and what if i fly?

Jay aka Bluejay/Jaya/J | Gender Fluid (he/him and they/them) | 21+ | Biromantic Demisexual Polyamorous | Writer, book lover, and huge advocate of ship and let ship | TBC | Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/bluejayinflight | "Why were words created if not to show us that we too can fly." - Me (icon by mayakern)

[feminist-space]

[johanna-swann]

[everydayconman]

The ancient texts were true… They DO have a reaction image for everything…

[wilwheaton]

“If you’re wondering why they’re working this hard to keep you from voting, the answer slipped out of Todd Blanche’s mouth this spring. Standing on a stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) outside Dallas, the man who’d been Trump’s personal criminal defense lawyer and who now runs the Justice Department as acting Attorney General told the crowd, “[E]verybody’s afraid that the next administration, if we don’t win, we’re going to all be investigated and indicted.” He meant it as a rallying cry. What he actually delivered was a confession: you don’t spend your evenings bracing for an indictment unless some quiet part of you already knows what you’ve done. A reckoning is coming for the people breaking the law for this president, and they can feel it.”

— This confession proves Trump’s terrified cronies know what’s coming for them

[avantgarden-er]

Me if i was a Sports commentator: okay so i would have done everything differently there at that moment. And correctly

[mothric]

thinking about the time a former housemate said to me "hey I put these box fans in the living room because it's hot" while gesturing to the fans that I was actively sitting in front of because it was hot. and I said "okay thanks." and she kept standing there like she was waiting for something else so I said "am I blocking the airflow? do you need me to move?" and she said no I'm just letting you know they're here, in the living room, for circulation. and I said well yes, I did put that together. I am enjoying them. thank you. and she looked confused. so I asked "am I meant to do something with this information or are you just informing me?" and she said no I'm letting you know they're here because It's Hot In Here. she seemed a bit aggravated, and her emphasis seemed deliberate.

it took me asking three more times before she finally told me she wanted me to leave the fans where they are instead of moving them to my room or something. and I said oh! I had no intention of doing so but thank you for letting me know what the expectation is.

about a month later she brought up that conversation as the moment it actually clicked for her that I Am Autistic And Will Not Magically Intuit The Unspoken Request You Didn't Ask Me.

[mothric]

I have observed enough allistic communication to know that generally, if somebody points something out to you that you can already see or are already clearly interacting with, they are making an indirect request. but as I don't know what the request is, the only way forward is for me to guess (and likely get it wrong), or prompt the allistic to tell me clearly what they need.

however, allistics don't realize they do this, so asking them to say the unspoken surprises and confuses them. this is not their fault. allistics can be quite emotionally fragile and perceive directness as confrontation, so they habitually rely on indirect speech and coded language to preserve others' feelings. this is why they may find it difficult to be direct, even when asked. I have found that with enough gentle encouragement and reassurance that they are actually helping you, you too can achieve successful communication with your allistic friend or loved one. :)

[mothric]

I've seen more than a few replies saying "I'm not autistic and I wouldn't have gotten that either / your roommate's an outlier / nobody could have gotten that." fair enough, it was a pretty specific situation and it seems she genuinely didn't communicate well. as I often run into issues with indirectness, it scanned to me like all the other times I haven't been able to read between the lines. so let me give a few more examples of this phenomenon that may be more common:

"You left your dish in the sink." > the hidden request is "please clean your dish, preferably right now." since it's phrased as an observation, I don't immediately intuit the request and instead think my housemate thinks I forgot about it. so I reply "oh, I know." housemate thinks i'm sassing her and gets annoyed with me. only then do I realize she was asking me to do something about the dish in the sink.

"There's hot soup on the stove." > said to me while I was preparing a sandwich. the hidden request is "please eat the soup." since it's phrased as a statement of fact, I don't immediately intuit the request and instead think my mom thinks I didn't see the soup. I did see it, but I wanted a sandwich instead. so I reply, "I saw it, thank you." mother thinks I'm being rude and gets annoyed with me. only then do I realize she was asking me to do something about the soup (and furthermore is offended I am eating a sandwich instead).

"Your bread is on the counter." > the hidden request is "please remove your sliced bread from the counter and store it elsewhere." since it's phrased as an observation, I don't immediately intuit the request and think my roommate thinks I meant to store the bread elsewhere and forgot. when I reassure her I know it's there, she gets annoyed. only then do I realize she wants me to do something about the bread on the counter.

"You can turn up the heat, you know." > said to me while I was scrambling eggs slowly over low heat. this one really confused me because of course I knew I could turn up the heat, but I had no reason to as I was only cooking for myself. when I ignored the statement because I was focused on my task and had nothing to say, my mother added, "the eggs will cook faster if you do." sure, I'm aware of this too, but I don't want to cook them faster. I won't get the texture I want. when I reply, "I don't want to, though," mom thinks I'm being rude and gets irritated, then asks me how long I'm going to take. only then do I realize she was telling me to cook faster (because she wanted the stove), instead of simply informing me I could.

"There are donuts in the break room." > a more benign example, but similar outcome. once again I hear this as a piece of information being given to me, and thank my coworker for telling me. when I don't immediately leave my desk to get donuts because I'm finishing a task, my coworker hovers and says, "well? aren't you getting some?" only then do I realize there was actually a hidden invitation, and I was supposed to respond to the hidden part and say, "I'll come get them in a minute," or "no thank you I don't want any."

as I said, I've learned over time this is something many allistic (non-autistic) people do (as well as high masking autistic folks who have learned the social rules and wear themselves out following them rigidly). despite what I've learned, my default autistic response is pretty much always to take the words at face value (especially when I'm distracted or multitasking), before remembering I have to translate them. and while I can make a decent educated guess in most cases, sometimes I just cannot and simply ask, "what are you asking me?"

unfortunately, many allistic people suffer from an inability to take words literally just as much as they struggle to speak literally, which can further obfuscate communication. this is why I emphasize gentle reassurance that you are not criticizing them, but asking them to help you, a person in need, by clarifying their intent. people generally like to be helpful and I have had moderate success with this approach.

ONE MORE THING: I have a bias! this is very US-centric, as that's where I live. some cultures around the world are extremely direct, so autistic people in those cultures may not have the specific issue I describe here. however, every culture has its own set of social norms that include a complex combination of nonverbal visual cues, body language, tone/emphasis, and countless other unspoken expectations for what's considered polite or "normal." the double empathy problem doesn't evaporate in cultures that value direct speech. autistic people just face different problems. thank you and be good to each other

[cottoncandylesbo]

oh fuck... the adderall has hit my system... the change, it's happening... grRRRGH...!! get away from me, before it's too late...!!

(flails on the ground, then stands up and does the dishes)

[satanfemme]

it's not enough to say "IP law doesn't prevent theft" (<- true) we must also stress that IP law enables and causes theft and then legally bars the original creators from using their creations, until corporations are mass producing the IP for immense profit while the original creators die in poverty (<- also very extremely true!!!)

[satanfemme]

like I could not care even a little bit about "IP theft". you can not steal a concept the way you can steal a car just by copying someone. that isn't a real thing you can do. I don't care about this.

but what I do care about is comic book writers dying broke and hungry while disney pumps out another $1billion military propaganda MCU film using their characters (labor they were payed comparatively nothing for).

what I care about is Gary Bowser paying nintendo 30% of his income for the rest of his life, just because he was pirating games.

IP law is not just some kind of hypothetical ideal. IP law is a law, and it hurts people in real material ways, while helping corporations further stuff their pockets.. if you support IP law, if you're some kind of pro-IP activist, you are perpetuating real harm that hurts real people while helping corporations gain more and more power. your motivations do not negate this. and if anything your motivations just make you look like a useful idiot.

[prokopetz]

"Isn't it weird that [thing humans commonly eat] is poisonous to literally every domesticated animal" I mean, there's a pretty good chance that [thing humans commonly eat] is at least mildly poisonous to humans, too. One of our quirks as a species is that we think our food is bland if it doesn't have enough poison in it.

[xeansicemane]

Humans have a really weird mix of mundane superpowers.

We're not fast and don't have a lot of natural weaponry but we're bizarrely tolerant to a broad range of toxins to the point that one toxin is considered a morning necessity for some to perform at work. Gotta love us.

[vexwerewolf]

[missmacfire]

[queenbruv]

the power of hitting 'end task' on a glitchy program in task manager is intoxicating. i feel like an assassin. i feel like a tyrant. you don't want to work properly? begone. off with your head. i need to kill my apps with a guillotine

[stillfuckingtired]

Uh-oh, coming down with a case of “what-if-a-bunch-of-other-people-experience-these-symptoms-as-bad-as-I-do-but-they-suck-it-up-and-work-anyway-and-I’m-just-being-a-little-bitch”-itis

[sobcat]

me when there's work at work

[spiribia]

it doesn't matter to cats what kind of bad week you're going through, they'll come into your room and start doing repeated bulldozer attacks on you

[r0zeclawz]

one of these big new indie cartoons should release with an exclusive adopt of like the main character. pay up 10000 dollars to be the only one whos legally allowed to draw pomni. i feel like the resulting fandom drama would change the face of the internet it would be so cool

[xxvapejuicekittyxx]

yeah hi this is actually a horrible idea why would you want this

[r0zeclawz]

i like when bad things happen

[everythingbutlarry-deactivated2]

AU: President Obama falls for part white house intern part rockstar Harry Styles. Obama surprises Harry in the audience of one of his shows and the affair blossoms from there.

[heritageposts]

date of origin: 2015.

[blignick]

[glumshoe]

do not go to Dr. Kenneth Wolf for top surgery

[glumshoe]

I went to him because he was 1.) the cheapest possible option and since I needed crowdfunding that seemed best 2.) within driving distance of my friends who’d be able to host me. I didn’t have any complications and I don’t hate my results, so the fact that he stopped offering free revisions after COVID (including for people who had their surgeries before the pandemic) and ghosts everyone isn’t a huge deal personally. I do have moderate to severe dog-earring right in the middle my chest which limits what clothing I can wear and have inquired about possible revisions with other surgeons (so far no one has been willing to operate on other dr’s work and have told me I’d need to pay the price of a full secondary top surgery). Dr. Wolf famously ghosts all his patients after surgery and has strict weight limits.

HOWEVER I accompanied my friend to their top surgery at the University of Michigan last year that made Dr. Wolf’s entire process seem back alley and sketchy by comparison. My friend had extensive pre- and post-surgical monitoring and extreme sanitary precautions. Dr. Wolf just had me take off my shirt and slapped me on the operation table still wearing my street clothes and then scraped me up and sent me home the moment I regained consciousness. His bedside manner was offputting and uncomfortable. It has been impossible to contact him ever since, even to ask politely why my stitches look so different from his other results. Other people with much worse results have also been ghosted.

[glumshoe]

OH AND ALSO when I asked if he could swap my left and right nipples just for the hell of it he said “yeah sure lol” but apparently you’re not supposed to do that because there is the risk of like, manually metastasizing cancer cells. lol. I did ask for it and I think I am at very low risk for breast cancer but I do think a responsible surgeon should at least know about and warn you of that possibility before agreeing to it.

[glumshoe]

my friends and my ex were great caretakers who made the recovery process easy and kind of fun but knowing what I know now makes the whole experience retroactively a little bit traumatic

[faggotry-enjoyer]

An additional anecdote: My roommate got top surgery with this guy during our freshman year of college, and he had no family or other friends in the area to accompany him. On any normal day I would've skipped class to do so, but I had a quiz worth like a fifth of my grade and not enough advance warning to ask if I could take the alternate time (my roommate told me about this literally the morning of).

Dr. Wolf operated on an unaccompanied patient and let him get in a Lyft by himself immediately post-surgery.

A week or so he had to go back in to deal with a minor complication, and wanted to go by himself again. So I emailed Dr. Wolf to ask if I should push back and insist on coming with this time, and got this reply:

We always feel safer for the patient to have somebody with him. If it was the hospital, they would refuse to even do him without somebody with him.

I guess it technically beats operating on him alone a second time, but straight-up admitting that a hospital would never do the kind of thing he does is... telling, I think.

[glumshoe]

wow yeah I don’t love that

he seems to have been a lot more communicative in the past when he offered revisions but I don’t know if his other policies used to be better

also correction: there was a one week follow up appointment where he changed the bandages and told me it looked fine but there was no other communication after that. also he used penrose drains which I didn’t personally mind but was a lot grosser for my caretakers because it meant I was just oozing directly into my bandages, soaking through them, and staining clothes/bedding.

[glumshoe]

I’m suddenly laughing at the idea of a cliche noir detective story written in the brutally concise style of Hemingway.

A woman walked into my office. She had legs. I noticed her legs. “I have a problem. I need your help,” she said. They always said that. I knew her legs weren’t the problem. I hoped she might want my help with them anyhow.

[glumshoe]

“Can you pay?” I asked. Of course she could. Her shoes were worth more than my rent. She could pay. “I can pay,” she said. Her eyes were wet. I wondered if anything else was wet. Probably not. I am not handsome. Not since the war. She was looking at my scar. Lots of people do. Most look away. Not her. She did not look away. She looked at my scar and I looked at her legs. There were two of them. I liked that about her. I liked that a whole lot. “Will there be danger?” I asked. There always is. This city bleeds danger, then drinks it right back up again.

[glumshoe]

“I’m afraid there might be danger,” she said. She had the voice of a beautiful woman. She also had the face and body of a beautiful woman. She was beautiful.

The light from the window was striped. It made stripes on my cigarette smoke. The end of my cigarette crumbled into ash. My marriage had also crumbled into ash.

“I can handle danger,” I said. I patted the butt of my gun. My gun was a Colt. My gun and my scar were all that was left from my time as a soldier. My gun, my scar, and the nightmares. I looked her up and down. “I am good at handling things.”

[glumshoe]

“It’s about my husband. He’s gone missing.”

She was not wearing a ring. It means something when a woman does not wear a wedding ring. Usually, it means that she is not married. “Seems your ring has also gone missing,” I said. I hoped her dress would join it.

Her red mouth curved upwards. She was smiling a little. “I don’t wear it outside. A diamond that large would only invite trouble.”

“In my experience, trouble doesn’t wait for an invitation.” I looked at her legs again. They were both still there. “When did you last see your husband?”

[animentality]