#and yeah for the record we do have autistic/ADHD people

[bloomingbluebell]

is there a way to explain to my "no excuse for laziness" family how executive dysfunction works? how autism and ADHD works? how they're not quirks or funny but often quite painful and distressing? (genuine questions)

i'm going to start crying if i have to talk with mom about my future one more time

(more of the rant in the tags. sorry)

[desert-bluffs-and-me]

Cecil Palmer has ADHD (like, maybe)?

In reference to this;

How can I say no to our local barista district? Disclaimer: The things I know about ADHD are based purely on internet research and therefore I may bring up some stereotypes or incorrect assumptions for which I apologise. Also although I'm using canon examples, I'm not saying this is intentional the way Carlos being autistic clearly is (unless it turns out to be, then ha! I knew it!).

So, does Cecil meet the criteria? Does he Cecil...

Make small mistakes like forgetting dates, misreading instructions, forgetting instructions, mislaying things etc. Yeah, all of the time. Now we can blame the dates thing in NV weirdness, sure, but when time becomes a bit more right post-Huntocarr this isn't something Cecil improves in. He also sometimes reads out the wrong thing and has to correct himself (in particularly, horrorscopes) or reads out things he was specifically told not to read out (most things about Dark Owl Records tbh). Always with an apologise or a 'oh no oops' though so it's not a malicious choice to say it wrong.

Poor organisational skills/inability to prioritise/finding it hard to do certain things (even if he wants to) through seeming lack of motivation? Now you look at this man and tell me his desk isn't a mess. But seriously, he breaks off to gossip during his show seemingly at random and I think it's just down to him being unable to tell (until too late) that such information doesn't need to be said right now on his news show. This has gotten him into trouble with Station Management multiple times. He also seems to use the interns to organise things around the station for him possibly because he has trouble with it himself (RIP the one intern who organised themselves into alphabetical order by organ when doing other stuff) and even has the interns proofread his Jaws slash fic which is uhhh...not their job Cecil they are here to learn about radio and help you with your job lol priorities please. Not to mention he says he loves journalism where he can go out himself but sees to send his interns a lot. This could be for many reasons but could just be that he Just Can't because of a lack of motivation/energy/ability thing.

Forgetfulness - Trauma? Lyme Disease induced fog? ADHD? Who knows.

Difficulty keeping quiet, and speaking out of turn - Cecil canonically had to take lessons in order to learn how to have a proper conversation with people because he had a hard time letting others talk and listening to/remembering what they've said.

Cecil's moods tend to ebb and flow rather suddenly, going from calm to screaming, from terrified to calm, from calm to squealing with happiness and showing a little hyperactivity in his sudden gushing and aahing at something he finds cute. He could just be like that but you could interpret it a 'sudden mood swings' sometimes seen in ADHD.

Cecil isn't extremely risky, but he does tend to deal with his stress via drinking and just not taking care of himself very well which could count as risk taking behaviour or an inability to deal with stress? He does get flustered and worked up very easily which could be him genuinely having trouble regulating stress and other such extreme emotions.

That's all I've personally got but if anyone (especially those who know more about ADHD/ADD than myself) wants to add things on I'd be so happy~!

[prxckedradiolove]

Rtc headcanons? Thoughts of any kind?

ok ok some obvious ones are ofc that ricky is autistic and adhd i mean veryone knows that and mischa is adhd tooo and ofc penny would be autsitic that's real for real okay oaky neurotypes outta the way

i've always had this mischa headcannon that although he is well-cultured he won't understand just small things like if he accidentally opens an app on his phone that didn't know he had or the the toaster isn't working he'll just get frustrated 🤭🤭

noel's favorite food is caviar. idk man.

jane's special intrest is lions and wants to infodump at you right now🙏🙏👌

not a headcannon but i kinda relate to ricky an it's scary 😰😰

also ricky makes super baller stylistic art and it's ✨✨

ocean wants to punch people but it would look bad on her permanent record

these are getting less and less specific 😭💀

for some reason i've always imagined Constance having a loft bed - no idea why that's there but yeah. she just does. as a kid Ocean wanted to go to Constance's house only because of it. she would use the excuse that "we can't go to my house because my parents are doing yoga and it's weird." but she just wanted that dang loft bed man.

that's all for now 🤭🤭😩

[shrimpmandan]

do you mean you feel alienated around self diagnosed autistic people? (aka 99% of the online autistic community) because if so I completely agree. I'm not sure if you have access to it but I go to public therapy for disabled adulta (if you're over 18) and in my group there is a bunch of autistic/adhd people. we usually talk about medication, funny stories about therapy and experiences with growing up autistic and such. it's pretty relieving, and completely different from speaking to autistic people online, which just feels like talking to neurotypicals

No I feel alienated around autistic people. And people in general. It's for a lot of reasons tbh, not JUST being autistic, but I've definitely have had grievances with the autistic community online for some time now. This is because there's this prevalent idea that what does or doesn't work for one autistic person must be true for every autistic person, which inevitably leads to alienation. I'm considered weird and offputting even by the standards of other autistic people. This isn't an uncommon experience for me.

Also, part of my alienation comes from the general politics of the online autistic community. I call myself Asperger's and high-functioning, which while I totally get why other people don't call themselves that, it's just kinda what I grew up with and what works for me. Also being trans on top of that, and hearing so many autistic people talk about how they personally don't understand gender, whereas I didn't have much of an issue with it (I view it through a strictly neuroscientific lens; I don't do well with metaphors and vague feelings). Being told I can't say "retarded" even though I've been CALLED retarded, not to mention directly threatened (I was nearly shot lmao) over being autistic. A mixture of oppression olympics among autists, and also 'higher-functioning' autistic people speaking over 'lower-functioning' autistic people. My stims also don't get represented much (I don't really flap, I've always been more of a rocker/bouncer/vocal stimmer) and I don't fit into the "good autist" role that a lot of people-- both neurodivergent and neurotypical-- want out of me. All this to not even mention how I get alienated for my other forms of neurodivergence, with people in general being extremely ableist towards those with OCD and dissociative disorders.

All I'm saying is it's not self-diagnosed autists who make my life harder. Not when me and most of my family has had to resort to self-diagnosis due to doctors not listening to us or just a simple inability to even see a doctor due to a lack of money and time. Actually, most of the people I click with are the self-diagnosed "I think I might be neurodivergent" people-- whether that's autism, ADHD, or some other various neurodivergence. The self-diagnosed people are my immediate family, as well as my friends who had to figure out they're neurodivergent because nobody else told them, or gaslit them over it. We're pro-selfdx here, and honestly therapy is the least of my concerns right now, at least when it comes to autism. I don't need therapy for being autistic. I don't need therapy to teach me how to be normal. I need therapy to teach me how to live. Y'know, tackling my ACTUALLY problematic disorders, like my severe OCD and CPTSD and what I believe to be some form of OSDD. ADHD... yeah I just need meds for that, it is what it is. But I've been in therapy SEVERAL times for my autism, with people who were supposedly specialized in it, and even they didn't really know what to do with me. So shrug lmao.

For the record I am professionally diagnosed with autism. I'm actually self-diagnosed with most of the other mental health issues I occasionally talk about here (ADHD, OCD, OSDD, et cetera). I'd LOVE to get diagnosed but we're just not in a financial situation where we can rn. I don't like throwing self-diagnosed people under the bus-- more often than not they're just trying to understand themselves and genuinely don't have the ability to access proper resources. I don't really think of the cringe "faking disorders for attention and spreading misinformation" people when I hear about self-diagnosis, personally. I think about people who have been gaslit and told either that they're weird/bad children their whole lives, or even the reverse where they're told they're gifted, before they begin to struggle and then are promptly abandoned. I went through the latter more than the former.

[thegoldfiles]

So this just happened on mobox's Facebook. It's translated in english because his post was in Spanish. And there was A LOT more in this post, I just screenshotted the parts that stand out to me

It could be just Facebook having poor ass translation, but did he seriously involve disease alongside with disorders in one sentence??

There's some things I agree with in this post, however he rants about people self diagnosing. Some people don't have the money to get professionally diagnosed (as he has mentioned) and some people have poor rude psychologists in general that result into them self diagnosing. Self diagnosing isn't bad imo! As long as you do enough research! Plus getting a professional diagnosis in the UK as autistic will affect your medical records and it literally makes surgeons decline to take your surgery because you aren't "mentally stable"..

And I find it hypocritical that mobox is asking to not romanticize these things when he's romantisizing abuse SO much.

There was more I wanted to say but it's late for me and I forgot.

- [ This is said by a autistic folk > me :) ]

(Putting these two asks together because it deals with the same subject)

I agree with almost everything you said, but his disorders are definitely not the cause of his behavior, not by a long shot.

It's pretty hypocritical since he also romanticizes ab*se. But Mobox has been shown to blame his disorders for his behavior as an excuse for what he's done (Mobox has anxiety, depression, and ADHD). This was shown in Mobox's "apology" to Kev after watching her video about her experiences with him. We discussed this here

In my personal opinion, yeah, self-diagnosing isn't bad as long as you do your own research and you're not doing it for attention or faking it

For example, some people can't get professionally diagnosed (even if they show a lot of the signs of a disorder) because their parents won't let them get a diagnosis, or like you said, they can't afford it, or it'll affect medical records

Though yeah, him putting diseases in the same sentence that involves disorders is pretty scummy, but still.

TL; DR: Mobox made a post on Facebook discussing people who self-diagnose themselves with mental disorders

[wyn-n-tonic]

Hello.

I hope this isn’t to personal. You can ignore it if it is, but I read your post about your diagnoses and…it…just really spoke to me. For a few years now I have suspected that am on the spectrum and the more I read about experiences like yours I get more and more convinced. I just….how did you go about bringing it up to your doctors? Did you have to go for testing to get the diagnosis? I’m really nervous to bring it up to my doctors. I am worried that they are gonna look at me like I am looking for attention or something. I am in my mid 30s and I’m afraid that they are going to question why I am bringing it up now. How can it be possible that I have lived 35 years and am just now bringing it up? The sad thing is that it’s affecting how I live my life and, if I am being honest, has affected my entire life. I feel isolated and alone. I want to grow these friendships that I am keeping at arms length.

hi, babes! this isn't something that i feel is too personal. i like to consider myself an open book for two reasons: 1) these things are just facts of my life, they happened or are happening and just speaking on them has no positive or negative connotations, they're just true. 2) if there's any small possibility that something i went through and my willingness to talk about it can help somebody else then i'm okay with living with pain or reliving it because it means others don't have to feel so alone.

this is a very long post so i am going to cut it.

so... bringing it up in your thirties is super not weird. especially if you are a woman (or AFAB). so much of our understanding of autism is still developing, it's still being researched, it's still being understood. and, like ADHD, it presents differently in girls than it does in boys and, well... healthcare is sexist. there's also still a lot of really fucked up biases that people have where they think of those with autism as being high support needs (otherwise known as low functionality but i fucking hate that term) because, again, they do not understand that it is on a spectrum.

and first of all, i want to say that self diagnosis is super valid and accepted within the autistic community. even if i said in that post that i don't feel like i am enough of anything to belong anywhere, i know that that statement is still true. i think that i'm closer to the end of the spectrum than either of my sisters but i'm still there and, really, how much is that just because i've learned to mask and tamp down who i am my whole life that now i don't really know how to get out of that? it's like when you pull funny faces as a kid and your mom tells you that your face will get stuck like that, you know? my mask feels pretty stuck.

ALL OF THAT BEING SAID. bringing it up now is so important and not at all attention seeking. you're looking for answers and you deserve to have them no matter how old you are. it's your body, it's your health and it's your brain. you deserve to know the things about it. then you can consider support needs and apply that to your life. of course, you can just apply support needs to your personal life and home as it is but sometimes asking for reasonable accommodation at work requires the official diagnosis.

for me, i do not have an official diagnosis yet of autism. i got my diagnosis of ADHD (which i was diagnosed with as a kid but since i don't have access to those records, i had to redo it). it was three hours the first session, three hours the second and then one and a half hours the third and it cost me a lot of money because my insurance did not pay for as much as they said they would. please don't let that deter you, though, because my version of a lot of money in this instance came at a very financially hard point for me. my doctor was like, 'look, let's get your stable on the ADHD meds and then we can start discussing the possibility of autism and sending you for testing.' this man looked at me two months later at a check in appointment and was like, 'yeah, i don't even need to send you for testing right now, i am very comfortable with just telling you that you are autistic.' i have worked with multiple psychiatrists and mental health professionals, as well, who have randomly mentioned it to me in conversation before this which is what really got me interested in figuring this shit out. like on psychiatrist just looked at me while we were at lunch and went, 'you know you're autistic, right?' and then i've had another conversation where i was talking about how i interpret some thing in a social aspect and this therapist was like, 'oh, because of the autism right?'

i will, at some point, start picking apart the healthcare system so that i can be officially tested and have that official diagnosis. because, at the end of the day, having that official diagnosis is having protection for yourself. especially in the work place. i just don't have the money for it right now and have a surgery i need to be focusing on alongside paying down debt.

i started with a psychiatrist because i work in mental health and can kind of navigate my way around in my state regarding rules and where to go and it's still SO FUCKING HARD to understand. i'm unsure what state you're in (or if you're even in the US, i'm so sorry, i shouldn't assume) so it would be my advice to bring it up with your doctor first and foremost because they likely will have resources and referrals that they can make. in some states, it actually has to be your doctor who diagnoses you (never mind that psychiatrists legitimately went to medical school too or whatever, we have established that the government doesn't know shit about medicine). hopefully they will have those referrals and can be a better guide for you. if they don't, however, i would say make an appointment with a psychiatrist and let them know that you just want to look into all the possibilities to help you feel and be the best version of yourself that you can feel and be. and that's not always medicine (there is no medicine for autism), sometimes it's just having the fucking knowledge.

because my psychiatrist, when he started the evaluation, we were talking and i had to take all these questionnaires for all the different mental illnesses and he was shocked. he was like, 'you are lighting up all of these questionnaires. you are leaning positive for bipolar and for borderline, your anxiety is one of the worst scores i have ever seen and your depression is.... have you ever been hospitalized?' like... sir, do not even suggest a grippy sock vacation, i cannot afford it. and i told him that i don't mean to sound like a drug seeker, i'm just very self aware and i work in this industry and i've done a lot of thinking about this. but i've been in therapy for years now and it is very helpful but it isn't enough and i've been treating my depression for years as well and i'm on one of the highest dosages of my anti depressant and it barely scratches the surface of my suicidal ideation because, underneath everything, i still feel different and unwanted and like i'm not getting it. i can be smart all day, i know i'm not stupid, but i really don't know how to navigate a lot of life and it goes so far beyond social anxiety. which only told me that my anxiety and my depression were not my illnesses, they were my symptoms and treating just the symptoms does nothing to treat the root cause of it all. And for the first time in my life, a professional agreed with me not to get me to shut up and get out of his office but because he believed me.

he said, 'that makes sense to me. because i'm talking to you now and i don't think you truly have manic episodes that would suggest bipolar disorder. i think that you've been depressed for so long that nobody knows who the real O is, not even you. so when you feel good and 'manic' the way you're describing... that's actually how you're supposed to feel all the time.' he started me on Adderall and we actually increased my dosage at my last check in but i'm going to request going back down. because that first month on the adderall was perfect. my brain was quiet, there were no intrusive thoughts, i wasn't fidgeting to get through the day, i understood and listened to my hunger cues, i was losing weight healthily (for a girl who's had an eating disorder since she was five, that is a huge deal for me), i didn't bite my nails, i wrote 50k words in the month of August. and then we started discussing the autism. and the more we talked and the more reading he had me do and the more reading i did for myself not to mention the personal interactions i have with those on the spectrum that tells me so much about myself like.... it all just made sense of everything for me. like it hurts! it's wild how much it does hurt. i feel like nobody talks about the grief of later diagnosis as much. and grief is weird and you're allowed to cry and crying is okay. because this isn't a bad thing, it just sucks that you had to learn so late in life that you feel as though it's too late for you. i promise it's not because i have to have that hope for myself. it's just gonna take a bit but it's actually really freeing.

i hope any of that made sense or was helpful, friend. i will try to answer questions or if you wanna just talk, we always can. i'm not a licensed professional by any means and these diagnoses look so different for every body but i'm here to commiserate!

[aggressive-positivity-network]

Do you have any autistic Scout headcanons? :P

Hell yeah!

I’ve actually thought about this a lot. A lot of people might think that Scout has ADHD, but I think he either has both ADHD and autism or just autism.

This is both because labeling Scout as having just ADHD is kind of a low-hanging fruit, and I also want to explore his symptoms a little more. So, in a word, I do, and thank you for asking about them!

*****************

Scout’s Spectrum:

So, where exactly does Scout fall on the autism spectrum?

First of all, he probably has both ADHD and autism, but wasn’t diagnosed with the latter until much later. This means that some of his symptoms were taken into account, but not all.

The ones that were paid attention to ramped up out of control, and the ones he didn’t hear about were stuffed away.

His ADHD symptoms include impulsiveness, need for stimulation, hyperfixations, forgetfulness, and insomnia; his autism symptoms include trouble with social skills, stimming, near inability to remember names and faces, lack of eye contact, hyperfixations again, and sensory processing issues, especially with noise and touch.

He used to have a lot of meltdowns when he was younger, usually about wearing new clothes and the amount of noise his eight brothers generated.

However, he was teased and pushed into masking nearly all the time, and made his whole personality about his ADHD, since that was what everyone accepted.

As he got older, he usually wrote off any autistic tendencies as either his ADHD or just “little habits” of his.

During his middle school years, he used energy drinks to bounce back from being exhausted every day after school. This would work, except those energy drinks would upset his ADHD, and would make it much harder to focus on even basic conversation.

After a while, he got such bad grades and had such a hard time making friends that Scout just stopped going to school altogether.

Baseball helped his focus, and the quick movement and thinking made a lot of sense to him. He never had to wait very long for the next development, and the instant gratification and community it provided supplemented what he never got at school.

With sports on his side, he rarely ever drank any energy drinks (the coach would never let them on the field), and he drank bucketfuls of water during every meet and game. Those teenage years were probably the healthiest he ever was.

However, with the amount of rumbles he got into with his brothers, and the turf wars that constantly raged in those neighborhoods, it was only a matter of time before his crime caught up with him.

After his first incarceration, he was booted from the team, which led to a downward spiral of unhealthy coping mechanisms - which included fighting someone tooth and nail whenever he could.

Even if he lost the fight, it not only catered to his impulsive nature and impatience, but also gave him roughly the same sense of friendship and camaraderie that baseball had.

One thing led to another, and by the time Mann Co. found him, Scout was a monster in hand to hand (and bat to bat) and had racked up quite the criminal record.

A perfect mercenary, ripe for the picking.

On The Team:

Scout very quickly adopted the “stupid, scrappy Boston boy” persona.

It was the only thing that made sense, and it kept him from having to try too hard in both the battlefield and socially.

Besides, that meant that he could be as silly, forgetful, and fidgety as he wanted, and no one would bat an eye.

And if he ever needed to take a break from the team, he figured everyone would appreciate the quiet.

The only thing that ever gave him away was him occasionally dissociating right when battle began, especially if the day had been stressful.

It was usually how he calmed down after a fight when he was young, but now he sometimes slid into that state when he was overwhelmed.

However, a yell from one of his teammates would usually snap him out of it.

Medic noticed this pretty early on, and wanted to look more into it, but Scout would keep making excuses not to get a mental examination.

He would blame it on zoning out, being tired, drinking too many Bonks - whatever it took for people to stop asking.

And, eventually, they did.

Even Medic stopped asking after a while - he couldn’t get a thing out of Scout.

This “try so little that when you do try it’s above average” charade worked for a long time. In fact, it went on for so long that Scout forgot how much he was actually capable of.

He began to internalize the stupidity, the exacerbation, the many comments on how dumb he was, everything.

The only time he ever gave his all was on the battlefield - moving fast, memorizing strategies, doing complicated footwork, knowing exactly how much force it took to crush someone’s skull with his bat.

That was one of the only things that he felt good doing, the only thing he could really work on without him being “found out.”

That and drawing, though he never showed the actual pieces to anyone. It was all stick figures and crooked lines with everyone else.

Sometimes, though, Scout wouldn’t be paying attention and he’d let something slip.

One time, Engineer was looking for his screwdriver, and couldn’t seem to find it anywhere.

Scout, not looking up from his comic, said, “Under the couch cushion, hard hat.”

Engineer bent down and reached into the couch, and his hand came back with his red and yellow striped screwdriver.

“Well I’ll be damned…”

At first Engineer thought Scout had just hid it, but Scout explained, still not paying attention:

“Last time we went out on th’ field, you had it on your belt, like always. But I was walkin’ by your workshop, you were usin’ a quarter to tighten a screw or somethin’. Your screwdriver had to be somewhere between the battlefield and your workshop. Engie, you’re like freakin’ clockwork. Every day, after a fight, you go to the kitchen, get a water, go to that couch, between the second and third cushion from the left, and sit there. Then ya go back to the fridge to get lunch and a beer, and ya go to your workshop until somebody needs you for somethin’. Your back loop in your tool belt is looser than all the others, ‘cause the screwdriver pulls against it when you sit down. The shank was probably in between the two cushions, and when you got up, it fell in. Demo, Pyro, and Heavy all sit on the second or third cushion at some point, so it got shimmied down. And since that’s the only time you sat down, ‘cause you woulda heard it if it dropped on the floor, and I…uh…”

“I’ll be damned,” Engie repeated, and felt the back tool belt loop. It was indeed loose.

Scout finally looked up, and realized what had happened.

“Uh, uh - l-lucky guess, huh Engie?”

Engineer squinted behind his goggles. “Yeah…real lucky…”

What ensued was Engie trying to get Scout to turn into a B.L.U Spy by chasing him around with his wrench. After a few good hits, though, Engineer saw that it was the teammate he knew and loved.

“But…how didja…?”

Scout threw his hand up, the other rubbing the back of his head where he’d been hit.

“I toldja Engie! Lucky guess! Jesus!”

Ever since then, Scout chose his words more carefully.

The Breakdown:

But, unfortunately, Scout could not pretend forever.

There was one week where Scout’s assignment count was so high that, if he wasn’t in a fight, he was on a mission.

Usually, Pauling wouldn’t trust him with so much, but no one else was available - or willing - to do the jobs.

Even when she was getting concerned about the amount of hours Scout was putting in, he blew it off.

“It’s no sweat, Miss Pauling! Their practically givin’ me the pay day. Those yahoos don’t know who they’re messin’ with.”

Over time, though, Scout had a harder and harder time staying focused and alert.

He’d sleep through alarms, stare off into space, zone out completely during briefing (not that he didn’t already do that), have a hard time hearing people in battle - even through his headset - ignore Spy’s taunts, and even forget to bring his bat onto the field.

Nothing seemed to help - Bonk!, warming up, stretching, cold showers, setting reminders, nothing.

And the team was starting to notice.

At first it was with the regular frustration - maybe Scout was just being lazy.

But as time went on, and his condition grew worse, their scorn turned into worry. They implored Medic to do something, but he had no way of getting through to Scout.

The doctor wasn’t above simply sedating him and dragging him into his lab for a check-up. However, he had a feeling that this was more than a physical issue.

The worst came when Scout was doing a routine battle with the B.L.U team on the field.

Everything had started out okay - he even remembered to bring his bad this time - but suddenly, everything was ear-splittingly loud.

He couldn’t focus on more than one sound at once, much less communicate the best course of action to his teammates.

He ended up hiding in a dilapidated shed, in a dusty, dark corner, somewhere between zoning out and panicking.

Scout’s head was in his knees, he was shaking, close to crying, when a sudden splitting of wood roused him.

A B.L.U Soldier had kicked his way into the shed, either having heard Scout or to hide from the other team.

Scout was stunned at first, but something of a blind terror filled him. He picked up his bat, screamed, and started pummeling the surprised Soldier.

At some point, he threw aside his bat and began to swing punch after punch, just like he did in his gang days when he had felt overwhelmed. Still screaming. Still crying.

By the time Scout had dissolved into a rocking, sobbing mess, the Soldier was long dead, with a gigantic pool of blood staining Scout’s shoes.

No one even knew where Scout was until a few hours later, when Spy heard a faint note of “Sexbomb” coming from Scout’s Walkman.

Scout had crawled into the shed’s framework, between the outer and inner wall, and was playing a specific verse over and over and over again, looking like he was on another plane of existence.

Spy immediately called for Medic, who had to lift Scout out by the underarms through a jagged hole in the side of the building. By then, the fight was over, so they could take him directly to the lab.

Medic’s Evaluation:

“I’m guessing zhis is your first mental breakdown?”

“Mental…doc, I ain’t crazy. Wait, you’re not goin’ to put me in a straight jacket, are ya?”

“If you’re not doing anyzhing later.”

Medic started to laugh, but quickly realized this might not be the time.

“No, Scout, everyvun has a mental breakdown at least vunce in their lives. It’s a…how do you say…a vake-up call of sorts. Vhen your body has no other options left.”

“Whaddya mean?”

“For zhe past few months, you health, both physical and mental, has been deteriorating. You eat less. You talk less. Your attacks are lackluster. You have bags under your eyes. You flinch vhen somevun yells for you. You stare off into space. Your routine, vhich usually has at least some changes, has become stringent, as if you can’t possibly expend any more energy into extra activities. You have avoided Demoman on zhe battlefield, even though you usually use him for cover.”

Medic flipped through his notes.

“I have pages and pages of your decline. However, as a scientist, I believe it is caused by zhe same source. And, though I usually respect my patient’s right to privacy vhen it comes to these sorts of matters, I believe you’ve been keeping something from me. Something that I should know as your general practitioner…your doctor.”

Scout shrugged, already shutting out the conversation.

Medic sighed.

“Maybe I tried to talk to you about zhis too soon. After all, you’ve just had a very sudden and exhausting episode. But…perhaps…”

Medic took a sheet of printer paper from his clipboard and a spare pen from his pocket.

“…zhere is an alternative.”

Scout was still unresponsive, but Medic continued.

“Zhere is a patient in my vaiting room vis a metal pole through the chest. It vill take me at least an hour to properly remove it, and a few minutes more to heal zhe area. Vhile I do zhat, vhy don’t you draw how you feel?”

Medic smiled.

“I know how much it grounds you.”

It wasn’t until Medic left that Scout actually picked up the pen, but he began drawing immediately.

For the first time in a while, he wasn’t trying to hide his strokes or scratch up the cleaner lines. No more stick figures. No more pretending.

Five minutes later, he was fully engrossed.

Medic started to walk in at one point, but, seeing how relaxed Scout was, decided to give him a few more minutes.

He deserved it.

[save-the-spiral]

PLS PLS LIST THE SWAPS!! TELL ME ABOUT THE SIBLINGS AND ALSO HIFUMI BECAUSE I LOVE HIM (IF YOU WANT!) I will also send more questions in the morning too, excited to see what you’ve been working on!!

OK OK OK !!!!! AHH! So, before assigning talents, I swapped the pools, so for the first game, I use the talents from the second game, and vis versa! For some i listed gender, sexuality, or neurodivergencies, though this isn’t all of them, and I haven’t developed them all to the same level!

This is SO long. I didn’t even bother mentioning things like my plans for the killing games. (I have DR1 planned out in full, but only parts of DR2 and the v3 anime)

THANK YOU FOR THE ASK MY HEART SKIPPED A BEAT IN HAPPINESS WHEN I SAW I HAD NEW ASK NOTIFS!!

LIST:

Trigger Happy Havoc (first game)

Kyoko Kirigiri- Ultimate Luckster- Mastermind (: Sometimes lesbians can be evil okay! was trained as a detective like everyone in her family and didn’t get the ultimate :) she’s definitely not mad about that :) her luck cycle depends on how far she plans things ahead. her good luck is when she’s spontaneous! She hates when ‘normal’ people are accepted by ultimates.

Makoto Naegi- Photographer (Mostly wildlife and nature photography, with Sayaka helping him for some animal photography (: trans and bi <3 One of sayaka’s birds nests in his hair like all the time)

Kiyotaka Ishimaru- Ultimate Swordsman (AUTISTIC ICON, has trained in kendo since he was a kid, then was essentially given away to the Fujisaki clan by his very stressed dad. Semiverbal, rarely speaks.)

Chihiro Fujisaki- Ultimate Yakuza (Taka is her bodyguard! His family is in debt to hers, the Fujisaki clan is the most powerful in Japan. trans icon, of course, dates Sayaka! Very direct, though she’s far more delicate and polite when talking to taka, her best friend)

Sakura Oogami- Ultimate Nurse (Works as an EMT- her clan still is in martial arts, so she’s still very buff, she assists in injuries at the family dojo. Autistic Icon)

Asahina Aoi- Ultimate Gamer (ULTIMATE ADHD. streams and has a ton of fun, will ramble while breaking records, demigirl who loves her girlfriend sakura :)

Mukuro Ikusaba- Ultimate Chef (Works best with ‘cheap’ food, and making them taste good. a byproduct of growing up on the streets with junko, and junko being bored of the same old food they dug out of the trash. now works closely with junko for her teams’ nutritional needs! autistic and sapphic.)

Junko Enoshima- Ultimate Team Manager (there are SO many sports she can never get bored, and the professional scene is always changing! prefers coaching womens’ teams, because being an ultimate brings them more publicity and usually higher pay :)

Mondo Oowada- Ultimate Prince (OH MY BOY. trans adhd icon. now the crown prince of Novoselic, with a reagent in his place until he comes of age. His service dog Chuck is a maltese and an absolute sweetheart. Chihiro takes him under her wing to teach leadership. also dates taka later OF COURSE, though they’re poly and I may add more ppl to their relationship later.)

Celestia Ludenburg- Ultimate Musician (specializes in violin, most strings, though she can play any instrument. grew up poor, dedicated herself to an instrument and persona to cope)

Byakuya Togami- Ultimate Musician (Yep. two musicians. two catty trans gay icons about to throw down. they HATE each other and grew up as rivals. specialize in classical, they literally tore a professional orchestra full of grown adults apart trying to make them side with who was the best musician. they’re so good that they’re matched, and Hope’s Peak accepts them as one student and combined ultimate. they room together. they fight. Literally if one of them gets expelled, the other does too, so they’re STUCK. eventually they become literally inseparable and insufferable together like the WORST siblings. I love them.)

Sayaka Maizono- Breeder (animal handler) (Specializes in birds!!!!!! has songbirds on her shoulders all the time. will give unsettling animal facts without realizing they’re unsettling. sends her songbirds to serenade chihiro when they start dating <3)

Yasuhiro Hagakure- Gymnast (you see this tall goof who acts like an older brother to everyone and wonder HOW he’s a gymnast. he’s completely different in competitions, though still lighthearted. becomes a big brother figure to mukuro and junko especially <3 also trans bc i say so.)

Leon Kuwata- Traditional Dancer (he just. kinda hates it. it takes SO much work and effort but he takes to it naturally. his cousin kanon is NOT like in canon, instead she’s helpful. he’d literally rather be doing anything else. doesn’t know how to do anything like... basic either. can’t cook. cant do his own laundry. everything was dedicated to traditional japanese dancing before he attended HPA.)

Toko Fukawa- Engineer (writes schematics and is very good at it. gets VERY upset when her plans go wrong. her notes are orderly and perfect. host for their system!)

Syo- Mechanic (a factive of genocider syo, NOT an actual killer. she’s a protector mainly, and also is more adept at hands on skills when it comes to fixing things, her hands are less shaky. Her notes are a disaster and she does it to spite Toko.)

Hifumi Yamada- (???) (reserve course) Protagonist! My BOY. HIFUMI IS GOOD OKAY. He’s autistic and loves anime and gaming! he’s not particularly ultimate-leveled at them, or anything else! Attending Hope’s Peak as a reserve course student! At one point he joins the student council as a reserve course representative even if he’s only a freshman :) He’s also a moderator in Hina’s livestream chat, under the username of JusticeHammer, fastest ban hammer this side of the internet. He's internet friends with hina and sakura, and doesn’t realize Oh We Go To the same SCHOOL until he bumps into them. and realizes hina doesnt know what he looks like. but sakura does. its hilarious. he’s aroace, and during the year they’re locked in HPA, is in a queer platonic partnership with Hina and Sakura, while they’re dating each other. it’s great.)

Goodbye Despair! (second game)

Peko Pekoyama- Lucky student (ohohoh. her luck relies on her conviction. if she has doubts her bad luck strikes HARD. trans!, was taken in by Fuyuhiko’s family when she was a baby, grew up as just another kid in the family. They all expected Fuyu to go off to HPA on his own and then BOOM acceptance letter)

Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu- Programmer (He. gets so angry while coding. He has an array of rubber ducks to talk to and work through his coding issues with. trans of course. Very protective of Peko when people say she doesn’t have a ‘real’ ultimate. ADHD and Autistic)

Sonia Nevermind- Writer (Literary Girl) (Her family immigrated to Japan when she was young! She writes a lot of serial killer novels, murder mysteries and horror and all that! Trans and bi :)

Gundham Tanaka- Detective (YEAH my guy is a detective. still talks Like That. Trans and bi and he and Sonia were kinda-dating (t4t autistic power couple in the making) when things started happening. He spends some time with his cool older sister who he looks up to a LOT. He and Sonia talk through things together a lot, they both have those red string walls, one for murder cases, another for a fictional plot lmao.)

Mahiru Koizumi- Moral Compass (my GIRL. autistic. Her morals rely a lot on people taking responsibility and being reliable, and she ends up having to work through some biases she didn’t realize she had when she arrived at HPA. Is still protective of Hiyoko, though that protectiveness is spread a bit thinner to extend to the rest of the class.)

Hiyoko Saionji- Clairvoyant!!! (HI YES I COULD TALK ABOUT HER FOR DAYS. Has actual visions in dreams and when she suddenly faints, but doesn’t really realize they’re uhh Real Visions for a WHILE. uses her status as an ultimate clairvoyant to trick and bully kids when in school for a LONG time, though her homelife wasn’t great with her grandmother trying to find ways to make her visions more consistent. SHES ALSO 12 WHEN SHE JOINS THE 77TH CLASS. she’s just so advanced in academics and her ultimate is so interesting hope’s peak cant HELP but scout her early. she has SO many issues guys no one appreciates hiyoko enough, autistic gifted kid hiyoko my beloved.)

Akane Owari- Gambler (started gambling to help out her family and Got Good at it. is very very conscious of money and food like all the time. Runs the hope’s peak betting pools once she arrives. these ultimates bet on a lot of things. she ALWAYS wins. until she doesnt!!!)

Mikan Tsumiki- Martial Artist (ohhhh Mikan. Still anxious and clumsy (though not like THAT in canon) and literally no one looks at her and thinks Oh The ULTIMATE martial artist?? it isn’t until you see her in the ring that you understand. She started learning self defense as a kid because her (bad) parents essentially said she had to rely on and protect herself and no one else would help.)

Kazuichi Souda- Pop Idol (OH TRANS ICON? he’s nervous and paranoid about Everything still, though now it’s like. oh the entire world is always watching my every move this is Okay (: has the brightest neon album eras. he literally keeps up a like. weird chad persona when interacting with people because he’s masking how hard he’s constantly just internally screaming.)

Nagito Komaeda- Soldier (AHAHAH my mans got issues problems disorder he’s a messssss, this trans guy, this absolute gay. this boy leveled a city of thousands of people with his own hands and some bombs. Still has medical issues, but most of his like. treatments and medicine is hold hostage as long as he stays in line. believes the ends justify the means and anyone who dies to him is obviously weak, because look at him! he’s weak, but that doesn’t matter because he doesn’t have to be the strongest, he just has to be stronger than the weakest scum.)

Chiaki Nanami- Heir (OOF. Agender, uses any pronouns. Doesn’t really. enjoy being the heir. grew up with Byakuya in the same circles. she treats the economy and stock market and stuff like games. enjoys gaming but isn’t good at them. collects so many things. has halls full of collections. Her parents stopped controlling her once she was able to prove she had more money than them and could literally bankrupt them if she wanted.)

Hajime Hinata- Baseball Star (Chiaki’s best friend, his family was upper middle class until he hit it BIG as a baseball star. wants to do BIG things and wants to attend hope’s peak more than anything!! Doesn’t really think of baseball as his THING, just a means to an end! trans :)

Teruteru Hanamura- Biker Gang Leader (started with shaking down some jerks who didn’t pay their food and drink tabs at his mama’s restaurant. now he RUNS their tiny town. His siblings are essentially gang mascots, he works hard to keep them out of trouble (while bringing them to like. meetings where he ends up beating a dude almost to death. its fine). most of what he does it to get more money to keep the restaurant afloat and care for his mama with her health conditions.)

Nekomaru Nidai- Fashionista (the drama. the CHAOS. most people are like ohhh we can never understand this artistic genius when he’s literally just. vibing and has ADHD and a love for coffee. Works a lot on accessible clothing lines for disabled people! Also he and Kazuichi work together sometimes, Nekomaru is good at calming Kaz down and seeing like, the root of whatever problem and making it better. ALSO A TRANS ICON and just flaunts it.)

Imposter- In the hope’s peak days they are impersonating Ryota Mitarai, as a part of the 77th class. In the Killing Game they impersonate Mondo Oowada as the Ultimate Prince. They’re doin’ their best.

Ibuki Mioda- (???) (Izuru Kamakura) Protagonist! Gundham Tanaka’s older sister (though they’re in the same school year). Nonbinary and using just. an array of pronouns alongside she/her, and jokingly fights with gundham for neopronouns like MOM said it’s MY TURN on the rawrself pronouns. She attends the reserve course to stay at her brother’s side. She dresses loudly and acts even louder because !!! she wants to stand out!! in the middle of this drab reserve course hell!!  but when things go down, she wants to be someone, to be worthy of being her amazing brother’s big sister. so she accepts some offers.

NON-KILLING GAME:

Ryota Mitarai- Ultimate Analyst (stays in his room. He’s terrified of the outside world but fascinated by it. watches hope’s peak academy through security feeds, picking up on little details. he just wants to understand things but never looks at the big picture.)

Chisa Yukizome- Ultimate Boxer (Homeroom teacher!! She’s working really hard and believes in everyone! Some are intimidated by talent, but she’s never hurt anyone outside of the ring! Dating Kyosuke)

Juzo Sakakura- Ultimate Student Council President (Has anger issues, though his work at reigning them in assisted in becoming an Ultimate. Was responsible for security and the Hope’s Peak student council. Dating Kyosuke)

Kyosuke Munakata- Ultimate Housekeeper (Meticulous, works himself to the BONE even if he’s good enough to not have to do that. Is working on establishing another Hope’s Peak! Dating Chisa and Jozu!!!)

Seiko Kimura- Ultimate Blacksmith (GIVE MY GIRL KNIVES!! She’s an anxious gal, always wearing a facemask that filters the air in her forge because she has some respiratory problems. she prefers making more decorative pieces like an artist, but sometimes can create utilitarian pieces or tools to fit specific needs. Still a doormat)

Ruruka Ando- Ultimate Pharmacist (She constantly asks Seiko for new tools for her developments in medicine, saying its all for the advancement of humanity, so Seiko denying any request is SELFISH, though she never thinks to make anything for seiko’s health issues. Dating Izayoi. Specializes in medicine for mental health. Not Doing Great :)

Sonosuke Izayoi- Ultimate Confectioner (He loves sweets. LOVES them. Creates things that look plain, ordinary. but taste so GOOD you CRY and maybe ascend for a little bit. sometimes Ando makes cool new drugs to put in the sweets, who knows! It’s a mystery! He always has like. a huge refrigerated case of fresh cakes, and constantly has a lollipop in his own specialty recipe in his mouth.)

[zymomonasmobilis]

I basically figured out I had ADHD like 5 years ago based on way-too-relatable posts on here and Reddit.

But I was in a split state of mind that was: “OBVIOUSLY I have ADHD” and “clearly in just making excuses, this is silly”

And I’ve been DIAGNOSED BY MY DOCTOR and ON VYVANSE for like 6 months now.

And I’m STILL: “but you probably don’t!”

I actually was IDing more with aspergers (at the time) even earlier than that....like 10+ years ago. But was also very much like: even though I identify with so many of the things that people describe as typifying their autism, and obsessively seek out autism-related content, and need to deal with sensory issues and am constantly looking for tips for dealing with autism...I definitely don’t have it! I’m definitely trying to make excuses and feel special!

But like...now that I’ve (y’know, mostly) accepted the ADHD thing....the autism comorbidity is sticking with me! Like....I’ll find content from ADHD-Autistic creators and it just seems so NORMAL. Not like, normative, but it all totally makes sense to me and they make sense to me.

But, like. I’m 34. I have a professional profile irl. I do talk sometimes in that arena about ADHD. It DOES seem like a weird and vague-dangerous (in a traumatized way) to be too open about things like that, or that journey, publicly. And I have a PhD and am an expert in my field! So there’s this thing of....but you’re WAY too accomplished to be neurodivergent/disabled. And the rebuttal is, yes, I have these accomplishments...but I’m miserable most of the time and constantly suffering. Which seems like an UNHINGED and totally melodramatic thing to say. But it’s true! I have a hard time, most of the time.

So....do I go further into the autism thing?? Am I just looking for patterns and excuses where they don’t exist?? And then....diagnosis. It’s not like I need an autism dx to get important medications. And, I don’t know how much this would actually effect me, but lots of people have talked about the structural DOWNSIDES to an on the record autism diagnosis.

AND, I’m pretty much self-employed, so, there’s no accommodations I could apply for.

so does it matter? What would be the point?? Is it ok to self-dx?? (I do, 100%, think self dx is valid. But maybe not for me???)

My therapist is good at psychoanalysis and that’s what we stick to. She couldn’t dx me with any of these neurodivergences—it’s not her area of expertise, and I respect that boundary. And some of the stuff that we talk about even now, after I have an ADHD diagnosis, is “maybe not going right to yeah it’s because of ADHD,” whenever I’m trying to figure out an issue that other people don’t seem to get.

What she says is, This specific thing might or might not be a symptom of ADHD, but either way it’s valid and either way you have to deal with it, and the way you deal with it in either case is feeling kind enough about yourself that you’re willing to give yourself accommodation and support. In that sense, I actually appreciate that she’s not too fixated on any Neurodivergent diagnoses. The answer to any of them is to accept myself and not try to beat myself back into line, and accommodate what I need to deal with that thing. Which is what I’d have to do with an autism dx anyway.

[the-autisticats]

An exploration of abusive, unnecessary research conducted in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis

Let me start this post by telling you all that reading the journal article I’m about to share made me extremely upset, to the point that I started hitting myself in the head. So needless to say, if you’re an autistic person who went through ABA as a child, you’re probably gonna want to keep scrolling. If that wasn’t clear: consider this paragraph a GIANT content warning.

Now, let’s get into it. What am I talking about? I’m talking about a study that was conducted in 2018, and published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. The study is called “Sound attenuation and preferred music in the treatment of problem behavior maintained by escape from noise.”

Here are the basics of what they did in this study:

They used two autistic children, Lana (age 6), and James (age 15) as test subjects. The goal of the study was to see if music-playing & noise-canceling headphones would decrease aggressive and self-injurious behavior in noisy environments. Any random autistic person off the street could tell you that yeah, of course noise-canceling headphones will decrease aggression in noisy environments. The aggression is a result of overstimulation, so when the person stops being overstimulated, *gasp* the aggression goes away. What a revelation! /s

But apparently, the therapists who conducted this study were not aware of that information. Instead, they viewed aggression and self-injury as “problem behavior” that was “reinforced” by the children’s ability to escape the noise when they exhibited the behavior. And their reason for using music-playing and noise-canceling headphones in this study wasn’t to reduce overwhelming sensory input, it was to see if the headphones would decrease the likelihood that the kids would “act out” and try to escape the environmental noise.

So the premise that this study was built upon is fundamentally flawed. And honestly, it’s baffling to me that in 2018, the authors of this study were still viewing self-injury and aggression due to sensory overstimulation as intentional, manipulative behavior to escape the situation. But that’s the problem with behaviorism, after all. It only examines people’s actions, not the root causes.

Now, let’s get into what they actually said about these two children:

“Two individuals referred for the assessment and treatment of aberrant behavior participated. Lana, a 6-year-old female diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder, [ADHD], and obsessive-compulsive disorder... [and] James, a 15-year-old male diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and profound intellectual developmental disorder...

“We treated both participants’ problem behavior under other environmental conditions prior to the study. However, caregivers reported that additional problem behavior continued to occur in noisy environments. Lana’s mother reported that Lana displayed problem behavior in loud restaurants and sporting events. James’ mother reported that James displayed problem behavior when she and James’ father argued loudly in front of him.”

Okay, deep breath. First of all, the definition of the word aberrant is, “deviating from what is considered proper or normal.” So the behavior they’re “treating” here is basically anything these kids do that isn’t standard neurotypical behavior. And if you’re autistic, I’m sure you can see exactly what the real problem is: these kids’ sensory and emotional needs aren’t being met. Somehow, it’s the autistic kids’ fault that they get upset and overstimulated when they’re forced into loud & aggressive situations?? I’m genuinely stunned by the fact that somehow James is the “problem,” when his parents keep arguing with each other in front of him! Their behavior should be treated!

But of course, the study gets more upsetting. As background, let’s go through the physical setup of the experiment:

“We conducted all sessions in a 3 [meter] by 3 [meter] padded treatment room equipped with a therapist, a stereo system, and two chairs.”

“Trained observers recorded data on the frequency of aberrant and adaptive behaviors in the presence of noise using laptop computers from behind a one-way observation mirror.”

Okay, so: the kids got put into a room with an ABA therapist and a stereo system, while being observed by strangers they couldn’t see, who were on the other side of a one-way observation mirror. Kinda like Eleven in Stranger Things. But I digress...

There were five different experimental conditions (scenarios) that the therapists created:

No-noise (Lana only): during this condition, the therapists were completely quiet, and didn’t play any sounds on the stereo.

Escape from various noises (Lana and James): during this condition, the therapists played sounds on the stereo system, unless the kids exhibited “target” behavior (aggression or self-injury). Whenever the kids started hurting themselves or others, the therapists turned off the stereo for 20 to 30 seconds, but then resumed playing it.

Escape from argue (James only): during this condition, two therapists who James knew had a staged argument with raised voices. Once James started hurting himself, the therapists paused for 30 seconds, but then continued arguing.

Standard headphones and music (Lana only): during this condition, the “escape from various noises” scenario was repeated, except this time Lana had unrestricted access to non-noise canceling headphones that played her favorite music.

Noise-canceling headphones and music (Lana and James): just like condition #4, the “escape from various noises” scenario was repeated, except this time both kids had unrestricted access to noise-canceling headphones that played their favorite music.

And before we discuss the results, here’s one quick thing y’all should know:

“For Lana we set the volume of the noise at 101 decibels... for comparison, all of the following produce an approximate 100 decibel acoustic level: a jet take-off at 305 meters, use of outboard motor, power lawn mower, motorcycle, farm tractor, jackhammer, garbage truck, Boeing 707 or DC-8 aircraft at one nautical mile before landing.”

This is the part where I started hitting my head. Are you kidding me!? They put an autistic 6 year old girl without protective ear coverings in a room with a stereo system that played at the same volume as a JET ENGINE?? Construction workers wear earplugs and ear defenders when they’re working with jackhammers!! And they put a child with known auditory hypersensitivity in a situation where they knew she would become extremely distressed... for what? For science!?

This is what they wrote about that in their section about the study’s “limitations.”

“According to the World Health Organization, the 101 decibel noise level used in the escape-from-various-noises condition for Lana could be potentially harmful with extended exposures. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) begins to set limits at noises above 85 decibels.”

They then went on to say that “noise exposure for Lana never exceeded the recommended maximum exposure time of 15 minutes.” So sure, the study was technically within the boundaries set by government organizations. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t incredibly harmful.

The results of the study were entirely unsurprising to anyone who knows anything about autistic people: both kids started injuring themselves or others during the conditions where they were exposed to loud noises and/or arguments. When they were given headphones with music but no noise-canceling qualities, their aggression decreased only a little bit. When they were given noise-canceling headphones that played music, their aggression decreased dramatically.

And the reason for that is not, as the study suggested, that “[noise-canceling] headphones and preferred music functioned to abolish the value of escape as a reinforcer, and decrease behavior that was previously evoked by noise and reinforced by noise removal.” The reason is that the noise canceling headphones blocked the overwhelming auditory stimuli, which calmed the kids down because they weren’t being overloaded anymore.

It’s so f-ing simple. And it makes me so angry that autistic people’s “aggressive behavior” is still seen as a manipulative tactic that gets encouraged when our caregivers remove us from overwhelming situations. Our “aggressive behavior” is an involuntary response to our bodies being overloaded with painful stimuli. That’s it. These so-called therapists wouldn’t have to torture kids in studies anymore if they would just listen to autistic people about our experiences.

To all you ABA therapists out there: listen to autistic people when we tell you that what you’re doing is wrong. Listen when we tell you that you’re participating in a system that does not value us as full human beings, unless we conform to NT ideals and stop exhibiting “aberrant behavior.”

This has to stop.

~Eden🐢

[bigskydreaming]

Now I'm thinking about this new generation of autistic and ADHD magic users traveling to underwater domains to learn those kinds of sorcery and some blending it with the magic they already have and use intuitively. It starts as these experimental exchange student programs

That reluctant/accidental ward slash sidekick we came up with for Constantine....seemingly working his last nerve, per the usual:

Constantine: That’s it, if you don’t stop being such a royal pain in my arse, I’ll ship you off to Atlantis. Let you be their problem!

His not-a-sidekick-they’ll-both-cut-you-if-you-call-him-that: Is that supposed to be a threat, old man? Go ahead! I can be packed and ready in five!

Constantine: Forty two! I’m forty two, you little wanker -

Zatanna, sighing as she wanders into the kitchen and heads straight for the refrigerator to grab some orange juice: If you really want people to remember your age, you could probably start by acting it, instead of acting his.

Constantine, flinging an accusing hand toward the fifteen year old:  He started it!

Zatanna, as she skips grabbing a glass and just grabs the whole carton so she can exit all the quicker: Way to take that note, Johnny. Just what I was going for with that.

Constantine, glaring beadily at his protégé: You’re the worst.

Not-a-sidekick-and-totally-only-here-under-duress: No, YOU’RE the worst. I have six demons on speed dial who can confirm it!

Constantine: All demons are bloody liars and you shouldn’t trust a damn thing they say unless they’re talking about how I put the fear of God in ‘em. That’s valid then. And you should only have four on speed dial! You been summoning demons without my supervision again? I told you, it’ll serve you right if you get eaten one of these days!

Not-a-sidekick: Fine! At least I wouldn’t have to deal with you anymore!

The front door slams as Zatanna decides two rooms away still isn’t far enough from this.

Both Constantine and his protégé stop in mid-rant, cock their heads and listen to make sure she’s gone.

Not-a-sidekick: Okay, just saying again for the record, this seems like a lot of work just to teach me the spells Zatanna says you shouldn’t be teaching me. You’re supposed to be my mentor, can’t you just tell her its up to you what you do and don’t teach me?

Constantine, with a full body shudder: Christ, no. Just ‘cuz its true doesn’t mean she still won’t turn my innards into a bow tie and wear 'em for her next act. Sides. This is fun, ‘innit?

Someone-really-should-have-stopped-him-from-becoming-this-man’s-sidekick: Well I mean yeah, that’s true. Okay, so about this Ritual of Intermittent Banishment...just how intermittent are we talking?

Constantine: Just enough to be obnoxious as all get out, but not enough to get anyone’s knickers all in a twist about being dark and unholy cursework. The sorta thing you use on someone who’s being a smarmy git at the pub, but not enough so that you can be bothered dealing with any relatives that might pop out of the woodwork on account of feeling obligated to avenge him or whatnot. Now, the first thing you wanna do is - 

[arrivalation]

2020: An Account

This year has been a nonstop, off-the-rails bullet train ride into what looked at first like chaos, but ultimately was a tearing down and reconstruction of my entire being. Because I know myself and I know I won’t remember much of this later, I’m recording it here. It’s hard to put some of this information out, but the universe regularly urges me to be more open. So here I go.

January

I got married.

It was, without contest, the absolute best day of my life. I’ve known since I was real little that I wanted to be married, that I wanted to be loved the way M loves me and to love someone just as much. I don’t know how to explain the feeling of having achieved that, and being able to share that with my entire circle. @abyssalsun​ made it down!! (my only regret is that @ladyoriza​ couldn’t make it, but I’m still so glad we got to make it to theirs). As often as I can, I revisit the memory of going to @chromecutie​’s house afterward, thinking it’d just be the four of us there, and opening the door to find a whole impromptu surprise party happening. Everyone cheered for us when we came in. I played CAH with Mordred, my brother and his wife, and several friends from out of town. By all accounts, these people would never have been in the same room together, but they were, and it was transcendent. It’s been almost a year, and I still haven’t recovered from all the planning and stress; but now that I’m past it, I can say with relief that it was 100% worth it.

February

We bought a house.

Up until this point, I’d been planning a wedding, participating in house-buying stuff as best I could, interviewing for a job I ended up not taking, and dealing with life-long mental illness that was festering and reaching critical mass. But then stuff started wrapping up. The wedding happened. The house was ours. We moved in. I could finally fucking breathe. LMAO bitch you thought.

March

The pandemic reached us.

I guess by this point it had probably already been in the US for a couple months, idr. But it wasn’t until March that things really started happening. People started dying in droves. New cases spread like wildfire. I remember thinking that this would be the zombie apocalypse, because at this point, I don’t think the CDC knew much about the virus. In my anxious mind, that was a completely reasonable assumption. My boss had us all start working from home. We all thought it’d be just a couple weeks.

April

I settled into working from home.

It didn’t take me long to get used to it, maybe a week. I hadn’t yet gotten used to my new hour-long commute from the new house to work, and so working from home quickly became my new normal. But I didn’t know yet why working from home was so good for me. All I knew was that I now had the brain-space to process things. I had the energy to do yoga and cook and do hobbies, and the time to appreciate and care for the home I lived in. I could think more clearly because there was no one else around to distract me. There was sunlight I could bask in. I felt human for once, and that became vitally important and infinitely valuable to me. Despite that, I still struggled with extreme anxiety, panic attacks, and some of the worst depression I’ve suffered through since I was a teenager. Outside my house, everything was a fucking mess and no one had their shit together.

May

I went back to the office for a few weeks.

There was a lull in pandemic activity. My boss had us all start coming back to the office again. At this point, I couldn’t make heads or tails of reality anymore. Everything was changing, nothing was stable. I desperately needed to stay working from home, because that was the one thing that felt Good and Right, but I had no real argument other than, 'I just need to.' So imagine me, at this point a soggy, run-over sloppy joe, attempting to return to normal. As you might think, it was... bad. I cried and hurt all the time. I think I really freaked out my boss with the way I reacted to coming back to the office. But then the second wave hit, and we all went back to working from home again.

June

Uncle Mike died on the first day of the month.

My uncle had been sick for a while, but no one was expecting him to die so suddenly. None of us were ready for it.

I also died that day.

It might sound dramatic, but I mean it quite literally and honestly. Over the years, I had gained suspicion that I was on the autism spectrum. M graciously found me a psychiatrist that took my insurance (and happened to be right next door). I wasn’t even going in for that - I was seeking treatment for my anxiety and depression. But I had amassed a (very long) list of my symptoms, and I brought it with me and read it to my doctor. I wasn’t even a quarter of the way through the list when he stopped me. I’m paraphrasing here, but in effect, he said, “No, yeah, you’re definitely autistic.”

I remember the way my body felt. Like someone had detonated a bundle of TNT in my chest, and I was burning from the inside out. At the time, I didn’t realize this emotional immolation was purposeful and executed by the universe to get rid of this old structure and build a newer, better, stronger one. For about fifteen seconds after he said that, I was relieved that it had been that easy, that there was an explanation for everything that my ADHD didn’t explain. It made a ton of sense why my environment was so important to me. And then I felt something unnameable. It was obvious to my doctor that I was autistic. Had it been obvious to everyone else? Why hadn’t it been obvious to me? I read the rest of my symptoms to him in a daze. I don’t remember how the rest of the appointment went.

And then I burned quietly and ungracefully until I was a pile of ashes. I didn’t know this at the time, but apparently it’s common for newly-diagnosed autistic people to have such dramatic and painful reactions, especially if they weren’t well-informed on the condition. Which I wasn’t.

I started therapy.

I also started learning about my “flavor” of autism. It was arduous, embarrassing, isolating, and ugly. I became aware that I had been masking my whole life, and I was astounded by just how often I did so. What really crushed me was knowing that I’d always have to mask to protect myself. I also became hyper-aware of the things that made me Feel Bad. Inexplicably, I stopped being able to react to those things the way I used to. Previously, if something made a loud and unexpected sound, I would suppress my reaction, because it’s not cool to get mad about it. But I found I couldn’t do that anymore. I had no choice but to react the way I needed to react. I realize now that this was to make me aware of what things make me feel a certain way so I can either avoid them or learn better tools to deal with them.

The therapist I saw wasn’t specialized in autism, and she wasn’t any help in that area, but she did teach me some important things. Like, “Is it reasonable for me to feel ____?”

July

Black hole.

I don’t remember a whole lot from this month, except sifting my own ashes through my fingers and crying. Every day brought a new revelation, a new thing that clicked. All of it was helpful and very painful. My psychiatrist recommended medication, but I’d had a bad and long-lasting experience with medication as a teenager, so I suffered through the pain on my own.

I shouldn’t have. I got so low I didn’t want to be alive anymore. But I think it took reaching the bottom and feeling that much pain for me to get over my fear of pharmaceuticals. 

I got into astrology.

I had been interested in it for most of my life, but it wasn’t until this point that I started studying it in depth. I discovered it was a language that I could use to translate so many things about my own life that I didn’t understand. It was a rulebook in a time when I desperately needed rules - but one just flexible enough that it taught me how to stop thinking in binary.

August

I got medicated.

There was a big adjustment period, of course. It didn’t cure me. But it did start to make things easier. And it helped to know that, even if I didn’t believe it at the time, I deserved to rest. I deserved not to feel so much emotional pain all the time.

I turned 30.

It was easily the second best day of my life. I learned a lot of important things, like that it’s important to be present, that I’m seen and loved (just the way I am!!), and that I deserve good things. M planned a whole day of surprises:

I woke up at my leisure and we had coffee on the couch. He got me a cute card with one of our inside jokes inside - I still have it.

We went to our favorite combination lunch place and bakery, which I believe was our first real outing since the pandemic started.

We stopped by a tattoo place. I almost got a tattoo.

He set me loose in Texas Art Supply.

We got dim sum for dinner.

We had a lovely virtual cocktail hour with @chromecutie.

He bought me an ipad!!

I became Spiritual™.

I had been agnostic for the past decade or so, slowly and subtly slipping into nihilism, without realizing how detrimental those ideas were to me. I’m not sure what I thought spirituality was before, but I wasn’t into it. I had always rolled my eyes at people who talked about “a higher power”, auras, and spirit guides, until I became that person.

My psychiatrist introduced some powerful ideas to me, ones that meshed well with my previously-existing idea of how the universe worked. I won’t get into details here. That’s a whole other post. Ask me though - I’d love to talk about it.

Anyway, I started (intermittently) meditating. I learned some exceptionally powerful stuff. I felt my scaffolding being erected.

September

I started learning who I am and why I am this way.

I started seeing a new therapist. She thinks like me. She follows my erratic, forking trains of thought. She sees me and offers real, actionable feedback and solutions. Working with her, I’ve gained the ability to see my life from a 30,000-foot view. I can see now why I’ve felt so lonely my whole life. I understand how my family’s dysfunction has shaped me. I know now that I have the opposite of a victim complex - by default, I believe I am so awful that I feel sorry for everyone who has to deal with me. Because that’s what I was taught to believe. Learning that I deserve to take up space, set boundaries, say no, and be wrong sometimes is still a hard lesson for me. But most days, I believe it now. It takes other people believing it and convincing me. I still need that reassurance often.

My parents sold my childhood home.

Mentally, emotionally, I still lived there. I was still the inverted victim, still beholden to my stepdad’s whims and my mom’s complete cognitive dissonance. This was a blinking neon sign from the universe that it was time to move out. My mom told me when the closing date was so I’d have time to drive down and look at the house one last time. I didn’t go, and I still don’t regret it.

I started learning my boundaries.

After my spiritual move-out, I learned I don’t have to jump when my stepdad holds out the little circus hoop. When he otherwise shows zero interest in my life but still baits me with passive-aggressive texts, I don’t have to answer!! What a concept! I don’t have to feel guilty for not talking to my mom more than I do. We have very little in common, and I still have a lot of things to work through regarding her.

I learned how not to be so reactive.

Or rather, I’m still learning. Something else I learned in therapy is that over the course of my life, I’ve developed a desperate need to defend myself and to justify every action or thought I have, even to myself. It’d been especially troubling at work. My RSD led me to felt stupid, incompetent, and unseen daily; if my boss complimented someone, I believed it also meant he thought I was stupid and bad and wrong, otherwise he would have complimented me too. If my boss said something that even remotely sounded like I’d done something wrong, I’d race to build an impenetrable defense: “This is the reason I did that. Here’s my line of thinking. Do you understand? Can you please understand?”

Now I know that so little of what everything everyone says or does at work is about me. I can appreciate a coworker’s accomplishment and also realize it doesn’t take away anything from me. I’m not stupid or incompetent, and I’m a valuable part of the team. A lot of times, my boss and I are on two different wavelengths - that’s because I think a lot faster, which can be frustrating for him sometimes. He doesn’t fully understand me, but that doesn’t mean I’m doing anything wrong.

October

I let go of an old friend.

This was especially hard, because I had known this person for years. We’d gone through a lot together, and we’d shared some really important and emotional story plots and characters. I had agonized over whether I was truly important to her or not. It didn’t matter how much I loved her as a friend, or how badly I wanted us to be close again and remain close. I had learned to read the universe’s signs, and it was clear it was time to move on.

November

The election happened.

I was expecting things to turn out badly, but I still hoped for something good. And then something good did happen. I cried watching Harris’ speech. I felt a tenuous hope that things might finally start looking up, societally. I still haven’t really let myself fully embrace that hope, but every time I see a court shoot down another lawsuit, or hear about trump’s own conservative republican supporters tell him, “Okay, buddy, it’s time to step down,” I feel a little better. 

M and I went non-monogamous.

There’s so much I want to say about this, but it’s for another post. Suffice it to say that like every other experience this year, it has been unexpectedly challenging and ultimately a catalyst for  priceless growth. I’m unfathomably grateful that we’re doing this together, for the things we’ve learned so far, and for how much closer this experience has made us, even when I didn’t think we could get any closer. 

Turns out I’m not gray-ace.

I had identified as such for a couple years, which was why we wanted to try non-monogamy in the first place. On the surface, it perfectly explained my sexual personality. But every time I told someone my identity, I felt inexplicably sad. When I read about others having “normal” sex drives and “normal” relations with their spouses, I felt jealous.

Turns out I’m just traumatized, lol. Walking along this non-mono path has unearthed a lot of things, including this gem.

December

This was our first married christmas in our new house.

One of the handful of good things the pandemic has done for me was allowing me to back up my boundaries with hard evidence. It’s been difficult dealing with my stepdad bullying me about not coming over for thanksgiving, and having my mom subtly guilt me into making plans for next year already. But what I needed this year was a quiet holiday, instead of the usual weeks-long chaos, and I got it. And it was fucking delightful. I’ve dreamed of days exactly like that one - spending a tranquil morning with my spouse, sipping coffee and listening to music and eating treats. Deciding exactly how we want our holidays to be, because we deserve to.

I’m scared of what’s to come in the new year. I’m still an anxious mess, and some days I’m not strong enough to pull myself out of the spirals I throw myself into. I’ve gotten used to the pandemic holding my hand, allowing me to shelter in my home, helping me enforce my boundaries, teaching me who I am. When it’s over, I don’t know what will happen or how I’ll react or what I’ll learn next. I’m not finished rebuilding, but I don’t think that’s the point. I’ll never be fully rebuilt. But at least I’m figuring out the new layout.

[maddiefriendlovesbilly]

Spencer x Ghost?

Spencer x Ghost

(AAAAA- it has been months since you sent this to me, and all i can say is im so sorry) Side note I have my friend @lethalbreadkills helping me with this one!

For reference: Maddie (maddiefriendlovesbilly) is green, Jimmy (lethalbreadkills) is red (((its 4:30 at the time i have joined this so im dead braincell wise sorry yall))) and Orange is stuff we decided together :3

Also this is so very chaotic im so sorry for this anon but this has been in my fuckin drafts for SO LONG and this is the only way its getting finished (its now 5 am uwu) im so sorry for all the shitposting i do its a mess. I shouldnt have been allowed here. (we finished at about 5:30 am its hell <3)

Sphost? Ghencer?? Sphoster??? I adore and despise them all equally.

We have decided that it should be BeanieGhost

Anyway I think this ship is really cute

They’re both so neurotic I can only imagine the chaos that would ensue

One of them starts a rant on some topic and the other joins the hell in

I’m an advocate of LETTING SPENCER INFO DUMP BECAUSE HE DESERVES IT OKAY

And Ghost would let this dream come true???

I would die for both of them and if Spencer told me I had to die I wouldn’t even complain, no questions I’d just be like “Aight.” I trust him that much.

(Not sure I trust Ghost’s judgment enough to do that unquestioningly; sorry Ghost)

Back on topic

I can’t imagine these guys on anything that comes close to society’s definition of a date

It’d be more like “hey you wanna come on this hunt with us?” “maybe, depends if there’ll be snacks” or like chilling in Spence’s room binging the entire star trek: original series in one sitting or “oops sorry about that level 11 entity that attached to my soul and is now wreaking havoc in your house, wanna make out later to make up for it?” “Fine but you also have to play three rounds of Call of Duty with me afterward”

They wouldn’t be romantic often but like highkey? I can see them throwing themselves into the line of fire for each other with a recklessness only they could survive

We can’t forget that Spencer is a more than 60,000-year-old overpowered demon/god/entity/thing, which, yes, could throw a slight wrench in this ship for multiple reasons, but I choose to make angst out of it instead.

Side note: Ghost is a chronic conspiracy theorist (and you can’t tell me otherwise) and every once in awhile Spencer will offhandedly say something like “Y’know I helped the Egyptians build the pyramids” and Ghost just goes fucking feral.

Look, I’m not saying Spencer IS touch-starved and most likely has issues creating and developing relationships and therefore avoids interpersonal connection, especially offline, but I AM saying he is prime material for it. (thats a lie thats exactly what shes saying don’t believe it) (I’m projecting okay dont judge me) (loser imagine projecting)

Imagine with me for a second: Why does Spencer willingly stay with a family who locks him in their basement with only minor complaining? He’s a near all-powerful entity just released into the world for Spence’s-sake - If he wanted to, there’s no telling what havoc he could wreak! So why doesn’t he? Why would someone so powerful, so terrifying, so dangerous that a group of people decided to seal him away forever stay with the first family he finds in sub-par conditions for years - especially someone who’s seen to be as high-maintenance as Spencer? Let me hit you with a theory: He’s chasing the feelings of validation, safety, and love - no matter how rarely it’s shown - that a family can provide. Being socially isolated for even a few years can do a number to a person’s psyche (I should know, I’m projecting onto this character right now), let alone thousands.

Now maybe Ghost can’t match thousands of years in isolation, but damn if he doesn’t have a few years of crippling loneliness on his record too.

I can see the two of them learning how to be vulnerable around others together, emotionally and physically; learning how to open up and how to talk through issues; and some third point, because points are better in threes.

(May I suggest that these losers are both trans but thats just me adding in my own projection lmao)

(You absolutely may)

Imagine the conversation thats just “so i have a murderer in my head thats an ass” “rip to u ig sounds like a you problem :///”

imo spence has trouble expressing emotions other than like,,, annoyance and haughtiness, its like sort of his go-to defence, so showing Ghost his emotions is a big step for him

I hear you, and i say yes good. (found this one headcanon that i kinda live by where he was uh, either autistic or adhd i dont remember but theres that too) OH yeah that would be at thing huh. Spencer: *is emotionally vulnerable @ ghost* ghost: oh shit im trusted??? Oh fuck uh.

Yeah so like…. Ghost and spence showing emotion at eachother is kind of :flushed: ghost be like: whats an emotion. Imagine having emotions fuciiing loser hhaha,,,, *laughs nervously*

Ghost is also very emotionally distant with most people so it would probably be like “what??? The fuck?? Emotions?????? You have those???”

Ghost and Spencer be like *gay*

So another idea is that maybe Spencer realizes Ghost doesnt play any games [like the uncultured SWINE he is] and decides he must [remedy] this and so he introduces him to like, nintendo first. (some bitches thought that said nintendo fortnite. Im bitches) and theyre playing like, mario kart or smash or smth and Ghost gets really [fuckin into it]

Ghost and spencer: *literally in eachothers laps playing fucking wii tennis*

Spooker: what are the- *TOAST FUCKING SLAPS A HAND ACROSS HIS MOUTH* shut up you dont wanna know what happens when its mentsonssbfdjfsd (sorry i had a stroke uwuwuwuw)

(Theyre in denial we don’t judge in this house)

They will not hesitate to play dirty either, they will straight up push each other over and vaguely flirt

Ghost is losing and straight up fucking goes “ur hot” and spencer actually dies and boom ghost is the winner. sparkle emoji Magic sparkle emoji

“I am Not a HomoSexual:™:” “Yeah, sure you aren’t” “Screw off”

Pet-names-ish: Asshole, Gaymer-Boy, casual insults, Mr. Spirit Bitch, Mistake, Loves Ghosts More Than His Boyfriend What A Fucking Loser aka Gay-ass

Pros:

They both open up a lot most likely. Gain someone to trust since they’ve sort of been through the same things (though on much different scales)

I can see soft hours of hanging in each other’s bedrooms

Spencer is a tsundere you cant tell me otherwise youre just a coward if you disagree

So is Ghost so this can only go well

Every time Ghost has to solve a case at the Acachallas Spence is just peaking out from his basement like “the fuck is this?? Hot Man??????”

Enemies to lovers 500k (Gets Hot and Steamy :flushed: NOT CLICKBAIT!!!!11!!!!! 18+!!!!!!! GAY LOVE StORY!!!!!!) Lemonz!!! Made from teh Sexiest of Wattpaders UWUWUWU YAOI Boys Love don’t like don’t read!! (this is so fucking stupid jkfnd) I hate this with a passion Q^Q. All my years of being a basic watpad fanboy have helped me to the moment i bring maddie to tears

The steam is just like,,,,, holding hands and being angy all the fuckin time the steam is literal because their anger translates into actual steam

Cons:

Their angst has nowhere to go and it just sits between them like two raccoons at a dumpster-style mexican standoff

They really start off hating each other huh. Like, I know this can still lead to healthy relationships but neither of them are very good at healthy relationships with people he hasn’t known for his Whole Life so that’s an Oh No.

They totally feed off of each other’s stupidity (but this could be seen as a pro too so take that as you will) as well as anger - im talking one-upping each other kinda shit

Its ridiculous honestly how intense it gets, like they straight up need intervention sometimes because they dont realize they can just STOP

Conclusions:

I think this would be a relationship that would that a lot of time and hard work to make work, but i think in the end it would be really super cute!! Like it would make no fuckin sense to anyone else but somehow they’d understand each other and help each other through their similar issues. Also theyre both big nerds in different ways and i think they’d have just ranting sessions back and forth over and over and it would be soft!!!!! So yeah, i think it would work, at least, i want it to :D

So. Maybe?? I feel like it could, but they’d need to work pretty hard to make it healthy and not constant fighting. Could be stupid amounts of cute and wholesome but also could be stupid amounts of oh no and pain, depending on how the two act. If they learned how to get along with each other and work past their differences it could be super cute and soft. Just a very, er, bumpy beginning. And middle. And end. (this makes me very nervous,,,,why did you mention an end) (wouldnt you like to know weather boy) (TvT) UFDUNS bumpy but soft . Agreeing with the loser gay, want this to work it’d be interesting :3

[autisticsidesau]

can we learn something about emile and remy’s friendship? how did they meet? -🦔

Apologies this took so long to answer lol we were kind of waiting until after the dee/remy/ableism introduction was over but here you go have fun reading this we sure had fun writing it ;)))

Warnings for: Unintentional Ableism, Panic attack

So dee and remy are coming home from their friday tradition of starbucks after school

And they find Virgil is in the kitchen with their mom Janet as they teach patton and emile how to make sufganiyot and hamantaschen

Remy and Dee walks into the kitchen and remy just freezes 

Total Gay Panic bc the cutest person they have Ever Seen is standing in the middle of his best friend’s kitchen

The kitchen gang hasn’t noticed Dee and Remy yet

So Remy turns to Dee and they quickly exit the room and remy cant s p e a k

 “Person.” “In kitchen.”  “Hot as fuck.”  “w h e e z e”

And dee is confused and then he realizes and starts wheezing and remy’s like “dude-”

Eventually Dee is like “Okay. Let’s go back. I’ll introduce you to the cute person in our kitchen.”

Cue more gay panic bc “Dee, I can’t just talk to them??”

Dee does Not listen to his friend’s pleas and they return to the kitchen

Now Dee has never actually met this person either, so he says “Hi. I’m Dee, Virgil’s twin. This is my friend Remy.”

And Remy hasn’t even talked yet and he’s already d y i n g /j

And the smaller one with the baggy grey cat hoodie who's making the hamantaschen perks up

“Hiiiiii!!! I’m Patton! I’m using he/him pronouns right now. And this is Rose!!” Patton gestures to a golden retriever with a vest saying “service dog: do not pet” that Dee and Remy didn’t realize was there. “It’s nice to finally meet you dee, Virgil talks about you and your guys’ moms a lot! Oh and this is my older sibling Emile! They use any pronouns.”

And remy is seeing stars as this cute kid looks up, gives an even cuter smile and an even cuter wave and remy is g o n e

Fortunately for him Dee steps in “it’s nice to meet you Patton, Emile.” 

Virgil: “We’re making sufganiyot and hamantaschen.” 

Dee nods as Remy asks: “What?”

And four autistic people proceed to infodump to Remy about what sufganiyot and hamantaschen is

Virgil and Dee greet each other like true siblings “hey loser” “‘sup dipshit”

Both moms: “swear jar”

Virgil makes a coin out of dough and straight up drops it in the swear jar

Like they’re baking with dough right? Like he just straight up makes a coin out of dough

cue dee being like "virgil!! its!! touching the coins!!"

bc dough is 100% a bad texture for dee

and them bickering but not really angry

So now remy is wingman-less and left to fend for his poor gay self

And so he just walks up to the cute person and their sibling

Remy: “so uh…. How do you guys… know...virgil?”

Patton: “Oh!! Well we share a lot a of classes and i invited them to our friend group-”

Remy: “You all go to the same school?”

Patton: “Yep!!! So do Logan and Roman!!! And emile too!”

And Remy’s looking at them like ??? bc they look completely “normal” except for the fact that Patton seems a bit energetic and has a service dog. But the other one- the cute boy- nothing looks wrong with him.

“Why?” Remy asks, before he can even consider if that’s a good idea.

Patton: “Why do we go to the same school? Oh me and Emile are autistic like Virgil and I also have adhd like Virgil!”

And okay, Remy can see that. Patton fits the idea of special ed in Remy’s mind. But the cute boy doesn’t.

So Remy then says to the cute boy- Emile his mind supplies- what he thinks is a compliment

Remy: “You don’t look autistic.”

*cue record scratch sound effect*

And everyone just turns

Because remy did you actually just say that???

And remy isn’t quite aware of what he just said 

And Emile looks up “Was that addressed to me?”

Remy: “Uh yeah?”

Emile: *inhale* “Ok. Ok, then. Patton?” 

Patton: “Yeah, Emile?”

Emile: “We’re leaving.”

Patton: “Ok. Ok sure. Uh Virgil?”

Virgil: “Yeah pat?”

Patton: “it’s been really fun hanging out but Emile and I need to go-”

Virgil: “Oh! No worries! See you guys monday or on the server?” 

Patton: “Oh yeah definitely!!! See ya!! C’mon Rose! Emile do you have your stuff?”

Emile: “yeah just a sec” 

And emile marches up to remy and just 

Emile: “I don’t care if you think that was a compliment, that was incredibly rude. Never speak that way to me ever again. Got it?”

And Remys just kinda standing there in shock like holy shit did that backfire badly

Remy: “yeah um yes, yeah. I got it.” 

Emile: “Good.”

Emile’s turning away and remy’s slightly panicking and running his hands through his hair because that was distressing. 

The door shuts and Patton and Emile are gone and suddenly Remy’s breath is coming in short sharp gasps

Remy faintly hears the words “Panic attack” and he can faintly feel someone’s hands guiding him to the couch and helping him sit down while another voice says to get him water

Remy returns to the present after god knows how long and finds a shiny weighted 1 foot lizard stuffed animal in his lap  

On either side of him sits one of the torres twins, Virgil is to his left chewing on one of those necklace things he always has and watching a video on his tablet with headphones on and squeezing a stress ball

On his right, Dee is clicking a fidget cube and reading Macbeth

Remy blinks a few times and Dee notices and immediately hands Remy the glass of water sitting on a wooden tray on the automan in front of him. 

Remy takes a slow sip and feels the roughness of his throat and numbness of his teeth as the ringing in his ears fades

Then he turns to dee making a vague gesture towards Virgil

Dee: “Oh Virgil’s fine he just needs a minute he got a bit freaked out watching you freak out”

Remy: “Oh.”

Dee: “It’s not your fault though don’t worry about it-”

Remy: “Dee?”

Dee: “Yeah?”

Remy: “I fucked up. I fucked up big time.”

[ladyofpurple]

here it is: the post Literally no one was waiting for. i'd put it under a read more thing but i'm on mobile and can't be assed to get out of bed so fuck it. we air our dirty laundry on main for the world to see like men.

so waaay back in february or something, i started seeing a psychologist again. i'd been seeing a psychologist for a while last year, but she had a private practice and got too expensive over time, so i had to stop. now, however, i finally got a referral to the public mental health offices in my county. which is nice, because norway has this neat thing that means when you go to the doctor, public health care facilities, refill prescriptions for medications you have to take daily, etc, the money you spend on those things gets recorded and after you've spent like $260, you get a free card that gets logged into your medical records and you don't have to pay for any of those things for the rest of the year.

anyway, i mentioned a couple of years back that i finally got put on antidepressants for the first time. they helped a lot, but then i just... stopped taking them. there wasn't a reason, really. i just forgot to take them one week when i was stuck in bed with a headcold, and then it was hard to get back in the habit again. i tried to get back on them off and on for a long time, but i'd inevitably just forget again. until, like, i wanna say november/early december last year? i started taking them again. there were still some slip-ups every now and then, but for the most part i took them almost every day. any gaps were no longer than two, maybe three days at the most, and those gaps were maybe once a month or so on average. averages aren't really useful in this context, but i hope you get the idea.

anyway, i finally convinced my doctor that, no, seriously, i really need to see a psychologist, i've always needed to see psychologists my whole life, seeing psychologists help me, i can't afford a private psychologist so i need a public one, and after a lot of begging and insisting on my end and a lot of hemming and hawing on her end she finally agreed to refer me. except she forgot to actually send the email she'd been typing in front of me, and then she quit, so there was a lot of confusion and time spent sorting things out until i got my first appointment.

i didn't like my psychologist at first. she was way older than i'm usually comfortable with (that's a personal me-problem that i know is irrational, and i'm not gonna go into the why but yes i'm working on it), and very blunt in an exasperated sort of way. she made me angry sometimes. she made me feel like i wasn't trying hard enough. but she helped me get shit done, so i guess she was doing something right.

in june she called in a psychiatrist to help adjust my medications, so i started taking zoloft in addition to the other medication (remeron, aka mirtazapine) that i was already taking. the mirtazapine was helping with my depression, but my anxiety was still pretty bad. the zoloft helped.

by my second appointment with my psychologist, she asked me whether i could have adhd, or if there was a history of it in my family. now, i have a lot of family with adhd (how closely related we are by blood is a bit of a mystery to me, my family tree is more like an overgrown hedge and who knows who fits where), and my grandma used to joke that the women in our family "all have a little bit of that adhd brain in us", but as far as i knew, nobody in my immediate, direct bloodline had such a diagnosis. i had my suspicions about myself, of course — i knew that not every focus or attention related problem necessarily has a specific attention disorder source, but i also knew that what i was experiencing couldn't be "normal," in the sense that if i walked into a room with 100 people in it, 86 of those people wouldn't necessarily look at a list of my symptoms and go "oh same hat." i've had add on my about me for a while now. maybe that was silly of me; i hadn't been diagnosed with it, and what i knew about the specifics of it were picked up piecemeal off the internet. you know, that super-reliable place where everyone is honest and factual all the time?

anyway, this began the process of investigating the merits of such a potential diagnosis. research was begun. questionnaires were taken. my mom was invited to one of my sessions, in which she revealed that, oh yeah, bee tee dubs, she's always suspected i have adhd. did she mention that she has also apparently always suspected ocd and that i'm autistic? no? whoops, well, she has now.

end of june i was referred to the neuropsychologist devision of the public health care place. over the course of a little over 6 weeks i went in for 2 interviews, in which i answered several questionnaires, talked about my life and childhood and traumas and what my mom had told me about her pregnancy and labor, every possible symptom i'd ever had, and was sent home with even *more* questionnaries. in addition to these, i went in for two rounds of "testing," in which i was tested on my memory, pattern recognition, reaction time, impulse control, and probably a dozen other things. i was nervous. it was exhausting. i wanted answers but was terrified of what those answers would be.

end of august, my mom came with me for the big reveal. and guess what? she was right. primary diagnosis: adhd, special emphasis on the attention deficit part. bonus diagnosis: asperger syndrome. surprise! i'm autistic, i guess.

it was hard to come to terms with. which sounds really silly, since i wouldn't have even been taking those tests if i didn't think the outcome was a possibility. and it's not like the diagnoses were surprising either. the adhd part was easier to accept, mostly because i already felt pretty confident i had it. but the asperger diagnosis was harder. having to unlearn all those ingrained ableist stereotypes and social stigmas is hard, especially when you had some you didn't even realize were there. it's very surreal to think a thought and be like "no, wait, i do that. that joke is about me." it's a very surreal and slightly upsetting experience to realize how biased you are as general rule, but especially about a facet of your own identity you weren't aware of. and the feeling of everything and nothing changing all at once. i've always been like this. a doctor telling me i have two cognitive/developmental disabilities isn't an event that magically gave me these disabilities. my brain has always worked like this. the only difference between me now and me a year ago is that i have an official, medical reason for Why now.

that's another thing: coming to terms with the idea of being "developmentally disabled." it's not like i'm suddenly a different person — i have to constantly remind myself that my brain has always been like this. but having a piece of paper confirming that i am legally entitled to special allowances in the workplace or at school because i have not one, but two "disabilities" is absolutely buckwild to me.

it makes me reevaluate my life and my past. how many situations did i make worse because i did not have the capacity or knowledge about how my own brain works to self-reflect? was i high-functioning in the past because life was simpler? was it because i subconsciously had a better handle on what works for me and what doesn't, and somewhere along the way i lost that? or was it simply because i didn't have the option to be anything other than high-functioning? it's confusing.

i also lost my spot at college. i can still reapply next year if i want, but at least now i know why i was failing out lmao

anyway, by my birthday in september we started the process of adjusting my medication again. upping my zoloft, getting me off remeron, and as of 6 weeks ago or so, beginning ritalin.

it was a rocky start, but i'm up to 60mg now. two pills in the morning, one in the afternoon. i have a goddamn alarm for 8am every day, even weekends. my sleeping is still wonky, but at least im genuinely tired by 8pm every night. the psychiatrist still wants me to try melatonin for a month (even though i told her multiple times it has never worked for me, and my problem has never been "i'm not sleepy enough"), so i'm on a whopping 2mg of melatonin for the next 30 days. norwegians are fucking WEIRD about melatonin, don't even get me started.

a slightly unexpected side-effect (on my end) of these medication changes: remeron made me gain weight. like, a lot of weight. and i was constantly hungry all the time, overeating to ridiculous amounts. why did nobody ever tell me that weight gain and metabolism changes are a side-effect of anti-depressants? i was more active this summer than i'd been in, like, three years and i just got fatter. which was incomvenient because i kept outgrowing my clothes. anyway, a side effect of ritalin is a loss of appetite and general weight loss. the combination of regularly taking ritalin and dropping remeron entirely? i eat a fraction of what i used to before, i've almost entirely stopped snacking, and i've lost 15 lbs in less than a month. i've already noticed my face is slightly slimmer now. maybe by christmas i'll be able to fit into my old tshirts again.

anyway, my psychologist quit, so i have a new one now. i've only seen her a few times, but she's veeeery different from my old one. i can't decide if i like her or not.

in the middle of all this, i've been going to the social security office as well to kind of get some of my own money, possibly help me get a job at some point in the future. my caseworker is super nice. if she's over 30 i'd be shocked. i relate to her really well, she's very helpful and understanding, and she's very patient with me and my bullshit. she's the kind of person where if we met at a party or something we could probably hang out.

anyway, she's helped me get out of the house sometimes. she introduced me to this youth club volunteer group thing called the fountain house, designed for young people who've dealt with or are currently dealing with mental illnesses and such. i hung out there yesterday and the day before and did some basic office work. it's nice. and then there's a work placement place that can either give you a job on site in one of their four departments, or help you get a job at an actual business elsewhere with more support and leniency than you might get if they just hired you off the street. i'd start in their second hand store. they clean and restore all donations they recieve, and they're super fucking cheap. i treated myself to my literal lifelong dream of owning a vintage typewriter (!!!!!) yesterday, because it's almost christmas and goddammit, i've been doing so much shit the past couple of months i deserve it. do i have space for it? not really. do i have a plan on what to use it for? no. was it heavy and miserable trekking through the snow and rain yesterday back and forth? was it worth the backache in the morning? fuck yeah it was.

a fucking lot of things are happening all at once. diagnoses, medications, lifestyle changes, work placement, social clubs, dealing with bureaucracies on all sides just so i can feel like a person again, not to mention juggling hobbies like writing and drawing and maintaining my irl friendships. i'm getting as many balls rolling as i can while i have the opportunity and mental/emotional capacity to, but i'm worried i'll burn out again. i'm stabilizing and slowly building my life back up, but jesus christ it would suck if this stupid house of cards collapsed again. but i'm tentatively optimistic. who knows, maybe it's not to late to course-correct my mistakes.

so long story short, that's why i've barely been active on tumblr for months. that's why i haven't been writing, drawing, or reading fic. it's coming along, but it's slow.

i guess the most important thing is that it's coming along at all.

[riotgrlpossum]

hows abouts giving a brief overview of your ocs 👀👀👀

!!!!

So I’m gonna put this under a read more cause there is A Lot.

I’m gonna separate this into two sections cause I’ve got like two projects/stories/whatevers I’m working on. A few months ago I made some posts about a different story that I was working on but that had some Serious Structural Problems and needs to be reworked, so it’s currently on the back burner. 

Anyway,

The first batch of OCs are from a story that I’m working on that will ideally become a novel. The project is called “The Unexplained Migratory Patterns of the Whooping Crane.” 

The main character is a 15-year-old girl named Oliver Lakely. Oliver is a sarcastic, quick-witted loner who has a really hard time fitting in with the other people in her town. She loves animals, music, and books. She’s cynical and artistic and really, really lonely. She’s also a psychic and her mother is a ghost. 

The other main character in TUMPotWC is 14-year-old Whyatt “Budgie” Kipling, nickname courtesy of his dyed bright green hair. Budgie moves in next to (but like country next to so quite a ways away) Oliver. He’s from London and his mother has been temporarily relocated to Oliver’s town to study the anomalous population of whooping cranes that have been nesting in this town for the last ten years. Budgie is a geeky, easy going kid. He loves to explore and is courageous to the point of being foolhardy. He knows that he’s weird, but is comfortable with it. 

Other characters include Miles and Siobhan Lakely, Oliver’s parents. Miles is psychic as well. He is a big tragic artist archetype. Plays the piano and has a lot of anger issues. Oliver’s relationship with him is a big part of the story. Siobhan is a ghost. She died when Oliver was 5 and has been manifesting in their house ever since. They also have a cat named Kyle he’s sentient and likes jazz. 

SECOND BATCH

These next children are from a project that is less fleshed out than TUMPotWC. It’s called “Pine Grove Stop & Go” and would ideally be a podded cast. It centers around a gas station off of the highway in Pine Grove, Wyoming, a one-stoplight town on the way to the Grand Tetons in the year 1997. The Pine Grove Stop & Go is a hotbed for supernatural activity, to the point that it is a bit of an urban legend. The story starts a month after one of the employees, Myla Heigel, is found dead behind the corner. Her death is ruled a suicide, but another one of the employees, Sophie “Lance” Lansing knows that isn’t true. 

Lance is the main character of the story. She’s 19. Anti-authoritarian, a flannel lesbian. Bit of a stoner. Super intelligent but hates school and organized education in general. Loves books and film. Cynical and sarcastic, comes off quite prickly but once she warms up to people she’s a total softie. All about that Repression TM. Has a whole thing later on where she becomes obsessed with a tape recorder to the point of near insanity but she generally gets better. ADHD.

Moving on. Noah Meredith. 19 as well. Conspiracy theorist. Gets a job at PGS&G to try and investigate Myla’s death. Super big nerd, diaster bisexual, the epitome of “bigfoot is real and we tenderly caressed each other one night behind the Arby's.” Not great at interacting with people asks A Lot of Questions WIth Little Regard for Politeness. Autistic icon. Really funny, loves campy sci-fi, secretly a bastard. At first he and Lance clash like crazy but eventually they get on like a house on fire. 

Seth Weiss. 17 years old. Burnout stoner. Likes to skateboard and makes dumb jokes. Crouching moron, hidden badass. Thinks that Lance is the coolest person in the world. Super gay but hasn’t figured it out yet. Sweet and genuine and kind of naive. Secretly Big Magic (He hasn’t figured that out yet either). Sees weird shit all the time but explains it away as either none of his business or a bad trip. Me, to Seth: my sweet boy let me show you the world. 

Lily Walker. 22 years old. The assistant manager at the PGS&G and *very* proud of it. Refuses to believe any weird shit. Always has a smile on her face but is like this close to just fucking losing it. The mom friend. Thinks she’s the token straight until she realizes that this is the kind of story where no one is straight and whoops she’s like hella bi. “Aren’t you tired of being nice? Do you ever just wanna go apeshit?”

Myla Heigel. R.I.P. queen. Was 20 when she kicked it. She’s like dead but also like ????. Big Dyke Energy. One of those people who smiles at you and gives you tea and then only after they’ve left have you realized that you gave them your social security number and credit card information. Walks up with her sundress and sandals and also like a crossbow. Super curious, could out-conspiracy Noah. Was investigating the weirdness behind the PGS&G before she died. Had a weird habit of recording everything on her tape recorder, which Lance picks up after Myla dies. 

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Yeah those are all my kids I love them all and love talking about them and I’m sorry this was so long but also like you’ve met me so is it really surprising?