#I mean it makes sense bc sensory but like never occurred to me….

[standingontheoverpassscreaming]

NOT LIKING TO WEAR JEWELRY IS AN AUTISM THING???

[hilarychuff]

for the ask game :)

i carry it in mine + 3, 13, 14

howl + 9, 15

the ask game

ty for the questions!!

i carry it in mine - tag, ao3

3. what’s your favorite line of narration?

hmm it currently stands at 45k words so hard to pick just one but i'm p sure this was the line that i was like first working towards when i started writing it

He means to make me queen, she thinks, her legs turning to jelly as she sinks to the floor.

like the scenes in chapter 6 and 7 at the wall where he shows her his mark/she realizes the full implications of it all were for sure like one of THEEEE inciting visuals i had

13. what music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?

i actually write mostly in silence 😭 i can plot and write notes etc with the tv on or with music on but honestly i usually find it too distracting!!! i'm a big singer alonger and i really need to like. concentrate for the most part when i'm writing for real. nooooo clue what would be a good soundtrack for reading bc i would want vibes to be similar to like medieval period piece stuff so maybe something sort of instrumental???? or like a softly crooning female singer songwriter type of vibe. something a lil folksy perhaps???

actually wait i lied sometimes i listen to asmr videos on youtube!!! not that i recommend that per se lmao. but just a lil something to provide a bit of sensory stimulation so that i don't get like. bored.

14. is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?

hmmmm. i don't think i went into this fic with the intention of like "this is what i want readers to learn" so much as i was like wouldn't if be interesting if... and then if their places were switched....

but i will say that something i didn't expect while writing was how many people would be upset with jon in the beginning for not making sansa his priority number one. which i GET like it's a soulmate fic that's sort of the expectation and it's an uneven expectation because he knows something here that sansa doesn't. but i always kind of felt like.... sure sansa is something different to him here than in canon but at least in the beginning the love is very much the same and exists and always existed???? and i could have done a better job writing TO that if i wanted it to be clear but i think it never occurred to me that it wouldn't be. it's so clear to me in canon how much jon loves his family, including sansa, even though we never actually see them interact for ourselves. but the way he thinks about her is so sweet. and the memories he has of her are very tender.

i think probably for the most part anyone who stuck around found a way to move past that if it felt wrong/unfair to them but i guess if i had one thing i wanted people to learn it would be sometimes that your ability to help someone or be there for them is not always a reflection of the love that you have for them. sometimes circumstances are just complicated. sometimes there's nothing you can do. but that doesn't mean you don't love someone and have love for them and hurt for them and think about them etcetcetc.

i am very much a problem solver in my own life/relationships which i think frustrates people sometimes and also sometimes leaves me feeling useless if someone is upset about something and there's nothing i can do but sometimes just loving someone and making sure they know that is enough !!! not that jon does that either in the beginning i guess lol woops but he's very much a sad boy ok maybe cut him some slack 😭

howl - tag, ao3

9. were there any alternate versions of this fic?

WELL the first howl i banged out in literally a 72 hour period cribbing heavily from an old scream script i found online that wasn't quiiteeee screen accurate and there was only ever one version of that. BUT in the larger grand scheme sense of this i do have notes for a howl 3 and howl 4 so like. not alt versions but additional installments in theory!!

i think there in the initial like "casting" phase if you will i had different notions for what howl 2 would be. bc joffrey was an obvious billy but i was like then who is stu.... and then finagling howl 1 meant some changes for howl 2 but honestly those felt really right to me when i settled on them!!!!!

as for howl 3 that casting has also taken a LOT of finagling that probably still needs some ironing out so that has probably gone through a couple different mental makeovers about how exactly to handle the roman/john milton of it all but rest assured i have lots of thoughts!!!!!!

15. what did you learn from writing this fic?

WELL!!!! actually!!!!! one thing that always bugged me about scream 2 was sidney being an actress and doing theater when it felt so like antithetical to her character to put herself in the spotlight in any capacity. but it's so like baked into the movie that doing howl 2 i was like ok how do i keep it??? and in thinking about that for sansa i considered a lot about the interiority of the character and how like. sure it's putting yourself in the spotlight. but it's also an opportunity to step out of yourself and be somebody different which i think both sidney and sansa are really craving, especially when stab/knifed is putting them on a national stage in a lot of ways. so that was something i hadn't really thought about before!!

i also think there are lots of times watching a horror movie where you see a character doing something and you're like "NO WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT WHY AREN'T YOU DOING XYZ INSTEAD" and then when you're making it like prose narrative as opposed to a script and you're in their head you really have to make it make sense to yourself a lot more (like not just running away after the police car crash scene in scream 2/howl 2) and so that was something i felt like i learned more about too like. yes sometimes you are making a decision because it serves the plot. but also how can you reconcile that action with your character's needs/wants/turmoils/experience etc.

[violetvapours]

This is so true. Part of recovery work is a journey to make meaning of our experiences. This can occur naturally as we age due simply to the passage of time allowing us to reflect on the past and form explanations for the effects trauma has had on us as we gain life experience. Sometimes a therapist can help us evaluate if our narratives are helpful to us in the present and develop them further. One newer approach for making sense of the things that happened to you and summarising a story of your history, survival skills, strengths, and support needs (that is more prominent in the UK) is Formulation. People can follow this process with a therapist or on their own.

About language difficulty when distressed or retelling distressing experiences - there's a neurological reason for this! Autonomic nervous system responses to stress and trauma activate the brain’s limbic system and amygdala to ready the body for a fight, flight, freeze or fawn response. During this process resources can be diverted from regions of the brain responsible for reasoning and logic - particularly Broca’s area, the speech centre can shut down. (Ever ‘cried so hard you can’t speak’? Your Broca’s is offline). These effects can make it difficult for people to communicate, think through their situation, and follow strategies to cope and self-regulate they may ordinarily be able to perform when calm. It can also impact a person’s ability to filter out distractions and sensory inputs. When outside influences cannot be reasoned or filtered out, it becomes hard to concentrate and learn new behaviours. This means that during a time of acute distress, trauma survivors are not equipped to confront, reflect on and reason through difficult memories and fears. Reliving them when we tell our story can activate those ANS responses that inhibit our ability to speak and make sense of our experiences.

Now, my personal ANS response is freeze & fawn. Like lucky-dan, when I'm not emotionally safe with a person my dissociation response and social phobia detach me from my emotions – producing a very stony and articulate presentation from me. This has resulted in some horribly traumatic experiences of being considered too ‘high functioning’ and disbelieved when I work up the courage to disclose my struggles and seek help (usually only at rock bottom). The very first time I sought a referral for counselling in my early 20s, this chauvinistic pig of a GP stared at me point blank and shrugged ‘Well you don’t look depressed.’ I suppose bc I wasn’t crying and hysterical - never mind the cuts under my clothes or waking up everyday wanting to die. I knew my therapist of the past 5 years felt right when half an hour into my first appt, her validation and insight reached through my defences so effectively that to my complete surprise, I did break down sobbing to a total stranger. And gasped, hiccuped, croaked and rambled my story out.

My work generally, but especially transcribing recorded therapy sessions into text for my training, and learning about how to evaluate language for signs of trauma, taught me something valuable when it comes to writing: People relating their own raw trauma tend not to be good storytellers. 

It goes against the novelist’s entire art to depict a first recitation of trauma the way it happens, because we’re taught to make theme, content, style, and character arc cohere simultaneously, in exactly the way real trauma stories generally don’t the first few times..

One of the things that makes trauma traumatic is that it breaks down the brain’s basic ability to work together to process memories. Instead of being wholly integrated and understood by the whole system, traumatic memories tend to be fractured and partitioned. The ways that memories, emotions, language, and physical sensations work together tend to be a little broken. If you can come out of an experience with the ability to accurately and movingly describe what it was like so that other people understand you, you’re actually way less likely to be traumatized in the long run.

Thus, it’s often really hard for people to speak easily about trauma, especially the first few times. Researchers of trauma have found that talking about a traumatic subject tends to make people’s language disorganized–although someone may be eloquent on other topics, they often devolve into sentence fragments and abrupt shifts, floundering to find the words to express what they want to mean. Language often becomes vague and elliptical, or brutal and blunt. It often takes several attempts to express an idea or relate an event. Diction often parts ways with emotional content, so something emotionally devastating can be related as a funny joke, or something seemingly minor can be given a lot of weight and attention.

And as people speak, they’re often so busy controlling their own physical sensations that they aren’t giving a good “performance”–they might not coordinate their breathing enough to properly fuel their sentences; they might be overwrought; they might appear relaxed or preternaturally calm. (They may appear to be preternaturally calm but show physical signs of terror.) They often don’t appear like whatever the hell we think traumatized people “should” sound like.

Talking about traumatic experiences can be helpful precisely because it allows us to re-work those fragments of trauma back into a coherent whole. Writing can be especially helpful because it offers a halfway-point; you can re-integrate language and memory without having to physically control yourself enough to speak. It’s why therapists are such fans of journalling. However, it’s useful to remember that unless your character also tends to do a lot of internal processing and language rehearsal inside their head, the first time they talk about something deeply painful, it probably won’t read like prose, especially not deeply dramatic and emotional prose, and it probably won’t be convincing to a skeptical audience.

My experience is that we often have to learn how to “perform” victimhood and make our stories socially acceptable–to pick up culturally specific ways of talking about our experiences that aren’t natural outgrowths of trauma so much as they match what the people around us expect of trauma survivors.

I think some writers skip this over entirely because it can be a laborious process not conducive to a lively style and a fast-moving story. There are ways this can be worked around; the process of slowly constructing a coherent trauma narrative can be a plot all in itself. It can, in fact, make your work better. Just so long as you know how the process happens.

[fangirlinginleatherboots]

I'm not sure if you're awake right now but I wanna ask, can you describe some things your ocd causes(I don't know if that's a good word to use but it's all I can think of) you to do? I'm wanting to write a story involving a character with ocd, while I'm doing research I remembered (I might be wrong though so feel free to correct me) that I think you said somewhere before you had it and since you kind of inspire me to go after things I thought I ask. If it's too personal feel free to delete!

Also, ocd story anon, I read that trauma can be a cause of ocd, do you believe that your ocd could've come from your trauma?

This is a very very long response going into a few of my (and some alters) OCD traits and some reasoning behind them and the range of responses I have to various triggers. It actually helps me analyze my traits better when ppl ask stuff like this so I may have gone overboard as stuff kinda clicked in my brain but hopefully somewhere in here you will get your answer.

So, I’m going to start with the last question first. MY OCD was not caused by my trauma, however my traumas have completely shaped my compulsions and obsessions to a point where my OCD traits are almost inseparable from my PTSD. See, I’m autistic, and OCD is part of this co-morbidity package a lot of autistic people end up with, to a point where the co-morbid disorders are often not even diagnosed after the autism is because its that common. (They’ll diagnose separately if you need treatment for one of them. like the reason i have ADHD and OCD listed as dx’s is because the doctors count them separately on me bc i need medication for them, but they’re extremely common to the point of being expected with most ASD dxs)

Yes, I have OCD and have always had, but my trauma caused so much anxiety that the disorder reshaped itself around specific triggers. There are many layers to my OCD, it’s actually a strange sort of nonspecific looking presentation because of how many alters also have OCD, so it becomes difficult to tell who has which O and C thus there being a lot of inconsistency in whether or not a trigger affects me.

It’s also worth nothing that some doctor’s feel that I fit under the specific label of “scrupulosity” or rOCD (Religious OCD) because of how much of my stuff revolves around religion. I don’t always agree that it’s this because while my O and C are based on religious themes, I don’t believe in the concepts behind the things. I believe most of the religious stuff is just from religious trauma.

On one layer, I have a number obsession. There are certain numbers that are tolerable, a few that are “cursed,” and one that is “blessed” and one that is “perfect.” I will do anything to change things to match my blessed and perfect numbers. I will even fudge the truth a little (not a lie, often an exaggeration, by about one or two digits) to make something fit those numbers. To randomly come across a cursed number or even just a slightly intolerable one, makes me very anxious and can shape how i spend my day and how much time i spend with my better numbers. The way my trauma shaped this compulsion was that my numbers tie to religious stuff, since my traumatic environment was often religious, or trauma would be inflicted with religious reasons.

There is an alter that has a compulsion to say a prayer. When we have intrusive thoughts (which you super need to research if you’re writing OCD bc it is a KEY PART of the disorder but ill go into it later here), someone starts reciting the prayer. Sometimes I will as well just because it’s easier to go along with it. Not completing the prayer is not an option. I mean that with absolutely every intent. Not completing the prayer is NOT AN OPTION. It does elieviate some background anxiety, so whoever is dealing with that is being helped by the compulsion, but it is extremely frustrating and upsetting, especially since i am as non-religious as i can possibly manage to be. The prayer is also said whenever something is uneasy or something triggers specific flashbacks.

One of the most obviously noticeable and upsetting for all involved O and C is being “dirty.” There’s a VERY wide range of triggers here, from actually dirty/germy/unclean things, to unpleasant/intolerable sensory triggers, all the way to conceptual dirtiness like sin, virginity, and lying. This can affect me subtly sometimes, like how i compulsively tell the truth and over share so that i feel clean or how i cannot go to sleep after a fight if it has not been resolved. (”never go to bed angry” they said, well shit now i literally cant cool.) This can also hit me violently and to a point where I am a danger to myself. I worked at a movie theater for a summer some time ago and touched something that was a bad sensory feeling while cleaning a dirty theater. I then proceeded to scrub my hands in near-boiling water for almost fifteen minutes in the break room, broke down sobbing, and when I got home i sat under very very hot water in the shower until my skin was raw and red for days. It doesn’t often get to that point, but when it does, I’ve been held down for my own safety since I’ll literally rip my skin and bite myself to punish myself for being dirty. It is frequently bad enough that I will let myself do something “dirty” as a form of self harm since it seriously makes me miserable and sick. This stuff comes both from religious trauma and from just....crappy normal autism feelings and manifests as my most disabling OCD trait.

There are other things like closing drawers and straightening and arranging things that are done to feel that I am being “good” because of reprimands I received in the past that made me feel like I am “bad.” I am sometimes able to not act on these compulsions, though it takes conscious effort to choose not to. Whether or not this stems from trauma doesn’t really matter to me. I know that most of the fronting alters have these “little OCDs” be it through me or for their own reasons. Tia for instance has to keep things in the kitchen a certain way and Phoebe has to complete certain physical activities a certain way or else she gets upset or feels she did a very bad job/failed.Since I’m really just. going at this question lmao lets talk a little about intrusive thoughts. Intrusive thoughts are upsetting/disturbing/unacceptable thoughts you do not take pleasure in. For me, a few of them make me feel dirty, which triggers my compulsions very badly. Some relate to trauma, others don’t make sense. There are very common ones such as urges to kill or mutilate self or others, urges to do disastrous things (like causing a huge car accident), urges to do disgusting sexual acts (to self or others, often to unacceptable people like children, elders, and the undesired sex), urges to become a serial killer/rapist/shooter/etc, and other such painfully upsetting things such as those. These are often what fuel the obsessions in OCD and the compulsions are to make these thoughts stop or hurt less. Personally, I get a lot of sexual ones because of how poorly the topic was handled in my childhood. I get ones about elaborately slaughtering a specific abuser, about doing things that will kill me, about mutilating myself and mutilating pets (those are the ones that fuck me up the most i think), and about doing very destructive things that would harm a lot of people. I also get some about terrorism happening where I am, but that one is FOR SURE a trauma thing so maybe it could just be my PTSD. 

Intrusive thoughts occur with a LOT of different disorders!!!!! It’s just OCD when you have compulsions to cope with them. Even then, it has to be a certain way for it to qualify.

I hope I was able to give you somewhere to start in terms of information. OCD is a very big disorder and is a major reason why I’m unable to function in a workplace environment. I didn’t go into the specifics of every compulsion, but if you have questions, I don’t mind talking about this stuff. It helps me process it to explain it to others and I end up healing a little through oversharing I think.

[inside-aut-blog]

Autistic Beau (Critical Role)

right out the gate the most obvious thing is that fjord explicitly coaches her on social skills. like, several times. several at her own request

the How To Give Compliments lesson in particular stands out, bc she’s like “wait. i sounded rude?? but i was being genuine!”, & she asks for his help practicing doing compliments right (& proceeds to do…badly); perfect example of missing social cues & struggling w/tone + facial expressions

literally the…entire aftermath of the bowl argument tbh:

explicitly asks fjord for help w/the apology bc she isn’t sure how to do it

when fjord goes “you, not good at apologizing??” she has to check if he’s joking; “you’re being facetious, aren’t you?

fjord: a great place to start w/apologies is to mention the stuff you just said beau: that i’m not good at apologies?

(a completely logical but also also very literalresponse)

fjord goes, “it takes a big person to apologize for something. little people are the ones that make mistakes and just let them go,” & beau’s all, “oh, like nott? a little person”; behold, another literal response

beau says “oh okay” when fjord tells her she shouldn’t smile while apologizing; seems genuinely surprised + grateful for the advice

fjord: there’s a thing called sarcasm that you ride a line with sometimes beau: okay, that’s good to know

(canonically struggles w/unintentional sarcasm, heyo)

an example of this is when she’s telling the group about what happened when she first met dairon, & they don’t really believe her bc she doesn’t sound entirely serious, even though she rly is

fjord also has to kinda talk her through that first hug w/caleb? she doesn’t know how to do it; unfamiliar & uncomfortable w/comforting folks

oh! fjord jester & nott all coach her through her awkward apology to toya

she’s generally low-empathy. like, she has to be told to apologize to toya, she struggles to understand caleb’s pov whenever they argue, she thinks jester’s genuinely happy & unbothered after the iron shepards stuff, she’s not all broken up by the dragon debacle, she affectionpunches the injured guy in felderwin, etc. etc.

on that note–she outright says that punches & the like are how she shows affection, & uhhh showing affection in unusual ways? that’s autistic.

relatedly. she seems most comfortable doing more traditional affection quietly? like, silently handing jester a tissue, waiting til jester’s asleep to tuck her in, wordlessly putting a hand on caleb’s shoulder, etc. (which isn’t necessarily autistic in itself, but is a mood for this autistic, so on the list it goes)

also like, ppl remark over & over again abt her poor social skills, particularly nott (“you think she was dropped on her head or something? she’s just very sort of…you know…”, “beau is terrible at relationships and social interactions,” [paraphrased] “you shouldn’t talk to yussa you’re abrasive and bad at this sort of thing”) and fjord (“sometimes when you compliment people it sounds like a fuckin insult,” “there’s a thing called sarcasm you ride a line with sometimes,” “[insert various bits of socialing advice here]”)

is the very first person to remark that holding + petting frumpkin, Designated Emotional Support Stim Cat, is therapeutic

on that note, again–beau has that weird characteristically autistic thing of mixing up informal & hyperformal speech? she speaks aggressively casually most of the time, but will still drop in shit like “facetious” instead of “joking,” & “therapeutic” instead of “calming,” & etc.

when she tells the truth, she’s almost invariably blunt, eg “i’m kinda concerned for your well-being–it’s fine, i’m not that concerned,” “i don’t know why i told you [i slept with dairon],” [insert literally any argument here], etc.

uhhhhhh sth abt her reaction to caduceus’s “tell the truth” thing–like, it doesn’t seem to’ve fully occurred to her before then that she could be selectively honest, or just bend the truth rather than outright lying? which strikes me as potentially autismrelated in the sense of. that’s a shade of gray, & black n white thinking is autism thing

anyway.

pocket bacon. a) doesn’t seem to realize it’s weird, & b) samefood…….

voice edges on monotone at times

just the fact she’s still wearing the cobalt vestiges early in the campaign, when she’s left the monks & hasn’t joined back up yet–sticking w/what’s familiar when it’s not necessary or even rly practical? autisti c

undercut + topknot? easy-to-take-care-of hairstyle, tie it n go

her eagerness to Get Into Sneaky Shit & quiet disappointment when she’s left out of said sneaky shit “bc it’s her whole thing” makes me think that like. that sort of espionage junk was maybe an old special interest of hers, in addition to obviously being Her Trade

big emotions that she struggles to regulate, esp. anger/frustration; has openly admitted having anger issues

relatedly she’s canonically gotten so frustrated & upset that she’s just started crying (granted it was at a broadly overwhelming moment–the succubus fight–but none of the others cried so like,)

lowkey has that “connects easier to animals than people” thing going on? is noticeably delighted every time she’s given frumpkin to hold; the very first time she holds him she’s all “he likes me :D!” –is also noticeably upset when the prof thaddeus saga goes down

lifelong struggle to make friends; never rly had them before the m9

asks a dude why he’s afraid of fire, ie why he has dissociative & nonverbal episodes whenever he burns someone to death. is then shocked that the reason is So Heavy

mmmm perseverates; eg in battles she’ll often Keep Trying To Stun over & over despite lack of success, in arguments she’ll keep hammering the same point, in General once she decides she wants to know a thing she digs & digs until she finds it out (file that under adhd as well)

sometimes overshares w/strangers w/out realizing she’s overshared; eg “yeah my parents named me beau because they always wanted a son,” said to bo like 30 seconds after meeting him

is shouty when they first meet keg & then apologizes for it & says “i’m trying to work on the manners thing”

the “long may he rein” bit at molly’s grave was echolalia

ok SO we all know traci is beau’s straightsona yes? but i hereby propose……….she is Also beau’s ntsona (sociable, bubbly, polite, uses more variation wrt tone of voice,,,)

when she touches the little window thing in halas’s study & pulls jester along with her, she’s like “ahhh! my actions have consequences that affect other people!!!” & that. is what we here in this house call an Autistic Mood (specifically a low-empathy autistic mood)

“is it wrong for me to feel okay when everyone else feels really bad” is Also an autistic mood (of the same variety)

she’s a great negotiator in terms of like. tactical shit? but when it comes to fuckin–emotional mediation stuff, she rly struggles. see: when she tries to mediate between nott & caleb in the apothecary basement (trips over her words & trails off, doesn’t seem to know what else to do/say)

canonically hates the color yellow. consider: is bc sensory bad

makes name puns. i’ve not met an autistic yet who didn’t love puns

seems surprised that no one else caught that her name is beau & she fights w/a bo staff–the redundancy is obvious to her, so surely it must be to everyone else aswell?? (what do u mEAN no????)

OH. when beau says to jester “i mean…you could watch if u wanted” re: her hypothetically kissing dairon & then is like “…would that make you uncomfortable? –nevermind” that’s. autism; foot in mouth not realizing how other ppl will feel

misses…..unstated implications. like down in the sewer w/the drow, they decide to just leave the dude & the beacon behind & beau’s like “we’re letting him leave without it?” & the others are like. we’re leaving both we don’t know if he’ll take it [wonk] not our problem, & she’s again like “but he won’t take it?” until fjord translates & goes “yes, he’s taking it”

she’s like “caleb u can just get a new fuckign jacket, god” but does she get herself a new one?? no. she jus adds a new lining to the monk robes she’s already got & calls it good, like a goddamn Dweeb

also when her arm wraps got burned off she immediately went to replace them; i’m betting she just Feels Weird w/out them bc Is Different, + that they provide some nice pressure times

also after the yussa encounter she says “ i could barely speak i could barely get words out,” which like. semiverbal……….

in ep 57 she said the “sensory overload” words, so mark that down for a phrase she is readily familiar with