#adhd haver to adhd haver communication. adhd haver to adhd haver comprehension

[bacchuschucklefuck]

literally figured sorcerer!kristen's freshman year design out the moment I sat down and attempted to brainstorm (rubs hands together fly style) we eatin good today boys

[yuurivoice]

Do you have any sort of dislike toward autistic people?

No??????

This is a wild question, but I'll bite.

I interact with multiple autistic people in my day to day life, and that expands beyond my inner circle of friends and into the broader community as well. As an ADHD haver, we're sorta rubbing elbows here and I wonder what would have turned up had I been tested for autism myself. We spoke about it during my screening and it came up as a "huh, maybe" but we didn't pursue it and it didn't get diagnosed.

In the course of my eight years of doing this whole YuuriVoice thing, I have dealt with a wide variety of internet strangers. Unfortunately this includes people who are purposefully rude, entitled, or some flavor of shitty and I have taken a firm stance when certain attitudes and language smacks me in the face. It has saved me a lot of grief from jerks.

Even more unfortunate is that sometimes there are autistic folks who for no fault of their own might come off that way when dealing with me anonymously, when I have no clue who a person is, what their intentions are, or what tone they are trying to take. So they end up getting bonked when they didn't need to be, and I wouldn't have bonked them in the first place had I known.

As it turns out, when someone is a random anonymous message in a sea of hundreds, I cannot actually decipher who is who or what is what. In any interaction I have had with someone I am familiar with and have even a slight understanding or inkling that they may be autistic, it's a whole different story because I can use my understanding and experience to manage my own expectations and comprehension of the interaction we are having.

It is sort of a strange phenomena because it's not like there's been some sort of sudden spike in autism amongst my audience, that's not how that works. They've been here the whole time. If I had to hypothesize, the latest batch of young adults who've found me might have folks who have not had the same experiences online that us older folks have had that sorta trained us differently. Not to sound like a boomer, but I think most millennials dealing with a variety of cosmic mental gacha rewards could probably attest to this. So we might have a lot of people having new types of interactions in new spaces.

I think on my end, I need to start assuming the best of people's intentions instead of the worst. I had to be hard in the early years, and there were genuinely people who would behave in ways that would bug the shit outta me and it had to be called out and dealt with in the light so people understood the expectation. It could also turn off people, and that was a loss I was willing to accept if it meant people didn't treat me like a content machine to be bent to their will and poked with sticks if their favorite blorbo didn't want to have a damn pet...for example. I swear to you, that exact interaction could happen with someone neurotypical who just wanted to kick my shins and give me a hard time because they didn't like the way I was writing my character. We've seen it happen plenty over the years, I've lived it, it's a thing.

So no, I have no issue with autistic folks. I cannot immediately diagnose someone based of the flavor of their text and assume the nature of their intentions. Through years of being an online person, I've been conditioned to be on the lookout for certain flags and unfortunately there are times where a completely innocent person ends up bumping into a guardrail.

Much like how I cannot control how people react and behave, I would caution against expecting me to not also react and behave in my own ways. I'm a person who struggles with my own shit too, and have had to manage it and purposefully adapt to my situation.

My little comfort characters I cooked up for my own delight ended up getting popular, and at any given moment they're loved, hated, slandered, adored, hyperfixated upon, not good enough, the best thing ever, absolute abominations, or just ALMOST okay but I didn't do it exactly how they would have done it. It's obviously a wonderful thing, that's the dream, people give a fuck about my work! But the downside is, that shit has my head in a blender constantly and is why I try to step back from wading into the deeper waters of the community, because I'm managing my own shit and trying not to make it everyone else's problem.

When things land in my inbox, anonymously, it's a big ol soup of everyone who could at any point be either my biggest hater, biggest fan, or just a troll who wants to piss in my cheerios.

So again, I will endeavor to try and assume the best intentions instead of the worst, and when in doubt I can just...STFU and not respond. It's that easy, so I should probably keep that in mind.

Hopefully that helps explain some of what's up in that regard, and certainly if anyone has felt like they've burdened me or been a nuisance, they should know that I understand and immediately recatagorize that interaction in my brain. So for example, the Finn Pet thing, I responded by stating that I was uncomfortable and understood and accepted that they did not have ill intentions. I'm not going to pretend I liked the question or the tone, but I respect that it was not coming from a place of trying to give me a hard time and I don't hold it against them. I like to think that is how moments of unintentional friction should be handled among adults. Apologies do not suddenly make things okay or undo your discomfort, but there is an understanding of the intent and an acceptance. I don't want to infantalize people, if I said "awww it's okay you're not dumb here let me indulge your headcanon" that not only sends the wrong message about how to respond to people who self depricate in response to negative reactions, but...no, I'm not just going to double back and treat the question differently.

Alright, I gave this a whole lotta energy and genuine care. I hope it is taken as such and we're all square.