#i find that autistic people can be so vulnerable because we feel like we owe everybody else for the crime of existing...

[uncanny-tranny]

Hey, autism related q! But I'm autistic too and struggle heavily in the social department, and I was just wondering if you had any tips on seeking out and making new friends as an autistic person, thanks!!!! <333333

I think a lot of it can just come down to be upfront - if you feel okay to tell people you have different needs (not even that you're autistic, you never have to tell a soul if you'd like!), people are more willing to acomodate your needs if they know you have them.

I also think it's important to forgive yourself if you do drop the ball - we all do it at some point, autistic or no, and it's okay. You aren't undeserving of friends, social skills are something you learn, not something you're either born with or not.

Above all, though, having friends should feel good. Friendships can have their ups and downs, but if you're finding that a certain friend is expecting you to be their therapist, or to fix their life for them for example and you aren't bring treated right at all, it's a bad sign. Friendships should not hurt you, they should not feel like a burden you have to carry.

[scribe-cas]

hi!! happy (almost late) storytelling saturday!! tell me, what is it about your favorite oc that makes them your favorite?

i usually add here that you can talk about more than one if you can't choose a favorite, but i feel like here i should probably add feel free to use second favorite if you feel you've run out of explanations for why couteau's your beloved baby. alternatively, feel absolutely free to repeat yourself if you wanna, i will listen

HAPPY STORY TELLING SATURDAY (don’t worry it will be STS for me for another like,,, at least 7 hours)

That note shot me in the face seven times /pos and I laughed my ass off so thank you for that

“If you feel you’ve run out of explanations for why Couteau’s your beloved baby”

Oh my dear

Beloved morbo

You have only heard the tip of the iceberg

Let’s see

We’ve covered his shitty sense of humor (he is full of banter and i love him for that), his basic personality, his tendency to murder abusive men (massive plus in my opinion) and a little bit of his hyperempathy-

Okay so tbh. I will dive in to the deep stuff with you.

The reason Couteau is my precious little blorbo is because of what he represents.

He’s just a guy. And I love that he’s just. A character. Like he is so much all the time, and it makes me proud to have fleshed him out like a person.

Like, genuinely. He gets up and eats breakfast and he has a best friend who’s name is Gambit. They’re roommates.

He’s touch sensitive on his back. He likes hugging people from behind.

When he’s being vulnerable, he’ll come up and put his head on your shoulder because his parental figure used to own a cane, making her shorter than him, even while he was alive, and it was easier than hugging her.

He likes strawberry milkshakes.

He can dance. He’s an old man and his muscles hurt but he still plays Just Dance when Gambit takes out the gaming console.

He used to be in the circus.

He died at 15 and is only learning now that sometimes it’s okay to go back to that screaming little girl who couldn’t take the pressure of life and murmur “it’s okay. You did your best.”

He’s autistic and temporarily nonverbal. He speaks sign language.

He likes cold temperatures but warm blankets.

He only does hand to hand combat.

He sells milkshakes.

He’s trans.

He can do a backflip but his spine would snap and crackle.

He copes with panic attacks by laying down on his bathroom floor, a heater whirring, blowing directly on his back.

He leaves red roses behind with every body that he’s killed by accident.

He knows no amount of kindness will bring a person back, but treats each corpse with a quiet kind of respect.

He has long hair because that was the hair the first person he fell in love with had, and he’s got a scar on the side of his head.

He hates himself.

He finds a quiet comfortability in being a villain.

If you tell him he’s beautiful with your heart, he’ll have to fight not to cry.

He spat in God’s face for the person he cared about so much that he changed their fate.

He loves astrology.

Like how am I supposed to exist and not love a person like this.

He’s made to represent those of us who gave up our lives to the people we loved and never got payed back for it.

Someone wronged by the abuse of the world but who has chosen to let the abuse fester because he never stopped and realized he is abusing himself.

And in doing so, is tearing apart others.

He has hurt and been hurt and has turned to rage because if you are a monster, then nothing can hurt you worse than you can hurt yourself.

He tore himself apart in life giving, and is now forced to tear apart others in death.

He sees it as a punishment

But he chose it for himself.

God is simply trying to teach him how to take.

Giving is framed as a noble attribute. And it is.

But not when you have to tear yourself apart for it.

You owe what you can give. Nothing more.

You do not have to kill yourself to bring more to the table.

You are allowed to care for yourself.

It is not an act of selfishness, but self preservation.

He is meant to represent those of us who have fallen from the sky and are slowly growing and learning not to mistreat ourselves so that we will not mistreat the world.

The first book is a horror. A romance, but a twisted one.

Couteau’s story is one of self hatred.

And hopefully, by the end of it

It will become one of self love.

Hope this helps. <3

[piduai]

You got any tips on making friends? Im like you where I present as a normie. I have the hardest time meeting people who I could vibe with, and your vibes are immaculate.

queen i’m literally the worst person to be asking this, i’ve been having trouble connecting to other people my whole life. in the last years with the extensive use of internet i think #alternative people now have the illusion that everyone is a weirdo (due to easy access of online communities that focus on niche subjects) and fail to take into consideration the sheer amount of humans on earth, and that an online space dedicated to whatever subject having five million users from all over the world is actually a drop in the ocean compared to the general population. most people in real life are normal and well-adjusted. and if you’re naturally a weirdo and naturally feel alienated, this lesson will be driven home from a young age. if you know you know.

so my advice is to seek other weirdos. chameleoning as a normie can only get you so far. it’s not that normie people lack dimension or are less interesting or their interests and worries are inferior and less #deep than ours and that we’re actually the chosen intellectuals in a world of boring nobodies, it’s that they have priorities different to ours and it’s ok. the bitter truth is that we live in their world and most times will not be accommodated. businesses and bureaucratic institutions won’t start closing 5 hours later because i’m a night owl, men won’t stop hitting on me because i’m a lesbian, professional etiquette won’t discard its confusing rituals because i’m autistic, etc etc. sometimes you just need to suck it up and take a movinonprofen. but i know that i’m different from people who have lived their entire lives in a world that is structured to cater to them and their experiences and thus the kind of priorities and problems that they have are different to mine. it isn’t their fault, neither it is mine. however even when i befriend this kind of people i know that there will always be a wall between us and that a genuine, fulfilling emotional connection will be difficult to achieve. 

having common struggles brings people together much tighter than having common interests, i think... this is why we seek communities of people like us. there’s also the problem when you feel alienated even within a dedicated community because you also struggle with something unrelated or simply have a difficult personality, though. but i still think it’s a good idea to first seek people like you. there’s common preacher and a call for being open-minded and accepting of everyone, but imo being so open-minded your brains fall out isn’t good and there’s nothing wrong about not wanting to waste your energy and giving people you simply don’t naturally connect with any chances. 

i think it’s also important to be able to adequately evaluate yourself. excessive self-reflecting and analyzing is NOT good, it will inevitably lead to a wrapped, fabricated sense of self, but i also think that a lot of people refuse to actually face themselves in an honest way. you don’t have to live a life of constant self-bettering, but acknowledging unflattering aspects of your personality is important. and i mean actually unflattering. we like thinking of ourselves as misunderstood and slighted while ignoring what actually may put people off. self-victimization, excessive pride, pettiness, being insensitive, emotional unavailability, dishonesty, constant negativity, lack of punctuality, financial irresponsibility, being self-absorbed, self-deprecation, hypocrisy - all these sound cute on paper, but people rarely want to admit them as personal flaws, like blaming circumstances out of their control for them instead, and in compensation focus on harmless, arbitrary, and contrived flaws. strangers don’t owe you acceptance, affection or attention and they don’t have to put up with what makes you difficult. being honest with yourself will probably make you see where exactly the difficulty to connect to others comes from; whether you want to work on it or not is another question, i know that i don’t.

but as i said overthinking is ALWAYS bad and will always lead to awful results. sometimes it’s imperative to relax and take it easy... sometimes it’s beneficial to not take yourself too seriously. improving your self-esteem, self-image and confidence is always a good idea, and not in meaningless ways such as seeking external validation and putting up a front of arrogance; then again it also requires honesty. reaching out to people is hard and scary for many reasons. there’s a difference between fear of rejection and fear of not being accepted. but ultimately there’s the choice for holding into your loneliness as a badge of honor or biting the bullet and putting yourself in a vulnerable position where other people can hurt you. 

i find it especially important to be the one to reach out to people you are attracted to or feel a connection with, because personally most people i observe from afar bore me. i always make a point to be the one to befriend those whom i find actually interesting, rare as they are, and i was never off the mark - as i said, we weirdos need to stick together, and if you know you know. people will come and go and some of them will like us and we will like some of them back. it will always be trial and error all over again until we die.

[monsterfucker-lisa-swallows]

i just don’t want to work in this industry. i hate the way it is right now so much. the blatant exploitation of workers, the clever little tricks they do to make you think that you can earn a living while they find ways to not pay you, the extra security measures this company has on us that show a blatant lack of trust in the workers...but most of all i hate how people think they can treat us. most of all, i hate the elderly.

i’m gonna go ahead and say that. i have an ‘old people are guilty until proven innocent’ thing now because too many of them treat me terribly all day. that’s not to say i’ll be any less polite or nice to them, i just don’t trust them. they give me anxiety. they seem to just hate me on sight because i get WAY too many interactions with the elderly that end with me having horrible anxiety.

every day that i work breaks me down further and i feel myself becoming bitter and angry and anxious and depressed and it’s all because we’re not valued as human beings. 

i want to tell you about this elderly gentleman i dealt with last night.

i’m autistic and hard of hearing. it’s yet another man at my register who won’t speak up and has an attitude towards me from moment one. but i continue being nice and polite because i have to be. he asks if we take food stamps. i say that we do. he tries to hand me the food stamp card. i say he has to slide it in the machine. he does that. he looks at me expectantly. i tell him he has to follow the instructions on the screen. he snaps at me that he didn’t bring his glasses and he’s old so he shouldn’t have to (literally he said that) and i’m still being polite because i hear that from people at least once a day. but he finally gets through that. it took a dollar off his total. i tell him he still owes $6. he snaps at me that ‘you told me you take food stamps’ and i’m like yes we do, it only takes off for food and drink. (i don’t know how people have food stamps and don’t know what they’re able to be used for, but i digress.) so of course he gets huffy and pays the rest in cash. i keep trying to be nice because i’m thinking maybe he’ll make the same mistake somewhere else, so i’m like ‘yeah sorry, food stamps are only for food and drink, they’re not for toilet plungers and cleaning supplies.’ i’m about to sympathize with the situation, because personally a lot of things that aren’t covered by ebt are essential goods. but this guy....oh this guy. you won’t believe what he says to me.

“i’m sure you’re very educated, ma’am, but don’t talk to me again.”

oh. oh i’m ma’am now?

i’m sure you’re very educated-

i’m trying to figure out what crime you think i was committing there. because i wasn’t being condescending. i wasn’t talking down to you. i was trying to help even though you’d been rude since the moment you came up to my register. so i’ve extrapolated possible meanings based on your tone.

You think i was being:

classist

elitist

ageist

racist

some combination of those factors

the only one i can forgive you for thinking in this instance is the racism thing. i can understand how constant microaggressions would put you on edge in interactions. i have trauma about men, so i’m a bit more sensitive around them. i’m not gonna get offended if that was your assumption. it was a wrong assumption, but i can see where you might get that especially with all that’s going on.

but dude. i work at a dollar store. i’m trying to help. i’ve never assumed i was better than someone in my life, you’ve just taken an immediate dislike to me and to the modern world. i understand that the elderly have it hard. i understand there are a lot of health problems at that age and that you’re very vulnerable to being dismissed or taken advantage of or abused. but you do NOT take this out on the girl at the dollar store who is just doing her job.

i dropped out of college. i’m disabled. i have no financial security and work in an industry that expects me to suck it up and accept poor treatment day in and day out. i’ve had to clean up after people (need i mention discarded tampons and toenails?), i’ve had to put up with people groping me, giving me their unsolicited opinions about my appearance, threatening to have me fired for following policy, complaining on me to management for displaying symptoms of autism (which i literally CANNOT control), calling me ugly and stupid, belittling me and ridiculing me and otherwise literally expecting me to bend over backwards and kiss their ass when they treat me like dirt under their feet! i am barely holding it together here! most of these instances of mistreatment have been perpetrated by elderly people! why do you think you can treat people this way? then you have the audacity to suggest that we’re being impolite and ungrateful? i’m not in the habit of accepting scraps anywhere in the rest of my life, which is why i left an abusive family, but i just accept it publicly because otherwise i’m gonna starve! it’s basically killing me! i wake up every day exhausted because i’m one write up away from being fired at a job that i hate and these people keep actively trying to push me over the line! i don’t do anything to you! i’m literally the most helpful person if you’re nice to me! ask anyone! i’ll go out of my way for anyone because i know how it feels to have to survive on nothing! but these people have the audacity to play victim with me when i didn’t do anything to warrant this!

i’m not even sorry anymore. i don’t want elderly people to speak to me. especially elderly men. the only old people who are allowed to speak to me had better be disabled in some way like me, because they’re always nice to me. we get each other. we’ll keep on discussing how bad people treat us and i’ll keep offering to help them get their bags out to the car because i’m nice to people who aren’t hostile. shocker. i think these people honestly think i’m disrespectful because i treat them the way they treat me. i don’t respect people who don’t respect me, and that’s just how it is. you’re not better than me because you’re old, and i think people need to stop excusing bad horrible behavior from people who act like toddlers. except with toddlers, we’re allowed to say they’re being rude! 

i’m over it. i am emotionally drained and i don’t want this life anymore. but i guess i’ll keep working til they fire me.

he ended the interaction with ‘i hate this place, i’m never coming here again

fucking

good

never return, you bitch