#I'm pretty sure my memory on this is fairly accurate. I know that my dad's first line is verbatim. I even remember his intonation

[giantkillerjack]

I think sometimes about that time the subject came up of what my grandparents would leave my parents when they died (no grandparents were in the room).

And while there was some speculation over my father's parents, my mother's mother had lived on a widow's pension for most of her life. So none of her seven children were expecting a fat inheritance.

And my dad was like, "Ah, yes! The Gaertner family fortune, split seven ways, should be enough to take us allllll to Eat'n Park!"

This got some laughter and heckling from the rest of the family, my mother included (Dad knows his audience). He went on to say, "And not just one course either! We can get whatever we want!"

"So we can get dessert?" my mom asked.

"Oh yeah! We can get dessert, we can get appetizers, a box of cookies to go....."

And then years later, when my grandmother died at age 94, her will allocated most of her savings for a funeral and a small wake. The rest was to be split equally among her kids.

It takes a while for these kinds of financial things to process, so my mother received her inheritance a few months later.

Each sibling received $200.

Which, as it happens, was exactly enough to take my immediate family and a couple of cousins out to a really nice dinner at Eat'n Park.

[lea-andres]

HHEHEhhehehe I have a shit ton of hcs for kid Bean.

Bark has taken up a guardian/best friend role for the lil' dynamite, they're platonic soulmates after all.

Bean has both memory and hearing problems all caused by whatever explosions that get too close.

Team Hooligan and Team Sapphire are just one big family. Bark and Jewel are the parents, Fang is the drunk uncle fresh out of prison, Tangle and Whisper are the fun aunts, and Bean is the feral kid that cannot be left alone without adult supervision.

There was one time where Bark was sitting on the couch and reading when he hears Cream's voice from the other room, "Are you sure this is a good idea?" He thinks nothing of it until he hears Bean's voice, "I'm sure of it, trust me!" The poor fella has never run that fast before.

All the kids have a group chat and it's chaotic as hell.

If Team Hooligan ever does settle down for a unforseen future, I can imagine them buying a fairly large house and move in with Team Sapphire. Mina would stop by every chance she gets.

Despite being a mercenary, Bean still has the mindset and personality of the average ten year old. The media often overlooks this part and just assume he's fifteen thanks to his unnatural height.

He owns a beat up teddy bear that cannot be destroyed by anything. Ripped up by some rude mobian? Nope, it's right there in Bean's co-car. Drowned in the lake? It couldn't have seeing as it's in Bean's hands right as we speak. Nobody knows how it keeps coming back, but Fang is convinced that it's possessed.

One time Bean got really sick during the middle of the night, and gave the other two quite a scare. It got to the point where he had to go to the hospital, and that's when Fang finally began to voice his worries - even if he was panicking internally throughout the entire ordeal.

👀👀👀

Yes! Bark's the dad/guardian/older brother/bff, and Fang being "the drunk uncle fresh from prison" is SO accurate LOL. He cares about Bean too, but Bark knows better than to leave Bean alone with him. The two get up to bad stuff together.

Bean in all versions of Bark and Jewel getting together as a couple is always 1000% in support of the couple, ships them hard, and will meddle in any way possible to get them together, but 10 year old Bean might be the most into it. The second he realizes Bark likes her, he's forcibly adopting Jewel as his mom, LOL.

They'd also probably get together faster in this scenario too, because a 10 year old Bean would have no tact whatsoever and would definitely expose Bark's crush on her, call her 'Mom' nonstop, get excited whenever they're together, get upset if he thinks they're not going to work out. Even an emotions dunce like Jewel would figure it out pretty quickly.

Tangle and Whisper are the fun aunts. Whisper lets him play with the Wisps and maybe shoot her Wispon if he behaves himself, but Tangle's definitely the favorite aunt. They also cannot be trusted alone. 😂

THE KIDS HAVE THEIR OWN GROUP CHAT LOL I LOVE IT. Bean and Charmy are the worst two, I'm sure. 😂

I love the teddy bear, LOL. It freaks Fang the fuck out. 😂😂😂

Oh no! Poor Bean! I'm sure everyone was worried sick, but Fang actually voicing his concerns... 🥺🥺🥺

I... have thoughts I will share this weekend once I can get more sleep, but oh my God, these are great.

[my-autistic-things]

Autism test anon here. I am an adult, but I'm pretty estranged from my parents and grandparents (who raised me more than my parents did). I've heard of several adults who didn't involve their parents and were diagnosed but will this affect it in any way? The most I could do is get my dad to call or email (but he works a lot and is super neglectful and in another time zone so that's a soft maybe) Thank you for answering BTW it's made me much more at ease (other than the parents part lol)

I'm glad I could help! I wouldn't stress too much about the parents part. For minors, namely children/young teens, parent reports are probably more essential because the kid can't report their own behaviors as accurately (or even know what's going on to be asked questions, if they are that young). Also they have less years being autistic to draw memories from. For me, all my mom (aka a person who was present during my childhood, so it could be an aunt/grandma/best friend's mom even probably) had to do was the online survey thing I mentioned. I did have the option to not include her at all after I asked about how the test would look and if the word "autism" was going to show up anywhere. I wasn't sure how accepting she would be, just for me to go out and seek a diagnosis, so I didn't want to spook her. If your psychiatrist does the same thing as mine did, your dad could do the survey thing pretty easily (theoretically). My mom had like....2 weeks to do it? Probably longer if she really procrastinated. The two week "deadline" was just from my initial appointment with the doctor when she emailed the link to my mom until the appointment where I did the eval. The psychiatrist was fairly open to me not involving her at all, though. The point is to get as accurate as a background to your childhood as possible, because let's be honest, nobody can remember how they actually were growing up. Also it shows from a different perspective how long certain symptoms were present and if you're blowing things out of proportion or you do have issues socially. The main thing that comes to mind is people saying "omg I don't wanna do my homework I'm so ADHD" or "ugh I can't flirt I'm so autistic" like first off, buddy-pal, your wrong, stop it, ew shut up, but also people do think of themselves as more socially awkward (and also all negative things) as more severe then they actually tend to be perceived as. So having someone else say "yup this person says slightly off things by neurotypical standards" is just like a verification thing. Also you could be lying, which doctors sometimes like to think....🙄. (Also, some traumatic brain injuries result in behaviors/symptoms/changes that actually look very similar to autism; if you had symptoms since birth/a very young age, then it's probably autism, if it's only after, say, you were in a car accident, hmmm maybe not autism). If you can identify yourself as having clear examples and situations from stories like "my mom/dad always used to make fun of me for lining up all my toys by color and size and that was my version of "playing" with them haha" or "yeah, I always needed to be tucked in super tight at night ever since I was a baby otherwise I would cry" stuff like that, then that should be acceptable.

When you give answers to questions, try to think of examples when you were little (either that you remember or that your parents have told you about) around ages 2-7 ish, during your teen years, and also recently as an adult. One example could be: as a kid I hated playing with other kids because my play scene didn't match with theirs and I only wanted to do mine, as a teen I hated group work because we never could agree on the same topic/way of doing things, and now I hate working with coworkers for the same reason" something kinda like that. Might be a tad overkill and you might not be able to even answer fully without being cut off like "hey yeah that's enough info I don't need all that *awkward laugh*" but it really doesn't hurt to be overprepared. This is where writing down some notes and bringing it would be really helpful, or asking to write a follow up email after asking friends/family who knew you growing up. Also, if your dad was neglectful (very sorry to hear about that btw) he might not even know you well enough to report behaviors anyways, so that's something to mention if the psychiatrist needs more reasoning then "he won't respond".

If you really want to overprepare, you can compare different disorders that can present similarly like ADHD, OCD, social anxiety, BPD, etc. and prepare examples according to the ASD criteria that couldn't be examples by a different disorder. Like a lot of my examples I gave mapped pretty well onto only social anxiety and OCD with my previous ADHD dx, so I made sure to discuss the sorta "root" of my social anxiety being how I have difficulties understanding people's intentions and meanings behind their words (rather than mainly talking about how I worry others perceive me).

Now that this has turned into another really long ramble, I'll stop now lol