The Desert Mermaid

Chugging along!

Prologue and index here!

Previous chapter!

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!

CW for a depressive episode, a repressive dad, and the words "suicidal ideation." Also a slightly nonconsensual bath; I know someone on Twitter found that sort of thing upsetting. It's more of a surprise bath, but yeah.

• I feel as though we're going to have to have a cultural conversation about robots as stand-ins for people in fiction, because I've been hearing people being concerned about robot stories being "pro AI" when the robots are clearly not written as the dumb computer tool AI actually is. Come on, dudes. We anthropomorphize everything. Doesn't mean we're pro-technocrat.

• As somebody who can happily live in a story for months or years at a time, I absolutely do not get people who "already saw it once" and then never want to watch a thing again. In that sense, I guess I'm Jonathan Sims' Wario.

• Sometimes when you're trying to discipline your kid, he drops a total shocker about alternate endings to the cool movie you enjoyed, and you have to tear yourself away from that rabbit hole and try to focus on discipline. Parenting is hard.

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"I don't want to tell you how to do your job," Thoren said to Dexer, "But do you think Lone Light Distribution could get some new stuff in? I'm dying to see Ugly Blood, and I don't think the Board's gonna approve of it."

"We'll take your suggestion under advisement," Dexer said, zeir voice pitched to a perfect customer-service drone, spitting out the disc Thoren had rented. "But we are experiencing a slight technical issue, which has slowed distribution."

"You gotta get going," Jod complained, looking over the menu. "I've seen all of these before."

"You don't like repeat viewings?" I asked, though I knew the answer.

"Why would I watch something again?"

Index and Prologue!

Previous Chapter!

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!

Hyperfixating on dumb shit against my will was a source of great angst to Little/Teenage Amelia. I thought I needed to be Intellectual and follow classical pursuits when all I really wanted to do was make up long, sweeping sagas about Super Mario or Star Wars or othersuch lowbrow nonsense. When I expressed my interest in writing, people would ask if I was going to write The Great American Novel, and my soul would die a little bit. It sounded like hell.

Fortunately, when I grew up I realized that writing silly shit about autistic gorillas in Space Pleasantville is totally valid, and leads to a great deal of insight that Deep, Serious Fiction™ might not. It's been a real relief, I tell you.

I also "hated" horror for a lot of my life. I think it scared me and, like Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, I had a hard time separating that reaction from the concept of it being immoral. I definitely got over that, too!

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I had to hand it to Thoren: he did come through in earning the money to pay his fine. He did it with bad grace, but he got a job with Mx. Plim running deliveries, and he also did the odd jobs Dad had suggested around the neighborhood. The neighbors teased him about it. I wasn't sure what I'd have done if I got that kind of teasing, but Thoren adopted a carefree, cocksure, bad-boy-but-you-love-it attitude, liked Drack from The Golden Hammer, that the adults seemed to find charming. It wasn't too long before he could spend his pocket money on other things again.

That was good news for me: I had been busy, as well.

Giro had shown me how to burn movies, and I was getting prolific. The only difficulty I had was in trying to gauge what other teenagers would find interesting—I was still stuck on The Golden Hammer, which had hijacked my brain completely. But the other kids had moved on from it, at least as far as I could tell. Zarla was offering recommendations about what was popular, and it was easy enough to see what the theater was running and to go find the original cuts of those films.

( Jod was easy enough to guess. )

Next Chapter!

Index and Prologue!

Previous Chapter!

Hooray, an on-time update!

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!

CW for body horror and self-sacrifice (in a movie)

• I'm not going to expand on the issues Zarla mentioned in the last chapter. She's got superpowers, but they're not really relevant to this particular story. Though she does come up in others!
• Somehow relevant to this chapter is the song "Belle" from Disney's Beauty & the Beast, where Belle really wants to talk about cool books and stories but nobody else cares. Belle's attempted infodumps really resonated with me. DREEDO'S GONNA GET THE TOWNSFOLK DISCUSSING MOVIES IF IT KILLS HIM
• Many thanks to my buddy Fade for consultation on ADHD medication. Giro's brain is a complicated labyrinth.
• The running courgette joke is a running gag for my own dislike of zucchini, which, if you ask me, can go fuck itself, but which I am assured other people enjoy. Those people are weird.
• One time in college I happened across a TV edit of Ridley Scott's Hannibal, and it was the funniest thing ever. I mean, okay, that movie's pretty ridiculous anyway, but Ray Liotta kept his frat-bro hat on all throughout That One Scene, and it was completely unintelligible.
• As a Utahn, I actually had a few friends who swore by CleanFlicks, or would have, if any of them swore. I can totally understand the appeal of getting a movie that won't trigger an upset, but on the other hand I've had some really good mind-blowing feelings when I've gone out of my comfort zone before. The tale of my discovery of horror through Alien is a long saga, and it also includes Ridley Scott, so shoutout to Ridley Scott, I guess.

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Zevon, we have a problem with PQ896.

What do you mean? The study's over. It was a wild success.

I've been going back over the questionnaires, and have noted a discrepancy.

The two that reported adverse reactions had handwriting that didn't match the signatures of the guardians at the bottom.

So what?

So it appears that in those two cases, the subjects themselves filled out their questionnaires, whereas in the others, the parents filled them out.

This error in our protocol has led to differing reports. It's possible that many more subjects had adverse reactions, but they were not recognized as adverse by the parents.

I would like to do post-study interviews of the other subjects.

Bel, we've closed this. It's over. We're moving on to PQ now.

Yes, but new findings have come to light. It is possible the other patients are experiencing similar problems. E06 reported myoclonic jerks, disrupted sleep patterns, lethargy, drowsiness, mood swings, nightmares, ataxia, vertigo. The implants need further refinement.

The parents are reporting satisfactory results. I'd say we've done our job.

That depends on what our job is.

Look, if you want to refine it, you're always welcome to submit a new proposal. But this is a done deal, Bel.

Sorry.

Let's focus on CN12.

#

Next Chapter!

Prlogue and Index!

Previous Chapter!

I was in my mid-30s when I read a Twitter thread explaining to autistic people that when people are angry and ask you questions like "Why were you late?" they are not actually looking for an explanation and will regard your answers as excuses. Holy hell, y'all. That explained SO. MUCH.

It is extremely jarring to talk to someone who remembers a movie/book as being utterly different from what you remember. I once had a conversation with someone who insisted that the Shitty Kids die in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, when I clearly remember a chapter called "The Other Children Go Home." It was very confusing and upsetting, and I had to go look at my copy of the book to prove that it was there. I have always wondered about that, especially after finding out about the Oompa Loompa revisions.

CW: Shitty family members, animal death, animal dissection, upsetting movie gaslighting, I guess, and Autism Warrior Moms. Also space tobacco.

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Civic Hygiene recommended going to the theater for Sightseeing movies as a way to connect us to our planet of origin; to help us contemplate our connection to it and our duty to it. History class told us to consider where the Great Protector got zeir start. (I probably should do something to get on the history teacher's good side after accidentally making an enemy of her; it turns out you're not supposed to ask about plot holes in scripture.)

But Thoren and his friends had decided we were going to see the new action flick, The Golden Hammer. He and the rest of the Ball team were passing a pouch of dust between them, which was not only delinquent, but also unsanitary, , plus it led to a lot of obnoxious sniffling and a few sneezes. I should really report it, but I remembered how Mr. Sordell and Nielli had reacted last time I reported a problem, and it seemed like way too much trouble. I didn't take any when Thoren offered me the pouch, though.

Prologue and Index here!

Previous Chapter!

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!

Note that the formatting is a little weird; you might have to sidescroll through certain parts to read all of it.

Do I have feelings about group projects? You bet I do!

Also, the pressure to change the world as a kid is strong when you take things literally. It's really difficult.

But hey, social media opens up new horizons even if your home doesn't have a horizon!

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I wound up doing most of the project by myself, of course. I don't know what Mr. Sordell expected; the others didn't take it seriously. The work they did was halfhearted and slovenly, so I had to redo a lot of it anyway.

Dad had suggested that we start with observations, so while the others went to practice and games, I found two colonies of feral sixcats to observe: one that gathered near the library's garden, and one that roamed the maintenance alleys behind Plim's and the surrounding businesses. (I suspected the latter was Toast's original colony. I wondered if I should put her back with them, but Dad said she seemed happy where she was.)

Dad's tablet was immensely useful. I found an old charger in a junk pile behind Plim's, so I could hang onto it indefinitely. I was learning where and how to look for information on ecomanagement and feral sixcat colonies. And Dad's various experimental notes were excellent models for my own studies. But the amount of helpful information in the Greater Galactic Database meant I could find help with that, too.

( Also, the sixcat videos were adorable. )

Anybody want a space-gorilla-doctor origin story?

This is a project I started for no good reason. I'm pretty sure there isn't a market for Autistic Space Gorilla Delinquent Sets Up Technology Black Market In Stanford-Torus Pleasantville, but I've been having a blast writing it. I might make the book this is spun off from, the infamous Space Doctors Alien Medical Drama, available, but for now I'm just gonna post this one. If you like autistic main characters and space opera, this is gonna be your jam! It's a bit of a love letter to Mystery Science Theater 3000, too.

So: Here goes!

Gonna make this an index page for all the chapters, so:
Prologue (You Are Here)
Chapter 1: Civic Hygiene
Chapter 2: Focal Citizens
Chapter 3: New (Metaphorical) Horizons
Chapter 4: Healthcare and Ecomanagement
Chapter 5: Arts and Culture
Chapter 6: Hidden Gems
Chapter 7: Beacon Studios
Chapter 8: Safety Protocols
Chapter 9: Societal Breakdown
Chapter 10: Lessons From History
Chapter 11: Policy Amendments

Oh, hey! Here's a ✨Paypal link ✨ in case you want to tip me! No pressure, but there it is.

CW for shitty family members and a reference to a gruesome death!

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In retrospect, I don't think I was supposed to know my dad was experimenting on children, but that never stopped adults from talking about it in front of me.

Not that it was a secret, exactly. But apparently I wasn't supposed to join the conversations about it. Once I asked Grandma and Ms. Coralym if they were talking about one of my dad's subjects, and Ms. Coralym's response was, "My, my, somebody has big ears."

Then she smiled at me in that way some people have, that always makes me feel guilty, as though I should be ashamed of myself for reading in the backyard hammock when she decided to lean over the fence to talk to Grandma.

I had no idea how to respond to something like that, so I ignored it. "But are you?"

They'd been using a lot of the same phrases Ms. Palbert had heaved out between sobs when she'd brought her son over to our house the night before: "wit's end," "unmanageable," "damaged," "unmotivated." The son she was describing stood a bit behind her on our porch, gazing at the sky panels dreamily. I thought he might be older than me, but it's hard to tell with paquos; they're smaller than koranos like myself, and they mature faster. At any rate, he seemed not to hear his mother's complaints, but when his gaze crossed mine through the front window, he flicked his ears amiably and continued scanning around at nothing in particular.

(Come to think of it, this might have been another discussion I was not supposed to hear, even though I was sitting on the floor doing a jigsaw puzzle not two meters away.)

Dad stood at the door, listening to her in his characteristic stonefaced silence until she ran out of superlatives. Then he said, "No."

( Ms. Palbert stared at him, openmouthed. )

WHAT IS THIS? COULD IT BE? Is it a COMPLETED INDEX of Scatterstone?

YES! It is the final installment of Scatterstone! I told you I'd get it up before the Sun became a red giant! I just barely made it!

It's been fun, it really has. I'm hoping to come back and revisit these little guys at some point, too, somewhere, somehow. But in the meantime, enjoy your closure!

--

( So! Where did we leave off? )

Rereading one of my old notebooks from when I was sixteen/seventeen--a bit of old research. I remember Teen Me as being an insufferable know-it-all. Turns out I was, but I was also extremely smart and funny. I was right in my religious awakening, which for me consisted of reading Stephen Hawking's books and thinking DAMN science is cool and also kind of being baffled to realize that other people seemed to actually believe their weird religious nonsense.* I was witty and full of wonder and excited about life and kind of a jerk with my friends. Also, there was a little bit of bad poetry, because of course there was.

And I was depressed.

I think I had my first bout of depression at age 15. A year and some change later, another came along. It's a little difficult for me to read some of those entries--though I seemed to recognize the moods/thoughts were not right, and commented on them with a lot of snark, they were still very THERE, and I remember the sadness. I also remember a more difficult-to-describe emotion: when trying to pull myself out of it, I would try to do things with my family, and they would not be enjoyable even though I knew I enjoyed them in the past.** This led to a sort of dread of those supposed-to-be-fun times, because they wouldn't be fun and would I ever be able to connect again? (This came to a head in October when we went to get pumpkins--there might have been some yelling.)

So amidst my snark on high school and enjoyment of AP European History and my awe at what I was learning from Professor Hawking, this particular notebook discusses my going on antidepressants.

Here's what I said:

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I feel just great today! I've made an important decision that may get my life back on track!

Here's the thing: Mom, Dad, my teachers, my counselors, [my psychiatrist], and I are very worried about my state of mind right now. It's a little scary--a few are afraid that I may wind up doing something stupid--they're afraid that, because of depression, I may resort to doping myself up. So, in order to stop me from doing this they decided, in an incredible display of logic, to: dope me up!

Yes. I'm going to go on antidepressants. I got sick of having nervous breakdowns at school every single goddam day, so Mom called [my psychiatrist], and they decided that, if I didn't object, they'd give me some medication.

Hell, yeah, I don't mind. I'd volunteer for a brain transplant to get rid of this desperation right now. I'm drowning in myself right now, and I'd really rather not be. I've tried solving it the tough way; now I'm going to try it The American Way (pills)

What puzzles me is the aversion people have to antidepressant pills. "You're not yourself when you're on those," they point out. But why is the self assumed to be a constant in the first place? The depression is dictated by chemicals [scribble] what's wrong with introducing other chemicals to get a different balance?

If someone has diabetes, then non one begrudges them insulin. Why, then, is seratonin different?

I'm personally fine with it. I'll ask a lot of questions, of course--but if I can get a firm footing in my whirlwind life, I'm willing to go for it!!

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Why do I bring this up now? Well, because antidepressants are getting another bum rap in the news today. Or depression is. It's hard to tell sometimes. Antidepressants have that weird backwards-logic stigma where admitting you take them makes people MORE afraid of you--the "only sick people take pills; if you don't take pills, you won't be sick" fallacy. (Me, I'd rather find out that somebody was taking the pills they needed than that they weren't.)

Slate already has an article arguing that "depression" does NOT make you murder 149 other people (and discussing the difference between depression and "depression" in a wonderfully sensitive way--yes, we need to fix situational problems AND chemical imbalances). But I just wanted to point out from a depressed teenager's perspective, antidepressants were the SAVING GRACE. I was not going to murder anyone, but I was desperate and anhedonic, and antidepressants fixed that.

So to naysayers I will say: teenage me knew what the deal was. Maybe she can persuade you.


*Till then I was under the impression that Church was just a really DEDICATED book club, where they discussed Biblical stories as literature, which seemed strange but hey, if they liked it, good for them. I was extremely confused when I realized that people believed it in a far more "literal" sense.

Evidently, some Christians do treat it like literature, and they make a far better case for it that way. Hell, the way Fred Clark describes it, especially in his incredible dissections of Left Behind vs. his theology I actually do agree with a lot of Christianity. Except for, y'know, the whole "whether there is a god" thing.

**For a brilliant description of this detachment, check out Allie Brosch's Depression Part Two at Hyperbole and a Half. It is the best description I've ever read of depression. And it has an interesting effect: everyone who has never been depressed reads it and earnestly says, "This has taught me a lot! I will try to be more sensitive in the future!" Everyone who has been depressed reads it and says, "OH GOD I LAUGHED MY ASS OFF."

Hey, look! I wrote a fairy tale!

( It has some backstory. )

In the old days, when the webs were still sparse in the heavens and the spirits still came to Earth, there lived a man in the city of Jubilation Lake. He was a trapper; the finest in the land. He would go into the mountains with his traps and return with stacks of pelts--red fox pelts, striped raccoon pelts, soft rabbit pelts, even silvery wolf pelts and rough warm bear pelts. And he used his furs for one thing--to trade them for gold and treasure.

He filled his house with riches. Jewels the size of apples, bars of gold and silver, finely wrought art pieces, he hoarded them all as a magpie dragon hoards glittering pebbles. He became known as Goldeye, for his obsession with treasure.

But though the gold gave off a warm glow, his spark stayed cold, for he had no love in his life. And fear of losing his treasure cooled it further.

Consumed with thoughts of thieves in the night, Goldeye finally went out into the mountains taking with him not traps, but with his chests of gold, and returning with not pelts, but with nothing. His gold remained hidden, far from the prying fingers of thieves.

But a man cannot hide from everything. The day he had taken his last bit of treasure to his secret hoard, the mountains were cold and snowy. As he made his way back toward town, an avalanche buried him. Not even thieves would discover his body.

His spark was displeased. He had amassed great treasure, and he would not let death take it away from him. Rather than return to the sky where it belonged, his spark stayed in the mountains--by the cave where he had hidden all of his fortune. Vowing to guard it forever, his spark sought a form in which to dwell.

After days of searching, Goldeye's spark found a grizzly bear.

The bear was a mean one, and had been a terror to all who came through the woods, so Goldeye reasoned he was doing a good deed when he displaced the bear's spark and took its body for his own. The spark of the bear wandered far and wide, but it does not come into this story.

Thus, Goldeye became Goldfur, the grizzly who guarded his treasure.

Many years passed--cold, lonely years for Goldfur. Tirelessly he drove off all who came into his territory, trappers and woodsmen and treasure-seekers alike. His mountain became known as a place no man dared to go.

But one spring day, someone who was not a man arrived.

Aster was a young woman, brown-skinned and blue-eyed. She lived in a cottage deep in the forest. One day she came to Goldfur's mountain carrying a basket.

( Goldfur could not tolerate this. )

Woo! Still doing this! If you're wondering where the hell to start, enjoy this handy index!

Fairy wings serve two main purposes. Of course, they help fairies fly--but not in the way you might expect. The wings are too small to do the job of flight by mere physics, though they do use them for balance. Rather, fairy wings have evolved a natural spell matrix into their structure. Unlike other species, where magic is a rare phenomenon, fairies all have some natural magic (though some, like Terwu'arie, have more than others). They use this magic to fly--although using straight magic is tiring, so when they can they usually apply it in combination with their more prosaic, but still impressive, acrobatic abilities.

The primary purpose of fairy wings, however, is as solar panels. Fairy wings are leaves. While fairies do have full digestive systems, they supplement their food intake with photosynthesis. While it is not crucial to her survival, a fairy who has been out of direct sunlight for a while will become sluggish, irritable, and unable to focus.

Biologists are divided about whether to call fairies hibernatory or deciduous. The fact is that in the late autumn fairy wings will change color, dry out, and eventually fall off. This coincides with a period of subtantially increased appetite, after which the fairy will go into hibernation for a few months. In fairy communities, the wing loss and initiation of hibernation is marked with a huge, days-long feast before everyone goes off to their respective winter dens. They emerge in early spring with new wings budding out of their backs.

None of this has much to do with the story, but I thought you'd be interested in some of Arie's background.

Anyway!

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( Impromptu Dwarf Lessons )

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Finally1 It's Part 12!