i am going to make it if it kills me

@narutofoxlover pointed out to me that there may be some confusion in the fandom about David as the character Troy Baker plays, and David Szymanski's cameo character.

These are two completely different people. David Szymanski does not voice the "David" you hear over the radio. Mr. Szymanski plays the SM-13's terminal and alarm voice. He's the one screeching "HULL BREACH" at Simon. David the character is the guy in the biker jacket who calls Simon an Eden piece of shit. "Plenty more where you came from." He's that guy.

This is David the character, Ava's wear-many-hats guy. He's an impromptu electrical engineer, data analyst, and the mission's second-in-command:

And this is Szymanski's cameo:

this is not life-threatening, but also who wants weeks of diarrhea and a fucking parasite in them lol. if you suspect you've already had this and it's passed, i would see a doctor. you might need an antiparasitic anyway. if you're actively sick, see a doctor and they might be able to prescribe medication to help you get over it faster.

try to avoid eating raw vegetables, scrub fruit with a produce brush and rinse thoroughly with water. again, don't bother with premade greens or bagged salads. if you buy lettuce, remove the outer 2-3 layers of leaves.

And they agree that yes, they do know how to eat, in theory. The problem is the watermelon. Surely, if they figured out where to start, they'd figure out how to do it, but they have no clue how to get started with it.

This goes back and forth. No, it's not an emotional issue, they're not afraid of the watermelon. They can eat any other fruit, other sweet things, and other watery things ("it's watery?" they ask you). Is it the colour? Do they have a problem eating things that are green on the outside and red on the inside?

"It's red on the inside?"

Wait, they've never seen the inside? At this point you have to ask them how, exactly, they eat the watermelon. So to demonstrate, they take a whole, round, uncut watermelon, and try to bite straight into it. Even if they could bite through the crust, there's no way to get human jaws around it.

"Oh, you're supposed to cut it first. You cut the crust open and only chew through the insides."

And they had no idea. All their life this person has had no idea how to eat a watermelon, despite of being told again and again and again that it's easy, it's ridiculous to struggle with something so simple, there's no way that someone just can't eat a watermelon, how can you even mange to be bad at something as fucking simple as eating watermelon.

https://drmaciver.substack.com/p/how-to-do-everything had a nice list of additional examples like this, with (non-)obvious major insights with regard to opening stitched bags, cleaning your bathroom floor, using a search engine, catching a ball, pinging somebody, proving a theorem, playing sudoku, passing as “normal”, improving your writing, generating novel ideas, and solving your problem.

If you’d asked me six months ago how to get better at something, I’d probably have pointed you to how to do hard things. I still think this is a good approach and you should do it, but I now think it’s the wrong starting point and I’ve been undervaluing small insights. [...]

Every time he tells me this story, his frustration by this point in the story, years later, is evident. He still sounds frustrated by it, despite all the time that passed. Teachers had been giving him crap for years because he hadn't been making much progress with the instrument.

When he got to the private instructor, she acknowledged his frustration, and asked him to try to play for her. He did, and she saw all he was doing. She then did something no one else had done before. She asked him to put his mouthpiece on a different clarinet and try to play the same notes. Like magic, it worked. She looked at the clarinet he had been using and found that the school's clarinet needed it's pads replaced.

He went from last chair to first chair nearly overnight, having been taught far more techniques than typically taught at that age just to overcome the broken instrument preventing him from making noise.

Okay, so one of the biggest problems that I have seen with a lot of neurotypical writers who have stories involving autistic characters is that they really misunderstand and simplify why and how they stim.

The most common reason you'll come across is that autistic people end up engaging in self-stimulatory behavior as a coping mechanism for when they're stressed or anxious, which is not untrue but it is often propped up as if it were the only reason why we do it.

Which is definitely not true, autistic people can and do stim for a number of reasons including but not limited to:

Excitement/happiness to express our joy and fascination with something.

A method of concentration to help ground us in the present moment or a way of focusing our thoughts.

To help process and sort through information.

To help regulate sensory processing and overload.

Unconsciously, because of how naturally it comes to us and we don't even realize we're doing it and not for any specific reason at all other than we like it and it's comforting.

It can also even help to reduce pain!

Also not every single kind of stim is an obvious or 'disruptive' one, they're are about six categories regarding stimming.

Visual (Staring at moving objects, bright colors, lights, fixating on lamps or screens, rapid blinking or eye fluttering, flipping switches and clicking buttons, lining up objects, counting things)

Auditory (Repetitive listening to any kind of music or song as white noise, humming or making vocal sounds, tapping on objects or ears)

Tactile (Rubbing skin or objects between fingers, hand movements, finger tapping)

Taste/Oral (Chewing or mouthing objects, licking, biting, comfort foods, seeking out specific flavors/tastes, playing with food and different textures like crunchy or squishy sensations)

Smell/Olfactory (Sniffing or smelling different things, scented candles, wax melts, perfume, even everyday smells like book pages and coffee)

Vestibular (Rocking back and forth, hand flapping, spinning or swinging, jumping, pacing or walking on tiptoes)

Also a few not so obvious stims: Rewatching media like movies or tv shows, playing with jewelry or hair, doodling, joint cracking, playing with clothing or fabrics, etc.

The problem with the common portrayal of stimming isn't that it's 'wrong' or even entirely inaccurate per se but it lacks diversity and nuance, and every autistic person is unique and won't have all of the same stims or comfort behaviors as another and when you portray one type or way of stimming as if it were the default you help to perpetuate the belief that all other forms of stimming is somehow unnatural and less valid in comparison, and the other issue is that when they do describe stimming they always portray it as a way of highlighting how disruptive and 'troubling' it can be for the people around them to witness while never bothering to show any way of how to simultaneously meet the needs of the autistic person without 'fixing' them somehow or demonizing them and their behavior.

You can't just hold the hand of an autistic person to stop their fidgeting and expect it to solve everything! It's unrealistic, Especially if you hold their hand without permission which would probably make them wanna stim more out of discomfort! I'm tired of seeing this disrespectful and ableistic kind of representation in the media and fanfic I consume, I don't know if others realize it or not but it's actually really harmful to the image we have of ourselves because it makes us out to believe that these unconscious behaviors we have are wrong and need to be discouraged cause it's harmful to the people around us.

cast & crew wages: $1,200 + uber eats

fake blood (assuming generous discount on bulk purchase): $2,000,000 i am so not kidding i did the math this is nuts