#literally the autism experience also

[aphel1on]

AuDHD is so funny sometimes like what do you mean my hyperfixations/special interests will last for years on end or possibly forever but they will cycle out every month or two with absolutely no transitional period or warning. like i will think about the same topic every day obsessively for 46 days in a row and on the 47th day with no visible cause adhd brain goes "ok! bored of that now" and autism brain goes "dw i got something queued up for ya" and i blast into full blown obsession on some other topic whose mental file folders haven't opened in 9 months. brain's out here treating hyperfixations like a crop rotation. once the dopamine runs out it cycles in another one but once something's in the rotation it never ever leaves. last summer we brought in one from when i was 11. it's so funny to me but frustrating too bc like. i cannot stress enough my inability to predict or control this. or how completely abrupt and random it can be

[shima-draws]

Just got back from seeing Sonic 3 and HOOOOOOLY SHIT y’all. Oh my fucking god. OH my god. Ohhhh my g o d

[saltycharacters]

[ID: Digital art featuring a fan-made kid for Apollo Justice and Klavier Gavin from the Ace Attorney series. The first drawing is their ref, depicting a 16 yr old with colorfully dyed hair and sunglasses perched on their head, two overlaid jackets, and torn jeans. Following that is a lineup of the Justice Family, including Apollo Justice, Klavier Justice, Anupa Erith Justice, Camile Dance Justice, and some pets such as Spätzle the ball python, Mikeko the calico, and Vongole the golden retriever. Next is a concept drawing of older Camile and Anupa, with Camile being 28 and Anupa 13- biggest changes include Camile getting a mohawk, growing to 6 ft 4 inch, and Anupa getting an aeronautical engineering inspired outfit. The final image details various Camile mannerisms and emotions, which are shown to be inspired by various pre-existing Ace Attorney characters. End ID]

Camile Dance Justice/CJ, supernova teenager extraordinaire :]

Don't forget, help Palestine:

-> arab.org <- Click once a day for free

-> gazaesims.com <- Instructs how to donate esims

-> gazafunds.com <- Randomly selects a fundraiser for you to support

-> Fundraiser spreadsheet <- Lists Gazan fundraisers

-> Operation Olive Branch Spreadsheet <- Lists other ways to support

-> Resource link google doc <- Has tons of information and links

[soullessjack]

SHAALLLL THIS IS SO YUMMYYY OH MY GOD.

Adding onto how Jack is basically forever an outsider just by virtue of being what he is, I’d like to offer these two scripts for you to eat:

“The truth is, there just isn’t much information about Nephilim. He didn’t realize he was such a rarity.” / 14x01

“Jack can read their faces, he’s back to being the oddball.” / 14x14 deleted script

“—the guys and Cas have circled around and look at him like a caged animal.” / 13x06 deleted script

⭑ ⭑ ⭑

I used to have a post about the way jack is narratively othered and dehumanized with animal imagery/motifs, and i will forever stand by that post, but there’s also something to be said about how that otherness is taken a step further by adding it to his characterization as an awkward teenage boy who just wants to fit in and be normal (think Clark Kent before he was Superman).

Like, yeah, every teenager naturally feels self conscious and like “nobody understands them,” wants to belong and wants to know who they are and where their place in the world is—but how exactly do you navigate all of that when you’re essentially a biblical cryptid and only halfway human? Jack has always been more human than he is archangel, more like Kelly in both personality and resemblance, and when he’s first born he doesn’t even seem to be aware that he isn’t human.

And further down the line, when Jack is actively trying to establish his identity, he mostly prefers to be-and-be-seen-as an average small town teenage boy / average teenage boy who’s also a hunter; like you said, he has a very limited life experience outside of hunting, and hunting has been one of the few facets in his life where he can thrive and belong and feel useful, so even in the hunting world where he lives alongside Cas and his angelic nature is more understood, Jack still doesn’t like to be reminded of his nonhuman status.

He doesn’t like being the oddball, the rarity, or the cornered animal, and we see that insecurity echoed by Hallucifer calling him the Winchesters’ “little pet monster” and asserting that he was never loved, but rather used as “the muscle” (re: weapon). There’s a lot that happens with Jack between 14x17 and 15x11, and even though we don’t actually see it, we’re shown enough that we know he’s canonically depressed and traumatized by it all.

and remember, his last words before dying are “I understand / I know what I’ve done / you were right all along / I am a monster.” Jack’s basically given up on the idea that he can be good or be anything other than what he is, since he’s essentially failed in trying to be a human. jack has fully resigned and relegated himself to being the oddball/rarity/pet monster/muscle. he goes all out with it, too: willingly killing and cannibalizing angels, becoming a living bomb, literally the whole shebang.

* edit: forgot to mention the fact that soulless jack’s entire spiral that eventually leads into him killing Mary is quite literally the fear that his soullessness would other him from the Winchesters again:

“I told her I was fine, I wasn’t any different. didn’t want the whole ‘no soul’ thing to become an issue between you guys and me.”

much like how he lost his capacity for goodness through an act of goodness, Jack also became an othered monster through his own fearful attempt to avoid it.

hi shal !!! so I was thinking about ouroboros (daily occurrence) and realized that the snake/chicken symbolism for jack destroying his soul could also double as symbolism for his choice to kill Michael. for starters, Cas says the story is meant to be a cautionary tale about greed, before leading into their conversation about dealing with loss; Jack pointedly says he hates to think about losing Sam and Dean, and that having to cope with their eventual loss sounds awful to him. and then it segues into him making the extremely impulsive and dangerous decision to destroy his soul and save them, despite being constantly told of the consequences and risks posed by his soul depleting.

within the episode, the chicken/snake symbolism is framed as — “Is Jack the chicken hard boiling her own egg to save the other ones, or is he the snake eating an egg out of his own nature and hunger and choking on it?” — but I think it can also be interpreted as “Is Jack killing Michael because he wants to save his family, or is he killing Michael because it’s a natural compulsion to kill,” (especially considering that Jack hates Michael with a soul-burning passion).

feel free to let this marinate, I know it’s a lot to drop on you suddenly and I know you’ve got things going on that are far more important! (saw in another ask you’re headed for another surgery, so good luck and good recovery! ཐི❤︎ཋྀ)

Conversations about Loss

I love that conversation between Cas and Jack. When Jack spirals, the 🎶musical track even goes off-key,🎶and it's very unsettling indeed. Jack is tortured by the thought of losing his family. ->"What's the point of being a cosmic being if everyone I care about is just gonna leave?"

Aside// Another interesting facet of that conversation is that, although Cas is gently preparing Jack for the inevitability of loss, he won't even allow himself to go there about Dean, not really. -> "So when Dean wakes up -- and he will wake up -- we just have to remember to appreciate the time that we all have together now."

///

Nature vs Nurture

To your larger point, I think what you're asking is if I think the chicken/egg/snake analogy can be applied to a cosmic thread of Nature Vs Nurture, right?

I think yes.

This is a thread that was introduced with Jack in his very first episodes, with Donatello (13x02):

DONATELLO: Ah. The nature versus nurture conundrum. DONATELLO pats DEAN and SAM’s shoulders.] Oh. Speaking not as a prophet but as a scientist, I don’t think teaching him is in the cards. It’s like asking a lion not to be a lion.

Again, in Meredith's scripted version of the human-angelic divide in Good Intentions (13x14 script only):

AU ZACHARIAH: Jack is the key to the other side. It's just-- humans, have such a primitive response to fear. Maybe he takes after his lesser side--

Again, in Meredith's scripted version of the Cas dialogue in Good Intentions (13x14 script only):

CAS: The only way I was able to outmaneuver him and escape was by trusting my instincts, relying on my angel nature, instead of pretending to be something I'm not…

And then there's Bobby talking about how angels, forces of Nature and emanations of War, are destined to turn on humans (13x14):

BOBBY: Look, Mary, when this all started, when Lucifer and his demon army rose out of Hell, we thought the angels were on our side. But one by one, they turned on us. He will, too. It’s just a matter of time.

///

The hard thing, the ugly thing

I'll add to this later, but I'm specifically thinking about how Cas moves to "do the ugly brutal things, so Sam and Dean don't have to." He consistently positions himself as the one who is more willing to do the necessary evils that even they cannot stomach.

Jack is a step above that, but he too moves to shield. He leans into doing the hard thing, but at the expense of his own self and family life. It's a metaphor for war, and how that sunders you from a life of love and comfort.

We get this echoed at lower levels, too, how Sam and Dean do the "hard thing, the ugly thing," so human civilians don't have to. (I believe it's a quote from Atomic Monsters in season 15, but I don't have that on hand).

They're each on their own level of war within the cosmic hierarchy. (Ordinary life -> Hunting life -> Men of Letters life -> angelic war -> archangels & gods)

///

The nature of the Ouroboros

I think all of these conversations can be applied to the nurture versus nature dilemma, as well as the chicken/egg/snake one.

Jack is characterized by a dualistic nature: he's both predator and prey, angel and human, heavenly and primitive, lion-coded and nurturing. I think he absolutely struggles with simultaneous bloodlust and the need to protect.

The war within leads to this tendency to self-annihilate, I think. He's not just the chicken or just the snake; he's like the ouroboros itself, eating its own tail in perpetuity as a doomed immortal, dying and coming back to life, like a zombie.

I'm reminded, too, that Jack's quintessential fetal episode (12x19) is filled with circle motifs, like Cas using his hand to complete Dean's circle. But Jack is intrinsically a complete circle without any aid from others; he's Heaven and Earth.

I'll ponder on it over the next few days and get back to you, but above are the motifs that come to mind when trying to stitch these two concepts together!

///

addendum:

Greed

PLACEHOLDER from comments @dawg-motif:

oh I also forgot to add, if this was meant to be a story of greed and jack IS meant to embody the greedy snake alongside the chicken, could him destroying his soul to save or “keep��� his family be the greed in question?

REFERENCE: The story of the chicken and the snake:

Noah: Have you ever heard the story of the black snake? Once there was a crafty black snake who kept eating this poor chicken's eggs. She couldn't watch them all the time, you see? The black snake would wait until she was gone and then slide one of the eggs into his mouth and crush it in his throat. Now, this went on until there was only one egg left. But when the chicken left that egg, just for a moment, the snake swallowed it up. But for some reason, he couldn't crush it in his throat. The chicken had hard-boiled her final egg just to choke the snake. And the snake died. Castiel: Why are you telling this story? Noah: [ Chuckles ] Because I can't quite tell if he's the chicken or the snake.

///

Jack: What does it mean? Castiel: It's a story about greed mostly. But I guess it's also -- it's also about being willing to give up the thing you love in order to kill the thing you hate. Jack: He said that he didn't know if I was the chicken or the snake. Castiel: Does that -- Dean. (Just then Jack and Cas hear noises and find Dean in Sickbay tearing it apart)

Is the story of the chicken and the snake really about greed, or is it more to do with the specific type of hunger? That is, it could be about the hunger needed to stay alive and keep your loved ones alive, and so it leads to a kind of warped altruism.

Greed is defined as the immoderate love or desire for riches and earthly possessions. A person can also be greedy for fame, attention, power, or anything else that feeds one's selfishness. As a deadly sin, greed is believed to spur other sins and further immoral behavior.

We recall the words Cas has about famine from 5x14:

SAM: I thought famine meant starvation, like as in, you know, food. CASTIEL: Yes. Absolutely. But not just food. I mean, everyone seems to be starving for something--Sex, attention, drugs, love... DEAN: Well, that explains the puppy-lovers that Cupid shot up. CASTIEL: Right. The cherub made them crave love, and then Famine came, and made them rabid for it.

TBD // discussion

[brittlebutch]

i kind of hate to say it because i feel like i'll get pushback for it,,, but i kind of feel like if you're going to be making informational posts about autism online you do need to be reading actual autism research and literature. at least some of the times. like you can't just make things up and then present them as fact.

[us-the-voices-and-more-voices-2]

a quick reminder to everyone

I have SEVERE LEARNING DISABILITIES

I am literally disabled because of my learning disabilities, I have faced literal descrimnation because of it.

everytime you call us retarded or a retard you are ACTIVLY upholding the systems in which I am trapped in.

I take more offence in being called a retard than anything due to the literal DECADES of systematic abuse and descrimnation from the medical system, every single government resource, and almost all school alternatives.

fuck you greatly if you use these words against us, I have to live in a country where they hate people like me and would rather us dead than to do literally anything to help people like us.

call us what you will, but I will never call anyone retarded because it’s a basic decency reserved for everyone.

I’m a very happy retard, fuck your ableism!

I will happily live and love and learn even if THE LITERAL GOVERNMENT doesn’t want me too.

(yeah being a mid supports autistic with other learning disabilities and disabilities in general that made me unable to attend a school just means I deserve to die. 100% legit I deal with this literally all the time always fuck the Australian government)

so again fuck you all greatly, for using a literal slur against me one that has been used against me since I was a baby.

fuck you all, genuinely.

did I forfeit my rights to be treated as a human being the moment I had a bit of trouble learning things? Because if I did I’d like to break someone’s teeth with a brick.

Edit: the language and lines between what the fuck developmental disabilities and intellectual disability are is confusing as fuck.

I have gotten very confused between the 2 because they are grouped together half the time.

My apologies to everyone for being utterly confused where I fall because it is extremely confusing to figure out, and internationally it varies wildly according to my brief reading.

I did not mean to be mean or anything I just was genuinely going off what I’ve been told most my life lol.

Shout out to my developmentally disabled brethren you are loved

[synthetic-rust]

What they don’t tell you about autism is that it feels like you’re simultaneously one step outside of reality yet two steps too far into it at all times

[puppppppppy]

who up seeing their disorder in a fictional character but feel like its not their place to put a name on it

[kirby-the-gorb]

[rackartyg]

in therapy today i just talked about the dark urge and astarion and my therapist was elated about it. it was fantastic. “wow you’ve really been using this story and those characters to process things. that’s amazing!”

the era of being ashamed of my interests is over. it’s apparently Cool and Healthy to use fiction to cope. i wish i could tell fifteen year old me about this it would blow her mind

[marcmorrigan]

i finished the duel monsters dub for the first time ever last night (!!!) so i figured i oughta lock down my faces for the aibous... what a show, man

[dallonwrites]

my autistic ass when i would try to explain to my non-autistic writer friends how my ocs don’t just feel like characters/plot devices/narrative tools, they feel like fully fledged people that just live inside my brain who i just have access to for some reason and the stories i write are merely a snapshot into their fully fledged personhood/lives. and that that these feelings don’t mean i’m unaware of my role/agency/responsibility as the writer who has the final say in these characters and how they are written it just means that my writing process feels very intuitive and i can only describe it as “listening” and “getting to know” these people that just live inside my brain in a way that i don’t feel like i can completely elaborate on. and because of this i would actually consider these characters “real” in their own way because the impact and influence they have had on me as a person beyond just my writing is so real and not having them would feel like i’m missing a part of myself 

[tunapesto]

girls when they are their mothers daughter and the birth of a new self etc

[manie-sans-delire-x]

I dont think my therapist meant it this way but I feel like she basically told me I should have just told the guy who raped me to "stop" and I essentially should have just pushed harder and its my fault and if I had just expressed my boundaries more firmly he would have stopped. She told me guys are taught from birth to listen to "stop" and so they ignore everything else and only understand when its a direct "no stop". My question is, is every guy fucking retarded? "I dont want to have sex tonight" "I dont want to go all the way tonight" "Wait" "Hold on" "I thought we werent going to have sex" "I need a break" "I need to go home" "Can I have some water?" and crying and trying to put on clothes and covering your vagina with your hand are all saying stop. He lied and said he didnt hear me, then even he admitted that he heard me and just didnt want to stop. Men arent fucking stupid and I wish people would stop letting them off the hook with the "Im socially stupid" excuse. You dont all have fucking autism.

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

i love shiny hunters like they fucking do the same shit over and over again for tens of thousands of hours hunting like and they’ll make it even more difficult for themselves by hunting really obscure and rare things like? the fucking title screen minncino??? you can’t even keep that. people will do the most monotonous tasks for months or years for a cartoon sparkle and they enjoy it.

[angelstrawbabie420]

dear god im so autistic