Autism - Blog Posts
here’s a story about changelings
reposted from my old blog, which got deleted: Mary was a beautiful baby, sweet and affectionate, but by the time she’s three she’s turned difficult and strange, with fey moods and a stubborn mouth that screams and bites but never says mama. But her mother’s well-used to hard work with little thanks, and when the village gossips wag their tongues she just shrugs, and pulls her difficult child away from their precious, perfect blossoms, before the bites draw blood. Mary’s mother doesn’t drown her in a bucket of saltwater, and she doesn’t take up the silver knife the wife of the village priest leaves out for her one Sunday brunch. She gives her daughter yarn, instead, and instead of a rowan stake through her inhuman heart she gives her a child’s first loom, oak and ash. She lets her vicious, uncooperative fairy daughter entertain herself with games of her own devising, in as much peace and comfort as either of them can manage. Mary grows up strangely, as a strange child would, learning everything in all the wrong order, and biting a great deal more than she should. But she also learns to weave, and takes to it with a grand passion. Soon enough she knows more than her mother–which isn’t all that much–and is striking out into unknown territory, turning out odd new knots and weaves, patterns as complex as spiderwebs and spellrings. “Aren’t you clever,” her mother says, of her work, and leaves her to her wool and flax and whatnot. Mary’s not biting anymore, and she smiles more than she frowns, and that’s about as much, her mother figures, as anyone should hope for from their child. Mary still cries sometimes, when the other girls reject her for her strange graces, her odd slow way of talking, her restless reaching fluttering hands that have learned to spin but never to settle. The other girls call her freak, witchblood, hobgoblin. “I don’t remember girls being quite so stupid when I was that age,” her mother says, brushing Mary’s hair smooth and steady like they’ve both learned to enjoy, smooth as a skein of silk. “Time was, you knew not to insult anyone you might need to flatter later. ‘Specially when you don’t know if they’re going to grow wings or horns or whatnot. Serve ‘em all right if you ever figure out curses.” “I want to go back,” Mary says. “I want to go home, to where I came from, where there’s people like me. If I’m a fairy’s child I should be in fairyland, and no one would call me a freak.” “Aye, well, I’d miss you though,” her mother says. “And I expect there’s stupid folk everywhere, even in fairyland. Cruel folk, too. You just have to make the best of things where you are, being my child instead.” Mary learns to read well enough, in between the weaving, especially when her mother tracks down the traveling booktraders and comes home with slim, precious manuals on dyes and stains and mordants, on pigments and patterns, diagrams too arcane for her own eyes but which make her daughter’s eyes shine. “We need an herb garden,” her daughter says, hands busy, flipping from page to page, pulling on her hair, twisting in her skirt, itching for a project. “Yarrow, and madder, and woad and weld…” “Well, start digging,” her mother says. “Won’t do you a harm to get out of the house now’n then.” Mary doesn’t like dirt but she’s learned determination well enough from her mother. She digs and digs, and plants what she’s given, and the first year doesn’t turn out so well but the second’s better, and by the third a cauldron’s always simmering something over the fire, and Mary’s taking in orders from girls five years older or more, turning out vivid bolts and spools and skeins of red and gold and blue, restless fingers dancing like they’ve summoned down the rainbow. Her mother figures she probably has. “Just as well you never got the hang of curses,” she says, admiring her bright new skirts. “I like this sort of trick a lot better.” Mary smiles, rocking back and forth on her heels, fingers already fluttering to find the next project. She finally grows up tall and fair, if a bit stooped and squinty, and time and age seem to calm her unhappy mouth about as well as it does for human children. Word gets around she never lies or breaks a bargain, and if the first seems odd for a fairy’s child then the second one seems fit enough. The undyed stacks of taken orders grow taller, the dyed lots of filled orders grow brighter, the loom in the corner for Mary’s own creations grows stranger and more complex. Mary’s hands callus just like her mother’s, become as strong and tough and smooth as the oak and ash of her needles and frames, though they never fall still. “Do you ever wonder what your real daughter would be like?” the priest’s wife asks, once. Mary’s mother snorts. “She wouldn’t be worth a damn at weaving,” she says. “Lord knows I never was. No, I’ll keep what I’ve been given and thank the givers kindly. It was a fair enough trade for me. Good day, ma’am.” Mary brings her mother sweet chamomile tea, that night, and a warm shawl in all the colors of a garden, and a hairbrush. In the morning, the priest’s son comes round, with payment for his mother’s pretty new dress and a shy smile just for Mary. He thinks her hair is nice, and her hands are even nicer, vibrant in their strength and skill and endless motion. They all live happily ever after. * Here’s another story: Gregor grew fast, even for a boy, grew tall and big and healthy and began shoving his older siblings around early. He was blunt and strange and flew into rages over odd things, over the taste of his porridge or the scratch of his shirt, over the sound of rain hammering on the roof, over being touched when he didn’t expect it and sometimes even when he did. He never wore shoes if he could help it and he could tell you the number of nails in the floorboards without looking, and his favorite thing was to sit in the pantry and run his hands through the bags of dry barley and corn and oat. Considering as how he had fists like a young ox by the time he was five, his family left him to it. “He’s a changeling,” his father said to his wife, expecting an argument, but men are often the last to know anything about their children, and his wife only shrugged and nodded, like the matter was already settled, and that was that. They didn’t bind Gregor in iron and leave him in the woods for his own kind to take back. They didn’t dig him a grave and load him into it early. They worked out what made Gregor angry, in much the same way they figured out the personal constellations of emotion for each of their other sons, and when spring came, Gregor’s father taught him about sprouts, and when autumn came, Gregor’s father taught him about sheaves. Meanwhile his mother didn’t mind his quiet company around the house, the way he always knew where she’d left the kettle, or the mending, because she was forgetful and he never missed a detail. “Pity you’re not a girl, you’d never drop a stitch of knitting,” she tells Gregor, in the winter, watching him shell peas. His brothers wrestle and yell before the hearth fire, but her fairy child just works quietly, turning peas by their threes and fours into the bowl. “You know exactly how many you’ve got there, don’t you?” she says. “Six hundred and thirteen,” he says, in his quiet, precise way. His mother says “Very good,” and never says Pity you’re not human. He smiles just like one, if not for quite the same reasons. The next autumn he’s seven, a lucky number that pleases him immensely, and his father takes him along to the mill with the grain. “What you got there?” The miller asks them. “Sixty measures of Prince barley, thirty two measures of Hare’s Ear corn, and eighteen of Abernathy Blue Slate oats,” Gregor says. “Total weight is three hundred fifty pounds, or near enough. Our horse is named Madam. The wagon doesn’t have a name. I’m Gregor.” “My son,” his father says. “The changeling one.” “Bit sharper’n your others, ain’t he?” the miller says, and his father laughs. Gregor feels proud and excited and shy, and it dries up all his words, sticks them in his throat. The mill is overwhelming, but the miller is kind, and tells him the name of each and every part when he points at it, and the names of all the grain in all the bags waiting for him to get to them. “Didn’t know the fair folk were much for machinery,” the miller says. Gregor shrugs. “I like seeds,” he says, each word shelled out with careful concentration. “And names. And numbers.” “Aye, well. Suppose that’d do it. Want t’help me load up the grist?” They leave the grain with the miller, who tells Gregor’s father to bring him back ‘round when he comes to pick up the cornflour and cracked barley and rolled oats. Gregor falls asleep in the nameless wagon on the way back, and when he wakes up he goes right back to the pantry, where the rest of the seeds are left, and he runs his hands through the shifting, soothing textures and thinks about turning wheels, about windspeed and counterweights. When he’s twelve–another lucky number–he goes to live in the mill with the miller, and he never leaves, and he lives happily ever after. * Here’s another: James is a small boy who likes animals much more than people, which doesn’t bother his parents overmuch, as someone needs to watch the sheep and make the sheepdogs mind. James learns the whistles and calls along with the lambs and puppies, and by the time he’s six he’s out all day, tending to the flock. His dad gives him a knife and his mom gives him a knapsack, and the sheepdogs give him doggy kisses and the sheep don’t give him too much trouble, considering. “It’s not right for a boy to have so few complaints,” his mother says, once, when he’s about eight. “Probably ain’t right for his parents to have so few complaints about their boy, neither,” his dad says. That’s about the end of it. James’ parents aren’t very talkative, either. They live the routines of a farm, up at dawn and down by dusk, clucking softly to the chickens and calling harshly to the goats, and James grows up slow but happy. When James is eleven, he’s sent to school, because he’s going to be a man and a man should know his numbers. He gets in fights for the first time in his life, unused to peers with two legs and loud mouths and quick fists. He doesn’t like the feel of slate and chalk against his fingers, or the harsh bite of a wooden bench against his legs. He doesn’t like the rules: rules for math, rules for meals, rules for sitting down and speaking when you’re spoken to and wearing shoes all day and sitting under a low ceiling in a crowded room with no sheep or sheepdogs. Not even a puppy. But his teacher is a good woman, patient and experienced, and James isn’t the first miserable, rocking, kicking, crying lost lamb ever handed into her care. She herds the other boys away from him, when she can, and lets him sit in the corner by the door, and have a soft rag to hold his slate and chalk with, so they don’t gnaw so dryly at his fingers. James learns his numbers well enough, eventually, but he also learns with the abruptness of any lamb taking their first few steps–tottering straight into a gallop–to read. Familiar with the sort of things a strange boy needs to know, his teacher gives him myths and legends and fairytales, and steps back. James reads about Arthur and Morgana, about Hercules and Odysseus, about djinni and banshee and brownies and bargains and quests and how sometimes, something that looks human is left to try and stumble along in the humans’ world, step by uncertain step, as best they can. James never comes to enjoy writing. He learns to talk, instead, full tilt, a leaping joyous gambol, and after a time no one wants to hit him anymore. The other boys sit next to him, instead, with their mouths closed, and their hands quiet on their knees. “Let’s hear from James,” the men at the alehouse say, years later, when he’s become a man who still spends more time with sheep than anyone else, but who always comes back into town with something grand waiting for his friends on his tongue. “What’ve you got for us tonight, eh?” James finishes his pint, and stands up, and says, “Here’s a story about changelings.”
I remember relating to Elphaba so much after seeing the show when I was like 11 because she was just as socially oblivious as me. Turns out she was being sarcastic, but I didn't get it because autism.
People not having panic attacks is such a foreign concept to me. Like... you mean to tell me that you can just go into a noisy, crowded store and just be fine? You can engage in a conversation with multiple people without snapping at them? Weird
I had a teacher just last week who was actively talking about how you shouldn't discriminate against other students, and he was specifically talking about disabled students. Midway through this talk, he looks back at me, (I'd been stimming pretty hard the whole time) and he says "what are you, playing air guitar?" And I was so shocked by how ironic it was, that I didn't even say anything.
•Harry Potter
•Miraculous Ladybug
•Sherlock Holmes
•Autism and Adhd
•Greek Gods and greek mythology
I saw this meme going around on twitter and I think it'll be perfect for this account.
List 5 topics you can talk on for an hour without preparing any material.
My all-time favourite youtubers decided to stop posting in july. I truly can't believe that people I have followed for 5 years now are just- gone? Parasocial relationships going hard right now.
Just had two crying meltdowns and three nonverbal episodes in one day :D. Autism is lovely, school is clearly wonderful for my mental health, and the only things mentally holding me together on a day-to-day basis are the promise that my friends will still be there in the morning, and also my weighted blanket. Life is wonderful and I am doing great! Promise!
i just remember sitting with my parents before school saying i just cant go and them telling me exactly this. i really hated going to school, it was loud and people never liked me that much. i felt strange all the time but i just tried to pretend i wasn’t some days, then others it was too much and i just couldn’t handle anything
after 11 tabs, 2 video essays, 6 hours of chatting on discord, 4 meals, 7 zone-out sessions, 4 doodle pages, 2 illustrations, 10 hours of twitter scrolling, 3 hour naps, 1 DnD session, 7 hours of tumblr scrolling, 15 hours of switching between social medias, 5 youtube videos about my hyperfixation, 2 hours of wikipedia hopping, 4 mental breakdowns, 3 hours of make-up, 9 hours of outfit wearing, and 12 old youtube videos, I FINALLY finished my 5 minute homework! ^_^
tumblr is where i allow myself to unmask i thinks(or as close to unmasking as i can while still interacting)
Having depression and autism plus hyper fixations is crazy cause whaddya mean I was sobbing uncontrollably unable to leave my bed this morning but now I’m jumping around and squealing with joy cause I read a cool comic book???
Autism: Bruce Wayne, Damian Wayne/Al Ghul, Cassandra Cain.
OCD: Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake.
ADHD: Stephanie Brown, Dick Grayson.
Neurotypical: Alfred Pennyworth.
None of the above: Jason Todd, Duke Thomas.
Head-canoning Damian Wayne and Cassandra Cain as autistic is like seeing these two assassin children who already having the HARDEST time transitioning into (western) society and deciding to give them another truckload of difficulties.
Oh, you come from a very strict background that barely/didnt at all give you the freedom to be you? WELL GOOD LUCK TRYING TO FIND OUT WHO YOU ARE AFTER UNMASKING!
Oh, you already struggle to understand what people mean and you don’t get why people are the way they are? BOOM, NOW YOU ONLY UNDERSTAND SARCASM HALF THE TIME!
Oh, the societal norms are completely different yet just as (if not more) suffocating? HAHA, EYE CONTACT MAKES YOU WANNA SCREAM!
Dc technically makes the rules, but they lost that right after shipping Cass off to HongKong.
So fuck it, I make the rules now and DAMIAN WAYNE AND CASSANDRA CAIN ARE BOTH AUTISTIC
They both get it from Bruce (idc that Cass isn’t biologically related to Bruce, he birthed her and Damian and THATS FINAL)
Damian and cassandra are autistic siblings I’m sorry I don’t make the rules
I think Apollo from toa is really autistic-coded, both as Lester and as godly Apollo. That thing that he does where he lies even tho it goes his natural instincts, yeah, that's masking I've decided.
One of his domains is order and structure? Autism.
Has a bunch special interests as domain then has a domain specifically for 'knowledge'? Autism.
God of prophecy? That's practically pattern recognition. Autism.
God of truth? Autisic folks are known to be brutally honest.
Autism.
Gets especially attached to objects and things? Autism. (Cows, instruments, ext)
Talks really formall with a mix of slang? Autism. It does not matter that he is over 4000 years old this is how I speak so autism.
We all know he has a strong sense of justice that he ignored too often as a god.
Forgets things as Lester? ADHD. That's right. He's actually Audhd-coded.
Every time I see a post about the autism coding in Supernatural and Deans not mentioned I scream.
There is something so frustrating about autism traits being overlooked in characters because there not the 'typical' traits.
And I don't even mean that people overlook it on purpose. I just think that Cas's type of autism is so much more 'oh, it's autism'. Even nuerotypical viewers probably noticed it. However, Dean's autism coding is noticable but it also has a layer of masking and fake ultra masculinity. (Anyone ever notice how Sam is actually the one who's more traditionally masculine or is that just me?) It seems to me that because a character sometimes masks, people ignore the blatant traits.
Or they find him hot and no one can admit that the white guy that they find attractive can possibly be autistic.
These three pieces of media have a trend
I love these movies and shows so much and I want to talk about just one reason I love them:
Autism.
The three main characters of all these franchises have a similar situation. They are all weird and friendless and they have a dream that no one believes that they can accomplish.
Izuku with his dream to be a hero. PO with his dream to be a Kung Fu warrior and Hiccup with his dream (at first) to kill a dragon (which turned into being friends with dragons).
They are all bullied and ridiculed. What I find really interesting though is there's The reason for them being bullied and then the hidden and (seemingly) more likely reason that they are bullied. Izuku is quirkless, no one thinks he can be a hero because he has no powers. PO is big, no one thinks that he has the body to be a warrior and Hiccup is small. As he says, he's a walking fishbone.
However from what I can tell, those are merely (horrible, might I add) excuses to hate on them. Like what gobber says, 'its what's on the inside that they can't stand.'
What I don't get is that in Mha, 20% of the population is quirkless. In a school of just 300 there would be sixty kids who didn't have a quirk. I know we didn't see much of other quirkless kids but I really do think that the bullying that Izuku received would have been much worse than everyone else. It seems to me that the main reason that they don't like him, (especially Bakugo) is because of his personality. Because he's annoying.
I think that a big reason they hated him was because they noticed autistic traits, didn't understand it was autism (or cared) and didn't like it.
(I can make a separate post about why I think all these characters are autistic)
Now with Kung Fu Panda. (I just want to say really quick that I do not mean to take away from the real situations and ridicule that plus size people receive. I know that it happens and I know it can be really bad and I'm sorry for anyone who experienced bullying. I think that Po does face a lot of discrimination just because of his body, I just want to highlight the underlining albeism that seems to be present)
Po in my opinion is so clearly Audhd. He has an intense interest on Kung fu and everything surrounding it. He knows everything about the five, and he misses a ton of social cues. He just blurts things out and doesn't realize how they can be inappropriate for nuerotypical standards.
When Shifu first speaks with him he is immediately unimpressed. Yes, he does bring up (if I can recall correctly) his 'flabby' body. But it was also because Po was so excited and he was speaking in a way that Shifu or one of the five wouldn't. He was describing all the artifacts and knew exactly what the pinky hold was.
In fact, to me, the movie wouldn't have happened if Shifu didn't accept Po's weirdness. Really, in the end, Pos's body shape wasn't a detriment at all and I think Shifu knew this. He's worked with so many different species before, he has to know that every type of body has their own value. He teaches a prey mantis for crying out loud.
And also, I don't think most of Po's insecurities came from his size. To me, he seemed mostly insecure about himself inwardly. (Though I haven't watched the movie in a few months) Come on though, the whole secret ingredient thing? I think there was a reason that when he looked into the scroll it only showed his face.
Yes, his size did help a lot in the fight and I love that part of the movie so much but his creativity and his differentness helped a ton too. He literally imagined the scroll as a comfort food to get to it first... I mean, are they even trying to hide it? (We know it's his comfort food cause he literally did the splits to get to them when he got upset)
I'll move on to How to Train your Dragon now. Hiccup had ADHD. Hiccup has autism. I think that's a universally accepted, right? I think most of the movie is a metaphor for nuerdivergence. The movies already have amazing physical disability representation but that came later. In the first few minutes, we already knew something was different about Hiccup compared to everyone else. He was impulsive, he didn't listen, once he was set on something he was going to accomplish it, he said things without thinking, he was terrible with socializing. Especially with those his age. Gobber said, and I loosely quote, "it's not what's on the outside, it's what's on the inside that he can't stand."
That boy didn't have any friends until he met the dragon that he shot down. I'm sorry, or is that not the most autistic thing you ever heard. It's like autisitic people and their animals. My dog was and is my best friend. Always will be. And a dragon is basically a giant cat/dog, and reptile.
He didn't get friends until his 'uniqueness' set him apart in a 'good' way. It wasn't until he was useful and cool that he got any human friends which is something I wished they touched on in Race to the Edge. Like, Hiccup has to have some insecurity surrounding that, right?
Anyway, my point is, whenever you see a character get bullied. Just remember that they are most likely nuerodivergent and that's probably why none of the characters like them. Peter Parker is included in this list.
I headcannon Alastor as autistic and sure I can explain all my reasons but this is more important:
Made by Always_Wrong
OKAY, so I know no one ever talks about SAO abridged on here but it's version of Kirito is like definitely autistic, right? I have the tism and I'm just saying, he probably has it too.
I'm not sure about the original Kirito since I couldn't get through season one but i genuinely feel so connected to abridged Kirito. He's so bad at socializing, he's so insecure, and he has a special interest in video games. I mean come on, he would rather live in a video game than in reality. Season 2 really shows the true scope of his autism. He went through serious character growth the last season so he's a lot less egotistical in this one. Because of this we can see what he was hiding before. He genuinely cares about Tiffany and their friendship and he shows this by directly stating it which is like a literal and blunt way to do things which can be autistic. He gets all excited about the new VR fairy game to the point he didn't hear Tiffany talk about his missing wife. He starts rambling and My God I love that scene so much cause he's just so happy and we don't get to see him happy too much. His little "Noooooooo," when he was acting out him destroying all the noobs lives in head rent free.
Kirito also speaks in a lot of sarcasm and movie references. And that is not necessarily an autism symptom but I do that a lot and so do a lot of other autistic people I know. He also takes things literally, like when Asuna (is that how you spell it?) said he really speaks from the heart in episode 2 and he responds, "I thought I was speaking from my mouth, guess that shows what I know about autonomy." He seemed completely serious too.
I just LOVE this Kirito so much to the point when SAO is mentioned I want to say I love that anime but then I remember that it's not the anime that I love but the abridged version on YouTube. Like, I see Kirito fan art and I have to remind myself that it's not the character I fell in love with.
I find it kinda funny that I resonate so much with a fan made thing rather then the original.
Anyway, this giant thing is just a scratch on the surface of reasons I love SAO abridged. The character development, humor, emotional moments and story beats are just so good.
I can go on and on about why I think Kirito is autistic too. Like, I only named a few things.
