dark of his room, he does his best to remind himself that it's okay to reach out when he needs someone. His hands are shaky as he finds his bosses contact and presses call before he can over think it. 

It's answered fairly quickly. "Reid? What's going on?" 

"I'm- it's not anything serious I'm just… I think I'm gonna have a panic attack and I haven't slept for nearly three days, I don't know how to stop it." 

He knows how weak his voice sounds, and he hates it. His hands clench and unclench in his bedsheets. Tears continue to slip down his face and his shoulders and neck feel tense. 

He hears a the rustling of sheets on the other side of the call before he gets a response. "Can you come up here? You know my room number, yes?" 

"Yeah. Yeah, I do." 

"Okay, come up to my room, then. You're gonna be okay." 

He nods, only realizing afterwards that Hotch couldn't actually see it. He tosses his own phone into the open duffle bag by the foot of his bed. The room he's in is uncomfortably dark, and he hesitates for a moment before he moves to reach into the black bag, pulling out a small-ish stuffed axolotl. 

It's soft, and the eyes are embroidered, rather than buttons or beads, so they feel nice for his hands to run over. The texture is soft but smooth, and he's grateful that it's that rather than shaggy or rough. 

When he's made it up onto the third floor, rather than the second, where his room was, his embarrassment levels had risen and by the time he'd made it up to the door, he heavily considered turning back. 

Spencer's grateful when he only has to knock once for the door to open. 

Hotch stands in the doorway, and this is probably the only time that Spencer would ever see him in just sweatpants and a soft shirt. 

He moves out of the way once he realizes who it is, letting him walk into the room. 

His boss moves in front of him, to sit on the large bed in the middle of the dimly lit space. 

"What animal is that?" He points vaguely at the pink stuffed animal clutched in shaky hands. 

Spencer stands awkwardly across from the bed, his hands fiddling gently with the eyes and the tail of the toy. "It's, uhm… an axolotl. Penelope got it for me cause she knows textures I like and don't like." 

Hotch gently sits back to make room for him. He pats the empty space, hoping that Spencer will take the invitation to sit. He does, watching his own hands as if avoiding looking up at his coworker. 

"Do you wanna talk about what's been happening? It's okay if you don't want to talk about it, but it can be a good distraction." 

He nods slowly, tucking his legs in to sit cross legged. "I- the rain. It's like… t.v. static. I haven't been able to sleep because the sheets are so unfamiliar…" 

One hand moves up to hardly brush a tear from his cheek. God, he hates this. Vulnerability doesn't come easy to him, it never has. He knows how tight his breathing is, and that realistically he should start breathing deeper to ensure that he doesn't become light headed but- it's a lot easier to say than to do. 

"Can I touch your hands, Spencer?" 

The man in question gives an affirmative nod and watches as hands slightly larger than his own come into his line of vision, wrapping around one hand that isn't wrapped around the body of a stuffed animal.

"I know it's tough, but can you breath for me? Just a few deep breaths?" 

Fingers flex between Aaron's own, squeezing in what he's fairly certain is an effort to ground himself. 

Tears drop down steadily still, and one lands softly on the back of Hotch's hand. 

A thumb circles slowly in the dip of where Spencer's hand meets his wrist. "I do hate to seem any kind of strict right now, but… Spencer, I know how hard it is to tell us when you start struggling. What I need you to know though, is that when Gideon agreed to have you on this team, and when I made the decision to keep you here, we knew exactly what we were doing." 

A small sob comes from Spencer, and it deepens Aaron's own frown. 

"You are an incredible asset to our team. You are the driving force to solving most cases we come across. There's nothing you could do, or show, or say, to us that would make us value or love you any less. If that means this, or telling us you need a break, or letting through more tendencies or quirks when we're working- all of that is good. You do so good, I jus-" 

He's cut off abruptly when his hands are shaken away and Spencer all but tackles him into a hug, arms wrapping around his neck and face pressing into his shoulder. 

"And here I thought you were always so worried about germs." 

Spencer sobs lightly, tears dampening the material under his face. His legs rest on the outside of Aaron's thighs, his weight settled on his legs. The man below him tentatively brings hands around his back to envelope him in a hug, hands rubbing down to ease the tension where he can. 

"It's- it's so much." 

And this, at least, Aaron can understand. His breathing doesn't even out more than it had, and Aaron would be much more worried if he didn't know that at least in some sense, this would tire him out. So, instead of urging him to calm down as he'd mistakenly done before, when he was less aware of Spencer's diagnosis, he takes a different route. 

"Spencer, name 3 things you can feel." 

Light sniffles come and shaky breaths still echo in his right ear, but he moves to where his mouth won't be muffled. 

"That method of- of calming people down is something they use on kids-" 

"Three things, Reid." 

He huffs a little bit, but obeys. "Your hands." He shifts where he sits. "The- uhm, the bedsheets under my knees." 

One hand goes up to his face, pulling strands of hair back to tuck it behind his ear. "My face is really warm." 

Even though Spencer was right, the method of describing different sensory inputs was something people use on children, it was working well enough for him that Aaron wasn't going to stop using it. 

"Three things you can see?" 

He lifts his head from the shoulder it had been resting on, eyes moving around the room. He looks down slightly. "My hands are shaking." A glance to the left, afterwards, "My stuffed animal is to your left." 

"And your lamp is on, but it's… dim." 

His voice is soft, and it makes him seem small. He feels small too, body trembling under Aaron's hands. 

"Can you smell anything?" 

Spencer moves his head in a gesture of affirmation. "Your cologne." He pauses to pull in a deep breath. "Cleaning products, several." 

He's breathing is beginning to fade into a normal pace, and there's less shake to his voice. 

"Taste?" 

"Mint… my uh, my toothpaste. Coffee." 

Strong hands move up to his shoulders and neck, massaging lightly into the skin there. 

"Hm. What about sounds?" 

There's a silence in the room now. Spencer sits up slightly with realization. "The rain. It's not raining anymore." 

"Mhm. Maybe the universe listened to you, for once." 

He nods softly. 

They sit like this for a moment, Spencer relaxing into the pressure of Aaron's hands, his tears slowly to a stop. 

"Can I… Stay in here? I don't think I'll be able to sleep alone." 

Hotch gives a single nod, and it would have seemed curt, but his face is soft. "Of course." 

Spencer moves slowly off of him, fumbling for the pink toy before he lays down completely. 

Hotch moves to do the same, but notes briefly the distance that had been put between them. "You can come back over here, y'know." 

A tense breath was released and it brings a small smile onto the older mans face as he feels Spencer wiggle back up to his side, one arm laying over his stomach and a head resting against his chest. He takes the opportunity to wrap arm back around slender shoulders, only after lightly brushing stay strands of hair behind Spencer's ear.

"Goodnight, kid." 

"Night Hotch."

[elizawright]

Other Experiences

Interviews with other women with Aspergers

Source: Aspergers Uk Facebook Community

I noticed while being on the group most of the participants were men backing up the statistics that majority of the Aspergers community are male. This backs up my own theory that women find it harder to get diagnosed as majority of what doctors associate as “Aspergers Characteristics” come from male representatives. A good point from somewhen else in the group suggested that it also comes from the fact women are better at masking.

First Interview

Below is an interview I conducted with a lovely lady called Lauren, it was a very interesting read and supported what I already believed to be true through my own experiences. Women with autism are rarely represented in the media and struggle to get diagnosis or support from others as they show different characteristics to the majority of the Aspergers community:

Q. When were you diagnosed with Aspergers?

A. Feb 2009 age 13 nearly 14

Q. Did you find it difficult to get the diagnosis?

(Quite often women with Aspergers are refused diagnosis as they don’t show what doctors perceive as “characteristics”)

A. it was difficult and took about 8 appointments to get a diagnosis as lot of signs/traits were interlinked with other conditions I already had diagnosed

Q. Name 3 things positive about your Aspergers

(Eg, it makes me more creative)

A. I'm strict with time (not been late once), very well organised and creative

Q. Do you feel there is enough positive female autism Representation in the media? If no, how do you think we can improve? If yes, please provide an example?

A. No I was diagnosed with mental health before I had my diagnosis and a lot of people say to women because you can do eye contact or you have empathy/show emotions that they are not autistic when they are. People need to remember women are naturally brought up to be more mature/grown up then men so we learn things sooner than men would.

Q. List 3 things you struggle with? What could nurotypical people do to help change this?

A. Going out to busy/crowded places, meeting new people/socialising with new people and changes especially to routine. Neurotypical people should be taught about autism in school so less bullying happens and more support can happen even simple things like structured routine or explaining something in a different way or putting it into a real life prospect.

Q. Is there anything else you would like to add?

A.People need to realise that autism is a invisible disability and there isn't a certain look like down syndrome. People also need to remember that autism is different in every person so just because one person with autism is aggressive it doesn't mean everyone is going to be aggressive. Finally to remember autism comes in different levels and severities so one person with autism could live independently with a little bit of support while another person with the same diagnosis might need 24 hour care and support

Second Interview

Another lovely lady called Sophie bravely answered two of the questions for me:

Q. Is there anything else you would like to add?

A. I feel autism is based more around men. The way this could be improved is if people were more aware that autism can affect both males and females

Q. Did you find it difficult to get the diagnosis?

A. I didnt actually get diagnosed until I was 19 but I went to John Parkes when I was younger as ny mum thought I was different but they only said I am left handed but use ny right hand so it was left at that until I was 19 and my mum started working in a school and realised that I did a lot of the things that an autistic child at the school did

Third Interview

Lastly was a very helpful interview by a lovely lady called Ebony. I felt the most connection with Ebonys answers, pretty much everything she said I could relate to, specifically the struggle our mothers had to get a diagnosis, the miss belief in diagnosis of you don’t fit the stereotypes and the frustration with the lack of positive female representation.

Q. When were you diagnosed with Aspergers?

A. I was diagnosed at 8/9 years old

Q. Did you find it difficult to get the diagnosis?

(Quite often women with Aspergers are refused diagnosis as they don’t show what doctors perceive as “characteristics”)

A. My mother found it difficult to get me an assessment to get diagnosed because I have a genetic condition which they wanted to overshadow autism under. Even though they’re totally unrelated. She fought in court for two years before I was granted a full assessment

Name 3 things positive about your Aspergers

(Eg, it makes me more creative)

3. Aspergers makes me more observant. Aspergers allows me to focus specifically on and learn things really easily with things which I am really interested in, in detail, which is really useful for my degree. And Aspergers makes it easy for me to process visual information

Q. Do you feel there is enough positive female autism Representation in the media? If no, how do you think we can improve? If yes, please provide an example?

A. Absolutely not. Autism seems to be very much represented by men with the very typical characteristics (Big bang theory and atypical prime examples). I think there needs to be more female influencers who are on the spectrum speaking about it and also in movies, using autistic female characters as the main character instead of male

Q. List 3 things you struggle with? What could nurotypical people do to help change this?

A. Change. I guess just not changing things would be helpful but I think that’s just the way of the world.

People thinking I’m not on the spectrum because I’m not good at maths or science and I don’t have a breakdown every two minutes. Not assuming the stereotypes are true in everyone. My very black and white way of thinking. Sometimes this gets in the way of being able to think perceptively, as hard as I try, it can be very hard to understand why something is the way it is.

Interview 4

Interview with a lady who would like to stay anonymous. She has a very interesting story and in the past has done lots of work studying Aspergers in women.

Q. When were you diagnosed with Aspergers?

A. 2007

Q. Did you find it difficult to get the diagnosis?

(Quite often women with Aspergers are refused diagnosis as they don’t show what doctors perceive as “characteristics”)

A. I had anxiety n depression off n on for years. Worked as a advocate an had an abusive partner and it became worse. I went to a gp after reading about the condition and was dismissed by the gp. I took anti depressants n they made me feel so bad. Weight gain, hailing beginning to fall out n head felt like a racing feeling. Went back n was referred for cbt n refused to take meds as suicidal thoughts listed as side affect, which was happening. Went for cbt the lady had an autistic son. She picked up on traits n did n assessment n referred me to psychologist. I think I was quite lucky in my journey, in terms of a diagnosis. My mum said she always knew but she was always on meds. I’m not a fan on medication - personally

Q. Name 3 things positive about your Aspergers

(Eg, it makes me more creative)

A.1. I stopped hating or comparing myself to neuro typical people and what they do so easily.

2. It was ok to be different and I wasn’t stupid

3. I started to see myself and my traits and enjoy being me. If that makes sense

Q. Do you feel there is enough positive female autism Representation in the media? If no, how do you think we can improve? If yes, please provide an example?

A. I think when people are shown autism they are often shown the extreme. I watched a programme on the bbc about people with asperges and I couldn’t c myself in any of them. People always think of Chris Packham but we too are all v different as are NTs. The only other female I know of is Susan Boyle who was exploited in some way. But I believe she’s had support now and on the up bless her

Q. List 3 things you struggle with? What could nurotypical people do to help change this?

A. Too many people

Eating around strangers

Bright lights

In terms of how Nts could help is tough. I’m used to not having help so can be hard saying I’ve got a disability n then dealing with people’s preconceptions or struggling without help. Mentor ship in terms of study n maybe work place could be good.

Interview 5

This interview is another who would like to be kept anonymous, their family is very judgmental of their diagnosis therefor they don’t openly disclose their name.

Q.When were you diagnosed with Aspergers?

A. I was diagnosed in 2013, aged 36

Q. Did you find it difficult to get the diagnosis?

(Quite often women with Aspergers are refused diagnosis as they don’t show what doctors perceive as “characteristics”)

A. I was fortunate in that the clinical psychologist who diagnosed me was a specialist in the female autustic phenotype, which made the diagnostic process easier.

Q. Name 3 things positive about your Aspergers

A. Three positive things about Asperger's:

I stand in solidarity with my autistic kids, and understand them better

The way I think makes me good at writing essays

I think autistic people find greater joy in small things than neurotypicals.

Q. Do you feel there is enough positive female autism Representation in the media? If no, how do you think we can improve? If yes, please provide an example?

A. Autism in the media is usually male, which influences women's ability to get diagnosed and get help. There is a small but persistent push my autustic women to make autistic women and girls more visible, and we need to keep building on that

Q. List 3 things you struggle with? What could nurotypical people do to help change this?

A. I struggle with practical things, like maintaining a routine, using public transport, and following directions. Neurotypicals can help by recognising female autism, and simply being kind