The Geography of Main Street: Station Identity Politics

Index and Prologue!

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It feels a little weird to add a ✨Paypal link, ✨ but hey, writing is hard, so if you want to tip me, I wouldn't say no!

Okay! Home stretch! There's only going to be one more chapter after this! And it's written! I just want to take a little while to make sure I'm satisfied with it, and it'll be up!

CW: Discussions of suicide and depression; weird family dynamics; jail.

• Basically, this is a speedrun of my life recontextualizing itself when I realized I was autistic. It's a tremendous relief when you've managed to carve out a supportive environment for yourself, let me tell you.
• Somehow relevant to this, someday I'm going to write my dissertation on Why Elsa's Character Arc In Frozen and Frozen II is also an incredible journey of self-acceptance*. I'll put it next to the other dissertations I've promised to write here.
• It has been a wild amount of fun coming up with dumb titles for the artistic achievements of this society.
• Obviously, the Deus ex Machina is not really named that, but its name does pretty much encompass the concept. The real name is probably something like Enemyi Duerueryu , a Rredra literary term that translates to, roughly, "everything explodes." This is a name for a plot device that shows up frequently in arhod folklore, in which the heroes are beset and besieged and have to hold out against their enemies and the elements until the unexpected return of the Sun (the Sun being famously unreliable on their planet) burns away all of the forces of evil and warms up the heroes. I suppose it could also be termed a "eucatastrophe," but the idea of this captain thinking of herself swooping in and solving everyone's problems amuses me.

*And how Frozen II specifically feels like it was a beautifully written character study and 90% into production they realized OH SHIT this is for KIDS, we gotta jingle some keys or something.

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Now that I thought about it, this explained a lot.

It had to be autism. That was Dad's area of expertise, the mythical Treatment he was working on, and, if I matched up my own inner life with the experiences the people I had met online, I had to conclude that I was autistic. Maybe Thoren was, too—we were twins, after all. But Dad's "study" mentioned that the variable—E0—had gotten a treatment for it. Thoren didn't seem autistic. So I guess the treatment was working.

At least, as far as I knew from the outside.

He had gotten lucky to have identical twin kids. We were practically designer subjects. It defied probability.

Deep in the night, it came to me.

Thoren and I had been born during Dad's stint in medical school planetside. He'd have had access to resources and facilities down there. He could clone a specimen, or two, and give one of them the treatment in vitro.

( Totally designer subjects. )

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