#autistic achievements

[earhartsease]

what's the most autistic achievement you've ever made? we'll start (sorry bit of a long story coming now - read on if you want a small heap of casual woodwind instrument knowledge)

it's spring of 1985, we're *counts* 22 years old and in our first year of an intense af course learning to make and repair woodwind instruments (which we will a year later tumble out of due to getting ME/CFS, as it turned out)

anyway, one of our old friends (well we'd known each other since we were 11 so) asked us to service her father's bass clarinet - if you're not familiar with those, they look thus

and they're played almost exactly like your normal Bb clarinet that you might have seen or played in a school band, but all an octave lower

the important part here is all that keywork

like there's just a lot of it - and the keywork was what brought the instrument to our tiny college workshop desk

because what happened was this was a pretty nice bass clarinet, and it had silver plated keys (often on the more basic/cheaper instruments the keys will be nickel-plated), and he'd put one of those classic yellow duster cloths you get in the case to wipe the instrument down with, and the cloth had come from china and had some kind of chemical in it that basically took some of the silver off the keywork it was pressed against

we showed the instrument to our repairing tutor and he was keen for us to do the work on it - which meant not only giving the thing a full service and repadding the keys (they have little pads under the cups which press against the edges of the holes underneath to make a seal - on standard clarinets back then they were either synthetic or handmade with fish bladder skin of all things, but on posher ones or bass clarinets they used white leather pads sorry long parenthesis) but also to strip off all of the keywork and get it replated

bloody hell this is getting long

anyway we did this, so before tweaking everything that needed tweaking we took off all the keys, and unscrewed all the pillars that are set into the wood (african blackwood, dalbergia melanoxylon) of the instrument's body, and strung them carefully in order on a steel wire to send off for replating

we were off college for a couple of weeks because of the fucking fatigue, and when we got back the guy who'd sent the metalwork off for us for replating looked sombre and handed us a box - the plating had come back beautifully done, but "I'm afraid the wire broke" and all of the pillars and posts were just in a jumble in the box - and there's two of these things for each key or lever or whatever, it's like over 50 of them (from the top and bottom halves of the instrument, which comes apart for storage) - and they're each unique, each can only go in one specific place because they're all different heights and so on

and we looked at them, and they looked at us - and then we cried havoc and let slip the dogs of autism, and worked out by means of jigsawlike logic and memory and sense and got it all back together - this took us three weeks, and when we showed our tutor and the class we got a huge round of applause, and he admitted he didn't think it could be done

now we feel a bit stupid writing about this, but can you imagine the fucking satisfaction involved in this?! like putting together a watch that someone else had taken apart and handed you in a teacup

so, we also want to introduce you to the bass clarinet sound if you're not familiar - first the godsdamn king, Eric Dolphy

and here's it being played beautifully and lyrically with some Bach originally for cello - we literally just found this and are in love

thank you for indulging our autism, we hope you learned new things you enjoyed learning - now tell us yours if you want to?

[hasellia]

[thepaintedredstart]

I see your “to be read” pile and raise you a “to be spun” pile.

[shadow-travel]

sometimes i think about how both nico and will weren't necessarily written to be autistic characters and i get so confused because both of them are so autistic. and in such different ways. personally i can't even remember the amount of times while i was reading tsats and nico did or thought something very particular that i also have done or thought and that is also a sign of autism

[cryptile]

Drumbot Julian and Jonny d'Bee (@jonny-b-meowborn ) are real.

Don't let the heavenly atmosphere fool you, we're about to fuck you up

Textless version since i have it

[lenin-it-to-win-it]

Artemis Fowl is what happens when you put all your stats into intelligence and have -800 left over for self-awareness

[smolerthanthediagram]

If I answer "trobed" how would the sub react lol

[rooolt]

television shows should not make one off jokes about character possibly being autistic, not because it’s in poor taste or anything, but because it invites speculation on an alternate, better show in which that person’s autism was actually focused on as an important aspect of their character and something integral to their arc and development throughout the series

[m-for-now]

I have this thing where I project my stuff onto fictional characters I like, so sometimes I go

What if Leo Valdez also had that thing where sometimes autistic masking and adhd procrastination are so exhausting that you consistently want to do something, but you just kinda can't and the sentence

"So, what did you do today?"

Is incredibly depressing, because the answer is "nothing much" but what is really also true is "I was trying to force myself to do literally anything at all the entire day and I kept failing the entire day so even if I factually did a thing, it doesn't count because I didn't achieve anything valuable that someone else could understand"

[absentlyabbie]

man i remember when my time at sandrock was still in development and there was some dev update introducing the town doctor character, fang, with his pretty delicate facial features and long shampoo-commercial hair, looking like every cliche of a "cold, reserved anime pretty boy" distilled

and then the update where they said they would make him romanceable/expand his backstory due to popular demand, and i rolled my eyes in utter disinterest at what looked like the same cardboard cutout love interest we've all seen a million times, cuz that is just not my bag, personally

and then i played the game and well fuck, so he's actually disabled due to deep childhood trauma, and you help him through his struggles to a place where it's less debilitating, learn he's extremely, passionately motivated to help others not suffer the way he did, and is in fact kind and awkward and a little bit of a dork

and oh no, whoops, i've tripped and fallen and married him

[mokeonn]

I fucking hate the tetris effect so much. Like oooh lemme play this funnie little card game rogue-like, ooh it's so fun it's gonna be the only game I play for weeks now, oooh what do you mean I'm fucking duplicating multi-card holographic sevens in my dreams

[frogayyyy]

why must i "watch" star trek. why can i not absorb every episode directly into my brain.

[elderdragonapologist]

Looking for folks willing to group up with me for Gyala Delves specifically so we can level up the bases for Touching base, please, i'm so close to finishing the achievement but no one wants to do events for the bases and just speedruns the meta :( (I'm on NA servers, I will make a discord to organise this if we need to, i can't be the only fool who didn't do the achieve at launch)

[cryptidclaw]

you might like qpp! (Queer platonic partner) it's like the middle ground of friendship/relationship and is something aroacespec people use to describe their relationship! It varies from relationship to relationship so I can't really give you a clear definition but I encourage you to research it if you didn't know about it beforehand!! :]

Oh I kno, I would like one plz 🤲

Tho I also wouldn't mind possibly having a romantic relationship but just like... not doing the kissing and sexual stuff lol (idk if that counts as a qpr ?)

Anywaysss they should make a aroace spec "dating" site where u can find fellow aroaces

[the-entity-down-the-street]

Has anyone done an animatic of "Lifetime Achievement Award" with Herbert West and Dan Cain yet? I feel like that song really suits them

[milimeters-morales]

I don’t really have the right words but i like the idea of Hobie doing quick checks for people’s safety without even really moving too much, as both a skill learned from his childhood and just a way he would be anyway. Like let’s say Gwen is calling him and she’s crying but sounds very detached. Hobie’s gonna do a quick mental checklist like this: (Injured? -> Alone? -> Aware? -> Show up -> distract as hiding weapons -> calm her -> check speech -> move location? -> check for injury) and it gets more complex as need be. He’d do this with all his friends and the people he helps in general, and it’s a quick and barely noticeable process unless he tells you he’s even doing that, which he usually doesn’t. I also like to think he was kind of doing this when he was talking to Miles on the way to meet Miguel, just very toned down (for him).