Again, not really saying anything new here, just trying to articulate part of the problem that makes lots of sense in my head but maybe isn't obvious to everyone else...
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
(SFF Bingo): The Outside, by Ada Hoffmann
Jan. 1st, 2026 04:50 pm Ada Hoffmann first came to my attention via The Neurodiversiverse anthology. This is the first installment in a trilogy. In a future where superintelligent AI are worshiped as gods, an autistic scientist accidentally causes a disaster on a space station. As a result, she's basically kidnapped by angels working for the god Nemesis, who need her help in tracking down her former doctorate advisor. Both the forces of Nemesis and the heretic Dr. Talirr have the potential to cause terror, so Yasira does a lot of bouncing between a rock and a hard place. "The Outside" refers to forces beyond our universe's space and time, which occasionally breach containment and cause "madness" in onlookers, but of course, "madness" is subjective. (In the acknowledgements, Hoffmann places this book within the stream of "Lovecraftian subversion.")
The worldbuilding of AI-as-gods requiring mortal trust to perpetuate themselves, and eventually absorbing human souls after they die, is fascinating. Ditto some humans' desire to build their own space stations without relying on godly technology. The glimpses we get of other alien species are great:
Your Boater dictionary had two words in it before you started drawing on my work. And both the words were variations on 'destroy the soul-eating abominations.'
...
However, any culture studied in sufficient detail will yield up a word, and often a fairly sophisticated system of safeguards and protections, for the things in this universe which are inherently incomprehensible to sentient minds. The semantics of the word chosen can be culturally informative. My favorite, of course, is the Spider term: Ȋsȋrinin-neri-ȋnik, or 'that which eats reality.'
Yasira comes from a culture that's comparatively accessible for disabled and neurodiverse people, and that filters through early. This description felt true-to-life:
Yasira's neurotype was supposed to be all about joy, about being so in love with science and knowledge and patterns that they eclipsed everything else. She'd been like that as a child, throwing herself into dusty physics texts the way other kids played games or ate candy. So excited when she tackled a new problem that she'd abruptly throw the book down and run around the house laughing. At some point, maybe in grad school, that had faded somehow. Who knew why? She was still good at the things people liked her to do, so there wasn't much wrong. Maybe it was just part of growing up.
I would have liked to see even more contrasts of how someone like Yasira might relate to angels or nonhuman entities differently than other humans would. This struck me as strange:
Akavi peered over Yasira's shoulder at the chart of the galaxy. This was unnecessary, since he had downloaded the chart into his head and could mentally examine it from whatever angle he pleased. But the physical signs of shared attention helped put mortals at ease.
The Outside, by definition, is outside ordinary understanding and language, so any depiction of it is inherently vague. It wasn't too much gross-out horror for me, but I'm not super into "we can't describe it, it was just some bizarre wrongness."
I would have liked more worldbuilding about what happens to humans after they die and how that relates to the gods. Yasira, quite understandably, is reluctant to do things that will get people killed; life, even life with some "madness," is better than death! But in a world where the existence of afterlives is common knowledge rather than a matter of faith, I imagine people's ethical calculations would be different in some circumstances. I didn't get enough of "how divine are the 'gods,' really" to feel like I necessarily understood Yasira's reactions.
I would have liked more worldbuilding about what happens to humans after they die and how that relates to the gods. Yasira, quite understandably, is reluctant to do things that will get people killed; life, even life with some "madness," is better than death! But in a world where the existence of afterlives is common knowledge rather than a matter of faith, I imagine people's ethical calculations would be different in some circumstances. I didn't get enough of "how divine are the 'gods,' really" to feel like I necessarily understood Yasira's reactions.
( Vague spoilers )
Yasira's girlfriend, Tiv, comes from a culture with great names and nicknames: "Tiv" is short for Productivity, "Citizenship" goes by "Ship," etc. Yasira struggles to have faith in the gods or experience religious transcendence; she looks to Tiv as an example of how a "good girl" would behave. Unfortunately, most of the time she's offscreen, and it's mostly like "if you ever want to see Tiv again, you better do as we say." We don't get a good sense of what Tiv sees in Yasira; to me, these sorts of relationships can come off as "anxious autistic person and their emotional support neurotypical." I understand that some people will value seeing f/f romance depicted in these settings! In my entirely personal opinion, I would have liked to see other kinds of relationships in Yasira's life.
(There is also a very funny subplot involving an angel who's crushing on his clueless boss, featuring a great Ironic Echo resolution.)
Bingo: Gods and Pantheons, LGBTQIA protagonist, Impossible Places, Epistolary (almost every chapter starts with an in-universe epigraph)
Disclaimer: I have a friend who contributed to this anthology, I won't be reviewing their piece!
This is an anthology built around a specific theme: what if neurodiverse people (ie, autistic, ADHD, OCD, etc.) were at an advantage when it came to making contact with aliens? After all, we already have a lot of experience dealing with minds that aren't like ours here on Earth!
Before I get to criticisms, I should say that the fact this book exists is not something to take for granted! A generation ago, the concept of neurodiversity and its upsides was not recognized and understood as broadly as it is today. We've come a long way since I was diagnosed with what was then Asperger's Syndrome as a first-grader in the 1990s. So that sense of perspective is important.
However, the flip side of this is that many of the stories run the risk of being Unintentional Period Pieces that might not age well. Depending on how you feel about pronoun rituals, the frequency of those may be either a feature or a bug. There's also a couple stories that include things like using TikTok to interview aliens, or Discord-like "servers" that have certain sections age-restricted.
More broadly, once you've read several of these stories, they can sometimes blend together in tone--which makes sense given the specificity of the theme, but it might mean that it's not a great volume to read cover-to-cover. Again, turns of phrase that might be empowering for one person ("they didn’t think they’d ever felt so seen") can become cliche to others, especially in close succession.
A few thoughts I had on individual stories:
-"The Grand New York Welcome Tour" (Kay Hanifen) is set not at the moment of first contact itself, but some time later, when aliens traveling to Earth for tourism has become more common. I think this choice worked well, since covering the entire range of "wow, it's aliens, what do I do now?" can be a lot to get through in a short story, whether or not the human protagonists are genre savvy.
This is an anthology built around a specific theme: what if neurodiverse people (ie, autistic, ADHD, OCD, etc.) were at an advantage when it came to making contact with aliens? After all, we already have a lot of experience dealing with minds that aren't like ours here on Earth!
Before I get to criticisms, I should say that the fact this book exists is not something to take for granted! A generation ago, the concept of neurodiversity and its upsides was not recognized and understood as broadly as it is today. We've come a long way since I was diagnosed with what was then Asperger's Syndrome as a first-grader in the 1990s. So that sense of perspective is important.
However, the flip side of this is that many of the stories run the risk of being Unintentional Period Pieces that might not age well. Depending on how you feel about pronoun rituals, the frequency of those may be either a feature or a bug. There's also a couple stories that include things like using TikTok to interview aliens, or Discord-like "servers" that have certain sections age-restricted.
More broadly, once you've read several of these stories, they can sometimes blend together in tone--which makes sense given the specificity of the theme, but it might mean that it's not a great volume to read cover-to-cover. Again, turns of phrase that might be empowering for one person ("they didn’t think they’d ever felt so seen") can become cliche to others, especially in close succession.
A few thoughts I had on individual stories:
-"The Grand New York Welcome Tour" (Kay Hanifen) is set not at the moment of first contact itself, but some time later, when aliens traveling to Earth for tourism has become more common. I think this choice worked well, since covering the entire range of "wow, it's aliens, what do I do now?" can be a lot to get through in a short story, whether or not the human protagonists are genre savvy.
-There are several examples of "not only do human minds come in different types, but so do extraterrestrial minds." Overall, I think this worked well, and provided the opportunity for fun alien POV. In "Impact" (Jasmine Starr), this is combined with "aliens don't have individual names, they're just all representatives of the species." That combination of tropes stretched credulity for me; are aliens going to consistently be like "oh, it's you, the one whose processing doesn't work like the rest of us, whatsername"?
-"Shadows of Titanium Rain" (Anthony Francis) had a cool scene of trying to communicate across language boundaries that reminded me of xkcd's "Time."
-"The Interview" (Brian Starr) goes back and forth between human and alien POV for dramatic irony that reveals more than either could alone.
It took a few beats for Tsah to realize that Ben was not planning to add anything further. She didn't actually have anything she wanted to write down, but somehow felt that scribbling a note onto his resume would suffice as a transition to ask the next question.
Ben, though, was certain that what she had written was Schklonian for "Earthlings are all useless and Ben Denton is the worst of them all."
-"Scary Monsters, Super Creeps" (Cat Rambo) is set in a world with superpowered individuals. "Seattle tempted me, but the supers out there got pretty weird sometimes." Shades of "Steelheart"! Like "Hench," it leans heavily into "even the self-proclaimed superheroes are usually no better than the villains," and again, I feel like books tend to deconstruct this trope that's played straight more in comic books and films. So as a primarily book person, I'm only seeing the deconstruction side!
-The Space Between Stitches (Minerva Cerridwen) has a poignantly genre-savvy character, and again, displays how far we've come in a generation or so:
“It’s funny, I dreamed pretty much my whole childhood that this moment would come. Someone asking me to get away to a world where I’d be fully accepted—still the alien, but spectacular because of it, you get the idea. Or maybe you don’t, but I kind of have a feeling you might.”
...
“Anyway,” Lutra continued, “I’m good where I am. Ibb, do you know how amazing life has become? I’ve got friends now, and most of them are also neurodiverse. We all love each other’s quirks. There are people in my life who can teach me, with my absolute lack of spatial awareness, something as complicated as crochet.”
-"A Hint of Color" (Jody Lynn Nye) had a sweet moment where aliens whose anatomy is very different from humans can nevertheless recognize and appreciate a team of humans taking care of their injured comrade; reminded me of "The Lost Steersman" :) "The bare minimum we can do is prove to them that we're at least as smart as they are."
-Sometimes it's funny when different stories independently hit on similar imagery for communicating ideas. Three different stories that play with the idea of Platonic solids:
Tangible Things (Jillian Starr):
People smell the anxiety on my breath, and they laugh because my smile isn’t right. Honestly, most of me isn’t right. Dodecahedron in a round hole and all that.
Meeting of the Branes (Kiya Nicoll):
“Yes,” he thought at it, and thought: tetrahedron. Cube. Octahedron. Dodecahedron. Icosahedron. Sphere.
It was the only way he could imagine to explain three-dimensionality, and the Angel recoiled again before returning. <<!!>>
Meaning Green, Unclear (Clara Ward)
Ari shaped a cluster of one thousand magnetic balls into Platonic solids: tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and finally a twenty-sided icosahedron. Geode formed the same shapes using a rainbow chain-link fidget.
-There were also several poems and pieces of artwork included. Overall I enjoyed the art--it's hard to tell a story or illustrate "neurodiversity" in a single image, but it does a good job at portraying "communication with aliens" and other engrossing images. With regards to the poetry, most of the free verse didn't really click for me, but "Close Encounter in the Public Bathroom" (Keiko O'Leary) uses the pantoum form effectively to portray being stuck in place (due to OCD and/or alien technology not working). Also, "Meaning Green, Unclear" incorporated haiku into the story as a means of communication!
-The editors had fun with the legalese, so don't skip the copyright/acknowledgements stuff:
No express or implied guarantees or warranties are provided for any links, facts, ideas, concepts, recipes, formulas, memes, runes, platitudes, or paradoxes expressed herein.
...
This book is made of bits and presented using atoms: bits are fundamental units of information capable of distinguishing yes/no conditions, and atoms are small but nonfundamental particles in constant motion that stick together when close but repel each other when compressed.
Bingo: great fit for Character with a Disability; also Indie Press, Published 2024, 5+ Short Stories!
Bait and Switch
Feb. 16th, 2024 04:36 pmThis is yet another "framework I turn over in my mind for a while, never have an excuse to write about, want to write a long and rambly book review, this will be a long and rambly digression, better make it its own post." As usual, I can't really talk about just one thing without a lot of digressions/tangents, but it fits together in my head. And a lot of it I've probably actually said before in different contexts, because they're long-term preoccupations, but I might have better ways of articulating it now than I did years or decades ago.
Also, I am absolutely not telling anyone to think this way or feel this way, I understand that it's not healthy. I'm trying to explain a neurosis that I already experience.
( Read more... )
Also, I am absolutely not telling anyone to think this way or feel this way, I understand that it's not healthy. I'm trying to explain a neurosis that I already experience.
( Read more... )
When characters don't know their goals
May. 11th, 2022 05:21 pmI've realized that there are several kidlit examples of a trope that was especially hard for me to wrap my brain around as an autistic child, and that's "the character thinks they want X but they actually want Y." If I'm following along, and the text isn't presented in an especially obscure way, I can usually infer "the main character's goal is X even if they never say in so many words 'I want X.'" However, there are cases where the character either gets (a chance at) X but isn't happy about it, or doesn't get X and is happy about it, and this causes me dissonance.
-The Paper Bag Princess: the princess thinks she wants to marry the prince, but she actually wants the prince to love her just as she is.
-Holes: Elya thinks he wants to marry Myra, but really, he wants Myra to love and appreciate him.
-Annie: Annie thinks she wants her birth parents to return for her, but really, she wants a loving family.
With the first two, you could say, "romance is just weird and strange especially if you're a kid," but for the last one, I'm sure there are people who would be like "how dare you think that birth family is the only family that counts, that's #problematic, found families are important too!" And it's like...I make that assumption because that's what the character claims that they want. It's something about that second-order realization, if it's not made explicit, that was kind of beyond my capacity to grasp.
-The Paper Bag Princess: the princess thinks she wants to marry the prince, but she actually wants the prince to love her just as she is.
-Holes: Elya thinks he wants to marry Myra, but really, he wants Myra to love and appreciate him.
-Annie: Annie thinks she wants her birth parents to return for her, but really, she wants a loving family.
With the first two, you could say, "romance is just weird and strange especially if you're a kid," but for the last one, I'm sure there are people who would be like "how dare you think that birth family is the only family that counts, that's #problematic, found families are important too!" And it's like...I make that assumption because that's what the character claims that they want. It's something about that second-order realization, if it's not made explicit, that was kind of beyond my capacity to grasp.
Empire Star (and Babel-17)
Jun. 8th, 2020 08:15 pmFebruary: people on exchange Discord namedrop "Babel-17," which is a Sapir-Whorfish SF novel from the '60s
March: I run across it in my library, together with a shorter novella "Empire Star" also by Samuel R. Delany, and pick it up
I have lots of thoughts about Empire Star
I decide to write it up before I have to return it to the library
The library announces it's closing indefinitely due to quarantine, bookdrops will be closed, keep your books until they open again
June: ...
Anyway.
Babel-17, if you can accept the suspension of disbelief required for Sapir-Whorf stuff, is fine. (Basically, it's if you thought "Arrival" needed more polyamorous relationships.) There's a little heavy-handed characterization about a square who goes into the spooky ghost district after hours and has a hot one-night stand with a ghost and has some epiphanies about "wow, these people outside the mainstream are actually cool and great just as they are," but that's not the focus. There was also a weird line about how, when one of the POV characters first met the protagonist, she struck him as "near-autistic" after having been traumatized by an attack on her home planet, but given that this was written in 1966 there's a lot of context I'm missing and I only mention it because of some of the weirdness with Empire Star. There's also some cheerful fourth-wall-ness; "Empire Star" is referenced as an in-universe publication by "Muels Aranlyde," which is an anagram of Samuel R. Delany--sad to say I didn't catch that on my own. And the linguistics-nerd asiding is fun.
Empire Star is...different. Some stuff worked for me, some stuff did not, and that ambivalence is why I've been procrastinating on this post.
Cool/fun linguistics-y things:
-The narrator is a "Crystallized Tritovian" named Jewel. Except, for most of the story, they're not actually speaking in first-person, but admits that they're going to narrate in "omniscient observer" POV. And then occasionally interrupts to say "hi, I'm Jewel, remember me? If you don't this is going to be very confusing."
-At first, the main character (Jo) spea's in a rough di'lect like thi' that lea'es out a bunch of let'ers and makes him sound rus'ic and une'ucated. The people in the spaceport, who have seen more of the galaxy, converse with thous and thees. Eventually, as Jo adjusts to them, they all begin to sound "normal"-ish.
-Another character lampshades this by saying "I am going to teach you, Jo, how to speak my dialect, otherwise everyone will give up on your conceit by page 40." Harsh but probably true :D
-We learn about Jo's homeworld that "plyasil" is their primary export, and Jo swears by saying "Jhup" in his own dialect. Later, someone asks him, "What's the most important thing in the world?" and he instinctively replies "Jhup...uh, plyasil, pardon my language." Her response is "that's always how it goes, the most scarce and precious resource becomes taboo." Interesting way of thinking about how taboos are very culture-dependent.
Not fun, but (imo) well-written, was the main plotline of slavery and how oppression harms the oppressors as well as the oppressed, but not in the same or even a directly comparable way. One of the aliens has an aside about "you're fine, just don't say 'some of my best friends are of an enslaved species.'" Jo is like "what?" "...never mind, silly allusion." I did not realize until looking on Wikipedia that Delany is black (and gay), the treatment of slavery was pointed but not anvil-y. (Again, imo.)
Now the stuff I disliked or was iffy on...
( Spoilers and also criticism of a classic )
March: I run across it in my library, together with a shorter novella "Empire Star" also by Samuel R. Delany, and pick it up
I have lots of thoughts about Empire Star
I decide to write it up before I have to return it to the library
The library announces it's closing indefinitely due to quarantine, bookdrops will be closed, keep your books until they open again
June: ...
Anyway.
Babel-17, if you can accept the suspension of disbelief required for Sapir-Whorf stuff, is fine. (Basically, it's if you thought "Arrival" needed more polyamorous relationships.) There's a little heavy-handed characterization about a square who goes into the spooky ghost district after hours and has a hot one-night stand with a ghost and has some epiphanies about "wow, these people outside the mainstream are actually cool and great just as they are," but that's not the focus. There was also a weird line about how, when one of the POV characters first met the protagonist, she struck him as "near-autistic" after having been traumatized by an attack on her home planet, but given that this was written in 1966 there's a lot of context I'm missing and I only mention it because of some of the weirdness with Empire Star. There's also some cheerful fourth-wall-ness; "Empire Star" is referenced as an in-universe publication by "Muels Aranlyde," which is an anagram of Samuel R. Delany--sad to say I didn't catch that on my own. And the linguistics-nerd asiding is fun.
Empire Star is...different. Some stuff worked for me, some stuff did not, and that ambivalence is why I've been procrastinating on this post.
Cool/fun linguistics-y things:
-The narrator is a "Crystallized Tritovian" named Jewel. Except, for most of the story, they're not actually speaking in first-person, but admits that they're going to narrate in "omniscient observer" POV. And then occasionally interrupts to say "hi, I'm Jewel, remember me? If you don't this is going to be very confusing."
-At first, the main character (Jo) spea's in a rough di'lect like thi' that lea'es out a bunch of let'ers and makes him sound rus'ic and une'ucated. The people in the spaceport, who have seen more of the galaxy, converse with thous and thees. Eventually, as Jo adjusts to them, they all begin to sound "normal"-ish.
-Another character lampshades this by saying "I am going to teach you, Jo, how to speak my dialect, otherwise everyone will give up on your conceit by page 40." Harsh but probably true :D
-We learn about Jo's homeworld that "plyasil" is their primary export, and Jo swears by saying "Jhup" in his own dialect. Later, someone asks him, "What's the most important thing in the world?" and he instinctively replies "Jhup...uh, plyasil, pardon my language." Her response is "that's always how it goes, the most scarce and precious resource becomes taboo." Interesting way of thinking about how taboos are very culture-dependent.
Not fun, but (imo) well-written, was the main plotline of slavery and how oppression harms the oppressors as well as the oppressed, but not in the same or even a directly comparable way. One of the aliens has an aside about "you're fine, just don't say 'some of my best friends are of an enslaved species.'" Jo is like "what?" "...never mind, silly allusion." I did not realize until looking on Wikipedia that Delany is black (and gay), the treatment of slavery was pointed but not anvil-y. (Again, imo.)
Now the stuff I disliked or was iffy on...
( Spoilers and also criticism of a classic )
I'm taking a course to brush up on my Python skills. (Which aren't many, but so far what I've seen is fairly basic/review. I suspect by the end of the week we'll be learning things that are new to me?) You don't need to know a lot about programming to follow this: (normal is input, bold is output)
x = 10
(this tells the computer what x is. x is now 10)
x + 2
12
(the computer added 2 to x, which is 10, and got 12).
x = 5
(now I give the computer a new value for x. it forgets about the 10 and goes with 5 instead)
x + 2
7
(get it?)
Anyway we're supposed to be learning/reviewing what is a "list" versus a "tuple" etc. right now. But this instructor likes to get sidetracked on how the "memory" works in Python, "stacks" versus "heaps" etc. Again, don't worry too much about what all this means.
x = (1,2)
(I told the computer I want x to be a "tuple," like an ordered pair on a graph.)
y = [0, (5,6), x]
(I made a list called y, whose third element is the tuple called x.)
x = 5
(the same way we did above, we forget that x used to be a tuple, now it's the integer 5. tuples and integers are different "types," but that's okay, x can be anything.)
y[-1]
(asking the computer to output the last element in the list y. course pauses, thinks about what this should be.)
The answer is...
(1,2)
because at the time we defined y, the last element was x, and at that time, x represented (1,2). Even though we've changed x since then, we haven't done anything to y. So as far as the computer knows, the last element of y is (1,2).
Now, this kind of abstract thinking is necessary not just in Python, but I would assume pretty much any programming language, to be able to keep track of what your variables represent and why. And, because I'm an abstract-thinking person and have experience with Python, this is pretty straightforward for me.
But this also seems to be a more 21st-century form of the Sally-Anne test! (Which...doesn't seem to be that reliable a metric anyway, perhaps this is a case in point.)
x = 10
(this tells the computer what x is. x is now 10)
x + 2
12
(the computer added 2 to x, which is 10, and got 12).
x = 5
(now I give the computer a new value for x. it forgets about the 10 and goes with 5 instead)
x + 2
7
(get it?)
Anyway we're supposed to be learning/reviewing what is a "list" versus a "tuple" etc. right now. But this instructor likes to get sidetracked on how the "memory" works in Python, "stacks" versus "heaps" etc. Again, don't worry too much about what all this means.
x = (1,2)
(I told the computer I want x to be a "tuple," like an ordered pair on a graph.)
y = [0, (5,6), x]
(I made a list called y, whose third element is the tuple called x.)
x = 5
(the same way we did above, we forget that x used to be a tuple, now it's the integer 5. tuples and integers are different "types," but that's okay, x can be anything.)
y[-1]
(asking the computer to output the last element in the list y. course pauses, thinks about what this should be.)
The answer is...
(1,2)
because at the time we defined y, the last element was x, and at that time, x represented (1,2). Even though we've changed x since then, we haven't done anything to y. So as far as the computer knows, the last element of y is (1,2).
Now, this kind of abstract thinking is necessary not just in Python, but I would assume pretty much any programming language, to be able to keep track of what your variables represent and why. And, because I'm an abstract-thinking person and have experience with Python, this is pretty straightforward for me.
But this also seems to be a more 21st-century form of the Sally-Anne test! (Which...doesn't seem to be that reliable a metric anyway, perhaps this is a case in point.)
Social media/mental health
Jan. 27th, 2020 06:22 pm(This isn't really about Dreamwidth per se, but Dreamwidth is better for hosting long text posts than other platforms, the irony.)
One of the common criticisms of social media in terms of its effect on mental health is the potential for jealousy. Many people, when they post about their own lives, are more likely to share happy moments than sad ones. Therefore, someone reading their friends' posts is potentially going "wow, they look like they're having so much fun all the time and are never upset! I must be a real loser in comparison."
However, I have not found this to be the case for me personally. For one thing, different things make different people happy. When I see pictures of my friends who are now parents, my reaction is often "wow, what a cute baby, I want to tickle it and play peek-a-boo with it," but I never say "wow, I wish I was in my friends' shoes"--parenting seems really hard, and I don't think it's a challenge I'm cut out for, at least not right now. Similarly, if I were to post a picture of myself having fun at a baseball game, many of my sports-hating friends would probably think "ugh, better you than me." Besides, the reason why I follow these people in the first place is hopefully because I like them and want to be happy for them when they're happy--if they're such jerks that seeing their happiness makes me miserable, either I probably never "friended" them in the first place, or I blocked them to stop displaying their posts after a while.
But I think the operative phrase in the above assumption is "when they post about their own lives." Social networks such as Facebook originally evolved as places for people to post their own mundane life news. However, some of them found that they could be more profitable/generate more activity by making it easy to "share" content from other users or news sources. Sometimes this will cross sites--you see pictures of screencapped tweets on Tumblr, or reddit threads on Facebook, because something has far outstripped its source.
One obvious problem with this that has been discussed at length elsewhere is the potential for misinformation and conspiracy theories to spread rapidly. But even without that, there's an issue with accurate news: news per se, unlike "mundane things my friends did yesterday," is far more often than not bad. If your culture values performative outrage, doom-and-gloom rage or lashing out at societal in-groups, then that's the content you share, even second- or third-hand. Sites like Twitter and Facebook don't have good mechanisms for filtering that out and allowing readers to subscribe to the users they came to hear from. Why should they? Attention and newsclicks give them $$.
So before you (generic you, this isn't targeted at anyone specific) position yourself as an advocate for mental health, or claim that you oppose stigma, consider what kind of messages you're promoting the rest of the day/week/year. Are your friends likely to believe that people like them have lives worth living, if they listen to you?
(Part of why I'm often stuck spinning my wheels is that I find being overloaded with other people's problems to be really disturbing, and because I try to live by the golden rule, I am not willing to therefore dump my problems on others. Maybe it's an autistic thing, because a lot of neurotypicals especially come off as extremely masochistic this way with their magical empathy woo-woo.)
AP Lit and beyond
Jul. 5th, 2019 03:08 pmThis was originally going to be a somewhat longer and ramblier essay thing but I ran an early draft by my parents and I think I can trim it down. :p
I recently got a nice comment on one of my older fanfics, "Everyone In My AP Lit Class Is Dead." It read in part "Thank you so much for writing this!! I'm glad you took the class, idk how your school did class schedules, but whatever. I hope you find happiness with whatever you're doing now!" Which I thought was very sweet.
As I look over the story, I find that it's aged pretty well...considering I wrote it 10 years ago, when I was in high school. (I'm now out of grad school with my PhD in math.)
When I try to explain this to other people (eg my parents), they're sometimes like "often the teachers or whoever who are exposing you to this content come from the same privileged groups you do, do you think they feel guilty and overwhelmed all the time?" And I'm like..."well, yeah? Or else they just have extreme cognitive dissonance, IDK, maybe neurotypicals are just weird like that." For me a lot boils down to "1. I have strong feelings of guilt and shame; 2. I would not have chosen this deliberately; 3. Therefore it came from the outside world; 4. People in the outside world/academia/church/wherever who are like 'well I didn't mean to induce those feelings, can't have been me' are being stupendously naive."
Anyway. I still enjoy reading and writing fiction on occasion, but that's in spite and not because of my teachers.
I recently got a nice comment on one of my older fanfics, "Everyone In My AP Lit Class Is Dead." It read in part "Thank you so much for writing this!! I'm glad you took the class, idk how your school did class schedules, but whatever. I hope you find happiness with whatever you're doing now!" Which I thought was very sweet.
As I look over the story, I find that it's aged pretty well...considering I wrote it 10 years ago, when I was in high school. (I'm now out of grad school with my PhD in math.)
I—the narrator broke off. I thought I was getting the classics! Easy, light stuff like murder and incest. I thought only the really hard class would have the, the implied rape and the genocide!
"No," Michael challenged. "That's not why you took this class. You took this class because you didn't get in to the most advanced class. Your teachers didn't think you had the interpersonal skills to manage it. Isn't that right?"
But there was no answer.
"I put on my biographical lens," he explained to the gaping crowd.
A lot of criticisms of broad-based plans to cancel student debt boil down to an issue of unfairness. If person A managed their budget prudently and diligently repaid their student loans, is it fair to tax them to waive person B's?
But I think this argument ("I already paid my dues, others should have to as well") applies just as well, if not better, to the issues of "safe spaces"/"trigger warnings" in academia. I was told that I had to suffer through texts/history lessons/whatever that made me deeply uncomfortable or guilty; I didn't want to opt out because that made me feel like a slacker. Autism gave me an advantage at abstract thinking relative to my peers; it wasn't fair to be excused from difficult material if it was necessary and for my own good. And now other people think they can get off the hook?When I try to explain this to other people (eg my parents), they're sometimes like "often the teachers or whoever who are exposing you to this content come from the same privileged groups you do, do you think they feel guilty and overwhelmed all the time?" And I'm like..."well, yeah? Or else they just have extreme cognitive dissonance, IDK, maybe neurotypicals are just weird like that." For me a lot boils down to "1. I have strong feelings of guilt and shame; 2. I would not have chosen this deliberately; 3. Therefore it came from the outside world; 4. People in the outside world/academia/church/wherever who are like 'well I didn't mean to induce those feelings, can't have been me' are being stupendously naive."
Anyway. I still enjoy reading and writing fiction on occasion, but that's in spite and not because of my teachers.
Introversion
Jun. 22nd, 2019 08:05 pmMy sister graduated from college (yay!) so travelling with my family to visit her. They had a baccalaureate ceremony which was pretty good, including this amazing hymn (set to the melodic/slow part of "Jupiter"). And, staying with my aunt and uncle, who are great.
I just needed the reminder, via my dad, that it's okay to nope out of conversations sometimes, because many of my relatives can get...intense. Like, when they're agreeing with each other, and just doubling down on how hilarious/terrible/whatever something is.
Felt pretty socially drained today when I was out canoeing with them at a lagoon. We're all terrible canoers but that's fine, that's not the point. Just my mom and my aunt going "WE ARE SO AMAZINGLY TERRIBLE, LOL." Just, do you have to be play-by-play and color commentary? It didn't help that we were three to a canoe so if we all row at once it's asymmetric and bad, if I skip I feel like dead weight. Ugh. The canoeing was pretty fun other than that though.
Anyway I have complicated thoughts about my own baccalaureate and...performative outrage and stuff, but I don't know how to put it here. It's all kind of a "wall of text or nothing" with me, so I can't really just go with quick back-and-forths in conversation with "yeah that speaker was weird."
(I also had some academic milestones of my own which I was going to post about, but maybe later. Still on the road.)
I just needed the reminder, via my dad, that it's okay to nope out of conversations sometimes, because many of my relatives can get...intense. Like, when they're agreeing with each other, and just doubling down on how hilarious/terrible/whatever something is.
Felt pretty socially drained today when I was out canoeing with them at a lagoon. We're all terrible canoers but that's fine, that's not the point. Just my mom and my aunt going "WE ARE SO AMAZINGLY TERRIBLE, LOL." Just, do you have to be play-by-play and color commentary? It didn't help that we were three to a canoe so if we all row at once it's asymmetric and bad, if I skip I feel like dead weight. Ugh. The canoeing was pretty fun other than that though.
Anyway I have complicated thoughts about my own baccalaureate and...performative outrage and stuff, but I don't know how to put it here. It's all kind of a "wall of text or nothing" with me, so I can't really just go with quick back-and-forths in conversation with "yeah that speaker was weird."
(I also had some academic milestones of my own which I was going to post about, but maybe later. Still on the road.)
"Openness to Experience"
May. 13th, 2019 04:40 pmSo I was taking a Star Wars survey (you can take it here !) that asked lots of different questions. Some were of the form "on a scale of 1 to 10, how much are you a fan of General Grievous" (he's way up there, those mechanical lightsabers are great), and others were more "on a scale of not at all to very much, how would you describe your psychology in general?" Some people were kind of ?? at those, but to me they seemed pretty likely to be a shorthand for the Big Five personality traits.
I don't want to bash that system too much, especially since it acknowledges that pretty much everything is a spectrum rather than a binary toggle, and it has more statistical reliability than many other models. But there's a big caveat that should come with it, and that is that it was primarily designed by and for neurotypical people! There is one axis called "neuroticism" that compresses a lot of traits into one, but for me as an autistic person, there are issues even with the others. For instance, I'm not particularly agreeable, but I'm also not at all extroverted. In fact, I'm so introverted that I think on some occasions that can mask my disagreeableness, because I'd rather stay out of things than pick a fight. (That probably doesn't prevent me from coming off as "cold" or unempathetic, though.)
But the real puzzler is "openness to experience." Many of the associated components of it are traits I have in abundance: creativity, imagination, interest in new intellectual ideas. But other facets are things that I'm very low in: preference for doing things the same way over again, having clear schedules and itineraries, not liking new tastes or textures. The latter sets certainly, and the former probably, seem to be inherently related to my autism.
(Some of the descriptions also seem to hew close to stereotypes of "open"="good secular liberals," "closed"="bad dumb religious conservatives," which seems side-eyeable. I say this as someone who is fairly left-wing, for nebulous reasons of fairness rather than avant-gardedom, and also very conventionally religious.)
So...caveat lector, I guess.
I don't want to bash that system too much, especially since it acknowledges that pretty much everything is a spectrum rather than a binary toggle, and it has more statistical reliability than many other models. But there's a big caveat that should come with it, and that is that it was primarily designed by and for neurotypical people! There is one axis called "neuroticism" that compresses a lot of traits into one, but for me as an autistic person, there are issues even with the others. For instance, I'm not particularly agreeable, but I'm also not at all extroverted. In fact, I'm so introverted that I think on some occasions that can mask my disagreeableness, because I'd rather stay out of things than pick a fight. (That probably doesn't prevent me from coming off as "cold" or unempathetic, though.)
But the real puzzler is "openness to experience." Many of the associated components of it are traits I have in abundance: creativity, imagination, interest in new intellectual ideas. But other facets are things that I'm very low in: preference for doing things the same way over again, having clear schedules and itineraries, not liking new tastes or textures. The latter sets certainly, and the former probably, seem to be inherently related to my autism.
(Some of the descriptions also seem to hew close to stereotypes of "open"="good secular liberals," "closed"="bad dumb religious conservatives," which seems side-eyeable. I say this as someone who is fairly left-wing, for nebulous reasons of fairness rather than avant-gardedom, and also very conventionally religious.)
So...caveat lector, I guess.
Andalites (and autism stuff)
Feb. 23rd, 2019 05:39 pmSo I saw some interesting prompts for autism-related speculation but it was also easily derailed. I'd previously seen someone else's opinion that Andalite Chronicles is one of the worst books of the Animorphs series and doesn't add anything new, which, um, no.
It's not hard (for me anyway, but also other writers) to see Tobias as autistic, and Elfangor and/or Ax as having autistic-type traits. I don't want to project specific human diagnoses onto other species who we wouldn't expect to think or act like us anyway. We also know that they're not the only examples of Andalites out there (Alloran, Arbron, etc.) But I like to interpreting Elfangor+Ax as examples of more "typically developing" people relative to Andalite culture/having traits that their society values. So with that in mind, here are some of the worldbuilding tidbits we learn about Andalites and what we can extrapolate from them. Not all will be autism-related, and not all will be consistent with each other/the series. (There are lots of examples of KASUs: the one-child policy stuff and its implications are a big example, but I also find it really interesting to speculate about.) And I recognize that they're not one-dimensional good guys. Still interesting!
It's not hard (for me anyway, but also other writers) to see Tobias as autistic, and Elfangor and/or Ax as having autistic-type traits. I don't want to project specific human diagnoses onto other species who we wouldn't expect to think or act like us anyway. We also know that they're not the only examples of Andalites out there (Alloran, Arbron, etc.) But I like to interpreting Elfangor+Ax as examples of more "typically developing" people relative to Andalite culture/having traits that their society values. So with that in mind, here are some of the worldbuilding tidbits we learn about Andalites and what we can extrapolate from them. Not all will be autism-related, and not all will be consistent with each other/the series. (There are lots of examples of KASUs: the one-child policy stuff and its implications are a big example, but I also find it really interesting to speculate about.) And I recognize that they're not one-dimensional good guys. Still interesting!
- -Lots of rituals in culture: morning ritual, death ritual, wishflower ritual. Importance of following the rules and doing things the same way over and over again.
- -Elfangor and Ax are both overwhelmed by taste/sensory issues when in human morph (as is Estrid).
- -Elfangor prides himself on his ability to overcome the Taxxon hunger instinct in TAC, and that gets him separated from Arbron and Alloran and kickstarts another episode of the plot. I think it's significant that inner strength/resistance is the first characteristic that distinguishes "our" hero from the other guys.
- -Elfangor is surprised to learn that Alloran had a strong sense of humor in his youth (much like Arbron).
- -Elfangor tells Loren that Andalites tried to live in cities for a while but preferred the smaller-scale social structures of scoops, with a few spaceports (say that five times fast). Preference for not too much socializing?
- -Names, how do they work? Elfangor and Ax's family is the only detailed example we see: parents Noorlin-Sirinial-Cooraf and Forlay-Esgarrouth-Maheen, sons Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul and Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill. So presumably it's the middle names that get inherited. Noorlin passes down his name to his son at a time when (because of the one-child policy) they might only expect to have one child? So maybe children typically inherit from the same-gender parent? But then when Ax came along they would get to keep Forlay's name in the family too.
- -Ax mentions that "all human fathers are male." ?? My headcanon is that this has something to do with who gets to pass down their name in same-sex couples (more on this later).
- -Ax has the ability to time exactly two Earth hours in his head, which is obviously necessary to the plot; we don't see any other Andalites doing anything like that. Do different people have different weird skills?
- -Noorlin served in the military in peacetime. Is this common? Maybe a couple years after people (men) complete their studies?
- -Seerow's Kindness was probably one of the first times Andalites shared technology with another species, otherwise it wouldn't have been such a crushing blow. How many other species outside the Yeerks and the Kelbrid do they know and consider roughly tech equals? There are a couple others namedropped ("only us and the other guys fight the Yeerks...") but never expanded upon.
- -Humans are considered a relatively quickly-developing species technology-wise. The Andalites in some form are ancient (Ellimist Chronicles) but developed spaceflight, Z-space tech relatively slowly. (The great tragedy of the series is that the Escafil device came along so shortly after Seerow's Kindness--if only the Yeerks had gotten that first!) This however leads to some consistency issues, see the #40 discussion.
- -Utzum is mostly considered a myth, like the Ellimists. Related to religion? ("the captain is like one of the ancient gods...") Or belief in an afterlife?
- -Why the prohibition/discouraging of women in the military?
- -The Quantum Virus/biowarfare stuff. Indicative of a disconnect between the military and the rest of society (led by the Electorate) that's developed by that point: even Elfangor as an aristh is shocked to learn the cause of Alloran's disgrace, and the crew from #38 are presumed dead to everyone. So we see the tension of both general society's principles of honor and the recognition that not everybody lives up to that. I suspect some of the military guys see it as a hyper-utilitarian "greatest good for the greatest number" along with "well the Hork-Bajir are kinda dumb, so who cares about them."
- -Gafinilan & or / Mertil. Were they a ship? I don't think they canonically are, and so it's a little frustrating to see them described as "oh it's definitely gay, 100% gay, anyone who disagrees is wrong." But I also don't think it's necessary to assume that Andalite society is homophobic. If anything, I think the population growth concerns (again, ignored by several other books) would make society fairly accepting of same-sex marriage--"you two go adopt kids and argue about who passes down the name, no need to make new babies."
- -Where does prejudice against vecols stem from? Maybe some nonverbal individuals preferred to really become recluses and that led to a societal taboo? Ax mentions being surprised that someone like Mertil, who wasn't compatible with the morphing power, would be let in the military--which doesn't make a lot of sense when you think about the timescale, the morphing technology is a relatively new innovation. (And Andalites tend to only use it for espionage stuff or rapid healing, since they think their natural bodies are so great that why would anyone need another form to fight in?)
- -How does symbolic language develop in a society with telepathy??? Skimming Ellimist Chronicles, it looks like they develop signed language first, and then that gets associated to more formal thought-speech? Elfangor can project warmth and courage in book 1--is that just something he can do, an individual quirk like Ax's timing, or more general?
- -Lots of implications for how this plays into autism-type traits. I can see it leading to emotional overload if people go around "dumping" emotion on each other too often--so society prizes stoicism, etc, and people prefer to live on their own in the scoops rather than crowded cities. Or "why would we need words to talk about how we're feeling if we can just, like, share it."
- -IDK, I just have a lot of thoughts, and better in my own space than disappearing into the void, I guess!
Autistic people are...faithful.
Mar. 2nd, 2013 06:58 pm (Part of the Autistic People Are series.)
As a person on the autism spectrum, I can oftentimes place an emphasis on logical thinking. Given the all-important caveat that "if you've met one person on the spectrum, you've met one person on the spectrum," there's in many circles an overlap between autistic people and various parts of the scientific fields. Although I consider myself a mathematician and not a scientist, I appreciate the importance that facets of a thought process like "attention to detail" and "interest in clear, unambiguous definitions" can play in the world of science.
Which is why it's all the more important to not make generalizations about autistic people (or, really, anyone at all), by pitting disparate terms to be at odds. My religious faith is extremely important to me, even if I sometimes feel uncomfortable trying to articulate it in various (web-based and otherwise) spaces. My mind appreciates formal structures and patterns, such as can be found in studying a hymn, or the cycles of the church year and lectionary. Some things that are hard for me are dealing with how we, as a church, can respond to social concerns (such as world hunger or something that makes me feel guilty), or, indeed, struggling to articulate my identity as a person of faith when I'm terrified other people will jump to unwarranted conclusions about my worldview, bolstered by other people's uses of religion for wrongdoing (which is a problem as a person on the spectrum, as well).
More broadly, I can be extremely loyal to people or hobbies I develop, sometimes leery of jumping on "bandwagons" until I can commit. This has its downsides, such as feeling betrayed by other people who take those relationships more casually, but is just another part of how I see the world.
As a person on the autism spectrum, I can oftentimes place an emphasis on logical thinking. Given the all-important caveat that "if you've met one person on the spectrum, you've met one person on the spectrum," there's in many circles an overlap between autistic people and various parts of the scientific fields. Although I consider myself a mathematician and not a scientist, I appreciate the importance that facets of a thought process like "attention to detail" and "interest in clear, unambiguous definitions" can play in the world of science.
Which is why it's all the more important to not make generalizations about autistic people (or, really, anyone at all), by pitting disparate terms to be at odds. My religious faith is extremely important to me, even if I sometimes feel uncomfortable trying to articulate it in various (web-based and otherwise) spaces. My mind appreciates formal structures and patterns, such as can be found in studying a hymn, or the cycles of the church year and lectionary. Some things that are hard for me are dealing with how we, as a church, can respond to social concerns (such as world hunger or something that makes me feel guilty), or, indeed, struggling to articulate my identity as a person of faith when I'm terrified other people will jump to unwarranted conclusions about my worldview, bolstered by other people's uses of religion for wrongdoing (which is a problem as a person on the spectrum, as well).
More broadly, I can be extremely loyal to people or hobbies I develop, sometimes leery of jumping on "bandwagons" until I can commit. This has its downsides, such as feeling betrayed by other people who take those relationships more casually, but is just another part of how I see the world.
Thinking like an Aspie
Jan. 14th, 2013 09:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmith has expanded her very cool poetry collections to include a military science fiction series about the autistic secession in space. Very cool premise.As part of that, I was going to leave a comment about the way I (as a person on the autism spectrum) see the world (cosmos, in this case) but I just started putting down random, rambly thoughts and it ballooned into deserving-its-own-post size, so here it is for ysabet and anyone else who finds it useful.
The operative word in the title is an. As the saying goes, "if you've met one person on the spectrum...you've met one person on the spectrum," and I make no guarantees about how this generalizes. I brought up a couple things that seemed to be relevant to the military setting, but if anyone wants to know more about something in specific (on this list or not), please do let me know--I love to blather on about myself. ;)
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