thedreadpirateholmes

[thedreadpirateholmes]

served my duty as an autistic artist and made a bunch of autism creature reaction images

#I have never in my life seen a more accurate set of reaction images #I need them

[thedreadpirateholmes]

When I was younger and researching the autism diagnosis criteria and symptoms, I thought “oh I couldn’t POSSIBLY be autistic.” Because when I read “takes everything literally” I thought it literally meant EVERYTHING and I was like “I don’t take EVERYTHING literally, just most things!” And I just realized the other day that it didn’t actually mean EVERYTHING and that was an overstatement.

#oh my gods #not me just realizing that this is exactly how I interpreted that statement and thought the same until this very moment

[thedreadpirateholmes]

Whiskers, claws, wide yawning jaws,

Toe beans hidden under paws;

Oh comfy cat so soft and warm,

Please delay this harsh-sun morn…

[thedreadpirateholmes]

blows my mind that i have little online friends who mildly care about me. it’s really nice

#I’m not great at articulating it but I do <3

[thedreadpirateholmes]

We need like “unclench your jaw” posts but for eye strain. Like

Go look at something 20ft away for 20 seconds.

#reduce the eye strain #things to remember to do

[thedreadpirateholmes]

Why is socializing so hard

How do most neurotypical people just know how to do this

I do not understand

I have been trying my whole life to understand but I continue to get a bad grade in being social - a thing both perfectly normal to fear and want to run away from

#halp #I be trying my bestest

[thedreadpirateholmes]

I like to say that words are hard. But that’s not necessarily what I mean.

What I mean is that emotions are difficult to grasp even without words, and trying to put them into words so that another might understand them seems impossible at times.

We could make up words to express what we mean (I know there are some who are trying to do so), but then we must come up with definitions for them.

How am I meant to define the grasp the moon has against the ebb and flow of my heart, plucking its strings with every fleeting glimpse through my window at two in the morning? The kind of call that dances in the blood, jittering the feet, wilding the eyes? How am I meant to define the cracked rib tightening that enthralls my chest every time I let the thought of Society tell me no, of Age tell me no, of Normalcy tell me no? How am I meant to define the panicked scream clawing at my throat every time I think the phrase “I want to live”, remembering that I am living, but I’m also dying with every tick of the clock on the work week wall that slides the lock into place for hours at a time?

What should be the word for longing to dance under the moon, unburdened and uncaring, until the thunderous heartbeats break through the heavens and the stars unleash the deluge you’ve kept hidden from the daylight - cheering and chanting until you collapse breathless and giddy, giggling mist and defiance into the morning air?

What other word would be able to encapsulate the breadth of finally letting yourself live?

#2am thoughts #this probably doesn’t make any sense #but I am going to post it anyway #I injured my ribcage by coughing too much and now I can’t sleep #my phone’s battery is running lowww

[thedreadpirateholmes]

Yes, uh, two and a half pages of notes that will likely be expanded into 30k words…. The only issues with this plan are:

1). I still have fic from a year ago to finish writing

2). This will require, SO much research, which I love, but have not the time nor brain space to dedicate to it right now…

The further into season 3 we get, the more I think I’m going to have to write that Hondo finds Tech on Eriadu fic that’s been steadily brewing in my docs…

#I am too much of a coward to use the fandom tags #but Hondo and Tech must needs be written #I need the potential shenanigans to recover from Season 3 and it isn’t even over yet #please

[thedreadpirateholmes]

The further into season 3 we get, the more I think I’m going to have to write that Hondo finds Tech on Eriadu fic that’s been steadily brewing in my docs…

[thedreadpirateholmes]

i want to see old men with full beards learning ballet and i want to see terrible art from people in their 30s who have only just got their first tablet and i want to see mothers picking up their old hobbies from before they were told it wasn’t okay to have hobbies and i want to see people in their early 20s figuring out how to be alive by making bad music in their bedrooms and i want zines to be handmade paper pamphlets of devotion and i want creation to be fun again instead of a competition where we all have to monetise joy until we lose the invaluable currency of unashamed love again

#the vibe #this is why I fanfic #writing just to experience the joy of creating

[thedreadpirateholmes]

Hmm, nothing like passing out between 3pm to 10pm to remind you that your sleep schedule isn’t normal and the 9-5 work day was not built to accommodate it or any of your body’s other weird quirks and functions

[thedreadpirateholmes]

Something that literally changed my life was working with a friend on a coding thing. He was helping me create an auto rig script and was trying to explain something to me but his words were just turning into static in my brain. I was tired and confused and there was so many new concepts happening.

I could feel myself working toward a crying meltdown and was getting preemptively ashamed of what was about to happen when he said, “Hey, are you someone who benefits from breaks?”

It broke me.

Did I benefit from breaks? I didn’t know. I’d never taken them.

When a problem frustrated or upset me I just gritted my teeth and plowed through the emotional distress because eventually if you batter and flail at something long enough you figure it out. So what if you get bruised on the way.

I viscerally remembered in that moment being forced to sit at the table late into the night with my dad screaming at me, trying to understand math. I remembered taking that with me into adulthood and having breakdowns every week trying to understand coding. I could have taken a break? Would it help? I didn’t know! I’d never taken one!

“Yes,” I told him. We paused our call. I ate lunch. I focused on other stuff for half an hour. I came back in a significantly better state of mind, and the thing he’d been trying to explain had been gently cooking in the back of my head and seemed easier to understand.

Now when I find myself gritting my teeth at problems I can hear his gentle voice asking if I benefit from breaks. Yes, dear god, yes why did I never get taught breaks? Why was the only way I knew to keep suffering until something worked?

I was relating to this same friend recently my roadtrip to the redwoods with my wife. “We stopped every hour or so to get out and stretch our legs and switch drivers. It was really nice. When I was a kid we’d just drive twelve hours straight and not stop for anything, just gas. We’d eat in the car and power through.”

He gave a wry smile, immediately connecting the mindset of my parents on a road trip to what they’d instilled in me about brute forcing through discomfort. “Do you benefit from breaks?” he echoed, drawing my attention to it, making me smile with the same sad acknowledgement.

Take breaks. You’re allowed. You don’t have to slam into problems over and over and over, let yourself rest. It will get easier. Take. Breaks.

#needed this today

[thedreadpirateholmes]

HI GIL IT'S EXCITING TO FIND YOU ON TUMBLR!!! I KNOW YOU'VE SEEN COW AROUND SO IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME UNTIL I TRACKED YOU DOWN... BOOPS YOU BOOPS YOU BOOPS YOU BOOPS YOU BOOPS YOU BOOPS YOU BOOPS YOU <3333

HIIIIIIIII!!!

SO MANY BOOPS!!! BOOP WAR!! OwO

#the chaos begins again #cue Gargoyles theme

[thedreadpirateholmes]

RIP desktop whyyy

HOW DID THE BOOPING TURN EVIL

#do I fire up the computer just so I can send evil boops #it takes twenty minutes for it to warm up #hmmmmmm

[thedreadpirateholmes]

HOW DID THE BOOPING TURN EVIL

[thedreadpirateholmes]

Watching Coco for the millionth time and still sobbing every time I get to the ending.

There’s so much about the scene where Miguel gets to sing to Coco, but the smile she gives him after he tells her how much her papá loved her, that little pause and then deepening of the smile when she finally gets to hear someone else saying what she tried to hold close in her heart from her own memories the belief that everyone around her claimed false, for decades - understanding that someone else understood what she did and supported her belief in that love and that she wasn’t wrong to hold onto it-

Breaks me every damn time.

I know reality rarely works out this way, where the parent didn’t disappear under their own power without looking back and missing their child the entire time (mine sure hasn’t, and I know there is no changing that no matter how nice it might be).

But, but that she got that moment, got to share that vulnerable smile of realization-

It hits hard in the best way for me and I feel like it’s not acknowledged enough amidst all of the other emotional beats going on together in that scene and I just felt like I had to scream about it a little.

[thedreadpirateholmes]

Remembering the time I went hiking with my grandparents in Arizona, known in the US as Australia Light.

Them: laughing at me for bringing a backpack full of water and gatorade and protein snacks, a cell phone, and first aid kit, after they'd chosen a trail that was only supposed to be 1.2 miles long

Me: "Now, remember, stick to the trail and don't touch anything!"

Them: "Yeah, yeah, we got it"

...not ten minutes later...

My grandmother: "What's this thing, it looks like a soft little bastard" pokes a teddy-bear cholla with her walking stick and screams when it explodes at her

My grandfather: "Huh, this looks like a fire-ant hill" starts stomping on it

Me: ...this is going to go well.

And then my grandmother refused to eat or drink or take breaks until she began to overheat, wherein, instead of drinking the precious water I had brought with, she began to dump it all over her face in an attempt to cool down, and when that didn't work, she began to panic that she was dying - so I had to run two miles to the ranger station so they could get a helicopter ride off of the trail, only for the EMTs in the ambulance to say my grandmother's "vitals look fantastic, she's just a little dehydrated and should probably work on drinking more water."

And then I refused to go hiking in Arizona with them ever again 🙃