Didn’t expect hamster god exploding toilet story to turn into Brennan and Izzy foreplay but it did and I’m here for it
in every incarnation that ayda lived alone and lonely there was already a meteor shower on its way through space to symbolise the love she would one day find
I give this google doc link out to individuals a lot, and realized it might be useful for a lot of people if i shared it more widely. It’s a masterpost of a whole bunch of Autistic Stuff – here’s the link to the actual doc, but i’ll also post it all here on tumblr (under a readmore after the table of contents).
(edit: if the hyperlinks aren’t working for you, here’s the google doc url that you can copy and paste into an internet browser to access everything: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16BqhRv4IlZ6KcElGAEZOx8sFYwRs4W1jF-ddY_XKYnE/edit?usp=sharing )
Please spread it around (including sharing the google doc link outside of tumblr wherever you want). Feel free to comment with more resources, tumblr posts, articles, etc. that you find helpful! And if any links are broken, let me know.
- ORGANIZATIONS AND SELF ADVOCATES
- DEFINING AND DESCRIBING AUTISM
misc.
Metaphors and images for autism
Disability models
Issues with Functioning Labels, ideas of “Mild” - “Severe” autism
- AUTISM AND INTERSECTIONALITY
misc.
Autism among women
Autism and race
Autism and LGBTQ
- STUFF ON SELF DIAGNOSIS
misc.
Is it ADHD or Autism??
Tests / checklists
- STUFF ON PROFESSIONAL DIAGNOSIS
- AUTISTIC PRIDE / CULTURE AND HISTORY!
misc.
Autism / disability history and culture
The Neurodiversity Movement
Person first vs. identity first language
Cureism
- AUSTITIC TRAITS (BEYOND THE ONES COMMONLY DISCUSSED!)
Misc. - samefoods, lists, needing to know what to expect, etc.
Stimming
Communication stuff - misc. - Verbal/nonverbal - Infodumping - echolalia - Prosopagnosia - Aphasia - Eye contact
Special interests / hyperfixations
Auditory Processing Disorder
Sensory issues / Sensory Processing Disorder
Meltdowns and Shutdowns and Burnout
Executive function
Emotion stuff
- MASKING / PASSING / SCRIPTING
- WHY AUTISM SPEAKS AND ABA ARE SO BAD
- MISCELLANEOUS
Suicide
Allyship / for allistics - For parents of autistic persons
More non-speaking autistic self-advocates
misc.
_________________
Keep reading
The Green brothers make me feel okay. Like I can do this, even if it’s harder for me than it is for other people
i know people make these kinds of posts with fictional characters a lot but like. hank green truly is one of The Most Guys Ever. like. he's one of the earliest youtubers who is still on there. he's a 43-year-old tiktok star. he's a science educator. he got cancer and his response was to make a tier list of the press's coverage of his cancer announcement. the president of the united states sent him a message of support and he told the president that he was pissing out the cancer. years earlier he was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and his response was to write a polka song about it. he created vidcon. he's the ceo of a company that produces a shitton of educational series (well, not acting ceo at the moment due to the aforementioned cancer). his guitar says "this machine pwns n00bs" on it. he invented 2D glasses. one of his earliest videos to get popular was about animal sex. between him and his brother, he was known as "the science one" (or "the music one") while his brother was "the writer one," and then he wrote two new york times bestselling novels. his most controversial opinion is that butt is legs. he's done so many things that there is a website dedicated to counting the number of days since he started a new thing. he and his brother use their internet following to (among other things) fight maternal/infant mortality in sierra leone. he has a baked bean furby. hes even bisexual
she had taken all of the pronouns in my poems and turned them masculine. every she was he. every her was him. i wrote about women dipping their hands into the honey of my chest and she had changed it in this stark, violent way. men now, in my work. in my ribs, i guess. how odd, to stare at it.
i write a lot about worshipping at the knees of my girl. what sapphic can resist the allure of chapel-talk, the divine nature of what is ours and ours alone. her hair in your shower. her chapstick melting in your car. when we say holy here, it is a different meaning. it is the smithing of our own haloes from mix-tape cds. no hammer to the anvil - only our own palms, skin scorching. forging every astral ray with the prayer please don't leave. our bible a history that is never taught in high school. we shape a church from the tent of her arched back. what other word for hymn but her voice. her moaning.
a poem can be stripped of its component parts, maybe, but can it still breathe? is it still the same ship? the words this woman changed, biting and spiraling up at me: my man is holy. i worship at his feet. he is the divinity of saturdays and the wheat of my communion and he is the hushed summer's glorious release.
it's common knowledge that you can say a word too-many times, and then it loses meaning. but here was something new: it wasn't that the words had lost meaning, but rather that they had shifted in the air somehow and turned radioactive to me. all of my words were otherwise unchanged, except for the unkind and glowing eye of him.
ivory-tower glowing in my aorta, i thought about talking to her on the sanctimonious and erudite level. telling her: a poem can be changed, can be erased or added to or demolished or reconfigured; but we do try to respect the original author. i would tell her i would have preferred her not change only the pronouns; that her actions felt like censorship rather than collaboration.
in front of me: you cannot cut him out of me, i was made to love him. no scrubbing, no penance. i will always come back to this house, come back to loving men.
i thought about telling her why her actions were cannibalism, not care. i would tell her about being 18 and pressured by my catholic family to accept a man as a partner; how i'd dated him for 5 years before being able to escape. how abusive he had been. how he had made me kneel in front of him - that i wasn't using the word worship idly, but rather as a reclamation. how i had to be re-taught even the concept of faith. how when i learned peace again, it was by the hand of a woman.
i thought about telling her about the wound behind it, the unceasing loneliness. i thought about telling her shape of the small and quiet hours; the fear; the endless and unpretty nature of just being queer. i thought about saying: all of my work comes from a place of pain.
i thought about telling her everything. when i finally found the words, it was only one: why? in that was the summary of all i felt: why not write her own poem? why change it so violently? and why choose my work, if she disliked it so much? why me?
i imagine she shrugged when she responded. all i got was a single sentence: "i really like your work but i want to be able to enjoy it without being made uncomfortable."
on her insta, her pinned post is of her boyfriend - now husband - proposing. they were married in 2023. congratulations. i really do hope she's happy.
i hope one day it stops hurting.
Listen, do I ship Riz and Fabian? Absolutely not. Riz is aroace. However, something distinctly queer is happening here. Comphet much? Fabian continuously bringing up The Ball instead of getting his kisses in. I mean come on.
I may have just made my life's work
the fix is one of the characters of all time. he’s played by hank green doing a vaguely southern accent. he literally cannot be stealthy. he uses the power of autism for both intimidation and flirting. he’s the biggest guy and made friends with the smallest guy as soon as he got the chance. he discovered choice and free will. he tried to say his boss’s hair looked nice and didn’t realize he had a hat on. him and his autistic wife adopted a whole orphanage of autistic children so they’re a giant autism family. really just everything
i keep thinking about how rfk said that autistic people "will never write a poem." i keep thinking about that, about if humanity is calculated on the back of old verse. how far we measure personhood is in baseball and stanza breaks.
i keep thinking - i have over 7k poems on here alone. language can be a special interest, after all. did you know the word autism comes almost direct from the greek word autos, meaning "self"? self-ism.
maybe he is right - i haven't really played baseball. i was a ballet dancer instead. and besides - my sister once accidentally hit me in the face with an aluminum bat. i'm not sure if the injury gives me half points. am i only a person in the dugout? hand in a mitt? swinging?
does softball count? does cricket? am i a person if i throw the ball to my dog. am i a person as long as the ball is in the air, or do i stop being a person as it rolls into the bushes. i took my girlfriend to fenway recently; was i a person in the sun, with my hands up, with the game laid out at my feet in a diamond. i felt like a person, but that was back in the summer, and i often feel my most person-like then.
am i more of a person because of the sheer number of things i've written? does quality matter, or is it quantity? i used to write entire books every summer in high school - i wasn't doing well. i felt the least like-a-person back then. but then - does any person feel human in high school?
in the library, ink on my skin, i feel personhood shutter at the edges of myself. actually, writing feels blissfully like not being myself. it feels birdlike; escaping into creation so my body dissolves and i survive only by muscle memory. i am not there, i am writing.
but who can deny the falconlike focus of warsan shire, the tenderness of mary oliver, the sheer skill of amanda gorman. those are poets. they are certainly human. you could line them up with the way their words have influenced us and measure their literary shadows like wings.
perhaps it was very assumptive of me to want to be a poet rather than "a [ label ] poet." i wanted the work to fill itself in, rather than be stained by what i am. i do not write in despite of my neurodivergence, i am just neurodivergent and writing.
does the poem have to be in english or can i send it through my palms into the coat of my dog. does the poem have to make sense. does the poem have to love you back.
if i break a glass, will the poem appear naturally? or is the act of breaking the glass human-enough. the shards of my life glittering out beneath me - do i have to write the poem, or is it self-evident in the pile of glass splinters? i cannot grasp this world the way other people can. regardless, i endeavor to touch - even the mess - very gently.
i broke my toenail against my coffee table recently. i released a bug outdoors. i made coffee. i walked my dog.
i didn't write a poem about any of these things.
something else, then. existing without humanity.
Fig and the Cig Figs sophomore concept album
1. Homemade Forever (crystal phone recording, no polish)
2. Your Car Isn't Half the Boat My Van Is (My Van is a Boat reprise)
3. Missing the Shrimp Jump (Beats Blowing Off a Goddess)
4. Fossils (or Sacred Order of Knights)
5. Brand New Face (Wanda Childa's version)
6. Mysterious Strudel Fracture
7. Yathmag Mount Go!
8. Nightmares (Summer Remix)
9. Chronomour (Ayda's Song)
10. I'm Cloaca (I SUCK!)
11. (hidden track) CRASH!!!!!!!!! (ft. The Ball)