#anyway I’m autistic bye I have to go the store

[primordial0riginator]

Me, the only Ares and Nyx shipper on planet earth: 😏

[milimeters-morales]

okay under the readmore is part 1 of a oneshot i wrote about an autistic miles morales for fun, but overlapped pretty conveniently with disability pride month at the time. Really self-indulgent, and i got some nice reviews on it and wanted to test sharing my writing on here for autism acceptance month ^.^

Content Warning: Miles does self harm a good amount in both parts without realizing, and thinks some pretty ableist thoughts (at least I think they would be considered that) about himself every now and then.

Word Count: 5k+

Pairings: Minor Milesganke, everything else is platonic!

Miles lets his feet dangle off the side of the building, his heel hitting the brick wall to a rhythm in his head. One two, swing out, one two, swing out, one two, shake-swing out, and start all over. He layed back on the roof, soaking up the last of the warmth from the sun and heated concrete. It was a common thing he did, this rhythm and movement, it helped him calm down or keep him from getting too bored. Too bored was bad, too bored was almost physically painful, but it’s not like he’d tell anybody that. Well, anybody besides Ganke. The other boy understood that perfectly well, it’s one of the many reasons they’re best friends.

He wasn’t sure why he actually did this though. But he didn’t like to think too hard about it, and he’s always got a lot of other stuff to do anyway!

Speaking of, Miles sits up, still letting his feet hit the wall and bounce off, when there’s a pained shout from below. Seeing a man in a dirty chef’s apron bending over with a hand on his back and a pained expression, Miles jumps down from the roof and lands quietly on the street in front of him.

“Do you want some help?” He asks him. The man nods his head to the paint buckets on the ground next to him, and Miles easily picks them up, barely registering the weight. The man walks stiffly and a bit hunched inside his shop, telling Miles to set the paints down on an empty table.

The inside was a mess. Napkins littered the floors and tables, sauces on the seats and counter, and a whole uneaten meal sat alone on the far end of the counter. Miles glances again at the man. He’s sweaty, exhausted looking, all alone in here going by how Miles can hear only his heartbeat, and he just hurt his back. There’s no way Miles would leave this man to deal with this mess himself.

“I’m gonna clean up these napkins so we don’t slip,” Miles tells him, already picking up the pieces. He wouldn’t slip of course, but the man definitely would if he wasn’t careful. “So, Mr…”

“Call me Bob,” the man says after putting the paints away somewhere in the back of the kitchen.

“Mr. Bob, how’d this even happen?”

Mr. Bob sighs and runs a hand through his short hair. “My kids invited their friends over, made a huge mess, left before I saw it, you know how it is.”

“Yeah,” Miles agrees, not knowing how it is at all. He throws all the napkins in the trash and was about to ask where a towel was so he could clean up some of the sauce mess, but Mr. Bob places his hands on his back again.

“Hey Mr. Spider-Man, how about you run along? My back is killing me, and I don’t wanna make you clean up alone,” he says, eyebags somehow becoming more prominent by the second. Miles winced under the mask and hoped it didn’t translate through. 

“That’s nice of you, but are you sure? I really don’t mind,” Miles offers, making a sweeping gesture to the rest of the mess still in the store.

“Nah nah nah, it’s fine. It’s my kids who should be cleaning it up anyway. I’ll make them do it when they get home,” Mr. Bob explains. 

Ah, okay. That’s better than the man just working in pain. 

“Alright. Bye sir!” Miles leaves Mr. Bob inside the shop, and swings away to another rooftop. He wishes he knew more about treating bad backs though, he might have been able to help more! Maybe he could ask his mom? But wait, would that be an overly familiar thing to do for a stranger? Surely not, helping someone in pain is what he does nearly everyday anyway…but some people get real upset if he has to help them, and he just doesn’t know why. Ugh, so complicated, and for what?

Doing a few extremely low swings that end up sending him high into the air, he lets the wind press against him with each rise and fall. It’s like being smushed, or hugged just tight enough to make you so relaxed that you feel weightless. He gets dizzy sometimes, but in a good way, he promises. He wishes Ganke could feel this. He wishes a lot of people could feel this, actually. They’d be much happier, he’s sure of it!

___

It’s not like he’s… embarrassed, he guesses is the right word, to have to keep shaking his hands at his sides. It’s just that he gets weird looks sometimes when he does it. It’s not often at all, it’s actually pretty rare, but when it does happen, it makes a weird feeling curl in his stomach and around his throat, making it hard to speak, which is embarrassing. It makes him stutter, pronounce words wrong, makes him unable to focus on whatever’s happening, it even made him tear up one time. It’s different, when he just doesn’t speak for a while, because at those times there’s nobody pressuring him to talk or for an answer on why he’s “being weird”.

“Well?” the officer asks. She pointed out his shaking hands, and asked him why he was doing that. And Miles was going to answer her, he was! It’s just… the way she said it. It was like when he got caught drawing on his worksheets and the teacher made him throw the entire paper away and start over. Or his parents caught him sneaking small animals under his clothes into their apartment. Or when the kids at school would try and see what he was drawing by looming over his shoulder. 

His chest felt kind of tight. Why did he even let her approach him? He tries to avoid as much interaction with the cops as much as he can besides calling them to places

“I… uh…” was all he could manage to utter. It felt like everyone was staring at him, even when he knew that it wasn’t true.

“Spidey’s still around?” Oh god, of course his dad is here. And approaching rapidly. 

“Yeah, was trying to ask about the hand shaky thing, but he just froze up,” the officer explains, turning away briefly- Miles can feel the tightness just a little- shrugging with a raised eyebrow. She tucks her hands in her pockets and turns to look back at Miles. Great. The feeling was back.

“Oh, this?” His dad asks, copying the moment, making it much harder for Miles to not shake his hands. Thanks a lot! “My son does that, lots of kids do that. You don’t do that?” 

Miles wants to run, so he does. Not like he needed to be there anymore anyway. He’ll go somewhere that calms him down so much to the point where he doesn’t even need to shake his hands.

___

Pavitr tightens his hold on him, arms a comfortable pressure on his waist. He nuzzles into the crook of Miles’s neck, humming when Miles lets out a happy sigh. 

They do this, sometimes, when the stress is becoming too much. Just hold each other. It works out great, because Pavitr loves giving hugs, and Miles likes getting hugs, and they have no problem being this close to each other. 

Miles traces a figure eight onto Pavitr’s back, fingers feather-light on him. He doesn’t like pressure the way Miles does, says it makes him feel trapped and anxious, but Miles couldn’t disagree more if he tried. Besides the obvious bad-pressure, like a building and debris falling on you, there’s good-pressure, and that pressure is what Miles craves almost daily. It makes him feel much closer to whatever’s going on around him without making him hypersensitive to it- he can focus better, basically. The weight on his body is like a firm reassurance that he’ll be fine, that he’ll be safe, and that he’s… real. Not some mistake and about to float away into non-existence, or whatever. 

He’s heard of weighted blankets, and has been wanting one for a few years now, but he’s always chickened out when it came to asking his parents. And it’s not like he can ask any of the other spiders, then he’d have to lie to his parents how he got it, and he’s trying to keep the “lying to your loved ones” part of being Spider-Man to a minimum. Plus, he just doesn’t think it’s that serious. It’s not like he’ll die without it.

Miles stops drawing the figure in Pavitr’s back and simply rests his hand on the back of his neck. 

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Pavitr mumbles into his neck.

Miles wishes they weren’t wearing their suits. He’d much rather feel the vibration directly on his skin.

“Nothing,” Miles answers automatically. The two are silent for a bit before Miles continues, “Oh, there was this cop. She kept asking me about this thing I do with my hands-”

“The stimming?”

Miles ignores the interruption and continues, “-where I shake my hands when there’s too much energy somewhere and I get all antsy.”

“Should’ve brought Hobie. He would’ve dealt with her,” Pavitr says, shoulders shaking lightly with silent laughter.

Miles rolls his eyes and raises his chin to rest it on Pavitr’s head. His hair was so soft, it was another thing Miles liked about these cuddle sessions, he guesses he’d call them. Pavitr was a good mix of soft and firm, like a foam cube in a gym or children’s play area.

“Wasn’t really her fault, I just got nervous. Thought she would call me weird or something,” Miles mumbles.

“Don’t they already do that? In the uh- the uhh… The news company with the musical instrument.”

“The Tuba?”

“Yes! That is the one, haha,” Pavitr giggles, “remember when they called you a clone of Peter?”

God, does Miles remember. Not only was it completely out of nowhere, it just didn’t make sense for so many reasons. One, how could a clone be a different race? Two, why would a clone be way younger and have no idea what he’s doing? Wouldn’t you want your clone to be just as smart as you and the same age, so when you died, it’s like nobody would notice? They even sounded different! People called him down just to try and rip his suit to see his face for days, causing fights to break out between civilians when someone tried to defend him. He couldn’t just fight back like usual, so all he could do was lightly slap their hands away or shove them off and swing away, and then just deal with his lowering reputation that came with “self-defense.” He was glad that there were a good few people, his parents included, ready to defend Spidey if they saw that happen in front of him, but it didn’t really matter. He really hated, still hates, the Tuba for that.

He can’t see the humor in it, but a lot of other people found it funny, so maybe it was just a him thing like it sometimes is… yeah, he's probably just missing something. Miles closes his eyes and says, “Yeah,” and relaxes again when Pavitr’s sensed his hold had gotten too loose and tightened it around Miles again. 

He’d have to leave eventually, but he’ll enjoy this time while it lasts.

___

“Miles, stop that, you’re gonna get a cramp in your legs,” his mom scolds him lightly as he passes by her.

Miles looks down, and hurries to flatten his feet from walking on his tip-toes. That was always embarrassing to have pointed out, but at least he wasn’t in public doing that. 

___

It was all too much. He thought coming to Gwen’s dimension would calm him down, it was much prettier than his and a huge inspiration when it came to art, so he thought he could come here after a particularly bad fight to just enjoy the sights and maybe draw them. But now, he can’t stand the sight of most things. He can’t even stand the feeling of anything. He was huddled on a roof, a dirty, disgusting roof, there’s probably dirt all over him now and his stupid suit- it’s too on him, he can feel it and the sweat scratching at him and trying to seep into his pores. The creases causing awkward pockets where the suit isn’t actually touching him, but he can still feel it, the thought of all the germs and dirt and god , the trash, the wet trash --

how would that feel?

--his body jerks violently and he falls to his knees.

He wants to yell. But even that would feel wrong. He’d feel his voice in his teeth for god’s sake.

He takes off his gloves, but he isn’t even able to enjoy the cool breeze hitting his now exposed hands because his nails, his fucking nails , they hit the concrete and scrape lightly. The feeling sends shivers down his entire body and makes him rip his hands away as if he had been burned, and bite down hard on his fingers. He can’t fucking stand it. He- it’s too much. It’s all too much. 

nails on chalkboard 

silverware scraping

that man coughing down the street

the smell of approaching rain

metal on your teeth

blood under your nails

flesh squelching in the rubble

sickening crunch 

his breath on your face

digging in your skin

too heavy too close he’ll kill you he’ll kill you

His thoughts spiral, he can’t control it. One bad feeling, and he can’t stop thinking about the other bad feelings just like it, and it keeps going until his brain reaches the end of its list. 

He hates this. He hates that his brain even does this, that it even thinks it’s the right course of action. Nobody else’s brain does this, he bets. Why is his so dumb that it can’t even realize it’s only making things worse? 

Miles keeps biting on his fingers and starts biting on the rest of his hands when the feelings aren’t going away. He tries to him to his favorite song to calm down, but it doesn’t work- nothing is working-

Gwen is here, he vaguely registers in his mind when a black and white blur lands in front of him. She’s here, and she’s grabbing his wrists and pulling his hands out of his mouth, and she’s trying to hold him. He scrambles back, but she catches him and lifts him bridal style. Miles tries to kick out and shoves his hand in her face to make her drop him, but she holds on as tightly as possible. The pressure from her fingers digging into him is- good. Bad. It’s just more touch - he doesn’t want touch right now, he wants pressure-

holding you down you’re a mistake breaking your neck is so easy keep fighting keep fighting 

“I know,” he hears faintly. Was that him, or Gwen?

He keeps thrashing in Gwen’s hold, almost escaping once when he bit her shoulder and started to scratch, as she hopped from rooftop to rooftop. It was all a blur, he could only focus on how her heartbeat was too loud, and the feeling of her fingers and just her being so close was confusing his stupid fucking brain, it was all good, but it was actually all bad because he didn’t want that now, it made it worse actually.

“I’m sorry, I know,” he hears Gwen apologize to him. 

God. Someone end it. Someone cut him out of his skin. He can’t be here. He tries to wiggle out of her grasp one last time before he gives up and brings his hands back up to his mouth to bite down, to have any sort of control over anything he’s feeling.

“It’ll be okay,” Gwen whispers- still too loud.

He doesn’t really remember much else.

___

Miles rouses slowly. His eyes don’t open immediately when he tries, the crust is uncomfortable on his skin, and his limbs feel like they were made of stone. He turns his head to the side, only to be met with webbing. He moves his body slightly, feeling himself swing. So he’s in a hammock then. That’s fine, it’s better than waking up on the floor. Or that rooftop.

Wait, the roof, Gwen, he bit Gwen-

He sits up and looks out of the hammock as best as he can, quickly spotting the girl gently rubbing her now bandaged shoulder with a solemn expression. Quickly scrambling out and crawling down to be next to her, apologizing before he even hits the ground.

“Gwen, I am so sorry, I have no idea what came over me, I don’t know why I did that to you, I’m so sorry-”

Gwen stops him, “Miles, calm down, I’m fine, see?” She gestures to her shoulder, and his eyes trail down and catch her bandaged hand.

He doesn’t even remember that one, and that makes him feel even worse. Shame curls in his gut, makes his fingers twitch, he feels disgusting.

“Listen, you aren’t disgusting,” Gwen says gently, “you were scared and in pain, you might have been overstimulated. I know it gets really hard to control what you do. I’ve done, like, the same thing.” 

Miles nods, not believing her.

“Seriously Miles. I’m not mad or anything.”

Yeah right. Who wouldn’t be mad after being bit and just… being forced to deal with whatever that was. Even he’s mad about it, because it never lasts. It always ends eventually, he doesn’t know why he was being so dramatic and violent when he could have just stayed still and dealt with it until it passed.

It’s whatever. It’s over now, and Gwen is clearly trying to move on from it. He shouldn’t make her more upset. Talking with her is already like walking a tightrope, lately.

“I uh, I wrapped you up in that hammock. Did that help? You said- well, not really said, it was more like… mumbling, that you just wanted pressure. So did that help at all?” Gwen stumbles through asking, fiddling with her hands and furrowing her brow.

Her question takes him out of his thoughts for a second. “I guess it did,” Miles says after a moment of consideration. He honestly wasn’t sure how he was feeling, but he certainly wasn’t feeling bad, so that’s definitely an improvement. He’d have to keep this hammock idea in mind, how did he never think of that?

And like the strings controlling her had been cut, her shoulders drooping and lenses closing as she breathes out a sigh of relief (look at what you did to her, Miles), Gwen reaches out to him. She stops right before they make contact, allowing Miles to move forward and finish the hug. Gwen hugs tighter, but in weird waves, like she doesn’t actually know how long a hug is supposed to last and keeps trying to part when she thinks she should. Miles loves it anyway, because it’s Gwen, and the last time she hugged him this tight was when… oh, nevermind that. He doesn’t want to think about that right now.

Gwen’s hug tightens again, and he feels the tension in his body slipping away.

___

The one thug that’s still conscious decides to try his luck at talking with him. 

“So I noticed something…”

Congratulations , Miles doesn’t say. He doesn’t have the energy to speak to anybody for the night, and while people didn’t really like that because it also tended to mean Peter was ready to beat someone to a pulp, they’ve learned that sometimes the new Spider-Man was just… didn’t speak.

“Why are you organizing us by shoe size? And you got Har- um, gray tennis shoes wrong. He wears a size 11.”

A good save on the name reveal AND a correction so his order is perfect? Well mister, looks like you’re walking away scott-free tonight!

Just kidding . Miles smiles to himself as he picks up “Gray Tennis Shoes” and places him in between Blue Nikes (size 10)  and Black Boots (size 12 and a half). He turns back towards the talking thug, pointing to his shoes, who sighs before answering, “Size 7. And a half.”

Miles smiles wider as he drags the cocooned man to the right spot, and begins walking away to investigate the den.

“Wait, you didn’t answer my question! Why are you organizing us like this?” The man calls out to him, trying to sit up but failing. 

Because he overheard cops on duty making fun of the way he organized people by their hair color last time. He had to go for something a bit less noticeable. Obviously. 

But Miles doesn’t say any of this, because he just doesn’t want to. Not like he had to answer that guy anyway.

___

Now, don’t get him wrong. He doesn’t have complete control over when he wants to speak or not, as much as he’d like to pretend he does to save himself some embarrassment from admitting it. And it seems to be both random and stress-induced, which is already bad when you’re Spider-Man. Most of your days are extremely stressful with worrying about the best outcomes, the best and most effective ways to save people in danger, time management because of school or a job interview or a party your parents threw that you cannot be late for again, the usual. The simple moments to help around are like a mini-break where he can take his time to breathe and get a second wind, so they’re greatly appreciated. Don’t even get him started on the power-naps he can sometimes sneak in if it’s a calm enough day with just the right temperature and breeze…

Off track. Basically, he can’t always control if he goes silent or not.

Right now, during the cleanup after a fight, where all the debris is moved to small piles for him and others to clean up, and any civilians injured are given medical attention immediately or taken away to hospitals, he can’t speak. The villain- which looked surprisingly too high definition- only stopped attacking after it heard a little girl screaming, and it was pulled through a portal by a red, blue, and white hand. Miles didn’t even care about a Rhino from a different dimension somehow turning up here, and what that could mean about the (worsening) stability of his dimension, he just wanted to curl up somewhere nice and dark, and sleep for fifteen hours.

But Spider-Man has a duty to the people.

He removes the last bit of rubble from on top of a woman’s car, tears in her eyes as he guides her away from the smashed vehicle. She’s certainly going to have to replace it, but she definitely has bigger things to worry about, like the glass sticking out of her arm from jumping through the storefront window to avoid the Rhino’s rampage. 

That was pretty badass of you, he can’t say. He frowns. He wanted to make her feel a bit better. That’s one of the many drawbacks of this unwilling silence, it prevented him from comforting people in the way he knows best: talking their ear off until they’re too absorbed in (or annoyed by) his ramblings to freak out.

He sits with her in an ambulance that’s treating the people with more minor injuries. The paramedics are stretched thin, so he’s here taking the smallest pieces out of her arm while the paramedic is on her other side and checking for a concussion. 

The woman winces.

Sorry, he can’t say, but he looks up with a sad expression to meet her own exhausted and tear-streaked face, and knows the message isn’t getting across.

He goes back to pulling the glass out. He can’t even apologize for all the pain he’s causing her.

Focus, Miles.

“Spider-Man, you’re alright?” The paramedic asks after the woman is cleared and sent off. The hospitals have been at their highest capacity since… ugh. He doesn’t want to think about it when he has something to focus on now. “Not a talking day?”

Miles shakes his head, already making his way to help other people.

The entire time he’s pulling more glass shards out, holding more hands through painful processes and anxious checkups, hugging more children and holding more babies as the parents are found and reunited, simply sitting with those too shocked to even understand what had just happened, not once does the barrier come down. The people look to him for words of encouragement, assurances that it’ll be okay, they cling tighter to him and hope he’ll say something kind to ease their fear, that the person on the stretcher will survive and heal just fine. 

And it breaks his heart when people see he won’t say anything, it makes him feel so useless, what is he even sticking around for? He sees the hope leave their eyes, sees it replaced by grief, by horror, by nothingness. Nothingness is the worst, if you ask him. They’ve given up because he can’t even muster up enough strength to say a few simple words. It shouldn’t be this hard for him, Spider-Man, to say “you’re okay” or “take a breath” for god’s sake! If he could, he would yell until his throat was raw about how he was sorry for all this pain he’s only made worse. How everyone would be fine, just don’t look at the bodies! How they just needed to follow his breathing, and to follow him to the ambulance! Don’t worry about your destroyed car! How he’ll do better, he won’t let something like this happen again, how didn’t want this, didn’t choose this, he wants to tell them so bad-

But he can’t. So he doesn’t.

The probably-now-orphaned girl clings to his legs as they stand in front of a pile of rubble Miles hadn’t moved yet. He knew there were bodies (or what used to be bodies, anyway) under there, heard the heartbeats instantly stop while the Rhino threw the hunk of concrete so he could hold Miles down and slam his fist into his entire body. He thinks she was the one who screamed and stopped that Rhino for enough seconds to be taken away. There was blood splattered on the bottom of her frilly green dress, and all over her legs and shoes, and Miles just hopes she has family somewhere that’ll take her in. 

He really should move her away from this. At least cover her eyes.

You’re a hero, he can’t say. And I know it doesn’t mean anything right now, but you’ve saved a lot of people, he hopes his look to her gets across. You saved me.

The girl looks up at him with angry eyes and a dirty face, clean lines created by her tears going down her cheeks. Some good that did, she’s saying.

Miles says nothing, because of course he doesn’t, and holds her hand as they walk to an ambulance. She needs that blood cleaned off her.

___

Miles sobs into Ganke’s pillow, wishing the boy would return from the nurse’s office quicker. It’s been a week since then, and now he’s finally able to talk. So of course the first thing his brain makes him do is cry so hard he can’t even breathe properly. Ganke was appropriately freaked out by his sudden crying spell, and went to go get an ice pack for him for the headache that was sure to follow. 

The hiccups are bordering on painful now, his teeth and jaw aching from grinding his teeth so he doesn’t cry too loud when he needs to take a break from practically suffocating himself in the pillow. He can still see the blood on the ground, on the rubble, and on the little girl’s dress. 

He closes his eyes and covers his ears, for a reason he doesn’t understand, curling up and sobbing some more into the pillow. He tries to dig his toenails into his other foot’s skin, the pain doing nothing but making him flinch. Maybe it just wasn’t the right spot to get rid of it, these thoughts. If he found the right spot, maybe even combination, his brain would focus on the pain instead of these horrible memories. 

He removes his face from the pillow and bites down on his hand and scratches at the side of his face, his thighs, his neck, any skin he can reach. He finally feels the switch from “slightly painful and annoying” to “very painful, we’re in danger” like a gentle wave, and releases his hand from his jaw, letting out a weak cough of relief as he falls limply back onto the bed. His breathing makes it sound like he just ran a marathon, and It aches and burns like he just did too. A lot. His mind is blessedly empty and numb, he realizes, as his eyes struggle to stay open. What’s he fighting it for again?

Ganke. Right. Ganke was coming back with an ice pack for the headache that hasn’t hit yet. Stay awake for Ganke.

He inhales his friend’s faint scent from the pillow and sheets, and feels the dip in the mattress from where Ganke sleeps, a bit off center. Miles always tells him to flip his mattress, but he never does.

He faintly hears the door opening over the blood rushing in his ears, and feels a hand grab his own. The touch is gentle, but is gone before he has the chance to lean into it. There’s a welcomed cold sensation on his forehead, making him shudder and sigh.

And he’s waking up, the alarm screeching into his ear and making him groan in annoyance. He goes to smash the alarm clock, but a hand catches his before it could do any damage.

“Not this time man,” Ganke’s sleepy voice scolded from above, “we aren’t replacing that thing again.”

Above?

Miles opened his eyes, realizing he was in Ganke’s bunk. Oops. An apology was already on his lips as he peeked out from under the bunk, but it died on the tip of his tongue at the sight of Ganke’s bed-head, squinted eyes, and scrunched up nose. 

“You good? Because I had to take care of your hand last night,” the boy asks with a yawn.

Miles looks down at his hands and his eyes widen in shock. His right hand was bandaged up in a white gauze, albeit a little sloppily, like Ganke was in a rush or something when he did it.

“Yeah, sorry if it looks bad. It’s just that I wasn’t really expecting you to break skin,” the boy tells him, “have you seen my glasses?”

“They’re on your forehead,” Miles tells him in a fond tone, “and thanks man. I know it’s weird-”

“Uh uhn, don’t start that now. It’s too early in the morning for me to talk with you about if anything’s weird or not.”

Miles shrugs and rolls his eyes. “It’s always too early in the morning for you,” he says as he tries to find his clothes to get ready for the day.

___

Dear Diary,

Haven’t been the best lately. It’s like i’ve only been hurting people and myself. I bit Gwen a few weeks ago, then i couldn’t speak and help people when that Rhino dude came, and last night i bit my own hand. I know it’s bad and gross, but it feels like it’s the only thing i can do sometimes even when i can’t really control it. And it works for me most of the time so it’s real confusing. It’s like i don’t have control, and then next thing i know i’m biting myself, and i’m calmer. Ganke says it’s not weird, just worrying, but i’ve never seen anyone else do it. Guess i never really bothered to look it up either because i know it’s bad. wanted to end this entry on a good note but i can’t think of anything. tomorrow is another day though so there’s that.

Part 2 >>>

[innocent-until-proven-geeky]

.

[prevsapphism]

uhhh here are some questions you should ask yourself in portraying autistic characters. allistics please reblog and other autistics add on!

HOW DOES YOUR CHARACTER LEARN OF, REACT TO AND HEED  ALLISTIC RULES? HOW GOOD IS THEIR MASK? allistic people are exhausting. they are impossible to please. to elaborate, they have a set of unspoken and intrinsic conventions they all adhere to and have been adhering to for ages. most of us [ autistic people ] are confusedly struggling to keep up with these-- eye contact, tone of voice, and certain jokes. when we do, we find we misapply the rule to its situation-- like scripting to start a conversation only to have the person we’re talking to get weirded out that we repeated something word for word and walk away. these Allistic Conventions are very often conditional and ever-changing: some will apply in one situations but not another. dealing with allistic people is never easy. every time we think we have them figured out and we can take our mask off and breathe, we haven’t. there’s something we did wrong. dealing with allistics as as an autistic person is a lot like cramming for a test the next day, then going in and finding out you studied for the wrong subject. it’s like going to the grocery store, putting all the food you thought was on your list into ya carriage and going to check out, only to find you bought all dairy and you’re lactose intolerant. it’s a neverending scavenger hunt. 

this prompt is especially important for your character as a child or for an autistic child character-- allistic people are unforgiving all over, but allistic children are particularly cruel. and children’s minds are malleable. how well they handle allistic conventions as a child and still Learning the World shapes our view of ourselves and allistic people forever.

Important Questions to ask: are they prone to Autistic Gaffes that tip off allistic people? was there ever An Incident-- something that gave away their lack of understanding social norms? how well do they blend in? how quickly do allistic people tire them out? what and when was the Tipping Point-- how did they find out they Weren’t ~Normal?~

HOW HYPERSENSITIVE IS YOUR CHARACTER? it’s no secret that autistic people experience the world, sensory-wise, way way differently than allistic people. @scriptautistic​ compared it to a cup-- some people’s cups are small and fill up quickly with sensory input, other people’s are bigger, so it takes getting to about half-full or to cause Real Distress. i’d also say that some of us, like Yours Truly, have colanders or strainers over our cups: we can handle some kinds of sensory input, like Ambient People Noise, and that kind passes through so we’re okay. but other kinds, like the taste of yoghurt, get stuck and upset us. the point is, it’s never a middle ground.  read more about this here. 

Important Questions to ask: are they oversensitive? undersensitive? what textures, sounds, etc does your character like and dislike? how Much, sensory wise, does it take to trigger a meltdown? how big or little is their reaction to sensory inputs then enjoy? inputs they dislike? 

WHAT ROUTINES DOES YOUR CHARACTER KEEP? it’s also no secret that autistic people like routines. 'like’ is even too subtle of a word-- we need them. change, especially unexpected change, upsets and confuses us. we feel blindsided and out of control. i have billions of autistic friends and i don’t know a single one that doesn’t keep some sort of routine lmfao.

Important Questions to ask: the obvious what routine( s ) does your character keep? have they ever deviated from this / these routine( s )? for how long and why? was deviating from it / them their choice or were they forced to? do others know of their routine( s )? do they have a certain Go To-- a favourite sweater for when they can’t figure out what to wear, a food they order when they go out to eat or grocery shopping?

HOW DOES THEIR BEING AUTISTIC AFFECT OTHER THINGS THEY MAY STRUGGLE WITH? every other autistic person i know is also marginalised in some other way. because autism is a developmental disability, ie autistic kids become autistic adults, autism literally Permeates every other aspect of our lives. i’ll use my own character molly-elizabeth as an example. she’s chronically ill ( she has pots, a dysautonomic illness ) in addition to being autistic. her being autistic made it a lot harder for her to speak up about her pots and even delayed her diagnosis, because she couldn’t describe how she felt dizzy all the time or why she passed out when she got blood drawn. She Just Did. it was just A Feeling and it was A Lot. 

Important Questions to ask: did your character being autistic affect a diagnosis / realisation? is another struggle lessened or magnified by their autism? did anything they had trouble with ever go unnoticed or get worse than it could have been because they couldn’t articulate?

WHAT ARE YOUR CHARACTER’S SPECIAL INTERESTS? to end this guide on a fun note, Let’s Talk Special Interests. in layperson’s terms, they’re basically sort of like a Favourite Subject, but it’s our Favourite Favourite subject. we. Like It More than allistic people. it’s our favourite thing in then entire world. hell, it is our entire world. it’s what we think about when we’re happy, upset or idle. it’s our comfort and our greatest joy-- for example, my Greatest Two are arthurian legend and norse mythology, and one of my closest friend’s is ukiyo-e prints. we also tend to infodump when our special interests are brought up. for those who don’t know what that means, it’s basically unloading everything we can about our special interest in a sort of excited monologue at the other person. we snowball. we Have To tell you everything there is to know about our special interest or else we will explode. that’s not to say that it’s a chore to infodump-- like i said, our special interests are our greatest joy and comforts, so it’s really exciting to be able to talk about them. it also means it hurts very deeply when others are disinterested ( something we can’t always recognise ) or shoot us down outright. 

Important Questions to ask: obviously, what are your character’s special interests? how long have they held that special interest? do they have one special interest or several? what do they like about their special interest? is their special interest unique to them or do other people like it too? 

Anyway That’s It Bye! i know this was long and poorly worded in spots, but i’m also autistic what’re you gonna do. send me an ask here or over at @trustawitch!! tag me or @ me on either blog if you do these as prompts!