#So autism like if you agree

[infiniteorangethethird]

btw shoutout to those who feel they are aspec because of their autism. To the aros, aces, apls, afams, and everyone else who feels their orientation is a direct result of their neurodivergency. Your feelings are valid, and you're not "just reinforcing stereotypes" by being yourself, bc you're not a character in a story, but a real person with real, lived experiences. I see you and I feel you

[keiksy-cake]

Germany's second page from the Hetalia Collezione

Official revisions included "just like shojo manga!" to "maybe he likes cute things?", and the addition of "his casual clothes are often described as "dad-like"

all collezione pages

[Please note, I’m an amateur in Japanese and have to use various resources and translation machines to help me. If you notice a possible mistake or want clarification, please bring it up to me *politely* and not aggressively or hostile.]

[beloved-child-of-the-house]

i stand with you in the face of a defensive misunderstanding of what critique is.

i think understanding what a critique actually is is a skill that increasingly is not taught. i remember going through freshman art courses feeling the frustration that all negative, nasty, unhelpful, and missed-the-point-entirely feedback is so commonly conflated with critique, and then critique gets a bad name because everyone remembers the time someone said their painting looked like an asshole (true story, altho now i think i would take it as a compliment) instead of the time a teacher or friend or classmate helped them uncover a hurtful bias or think of new ways to explore the same idea or how to connect it to related ideas or how to look up and understand other people's ideas on the same topic.

anyway i think you're great.

ahhh you're so kind to me!! i appreciate your support, and i think you are great also.

i have experience with giving and receiving critique as a student myself, and i think it was the best part of my degree! i majored in creative writing in college, and critique was just a generally accepted part of learning to become a writer. i don't even remember people being especially worried about receiving critique on their work. we had guidance on what kind of feedback was useful, but we were still at liberty to give it as we saw fit as like messy 19 year olds. the standard was that we gave it both written on printed copies of the work AND aloud in front of the whole class, and the writer receiving it was not permitted to speak during the critique. understanding how people are perceiving your work is important!

i don't have any particularly negative recollections of the critique process, although once in a high school writing class, the boys in the class told me that my male characters touched each other too gently and real boys are more rough with each other. in particular, they took issue with me writing that one boy nudged another. nudging is too soft. nudging is for girls. that was more than 20 years ago, and i still think about it sometimes because it was such an interesting perspective! i did not take their advice, though.

i should dig up that piece and see if it reads queer in any other ways. i think that's what they were getting at. (actually i once had a non-fiction class tell me i was in love with my roommate after reading an essay i wrote about her)(i did not listen to that advice either, but having 12 acquaintances tell you that you're gay in 2006 before you realize it yourself is Truly Something!)

i think people have conflated criticism and critique and think that being more openly analytical is the same thing as being negative. but analysis is so fun to me! analysis is why i joined fandom in the first place, and it's why i write fic! can we trust each other to be respectful and to speak in good faith even when we're not singing each other's praises? for me fandom would be better if we could.

oh i also want to clarify that i don't think it's impossible to demonstrate that you've thought deeply about a piece of fanwork while remaining completely positive. people do it all the time and do it very well!

i know i sometimes have tunnel vision wrt my own perspective. in a lot of situations, i wish it were more acceptable to be more direct, and i know people sometimes find the way i express myself to be kind of shocking. i know a lot of people like to be spoken to more indirectly than comes natural to me, and i don't mean to imply that my perspective is the only correct one or that there's no good reason to err on the side of gentleness/politeness in our responses to amateur art and writing. i just think that at a certain level of circumspection, it feels like we're all holding each other at arm's length.

i think for people who can't bear to feel exposed, making and sharing art is always going to be painful and difficult, and maybe too painful and difficult to enjoy the process unless they're sure of a soft landing. but like. the rewards of being loved only come after the mortifying ordeal of being known, right?

[to-dance-beneath-the-diamond-sky]

petition to add a fifth category of answer to the RAADS-R Autism test for "I do not know how to answer this question // The premise of this question is highly flawed"

[nothingweirdhere]

ok so i tried to comment on a post on r/adhd talking about some bullshit a psychiatrist told me about how she wouldn’t diagnose me with autism bc i had a fairly large group of friends and autistic people can’t have that many friends (yeah, what the fuck), despite the fact that basically that entire group was neurodivergent (and queer) and at least one person in it would eventually BE OFFICIALLY DIAGNOSED WITH AUTISM.

then i get this message

imo this is wack. firstly, neurodivergent IS just a descriptor. full stop. and i don’t want to say “people with mental health disorders” or any bullshit like that. (especially since adhd & autism are neurodevelopmental disorders, not mental illnesses) it’s clunky and awkward and in my experience NOT HOW PEOPLE TALK. neurodivergent is an incredibly widespread term! there’s nothing wrong with it!

then i checked out the links, and here’s some of their “position on neurodiversity” post

this is all bullshit? like i also disagree with framing neurodiversity as purely neutral differences in cognition—yes certain things would be much less disabling if society was more accommodating, but even in a perfect world things like adhd and autism would still be distressing/disabling for a large number of people. they’re using the beliefs of specific groups that also happen to use terms like neurodivergent (because it’s a descriptor and a lot of people use it!!!) to label everyone who uses those words as part of a specific “neurodiversity movement” and i don’t like that??

anyway i’d like to hear some other people’s opinions on this

[that1gal3-141]

Daydream in Blue by I Monster gives Fairchild

[autisticlee]

sometimes people who struggle like to make jokes or find positives about their condition that causes them to struggle so they can escape the constant negative and struggle. sometimes autistic people will say things like "the 'tism" or use the "autism creature" or say their autism helped them have a *positive trait* to feel better about their struggles. because living your life only focusing on the struggles and negatives is depressing and makes it hard to want to live, even if those struggle take up 100% of your life and you can't actually escape them. sometimes any little seemingly positive thing can help a lot.

but there's so many other autistic people that hate when we do that and call it "reducing autism to a cute trendy thing" and say it takes away from *their* struggles and is bad and shouldn't be used. maybe *you* want to only focus on your struggles, but some people can't live in constant negative and need some positive or to find ways to make their condition more positive so they can feel better about living with their struggles. life is hard. I take anything I can get.

I cant get jobs. I can't make and keep friends. I can't get help and support for doing "normal" things so sometimes I go weeks without being able to shower and without eating more than a bowl of cereal a day. most times can't even do things I like. struggle to communicate. have meltdowns. i'll never be able to live independently. I struggle a lot. but instead of sitting here always depressed and having no motivation to live, i'd rather try to joke about "my 'tism is acting up again" when i'm struggling (just an example. don't think I ever actually used the 'tism thing but i saw others use it) or say "i'm just being a creature" when I need to stay in my dark room because everything is too much and I personally find it cute to be a little creature meant in a positive way. i'm not actually downplaying mine or anyone else's struggles. I still acknowledge them and that silly jokes dont make them go away. i'm not trying to be trendy. i'm not doing any of the things people say we do by making silly little jokes. i'm using the silly little jokes to convince myself life can be a little more than pointless, painful garbage all the time.

(continue in tags)

[skwivr]

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[kumakuma-circus]

just randomly remembered that during my like 10+ attempts at the shadow yukiko fight i more or less consistently ran out of revival beads so yosuke was just dead (well unconscious but whatever) on the ground for like half the fight gfhfjvhfhfhd-

[littlekirsten]

You know those Tesla Cybertrucks right?

These things?

Yeah.

I figured out where they look like they’re from.

The Tri-State Area 2nd dimension.

And who built them you may ask?

None other than our very own Heinz!

Gotta love an entrepreneur. :D

[vaingod]

knowing how to say hello and thank you in most languages is a good thing except when its stressful border control situations and people believe your abilities to understand them, im sorry heavily tattooed gelled up gay german man i only know vielen dank, bitte sehr, and wo kann ich rauchen, thats it!!!

[burritowitch]

.

[buildarocketboys]

the way the autistic community went from "having low/no empathy doesn't make you a bad person" to "actually all autistics are hyperempathetic, they just don't express it like neurotypicals!!!!" within the space of a few years :////

[thetoastedalmonds]

Hey yall toasted rant time but...can we stop just pointing at people and saying what they're doing is "autistic" or that they should get a diagnosis? Im just so fucking done with getting told that, its super not funny actually

Like I get it, sure, you highly suspect you have autism or whatever but oh my god maybe, just maybe, my bad biases still need to be addressed first before we call me autistic?

I was given poor education about autism, and am working to do better, but oh my god the amount of hatred I feel when I'm told I must be autistic

Like; am I partly upset because of my biases I need to fix? Yes!

BUT I ALSO DIDNT ASK FOR A FUCKING DIAGNOSIS

Sorry I just have had this happen with most of my friends and I am so done with it cause maybe we don't give our other friends some quirky diagnosis they aren't asking for

[ireallyamthemaincharacter]

Dude this is so me fr

[nonokoko13]

Rollo Flamme is autistic. I had suspicions about it but after reading his vignette I heard a voice in my head confirming it. God has told me the truth and I must spread the word

He would also be ok with Batman, if he's not his most favoured hero. Oh and he also probably has PTSD and depression. Thanks for coming to my ted talk