#actuallyAutistic

[autistic-answers]

Face blindness is common in autistic people. I have it too.

Face blindness can be mild, moderate, or severe. My case is a little milder than this, since I can consistently recognize my parents as long as they don't change their hair or put on a hat/sunglasses combination. But all my life, I've been confused by the friendly "strangers" who know my name and details about my life.

Who are they? Often, I never know.

This is my final project for a summer English class I’m taking! Once everything’s graded, I’ll finally have an associate degree.

I hope you guys enjoy the comic. It has devoured my week. As always, reblogs are greatly appreciated!

EDIT: I’m really glad this comic is resonating with so many people! From all of you guys’ many comments, it looks like this is something that many of you relate to. It’s prompting more discussion than anything else I’ve ever made, no contest—it has more comments by far than pieces with with tens of thousands more notes, and they’re all very interesting and informative.

So if anybody is feeling alone in this, go ahead and look through the tags and replies! Looks like we’re all in this confusing little boat together.

[pigeon-cave]

Spectrum of overwhelm, now in triangle form due to popular demand

[Image description: A triangle chart titled, ‘Spectrum of Overwhelm.’ The three points are ‘404 Error,’ showing a person with an empty thought bubble; ‘wet beast,’ showing a person sweating and sobbing; and ‘rage beast’ showing a person clenching their fists in an outline of orange fire. The peak is the ‘404 error’ vertex, and the inside of the triangle here is coloured beige and labelled, ‘shutdown.’ The lower half is labelled ‘meltdown’ and is red on the rage beast side and blue on the wet beast side. \End description]

[mattiautistic]

Soy demasiado sensible para este mundo tan aspero y cruel

[defectivegembrain]

It's unfortunate how often the solution to a problem is just talking to people. You'd think it could be something easier like making a comprehensive chart or list, or reading everything you can find on the subject, but no, so often you can do all that and you still have to talk to people.

[catgirl-kaiju]

based on a true story

(side note, it's very euphoric drawing my kid self as a girl! i'll have to do more of this!)

Edit: this has a proper image description now, written by @disasterhimbo

thank you very much! ID below the cut and in alt text:

[ID: a comic titled “Weird Girl: a comic by Scout Forester.” It’s full-color and in a cartoon style. It opens with close-ups of each of three children’s faces, all with big eyes and open mouths, observing a praying mantis in awe. An older kid comes up to them and says, “Hey shrimps! Don’t ya know we’re playin’ boys vs. girls right now? Why’re y’all weirdos just sittin’ around? Are y’all scared? Y’all chicken?” He is depicted towering over the younger children as he says this, but in the next panel, he is much less intimidating, just standing across from them on the playground equipment. One of the children, a girl with curly red hair, replies, “Um, we don’t wanna play that. We’re busy.” Another kid says, “We’re watchin’ a prayin’ mantis here, it’s real cool.” The bully, red-faced and sweaty with a red explosive background behind him, yells, “Sh-shut up! I’m big and you’re small, so I can make you play with me!” The redheaded girl looks at him inscrutably.

The next two panels are larger, with a black background. The redheaded girl closes her eyes. When she opens them again, she looks righteously angry, and only her eyes are in color. Next to her is a bust of a dinosaur with lightning bolts striking the dinosaur’s portrait. She says determinedly, “spirit of the pachycephalosaurus.” In a tiny panel, a simply-drawn version of the bully says, “wait, wha-” The last panel is the biggest, and depicts the redheaded girl headbutting the bully and knocking the wind out of him with a comic-book style, all-caps “wham!” The praying mantis is perched on the bars of the playground equipment and the sun is shining behind both kids, giving a dramatic lighting effect. End ID.]

[autie-j]

Accommodation I should have: someone to follow me around and whisper in my ear, medieval court advisor style, how to correctly respond when presented with different social situations

"My liege, that was a rhetorical question you just heard. Do not answer it."

[ka3l]

[aw-tysm]

What frustrates me with being an "out of sight, out of mind" person is that people tend to love suggesting notepads, diaries, apps, lists, anything that you can write reminders in. But my kind of "out of sight, out of mind" extends to that as well. Truly. If it is not in my sight, it is not in my mind. And you know what happens when you close a book or an app? It is not longer in sight.

[chaoticneurodivergent]

Extra love today to Autistic people who:

Can't drive

Struggle with shopping

Struggle with cleaning

Need help with simple tasks sometimes (or frequently)

Cannot follow directions that are simple for others

Noticeably lack motor skills

Have interests or hobbies associated with children

Stim in noticeably out of the ordinary ways and can't mask it

Have learning disabilities.

[maxillo]

shoutout to autistic people who have memory issues and can't remember many things about your special interests. you don't need to be able to remember things for the interests to be valid or important to you! if you enjoy them that's what matters

[vulturesawake]

This is what it feels like when someone infodumps to me. By the way

Edit to add caption:

[desc begin: a six panel comic featuring an everyman character sitting on a couch with an autism creature loafing on the back of the couch. The creature jumps down to the seat and lies their head on the person's leg, much to their delight. Desc end.]

[pigeon-cave]

Diagrams are helpful to me

[theconcealedweapon]

When you're autistic, it's impossible to miss how much society normalizes child abuse.

I could dedicate my entire life to studying how to interact with people and I'd still never master the social skills that young children are expected to have on command.

Say the wrong thing? That's disrespectful and you're punished. And you don't even have to actually say anything wrong. Pretty much anything you say can be considered "giving lip" if your parent wants some excuse to punish you. But if you say nothing, then you get punished for ignoring. You also have to calculate your response to their mind game quickly because taking too long to respond is considered ignoring. Also, if you're being wrongly accused of something, saying nothing is considered a confession. And even if you somehow manage to say exactly what your parent wants in exactly the correct tone, they'll still punish you for "sarcasm" or "not really meaning it".

[catgirl-kaiju]

here's to all of the neurodivergent transfems who never got the chance to be seen as the Weird Little Girls™ we were when we were kids

[she-waves-at-cats]

I think it needs to become common knowledge that "inability to read social cues" can show up as overcompensating.

You don't know how much misbehaviour is allowed, so you become the perfect child who never tests rules.

You don't know if someone is irritated with you, so you'll be extra generous and self-effacing.

You don't know how much is expected of you at work so you'll kill yourself in a minimum-wage job and not notice that nobody else is working like this.

"Hardworking and quiet" should be as much of an autism red flag as "ignores rules and doesn't know when to stop talking". Or why don't we just start using words to communicate so i can stop tracking everybody's eyebrow twitches, that would be great.