#autistic matt lloyd

[a-wins-a-win]

if i told you Matthew Lloyd was autistic too would you think i was right or insane?

[rudylloyd]

these drawings go with the hell I unleashed at 3am

[cornfields-td-nonsense]

if lloyd can get a redemption arc so can matt please mod hes just a little guy he didnt intend to be creepy hes just autistic please im dying

i will even defend him on court if its necessary please just one chance

If we do a s2 he’s absolutely getting redemptioned. this kid needs a shower, a nap and a lesson in basic boundaries and he’s all set

[whereconfusionisarhyme]

Hello, and welcome to my AU! I'm gay, depressed, and autistic so here is something I thought up! I'm gonna give a quick little breakdown of the AU, and then go into characters.

~ This is a Modern AU cause I want them to have like personal smartphones (and set up for a concept I have)

~ Also there is more information about autism available in 2020 than in 200, sooo-

~ Nothing else of the setting changes other than the time period. (I headcanon them to be in Ohio)

~ This is an AU, not a multi-chapter fic

~ It's gonna have a pretty loose canon, with me just adding on headcanons and one-shots as I go

~ It's gonna be tagged on ao3 and Tumblr as "Autistic!Peter AU ~ Az"

~ Because Az is the name I use online lol

Characters

~ Peter is autistic! :)

~ I will be projecting a lot of myself onto Peter (but like, what's new lol), so this is in no way shape, or form everyone's experience with autism

~ Unlike me, he is professionally diagnosed (*cough* cause he's male *cough*)

~ Sorry for the salt there

~ ANYWAYS yeah he's professionally diagnosed with autism, although his parents aren't exactly happy about it :/

~ Other than that he's really not all that different from canon

~ Obviously, autism is different in everyone, so let me just real quick do a speed run of what it looks like in Peter:

~ Peter can mask, but since he got diagnosed before he had to do it for too long, it's not automatic for him. He can choose when to mask and when not to mask and tends not to because of how draining it is

~ During sensory overload he tends to gets super snappy and rude (although he's working on it)

~ Tends to have meltdowns over shutdowns

~ He's pretty outgoing and extroverted, but the autism can make it tiring

~ Only extroverted with friends

~ Strangers are a no-go (me too-)

~ His past special interests have included but are not limited to: tom cruise movies, methods of cooking, baking (different techniques and methods), A Midsummer Night's Dream (during their junior year), and Romeo and Juliet (during their senior year lol)

~ Jason is pretty much the same as in canon, except he gets panic attacks and is also autistic

~ Because, say it with me,

~ p r o j e c t i o n

~ I mean I headcanon that he has panic attacks in cannon anyway so it isn't exclusive to the AU, but

~ Y'know

~ He's pretty ableist in the beginning, but, c'mon say it with me,

~ While they do bad things, all of these characters are simply products of an environment that they had no control over. That being said, they still have the same responsibility as everyone else to be a good person and impact others in a positive way.

~ So he learns to not be a dick

~ Also it's low key internalized

~ He is also autistic, but only figures it out after rooming with Peter for a while since his parents refuse to take him in for any sort of testing or diagnosis

~ Cause there can't POSSIBLY be anything "wrong" with Jason

~ In case you couldn't tell yet, they're kinda ableist

~ Unlike Peter, he's more prone to shutdowns than meltdowns

~ Has spent so long masking by the time he figures it out, so he has to try and de-program himself from masking (me right now-)

~ Very introverted, doesn't really open up to anyone other than Nadia and Peter

~ Being around people exhausts him, but he does it anyway to keep up his image

~ Past special interests include but are not limited to: Fairy Tales, baseball (specifically, the mechanics of the game and different plays), and Romeo and Juliet (he picked it up from Peter, and one of the reasons he was so reluctant to audition was because he was scared people would think he was "a bit too into it")

~ Nadia is her good old cynical and slightly problematic canon self

~ Implied clinical depression, but the situation with diagnosis is the same as Jason's

~ They refuse to take her to a professional setting to have anything serious done

~ Those bitches :)

~ Is the first person (other than Peter) Jason "confesses" to about his suspicion about being autistic

~ Technically the first other than Peter was Father Flynn but Jason was so incredibly cryptic in fear that Father would figure it out that Father didn't actually know what he was trying to say

~ But anyway

~ Actually not anyways because I don't have anything else to type here :/

~ Ivy is the exact same as cannon

~ Nothing changes whatsoever for her or Matt

~ Lucas has adhd

~ His parent(s) (still not sure what I should make his parental situation be) doesn't get him meds for reasons I have not yet decided on

~ So he gets adderall through his own means

~ If you get what I mean ;))))

~ (Disclaimer: don't become a drug dealer just to get adderall for your adhd)

~ (that's a bad idea)

I'm really excited about this AU, and I'm really excited to share it!

@starkidstan @hvvrtfulloflove

[christysautismjourney]

Happy Birthday, Sesame Street!!!

I love birthdays. I love eating cake and ice cream at birthday parties, I love to celebrate the birthdays of my family members, and eating ring bologna and cheese at birthday parties, with meatball sandwiches added to the meals. That’s what I love about birthdays. However, it’s neither my birthday nor any of my family members’ birthdays, today. Today it’s Sesame Street’s birthday. I’m a big fan of this show. It’s been my favorite since I was a little kid, and it’s still my favorite today. 

I love singing along to the songs with the Sesame Street Muppets. I also love singing along to the theme song as well. I love going out to the book sale every summer with Mr Kiffer to get some Sesame Street books and DVDs. I love going to Walmart with my mom to get some Sesame Street DVDs. I can’t wait until I get my first Sesame Street book at Walmart. I can’t wait until the Thanksgiving episode of Sesame Street, too.

I love the songs of Sesame Street. My favorite songs from there are “Sing,” “Let’s Go Driving,” “Sing After Me,” “Rubber Duckie,” “I Love Trash,” “Spanish Me, English Me,” “Monster In the Mirror,” “Two Heads are Better Than One,” “Elmo’s Song,” “Imagination,” “Moonshine,” “The Sound That’s In the Air,” “Kids With Wings,” “Makin’ Believe,” “On My Pond,” “I Think That It Is Wonderful,” “Three,” “Love the Ocean,” “Everyone Makes Mistakes,” “I Love My Room,” and “One Fine Face.” These songs are wonderful. Most of the Sesame Street songs have the banjo joining in the orchestra that plays in the Sesame Street show. 

When my grandmother was still alive she and I used to go to my cousin Dana’s house, and his son Benny was such a big fan of Sesame Street. I’m not sure if he is now, but when he was a little boy, he watched Sesame Street a lot. He watched the Elmo’s World: Wild Wild West DVD over and over again, amongst other DVDs. He used to own some Sesame Street coloring books. He especially loved the segment where Bert and Ernie went fishing, and Ernie said, “Heeeeeeeere fishy fishy fishy!” He even had a goldfish just like Elmo, and named it after Elmo’s goldfish named Dorothy. 

My favorite Sesame Street Muppet performers are Peter Linz, Matt Vogel, Tyler Bunch, Frankie Cordero, Leslie Carrara-Rudolph, Stephanie D’Abruzzo, Paul McGinnis, Ryan Dillon, David Rudman, Eric Jacobson, Carroll Spinney, John Tartaglia and Carnen Osbahr. I also love Jerry Nelson, Jim Henson, Richard Hunt and Louise Gold. I also like Frank Oz too. But who could ever forget Jim Henson? Jim Henson was my favorite Ernie when I was a little girl. And now that Peter Linz performs him, I love Ernie even more now. 

I remember when I was a little girl and I had a Sesame Street balloon that said “Get Well Soon” on it. It was with all of the Sesame Street Muppets on, and I had my eyes operated on from that menengitis that I had when I was a baby. I loved it so much. It had Big Bird, Snuffy and all the other Sesame Street Muppets on it.

I love Ernie’s kind heart and wonderful presence. I love that he’s so funny and his power of imagination. I love his songs “Imagine That” and “Rubber Duckie.” I love when he annoys Bert and his silliness and messiness. And I love Big Bird, because he’s tender-hearted and funny and awesome. Big Bird is my favorite Sesame Street Muppet. Abby Cadabby is another favorite Sesame Street Muppet too. She’s cute, funny, warm, wonderful, kind-hearted and sparkly. I like sparkly stuff, so Abby had become one of my favorites as soon as I saw her.

In the near future, I will have a lot of the Sesame Street DVDs, books and plushes. I want to get all of the Sesame plushes, DVDs and books. I can’t wait to get some more Sesame DVDs and books for Christmas this year. I also can’t wait until Muppet Wiki announces some more DVD releases on their website, which I go on every day. I get a new Sesame Street DVD a week or two after it’s released, but sometimes I get it on the day it’s released. As an autistic adult, I’m happy to say that I’m still a big fan of Sesame Street. And I’m glad that I am a fan. The Sesame Street Muppet performers are my friends because they have such kind hearts and loving spirits. I love all of my favorite Sesame Street performers so much and they mean so much to me. 

I hope that someday Joan Gantz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisette read this, and I hope that one day I’ll get to meet the Sesame Street Muppet performers and the production team, and the writers and cartoonists and screenwriters. I am so thankful for Sesame Street, because it helps me go to sleep at night, it helps me learn different languages thanks to the international versions of Sesame Street, and it touches me in so many ways. I know I have said what I’m about to say before, but when I’m tired, scared, sad, upset, overstimulated or sick, I can always watch Sesame Street to see my Sesame Street friends. They always comfort me when I’m sad and crying or sick and they always cheer me up when I’m sad and crying. And they also cheer me up when I’m sick too. They either talk or sing to me through my TV or New Nintendo 3DS screens, and when they say “Hi!” I say hi back and when they say “Welcome to Sesame Street!” I say thank you to them. 

Again I just want to say that I’m thankful for Sesame Street. I’m thankful that it’s brought so much joy, comfort and laughter to my life. I’m thankful that I got to watch the show when I was a kid, and as an adult, I still enjoy watching it now. Thank you so much Sesame Street for all the comfort and laughter and joy you’ve brought to my life. Happy 48th birthday!

[cornfields-td-nonsense]

🎯 for all of them, tho it's more like "in what kind of challenges would they excel at" (ex. grossness based, agility, strength, etc)

Well

Ming, Lloyd, Rod, Carmen, Lara and Eve are all pretty athletic and agile. Lara's specifically a very fast runner, outsped only by Carmen, whose speed and strength seem almost... supernatural. Eh, I'm sure it's nothing. Sal isn't very agile but is extremely strong. Maybe too strong, and she isn't great at controlling her strength, which bites her in the ass later. Greta's not super durable in long-term exercise but she has insanely good reflexes (one might even say cat-like). Reggie's incredibly resistant to damage, as a result of her body running on extreme 'cartoon logic'. Running off cliffs and not falling until she looks down, etc.

Skelly, Isla, Esther and Harper have very strong stomachs. Harper in particular can eat some pretty gross stuff if sufficiently motivated. She had to cook for herself from a young age and basically learned by trial and error what to do and what not to do. So she's consumed some not-great stuff in her time.

Charlie, Lara and Esther all have intense Random Knowledge Recall - they know a lot about niche topics and have a bunch of completely miscellaneous skills that come in handy in challenges. Esther's main skill is her resourcefulness, being able to take full advantage of what she has and where she has it.

And in terms of more voting- and character-based skills rather than challenge skills, Lloyd, Alisha and Lara are all incredibly perceptive, as I've said before.

Lloyd is talented at picking up social cues and figuring out dynamics and relationships between people. If two contestants are in a secret alliance or if someone's taken a disliking to someone else, chances are Lloyd already knows. (Obviously this skill isn't flawless or he might have picked up on the fact that Rod likes him.)

Alisha's talent is playing the long game, keeping her cards close to her chest. She rarely ever acts on impulse and tends to sit back and gather information until the right time. This might sound like she has a cold and calculated persona - far from it, she's a very emotional being with a great deal of love in her heart for her friends and those she cares about.

And Lara's skill is... simply her persistence. She gets knocked down, and she gets up again. As an undiagnosed-until-recently autistic girl of colour who has a history of parental neglect and targeting from bullies, Lara's learned to take a hit and keep trekking on. And it's with the right support network, just finding those few people who do love and believe in her, when she's finally able to go further and push harder than ever before.

You may have noticed the absence of the Pathetic White Boy Quartet (William, Matt, Hans, Art). That is because none of them have any skills of note.

Well, that's not true. All of them have the same main skill, and it's 'being a bitch'.

[cornfields-td-nonsense]

🧠 all of them

An ask from the OC ask game I forgot to answer oops

What do you like most about them?

Starting in elimination order, then quickly veering off and going in a completely random order:

- William is a dramatic little bitch who dresses like a colourblind D&D bard. Need I say more.

- Sal's just big and dumb and doesn't know her own strength but cmon guys, she's doing her best!

- Nicolas is just funny to me, like, conceptually. Chris really went through the process of adopting a random orphan to have on his show and became an unwilling father. brilliant

- Reggie's just silly. She's the definition of a silly little guy. She operates on cartoonier physics than anyone else. She's a horrible influence on Nicolas. She's Roger Rabbit as a teenage lesbian. Also I just love clowns, I wanted to make a clown character for TDN almost as soon as I thought of it

- Carmen's just fun. She's pretty and smart and she gets along with everyone! And I especially love how human she is. Like. Totally human. I don't know what that one anon was talking about. There's nothing supernatural about her.

- Matt, on the other hand, is an absolute bitch. Sometimes it's just fun to have a horrendously unlikeable character to play around with.

- Greta's a wannabe supervillain that is trying and failing to be evil. She's like if Max wasn't annoying.

- Hans just does not give a crap. I respect that.

- Charlie's aroace and we need more aspec characters like. in general. Also I like it when characters in TD do something, get eliminated, and then the thing they did continues to be important and comes up later, like MK hacking the confessionals in TDI2023. Something similar happens with Charlie's research and notes on his findings about the island - something to do with Alisha and Esther.

- Harper. One, I like the idea of an intern being unwillingly dragged onto the show. Two, I love stories about unrequited romantic feelings that have actual happy endings and show that "staying friends" is a totally feasible option that can actually be the best case scenario. Harper and Charlie manage to snag their friendship out of the fiery wreckage of their not-romance, and they're both better off for it.

- Esther was the first TDN character, and you always remember your roots. Shes basically the reason this thing exists, lol. I also put a lot more of myself into her than I was expecting to, but I do that with a lot of my characters

- Skelly is a punk character that isn't Duncan. That makes them awesome in my book.

- Alisha is a theatre kid. We love a theatre kid. I do have a lot to say about her but I'm saving that for another ask currently sitting in my inbox

- Ming is a menace. In the best way possible. Once Lloyd pulls the betrayal card on Rod, Ming fully declares war on his ass - she is VERY protective of her friends.

- Art is the kind of unlikeable character I really enjoy - he's believable. He's multi-dimensional. There's reasons he is the way he is, and he's capable of change.

- Isla is a bigender artsy kid with ADHD. You know. Like me.

- Eve has a snake. Like. Come on. (Also yours truly forgot to mention she's mute and uses ASL in her character bio. oops. I'll go back and edit that in later lol)

- Lloyd is, like I've said before, utterly overflowing with issues. I want to examine his brain under a microscope.

- Rod's not stupid. I know it's a bit of a weird thing to specify, but oftentimes the optimistic ray of sunshine who's best friends (or more...?) with a jaded grumpier one is portrayed as dumb. Rod isn't some kind of genius, but he's no idiot, either. I think that's important to say.

- Lara is an autistic girl who overthinks every social interaction she has, struggles with sensory issues she doesn't know how to deal with or even explain, and gets pushed around by certain individuals (coughartcough) who perceive her struggles as her being lazy or untalented. And by building a support system and finding someone she can truly connect with in Esther, she comes out of her shell, stands up for herself, develops and fleshes out her skills and manages to win. In short, Lara is the character I needed when I was younger.

[a-wins-a-win]

#maybe i'll do a longer deliberately autistic reading of his character like i did jason. you'd have to believe me then - guess what this is!

tldr; looking at Matt's character through an autistic lens gives him an interesting layer of complexity, and a different way to interpret a lot of his traits & behaviours - rigid thought patterns and intense rule conformity, a strong sense of justice to the detriment of his social relationships, a tendency to over-explain himself, and a general sense of being on the fringes/on the outside of the social bubble he tries so hard to find a way into.

look he is not in as many songs as Jason is so it's a much shorter extended post but it's under the cut anyway

---

to be perfectly honest a lot of it is about the vibes/the way he is often staged/my interpretation of him being in the group in the sense of most of the cast have obviously been friends by association due to just. the proximity thing. but he's not In The Group the same way that everyone else is - they tolerate him well enough, and they're not trying to actively exclude him, but he never quite feels like he exactly fits in amongst the rest of them

* i also want to preface this one by stating i am conscious of the fact that at times Matt's incessant pursuing of Ivy is interpreted as like. deliberate, shitty, & borderline weird/disrespectful. and i don't want to imply that i am excusing that type of behaviour, OR that autistic people get a pass because they may not understand it the same way as neurotypical people. but the interpretation i have of Matt - as a character generally and as an autistic character in particular - i truly don't think he is crossing any lines in regards to his attempted flirtations (although different actors/productions will play him in different ways - so it's hard to put a blanket rule over it)

Auditions is interesting in the way it introduces Matt as a character. He's obviously upset that he didn't get the part he was (arguably) told he would get, which is a fair call, and as such his interactions with Jason are played often as tense & passive-aggressive - but throughout the rest of the show I would argue that he's established as a generally sincere/honest character in his reactions.

"Well, congratulations." if we choose to interpret Matt's congratulations of Jason as sincere, we can extrapolate issues with tone - both his own and how he understands (or doesn't) other people's

Wonderland serves best as a drawn out example of Matt's hesitation to break the rules, and this super strict adherence to them to the detriment of his social life could be looked at as a textbook symptom of autism.

"Something classy, something small..." Matt's line of thinking here can be looked at in an interesting way through an autistic lens - just in regards to him picking something he'd like without a clear understanding of whether Ivy would actually like it? (and i mean. her excitement about/willingness to go along to the rave would suggest she does actually have a penchant for that type of event - loud, bright, etc.)

"And what is that supposed to mean?" the line is usually played as defensive, but i also think it's a reasonable angle to consider that Matt genuinely doesn't understand what Jason is actually saying (that Matt's whole aesthetic is not quite rave-appropriate)

i think it's interesting to look at Matt during Portrait Of A Girl through an autistic lens - in regards to the fact that he wants to have this connection with Ivy, but can't effectively navigate his real life interactions with her to make that happen.

"Don't know what to say / I'm scared I'll say too much." this sentiment in particular could be looked at as an insight to Matt's lack of a filter - a trait common in autistic people

while i actually think that Matt's upset during Birthday, Bitch! at the way the others are crashing the party is really reasonable, interpreting the extremity of it as related to both sensory overload and the fact that it's plans being interrupted/changed last minute can be spun into a solid talking point for autistic Matt.

"Maybe I'm not being clear-" autistic people will tend to over-explain themselves, and this line in particular feels like a segway into that (until of course they are interrupted by Ivy's arrival)

One Kiss is actually just a really easy example of Matt not understanding glaringly obvious social cues.

"Dance with me." ["Next song."] "Okay." ["I'll find you."] "You might not - anyway..." the part that gets me about this interaction is that Matt is canonically a smart guy - and yet somehow still takes all of Ivy's words here at face value. i would argue that any other character would be able to pick up on the hints that Ivy's dropping, but Matt just never seems to

Are You There? is a) one of my favourite songs in the show and b) a really good character moment for Matt.

"[...] what it's like to stand outside? / To watch the world [...]" this concept of Matt's being an outsider despite all his best efforts to get along with/fit in with everyone else, and the idea that there's a separation between him and the rest of the world, is a common sentiment amongst autistic people

"[...] ask You how come life is so unfair?" again, fairness & honesty being at the core of Matt's characterization/personal belief system can definitely be read through an autistic lens

Reputation Stain'd capitalizes on the concept that the themes & situations they're playing out in rehearsals parallel their real life - and if we twist it up a little, it could allude to the idea that Matt finds it easier to comprehend social situations/relate to people through the lens of fictional stories.

One, while not heavily featuring Matt, does offer us a fairly self-explanatory "[...] dying to fit in." one of the big parts of Matt's character is wanting to be able to interact with his peers they way they all interact with one another, but despite his best efforts he just can't.

Promise my beloved <3 - While we can all acknowledge that outing Jason was a terrible thing and Matt absolutely shouldn't have done it, oftentimes autistic people will have a really strong sense of justice - principles they stick to irregardless of nuance/wider contexts that neurotypical people would take into account. Matt reads as a character that absolutely believes lying is wrong, with no exceptions. And even if he is weaponising it for his own gain (if you want to interpret him that way), it still relates to the idea that he prioritizes honesty over pretty much anything else. The anger in the delivery of "Don't play dumb with me Peter" could also tie into that reading of the situation.

---

i swear on my life i had more to say about him, but for some reason this one was much harder to articulate than my autistic Jason character breakdown, so you're just going to have to take my word for it (or don't! it's ur life & ur interpretation of Matt as a character, you know?)

once again! i am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, this was just a fun little exercise in characterization. i'm not claiming Matt was deliberately autistic-coded, or that anyone else has to read him that way, just that viewing him and his interactions with the other characters through an autistic lens can put a different spin on things and add an interesting point of complexity to his character.

queer autistic matt lloyd i see you <33

if i told you Matthew Lloyd was autistic too would you think i was right or insane?