Stubborn Mouths: Humans In Translation

Stubborn Mouths: Humans In Translation (62938 words) by Hannah
Chapters: 23/23
Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Characters: Julian Bashir, Elim Garak, Jadzia Dax, Odo (Star Trek), Kira Nerys, Quark (Star Trek), Miles O'Brien, Keiko O'Brien, Benjamin Sisko, Minor Characters
Additional Tags: Disability, Disabled Character of Color, Autism, Canon Character of Color, Neurodiversity, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Alien Cultural Differences, Judaism, Jews In Space, exploring replicator limitations, Literary References & Allusions, Neko Case - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autistic Character
Summary:

If you’re sending yourself out to the edge of civilization, people expect it to be done for fame and glory – but then, Julian Bashir has never been what’s expected of him. He’s quite happy to agree with the reasons other people provide, because he isn’t sharing the private whys and wherefores when people are more than happy to fill in the gaps themselves. There are other, better things to worry about, work to be done and friends to be made – possibly even a lover, if he’s lucky…

...all while fighting to maintain his worth, and remain exactly who he’s always been.

This is an awesome story, taking an AU premise (what if Julian’s parents had been caught before they could have him genetically altered?) and exploring it.  I love the characterizations, I love how three-dimensional everyone seems.  But if you might be triggered by parents “treating” their child to make them “normal,” you might be bothered by this fic–we never even meet them, but it deals with what they tried to do to him.

Writing Autistics Like Sentinels

I was reading a Sentinel-AU fanfic, and it occurred to me that reading and writing such fics would be good practice for writing autistic characters.  Because Sentinel fics are all about the senses and thinking through what it would be like if you had hypersensitivity.

Guess what!  Hypersensitivity is a common symptom of autism spectrum disorders!  We’re not Sentinels, of course, but we are often really sensitive to things that allistic people don’t even notice, and we often have trouble filtering out the things we’re sensitive to.  That’s one of the more common causes of autistic children having meltdowns (which allistic people sometimes mistake for temper tantrums).  The world is a big, noisy, smelly, overly-bright place designed for people whose senses work differently than ours, and children especially have trouble processing it, and so they get hysterical because they Just. Can’t. Cope.  (Which is why one of the most effective ways of dealing with a meltdown is to take them into a dimly-lit, neutral room and have them lay down under a blanket you know they like the texture of, so you can block out all the overwhelming stimuli.)  Adults tend to have better coping skills and better ability to avoid the things that really knock us for a loop, but it’s no more pleasant for us as adults than when we were kids.

So you know how in Sentinel fics, clothes feeling like sandpaper is a major clue that Character A is now a Sentinel?  It is super-common for people on the autism spectrum to have that issue with clothes feeling like sandpaper.  And yet, at the same time, that same person might not even notice getting a cut–it’s a different sensation.  It’s not all things relating to a particular sense, for us; we tend to be hypersensitive to certain things.  For example, my nose is normally pretty bad, I’m not good at picking up and determining odors, but the “new car” smell makes me nauseous and I JUST CAN’T STAND IT.  Most textures don’t bother me to feel (and a few I really, really love), but there are a couple that freak me out.  So if you’re writing an autistic character, and you want to get into their head, pick a couple of sensitivities and show the reader why the autistic person doesn’t like them (or, conversely, really really likes them).

Of course, one of the differences between Sentinels in fic and autistics in reality is that when a Sentinel has a sensory issue, most people are sympathetic.  When an autistic person has a sensory issue, we’re told to get over it and stop being so weird.