#am i actually not visibly autistic or can u not see the autism in me??????????

[ileftherbackhome]

fyi, if you refer to me as "low supports needs" or "less visibly autistic," i will block you.

just because i can communicate verbally doesn't mean I can function without help nor does it mean that my autism is not visibly present.

am i less visibly autistic or can you just not recognize the autism in me?

[nyaagolor]

Something that really gets me about Nemona is that despite having the social awareness of a brick wall, there are a few cases where you can see her have a complete demeanor flip if you respond negatively to her questions and I am SO interested in those. Her eyebrows furrow, she brings her hand closer to her face like she's visibly curling up, and she looks genuinely concerned-- whether ur saying you want to rain check a battle or you don't want to be her friend. It's such an extreme reaction to ultimately trivial things, but in combination with her railroading you / being her overzealous self and the way she panics about coming off too strong, it just gives me pause

I'm probably overthinking this, but those strong reactions remind of kids who were told they're Too Much by the adults in their lives and then get stuck in a push-pull of doing what comes naturally to them but also trying to be cognizant of when they're being Too Much as they struggle to grapple with social cues. Nemona only ever seeming to realize when she's crossed a line after someone tells her that explicitly or responds badly to her just gives me such confused neurodivergent teenager vibes, it is driving me insane. She acknowledges her emotional distance from other students and worries out loud to the player about Coming Off Too Strong in their first meeting, but doesn't seem to connect those ideas with any specific behavior she's doing, and the entire thing is just setting "autistic high school sophomore" alarms off in my brain

It really feels to me like a case of someone who has internalized the understanding that they're too overwhelming for others after having been told it countless times, but doesn't understand WHY; just stuck in this loop of getting negative reactions and desperately trying to work backwards from there to figure out what about them and their behavior is scaring people off. She immediately goes from this boundless confidence to insecurity (shown via pose or dialogue) the literal second she's faced with a "no" and it really makes me think it's because she's terrified of losing you as a friend and sees ur negative reactions as a precursor to that. In the absence of an actual understanding of how her own actions drive people away she's stuck relying on your reactions, and something like a simple "no" reads as a red flag that she may have crossed some invisible line that everyone else but her seems to see. (slaps her forehead) u can fit so much autism in here

[thesaltyace]

big rant/ramble below, you can safely ignore and move on to the next post in your feed.

Urgh

I shared the results of that autism screener with a quasi-friend who I thought would be "safe" (we used to work together and we connected over his being gay and me being visibly queer) but his response was blergh

Everyone has hints of autism.

okay yeah but this isn't just *hints* of autism. I'm answered yes to symptoms I've had since I was a kid that I've learned to mask or work around as an adult. But I still struggle with them.

He pointed out that he sees me as more ADHD than ASD.

Yeah, fair, and I'd need to see a professional to try to distinguish if my symptoms are ADHD, ASD, or both.

You don't hit the three prongs needed for a diagnosis.

But.... but I do. And the stuff I dealt with as a kid is still stuff I deal with today. I just mask it better. A short and not exhaustive list:

As I kid I had trouble interacting with peers. I didn't have friends, really. I didn't know how to make friends and I didn't try terribly hard to. I acquire friends when someone else "adopts" me and decides that we are friends. And once I became an adult, I have almost never had friends of my own - I share a friend group with my spouse who we're primary connected to through him. I'm okay with that. Maintaining a friendship entirely on my own power sounds impossible and exhausting.

I was okay with not having friends, I liked being alone, but my mom insisted on me being social. She made me join things so that I would have a list of people to invite to parties. I'd honestly have preferred a day of doing stuff I like or just a couple friends. As an adult, I want to be alone on my birthday. I will celebrate with certain friends, separately, usually over a quiet meal. That's it.

I had trouble understanding sarcasm and figurative speech. Like, I understand it now but I still think most figurative speech is annoying. I've been told the way I deliver sarcasm is weird, too.

I liked memorizing movies and quoting them start to finish, I thought it was fun but everyone else thought it was weird. I continued to do this into adulthood but I only quote aloud when I'm alone. Alamo Drafthouse quote-alongs are the BEST. I don't do this with every movie, either, just ones I really like.

Okay actually I also liked to listen to the same album or, in some cases, the same song over and over until I was sick of it (and sometimes even after that point). I mean, just endlessly looping on repeat. Not interspersed with other songs. I do this as an adult a LOT because it's easier with headphones to do this without annoying everyone else around you. Like, often it's fine for me to just put a playlist on shuffle, but I get into Moods where I just want the one album/song over and over. Yesterday I listened to Wellerman about 50 times in a row and only stopped because I had to get up and do something else and that song wasn't "good" for whatever I got up to do.

My special interest as a kid was cats. Literally everything cats, all the time - I sought out obscure facts and could tell you the difference between similar species, and wanted cats involved in literally everything I did. Adults laughed it off as childhood obsession. I was also pretty obsessed with the solar system. I thought asking my peers, as a trivia question, which of Jupiter's moons had its own asteroid (Io, in case you were wondering) was appropriate and interesting and was confused that they didn't know that. That was in fifth grade.

I watched the weather channel for fun. I would watch it for hours and absorb the weekly forecast info just... for fun? I never used it, could never tell you if you should dress a certain way or bring an umbrella or whatever. Everyone thought it was weird.

I was a know-it-all and literally could not stop myself from bluntly correcting people who were wrong. Didn't know or care that it was "rude". I'm still that way but I've learned how to sometimes swallow the urge long enough to find a more tactful way to point it out (but often fail).

I could read on my own before kindergarten, used vocabulary beyond what one would expect for my age, and had a special interest in spelling and grammar throughout my school years. I did not understand how other people weren't interested in learning about it and getting it right. I read at an undergrad level by 4th grade.

I hated loud noises and often covered my ears to block out irritating sounds. I could also hear high pitched noises that even other kids didn't seem to hear (or at least weren't bothered by them). Too much noise sent me into an internal meltdown, I'd just kinda shut down because I couldn't deal with it.

Textures and pressure on my skin bothered the absolute fuck out of me - sock seams, certain fabric materials, socks that weren't equally elastic, one shoe tighter than the other, tags.... all of that. (Also, fun anecdote I just unlocked - when I was 4 or 5 my grandmother started letting me use the soft silk sleep shirt she had as a young woman because I preferred it to anything else. Soft, smooth, no irritating qualities. Bliss. I wanted to wear it all the time.)

Don't get me started on food. Until I was in COLLEGE I mostly subsisted on pasta with either butter or alfredo sauce and chicken. I would eat other things, but pasta and/or chicken was (and still is) my biggest safe/comfort food. I'd eat other stuff mostly if I could control the balance of ingredients, get it made plain, or could confirm the texture wouldn't be offensive (so, like... plain burgers, plain cheese pizza, grilled cheese, mashed potatoes, etc.) I cannot stress this enough - from childhood through COLLEGE I did this. As a kid my mom had to make me a completely separate dish most nights to get me to eat something. My spouse was horrified at what little variety I ate. The only reason I eat so much variety now is that he knows what I do/don't like and tells me in advance if I'll find a texture or taste offensive. Of course, rather than wanting consistent texture like I did when I was younger, I now seek as much texture as possible (so long as they aren't Bad textures) so.... that's fun. But yeah most of my objections to Yucky foods is due to T E X T U R E. Even if I like the taste, the texture overrides it all.

I prefer animals to people. I will seek out animals and interact with them instead of people in the same room. And will pointedly focus on the animal to avoid interacting with people.

I'm perfectly happy with only myself for company. Being with just my spouse counts as me being "alone" though. Always has. I just realized last night that it's because I do minimal to no masking around him because he's a safe person to unmask with and always has been. Never batted an eye at the weird shit I do beyond asking questions about what I was doing or why. And then just "Okay."

Okay honestly just the fact that I want to vent into the void of tumblr instead of actually discussing this with a person - even my spouse! - pretty effectively shows how little it occurs to me to interact with other people directly. o_0

And there are so many more things that I won't list here because I could just go on and on. And like, sure, some of this may certainly overlap with ADHD but my point is that I have enough to point to ASD that it doesn't feel like having a "hint" of autism. And who knows - maybe it is mostly just ADHD and CPTSD stuff interacting in weird ways. Could be!

But just because I can make small talk and make eye contact and do the "normal" shit and I can interact "normally" doesn't mean I LIKE it. I had to LEARN to do those things to avoid having bad social interactions. When I'm by myself or with my spouse, I behave very differently than I do around anyone else. ANYONE. It's not just slightly changing my behavior depending on who I'm with - it's completely suppressing how I naturally would do things if left to my own devices.

Like, the things we recommended to our autistic students who wanted to know how to interact in ways that would help them blend in/be accepted by others ARE THE EXACT THINGS I ALREADY DO. Like, it did not occur to me at the time that neurotypicals literally do not have to think about doing those things. I thought, ah, these students just need to be told what the tricks are. Other people figure these tricks out on their own. It did not occur to me that other people, in fact, do not learn these tricks because they naturally do that behavior. They do not have to actively think about learning the trick, period. I literally thought other people also have to think as hard as I do about interactions. Evidently not.

So yeah, I'm feeling a little upset about the reaction I got from him because I'm like.... honestly, a diagnosis of ASD wouldn't change a lot about how I do things or think of things. But it would make me feel better about interacting with and participating in autism-related stuff if I am actually autistic. I realize I can use the resources and supports meant for ASD regardless, and for formal supports anything I can access due to my ADHD diagnosis likely covers anything I'd need for ASD. But having a diagnosis opens up more community. Right now I'm like yeah I'm ADHD but I totally relate to this ASD content. But I'm not going to interact much because I feel like I don't have the right to join in since idk if I do have ASD.

idk I have a lot of feelings. I had a bad email about the trans insurance coverage thing yesterday and I'm not in a great headspace, but finding out me and my spouse both scored very high on the autism screening stuff was honestly a high point because we ended up sharing a lot of how we view and interact with the world that was very eye-opening about why we interact the way we do, how we relate to others (and how other people think we're weird for how we relate to others), and just...everything. And having someone be skeptical after I've spent a lot of time trying to convince myself that I DON'T have ASD only to conclude that at the very least, I should probably be evaluated because I can't reasonably rule it out. Like, most people do not wonder if they have autism. The fact that I am spending this much time looking into it and trying to find examples to disprove it only to find I overwhelmingly can't in virtually every single diagnostic category.... just..... dismissing it outright is kinda hurtful.

Like, I recognize that ADHD symptoms overlap a fair bit, but seriously. My spouse (who definitively does not have ADHD) scored almost identically to me and we vibed on almost everything when we compared answers. We see most things similarly. We have similar areas of confusion about other people and for fundamentally similar reasons. I can't imagine all of the stuff that points to ASD for me is just ADHD in disguise, not when I vibe THAT HARD with someone else. Spouse does not vibe with me on ADHD content. At all. He can appreciate it since he does live with me, after all, and observes whatever's being discussed. But he doesn't vibe with it. He vibes with autism content, though. And I vibe with both.

idk this rant ended in rambling and I'm just going to go listen to Inside on repeat for a couple hours while I try to calm down a bit. o_0

[8-evil-annoying-catboys]

i was gonna make this just a rant in the tags but i need to say it visibly, so my apologies in advance to op if we disagree here, but for me: this does not exclude content that is SUBTLY problematic (ie, if you weren’t part of the minority targeted, you wouldn’t notice) or content created by someone who is problematic but isn’t known for that or wasn’t known for it before the content got popular. i am sick and tired of being shamed for special interests i have because i formed an attachment to them before finding out there was a problem with them. if i have a special interest it is too fucking late for me to change my mind because it has weird undertones i missed (which is often bc i’m literally socially tone-deaf bc of my disability) or the creator sucks.

for a currently relevant example: i’m trans and i’m still gonna like harry potter and fantastic beasts, even though there’s like a 5% chance, 10% at best, given the circumstances, that jk rowling isn’t transphobic. short tangent for ppl who aren’t clicking the link, if u did read it or don’t care cause u believe me, skip down to the next paragraph separated for ur convenience. if ur still here, the condensed version of the snopes article there is that jk rowling has been accused multiple times of transphobia, and has neither confirmed nor denied it; however, many ppl take this as confirmation that she’s transphobic, bc when she’s been accused of holding similar views about other minorities, she was quick to clarify her opinion. she KNOWS she’s been accused of transphobia and she’s been 100% SILENT about it except for one instance where her representatives claimed that her liking a tweet expressing transphobic views and terf ideology was “an accident,” without clarifying whether or not she still agreed with the tweet after this was brought to her attention, which would seem extremely out of character for her if we were to assume she wasn’t transphobic.

all that being said about jk rowling, i, even as a trans person who now holds her in a position of distrust, suspicion, and extreme dislike after having this revealed to me, cannot simply disown harry potter or stop allowing myself to enjoy fantastic beasts, or even relinquish my sort of weird relationship stemming from on-the-fence position on cursed child (which i’m iffy about bc i’m gay and it’s pretty obviously queerbaiting to the point i could write a whole essay on that alone, but it’s involved with a special interest, which is my point anyway lol). harry potter has been a special interest for me since i was, like, five. am i critical of jk rowling? hell fucking yes. am i critical of the actual text of harry potter in itself and its related content, now that i’m old enough to analyse it more deeply than just seeing it as saying “magic cool and friends good”? yes, yes i am. but that doesn’t mean i can just go, “oh, okay, it’s cancelled now,” bc my mind just doesn’t WORK that way. not everyone’s autism affects them the same, and maybe some autistic people who have also had harry potter as a special interest this long can let go, but i can’t, especially since it’s shaped some of my most important social bonds (namely, it helped me bond with my mom more, and it was a huge help for me to bond with my best friend, especially when i first met her) and therefore has helped support my social skills which would otherwise be way less strong or even completely nonexistent, seeing as they’re already not great. i could list a couple different special interests this applies to, some of them being things i got into more recently than others. i probably will in the tags tbh. but my point is, like... the whole point of “fuck cringe culture” and “cringe culture is dead” is that you shouldn’t fucking bully people for enjoying things as long as they, PERSONALLY, aren’t harming other people in the process (by doing things like, for example, fetishising gay people and making real people uncomfortable through shipping culture, or using fandom as a vessel for their bigotry, or refusing to acknowledge flaws in content once it’s been pointed out to them, etc.). there are some things that are immediately and obviously problematic, yeah, but if it’s not immediately slapping me in the face with blatant antisemitism or racism or homophobia or transphobia or anything early on enough for me not to have already become attached to it (that is, while i’m still in the process of consuming it) for the love of god don’t fucking tell me i should be ashamed of myself for taking comfort in it. asking me not to talk about it to you, or to tag it, or whatever? that’s one thing. shaming me and bullying me over not realising i was doing something wrong is another thing altogether.

tl;dr: autism affects everyone differently, but in many cases the bond an autistic person forms to their special interests are going to make it hard or even impossible to fully let go of it even for it being problematic, even if it’s problematic in a way that’s targeted towards them. trying to avoid problematic media is 100% valid and understandable, but you can do that without making neurodivergent people feel like shit for enjoying things that, in a lot of cases, they may not even be able to financially support or contribute to, or may choose not to buy merch or otherwise contribute to the creators’ incomes because they already know about the issues with it.

postscript additions: i realise i only really talked about autism in my comment on this post and it wasn’t only about that originally. i can’t speak for people with adhd or add as i have been diagnosed with neither, but i’m sure plenty of them are affected similarly with their hyperfixations as i am with my special interests. basically, i’m just saying don’t be fuckin ableist and rude. i’m also not trying to excuse any of the content i enjoy. i’m saying that my enjoyment of it does not mean i am unaware of its flaws or that i agree with any of the bigoted opinions expressed by the creator, whether those opinions pervade the content or not. it does mean that i was unaware of those flaws when i became attached to it, and now i feel guilty enough about it already without you bullying me over it. finally, though i hate that i feel the need to clarify this, before anyone says anything about my identity to discredit my opinion, i’d like everyone to know that i’m a trans, gay, racially mixed latino and, as i think i made pretty clear already bc it’s literally the point (but i’m gonna repeat it again for emphasis), im neurodivergent.

ok that’s it for my visible comment thanks for reading

"destroy cringe culture" was super big when it was about shit like minecraft but now that its about stuff that has a primarily gay/trans/adhd/autistic fanbase then suddenly its okay to criticize people for being "annoying" 🤔