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The way most autism literature describes "literal interpretation" is often not at all similar to how I experience it. Teenage me even thought I couldn't be autistic because I've always been able to learn metaphors easily.

In fact, I love wordplay of all kinds. Teenage me was fascinated to learn all the types of figurative language there are in poetry and literature.

But paperwork and questionnaires are hard, because there's so much they don't state clearly. Or they don't leave room for enough nuance.

"List all the jobs you've had, with start and end dates." What if I don't remember the exact day or month? Is the year enough?

"Have you been suffering from blurred vision?" Well, if I take off my glasses the whole world is blurred, but I'm fairly sure that's not what the intake form at the optometrist is asking.

Or the infamous (and infuriatingly stereotypical) "Would you rather go to a library or a party?" What sort of party? Where? Who's there? I work at a library. Am I currently at the library for work or pleasure? Does it have a good collection?

It's not common figures of speech that confound me. It's ambiguity, in situations that aren't supposed to be ambiguous.

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this is, as the kids say, frying me (a glasses wearer)

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author: sorry I’m jumping on this bandwagon and writing a fic with the same premise as all these other fics

me, has read 500 fics like this one and is prepared to read 500 more: please never apologize for giving the people (me) what they (also me) want

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Story time:

In middle school biology, we did an experiment. We were given yams, which we would sprout in cups of water. We then had to make hypotheses about how the yams would grow, based on descriptions of yam plants in our books, and make notes of our observations as they grew.

Here’s what was supposed to happen: we were supposed to see that the actual growth of the plant did not resemble our hypotheses. We were then supposed to figure out that these were, in fact, sweet potatoes.

What actually happened was that every single student in every single class lied in their notes so that their observations perfectly matched their hypotheses. See, everyone assumed the mismatch meant they had done something wrong in the process of growing the plant or that they had misunderstood the dichotomous key or the plant identification terminology. And, thanks to the wonders of a public school education, everyone assumed the wrong results would get us a failing grade. We were trying to pass. We didn’t want to get bitched out by the teacher. Curiosity, learning, science - that had nothing to do with why we were sitting in that classroom. So we all lied.

The teacher was furious. She tried to fail every student, but the administration stepped in and told her she wasn’t allowed to because a 100% fail rate is recognized as a failure of the teacher, not the class. It wasn’t even her fault, really, though her being a notorious hard-ass didn’t help. It was a failure of the entire educational system.

So whenever I see crap like Elizabeth Holmes’s blood test scam or pharmaceutical trials which are unable to be replicated or industry-funded research that reaches wildly unscientific conclusions, I just remember those fucking sweet potatoes. I remember that curiosity dies when people are just trying to give their superiors the “right” answers, so they can get the grade, get the job, get the paycheck. It’s not about truth when it’s about paying rent. There’s no scientific integrity if you can’t control for human desperation.

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A small collection of my fave out of context Star Trek: TOS stills

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what? oh sweetheart no, you're not weirding me out at all. you're weirding me in. keep talking, freak

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I love the planets in tos

Also… he’s bisexual

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So, so tempted to officially add La'an Noonien-Singh to my AOS Crew expanded crew...

It would be quite ironic if she came to the Enterprise after the Enterprise itself has been involved in a battle with her ancestor. I can't imagine if she were on the Enterprise during Into Darkness - would've been cool.

(If I'm not doing it, it's because that edit has been redone 6546516 times, and I also don't have two other characters to add to keep the style even. I could add Gaila's brother - provided that I found a fancasting for him - but I don't have another character)

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Okay so there's these two brothers who are both into cosplay and decide it would be fun to do a cosplay together, going as characters who are also brothers. Having suggested a handful to each other, both agree on making a cosplay as Boromir and Faramir to attend an upcoming convention.

And at the con they happen to make aquaintance with another two-person team of cosplayers, who are also brothers in real life and had had the exact same idea, except that they had decided on cosplaying Thor and Loki respectively. And they make friends bonding over this. Like an hour later the one cosplaying Boromir and the one dressed as Loki notice that their brothers are both missing, and neither one is answering their phone or even reading messages. So they come to the conclusion that whatever they're busy with, they're probably together.

They do end up finding the missing brothers, who were indeed being busy together, with Faramir sucking Thor cosplayer's dick. So things kind of get awkward after that, and the two brother pairs agree to go their respective ways.

The con is a three-day event and on the morning of the second day, by 10 am Faramir is fucking gone again. He has somehow found another Thor cosplayer to suck off. When asked about it, he shrugs and says that it just happened. And as they say, once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, thrice is a pattern. And by the time his brother had found a fourth dude cosplaying Thor, the brother cosplaying Boromir is starting to get seriously pissed off.

He's not even mad about the dick-sucking. He knows his brother. He knows that he's got a type. He's not mad about his brother being into buff long-haired blond guys, or about him blowing through the entire goddamn convention like a fellatio tornado. It's the way that his brother keeps acting like this is some kind of a coincidence, like he just keeps stumbling upon random Thor cosplayers who just happened to be looking to get their dicks sucked. It's the dishonesty of it all that's pissing him off. So now, Boromir has to put his foot down, and he says:

"One does not simply 'walk into' more Thors."

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My friend told me to do it and I couldn't say no

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How to write like Spock

Some Spirk writers tend to write like Spock anyway and that's why we write so much Spirk (cough cough, me. Let me tell you, people don't like it when you write like Spock in books). Others consider his voice a particular challenge, so this is for you.

Spock's level of formality can be a challenge if you're used to colloquial English. It includes things like an advanced vocabulary, convoluted sentences, and an avoidance of idioms.

My biggest tip is this: if you don't know how to do a thing, best not to worry about it. Don't use words if you don't know their meaning. If you need a sciencey word and don't know enough science, make one up. In the end, Spock can talk like other people if he wants to so don't tie yourself in a knot about it.

Kirk and Spock are both kind of Renaissance men. So they don't just talk about science, but may reference history, literature, psychology, whatever you like. Feel free to give them your interests and make them cite your favorite book or historical figure.

There are certain words the fandom loves and loves to misuse:

amenable: willing, agreeing to something. "I would be amenable to your proposal." The proposal isn't amenable, Spock is.

agreeable: this one can be used for the proposal. "Your suggestion would be agreeable to me."

reticent: reserved, unwilling to disclose. "He was reticent on the topic of pon farr."

reluctant: unwilling to do something. "He was reluctant to disclose the meaning of pon farr." Don't say he was reticent to go swimming. We don't really say reticent to do anything. It's an adjective that stands on its own for someone who's politely secretive (like Spock).

thusly: is not a word. People started using it as a joke around when I was in elementary school and now they seem to think it's real. It's not.

thus: in this way. It is an adverb already so there's no need to add -ly. "Why do you act thus?" "Thus I have always explained it."

Spock does use contractions, for instance in his classic line, "When I feel friendship for you, I'm ashamed." You can avoid them to help the ear hear his specific cadence, but it's not weird if Spock happens to use them and his friends would not be shocked.

Spock does not swear (till STIV, and then badly). If he cusses, Bones is going to whip out a medical tricorder to see what's wrong.

Spock does occasionally use idioms, but often in "air quotes" so he can pretend it is a human foible he wouldn't dream of using on his own. He understands them perfectly fine, but he sometimes pokes fun at them. Don't overdo this or he just seems obnoxious. Spock can read the room.

Despite his love of formality, throughout TOS, Spock uses "Jim" readily off duty or in moments of danger. Now of course depending on your fic, he might not be on a first-name basis with Jim yet. But they don't have to be sleeping together to be using first names.

Spock rarely admits to emotions but he does feel them. It's up to you whether he admits them in his internal monologue. There are a lot of strategies people use to show his emotion:

"He noticed a flash of fear and tucked it away to meditate about later."

"The threat of mortality had risen to sixty-one percent, but as a Vulcan he felt no fear about this, none whatsoever."

"His knees felt weak and his stomach churned. Perhaps he was coming down with a virus."

"He wondered idly if, when he died, the captain would weep."

There's no one right way to do it! We rarely see what Spock is actually thinking, so you can make him poetic, alexithymic, enlightened, whatever background makes the tiny above-water iceberg of his visible behavior make sense.

This deserves to be its own point: with all characters, there will be a difference between their inner narration and what they reveal on the outside, but that's especially true for Spock. Using his POV allows the chance of showing tons of stuff he would never show. Feelings, motives, Vulcan traditions that guide his reactions. Jim will often be aware of his feelings, but most people won't.

Okay that's what I can think of off the top of my head. I hope it makes you feel more comfortable writing his POV if it's something you've been afraid to try.

What did I forget?

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Chris Pine is the cinematic version of Jeremy Jordan and Jeremy Jordan is the Broadway version of Chris Pine. No I will not elaborate.

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I don’t believe “think” is the correct verb to use here.

Think smarter not harder

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A few years ago while trying to find ways to commit suicide as painlessly as possible, I came across a PDF of Dr. Paul Quinnett's The Forever Decision. Thinking it might go into actual methods of suicide (I read an article once that actually did that and was trying to find it again) I started to read it, and I think I only got about two pages in before I was crying too much to actually see the words.

I downloaded the PDF to my hard drive and I open it again whenever I'm feeling too suicidal to do much else, but not enough to start booking a ride to the hospital. And every time without fail I only go up to a few pages before backing off and choosing to live another day just because suicide suddenly seems even more unbearable than whatever the hell upset me in the first place.

All the book really does is [I'm pulling a summary from GoodReads here as, again, I've read no more than 5 pages] "discusses the social aspects of suicide, the right to die, anger, loneliness, depression, stress, hopelessness, drug and alcohol abuse, the consequences of a suicide attempt, and how to get help."

But it also starts with the author kindly asking the reader to complete the book before going through with anything, and for some reason I'm compelled to really just try to read it all before finalizing everything. Despite not yet completing it (hopefully never will) I think I can safely say it's saved my life at least a few times now.

It's intentionally legal to copy and redistribute this book to keep it as accessible as possible, and it's very easy to find, but here's a link for it anyways.

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Is it just me, or does this sound like the beginning of a kick ass rpg party?

Thinking about when I worked at a shitty restaurant + one night it was just me + 3 other women on closing shift, so some guy came in the back and waved a knife around, presumably for money but I’m not actually certain, bc he was met with the bartender holding a much bigger knife, a tiny teenager wielding a cast iron pan, an elderly woman holding up a crockpot of clearly boiling water, and me, turning on the meat slicer with eye contact for maximum effect. He left, but the moral of the story is not girl power or whatever, it’s just. Why the fuck would you threaten a room full of underpaid and sleep-deprived blue-collar workers surrounded by lethal weapons.

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The Fool's Official McSpirk Timeline™ for AOS and TOS are rather notably different in shape - which is to say that TOS's timeline is incredibly long and has Spirk get together first before later adding McCoy in, while AOS's is greatly accelerated and begins with McKirk before adding Spock - and really the only reason for this difference is that AOS Kirk is both messy and an annoying brat.

Like if we assume that TOS Kirk and AOS Kirk both meet Bones at about the same point in his divorce (as is my headcanon), I tend to imagine that TOS Kirk will look at Bones being a sopping wet mess of a man and being like, "Okay, what he needs is a friend, and not someone flirting with him," and then, once he's comfortably settled into the role of 'friend' just. figures it's not worth rocking the boat. Sure, he loves him, but friendship is love, too, and he's quite content to stay as-is. Then in comes Spock, and Jim falls fast and hard, so he's got this quiet steady love burning for Bones and he's very obviously smitten with Spock, who is very obviously smitten right back, and still nobody manages to get together until after TMP (and even then, I'm not sure that Bones would manage to join the mix at all until TSFS!).

AOS Kirk, meanwhile... like, I think he knows that it's not a great idea to romantically pursue someone who just got out of a messy divorce, but like. that's sure not gonna stop him. If anything, McCoy's messed up state just makes Jim more willing to pursue him. Right out of the gate, he's leaping to propositioning McCoy (especially when drunk), and sure, Bones thinks he's joking at first, but eventually he catches on that the wheedling wet puppy act that Kirk's putting on isn't really an act and he actually does want McCoy with pathetic desperation, and so they manage to fall together sometime before they graduate (and really Jim's damn lucky that nothing falls apart on him because it is truly a horrid idea to try to flirt with your recently-divorced-and-still-bitter roommate-slash-best-friend, especially when you're in a precarious emotional state yourself). Then Spock comes into the mix with a bang, and Bones sees the very moment Jim goes from "god I hate that guy" to "I need him to fuck me right now," and he just kind of rolls his eyes and waits for Kirk's wet puppy act to somehow work its magic once again (which takes a bit longer, not until after Beyond, I imagine, because Spock doesn't realize for a time just how genuine it is or that McCoy is entirely supportive of it).