#and I think it is as impossible for neurotypical people to grasp as it is for me to grasp neurotypical ways

[fatwithoutkatsudon]

Having undiagnosed ADHD until you’re an adult is so hard because it has shaped so much of your life and personality it’s hard to tell where it ends and you begin, but it’s also the answer to every time you have screamed, crying, frustrated with yourself “WHY AM I LIKE THIS?!?!”

[atomicduckthefirst]

Was talking with @gameguy20100 and sort of discussing the nature of Kagami's creation, and what the heck Tomoe was thinking, and came to the conclusion that what made Kagami was the idea of honesty, or the desire for it.

Neurotypical vs Neurodivergent

Small disclaimer: I would like to apologize to anyone this might hurt, feel free to correct me at any time.

It's been basically established throughout the fandom that Kagami is HEAVILY autism coded (eg making lists to explain friendship, misunderstanding social cues or not picking up on them at all, needing the truth and nothing but the truth, etc.). We talked about why Tomoe would want to intentionally make Kagami autistic in a world that (I assume) is generally hostile to neurodivergent people. After all, perfection is generally associated with a rise to the top, so wouldn't being neurotypical make that easier? And with someone who is obsessed with perfection and believes their word is law, you would think they would make their daughter more like them, right? There are three reasons that we came up with.

1. Control through other people

First off, it allows her a better grasp of control over Kagami's free will. Though iirc it's unknown why she ever gave Kagami free will (likely because she values honesty), Kagami being autistic allows her to have a better hold over her. It isolates her from quite a few of her peers, at least at first, and it encourages her to interact with people like her mother, who is blunt (making her easier to understand for Kagami) and aggressive (which normalizes this behavior to Kagami). Additionally, she seems to find her mother hard to understand, but other, less abusive people can also be hard to understand, so even when exposed to better people she still believes her mother is a good person.

2. Control through the system

Since misunderstanding social cues and her own traits being misunderstood can screw Kagami over, why make her autistic? By intentionally kicking her down, she prevents her from getting to the top, and by association, prevents her from realizing Tomoe will never be happy with her, and that striving for perfection is an impossible goal. Once again, it allows her to keep control over what Kagami expects from her mother, and what she expects from herself.

3. Honesty is the best policy

To someone obsessed with perfection, who considers herself above all and who clearly doesn't like beating around the bush, it's possible Tomoe thinks the exact opposite of ableist people and considers being neurotypical a flaw. To someone who values honesty, arbitrary social cues, arbitrary expectations, and an aversion to saying what you want or mean, might be read to someone like Tomoe as making up rules, making up expectations, and twisting words. In other words, she might consider being neurotypical as being dishonest. As someone who is disabled, she's likely had quite a few people try to take advantage of her, especially considering the community she interacts with, so she might have reservations of her child being the same as those around her. It could quite literally be an act of rebellion. And considering Kagami's theme within the show is heavily implied to be truth (possibly directly paralleling Luka), it's possible Tomoe made Kagami desiring honesty. Which makes a lot of sense considering her character.

What's ironic though, is that she's friends with a lot of people who are... less than honest. Marinette and Adrien, sure, but also Lila (who she knows is a liar) and Felix (who iirc she also knows is a liar). So she directly goes against her mother's wishes.

She's very interesting to me, Kagami is love, Kagami is life.

[eyeciclez]

Some examples of why I think online autism advocacy is often confusing:

-- most people misuse at least one of the following words: stimming, Special Interest, masking, empathy, diagnosis, symptom, echolalia, non-verbal, meltdown, shutdown, hyperfocus/hyperfixation, misophonia

-- everyone claims there are clearly defined “neurodivergent” traits, but in the same breath say that autism is such a large spectrum that lots of people on it have nothing in common with each other. How do I explain this better...it comes across as if it’s extremely easy to know if someone is autistic, but impossible to know if someone isn’t autistic, but it’s of course much more complex than that

-- people are either reluctant to talk about the criteria you have to fulfil or they outright say there are no criteria (which would make a diagnosis and even self-identification pointless)

-- many say self-diagnosis is fine with proper research, but no one explains what “proper research” even means, how you can know for sure you have a good grasp on autism

-- scientific research and lazily put-together online questionnaires for random strangers are treated as either the same, or the latter is seen as more “valid”

-- lived experience is also treated as science (not saying it has no value; it’s just not science on its own), same goes for opinion pieces

-- most seem to think autism being mostly genetic means one of your parents (or grandparents, great-grandparents, etc.) has to be autistic, which is the most superficial understanding of genetics one could have

-- some claim “neurotypical” people are actually the ones with communication issues, empathy issues, etc., completely disregarding all the autistic people who do struggle with these things

-- autism and ADHD symptoms/traits are constantly conflated & while the many similarities between autism and other disorders (most obviously to me: schizophrenia) are ignored

-- the most average human behaviour gets pathologised

[coldresolve]

Also an important sidenote, I'm well aware there are other forms of emotional sadism. A good portion of sadists also happen to have no empathy, which makes that alexithymic empathy response impossible for obvious reasons - but they'll still feel pleasure at suffering that's distinct from whatever drives sadistic actions in the first place. And some sadists can't feel guilt or remorse, so they while might be prone to cognitive sadism, they obviously aren't in that Remorseful Sadist category I made up. My more general point is just that I think there's a difference between "the thing that drives sadistic actions" and "the emotional response sadists get from other people's suffering", and that I personally think that difference has the potential to be useful in how we conceptualize sadists

But it's complicated, and everything is on a spectrum, and some people will always break definitions. It's why psychology is so fucking tedious sometimes, all models ever made fall apart eventually. The original post was made from a more normative standpoint for otherwise neurotypical people who do experience empathy and guilt, so yeah

TL;DR take everything with a grain of salt, nothing I've said here is universal by a long shot. I just think it's interesting to think about these things more comprehensively, and I'm grasping at straws because research is scarce lol

My grand thesis on sadism

I'm not an expert on anything whatsoever, and studies on sadism are sparse to say the least, so I'm basing this on squinting at concepts I've seen elsewhere and a layman's gut feeling. Here's my thesis:

Introduction

Sadism is when someone feels emotional pleasure as a result of someone else suffering. That's about it, afaik. And yes, this does mean that that one time you said something mean to someone else in the heat of the moment to hurt their feelings, you were behaving sadistically. Sorry lol, sadism isnt a mythical creature, everyone is capable of it

Obviously, some people are more inclined to experience sadistic pleasure than others, which is where we draw that largely arbitrary distinction between sadist and non-sadist. My thesis is that this distinction is a tad more complicated than a binary spectrum: there are (at least) two different types of sadism, both of which play a role in what type of sadist a person is. Those two types are a) emotional sadism, and b) cognitive sadism. I made these terms up just now for the record

Emotional sadism

This is a type of sadism experienced by people who have alexithymic tendencies. Alexithymia affects about 20% of people. It's that thing where you're not very good at distinguishing or expressing different emotional states; distinguishing emotions from non-emotional bodily sensations such as hunger or fatigue, and; distinguishing between your own emotions from those you feel through empathy. (Loads of alexithymic people think they don't experience empathy; they do, they just don't attribute their feelings to other people.) Alexithymics will often have difficulty describing their emotions beyond negative, positive, or neutral. But some alexithymics, in certain regards to certain emotions, will have difficulty even doing that.

By attributing sadism to alexithymic tendencies, what I mean is this: You see someone suffering, and you feel a rush of adrenaline. But because you kinda suck at distinguishing this rush as the negative emotions felt by the other, transferred to you through identification and/or empathy - your brain interprets the rush as a positive experienced by you, which is influenced by, but still independent from the suffering experienced by the other. I hope I'm explaining this okay lol but this is the most plausible explanation I could come up with as to why sadistic ppls brains will interpret other people's suffering as a source of pleasure, because there is a significant correlation between alexithymia and the dark tetrad.

Cognitive sadism

Cognitive sadism can be summerized very sussinctly by this quote from C. Fred Alford:

Sadism is the joy of avoiding victimhood, though that puts it too passively. Sadism is the joy of having taken control of the experience of victimhood by inflicting it on another.

Cognitive sadism is an expression of control over the role of victimhood by imposing it on another person. I view this as the sub/conscious justification that drives sadistic actions, seperate to the emotional state experienced by the sadist after the act has taken place. These are, in my opinion, two seperate processes.

K, but so what?

Viewing these two things as seperate processes might help us distinguish between different types of sadists, by simply adding or subtracting. Here are some terms for what I mean that I also literally just came up with lol:

The Opportunistic Sadist: Experiences emotional sadism, but has no inclinations toward cognitive sadism. This means that they will experience sadistic gratification at witnessing the suffering of another, but they have no desire to be the one inflicting said suffering themself. (A good portion of yall are like this from what I've seen)

The Remorseful Sadist: Seeks control by imposing victimhood on others, but can distinguish their empathetic response as other-oriented and distinctly negative, leading to intense feelings of guilt/shame/remorse/whatever after the fact. (Industry secret: a large portion of people who broadcast themselves as hardline sadists secretly fall into this category. They'll never admit it lol)

The Pure Sadist: Experiences both the alexithymic empathy response and control-seeking inclinations. What most people think of when they conceptualize sadists; people like this are pretty rare in my experience? But I also have no data on it so like.

Anyway here's a graph I made:

The graph means I'm basically an academic about it lol idk

Conclusion

Fuck if I know, I'm just thinking thoughts about it for now tbh

[felinedetached]

Fandom Ableism in the MCYT Community

[Edited 14 June 2021]

One thing I’ve noticed about the MCYT (Dream SMP, specifically) community on both Tumblr and Twitter is that when informed of things that are ableist, or harmful to ND people, a lot of people ignore the post/tweet, derail it or actively fight against it.

“I’m ND so I can’t be ableist” is a common statement, which is blatantly untrue. Even I’ve used ableist terms and phrases before, without realising they were harmful. So as a neurodivergent person, with autism, BPD, depression/anxiety, dyslexia, psychosis & brain damage*: here’s some common ableist things both CCs and fandom say almost constantly**.

*note that not every neurodivergent person will agree with me on these, but these are commonly ableist things people have previously talked about online, and/or have been discussed between me and other neurodivergent friends. No minority can ever speak for the entire group.

**note that a lot of these are common outside the MCYT community as well, and that some of these are just considered societally acceptable. This isn’t okay, but it explains why a lot of people don’t recognise jokes or comments like these are wrong, and it means that it’s not a direct moral failing of people that they don’t immediately or directly recognise these comments as wrong.

Now, let’s get into the things you might not have realised are potentially ableist:

1. Use of “Psychopath/Psycho/Sociopath/Schizo” and other demeaning terms for people with mental illnesses as insults, or to describe characters who are considered villainous. Psychopath/Psycho/Sociopath are already terms that people with ASPD dislike using, even not as an insult, but using these terms to describe people or characters who you disagree with or see as villainous only contributes to the villainisation of people with ASPD and other mental illnesses. Using c!Dream as an example: Dream as a character is not confirmed to have any of these mental illnesses. He is, however, commonly labeled as psychotic/psychopathic, incapable of any kind of compassion.

He is also a character that fandom largely insists that nobody is allowed to sympathise with. This is a huge issue, and has hurt a lot of people, especially people with low empathy, or mental illnesses that cause them to relate to some of c!Dream’s actions (e.g. pulling away from all his friends, desperately grasping at straws to gain control of situations etc). Insisting that these characters are characters it’s impossible to sympathise with, all while calling them psychotic/psychopathic/sociopathic, is extremely harmful, and I hope this post draws attention to that.

Here’s another post that talks about that.

2. Use of the term “freak”, in general. As an insult, “freak” has been typically used to insult neurodivergent people, people with visible physical disabilities (ex. “freakshow”, and the term was reportedly created with the intent of insulting people with physical disabilities), or people who display any kind of abnormal/atypical social behaviour/physical aspects — people who are usually ND people who lack a diagnosis or people with physical disabilities. Recent usage has come to mean “people who do things that hurt other people”, but this is harmful as well; using words like “freak” or “weirdo” which mean “socially atypical behaviour” to refer to people who are actually doing things that hurt other people conflates the two, and often has a side effect of hurting disabled people who see it.

3. Calling ND ccs like Technoblade monotone/emotionless. While the term “monotone” isn’t ableist in and of itself, the fact that it’s being used against a neurodivergent man who emotes in a different way to neurotypical people rubs a lot of ND people the wrong way. I’ve partially discussed this here, in a tweet responding to a person who said that c!Technoblade, quote, “has no human capabilities like emotion for example”. This, however, is not something contained to c!Technoblade — one of the most common jokes in this fandom is how rare it is to hear emotion in Technoblade’s voice.

The issue with that is that neurodivergent people almost universally agree that Technoblade emotes perfectly fine, and, in fact, emotes more freely and clearly than a lot of others do. Hence, calling him monotone perpetuates the idea of ND people as emotionless/less able to be hurt/less expressive, which often hurts us. It also contributes to the dehumanisation of ND people — related to how ND symptoms are most often seen in robots or monsters in shows — and is generally extremely harmful, on top of being untrue.

4. Related to point 3: the infantilisation of ND ccs like Tubbo and Dream, usually paired with assigning “caretakers” of their friends, like Tommy and George. This is about the posts that spread like “omg, Tommy helps Tubbo with his dyslexia, that’s so cute” or “omg George is so patient with Dream, I could never sit through that” on videos of Dream vocally stimming because of his ADHD. This is another post that talks about this, but I wanted to talk more about why this is harmful here.

4a) With Tubbo’s dyslexia, from someone with dyslexia, it isn’t harmful to correct his spelling and move on. Personally, I think this is helpful — others will think it’s condescending, because not all ND people are the same — but as the above linked post mentions, this is not what Tubbo’s twitch chat does. This is not what the comments say. It’s all things about how it’s “so cute” that Tubbo can’t spell, how Tommy/Ranboo are “so patient” with correcting him. This is rooted in the need to constantly watch over ND people while acting like we can't live our lives without someone having us under constant vigilance. It feels like savior-complex ableism, like people are trying so hard to not be ableist that they spin back around to hurting us instead. And it feels like we are being treated like children. Like we are lesser than, and need to be monitored/watched over.

4b) Similarly to what people do with Tubbo, the comments on posts about Dream’s vocal stimming are often full of people calling George “patient” for “dealing with it”, or claiming they “wouldn’t be able to handle it”. This is inherently ableist. They’re praising George for basic human decency towards ND people, and claiming in the same breath that they wouldn’t be able to do that themselves. And then there’s these.

These comments infantilise Dream — claiming he “wouldn’t be able to stop/calm down” without George’s help, implying he’d “spiral out of control” or claiming “everyone is now my child”. It’s all related to the infantilisation of ND people, and the belief that without help/a caretaker we cannot take care of ourselves.

5. The way people treat ccs who likely have undiagnosed neurodivergencies, like Wilbur. Wilbur has openly admitted on stream before that his parents considered getting him an autism diagnosis. He also openly admits on stream that he has habits he doesn’t understand why he does, and hyperfixates on things for months at a time and doesn’t know why. Posts like this have gone around Tumblr, in which Wilbur displays blatantly ND traits.

And fandom generally calls him weird for expressing those traits. This video where he talks about eating sand because he likes the texture? That’s an ND trait. This video where he talks about his irrational hatred for anteaters? While mostly a joke, irrational hatred of something when you can’t explain/understand/articulate why is also a common ND trait. He spends 20 minutes during a Philza stream info-dumping about self-sustaining ecosystems (sharing the photo, because I think it’s really cool) and fandom begins calling them “Wilbur’s weird jars”. It’s demeaning to people who infodump, and as a ND person who hyperfixates and infodumps it’s really upsetting to see. It’s also upsetting to see other ND traits being called “weird” or “freaky” & made out to be soley some funny joke for NT people to laugh at us about.

Additionally: It’s strange to me that people think it’s okay to make fun of ND traits just because they know that or perceive that the person they’re making fun of is NT. It’s still making fun of ND traits. It’s still insulting ND people. It’s still ableist as hell. Why is it okay just because the person is NT?

6. Implying that c!Ranboo’s enderwalking is inherently violent. Ranboo has shown us time and time again that the enderwalk state isn’t a violent state. That the enderwalk state isn’t a seperate version of c!Ranboo that does horrific things. Why, then, is it so common to imply that Ranboo would be violent and hurt people why he’s enderwalking?

It comes back to the perception of c!Ranboo as a character with “two halves”, or as a character with DID. Ranboo has made it clear that his character does not have DID, but this headcanon about his character persists, and it persists in a way that is directly harmful to people with DID — and to people who dissociate or sleepwalk. We do not commit horrific acts while we dissociate, while we’re sleepwalking, because the majority of the time we’re just checked out, our body is on autopilot. Insinuating that we do is harmful. Insinuating that Ranboo has “another half” that’s inherently violent or evil is harmful to people with DID. I’m not going to ask you to stop writing these headcanons etc, but please consider the effect you have on people before you do.

7. Related to point 6: the perception of c!Ranboo as “soft” and “cute” and/or perfectly moral because of his canonical anxiety. This is really harmful, and comes once again from the infantilisation of disorders like anxiety and depression. Ranboo has made clear time and time again that his character isn’t moral, and in fact is extremely inconsistent. He’s portrayed his character as inconsistent, as someone who hurts his friends unintentionally and often due to his want to please everyone, and yet he’s constantly seen as “soft/pure/the only moral one” because of his anxiety causing to have repeated and consistent spirals on-screen. These spirals are not healthy. They don’t indicate his “perfect morals” or make him more moral than anyone else on the SMP. Please stop infantilising people with anxiety, it’s really hurtful.

8. Implying that c!Technoblade is inherently a violent person because of his voices. I’ll admit here: my hallucinations are visual. I do not get auditory hallucinations, and I cannot speak for people who do. But many people have spoken out about this, and discussed how talking about Technoblade as an inherently violent character because of his voices is harmful, and a stereotype of people with schizophrenia.

Technoblade’s character is, in and of itself, inherently a stereotype (despite the fact that his chat are more likely to be a supernatural entity than a symptom of a disorder such as schizophrenia) in that the idea of “hearing voices that encourage violence” is a stereotype of people with schizophrenia. As an actual symptom, is a very uncommon one. More common auditory hallucinations for people with schizophrenia or psychosis are, reportedly, whispers or unrelated conversation. One of my friends hears screaming.

But the issue is with the implication that c!Technoblade is “driven to violence” by the voices. Canonically, he has dealt with the “bloodlust” of chat by grinding withers. He’s perfectly capable of being peaceful, even with “voices pushing for violence”, and he’s perfectly capable of being violent without the “voices” influence. It’s the connotations and the history that fandom has in demonising and villainising c!Technoblade for even having the “voices” in the first place, and acting having them makes him inherently violent and unstable. There’s precedent for that already in society, and it’s not okay to perpetuate it.

[Edit: as of 22/05/2021, I do experience auditory hallucinations, and I can confirm that I am not any more violent, and the voices I hear don’t push me to violence. The clearest one just said ‘click’ in my ear.]

9. Jokes about brain damage and the use of “brainrot” as a term. I made a post about how common jokes about brain damage are here, and I would like to reiterate bits of it.

Jokes like these are really really normalized in modern society. I’m sure a lot of you didn’t even register it as wrong, and that isn’t a moral failing! It’s a norm in society, and that means the majority of people arent going to register it as something hurtful, because it’s said so often. But it does still hurt. The idea of using a disability as an insult is really harmful and it feels dehumanizing, like our disability makes us lesser, something that should be laughed at.

“Brainrot” as a term originated in Skyrim, as a disease that literally rotted your brain. However, as a term, it has very similar connotations to “brain damaged” and has been used in similarly joking and insulting ways. It’s something that feels really off to me and other neurodivergent people to see used by neurotypical people. It even sometimes feels uncomfortable when used by neurodivergent people, even if it’s used in positive ways. I know quite a few people who have removed it from their vocab completely because of the connotations, and I have personally done the same. Once again, I am just asking you to please consider your words before you use them.

10. Calling c!Wilbur during his Pogtopia Arc “Vilbur”. Yes, he was a villain. Yes, he hurt people. But c!Wilbur during the Pogtopia Arc only has one major difference from c!Wilbur during the L’Manburg Arc: a visible depiction of mental illness, specifically paranoia and psychosis. Treating him as a seperate person and calling that seperate person “Vilbur” comes across as extremely hurtful, and contributes to the villainisation of mentally ill people. His mental illness does not excuse him from hurting people, but calling c!Wilbur “Vilbur” upsets a lot of us, because wether or not it’s intended, it feels reductive, hurtful, and insulting.

If you got to the end of this post, thank you so much for reading. I hope that this helped you recognise things that you might not have known were ableist, and that you consider what I’ve said here. I also know that I haven’t addressed everything ableist that’s spread through the MCYT fandom community, so if you’re ND and have something you’d like to add, please feel free.

[scrawnytreedemon]

Neurodivergency, and Sephiroth

Right, I’m going to see if I can try and explain why this reading appeals to me.

For some background, I’ve watched a full silent LP of the OG, watched Advent Children, and am largely familiar with his characterisation in Crisis Core(though it gets a bit patchy in some areas). I am not familiar with his characterisation in KH, Dissida, or any other spinoff appearances.

I’m going to be looking at this with an autistic lens, as, hey, I’m autistic, however much of these patterns aren’t exclusive to autistic people by any means and thus are fairly applicable to other labels.

This is an explanaition on why I find this element worth considering, and while I hope that others can relate or take away something from this, in many ways it is highly personal and not intended to be a decleration on Sephiroth’s ‘true nature,’ as it were. I’m not claiming that this was intended by the writers-- Infact, I’d be very surprised if they considered it, at all --As many of the traits he exhibits could be brushed aside as due to his upbringing.

That being said, let’s get into it!

1. Alienation

A common thread in neurodivergency, autism in particular, is some form of alienation. This doesn’t necessarily mean being outcast-- I, for one, have been largely accepted by those around me, and yet there is still that sense of being ‘other‘ that’s always been there, long before I even had a word for it.

Now, of course, in Sephiroth this is more related to his lineage, and how it’s expressed in... well, everything. Even still, I find value in expanding that, and considering just how getting the sense you’re implicitly divided from your peers.

There is, of course, the matter of Sephiroth’s literal isolation-- However, as fun as those scenarios are to play around with, I don’t think Sephiroth was raised wholly, or even mostly in the labs. The reason being that it would be nigh impossible to have hid just what made Sephiroth different, especially knowing how observant he is. It’s clear that Sephiroth had had extensive contact with other children, as epitomised by the line:

“I knew ever since I was a child, I was not like the others. I knew mine was a special existence. But this is not what I meant!” 

Sephiroth was painfully aware that he is different, even if he didn’t know exactly how. It is at once an oddly thrilling, and lonely sensation. Thrilling, because-- Hey! --You can do and see things others can’t and/or wouldn’t; and lonely, because it makes it hard to relate to others or have them relate to you.

2. Socialisation

I would like to start off by saying that, while I find it a tad more faithful and endlessly less grating than Sex God Sephiroth, Sephiroth is not a complete and utter social failure. While it’s clear he has difficulty articulating emotions and understanding others, it’s very clear even still that he knows how the game works, and knows how to play it.

This is going to dip far more into speculation territory, so buckle up.

A thing that, perhaps, I don’t see talked about often enough online when it comes to neurodivergent experiences, is that many things that are considered ‘normal‘ get experienced as systems that we need to actively learn and maneuver-- Socialisation especially!

Now, of course there is always some degree of social interaction being a give and take, a step forth and step back, regardless of neurotype, but it’s dialed up far more when you deviate from ‘the norm.‘

If I can give my own example, a thing I struggled with when I was little was humour! Not because I didn’t find things funny, or didn’t know what it was, but because I had issues grasping at the machinations of what made something funny. This lead to alot of nonsensical jokes that left my siblings confounded, until I picked up a joke-book, and started analysing from there. It was mostly alot of puns, which! Due to their simple structure, are a great way to learn the basics! I didn’t even know this was unusual, until my mother pointed it out to me years later.

And that method goes for alot of things.

Sephiroth, above all else, is observant. He makes efforts multiple times throughout the OG and Crisis Core to check up on others and ask how they’re doing. He asks Cloud how he feels returning to his hometown, and about seeing his mother, and urges Zack to check up on Aerith in Crisis Core, to name some notable examples. Even if you get the sense that his attempts are, perhaps, a little ungainly, it makes it clear more than anything that Sephiroth tries.

I think the reason that people have leaned alot more into the overly-awkward perception of Sephiroth in recent times, is because it humanises him. I feel there’s been far more of a shift within fandom to focus on the mundane, on relatability, on humanity. A veneer of endless, effortless confidence really isn’t that sexy anymore-- When sexual-appeal even comes into the matter, at all.

That being said, this section more than anything, I think, is very easy to brush aside due to his... interesting upbringing. Depending on how you construe the timeline, Sephiroth got sent to war as early as twelve, and wouldn’t have had much of an oppurtnity to develop these skills in a healthy and timely manner.

Even without that, a degree of social awkwardness is far from exclusive to any particular neurotype-- It’s the way it arises in him, though, that piques my interest.

3. Analysis and Obsession

This... I think, is the one where I’ll be grasping at straws the most.

While, yes, the obsessive research demonstrated in the OG during the Nibelheim incident and even before that to a lesser extent in Crisis Core could be some indication of a degree to absolutely immerse yourself in a subject in that Very Autistic WayTM, more than anything these are brought on by dire circumstance(the former especially by the question of his very humanity), and as we don’t see Sephiroth as a child, it’s uncertain as to whether he displayed these behaviours as such and to this degree under ‘normal‘ circumstances.

Even so, I get the feeling that Sephiroth is very analytically-minded, in a very Stranger In A Strange World sort of way(not in any way referring to the 1961 novel by a similar name, lmao). I get the feeling he’s the type of person to pick up some highly-esoteric text just for fun and come away with a menagerie of strange and unusual and obscenely specific factoids that he’ll remember for the rest of his life.

Like, someone might mention a topic offhandedly, and though he’d keep his mouth shut because He’s Like ThatTM, a slew of all the little bits and pieces he’s seen or read on the matter over the years would just jump to mind.

What I’m trying to say is, I think Sephiroth would take joy in painstakingly pouring and mulling over topics that not many people would have the consideration nor the mind to hold any long-term, inimate interest in.

If the last point was easily brushed aside, then this one you’d merely have to breathe and it’d fall apart. Nonetheless, I feel that within fandom’s current common framework with how we perceive Sephiroth, this wouldn’t be too much of a stretch.

I, however, want to make it clear that I can see the issue with labelling Sephiroth as neurodivergent. He could all too easily fall into the cliché of cold, emotionally and socially-inept, often rather callous depictions we see all too often in the heavily-neurotypical media that sees us as Missing Something; less than. Things have gotten better, but even still, there’s such a tendency to flatten us down to the things we can’t do, or lawd as us Potential Einsteins in spite of it-- Which, just, while it happens, on the whole it isn’t very helpful or realistic to expect this from us.

We are by no means a monolith, and while I take comfort in the idea of a neurodivergent Sephiroth, I understand that for some, it can feel like taking on a label to a character that vaguely fits the stereotype, and thus, perhaps, insinuating that to be autistic you have to look Like That-- And when it comes to villains in particular, it’s all too easy to dip into demonisation.

This isn’t even getting onto some of the issues that’d have this fall apart, were we to look at other symptoms. The first that comes to mind, and one that even I, as innocuous as I am, experience: sensory overload.

While it is entirely possible that Sephiroth learned to deal with it accordingly in life, or was forced to surpress it, because Shinra’s Science Department(cough cough Hojo) has been shown time and time again to force its subjects into little boxes and blame them for any failures expressed, the fact is that such a symptom could make fighting on the battlefield downright impossible.

Again, this is something that could’ve been given a ‘solution‘(as much as you can or even should think about long-term surpressing your basic thresholds), it nonetheless remains an issue.

I just hope that, on the whole, this served as some food for thought.

TL;DR: Sephiroth is autistic because I Vibe With It.

Also, happy Disability Pride!

[alien-affect]

I’m curious about how people think.

A while back I was talking to a friend of mine about just this. How our thoughts flow. She’s got ADHD, and she described her thought patters as like a train station.

The trains are her thoughts, moving in and out of the station seemingly sporadically, at least to anyone who doesn’t know the schedule. The tracks swerve and cross-cross and split off in some places. Something is always going on, and sometimes it feels like she’s having multiple trains of thought at once. Either way, something is always in motion.

I described my thoughts like a tree, or a web map. There’s the initial thought, and then maybe a half dozen associations that come with it, and I can only follow one track at a time. So I pick a track, and then that path also has another half dozen associated thoughts, and so I pick one, on and on, until I’m far and away from the initial topic and have to track backwards just to figure out what the starting point was.

It’s like I have one though, and then five others slam into my brain in quick succession. Clusters of thoughts rather than trains. There no A to B, instead it’s like A leads to Apple and Apple leads to Fruit, and Fruit leads to Produce and Produce leads to Plants, and suddenly I’m thinking about Mycology and wait– how did I get here?

My older sister described it as ‘shooting stars flying acronyms the observable universe of her mind.’ There for only a second and impossible to grasp. Fleeting brilliance.

I wanna know how neurotypicals think. How do thought move through their minds? One at a time? A leads to B and that’s it? Do you have to sort out the sudden wash of thoughts just to figure out what’s salient? Do you get distracted by your own thoughts? How much of your thinking is conscious? How much do NT’s have to focus on organizing their headspace just to make a point? How many different ways do they have to frame a thought before they think, ‘that’s it, that’s the way to word this,’– do they only do this in deep discussions, or in casual conversation too?

How do people think?

[heraldofzaun]

what are your thoughts on viktor and being neurodivergent? though like, obligatory disclaimer that if riot ever did come out and say that "hey! viktor is canonically [something]" that would be catastrophic but i think it is a little bit of fun for consideration

Oh! Well I like to think he's autistic, which is partially because I am too. (Of course in canon it would be catastrophic because haha, oh man, look at how they've treated Blitzcrank's biographies ever since they gave him an updated one. There's some coding in there, alright, and I am... not a fan...)

I’ve posted a lot of long posts recently (this is no exception) and this is also on a kind of tricky subject, so I’m readmore’ing it.

So anyways, while I have to admit that some of the reason why (my) Viktor is autistic is because I am - I think that you can make a general semi-convincing argument. Or I'm so wrapped up in my own interpretations that I can, at the least. Anyways, from here on out when I say Viktor I mean my personal take. Your mileage may vary on applying this to other interpretations.

(Also, thoughts on new lore Jayce's being kind of coded to be like, a stereotypical autistic dude? (If you have any I mean.) I don't like that Riot is doing it, of course, but I've seen a few good rehabilitative takes on it in fandom. @hamartio's Jayce springs to mind, because their Jayce has been developed over the years and also written by someone who like. Cares. Anyways, I have my own personal Jayce ideas that rely on his old lore so he's not really an asshole there, at least in those regards, so I don't really have many thoughts on new Jayce. I think new Viktor is... pretty coded as well, but it’s also insanely stereotypical. The whole “always working, always wants certainty, gets into automation not because he (primarily) wants to help those injured by catastrophes in Zaun but because the catastrophes interrupt his work” thing makes me uncomfortable. Maybe I’ll write sometime on why the rewrite of his lore fails, in my opinion, to hit upon the same themes of his first - would that be of interest to folks? Anyways, this parenthetical is too long.)

I think that autistic Viktor is cool and makes sense, somewhat because of the fact that the ways he goes about solving his problems are, er, unorthodox. (Of course I am not saying that the GE is because he’s autistic, because that’s stupid. This is why I’m kind of squirrely about talking so openly about what I think Viktor’s got going on, and why I don’t really trust if a non-autistic person headcanons him as autistic. There’s a lot of room for that headcanon to just reinforce the “autistic people are supergeniuses with no emotions that work based off of Facts and Logic” trope, and I hate that.) Since a lot of autism is about feeling adrift from/at odds with neurotypical society, I think that Viktor’s general solutions and also his idealistic leanings in the face of everything Zaun is tracks for that. Roboticization makes sense as a way to stop suffering and death, because it’s more achievable than individual feats of immortality through magic or whatever. Viktor doesn’t really get why people would be so opposed to it - he’s made it clear that while he dislikes his own emotions and wants them gone, he doesn’t expect others to cast off theirs. (Maybe he expected that when he was in the thick of his emotional pain, mostly because he couldn’t imagine others choosing differently than he at the time, but not in the current day.)

Of course, externally, when the scary cyborg man who admits to cutting off his own limbs says “no, being a robot is cool, you can keep your emotions even”, any Zaunite (or any person) is going to interpret that as “he is definitely lying”. Viktor doesn’t quite make that leap. (I have thoughts on the whole Theory of Mind concept and I don’t mean to say that Viktor can’t empathize - he does, and does too much - with others, but I think that in this instance he just can’t quite understand sometimes why people don’t believe him.) He also doesn’t quite get why people would be so attached to the bodies that they’re currently in, especially if he can make a mechanical replica. Or why people might want to die and pass into non-existence after a life well lived. (To him, personally, there’s always more to do. Also he’s terrified of death but that’s another topic.)

I also think that Viktor’s empathy is of the hyper- rather than hypo- kind, partially because I feel like outside of self-advocacy groups the mere concept of autistic hyperempathy is seen as like... impossible? It’s also because he generally seems to be kind of an emotional guy in canon before Stanwick, what with the lore saying that “almost no trace of the original man remained” in reference to Viktor reemerging as someone without emotions. That, combined with the fact that he was described as having a “hope to better society” before everything went down, kind of makes me believe that he was a naive idealist type. (Again, not that autism makes you naive, but...) But yes, hyperempathy. Hence "no pain, no wars, no suffering, no death” being part of his ideology for the Glorious Evolution. He gets pretty ripped up about people being hurt, and it’s really only gotten worse over the years as he’s grasped the full scope of pain in the world.

Personally, I write pre-Stanwick-incident Viktor as someone who is still somewhat awkward with expressing emotion, but it’s not due to him not having them. It’s due to the fact that the ways in which he naturally expressed them and in which he interacted with the world were just... seen as odd/different/etc. (I don’t think Runeterra has an autism diagnosis or particularly excellent psychology, even in Piltover and Zaun, so he just gets the “you’re a weird dude” treatment for his entire life.) Stimming or smiling a certain way or talking a lot about his interests or, you know, the general autistic existence is weird to most people around him, as it unfortunately is in real life. So he’s more reserved until you actually know him, because he’s just masking all the time. (Fun fact about my Viktor: he’s pretty expressive under that actual mask of his. It helps to not have to micromanage expressions all the time when he isn’t experiencing a bout of flat affect due to [gestures vaguely at everything else going on with his mental state], although he sometimes feels poorly about not being able to manage himself. But that’s his issues, and I think it’s good for him to show emotion.)

Side note - Stanwick was able to do such a number on Viktor due to: a) Stanwick being very charismatic and manipulative, on top of being an actually smart man and scientist - he’s really a great example of a “good Zaunite”, in the sense of being good at being what the culture rewards, b) Viktor actively dealing with the death of his parents and Stanwick being an older adult who’d treated him kindly and had never seemed put-off by Viktor’s oddities, and c) Viktor not realizing that he’d get backstabbed, because yes he knows that that happens in academia but Stanwick’s nice. Whether or not the outcomes would have been the same if Viktor were more competent at being “a good Zaunite”... well, probably not. Viktor ended up where he did because of who he is.

(Secondary side note: Viktor has a very strong and very black-and-white sense of what’s right and wrong, as well as general black-and-white thinking. You can see how that would have... not helped in the situations he was put through.)

This is getting kind of rambling, but I guess the point of this is that Viktor’s wanting to remove his emotions may be cloaked in the language of them being “inefficient” or “unhelpful”, which would feed into autistic stereotypes, but it’s really more of a matter of them being too painful and raw for him to process. He feels too much and hurts too much, and no amount of positive emotions in the world will (in his mind) make up for the pain he’s felt and will feel. So it’s better to not feel anything at all, isn’t it? At least then you aren’t overwhelmed by it all.

Viktor just hasn’t fit in with Zaun for all his life, really. Not as an odd child who can tell you all about science-fiction and techmaturgy, not as an odd and reserved teenager/young adult, not as a bright young doctoral student still dealing with grief but trying to make the best of it, and... not as the Machine Herald. But now he’s given up on trying to fit in, for better or for worse.

(Other miscellaneous and less serious autistic thoughts on him: generally a pretty fixed diet, partially due to being autistic but also due to what’s easily available in Zaun + what agrees with his stomach. A fan of weight and pressure - I like to think that the reason his outfit is like that is that he finds it comforting, and also that he has a weighted blanket or two around. Special interests of general techmaturgy, robotics, and science-fiction. He can talk for hours about any of those, and has. Both his parents were mildly spectrum-y, his mother a little bit moreso, so they just kinda assumed that him being him was out-of-the-ordinary and a bit strange but not something “horribly wrong”. Oh! And his third arm, which is under a little less conscious control than the rest of him, still stims sometimes when he’s working or otherwise not paying attention to it.)

This was very long and jumped around a lot, because I find it hard to give a convincing paragraph-by-paragraph argument about exactly why I think that Viktor is autistic, or rather why I headcanon him as such. But hopefully it was interesting! I just have a lot of thoughts on him, as well as the general state of autistic-coded or perceived-as-autistic-by-individuals (both allistic and autistic) characters in media and so it’s very hard to do anything concise without branching out into discussing other topics.

[astridbrandonauthor]

Autism and Jobs

Related to the last blog I wrote, which stopped getting notes after like a few hours. LOL TW: Coronavirus talks; job loss So on Monday, I was told that I would be let go from my current job. What do I do in this job, you might ask? Literally my job is to take my ‘patient’ to and from his appointments 30 miles away. It’s literally the easiest thing ever, and was absolutely perfect as someone who 1) already was acquainted with the family to an extent and also friends with his sister, 2) in college, and 3) also as an autistic person and my patient’s mom literally works with people who are neurodivergent so she completely knows how to work with me. He’s pretty independent except for being autistic and also not being old enough to drive. So for me, this was like a dream come true: Something easy and something I could work while in school, and still get paid a decent amount of money. And tbh the family is really sweet and amazing. So, when she broke the news to me, I was so shocked and sad. It wasn’t anything I did, or she did.  My job (and actually hers as well) were victims of Coronavirus. Her hours are being cut, so she’s going to be home the entire week. His sister is likely to still be home this semester as well (again because of Coronavirus). Honestly, there is no point in keeping me if someone is going to be home all the time. So, I have about 3-ish weeks left. As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been working for 3 years and have had 7 jobs. Every single time I was looking for a job, I’ve always found it practically impossible to find a job (except this one—this job I hadn’t actually been looking. My friend had messaged me asking if I would like to take her place while she went off to Job Corps. Having had a hard time at the dry cleaner’s, and anything to be done with working customer service, I did not hesitate to accept). Having to jump back into job searching has reminded me just how difficult it is as a neurodivergent individual to find a job.

I’ve had problems with people in the past thinking they knew what was best for me. I immediately cut ties with a former friend who was trying to force me into McDonald’s because, and I quote, “I’ve trained autistic people to work the window before.” and essentially any autistic person should be able to do the job. That’s not the case. Despite being acquainted with her for years, she obviously knew nothing of me. 

I know what my limits and capabilities are. Fast food? I would not last a minute in fast food. I can list numerous reasons why I could never last: the sounds of food cooking, the sounds of people shouting over each other in the kitchen, people talking at the drive-thru, people talking in the dining area, the people talking at the counter, the fast pace. And that is perhaps just scratching the surface. 

Car cleaning? I’ve already tried it, it’s similar to fast food but without the food. There was just too much going on, the heat, and too much physical work (I thought I could handle the physical work but obviously I couldn’t). Out of the question.

Grocery stores or department stores? Well, the last hundred times I’ve applied to grocery stores, I was always turned down. Why? Because I’m a college student with inflexible hours. That’s why. Grocery and department stores used to be great for college kids, but now it just feels like you have to be lucky as a college student in order to work retail.

Maybe return to the dry cleaner’s? Fuck no. I had more problems there than I did at the other dry cleaner’s that went bankrupt on me. Though I miss the one manager I worked under.  Maybe try another care attendant job? Well, I’m looking into it, but my problem is trying to find someone close to where I live, and in a similar situation to my current patient.

The problem I’m running into right now is a combination of, “These are things I know for a fact I cannot do.”, “I don’t have the skill set for this one”, “I need to be making over $9 an hour.” and “I am a college student, so my hours are inflexible.” And what really is frustrating is that I have even looked at Amazon jobs, and Amazon isn’t hiring near me. Or at least jobs within my “skill level”.  Yes, jobs for me exist. It’s just a matter of sifting through hundreds of jobs that I can’t do because of this, that, or the other. And if you’re a neurotypical reading this and your first thought is, “Well that’s your problem, you’re saying that evil four-letter word!” (Can’t) well, while you’re right that I’m saying that, you’re not grasping why I’m saying it. You don’t know my limitations—physically, mentally, and emotionally. You don’t know what I’ve tried and failed at no matter how much effort I put into it. You don’t know how many times at the jobs I’ve failed where I was in the bathroom, bawling my eyes out because of sensory overload or being treated like shit. Neurotypical people can naturally filter out things that cause autistic people sensory overload, burn-out, and to have meltdowns. And it’s not that I’m trying—because let me tell you, I’ve been trying as hard as I can. I am limited in what I can do, but I’m also willing to work hard at the things that I can, for a fact, do.  I can do the things I know I can do, I just want the opportunity to show that I can do them. And the fact that there are very few resources for adult autistic people, especially ones to help us find jobs, really makes things feel like an impossible task.

[missn11]

So I’m going to be a killjoy and talk negatively about Himbos for a bit or rather how fandom and people tend to view them, cause the last I saw about Himbos and some of the comments actually made me feel a some type of way.

I’m very sorry if I come off as shamey towards people who love Himbos and/or have characters they would call Himbos, I’m merely having a rant about how over used the term can be used at times.

Namely, in one person’s words, “and he never changes” and this creeped me out and I wanna talk about why that is.

So from what I understand what a Himbo is a kind hearted, attractive man of low intellligence, a contrast to the assholish, smug, pseudo-intellegent man who thinks they know everything and won’t admit they are wrong no matter what.

So easy enough right, but in reality not all people who are shall we say ‘dumb’ are kind, a lot of them are actually hurtful in their willful or unkowably ignorance and some of them are really nasty. In short while there are so many ‘smart’ people who are assholes so are there many asshole dumb people, God you can just go on a Reddit threat like AITA to find them!

But also, another thing we have to take into account, not all male characters who are labled as ‘Himbos’ are dumb, some have tunnel vision when it comes to their goals, and that makes them not always think things through, others are uneducated or culturally ignorant of a country’s social cues (and perhaps the only reason they sound ‘dumb’ to you is that they might not have for example a grasp of english, isn’t that kind of fucked up to call someone ‘dumb’ because they are still learning a second language and a whole another culture???) and also we have to acknowledge that some of them might be non-neurotypical too, so that makes me really uncomfortable to say the least to have them be called ‘dumb’ when they are merely different from the norm.

Also, why can’t a character be smart and emotionally intellegent as well? That’s kind screwed up to me that we have this binary where someone who is intellegent can’t be kindhearted but a person who isn’t intellectual but is able to have a heart of gold. Of course, it’s better to have more people who are compassionate and emotionally intellegent and honestly we need more of that frankly, but why at the cost of their intellegence? A truly smart person will admit when they don’t know something and be willing to learn or ask for help. But of course, a Himbo will actually realise that they need help and will ask without assuming that a woman doesn’t know anything and will actually respect her knowledge and I think that’s a good Himbo trait.

But let me get back to what I was creeped out about this comment “and he never changes” , I find it kind of gross that no-one, anyone no matter the gender, would want their partener/friend to even have the chance to grow as a person, honestly if you heard a man say that about his ignorant girlfriend, you would rightfully call him out on his sexism and creepy behavior! Trust me it’s an ideal that is worrisome and impossible, as no matter what a person will change throughout their lifetime for better or worse. And would you want someone to never grow and be stagnant, they can still be a kind person but perhaps wiser.

And let’s not forget another thing, someone that helpless in life that you need to constantly teach them everything, will get mentally tiring after a while. Provided that the person is acutally able to remember or willing to remember what you have taught them, cause if they can’t, they have memory problems which that need to be looked into, faking being ‘dumb’ or etc, etc, either way it’ll be exhausting to deal with daily!

Also, I’ve seen enough stupidity in my time to put me off the idea that it’s ever cute to deal with frankly, like I’ve said not all ‘dumb’ people are emotiaonally intellegent, a lot of them aren’t! And also, how emotianoally and intellectually stimulating are they in a relationship, again depending on the person the answer might be yes or no.

So, I had mentioned some men pretending to be ‘dumb’ so their so usually their wife will have to do everything, cooking, chores and looking after babies/children. Remember about that post about the man who pretended that he didn’t know how to make deviled eggs so his wife had to cook them rather than simply telling her he liked it when she made them?

You could say the post about the man who worked hard to make his wife the perfect breaded chicken cutlets is a Himbo, though we don’t know how intellegent he is, he could be real smart, but what we do know is that he cares about his wife and has the emotional intellegence to show it!

I think the thing is that we want more men/people to be respectful and emotionally intellegent towards woman’s/other people’s and you know what that’s beyond vaild but does it have to come at the cost of a person’s knowledge?

And labeling a character a Himbo is ignoring all of their characteristics and depth, therefore shutting down any meta discussion around in favor of a easy box we can place them in.

[casual-eumetazoa]

1, 8, and 22 for the trans asks!

How did you choose your name?

when i first started looking for a name i basically had two criteria - i wanted it to start with the same letter as my birth name and i wanted it to be somewhat gender-neutral / have a gender-neutral variant because i IDed as nonbinary at the time. and i went through a ton of versions, like i would stay on name list websites for hours looking at names and did not like anything. especially cause i was trying to find something that would have a Slavic version and a lot of cool names i liked did not have anything close to them in Slavic languages

and in the end i picked “Matthew” because i was watching Daredevil at the time and realized that i really liked his name lol. also cause it had a gender-neutral version - Mattie - which i still absolutely love even though i realized i was really a binary trans man pretty soon after i picked that name. and it is an old name so it does have versions in both Russian (Matvei) and Polish (Mateusz) so it worked out

8. How would you explain your gender identity to others?

there’s not much to explain really beyond explaining the concept of being transgender. like, i don’t have the same issues as nonbinary people have at least, because everyone knows what a man is lol. in terms of explaining the concept of being trans to people, honestly i fall into biological/neurological explanations even though it is not 100% accurate to what i actually believe. as in, i do believe that gender identity comes from the brain because everything about us comes from the brain, but i don’t actually think it is all down to hormones or genes during embryonic development... 

i do agree it is at least to some extent cultural and experience-based and people with the exact same structure of those gender-determining regions of the brain (which are a pretty small part of the brain anyway, and have not yet been properly identified and described) can have different gender identities because gender identity isn’t just the sex of your nervous tissue, it’s a much more malleable and amorphous concept. culture and life experience and language and so on is definitely a part of it i think

but when i am talking to cis ppl, you know... it’s like that meme with Greek philosophers and toddlers lmao. i just go “yeah it is because testosterone has an effect on certain parts of your brain and your gender is just another sex characteristic like chromosomes or genitals” cause i am not going to give them a five hour long lecture about gender like, i just don’t have the time and attention span for that lol

22. Do your neurodivergencies and/or disabilities affect your gender?

i think so, yeah! i mean, there is empirical evidence that autistic people identify as non-cis at much higher rates than neurotypicals, so it is a pretty good guess that me being autistic has something to do with me being trans.

specifically i think that, because my brain is not as good at picking up social norms and gender stereotypes/roles, i don’t feel like i grew up “socialized as female”. i identified as a girl up until i was 16 or so, sure, but i don’t think i ever felt the pressure of gender stereotypes meant for girls... i was raised in a pretty gender-neutral way and while i did have certain experiences that are way more common for women (like being catcalled for example), it just sort of never stuck with me that i was experiencing it As A Girl yknow?

i was very aware of the societal pressure on women but it never felt like that pressure applied to me as much. and i don’t think i even grasped the distinction between girls and boys at the same age as everyone else because i hanged out with both boys and girls as a kid and it didn’t feel like, Different. idk, the influence of gender roles is so strong it is impossible to escape it completely but i do feel like it did not stick as well on me as it did on other people

also trying to figure out my gender was probably more difficult because of autism but hey, i figured it out in the end so i wouldn’t say it is a huge negative or anything

[ophidahlia-did]

Feeling pretty comfortable reclaiming "crazy" as a slur tbh ("mad" also). Even years after getting diagnosed correctly I still have little control over switches, so much identity confusion, so much "made" actions/feelings/thoughts, my physical health & mental state are both extremely unpredictable & unstable over days, weeks, & even months. Combine D.I.D. with Conversion Disorder, CPTSD, complex chronic pain, and all the other very uncommon components & marginalizations of my situation (being trans, a power wheelchair user, extremely poor, a practicing pagan, etc etc just edges me further out onto the fringes of society)... "crazy" just feels like my normal now. Like, I still have apparent physical injuries just appear out of nowhere and it's nearly impossible to determine that they're really conversion symptoms and not actually organic. It feels like even my body itself is crazy, to say nothing of my mental states.

Saying I'm crazy is like, anything but a diagnosis. Crazy, for me personally, isn't experiencing things that aren't real, which is how most people (especially neurotypicals) think of it, it's experiencing things which most other people can't comprehend as being real. It's not lacking a grasp on reality, it's other people not being able to grasp my reality. It's existing somewhere outside the general consensus reality. "Crazy" is a box people put you in when they can't imagine you fitting in any of the tidy, neatly labelled boxes they have for people because your lived reality threatens to overturn their little epistemological taxonomy.

Well, I'm keeping the box and I'll going at it with the markers and box cutter and duct tape and they can't stop me lol. I always loved the Mad Pride movement/counter-culture for so many reasons, and over time I guess those reasons have finally become as personal as they are political.

(Neurotypicals do not interact with this)

[npd--bakugou]

Hey, I saw your addition to the post abt Travis McElroy. I was raised by a parent who had NPD. He was abusive to the point that I had to cut him out of my life, and I was taught to associate all of his abusiveness with his narcissism. I don't want this fact to taint my perception of all people with NPD, and I was wondering if you had any resources that could help me and people like me better understand those with NPD. Sorry if this ask is invasive or triggering, thank you for your time.

First off, I'm so sorry to hear about your shitty parent! I'm glad he isn't being a drain on your life anymore. While having NPD (or any other disorder) never makes someone an abuser, the symptoms can certainly play into abuse. I really appreciate your coming to me for help instead of just going with what you've been taught: trust me when I say I know exactly how hard being wrong can be. I'm lucky not to really have any triggers that strangers can set off, so no worries on that front.

As for resources, unfortunately the pickings are a little slim. There's Travis, who's awesome. There are certain people on Quora who talk earnestly about their NPD that I can recommend you if you're ever on Quora, though for every one of them there's probably fifty neurotypicals who insist that they know everything about us and we're pure evil. There's tumblr and the community here, but that tends to be a bit insular, and furthermore spaces by narcs for narcs are often full of venting that doesn't make for a great first impression. They're like that because there are so few places we can discuss feelings without being judged (and also we tend to be a pretty edgy and dramatic crowd) and honestly I like having spots where I don't feel like a monster for feelings or lack thereof, but they're not quite as informative or inclined to make non-narcs sympathetic as I'd like. You're of course welcome to follow me, or my main, I've got a post kind of blowing up atm so I won't just be able to clock you the second you follow since I'm getting more followers than usual, if you favor anonymity. I can tell you about myself, and why a lot of us behave the way we do, and I think that's about the best I can offer you at the moment.

Primarily, the root of the disorder is that your brain, in response to early-life trauma, decides that you can't be wrong, and you are akin to a deity. That's why a lot of us will get upset and irrational if we get called or criticized on something, even something small, because being wrong is awful and having someone else know about it is worse. It involves this public persona where everybody needs to think you're perfect all the time because otherwise you'll have to consider that you're not. Forming attachments can be hard, but you need people around to give you attention so you don't have to think about why people aren't giving you attention, so often we'll surround ourselves with people we don't really care about just to stave off breakdowns and end up feeling resentful and unfulfilled. Since NPD fucks with empathy, it can be difficult to really grasp interpersonal consequences, or even that other are really people in the same way we are. Personally I have a lot of issues with jealousy over people I actually care about, overreaction to small irritations, and serious pettiness. Personality disorders fall on this weird fault line between mental illness and neurodivergence where they've definitely got some adverse symptoms, but they also can't be "cured" because they're part of who you are. The way they're treated is generally by working to mitigate harmful symptoms, but they aren't all bad.

NPD is something of a spectrum. I'm diagnosed, but I believe I'm on the less servere end of it. Personally, I think this arose out of my ADHD; I always had really bad rejection sensitive dysphoria, and it's easy for me to see how that could've rolled into NPD. I've got a pretty tight leash on my symptoms, and I think that's because of feminine social conditioning. I've had multiple people who've been shocked to learn I was a diagnosed narcissist, because, well... as a girl there's just a lot of shit you simply can't get away with like a man would be able to. If I threw a screaming fit every time I wanted to throw a screaming fit, no one would want to be around me. Not that people should be willing to put up with men who do this, it's bad behavior, but I find that men on the whole can get away with more such bad behavior. It's why women with NPD are more often stereotyped as Queen Bee manipulators, because simply put, no one would put up with us if we acted like unchecked guys. As far as I know, there are no nonbinary narcissist stereotypes. Of course it varies from person to person. For some people it's near impossible to gain the self-awareness or self-discipline necessary to keep themselves in check. This does not excuse their actions, you should still get away from these people if they're hurting you. You should still warn others to avoid their getting hurt. It's just meant to explain why we can be like that.

It isn't all bad. I'm dependable as hell, I'm a good friend to the people I care about, and I tend to befriend introverts who don't stand up for themselves, so never having a shortage of fury isn't always a negative. These are things I take pride in, that fulfill me and allow me to have a few close, fairly healthy relationships actually built on mutual affection rather than just a desperate need for attention.

Man I can talk about myself for ages! Typical, huh? Sorry for rambling, thanks for bearing with me if you've read this far, please don't hesitate to ask me any more questions you might have, and congrats on cutting abusers out of your life! 💖💖💖

[sign-from-god-complex]

Caretaker

Summary: Autistic! Sides! Logan is a little too caught up with his work and Patton reminds him to look after himself first.

Pairing: Platonic logicality

Warnings: Food mention and that’s it I think!

Tag list: @mutechild @super-magical-wizard

A/N: I know this isn’t a whole lot on its own, but I wanted to do some autistic sides content so I thought (read: hoped) it was good enough. I was thinking I could (over time) write one for Patton taking care of/helping each of the sides in different ways and then one of them all helping Patton, cause I love stuff like that.

AO3 Link

"Logan? When was the last time you had something to eat?"

Logan looked up from his laptop blankly, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the room. He was aware Patton had said something, but he wasn't 100% sure what exactly it was he had said, his mind far too caught up in his work.

He'd had the perfect idea for his astronomy paper earlier that morning, right in the middle of drinking his first cup of coffee, and had immediately wrapped himself up in getting it all written out and edited. The fact that the paper didn’t need to be handed in for another month was mostly irrelevant. It would certainly be useful to be a little bit ahead of the other students, plus this idea was far too good to let slip away regardless of the due date.

"I'm sorry, what was that, Patton?" Logan adjusted his glasses, semi-absentmindedly taking in his roommate’s form in the partially darkened room.

Patton was sitting upright in the armchair across from Logan—presumably indicating a serious discussion—leaning forward slightly—likely to show engagement in the present conversation, potentially also to appear less intimidating—and giving a—reassuring? kind? worried?—smile. All relatively common body language displays from him; nothing too out of the ordinary.

Logan wasn’t entirely sure when he’d arrived in the position he was in but, taking into account Patton’s almost constant sensory seeking and the lack of stim toys or blankets in his possession, Logan would assume it hadn’t been long.

"I asked when you'd last had something to eat, Lo," Patton said, tilting his head to the side—curiously? interestedly?

Logan hummed, returning his gaze to his paper, only vaguely continuing to pay attention to Patton. "Virgil brought me a chocolate bar not too long ago."

He skimmed the paragraph he’d just written, quickly refamiliarising himself with the point he was attempting to make.

"And did you eat it?"

There was something in Patton’s tone that made Logan pause. Of course, he'd eaten it! …hadn’t he? Chancing a look down at the table in front of him, Logan caught sight of the whole, still wrapped chocolate bar Virgil had brought him—sitting in plain view of Patton. Oh.

"It would appear not."

Logan watched as Patton sighed, scrunching up his face a little—in pain? annoyance? really, he had no idea—before speaking again. “Lo, I know you’re still kinda hyperfocusing but do you think you could come with me to grab some food?”

“Why would you require my companionship in order to eat?”

Patton screwed up his face again and Logan had a distinct feeling that he wasn’t grasping something that was vital to his understanding of this conversation. Truthfully, that was how Logan felt about most conversations, however, this was something beyond the realm of his regular confusion.

“Sorry, I didn’t phrase that well.” Patton began to scratch lightly at the chair he was sitting on. Logan’s mind immediately latched onto the sound, almost entirely blocking out Patton’s next words. “I meant, can you come with me so I can get you something to eat? Please?”

Logan blinked. He shut his laptop, recognising this was something he should appear slightly more involved in, even if he wasn’t entirely sure of the reasoning. He desperately wanted to continue working on his paper—he was halfway through a really interesting train of thought that he didn’t want to lose—but he owed Patton more than that.

“Why?”

Patton didn’t look offended by the question—he knew Logan wasn’t being snarky, he was genuine.

One of the best things about having entirely neurodivergent or autistic roommates was, despite them having their own difficulties and strengths, they were at least all aware of the things the others struggled with.

For example, Virgil had the most trouble with verbal communication, as well as having issues with becoming easily emotionally overwhelmed. Because they knew this, it resulted in the three of them being more cognizant of situations that could prove to be challenging to Virgil, or for that matter, any of them.

The level of communication in neurodivergent circles, Logan had found, was infinitely superior to the level of communication in neurotypical circles—something he personally appreciated a great deal. It was impossible to comprehend what people were trying to get across if they didn’t simply say what they meant; he didn’t understand this obsession neurotypicals had with making conversations more difficult than they needed to be.

“I’m worried about your wellbeing, that’s why,” Patton replied, pausing his scratching to pick up a stim toy from the table in front of him, “You haven’t eaten all day.”

“All day?”

Logan frowned. That seemed like a curious choice of words. After all, it could only be… What? 12 pm at the lates-

“Lo, it’s 8 pm.”

Ah, there it was.

At the revelation of the amount of time that had truly passed since he’d sat down to begin his paper, Logan abruptly became more aware of his surroundings, almost as if being pulled out of a dream. The appearance of the room, though once so hazy and unimportant, was forced into clarity and Logan had to take a second to process.

It was dark. He had noticed it was dark and yet he hadn’t until this exact moment realised the significance of that. It was also quiet—good for his focus, presumably not very good for his awareness—so he could assume that Virgil and Roman had retired to their own rooms.

His alarms had probably been going off all day and he hadn’t paid them any attention in the slightest. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had something to drink. Was it that coffee this morning? His throat was so dry, he was lucky he didn’t have a headache.

Patton’s concern seemed infinitely more warranted now.

Logan furrowed his brow, sucking his bottom lip into his mouth. “I see.”

“Mmhmm,” Patton hummed. He threw the stim toy back onto the table before bouncing up out of the chair and over towards Logan. “So, you okay to come and get food with me now? I might even throw in some Crofter’s for dessert…”

If Logan wasn’t already prepared to accept Patton’s suggestion of food, the mention of his samefood certainly would have been enough to get him there.

He wondered, with enough convincing, whether Patton would make him Crofter’s waffles for dinner. Normally Logan felt very strongly about only eating breakfast foods for breakfast, but considering this entire day had been a disaster as far as routine was concerned—and if Logan thought about that for more than a second his chest started to tighten and his hands started to twitch—he supposed he might as well ask.

It would throw his whole week off, no doubt, but quite honestly, he felt like today was going to accomplish that whether he ate waffles for dinner or not. And at the present moment, Logan was willing to risk it regardless, solely to obtain a fraction of the comfort Crofter’s waffles brought him.

He stood up from the couch, wincing slightly at the way his muscles protested the movement. Despite all the work he’d managed to get done, staying in essentially one position for over ten hours definitely had its disadvantages. “Yes, Patton. That would be ideal.”

Logan threw in a, “thank you,” for good measure—it always paid to show gratitude to people when they were doing you a favour, and Patton appreciated good manners.

It was the kind of thing Logan had come to realise was quite important when sharing a living space with someone. He couldn’t say he had been all that polite in the past, but every time Virgil left his dirty dishes in the sink or Roman woke him up by singing Disney songs in the hallways, Logan understood Patton’s perspective just that little bit more.

Patton lit up at the response, his face breaking out into a grin and his whole body doing a small wiggle—happiness; that one Logan was absolutely sure of. He’d had enough exposure to Patton’s pleased stims to be able to recognise them when they happened.

Plus, he may or may not have whole sections of his notebooks dedicated to his roommates’ stimming habits—as well as sensory preferences, triggers and anything else Logan deemed important—but that was neither here nor there.

“Good,” Patton said brightly and before Logan even noticed he was moving he was grabbing a hold of Logan’s hand and pulling him into the kitchen.

[rabbitindisguise]

If you genuinely believe this then you're responsible for mitigating all the reasons why people feel this way

Ableist claiming if we post pictures of puppies we can't be depressed

SSI making it impossible to attempt to recover and have stable housing and income even though any small amount of recovery won't make someone work

Being pestered to recover and when it doesn't work claim that we're just Not Trying For Reals

All the people thinking someone is lying and making excuses for laziness when they bring up reasonable reasons why things won't work ("already tried the many trash can trick, it didn't help" or "already tried yoga, didn't help, I did yoga for seven years" or "eating lots of salads is more stressful than a V8 I'm being reasonable and helpful and you're telling me I'm being self deprecating and it's getting in the way of helping other mentally ill people")

The many people who act as if being mentally ill means we always have to slog to do the impossible (be mentally well, sometimes even retroactively into the past) and we can't have fun or god forbid slack off until it happens, leaving us to a life so miserable able bodied neurotypicals don't even try it (yoga at seven, running outside at eight, hand prepped meals with vegetables, sleeping nine hours, never even skipping a shower ot nap, insane amounts of vitamins and a spotless house and routine, all things that are nearly impossible for well people)

Everyone committed to not believing someone was ever mentally ill if they ever get marginally better, or worse, that they were faking if they stop being visibly mentally ill entirely because of the right routine, therapy, and/or medication(s)

All the people that claim mentally ill people in general are over exaggerating, lazy, con artists, throwing pity parties, making themselves worse on purpose, or in general just don't "really" exist

After all of these problems are solved- and only then!- will I hear a word about there even being such a thing as "anti-recovery." Can't fix these things overnight? Cool, you might begin to grasp why someone would remain mentally ill and have an aversion to "practical" advice that's more like a Sisyphus curse than kindness.

Idpol around mental illnesses is terrifying, there’s legit kids on this website who are purposely keeping themselves the most miserable they can so they can get some tumblr.com cred in discourse and that’s super fucked up. Neurodivergent activism in this website really need to be rethinked because this anti-recovery, anti-wellness, “healthy coping mechanism? we can’t all be neurotypical karen” bullshit is legitimately harmful.

[maxim-tomato]

Breakups are so much more intense for neurodivergent people. There is no closure possible because we cannot draw conclusions as to what went wrong, when things went wrong, why it happened, or even conclude that it might have been bad for us at all. This is especially the case for neurodivergent people who have to deal with childhood trauma, because it lingers into adulthood and ruins relationships, and we just can’t control it. Dating a neurotypical person as a neurodivergent person could be difficult because we asssume our partners think lesser of us because of our issues. I keep hearing that neurodivergent people should date other neurodivergent people, but I don’t think this is good either, because the difficulty of communication is now exponentially higher. Each partner could end up misunderstanding the other due to their own issues and then not realize they’re causing harm. It’s an impossible line to walk without both partners being able to communicate, and if one refuses, then it just falls apart and ruins the life of the other as they try to grasp for any air they can as they’re tossed aside to drown in their emotions and disorder.