Meh. Tired.

There was something in the classroom today that made a sound like a cellphone that's about to die. It went off about every 1-2 minutes. It was annoying everyone, I could tell (mainly because they said so,) and for me it was really obnoxious. I'm not able to keep talking through that sort of thing any more than I can talk through the school bell, so it made participating in class a lot harder. It was also a tone that hurts my ears, so the constant interruptions with ouches was causing problems for getting my concentration back after each interruption. This went on for about the first hour and a quarter of class. Bad. I was on the edge of melting down but there wasn't much of anything I could do about it because I needed to be in class. It wasn't anyone's cell phone. We checked. We couldn't find anything in the room that could be causing the problem. But there it was, that sound, and considering that speaking is a big part of class and also that I'd only gotten, oh, about four and a half hours of sleep, less than half what I need, this was not good.

Yeah. Four and a half hours of sleep. That's what happens sometimes with me and hard deadlines, in this case related to the piece I'm writing (wrote and rewrote) for FYTortall's book. Which is going to be a totally awesome book, I'm sure. That doesn't mean the time spent from 8pm-3am chasing citations and rewriting stuff is time I ever want to spend on that again. It's not. But it's done and I hopefully won't have to do that again. Please. I do not want to do that again. I prefer to write about the cool stuff Tamora Pierce writes at hours when I am properly awake, thank you. [Not everything about how she handles neurodivergent characters is awesome, but I had coherency issues on all the meh representations so my article is mostly talking about the things she did really well. No, really, Zhegorz's character arc is wonderful, for example.]

Oh, and in Chinese class we did an in-class written thing. It was handwritten and I turned it in, so I can't hand it over yet, but I've got all the words that I had to type to check how they were written. (My typing system uses pinyin, and then I choose the character, so if I know the pronunciation and can recognize a character, I can type it. Writing it requires a bit more, at least if I want to write from memory.)

These are the words I had to look up. I really should know how to write a few of those, but... I'm human. I'm better at remembering where information is stored than I am at remembering what the information actually is. That's what psychology says anyways, and that that's why we're all so dependent on Google now, if they're right. Which is actually pretty cool, I think.

污染环境

影响

拿

公司

愿意

拉关系

侵犯

法律

害得

身体健康

能源

I myself have noticed my growing resemblance to a daffodil

Fanfiction, Tamora Pierce, was on Archive of Our Own first. Warning that we have characters thinking they and/or other characters have lost their minds due to one character having woken up as a daffodil. I don't own the characters or the universe.

When Neal woke up, the first thing he noticed was that everything seemed much larger than usual. He looked around his page quarters. Everything was bigger, and his perception of color seemed a bit off. He looked down. Then he fainted.

When he came too, he looked down again. Sure enough, he seemed to be a flower of some sort. He couldn't tell what sort, seeing as his eyes were in what he presumed to be the bloom, but the shape of his arms suggested that he may have become a daffodil.

I myself have noticed my growing resemblance to a daffodil. No. That had been a joke. He was not supposed to actually turn into a daffodil. It had to be a dream. It had to.

Experimentally, he tried to wiggle his toes, or where his toes should be. He felt no response. Looking down, he saw no response. He seemed to have taken root in his sheets. He tried to move a whole leg. Still nothing. Nealan of Queenscove began to panic. Wiggling his fingers was impossible. Waving his arms was much slower than it should have been, but there was movement. He could turn his head. He tried to speak. It was barely audible, but his voice existed. That was something.

Of all the stupid jokes I made, this has got to be the worst to actually have happen.

There was no way he could scream loudly enough to be heard with the door closed. He had to hope that someone would come looking for him, and soon.

Kel didn't see her best friend at breakfast. Risking lateness for class, she ran to the hall where all the pages lived and pounded on his door. “Neal!” She heard a squeak, barely. She kept pounding. When more squeaking was the only answer, she tried the door. It opened. Neal was not in his room, and there was a daffodil taking root in his bed. She wasn't sure what was going on, but it wasn't good. Turning to leave and tell the training master that Neal was missing, she heard more squeaks. They sounded vaguely like words, and they came from the daffodil.

“Kel? Can you hear me? It's... it's Neal.” Kel looked at the daffodil that was claiming to be her best friend, and it continued. “I myself have noticed my growing resemblance to a daffodil.” She heard what sounded like nervous laughter. That was Neal, all right. But he was... a daffodil. That was a problem, and frankly one harder to solve than trying to keep her fellow pages alive when they were ambushed by bandits in the hills had been. That was a question that made sense, even if the answer was hard to get. This question should have been impossible.

“Should I get the Stump?”

“Probably. And Numair.”

“I'll be back.”

Wyldon was easy to find at the training yards. “You're late, Mindelan.”

She bowed. “Yes, sir. And Neal seems to be a daffodil.”

He stared at the one female page. “I think we need to get you to the healers. Clearly the stress of training has taken a toll on you. I've said it before, that women aren't cut out for this life.”

Kel bit her lip. That was the most logical assumption for Lord Wyldon to make, and unfortunately, it was the wrong one. “Please, sir. He hasn't reported to practice this morning yet. Can you at least come check his rooms before concluding I've lost my mind? I'm telling you, Neal seems to be a daffodil.”

“Very well, Mindelan, if only so that I can attest to the inaccuracy of your delusion when I drag you to the healers afterwards.” He followed her to Neal's rooms, then knocked on his door. “Page Nealan, this is your training master. Open this door at once.”

Only a faint squeaking was heard. Lord Wyldon knocked again. “If you do not open this door by the count of ten, I will open it myself.”

“It's unlocked, sir,” Keladry said.

When he reached ten, the door remained shut. Entering the room, Wyldon saw no signs of the Queenscove boy, though there was a daffodil on his bed. Gods, I've lost my mind too. Then he heard the squeaking again, coming from the daffodil.

“Yes, Neal, I brought him. He thought I was insane, though I'm not sure if he thinks differently now. He might think he's insane too.”

“I wish you were insane. If this is a delusion, it's shared.”

Wyldon swore, something neither Kel nor Neal had heard him do before. “We either need healers, all of us, or we need Numair.”

“Shall I get him, sir?” Keladry asked.

“No, you stay with our... daffodil. I'll get Numair.”

Winter is Coming

Oh hey, more fanfiction. The prompt was Winter is Coming, and yes, I stuck this on Archive of Our Own first. 

Alana shivered as she got out of bed and dressed. Last night had been the first hard frost of the season, and it was still too early to for it to have warmed much. She estimated that she had an hour until the first bell of the morning, when she would need to go to the dining hall and eat, then go to the practice fields with the rest of the pages. That was time enough to practice with Coram's sword, and as much as she hated the cold, she hated the idea that she might be killed adventuring due to never having mastered the sword even more. She pulled on as many layers as she could without truly affecting her ability to walk, borrowed his sword quietly (he had drunk too much after his guard shift the prior night and would likely sleep till noon, waking with a horrid headache,) and headed for the private mirrored room she practiced in. She would learn to be natural yet. She had to.

That was not the morning she learned to be natural. Nor was the morning after. She hoped she was making progress, though she had little evidence of this. In practice with her fellow pages, she felt as slow and clumsy as ever. Sklaw could some progress in the small red-head, but he seldom complimented anyone and never her. Without the free practice duel that he seemed so reluctant to put her in after the utter disaster her first had been, there was no evidence she could judge. She didn't notice how Coram's sword felt less heavy than it had, nor did she realize that she was completing her pattern drills faster. If she had, it would have been some small comfort against the fact that hard frosts were now every night and it was still cold in even their morning practice outdoors. At least when it's actually winter, they won't make us practice outside anymore!

Days before the end of outdoor practice for winter, the Duke granted Alana a day off. For the opportunity to see George, she could brave the cold she dealt with on the practice courts. She saddled Moonlight herself and rode to the Dancing Dove. En route, she had to use the thieves sign George taught her- even those who knew they could go to market any time they wished were starting to shop for Midwinter in earnest, and that meant the pickpockets were out in force. Most of the cities thieves knew better than to bother the red-head with violet eyes, as he was a friend of the Rogue, but this was a time of year where there were new folk in the Court who didn't yet know whose purses to leave alone.

George noticed her right away, of course, looking up from his card game. “Lad, I wasn't expecting to see you until Midwinter! His Grace decide you deserved a day of rest, did he?”

“He said I was making progress well enough that I could get my Midwinter shopping done before the crowds.” Alana snorted. “I think he misjudged the crowds.”

“He may not have the same information that we cityfolk do, always up in the palace. Why would he care about a storm down the river? But the dockworkers care- no boats coming in means buy while they've the time.”

“Is it coming this way?” Much as Alana hated cold, she liked snow, and with winter almost upon them, a storm might well bring snow to throw at her friends.

“Unlikely- that his Grace would know, and even I've not heard it. Now, shall we deal you in?”

Alana took the offered cards- Gambler's Chance was an old game, and she knew it well. 

Sprouting Lightning

I write fanfiction sometimes. This was actually on Archive of our Own (A03) first.

Warning: I'm depicting a bit of a meltdown here. Not particularly graphic, mostly the crying kind.

(I say meltdown because I read Tris as autistic.)

“Tris?” Sandry said. “Your hair?”

Tris raised her hand to her bandanna, which had once again fallen off, leaving her frizzy red hair uncovered. She grabbed a lock of hair and pulled it around to look. It was sprouting lightning. She groaned.

“I don't need this. I don't need this. I don't even want it. Why is my hair sprouting lightning when I'm not even upset?!”

“You don't sound 'not even upset,' Coppercurls,” their foster-brother drawled, “though all I see is a real bad case of Runog's Fire.”

“Thanks ever so,” Tris snapped.

“She wasn't, though,” Daja said. “Until Sandry pointed out that she was sprouting lightning.”

“Is it getting worse? I mean- more?” Tris said. She did not need this. No no no no no.

“It doesn't look like it,” Sandry said.

“Well, that's something.” Tris said. She started pulling the seed lightning from her hair. More came to replace it. “AUGH!”

Lark entered, rubbing her eyes drowsily. “What's wrong?”

“Lightning is wrong. I knew I could make it when I was angry, like with the pirates, but...”

“You didn't expect it to happen every time you were upset?”

Tris sniffed. “I wasn't!”

“But you are now, dear. Sit tight, I'll put the kettle on. Do any of you know where Niko is?”

The four children shook their heads. “Away,” Tris said. “This morning there was a note saying I should meditate as usual for the start of our lesson time, and then I was free. He knows that means I'll read.”

“He didn't say where he was going?”

Tris shook her head.

“Do you know when he'll be back?”

Tris nodded. “Late tonight, I think. Could... could you maybe leave a message with the people in charge of his rooms that he should come here as soon as he can? I don't want to go myself when I don't know what my hair is even doing.”

“Or course I can, dear. It will be all right.”

“And if it's not, well, you just chuck lightning at people until they pretend it is, right?” Briar said.

Tris glared daggers at her brother. “Oh? Remember the time you were sprouting lightning?”

“But I can't throw it a'purpose!” he insisted. “Plus, yours doesn't seem to be going nowhere. It's just sitting there, in your hair.”

“At least for now.”

Sandry looked thoughtful. “If you wove some of your lightning together as a sort of cloth, would the rest of the lightning stay behind it?”

Tris stared at Sandry, then looked down at the lightning in her hand. It was still dancing around her fingers. Staying in one place wasn't something lightning seemed to do: it was the movement of energy that made it, after all. “How?”

“Well, Daja's fire-weavings-”

“Not that kind of how, how do I make lightning act like thread?”

“Maybe if I work through you?”

Lark interrupted them. “If you're going to start playing with magic you've never tried before- that, no one has ever tried before, you need a protective circle first.”

“So that if we blow ourselves up, we only blow ourselves up?” Tris asked.

“Exactly.” That was Rosethorn. “No taking others with you while you attempt the impossible.”

Sandry looked at Rosethorn. “Why would it be impossible?”

Rosethorn looked at Lark, then at Sandry. “Lightning burns thread. Thread mages shouldn't be able to weave with it.”

“What about fire?” Briar insisted. “She wove that.”

“Which should also be impossible,” Rosethorn informed them. “If you four didn't have a history of impossible, your answer would be 'Don't even think about it.'”

Tris rubbed her forehead. “And the problem I'm having right now?”

“Also impossible. Or it should be.”

“Great.” Tris said. “We're going to make a protective circle so we can try something impossible to fix a problem that's impossible to have, and the only reason you're letting us do it is because of other impossible things. Sound about right?”

Sprouting Lightning

I write fanfiction sometimes. Like now. Universe, characters come from Tamora Pierce, and I put this on Archive of Our Own first.

“Tris?” Sandry said. “Your hair?”

Tris raised her hand to her bandanna, which had once again fallen off, leaving her frizzy red hair uncovered. She grabbed a lock of hair and pulled it around to look. It was sprouting lightning. She groaned.

“I don't need this. I don't need this. I don't even want it. Why is my hair sprouting lightning when I'm not even upset?!”

“You don't sound 'not even upset,' Coppercurls,” their foster-brother drawled, “though all I see is a real bad case of Runog's Fire.”

“Thanks ever so,” Tris snapped.

“She wasn't, though,” Daja said. “Until Sandry pointed out that she was sprouting lightning.”

“Is it getting worse? I mean- more?” Tris said. She did not need this. No no no no no.

“It doesn't look like it,” Sandry said.

“Well, that's something.” Tris said. She started pulling the seed lightning from her hair. More came to replace it. “AUGH!”

Lark entered, rubbing her eyes drowsily. “What's wrong?”

“Lightning is wrong. I knew I could make it when I was angry, like with the pirates, but...”

“You didn't expect it to happen every time you were upset?”

Tris sniffed. “I wasn't!”

“But you are now, dear. Sit tight, I'll put the kettle on. Do any of you know where Niko is?”

The four children shook their heads. “Away,” Tris said. “This morning there was a note saying I should meditate as usual for the start of our lesson time, and then I was free. He knows that means I'll read.”

“He didn't say where he was going?”

Tris shook her head.

“Do you know when he'll be back?”

Tris nodded. “Late tonight, I think. Could... could you maybe leave a message with the people in charge of his rooms that he should come here as soon as he can? I don't want to go myself when I don't know what my hair is even doing.”

“Or course I can, dear. It will be all right.”

“And if it's not, well, you just chuck lightning at people until they pretend it is, right?” Briar said.

Tris glared daggers at her brother. “Oh? Remember the time you were sprouting lightning?”

“But I can't throw it a'purpose!” he insisted. “Plus, yours doesn't seem to be going nowhere. It's just sitting there, in your hair.”

“At least for now.”

Sandry looked thoughtful. “If you wove some of your lightning together as a sort of cloth, would the rest of the lightning stay behind it?”

Tris stared at Sandry, then looked down at the lightning in her hand. It was still dancing around her fingers. Staying in one place wasn't something lightning seemed to do: it was the movement of energy that made it, after all. “How?”

“Well, Daja's fire-weavings-”

“Not that kind of how, how do I make lightning act like thread?”

“Maybe if I work through you?”

Lark interrupted them. “If you're going to start playing with magic you've never tried before- that, no one has ever tried before, you need a protective circle first.”

“So that if we blow ourselves up, we only blow ourselves up?” Tris asked.

“Exactly.” That was Rosethorn. “No taking others with you while you attempt the impossible.”

Sandry looked at Rosethorn. “Why would it be impossible?”

Rosethorn looked at Lark, then at Sandry. “Lightning burns thread. Thread mages shouldn't be able to weave with it.”

“What about fire?” Briar insisted. “She wove that.”

“Which should also be impossible,” Rosethorn informed them. “If you four didn't have a history of impossible, your answer would be 'Don't even think about it.'”

Tris rubbed her forehead. “And the problem I'm having right now?”

“Also impossible. Or it should be.”

“Great.” Tris said. “We're going to make a protective circle so we can try something impossible to fix a problem that's impossible to have, and the only reason you're letting us do it is because of other impossible things. Sound about right?”

By Smoke or By Fire

I sometimes write fanfiction. Since I'm doing a fanfiction related challenge, I'm writing even more of it. Characters and universe belong to Tamora Pierce. I put this on Archive of our Own first. 

Trigger Warning: Death

“Halt!” Beka shouted. The man she chased carried a lit torch and lamp oil, both stolen- the oil from one of the nearby shops, the torch from the door on the way out. Oil and torch made for a deadly combination, and the man showed no sign of slowing or stopping. Her partner, Rusnill, was no distance runner, and he began to fall behind. She dared not slow to let him catch up, not when her quarry carried such dangerous goods.
Whistle in mouth, calling for her fellow guards with every exhale, she followed the man into the Cesspool. Though her legs were not tiring, the man was ever so slightly faster. That may have saved her life - just as she was reaching the warehouse she saw the man duck into, flames billowed out. She stopped and stared. In the Cesspool, there would be few sources of water, not enough to put the fire out. “Does anyone have rags?”
No one answered. She asked again. “Anyone? A wet rag over nose and mouth can be the difference between life and death for a mot or cove in a fire!”
A small girl, looking to be not more than five, tugged at her sleeve with one arm, trying to pull her apron off with the other. “Mama says you can have my apron if you get me a new one after.” Beka looked up at the woman she guessed to be the mother, who nodded, and helped the girl take the apron off. “My papa's in there,” the girl said.
Beka cut the apron into smaller pieces as she jumped into the gutter. Above the mud, piss, and scummer was a thin stream of water that she used to soak the apron pieces, then put one over her face and jumped into a basement window not yet full of flames.
Immediately she regretted it. While the basement of the abandoned warehouse was not yet on fire, pieces of the floor were starting to fall. In a corner, she saw someone. Curled up, he looked to be breathing through his shirt. Smart man. As quick as could be, she made her way to him. She tapped his shoulder, handing him one of the apron pieces with the tapping hand while holding her own piece over her face with the other. He accepted it, standing when she tugged his arm.
“The stairs are no good,” he told her.
“We're going out the same window I came in.”
He stared at her, but he followed. As they reached the window she had climbed in, she heard groaning- not a human groan. The ceiling was groaning. Beka cursed. “Pull yourself up,” she told the man. “I'll give you a boost.” He nodded and grabbed the bottom of the window, pulling himself as Beka pushed. He fit- barely, and once he was out he extended his arm back to help pull Beka up. He coughed, and kept coughing.
“Papa!” Beka heard a girl shriek. It was the girl who had given her the apron. The girl ran to meet her father, her mother close behind. The man she rescued smiled weakly at his partner and child, and kept coughing.

Beka woke with a start, Pounce digging his claws into her shoulder. As much as it hurt, she was grateful not to watch the man cough himself to death in front of wife and children again. He hadn't even been able to keep his feet- towards the end, he had fallen into the gutter, dying in the mud.

Sir Alanna and Lady Knight Keladry

 Time to talk about a thing Tamora Pierce said!

“Sir and Lady Knight are titles granted to individuals by the crown and aren’t passed on. Alanna prefers “Sir” because she was making a point. Kel prefers “Lady Knight” because she’s making a different point. Jon just throws up his hands and tells the Master of Ceremonies to ask the ladies for their preference.”

Can I talk about how much I love this? 

Can I talk about a parallel I think it has with the Autistic community and how we seem to have handled language and a lot of other things?

Alanna makes a point with being "Sir Alanna." I think her point is "I can be just like you." And she can. She is King's Champion. She's also probably 5'2", maybe 5'3". There's no way that she's the 5'4" a lot of the fandom seems to think she is, because it was a while after Daine found Alanna at least 2 inches shorter than her that Daine was even described as 5'5". So I'm not entirely sure how she had people convinced she was a boy up through when she was 18, but that was a thing that happened. She's not trans, by the way. She just knew that they wouldn't let a girl do what she wanted to do, so she spent 8 years pretending to be a boy.

Kel (full name Keladry) makes a different point with being "Lady Knight Keladry." I think she says "I don't have to be just like you," as part of it, at least. The other part is "I'm going to choose not to even try to be just like you, and I'm going to remind you of it all the time." She was the first girl to get to train for knighthood openly in at least a hundred years, and she spends a good bit of her time reminding everyone she's a girl. She's not required to change for dinner any more than the boys are, so she could stay in her page's uniform, but she's also not required to be in uniform for dinner. So she wears a dress to dinner. Every night. Just to remind them that yes, you have a girl among you deal with it.
She uses a distaff border on her shield. Alanna doesn't.

Alanna had to hide, and she wants to make the point that she can be just like the men, do everything they can, now that she's unhidden. Keladry never hid, and she wants to make the point that she doesn't need to be the same.

Now look at autism.
"Person with autism." I am a person, just like you. I just... also have autism. I am a knight, just like you. I just... happen to be a girl. Sir Alanna.
Autistic person. I am Autistic. This is important, and it is part of me not an appendage, and I am not hiding it and you do not get to ignore it not even in what you call me. I am a woman, and this is important, and it is part of me not an appendage, and I am not hiding it, and you do not get to ignore it not even in what you call me. Lady Knight Keladry.
I'm Autistic and applying for a job. Sir Alanna discloses after, if ever. Lady Knight Keladry? She probably shows up at the interview with a stim toy and doesn't look at the interviewer. She'll remind you exactly how she's different.
Sir Alanna was normalized, or at least people tried. Sir Alanna probably thinks that was the thing to do, because I can be just like you. Sir Alanna might (or might not) advocate the same for the next generation- she might rejoice in how the younger generation doesn't necessarily need to do it the way she did, as the actual Sir Alanna does in the books. Lady Knight Keladry was not normalized. She learned functional skills, like how to be a knight or how to cook or read or write, but she was still openly a woman. The court manners she learned were those of a lady, approximately. She'd have learned how to match up Autistic and neurotypical social stuff as a meet people where they are, not as a pretend to be neurotypical. (Not as a pretend to be a man- Alanna learned men's court manners.)
Interestingly enough, Sir Alanna didn't have to hide her autistic traits the same way she had to hide her gender. She didn't believe her friends when they said they liked her because she was different, but she also didn't hide those traits the same way she hid her gender. She was practically famous for hating social events, and everyone knew she didn't talk much. (Unless she was angry. Anger seemed to involve either losing all words or using all the words to explain exactly why everything is horrible.)
There are times and places for both Sir Alanna and Lady Knight Keladry, of course. The first person in the door anywhere probably has to be a Sir Alanna, just for practicality's sake. Those who follow have the option of being a Lady Knight Keladry.

"Everybody" knows wrong.

Trigger Warning: Erasure, references to ableism and "wiping out" autism

Today, I'm talking about one of the parallels I noticed between manufacturers as described in Democratizing Innovation and organizations that miss/ignore the contributions of activists who are outside their organization. Autism Speaks would be a pretty good example of that kind of organization, FYI. They needed a week of activists yelling at them on their page to give credit to the fact that Google's changes to their search suggestions didn't just happen. Autistic adults, a group they tend not to think about beyond the idea of a crisis and transition, made it happen.
 Manufacturers are often convinced that they developed innovations that were actually developed by lead users, only convinced after being shown the lead user prototypes predating the designs they sell commercially. This comes at least partially from the fact that “everyone” knows user needs are found through market studies and products are designed by manufacturers to meet these needs. Similarly, "everyone" knows that nondisabled caretakers are the advocates for disabled people, and that often means parents. This is the part where I quote Tamora Pierce, in the form of something she had Daine say: "Someday I must read this scholar Everyone. He seems to have written so much- all of it wrong." That shows up in Emperor Mage. It's kind of the problem here: "everyone" knows a thing. "Everyone" knows that user needs are found through market studies and then manufacturers design a thing to meet those needs. "Everyone" knows autistic people are helpless eternal children and someone else needs to make advocacy things happen for us. And "Everyone" is wrong.
But.
"Everyone" knows it. And that has effects. Since “everyone” knows where innovations come from (manufacturers,) manufacturers typically don't track where their innovations actually come from. Or groups like Autism Speaks don't track down how things actually came about. Maybe they even feel like the changes Google made were things that just happened. It's not true, but everyone knows manufacturers do the things or everyone knows autistic adults don't exist/don't do the things, so no one checks to see if maybe someone other than a manufacturer did the thing or if autistic adults did the thing.
Additionally, modifications and improvements made by their own engineers often hide the user-innovator roots of the product. In terms of organizations, that can be things like organizations making additions to the things that other activists (even member activists!) do and then not crediting the initial activists who started the thing. That happens, sometimes. I'd put money on even organizations I like, ones I think of as generally being pretty good, doing that one. How they react when the roots are pointed out matters more to me than them making the mistake or not, in this case, since, well, it's not that hard a mistake to make. But if you insist that it's 100% yours now and/or that the initial contributions of the original activists don't matter? That's when we have a problem.
In reality, nearly 80% of major innovations in scientific instruments that were commercialized actually came from user-innovators, despite manufacturing firm managers being convinced that all the examples were developed within the firms. In reality, Disabled people, Autistic people, make a lot of things happen. It was autistic people who got Easter Seals to write their apology, I'd bet. It was predominantly autistic people in an autistic-run (I KNOW IT WAS AUTISTIC-RUN BECAUSE I RAN THE FLASH BLOG AND KNOW THE PERSON WHO TALKED TO THE MEDIA) effort to get Google to at least not suggest hate speech searches. [The results of the searches were not changed. This is not preventing people from accessing articles, it is simply making it so that you actually have to type out the hate speech yourself if you want to search hate speech.] It was disabled people who made the ADA happen. It was autistic people who dealt with the bus ads talking about wiping out autism. The people who use things every day, who know their disability in and out because they live it, who are out in the community or out in the world living? Yeah, we actually do a lot of things. It's not all big organizations or big manufacturers, but the "wisdom" that it is? It hides the times when it's not.

P.S. Today is my birthday and also I'm heading off to a pre-departure orientation for study abroad. 

The Point of Hillary and Rose

I wrote introductions of two 20-year old Autistic people, Hillary and Rose. Before reading this post, I suggest you read those.

I wanted you to think about these two people.
Remember what you thought?

They're the same person. They're both me. I just selectively decided on different bits of my life to give you in each. The book I'm already in is Loud Hands: Autistic People Speaking, and the piece in it is "I Hid." The single-author book is one on Neurodiversity and Tamora Pierce. The piece that's going into another book is sort of an introduction to the Neurodiversity and Tamora Pierce one, and it's going into FYTortall's book.
I chew on my hands sometimes. I really do. I don't chew hard enough to actually hurt myself, but yeah. Chewing on my hands is a thing I do. My teachers have had pretty varied reactions to my inability to sit still. (I'd fail special needs kindergarten, not even joking.) I've had people completely fail to care, and that's been great. Those are the classes where you'd see me sewing or making chainmail or knitting in class, and I'd be doing really well. Those were the classes I was most likely to get an A in. Not because it was easy and I didn't need to pay attention: because that's what I need to do in order to pay attention. This was AP chemistry. This was AP biology. This was Honors economics in college. I've also had people try to stop me from fidgeting. Those were the classes I didn't do so great in. Often "easier" classes- Hebrew school, middle school unleveled science classes, middle school history classes.
That's the thing. People have mixes of traits. When I taught an autism 101 class at MIT's Splash, I had short, 1 paragraph bios of people and the students were supposed to guess if the people were autistic or not. People guessed that Amy Sequenzia was not autistic. It's possible to manipulate the picture that much. Which was among the points I was trying to make.
So, do you really trust the people who use functioning levels as a reason a person should be ignored?

Note: This is apparently my 500th post. WOOT.

Book and Song Thoughts

Trigger Warning: references to caregiver violence, ableism, and eugenics

I read a lot of Tamora Pierce's work. I like it. I also listen to a lot of PONS. When I started listening to them, they were called High Tide.
I've been re-reading the entire works of Tamora Pierce lately because I'm writing a thing for FYTortall for them. I finished the rough draft a few days ago, and I think I'm going for a whole book on the topic. We will see. (Very few, if any, of the full-length sections will appear here. I will probably keep blogging short stuff about ideas I have and I might put up a list of topics I'm considering.)
Anyways, from Trickster's Queen:

"He was a great god and could do what he wished with her. If she was going to die, she wanted to die arguing."

That's Aly thinking. She's pretty cool.
The other words I've got in my head are from an older PONS song. It's part of a verse they have since cut, and sadly the only video I've found with the whole second verse is friends only...  (WHY is it that both times I've talked about PONS lyrics I've been unable to actually find a publicly available recording?) The song isn't actually about the stuff I'm getting out of this bit of it, but art's cool like that. (If it were about that, I don't think it would have gotten cut.)

Can we wait? Does it help if our cause is lost?
I won't give a second thought,
The solution is to trouble the waters, my friend.
You'd rather watch than sink or swim?

Yeah, I'm in a "I might not be able to win, but I am at least going to go down fighting" space at the moment. It's what happens when a large portion of the world is convinced that what we really need is for there to not be anymore people like me without even knowing what it means to be like me. Without knowing what it means to be like any of us. Without knowing what it means to be like Amy, or Henry, or Lydia. (Remember, if you're neurotypical and have an autistic kid, your kid won't be exactly like me because HELLO I AM AN ADULT AND YOUR KID IS A KID AND NO TWO PEOPLE ARE EXACTLY THE SAME, but I am like your kid in several important ways.)

Well, sometimes giving up is what happens, but remember, a lot of autistic people are really stubborn. And also we like being alive and we like who we are and maybe we don't think that "make sure no one is ever like us again" is a good goal. I don't.

And a lot of abled people have a lot of power over us. I'm safer from that than a lot of people are, since the services I need are ones that a person can hire due to being a busy professional as opposed to things that everyone knows are for disabled people. I could (and probably will- engineers tend make enough that I should be able to afford it) hire someone to do those things for me without telling them that I'm not actually capable of doing those things. Yes, I know how. No, I can't actually do them, and definitely not in the time frame needed for doing them all myself. But there are a lot of us where changing "great god" to "caregiver" would leave that first quote pretty much true. And a lot of us do die arguing. Some of us only live because we argued, knowing it was probably a lost cause and trying anyways.

So yeah. I'm stubborn. I'll trouble the water. I don't care how many people tell me it's a lost cause, or that I should want people like me to stop existing (why would someone want that?) or whatever else. I'm not going to watch; I'm going to argue.

1984 and... Neurodiversity?

Trigger Warning: Ableism, sexism, totalitarianism

Funnily enough, yes. Michael started it, I think. If not, he at least came up with it independently- I haven't googled yet to see if anyone else is doing this sort of thing, or with this book. That Autistic That Newtown Forgot is in on it too. I've actually used 1984 as a major source in research papers twice. My senior research paper in high school was about fear tactics and social control. It's got problems. I'll probably talk about those problems in a later post. (Autistic That Newtown Forgot, I'm looking at you because that's your thing too.) I talked about 1984 again in "Dehumanization of the Party and its Members in 1984," my final paper for a summer literature class I took for general education credits. I mentioned it briefly when talking about why moving graduation indoors out of fear was a bad idea. And yes, I had a bag with me at graduation that security didn't know I had. It was that pathetic. But now? We're talking about 1984 stuff and neurodiversity stuff.

Michael talks about the concept of facecrime, quoting the bit in 1984 where it is mentioned.

In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called. (Orwell 65.)

 This is a book written in 1948, and while the word facecrime is not used in literature describing the "treatment" of autism, the concept is there. Autistic people are often described as having a "flat affect," and this is one of the "symptoms" that people aim to treat with things like ABA. One of the things that autistic people are taught, then, is quite literally that facecrime gets you in trouble with adults. Leaving out the word facecrime and choosing flat affect or inappropriate body language/inappropriate facial expressions doesn't change this.
Then An Anonymous Newtown Autistic gets into neurotypical performativity based off the idea of gender performativity. I think about a female character I read as autistic, who spends 8 years pretending to be a boy. I just finished the rough draft of a piece about her author's works in general and neurodiversity, and I mentioned how some of her gender passing stuff parallels the experiences of autistic people passing for neurotypical. I read both Michael's and the Newtown Autistic's blogs again. There is even a point where facial expressions show up as a thing Alanna may need to control in passing as a man- as the heir's squire, she has to dance with the women at social events, and she can't exactly show how much she dislikes it: people would suspect "Squire Alan" to be off in some way. Perhaps they would only think him gay (not accepted in Tortall, unfortunately,) rather than guessing that Alan is really Alanna, but... not a safe risk, especially when even the less worrisome of the possible assumptions could still get her into trouble. An autistic woman passing as a man must control her facial expression, or bad things could happen: There is gender performativity; there is an autistic person; there are facial expressions at play.
Then there is the idea of Ingsoc aiming to make its members inhuman, while autistic people are often seen as inhuman (subhuman, often.) Ownlife, eccentricity: condemned by Ingsoc, so an actual autistic person in the Party would be in trouble quickly, as we are by nature different from the typical.
Or how O'Brian wants to cure Wilson of his "insanity" of believing the past immutable, the idea of sanity being culturally constructed, the idea that when one is considered insane almost anything can be further evidence of insanity (Rosenhan 1973.) Often enough, it is from body language (and real-time readings of reactions by machines), including facial expressions, that O'Brian uses to "know" what Wilson is thinking, so it is once again a sort of facecrime, though Wilson is already convicted and doomed. With many autistic people, it is often the body language and facial expressions that authority figures should know they can't actually read which get us into trouble- either our expression is "wrong" for how they and we know ourselves to be feeling, or they insist we feel what they would express with our current facial expressions, which are the "wrong" thing to be feeling. By being autistic, we are already convicted and doomed, just as Wilson is already convicted and doomed by being in the Ministry of Love.


Orwell, George. 1984. New York: Penguin, 1989.

David L. Rosenhan, “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” Science, Vol. 179 (Jan. 1973), 250-258.

Daine... #Neurodivergence of a Supernatural Sort?

Trigger Warning: Attempted murder for being "crazy"

Still working on the Neurodiversity in Tamora Pierce Works thing...

SPOILERS FOR WILD MAGIC BY TAMORA PIERCE
 
I just read the first book from Daine's quartet, and I'm not sure if I should consider the forgetting she is human and not an animal from her wild magic and self bleeding into each other a portrayal of a magical neurodivergence. Wild magic is different from the Gift in that it can sometimes do things outside the control of the person who has it, and it feels like something that caused her to be considered crazy by her village would belong...
So these are the notes I have on that bit.

Daine went mad for some period of time prior to meeting Ouna. This was apparently intentionally caused by some sort of divine figure to teach a lesson. (23.)

“Surely listening wouldn't bring on the madness. She wasn't trying to be an animal, she just wanted to hear them” (30.)

Daine's horse, Cloud, tells her that she's of the “People,” or the animal term for themselves, rather than being fully human (62.)

Daine notices that she in Tortall, she can get away with a lot more than she ever could in Galla, that women do wear pants and fight, but she is sure that they'd still care if they knew she went mad once (80.)

Listening to a wolf-pack, Daine nearly forgot she was human and not an animal (107.)

Daine also almost gets lost in a horse herd, Cloud pulls her out of it and orders her not to run with the People until she knows how to hold onto herself (130.)

“He makes it sound easy, but it's not. There's something wrong with me, she decided. It's the madness, just waiting for me to drop my guard so it can take me again. That's how he can protect himself- he never forgets what he really is. And I can't remember” (133.)

After Daine ran with the wolf-pack, some people from her old village tried to kill her, saying that she was crazy and had to be put down quickly for her own good (154.)

Numair puts up a magical wall between her wild magic and her inner self, so she does not forget who she is again. She still has and can use her magic; she just won't forget that she's actually human anymore. (158-9.)

I also notice that the voices of gods do not hurt Daine's ears in this book. They do hurt Alanna's ears, even that of her patron goddess when being gentle/whispering. If I remember correctly, Numair doesn't have any problems with god-voices either, nor does Alianne, Alanna's daughter. Since "voices of the gods" is a kind of supernatural thing, I wouldn't have counted it as a likely sensory issue for Alanna if it weren't for the whole "everyone else is fine" thing that we need some of the other books to see. But if other people, including other Gifted mortals (Daine's a demi-goddess, but Numair and Alianne are mortal) are fine and Alanna needs all her willpower not to cover her ears... that's a bit odd.

Tris from the other universe has some noise sensitivities too, but hers aren't supernatural noises.

#Neurodiversity Reads

There is a group on Goodreads now, called Neurodiversity Reads. I have a pile of good things to say about them. I'm also a member, because BOOKS! And NEURODIVERSITY! Together! This is a good thing.
The group description is "Neurodiverse people, reading books about topics relevant to our lives."
So anything written by a Neurodivergent author counts as relevant, anything that's about a neurominority (so bipolar, autism, OCD, ADHD, etc) or multiple neurominorities is relevant. Advice books for neurodivergent folk are relevant. Books with neurodivergent characters are relevant. All my thoughts about neurodiversity in Tamora Pierce's writing are relevant, as is my "wait, is Alanna the Lioness autistic?" thought.  I really like Alanna, by the way- I dressed up as her for Halloween once.
So yeah, it's a cool group. There's a decent number of people in it, and there are some discussions in there that could totally be going on. Suggest books as yes, you should read this, suggest them as "this is a thing to stay away from!" Talk about the books. Just remember that this is a reading group that does not support eliminating neurodiversity. At all. Bigotry not allowed, be a decent human being and all that.
I'd also like to note that the group description is a good use of the word "neurodiverse." We're a group, so we can be diverse, and there are multiple neurologies represented within the group, so it really is a neurodiverse group in addition to being about neurodiversity. I just thought that was kind of cool. (Neurodiverse individuals, like said later in the rules, does not make sense. One person can't be diverse. People can be, individuals can't. Neurodivergent individuals could make sense, neurominorities could make sense, neurodiverse individuals just doesn't.)

Might it be autism in Alanna of Trebond's family?

I'm doing research (also known as re-reading all the Tamora Pierce novels and short stories) for a chapter/essay thing that I'm writing for FYT Writes A Book. (Heads up that FYT swears, FYT stands for F Yeah Tortall.) It's about neurodiversity and the portrayal of neurodiversity stuff in the Tamora Pierce novels. And... I'm kind of wondering if the whole Trebond line is autistic? I know that autism tends to run in families. At the start of my re-reads, my question was if Thom might be autistic. It didn't occur to me that Alanna might be too, since most of her self-esteem issues as a page can be chalked up pretty well to living a lie. But there are some bits that had me wonder. I know that autistic people who are generally kind of clumsy but spend a lot of time on the one thing can and do get really good at the one thing- Neurodivergent K is just about as clumsy as I am but was a competitive gymnast. And we have it in canon that Alanna was initially clumsy as well as being smaller/weaker, and that she spent lots of extra hours using a much-too-heavy sword learning to use it before she became decent with it. There is perseveration. Thom and Alanna both seem to do it. Neither of them seem to understand other people particularly well, though the way it comes out is different between the two. Thom openly dislies people (or seems to- we do not here from him that he dislikes others, but others have the distinct impression that he only cares about Alanna and himself.) Alanna admits to not understanding people and goes to Myles for instruction on understanding people as she becomes better friends with Myles. She also seems convinced that she will be disliked for the reasons that she is different, and her friends notice this about her. She can't believe that they like her because she is different. This could certainly be explained by guilt about lying to everyone about her gender, but it is also in line with how an autistic person who wants friends and finds people confusing could feel. (Her difficulty with the concept that she may do as she wishes and that friends will defend this is also in line with someone who has received the bullying common to many autistic people.) We also have that Alanna is intelligent and blunt, that she can't control her temper (but often wishes she could!) and has a tendency to overstretch herself, believing herself to be perfectly fine right up to the point of collapse. This lack of awareness of how close she is to her limits is also a common trait in autistic people, and it is a tendency that we see continue to lead to collapse through all the stories where she is the protagonist. So far, I have only re-read the first novel from her quartet, but I suspect the text will continue to support the conclusion that it is autism running in the Trebond line. (Autism was once referred to as childhood schizophrenia and thought to be a form of psychosis. Many lay people still think autism is a form of “insanity,” which isn't a formal diagnosis anyways. It's not exactly a stretch to assume that citizens of Tortall would not be aware of the differences between autism and various things which get lumped together as insanity, so I don't find the fact that the difference in her family is always referred to as insanity to be an issue with the argument that autism runs in the family. Rather, it supports the argument since autism is one of the mental and neurological differences that does run in families, and it must be one of the differences that runs in families.)

A Discussion on the Gender Binary

Trigger Warning: References to forced normalization, anti-trans bigotry+violence, cissexism, binarism

In the current society, it does not appear possible to live entirely without gender- it is certainly possible to have a genderless identity, and it is possible to perform in ways that make it extremely difficult for others to determine a gender, but it seems impossible to avoid having others read the performance as belonging to one of the two binary genders. (The performance may, however, be read as being a defective or incorrect version of one of these two genders.)

I claim that it is possible to identify with no gender at all due to both knowing people who do so and to having run across statements from those who do so over the course of research for another project, namely discussing the erasure of Queer Autistic people. In this research, I had difficulty finding anything academic about sexual orientation, perhaps due to assumptions that we are incapable of relationships (a false assumption) and that our sexuality would therefore be irrelevant (I had better luck with Autistic bloggers, who have written both about their orientations and about the erasure of their orientations.) One wrote about navigating a world full of gendered signals that were invisible to their genderless self, and another wrote that questions asking about gender remind him of being asked for "miles per gallon" of a vehicle powered by solar electricity. (Jack 2012.) Using writings from many Autistic people as well as researchers not identified as on the spectrum, Jack discusses a view of gender as a copia from autistic perspectives, noting that many Autistic people have non-traditional gender identities. Sometimes, these identities are a matter of dis-identifying with both binary genders, stating a genderless identity, or claiming to lack the internal wiring to see gender as an important variable (Jack 2012.) Given this sort of identification as part of newly more common questioning if gender comes in more than just two flavors (Rosenberg 159,) it's clear that a genderless identity is possible.

However, I do not think it is currently possible to be read by others as genderless- gender identity, assignment, and presentation are three different things (Lee and Shaw 107,) and I would argue that attempted presentation is not the same thing as how presentations are read by others. The idea of androgyny many have is one that emphasizes the masculine, viewing it as neutral (Lee and Shaw 109,) so a performance that is actually a mix of masculine and feminine will be read as feminine. This is the issue I run into with my performance, which includes a mix of masculine and feminine pieces and is read consistently as feminine, sometimes as poorly done feminine. It is also part of a social construction of gender which privileges masculinity as ideal or as neutral- men are not often thought of as a gender group (Lorber 127.)

Society is, in many cases, terrified of those who may break the gender binary, assigning a gender at birth, then using surgery and hormones to make those who are biologically intersexed fit (Lee and Shaw 106.) Forcing performance in alignment with the gender assigned at birth is often considered a part of therapy for autistic children (Bumiller,) noted in her essay about autism, political theory, and working against forced normalization. This is not, of course, exclusive to autism- anyone who veers too far from gendered social standards is subject to sanctions, both formal and not (Lorber 127.) These sorts of sanctions are what many trans* people run into, having been pushed into one gender box their whole lives but fitting better in the other (or in neither!) Trans* people are at risk for all sorts of discrimination and hate crimes (Rosenberg 160,) which looks like an adult and higher stakes version of the sanctions Lorber describes.

This fear of those who break the gender binary, or even those who simply wish to take the "other" position within an untouched and unquestioned binary as Richards seems to (qtd. in Rosenberg 161,) stems from the institution of gender as a way of creating social groups to assign jobs to (Lorber 127.) If a person steps outside of their assigned place within a hierarchical system, people worry that others might wish to follow, that the system could be about to collapse, and so any deviation must be eliminated swiftly. To make men fit, shame is often the weapon with which they are taught that they must not be like women (Wexler 141,) and women are socialized to be all the things men are shamed out of. This shame could not work if femininity were considered equally valuable and simply different, but masculinity is privileged, and so the ways of making women conform to femininity need to be slightly different. They are also less stringently enforced, with far more women willing to admit to "tomboy" tendencies than men willing to admit to being a sissy (Lee and Shaw 105.)

It's socialized. It's all socialized, everything is culture. Things that are really results of socialization, such as the idea that men are more honest, intelligent, and courageous, while women are passive and dependent, are often stated as "biological fact" and used to push people into jobs that gender stereotypes say they are best qualified for. Even when people actively rebel against gender norms (or simply fail to understand why they are so important and innocently ignore them,) gender is still a huge part of life. Others will read us as belonging to one gender or another, based on things like a baseball cap, earrings, or choice of shoes (Lorber 126.) From those readings, we are shuttled along one path or the other, sometimes physically separated from those on the other path. When Beka, the protagonist in one Tamora Pierce novel asked how men and women could understand each other when kept separate, her cat (this is fantasy and the cat is also a constellation) replied, "They aren't expected to understand one another," he replied. "The women will learn to flirt over a friend's shoulder, instead of close. The men will see the women as distant and unknowable. Their friends will be only men. The women will see men as strong and unknowable. Their friends will be only women" (Pierce #.) That is an extreme effect, but men are often taught today that they can't understand women because of innate gender differences, when it is really socialized gender differences that make it hard for members of one gender to understand members of another.

Works Cited:

Bumiller, Kristin. "Quirky Citizens: Autism, Gender, and Reimagining Disability." Signs: Journal of Women  

     in Culture and Society 33.4 (2008): 967-91. JSTOR. ITHAKA. Web. 1 Apr. 2013.

Jack, Jordynn. "Gender Copia: Feminist Rhetorical Perspectives on an Autistic Concept of Sex/Gender."  

     Women's Studies in Communication 35.1 (2012): 1-37. Taylor & Francis Online. Taylor & Francis 

     Group, 16 May 2012. Web. 1 Apr. 2013.

Lorber, Judith. "The Social Construction of Gender." 1994. Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic 

     and Contemporary Readings. By Susan M. Shaw and Janet Lee. 5th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher 

     Education, 2011. 126-128. Print.

Pierce, Tamora. Mastiff. Random House, 2011. Print.

Rosenberg, Debra. "(Rethinking) Gender." 2007. Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and 

     Contemporary Readings. By Susan M. Shaw and Janet Lee. 5th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher 

     Education, 2011. 158-162. Print.

Shaw, Susan M., and Janet Lee. "Learning Gender." Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and 

     Contemporary Readings. 5th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2011. 105-120. Print.

Wexler, David. "Shame-O-Phobia." 2010. Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and 

     Contemporary Readings. By Susan M. Shaw and Janet Lee. 5th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher 

     Education, 2011. 141-144. Print.

Later, shorter, or not really relevant thoughts that I still want to say:

• I think I know Lindsay of Autist's Corner who got cited in Jack 2012. A couple others are in Loud Hands: Autistic People Speaking with me. I... am apparently citing a paper that cites the blogs of some people I know. Huh.
• I wonder how much the whole "trouble reading neurotypical social cues" has to do with the number of Autistic people who "don't get" gender and how much it has to do with what I semi-jokingly describe as "My brain is different, and by the way, my brain is different." When I say that, in this case, I mean that Autistic people are definitely wired differently, and that there does seem to be some brain difference component to being LGBTQ+ of any flavor, and the actual neurological differences aren't that well understood for either group. For all we know, the relevant brain differences for each could be related to each other. There is some evidence of correlation.
• I prefer to think of the masculine and feminine spectrum as being two separate sliders rather than one spectrum because more masculine doesn't nessesarily mean less feminine, at least in terms of identity. My levels of each seem to move around pretty much independently of each other, anyways. (In response to the continuum description on page 110 of the text.)
• "Born male" and "born female" along with "man living as woman" and that sort of thing all kind of bother me- what we are assigned at birth should not get precedence over identity as what we "really" are.
• It sounds like Smith is discriminating against transwomen. That's not cool.
• Trans* is a notation I see trans* people use on Tumblr for basically everything other than cis. I'm going with the language choices I see trans* people actually using here.
• I'm still working on figuring out exactly what my gender identity is. It's something in the gender-neutral/androgyne area, but exactly where is a good question. That's why I often say "they" about women.
• Tamora Pierce was the female role model I posted about in my introduction. This is part of why. Unfortunately, I'm not sure where my copy of Mastiff is, so I'm not sure what page it's on.
• I don't know how to walk "like a girl." I've been told there's something about swinging my hips, but that doesn't tell me how to actually do that.

Some Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere (but you can't find those elsewheres)

 I write stuff besides just things that are originally for the blog. Some of them I think belong here too. So here's a thing. Two things, actually. A Women's Studies thing and an abstract I'm submitting to maybe get into another book.

For Women's Studies, my introduction that I stuck on the forum:

My name is Alyssa and I am a triple major in Mechanical Enginering, Mathematics, and Chinese. I'm entering my fourth year in the International Engineering Program, which means I'm about to have my year abroad. I have some idea about Gender/Women's Studies from independent stuff, but have never taken a relevant formal course before. My main sociology type interest is actually in Disability Studies, specifically in the (fairly new) neurodiversity movement, but it isn't possible to fully understand any one dynamic without some understanding of how it interacts with other things, like race, class, gender, and sexuality. From this class, I'm hoping to gain a general understanding of feminism and women's studies to use as a basis for looking more closely at the intersection of disability and gender. My main female inspiration is Tamora Pierce, who wrote the Song of the Lioness series along with quite a few other books. Those books were my introduction into the fantasy genre and all have female protagonists, which has been a big factor in my understanding that yes, representation of women in fiction really can show many ways of being a woman without resorting to stereotypes. In a way, she was my introduction to feminism as a thing people talked about and had to fight for (instead of something that came from a sense of fairness and that I thought everyone just knew) as well as my introduction to the fantasy genre.

And for FYeahTortall (heads up that they swear,) they are working on putting together a book, and this is the abstract I sent in:

A Neurodiversity Perspective on the Representation of Mental Differences in Tamora Pierce Novels

Within the Tamora Pierce novels, there are characters who clearly have mental differences, such as PTSD in the case of Briar and Rosethorn following the war in Yanjing, brain injury/damage due to oxygen deprivation after Rosethorn was briefly dead, and Zhegorz having something (probably a mix of things including PTSD) resulting from abuse and mistreatment he received from those whose secrets he unintentionally heard, along with possible ADHD in Jory Bancanor. There are also forms of magic in both the Tortall and Emelan universes which could likely be best examined as neurological differences, such as the Sight (George and Aly Cooper) and the innate ability to hear voices/see images on the wind (Zhegorz, Tris, references to many initiates,) given that these are differences in sensory perception. In this essay, the portrayals of all of these differences, along with any others I find in a re-reading of all of her novels, will be examined from a neurodiversity perspective. Both the ways the characters are shown to the audience and the ways that other characters are shown to react will be examined, studying both our own society and those within the universes created by Tamora Pierce.

Halloween Costumes

Anyone who knows me offline knows that I pretty much don't do the "revealing clothes" thing, so I have made a decent number of my own halloween costumes since I got old enough that "sexy X" was the norm for girls. Actually, that wasn't even the first time I made my own costume, since Blue from Blue's Clues didn't go up to my size back when I was probably eight and I insisted on being Blue anyways, but the point remains. It's really hard to find a costume meant for a woman (well, I'm actually androgyne, but very few offline people know that since I'll still wear skirts and I don't shout it from rooftops and all) that isn't really revealing.
I have no issues with people choosing to wear revealing costumes, by the way. I am worried that something might happen and that they might get victim-blamed over it, but that's an issue with rape culture and victim blaming, not a problem with the costume itself. What I have issues with is that it's nearly impossible to find something that isn't revealing. Both options should exist, and usually the sexy version is the only one designed to fit women.
Which is why I wound up making for myself. I've been a generic witch using a ground length black skirt, T-shirt, and robe. I've been Hermione by using a Hogwarts robe instead of plain black. (And I made all three Hermione from fabric for the HP7 midnight showing, landing me on the Shanghai news, which the school I was abroad at STILL HASN'T SENT ME THE LINK FOR. I was Alanna the Lioness from the Tamora Pierce books, homemade except the red wig. And then I was a knight using homemade chainmail. It was awesome. It was also a lot of work, and not everyone can do that. It was a lot of time, too, also something not everyone can do. The inability to find a costume that isn't revealing is a product of sexism. (Personally wanting one that is revealing may or may not be related to sexism, but the near non-existence of ones that aren't is very much related.)
(Sorry if you thought you were getting something about Halloween costumes that work with sensory processing issues. I make my costumes using fabrics I can comfortably wear and that's really all there is to it for me.)