I'm not one for the whole "neurodivergence is my superpower" thing but I feel like logically we would be immune to mind readers

Depending on your level of focus at any given time, it may not be a passive thing because I spend a lot of my time with my head completely empty but there are times when a bunch of different sounds are playing at once, and this could be while I'm just walking around looking at things and it's probably the stimulation coming through my eyes triggering my brain to not be able to select background music. So, really it's about mind readers getting one of two extremes.

And if I know someone is reading my mind, I unfortunately have OCD and AuDHD (intersectional neurodivergence BABY!) so my brain is gonna say "Congratulations! I thought of the thing you wanted! HERE'S THE ENTIRE FUCKIGN CATALOG OF THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY!!!" And then I just fucking black out.

I have wondered whether it sounded ablest to assume that neurodivergent and mentally ill people are immune to mind readers, but considering how I know my own brain works I think I can safely say it's at least true for me. You'd have to catch me lacking to be able to read my mind.

Disability Month is about to be over so I want to talk about the Dumb Brute archetype

Personally, I like himbos and herbos as much as anyone does, but there's a stark difference between a little dumb and straight up ableism. Orientalism and racism play a huge part in it as well considering the overlaps of stereotypes though.

If you want your big hunk of muscle to be a little bit dumb, you can do it without making them straight up stupid.

Honestly, actors should be allowed more to be more feral

People forget that humans can growl and snarl just like other animals. And no, I'm not talking about the Shadow Daddy/CEO growling trope, I'm talking about making a weird noise to jumpscare somebody.

Actors already get instructed to hiss like vampires in a bunch of goofy scenes (ahem, that one Indiana Jones and the Great Circle cinematic where a Nazi leapt at a lady and hissed like a vampire).

And the only actor I've ever seen growl as a jumpscare was Odin growling at Loki when he tried to interject as he was lecturing Thor near the beginning of Thor (2011).

But Anthony Hopkins improvised that. And he's autistic… and so am I… and I've done the same thing. Which is probably why I've only seen autistic people growl. That also explains why I headcanon animalistic characters like Katsuki Bakugo and Inosuke Hashibira as autistic.

I don't know if it's a stereotype about us or if neurotypical people growl too, but neurotypical people have very specific views about acceptable expressions of anger.

Anyway, let actors be weird and make weird noises. Nicholas Cage would probably get a kick out of it, so start with him first and then… I don't know, Sarah-Nicole Robles? If she gets to voice Luz again, it'd be hella funny.

I hate Duolingo Chess so much. I get an 80/124 ratio of wins to total matches, but the minute Oscar wins he starts acting smug. And most of those other 44 times I've lost the game were because I stalemated Oscar, not because he beat me.

And the way Oscar wins is BULLSHIT because the YOU LOSE bar covers my half of the fucking board so I can't even tell how he won and a lot of the time where I can figure out where he placed his piece to win, I SHOULD BE ABLE TO TAKE THAT PIECE!

THIS GAME IS FUCKING RETARDED!

AND I'M NEURODIVERGENT SO I'M LITERALLY CLASSIFIED AS BEING RETARDED ACCORDING TO ABLEST 20TH CENTURY DOCTORS!

I can't tell if it's because of Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria or some other wack ass shit but for some reason always kinda… it's hard to say exactly what it is but, I guess I have to kind of explain what I'm dealing with for you to get it.

I have a female character, let's call her A for anonymity's sake, who's kind of the overarching protagonist of the story and she's described as being "well-endowed, unfortunately or fortunately depending on your perspective."

Unfortunately because she's a woman, a woman of colour specifically, and her body draws judgement from old guys who can't keep their eyes to themselves. And fortunately because it's kind of something to be proud of, loving your own body sort of thing.

The "problem" that I know isn't actually a problem comes in when I have descriptions in my writing to say "He cried into her breast."

What this sentence describes is a child that A is comforting because of something that happened.

Breast and chest are two different descriptors that are rarely interchangeable, in this case they are not interchangeable. And that's a child. Would be pretty sus if you tried to make it weird bro.

So, there's nothing inherently wrong with the sentence, it would only be weird if it was pluralised to say "He cried into her breasts", which is… what?

But for some reason I have this weird hang up about people taking it weirdly. Which… is weird, because even though I'm not a professional writer, I write with a plan for animation so people won't see my descriptions until the script is released or novellised.

The major thing about my unnecessary hang ups with this character that I know probably stems from my RSD is the fact that I am quite hesitant to make any sort of jokes about her body.

And I know the difference between what a good joke and a bad joke is but I'm so afraid of the "Written By A Male Author" thing that I kind of just unnecessarily filter out any jokes about her body.

I'm comfortable with joking about male characters in the story who also have big boobs and big butts, and my friends were saying that "When we draw A, we can't forget to give her an ass and titties, everyone's gotta be thicc. Don't matter if you're a man or a woman or whatever." So I only make jokes that have been peer-reviewed.

By the way, the jokes that I'm talking about that I'm hesitant of are like, one of her walking into a "Holy House" and seeing a giant glass mural of her feeding a baby and she's like "I'm severely uncomfortable" and it's kind of meant to show how dangerous people who worship a living person as a deity are, and A is kind of a deity but she's Samoan so she's more of a Maui-like figure and this mural kinda shows these worshippers trying to Christianise her in a way.

The other joke was a more of a Deadpool style quip where she's fighting someone and they strike her in the chest and she's like "Ooh! Right in the Amatitties!" Which fits her characters because she's kind of this foul-mouthed jokester, and while she's not exactly like Deadpool it is something she would say.

I know there's nothing inherently wrong with either of these jokes and that they're not punching down on her body, but I just kind of am weird about them. Maybe I just need to get out of my own head. It's not offensive, and I wouldn't be being "brave", so I should probably just stop being a coward.

Every time introverts talk about "Imagine if extroverts were treated like introverts" it ends up being some ablest bullshit

Now, I am an ambivert but I appear introverted in public because that's how I was taught to be polite, and I don't know if it refutes the claim that extroverts are never taught to shut up and make the space comfortable for everything but I know the claim is false

I know the claim is false because even neurotypical extroverts are taught to respect the space of others, and it's one of the things I've been taught even without having to publicly mask. When I'm extroverted and one of my siblings is introverted, my sibling isn't expected to "come out of their shell", I have to respect their boundaries, and vice versa inverse

Now, back to the top. What do I mean by the phrase "Every time introverts talk about "Imagine if extroverts were treated like introverts" it ends up being some ablest bullshit"?

What I mean is that there are video sketches about what would be said to extroverts if they were treated like introverts: "Do you like, silence?", "Oh look, it shuts up", "You should be in your shell more." And I see a lot of introverts laughing at this saying it's so true and how extroverts are never treated like this.

I don't want to sound like I am offended but this is incorrect, extroverts are treated like this. It's just not the extroverts who are considered "the fun ones" similar to how I've never been told to come out of my shell as an introvert because I'm "polite." The extroverts who get treated like the ones in the videos are the ones who are neurodivergent.

While the exact words in the video aren't what we're told, we are essentially told the same things:

I've interacted with adults most of my life so I was never actually allowed to speak and have these things said to me, so I picked these things up through osmosis. My shyness in public was interpreted as politeness and I couldn't speak to anyone older than me because there's nothing to talk about and adults don't give one shit about disrespecting you in front of your face whether it's calling you Michael Jackson/saying "peace out my brother" because your hair is poofy even though you're Coloured, not Black, because your hair is voluminous or wanting to kiss your cheek without your consent. And the other kids just like talking over each other.

That's why it's false to claim that extroverts never face hardship in society. And that's without mentioning social rules designed to punish both introverts and extroverts.

Do you have a praise kink or are you just neurodivergent and need validation for everything because otherwise you feel performative?

Hollywood ADHD isn't inaccurate because the topic changed from boobs to the Independence of Scotland, that happened to me and my siblings, it's inaccurate because there's no throughline to get from boobs to the Independence of Scotland. If I explain to you how me and my siblings got from boobs to the Independence of Scotland, it would take a while because there's a lot of stepping off points that got us there and I have to explain a lot of lore on the topic we're discussing and it will just unravel and you'll lose focus. Hollywood doesn't have the kind of patience to write a derailing conversation so you can naturally see how the conversation got from boobs to the Independence of Scotland and so they rely on making bullshit connections to prove their characters are "quirky."

But if you need context. We were talking about whether android boobs would be useful in our universe and that led to the discussion of the difference between synthetics and androids, which are separate from robots because synthetics and androids are alive but misnomered as robots which aren't, and there's also different planets in this universe and it'd be spoilers if I told you why those two things are related but we ended up discussing what the "America" of each of those planets would be because Britain conquered the Western World but America is the face of it and then we were discussing the difference between Britain and England which led to wrapping in Wales, Ireland, and Scotland and that's how the conversation went from boobs to the Independence of Scotland in the simplest way I can explain it.

The reason why self-rewarding doesn't work for me as a neurodivergent person is the fact that I'm a very scheduled and disciplined person. I rely on routines and so I have priorities. I don't think "Oh, I have to do something, better reward myself afterwards to motivate myself!" Because that may just lead to me only thinking about the reward and wanting it more than working. But you know why that doesn't happen? It's because my brain works like "Oh, I want to have a snack/drink, but the dishes are dirty, I can't have a snack in this condition and I can't let the dishes pile up for later" so my brain is motivated in a roundabout way where I can't be motivated by a reward, I just have to clear something so I can do something.

One thing I hate about being autistic is when I start thinking about things that are dumb. But not like a special interest kinda dumb, I just really like the functionality even though it's dumb to talk about. Cause like I was thinking about umbrellas and how they're one of the best inventions because their use cases are so broad. You can use it in the rain and you can use it in the sun, it's one of the only inventions where its use cases can be polar opposites and nobody can say "But what if?" to it. And they're fashionable so it doesn't even have to be raining or sunny for you to use it, while at the same time if you use it as fashion it can still be used later. Plus it can be a cane, maybe.

Something weird about neurodivergence that neurotypicals don't seem to get when they hear is that neurodivergent individuals often have high degrees of empathy (obviously in contrast to some having high degrees of apathy) and a strong sense of justice. This doesn't mean we're naturally good people. I consider myself and my siblings very empathetic but it can make us emotionally vulnerable at points, sometimes what some would consider immature, and while it helps me understand my characters more because I can put myself in their shoes, sometimes having a high degree of empathy can cloud your sense of justice. I've felt sorry for people like Homelander for crying out loud! Empathy helps you understand where a person is coming from but there's a reverse to it because having a high degree of empathy makes you seem apathetic when in the same position as another person you can't understand where they're coming from. Characters like Judge Holden I'm not meant to agree with and I have a somewhat irrational hate for him, more than I think I'm supposed to, because I do not understand his philosophy in the slightest and despise everything he does because I can't wrap my brain around why anyone would logically believe him. I try to understand people as best as I can and when I don't, I get mad. And then there's the sense of justice. This doesn't necessarily mean that we always know what's right, it's more about fairness. If you do something bad, I do something bad. If I do something bad, I try to make up for it. It's very simple and admittedly childish on the surface but it can lead to overcorrections where either you apologise too much, beat yourself up about everything, or overreact to something seemingly trivial because it breaks your internal rules. So, please, neurotypicals, stop getting offended about things you don't understand. Having a high empathy and sense of justice doesn't make us automatically better people than you and it's not us trying to make ourselves feel better. It's a lot simpler and a lot more complex than you think it is.

You know, when I first heard there was an autistic Barbie coming out I was like "What? Can't we just make our Barbies autistic instead of making a new Barbie doll and calling her autistic?" And then I actually saw her and I was so happy that she wasn't just a new Barbie with an autism label, her box actually comes with a fidget spinner, weighted blanket, scratch pads, and ear plugs, and she's got her own little fidget spinner too. This actually made me smile, a character created for the autistic community that actually fits autistic people.

So, I just learned what egocentrism is. I don't like how selfish of a word it sounds. And I just realised it's a problem a lot of neurodivergent people have where we expect everyone else to have the same information as us or understand what's happening in our brains, which leads to us saying this that could be misinterpreted as problematic like making a comparison of our own experiences to someone else's without the full context which makes it appear like we're minimising the other person's issues. And conversely, I feel like neurotypical people also have issues with egocentrism because they give "signals" that mean something that they consider to be social etiquette but since a lot of neurodivergent people struggle with social cues that aren't necessarily clear, we once again appear to be disrespectful. … Can someone smarter than me explain why neurodivergent people lose in both scenarios?