i am not a taskmaster blog but i AM autistic and a taskmaster fan and this post made me have some emotions earlier today and i am yet to see it shared on tumblr
[ID: Two screencaps from Taskmaster. Fern Brady stands outside a house, in front of a metal barrel with a pile of potatoes on it. From off-screen, Alex Horne asks, “Do you remember these things?” Fern says quizzically, “Wait, did I meet these potatoes before?” End ID.]
“I grew up confident about my queerness. Girls at school made fun of me for it but autism’s lack of regard for social norms combined with my constant sapphic-novel-reading had given me confidence and I remained unruffled. I couldn’t imagine being anything other than bisexual and never thought of it as weird. It took repeated messages, over and over and over again, to instil a suitable amount of shame in me.
From what I can tell, a lot of allistic people I know are primarily motivated by social approval so push any rogue queerness down into their subconscious or suppress their thoughts and only get comfortable with it later in life. For me, it’s been the reverse. I was made to get uncomfortable with it. A combination of my rigid thinking with no grey areas combined with society’s messages about sexuality made me more muddled than was necessary. My teen years would be the last time, for a long time, that I felt being bisexual was normal.”
[ID: Ten screencaps from Taskmaster. Fern Brady says, “I am dressed as an alien dressed as a Scottish man.” The studio screen shows her in costume, with an uneven bowl cut, bushy monobrow, sweater vest, brown trousers and brown shoes. She explains, “There’s a Scottish book called The Cone Gatherers about two brothers. And for some reason, I was an alien that inhabited the character of the book. But I’m not what people call a thespian, so I got shot dead in the end.” Greg Davies looks baffled. John Kearns asks, “Why was the alien shot?” Fern replies, “I was shot ‘cause I wasn’t meant to be gathering cones in the forest.” Greg says, “I feel like possibly my drinks have been spiked.” End ID.]