#autistic neoteny

[brightlotusmoon]

When I was in my 20s, it was the beginning of the 21st century and I'd already developed this weird trauma thing about aging, because I knew even then how the cerebral palsy was pressing against me causing premature internal aging. When I joined a support group and learned that our systems genuinely do age 25 years faster, part of me went into a tailspin.

I looked into skincare products like peptides and moringa oil. The era of commercializing the "war on aging" had already sunk its claws into the internet. Wrinkle creams were getting big. I accidentally pushed myself into studying dermatology and cosmetics and working with aestheticians because I was afraid to grow old.

I've always been told I look much much younger. But I was too busy wondering if the hemiplegic left side of my face would remain tight and taught while the right side sagged. I was so anxious. It was ridiculous.

Chronic pain dealt me an epic set of worry lines. I've had people comment on selfies with "you look like you're in pain" and "you look sad and tired." Recently I've developed a deeper smile line that's visible on the right. But I've learned learned to like it.

I don't want to fear getting old. It's going to happen. It's a lifetime pressed into my skin, a map of my experiences. The surface should be the least of my worries here.

I'm rambling. My head hurts. But you get the idea.

[entei]

fursona spec. zoo

domain: eukarya kingdom: animalia phylum: chordata class: therapsida order: ophisvillosa ("hairy serpent") family: theregaledae genus: theregale species: theregale montanus ("royal beast from the mountains") common name: montane forest dragon, or simply a "dragon"

a branch of therapsids that diverged from cynodontia in the late permian. they share many similarities with mammals, both convergent and homologus. they are the only known group of animals to have evolved sapience, other than humans.

their numbers began declining in the early cenozoic due to competition with mammals and eventual over-hunting by humans. it is likely only a few hundred of any given species remain. due to their extreme rarity, dragons have been bestowed great significance in human folk-lore, and are highly sought after for trophy hunting.

t. montanus (referred to as "dragon(s)" going forward) is a semiarboreal generalist feeder. their historic range includes much of the rocky mountains. they can be anywhere from 4 feet to 7 feet tall when standing on their hind limbs & necks in a neutral posture. bipedal and digitigrade, though they will often switch to a quadrupedal gait for brief but fast sprints.

dragons are furred, with the structure being practically identical to mammalian hair. their fur is the softest of any known animal, and is even rumored to induce minor euphoria if touched.

individuals can range anywhere from a vibrant brown to a dull grey, and are typically striped or "ticked". pups have a characteristic spot & rosetted pattern. in rare cases these spots will carry over into adulthood as a form of neoteny.

dragons are omnivorous, typically scavengers but will opportunistically hunt prey. due to their very high internal body temperatures, dragons are able to freely feed on carrion without contracting illness, though this temperature requires many excess calories to maintain. their favorite foods include fish, fruits, nuts, and small mammals.

their primary senses are vision, smell, and hearing. rather than the complex nasal cavities of mammals, dragons have convergently evolved a tongue very similar to that of squamates, which flicks outside the mouth almost constantly. the tongue is used both for smelling (of which the fork can differentiate the direction of any given smell), and for sensory purposes, as dragons lack facial whiskers.

dragons possess keratinized display structures that are flamboyant in color. this includes their horns, claws, ears, and scutes (boney plates, embedded in the skin, that run along the dragon's limbs). as the bright coloring only develops during sexual maturity, these are likely to advertise to potential mates.

dragons communicate through clicks, whistles, and squeaks, though they are capable of learning human language. body language is communicated primarily through their ears and tail-flagging. they will wag their tail if excited, flick it if annoyed, etc.

dragons possess "mammary" glands, 2 pairs in total, with some distinctions from true mammary glands in their internal anatomy, along with the highly flexible lips required to drink from said glands. dragons will raise their young, litters of 1-3 individuals, until they are able to fend for themselves in about a decade and a half. newborn pups are only a few inches long and covered in downy fluff.

rapid fire:

long neck that can extend and retract

bird-like feet with reversed first toe, adept at climbing trees opposable thumb for Grabbin uses the shadow of their tail to attract fish

im autistic btw ok bye <3

[loki-zen]

https://www.tumblr.com/soularth/743343727166275584?source=share I have no real interest in doing romance plot with my space LARP character but I've had some interesting conversations about whether or not it would hypothetically be Weird and/or the kind of thing LARP-runners would want to rule out/discourage.

This is my alien who is (to the best of science's limited understanding) physically and psychologically an adult of its species, which reaches maturity in under half a decade and lives for perhaps three.

I mean aside from the whole romance question it's interesting; it's interesting to try to unpick and puzzle out which parts of the human concept of 'childlike' stem from psychological immaturity versus brevity of life experience thus far. It's interesting to see how responsive Nif's childlikeness of affect is to the way people treat them, and it's interesting when the incongruities-from-a-human-perspective catch someone off guard. (I was kitting up with very real energy weapons for a combat mission in which people died when I dropped the oft-quoted line from the last game, "I'm five and a half!")

@mercuryjellyfish sez: I think the most childlike thing that Nif does is loudly declare whether something is Right or Wrong, or Bad or Good, which is funny because it's actually evidence she's thought more about the situation at hand than the average adult present.

..which is definitely true but hard to say whether it comes under neoteny or 'autistic-coded alien', which it also is

[soulvomit]

Most people process the world around them through their feelings. Their feelings are like a cat whisker or curb feeler extended beyond their body, that maps the world and forms impressions that are THEN processed by their logical mind. They are in an altered state while they are in their feelings and are best treated that way. They can't process logic until they manage to get out of their feelings. They literally will not hear you until their feelings are sorted. Their feelings will get MORE intense if they're not allowed to be expressed. Also, i think lots of people - process logical or factual information as negativity or criticism or invalidation, if they are in their feelings at the time.

This includes a vast number of autists too, now that feelings-first autists are being diagnosed at a rate that's beginning to redefine autism to the public discourse.

I learned that "The Shit Sandwich" is a good model for safely talking as an analytical type, to the feeler types. Show parity and empathy - insert analysis (within reason, and properly softened, which is difficult) - then close with returning to the party in question and showing empathy to them. Them processing factual material as negativity is what makes the Shit Sandwich format (positive - negative - positive) so effective a model for this. I suspect that autists spot the Shit Sandwich a mile away though (and may be triggered/activated by it) so it's definitely a thing of Knowing Your Audience.

Also I feel like the cultural feeling shifted hugely Feelings in the last couple of decades (this is a long evolution from the late 1960s) so primarily-analytical people, autistic or not, may be a cognitive minority. I felt othered as a female "INTJ" type in the 80s and 90s, because girls were literally Not Supposed To Be Like That, but I feel like that same othering has extended to men too now, outside of specific subcultures.

I suspect some autists have a tendency to be cultural relic or in the cultural long tail of behaviors and feelings which are no longer in style (so many logic types I've known, have or struggle against cultural relic beliefs from the midcentury).

So it's possible that Feelings Autists could be the "picture of autism" (assuming some other cultural construction of neurodivergence hasn't taken the place of autism) if the pendulum swings and analytical-first processing becomes norm again for any big part of the population. And we may have to have a movement of "autists (or whatever it's called then) are logical, too. Just like normies. We are actually MORE logical than you."

Or I could just be talking out of my ass. Carry on

[blackwoolncrown]

I think ppl on the Autism/ADHD spectrum have a lot more awareness than a ‘NT’ person. At least differently placed and to different depths.

and at first that sounds wrong, right? bc so many ppl struggle with being unaware of so many things, like other people’s expressions or our own bodies-

but I think the extra awareness is all on things that are, in a NT person, subconscious. So we as a conscious awareness end up managing, observing or otherwise dealing with things NT people never have direct perception of.

So we’re distracted, obstructed or otherwise physically, viscerally affected by the way it feels when certain sound/light frequencies hit our bodies, or maybe even their shape and texture, or the multidimensional array of a cloud of connected ideas. ‘Conscience’ becomes a sensory organ of its own and puts interpersonal interactions in the spotlight, adding deeper perception to facial expressions, so much so that they can become overwhelming to behold.

The lack of ‘trueness’ in abstract phrases or falsehoods versus facts becomes palpable and we can exhaust ourselves trying to explain to people because it feels like being gaslit, like having to shout ‘the sky is blue!’ at people who don’t believe you.

Sometimes our minds are so busy part of them slips from our bodies. We’re actively holding the part of our brain that decides what to say, asks what is right, puts the words together, asks what do we look like from the outside? It’s a juggling act and sometimes we drop one, sometimes we just could never hold it.

We can feel the over-harsh hyper-busy world you live in. We feel it draining us. We see it draining you, too, but you say it’s normal and you’re fine. It’s not that you don’t feel it. It’s that you aren’t aware of the part of your body that does.

I think of how people on psychedelics- which disrupt mental barriers and rigid thought constructs as well as enhance sensory sensitivity- it’s known that people can become sensitive to eye contact, greater sensory perception subject to overwhelm and awe, synesthesia, echolalia, glossolalia, poor coordination, going nonverbal or having difficulty speaking- as well as hyperability to communicate with others on the same substance, enhanced creativity & detail focus- all symptoms of a person on the spectrum.

I think about sensitivity as a quality, not a judgment- how dullness is good for enduring damage but sensitivity is required to gain intelligence. No one wants their nose, eyes, ears, microscopes and so on to be insensitive- why should a person be?

I think about stimming in ASDiv people and qi gong, asanas, energy clearing. I think about spiritual texts that promise that following disciplines of sitting still and staring, stretching your body parts and eating simple foods will return to you a youthfulness of spirit called ‘the childlike mind’.

I think of how a defining quality of humans and being associated with them (as in the case of our domesticated animal kin) is neoteny, the retention of juvenile traits into adulthood. It’s why there’s no ‘inner child’-- that’s just us. Just what it means to be human. It makes dogs stay puppies at heart and what makes humans more kind than cruel.

I think about how they say Autistic people ‘struggle with abstract thought because we have a concrete worldview’ and how philosophers and shamans talk about how the world as we know it-socially, superficially, the world of words and judgments- is nothing but a construct, an illusion not entirely connected to the real world of perception, feeling, nature.

I think about how my mind flits from task to task to get 100 things done in a day and how Zen and Daoist writings talk of a mind that flows easily, emptily from one thing to another.

Just thinkin’.

[brightlotusmoon]

A friend who is autistic and helps out autistic children was talking about how one lady didn't think her son could be autistic because he didn't have big eyes. We were joking that the mother had heard vaguely about autistic neoteny and conflated it with anime.

[brightlotusmoon]

Re: TMNT Michelangelo having ADHD in canon and being autistic in fanfics.

I found this comment in an ADHD support group, and it describes Mikey perfectly.

"I can often tell by looking at a person that they have ADHD - that they are empathic, that they have high intuiton and are very "imaginative". Sometimes, a photo will catch it, too!"

More and more people in the fandom headcanon Mikey with ADHD, but they don't have to, it's already canon.

I've been nudging Mikey's Autistic traits for years, because Donnie was stereotyped as an autistic nerd since the late 2000s. In 2012, 2003, and 2016, I like to think Leo is also autistic. Rise Raph, too.

There are many ways to be autistic, not just Donatello.

See. As a spectrum we're a Mobius Strip, an Ouroboros, a color wheel, never a line. No mild or severe, no high or low, just varying traits and presentation.

(The autistic advocate community as a whole prefers " is autistic" to "has autism" since we see it as defining and identifying, how our brains are wired. It falls on the individual to say if they prefer Identity First Language or Person First Language.)

[brightlotusmoon]

I just realized that I and several of my FB friends with cerebral palsy share a weird inside joke: pointing out that none of us age due to neoteny and spasticity, and then we check the list of immortal celebrities. And then we laugh darkly because our bodies are actually 25 years older due to pressure and trauma, etc.

It gets even funnier for those of us with ADHD or autism, because of those neoteny tendencies piling on.

[brightlotusmoon]

Welp. Today I am become THE ANSWER TO LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING.

I only get to say that once, for one year.

People still don't think I'm in my forties. Being 42 feels like a weird accomplishment and I cannot explain why.

Autistics and cerebral palsy folks weren't supposed to get this old. In fact, there's almost no research on aging with cerebral palsy, and many neurotypicals still think autism isn't something that ages with us, and we do tend to be murdered by caregivers before we reach adulthood.

I'm an ultimate cryptid, said a friend.

(My selfies all have a smoothing filter to soothe the dysmorphia and depression.)

My skin care routine isn't complicated but it does require specific extracts known to increase cell life I guess. I probably knock some plants down in an ally and rifle through their seeds for loose oils.

Happy birthday to me, then. I hope I keep surviving.

[brightlotusmoon]

...part of me wants to cry out into the trauma void about cerebral palsy in adults not being studied enough, about how nearly all of us have PTSD from childhood physical therapy, how spastic and mixed CP leads to multiple spinal problems, rib and chest damage, lung and heart compression, less oxygen being pumped, micro spasms causing undue stress on joints and bones, arthritis at young ages, the fact that the palsy damage ages us twenty five years faster yet gives us a neoteny that makes us look at least ten years younger (gods help us if we're also autistic which is eight percent), the extensive musculoskeletal damage that barely scratches the surface, how a lot of us are diagnosed with Ehler Danlos and rarely know it, etc.

How it automatically brings Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder just from happening, and how if you're mild enough it can take a couple of years for a diagnosis, how "oh, I didn't realize you have cerebral palsy" is the opposite of a compliment because yes it is a defining characteristic, just like the autism and ADHD except the result of damage that nobody could control,

and also the sheer bigotry, the extraordinary discrimination from not just the abled community but from our own community, how being mild makes us less seen but being severe makes us pitiable and it doesn't matter which is worse.

Having two dozen conditions and syndromes on top of that - epilepsy, fibromyalgia, regional chronic pain syndrome, guaranteed depression and generalization anxiety disorder - makes us that much more vulnerable and dismissed from every direction as we age.

I'm four ten and I'm probably gonna shrink as I go through my forties and beyond. I barely know any other CPer older than me who has a good quality of life. I'm lucky I'm still as mobile as I am - when my left leg randomly stops working and feeling I need to make sure I'm at least not in a dangerous path.

Eh, I'm just venting.

@rhythmsmith

[brightlotusmoon]

[brightlotusmoon]

I had to take a selfie Very Specifically to register with Maryland's medical cannabis commission - no smiling, plain, simple... and holyshit I look so TIRED.

They'd better notice that.

Yeah, even a fae changeling with neoteny can look beaten up by existence. I'm actually looking my age, no matter what my friends say.

I gotta dye my hair purple again, I miss it. And start wearing makeup every day, it's self care.

[brightlotusmoon]

EDS: It's Not About "Flexibility" — Murray Meetze

I often come back to this site to try and figure out how I never realised that I had every fucking comorbidity for Ehler Danlos Syndrome but never thought about it because of the cerebral palsy. Spasticity, ataxia, and dyskenesia hid a lot of the connective tissue dysfunctions. EDS and cerebral palsy each have a unique neoteny.

A lot of autistics have EDS. We're still figuring out the connections. Autistic Neoteny is also a thing and part of the changeling myth and uncanny valley theory.

Also, FYI, eight percent of autistics have cerebral palsy. Over sixty percent of autistics have ADHD, which shares eighty percent overlap with autism.

I also look over shots from a photo shoot I did a few years ago, and I'm still surprised nobody noticed EDS.

[brightlotusmoon]

At least it's getting easier to tell allistic fiction writers that if they really want to write autistic main characters but they don't know enough about autistic people to even realize that it's not a line spectrum but a wheel or infinity symbol, not to mention a whole system of central wiring, they cannot proceed without talking closely to at least two autistic people with varied trait strength traits.

We are not your stereotypes, your inspiration porn, your antiheroes, your aliens.

Although most of us probably are fae. We're reclaiming the changeling theory, dammit.

[brightlotusmoon]

A Rather Ableist Neurotypical: Mentally incompetent disabled people, such as autistics, can't give consent, so you shouldn't have sex with them.

A Whole Ass Bunch Of Autistics: Ahahaha wait excuse us we what now?

Around Two Hundred Comments Later: Either she changed her mind or this many happy autistics casually discussing BDSM and kinky sex scared her off? 🤷‍♀ 🤦‍♀💁‍♀😘😁

[brightlotusmoon]

"“Cerebral Palsy, Co-Occurring Autism Spectrum Disorders, and Motor Functioning – Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, USA, 2008.”"

Can anyone help me dig up more recent work on comorbid conditions shared between autism, ADHD, and cerebral palsy? All thre of my relevant support groups on Facebook have been separately discussing the same disorders. It's almost funny. I wish I were a neuropsychologist.