@chromesthesia @commaficionado I suppose Lyra is a bit of an NT fantasy in some ways, a bit like Elsa. A normalised and accentualised (just made that up or it came to me - like a combo of accent and actualisation) - and was like a combination of who people in the community told me I was supposed to be
@chromesthesia @commaficionado and my actual ideal self, who I wanted to be or was in my head. Quixotic complex passion, sometimes naive but without fault in that since it was coming from a good place and made outside the box.
@chromesthesia @commaficionado My son who is diagnosed and much more academically consistent and much more atheist than I am embodies these qualities. And he's definitely a boy but also GNC.
On the other hand, Will had different streetsmarts, executive function and he knew how to make himself invisible.
On the other hand, Will had different streetsmarts, executive function and he knew how to make himself invisible.
@chromesthesia @commaficionado He was masculine in a quiet, old school empathetic and dedicated sort of way? Lots of arguments both way. He had a mother worth mental health difficulties and he'd been bullied but that could be explained many ways and related to by many people.
@chromesthesia @commaficionado Like a pair of adult silver screen tropes from a slow drama, sort of reimagined, or like Pip from Great Expectations paired with a Brontë heroine. Gah, damn tropes. Make trouble when it comes to thinking about this. All the obfuscated liminal semiotics!! Bleh.
@chromesthesia @commaficionado Thats another point of identification with Lyra based on a split between my ideal self/others' hopes and the reality. Lyra's sense of adventure & self-possession took her into puzzling out big mysteries, intuitively grasped big mysteries others weren't; simplicity & small words!!
@chromesthesia @commaficionado I was full of ideas and big thoughts and romanticisms and pedantic in speech and behaviour, absorbed big vocabulary and used it verbally, but couldn't produce much academically, which may be to do with comorbid SpLDs - Lyra was bright but not conventionally academic, a feisty 🌪
@chromesthesia @commaficionado But there were girls at school I would get the sharp end of - somewhere between outsiders and pack animals maybe, not 100% conforming or more than average because nobody is, but working it - who I might have had pegged as something like "agressively neurotypical" - hmm.
@chromesthesia @commaficionado She was that sort of gang leader. But maybe I relate to her because mostly we heard her lonely and conflicted inner voice/conversations with Pan when she was alone and up against things - and it definitely wasn't a silly voice saying "I'm too special to be anything but selfish"
@chromesthesia @commaficionado And that was a repeated sarcastic warning to me as kid, when I tried to interact or get things out my head and into shared spaces.
@chromesthesia @commaficionado So though not sexualised being a child, she's a sort of an opposite male fantasy to her mother Mrs Coulter, the well-connected femme fatale. Lyra is lowbrow with simple words: a big mystical wholesome puzzling, feisty mystery. I am and am not like Lyra: my Mum is not Mrs Coulter!
@chromesthesia @commaficionado @threadreaderapp please unroll
@chromesthesia @commaficionado Sorry for blobbing at you with so many thoughts. I've thought before that maybe my mum is more like me than I thought, sometimes she would remind me of those pack-leader girls but she had different motivations. Is Lyra ND or NT & is Will? We're are all valid in this conversation.
@chromesthesia @commaficionado I definitely think though, maybe the ideal-self of neurotypical masses is wanting and managing to be invisible, a seamlessly integrated part of the whole: but there is also a battle with the idea of a hero's journey and their own authentic differences. And thus inspoporn exists!?
@chromesthesia @commaficionado My son does not have that, not laid on with a trowel. Tbf, he's pretty resistant to it anyway. I think that's gender, no LD, personality. But dx too.
It's weird trying to explain having experienced something like what other disabled activists termed inspiration porn without a dx.
It's weird trying to explain having experienced something like what other disabled activists termed inspiration porn without a dx.
@commaficionado I propose 'accentualisation' as an alternative that's inclusive of that and other ''positive" Othering experiences. And it doesn't involve mentioning porn. Strong words can help the fight or ease the pain sometimes but people have many reasons for preferences.
@commaficionado Lyra is somewhere between a range of feisty-pants perpetually frustrated non-conforming female tropes and a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a bit like Anna from Frozen, but in a different way.
I think maybe those tropes are muddled historical stories of oppressing women/AFABs, NT & ND.
I think maybe those tropes are muddled historical stories of oppressing women/AFABs, NT & ND.
@commaficionado I think that should have been *oppressed women/AFABs, but there's often been "nice guys" like Kristoff restrainING justified anger. With mixed motives. As well as isolation and incarceration. Or as with Coulter, folding to, fetishism and monstering of skilled anger & persuasion.
@commaficionado Sorry still waffling. Have a good day all.
@commaficionado PS. (*I think accentualisation/inspiration porn is also about convenience and not being responsible when duty of care is hard. Not just about deferred actualisation in their dreamy spiritualised vision of decontextualised emblematic hyper-reality. It's both.)
