The Desert Mermaid

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!

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.

---

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. )

Next Chapter!

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!

• George Axelrod's 1952 play The Seven Year Itch is about a married asshole who has an affair with his bimbo upstairs neighbor and is then racked with guilt about it. Billy Wilder's 1955 movie The Seven Year Itch is mostly about Marilyn Monroe's legs, but also, with the stringent guidelines of the Motion Picture Production Code, it is about a married asshole who wants to have an affair with his bimbo upstairs neighbor but whiffs it dismally, and is then racked with guilt about that. It is, for my money, infinitely funnier than the play: in the film, Tom Ewell's dipshit character torments himself with imagined scenarios based solely on his own insecurities. Marilyn Monroe plays The Girl as utterly innocent, less like a sex kitten and more like an actual kitten, and it leads to a rather bittersweet story on her character's part of a lonely girl who just wants a friend and thinks she's made one in a self-absorbed idiot who spends his time catastrophizing about how SoCiEtY will perceive him.* The content constraints annoyed Axelrod, who also co-wrote the screenplay, and the Hays Code was overall bullshit, but I find the results surprisingly interesting in that it leads the main character to be struggling solely with himself and his anxieties while The Girl remains completely oblivious to his nonsense.
• Tech Demo sounds like some unholy combination of Blade Runner and The Seven Year Itch—a description which, come to think of it, could also apply to Ex Machina. (Let's hope Tech Demo is funnier.) I'm not sure how the hell it got past the Board of Civic Hygiene; I guess somebody at Beacon Studios is a highly skilled editor.
• The role of robots in fiction is completely fascinating to me. On the one hand, we have rock-stupid AI nowadays, only as smart as its programmer, and not an emergent consciousness. In that vein, they're dumb machines and you can yell at them all you like. Plus, I like the concept of famous sex pest Isaac Asimov's I, Robot being a series of logic puzzles trying to figure out robopsychology. On the other hand, robots are often coded for the Other** and, as such, we use them to explore interesting themes of humanity's social tendencies and our regard for and treatment of the Other. It also shines a light on our blind spots and biases with regard to that; look at the droids' social status in the Star Wars franchise. Specifically, Solo's use of L3-37's droid rights agitating is, y'know, pretty klutzy. Robofiction is Complicated, y'all.
• Someday I will write my thesis on how The Real Antagonist In The Alien Franchise Is Whatever Alt-Right, Neo-Nazi, Megalomaniacal Incel Programmed All The Robots To Have Completely Whack-Ass Ideas About Sexuality And Reproduction.
• That being said, I really ought to delve more into the history of this star system. IN ANOTHER STORY, DAMMIT.

*It's worth noting that the dickwaffles who do assume he's adulterous are completely supportive and assure him they will uphold the Bro Code.

**Data is an autistic icon and you cannot change my mind.

---

Vilda set the stewed courgettes in front of us, with a large helping for me.

"You'd better put something nourishing in your body, what with all the fast food Ms. Trandy says you've been putting away," she told me.

I grimaced. Sometimes living on a tiny space station was a pain.

# Next Chapter!

Index and Prologue!

Previous Chapter!

Oh, hi!

Yep, still writing this, just at a slower pace. Updates will probably be sporadic from now on, but I do have a Plan, so hopefully I can fill that in.

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 that extremely frustrating feeling when your "friends" are doing something deliberately stupid and you're stuck trying to be the voice of reason. Also for autism misinterpretation.

The original draft of this study done on "atypical" autistic morality interpreted having a conscience as a neurological dysfunction. Pathologizing autism is a real pastime amongst scientists, it would seem.

---


"I'm so bored," Jod complained. "This station sucks."

We were sitting in 225 Park, Jod, Nielli, and Thoren pitching rocks into the pond. I wasn't sure if that fell under the Do Not Throw Things Into The Pond signs around the area, but just to be safe, I wasn't joining them.

"We gotta find something to do," Jod went on.

I was trying to figure out a way to excuse myself to go hang out with Giro. But Thoren had sort of swept me along with him after school. And now we were aimlessly loafing around and complaining, which wasn't on the approved list of Correct Uses of Leisure Time as outlined by Beacon Studios, and the movie file Zarla had shown me how to download was burning a metaphorical hole in my tablet.

"Why don't we go to the library?" I suggested.

( To nobody's surprise, Jod blew a raspberry. )

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.

---

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!

---

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
Chapter 12: Station Identity Politics
Chapter 13: Centrifugal Force (Final!)

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!

---

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. )

The Book: The Martian by Andy Weir, a breakaway hit. Maybe you've heard of it.

The Basics: Things have not gone well for the third manned mission to Mars. Just six sols into their thirty-sol mission, a dust storm threatens their ascent vehicle to such an extent that that they have to abort. But as they're fleeing to the vehicle, the storm takes out the communications array, and its collapse kills astronaut Mark Watney super fucking dead. Unable to go back for his body, the crew is forced to leave it behind. And thus, the crew is going to spend the ten-month trip back to Earth very dispirited.

But not nearly as dispirited as Watney is when he WAKES THE FUCK UP STRANDED ALONE ON MARS.

OH SHIT: Yeah, so, he may not be as dead as previously indicated.

So, What Now?: Obviously, Mark's situation is the definition of hopelessly dire: he's on a planet with a very thin atmosphere, enough food to last six people seventy days, living in basically a high-tech tent. It will be four years until anybody can rescue him, but because they think he's dead and he has no way to contact them and tell them otherwise, even that is a longshot. He's clearly going to die.

Except that Mark Watney is an awesome astronaut type person, so after his initial Oh Shit response, he immediately begins considering ways he can survive. Using resourcefulness, creativity, humor, and lots of math, he immediately gets to work making his impossible situation possible. Every time an obstacle is flung in his way, he figures his way around it with duct tape or potatoes or something, and you find yourself looking forward to finding out how he's going to get through THIS completely insurmountable mess.

Sometimes NASA Butts In: And the switch from Mark's first-person log entries to the third-person NASA bits is Weir's weakness. Those portions feel a little like a screenplay or script, and the characters seem a bit stock-Hollywood. One particular character, Mindy, does have an arc, but it's an oddly clunky one. Still, it's got some fun stuff--NASA's eventual realization that Something Is Up is pretty entertaining.

Favorite Bit Of Survivaling: The part where he builds water. Yes, he survives some more immediate and alarming things, true, although his water building is explosive as hell. But I just love that he can fucking BUILD WATER out of its components.

Space Place Book Club Time!: So for some reason a whole bunch of us Space Placers independently decided to start reading this last week. I did because my sister's been after me to read it. I think the others did because the movie is coming out. I waited to finish the book before watching the trailer. And while Matt Damon does not look at all like the Mark Watney in my head, hot DAMN I want to see the movie now.

In Conclusion: I am really pleased that OMGSCIENCE! is becoming so popular in media recently. Especially when the stories are as great as this one. I hope the pendulum doesn't swing away from this too fast, because I want more things like The Martian. Go check it out!


DISCUSSION QUESTION: Do Hindus really say "Oh, gods"? I appreciate him diversifying his cast, but I'm seriously wondering if that's a thing.

SO I SAW INTERSTELLAR Y'ALL.

I ... hmmm.

Um ...

Huh.

That sure was a movie, that was.

I guess I hadn't really considered the fact that, as a Christopher Nolan movie, the thing could conceivably be made entirely of climaxes. Or that, like pretty much all the Nolan movies I've seen, I'd come away not with a big picture, but a sort of composite of Things I Liked and Things I Didn't Like. And as far as the story goes, the bits I was interested in (I really love the humanistic message that we can transcend ourselves) were fused inextricably with bits that just kind of annoyed me (no, seriously, you are fucking with causality like you're a goddamn Star Trek episode).

It was overwrought. I got really tired of the long, drawn-out climaxes and Hans Zimmer's All-Heartstring Orchestra Score. It was a huge oversell. But then, it's not hard to sell me on OMG SPACE!--I already am all about going and checking it out.* However, I know a lot of The Public is not interested in "wasting" (FUCK YOU) money on space, so I hope it does what it was trying to and inspires some people who aren't so into our spacey future to rethink that stance, because getting to space is ultimately going to be necessary (and awesome) for us. Ultimately I think that's probably a good thing.

But, uh, for my money? Erik Wernquist's three-and-a-half-minute video Wanderers was far more inspiring than this three-hour blockbuster. I am glad others have been inspired by it. But me, I'll stick with those Wanderers.



(Although I may have shrieked in excitment when, almost at the end, Matthew McConaughey ( sees a thing. ) Those things are cool.)


*Though not with Mars One. WHO COULD HAVE GUESSED that Mars One's plans do not appear to be all that well-thought-out?

Rereading the Chanur Saga. This series is still awesome. And I love rereading because I pick up so many details I didn't notice before.

Had a couple of people tag me for that Book Meme that's been going around on Facebook. The idea is to pick 10 books that have stuck with you. Which is RIDICULOUS. Ten? Like all the other book dweebs before me, I have trouble narrowing down my list of a hundred favorite books. But I want to toss out a few. If I stop to analyze it anymore, I'll never actually get it done.

So! A random ten of the Books That Stuck With Me:

1. All I See Is Part Of Me, Chara M. Curtis, ill. Cynthia Alrdich - a picture book told in rhyme about the connection everyone has to Life, the Universe, and Everything. I love the illustrations, and it's a nice sentiment.

2. Matilda, Roald Dahl - yeah, you don't need me to explain more, do you? Book is great.*

3. Letters from the Earth, Mark Twain - an unfinished book, but a useful one for a secular kid who was just discovering that religion was a Thing and wanted to know if she was the only one who had noticed how bizarre it was.

4. The Belgariad/TheMalloreon/Belgarath the Sorcerer/Polgara the Sorceress, David Eddings - Yeah, I am including twelve books in one here, but as always, when you have a saga of books it makes sense to count them as one. God, I read this in junior high and it blew me away. It has its problems, but it also has Polgara, Belgarath, and Silk, who are fascinating characters, and one of my favorite author self-inserts of all time in the form of The Voice Of The Purpose Of The Universe. You know how everyone else seems to consider Middle-earth to be Standard Fantasyland? In my brain it's the world of the Belgariad.

5. Circle of Magic quartet, Tamora Pierce - The first I read of hers. Love the characters, the worldbuilding, and the magic system. I was also kind of a fan of the fact that three of the books' conflicts weren't about villains; they were about other problems, like natural disasters and plagues. That was different. And it was also one of the first Fantasyland stories I read with racially diverse characters, which was a revelation.

6. Bruce Coville's Book of Aliens, various - this was like Baby's First Sci-fi. The first Ray Bradbury story I ever read was in this book,** as was "To Serve Man" (Christ, I'm glad I read the story before seeing the Twilight Zone episode). It opened up vast and wonderful new worlds for me.

7. Our Mutual friend, Charles Dickens - one of the few classic books I really enjoyed from English class. It was funny, dammit!

8. Who Talks Funny? A Book About Languages For Kids, Brenda S. Cox - a nonfiction book taking one on a tour of the weirdnesses of language. One of the books that really got me on my path toward linguistics.

9. Room, Emma Donoghue - One of the few books that actually belongs in present tense. I didn't expect to like it as much as I did, but the darn thing was in the book drop at the library one day and it got stuk to my face. It was just so darn interesting.

10. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien - My all-time favorite book. I could go on forever about it, but suffice to say, the adventure is great, and goddamn I relate to hobbits in general and Bilbo in particular. Making your hero just an average middle-class schmuck without making him annoying is almost impossible. Tolkien pulled it off perfectly.


There you have it! I've been considering doing a weekly retrospective of books that made an impression on me (I HAVE LOTS), but I am incredibly lazy and so it may not get done. Perhaps I will find the follow-through now. But either way, y'all are welcome to do this meme too if you're interested!


*I'm surprised at how many people from my generation fondly remember that godawful MOVIE of Matilda I was infuriated at it. Regardless, Mara Wilson is great and I will hear no ill spoken of her.

**My favorite, "The Veldt," I found in a book from a school program called Junior Great Books like a year later. That story just creeped me right the hell out. And I felt super smart for realizng that the holodeck nursery symbolized television. That one was the beginning of my long love/hate relationship with Bradbury.