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.

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.

Found out yesterday that it's Disability Month so I gotta talk about it

Admittedly, sometimes I waffle between calling myself disabled and not because I'm obviously neurodivergent but I've learned to mask so well and all my siblings are neurodivergent so we don't force each other to mask, which often makes me wonder if it still counts.

I am a bit of a fucking hypocrite when it comes to defending the status of other disabled people though. I'm the first person to jump in and remind people that cyborgs are still disabled even though those prosthetics go crazy.

I guess I am physically disabled by the fact that I have astigmatism and am a bit nearsighted so I need glasses.

But one thing that I want to talk about and I never see represented in media is a birth defect I have: a cleft palate.

When I was born, my mouth was split open and the doctors had to sew it back together. Mom said she could see my brain through my nose but she had to be exaggerating. Despite that, the first thing I ever did apparently was smile at her.

My lip is fine now, there's a scar under my left nostril connected to my upper lip but my lip isn't deformed and because I was too lazy to shave, I grew a small mustache that partially covered the scar. But my mom taught me to shave when I was like 15 and taught me to avoid cutting my scar open again.

My left nostril is a bit wonky compared to my right, it hurts to get a pimple in there, especially on the scar, and my teeth haven't been growing in right ever since I was like 7 so I need to get braces. But one of the funniest things to happen was the fact that my uvula is short and I used to think it was because I was a boy because of that one joke from Monster House, but a couple years ago I discovered that my uvula is split down the middle and I can do that my forcing air through that area, causing it to split. I can also touch my uvula with my tongue. Funny.

But I never see cleft palates represented in media, even the issues I don't have. Besides a lisp, I've never had an issue with my diction because of my mouth. But the scar on my face and the anxieties my mom has about it are things I've never seen before.

The closest I ever got was Rudy from Ice Age: Dawn of The Dinosaur. A fucking albino baryonyx with gigantism is the closest thing I've ever had to seeing someone with a facial deformity like mine. Maybe that's part of why I was obsessed with dinosaurs when I was younger.

But that's why one of the main characters in my urban fantasy Gravity Falls style superhero story has a cleft palate. She has a scar on her lip, her teeth are screwed up, and while she doesn't make a drama out of her condition, she always makes sure to never get punched in the mouth so that her teeth don't get more screwed up and her face doesn't split open again. That's why my mom was so afraid of me learning martial arts, besides my big ass heavy ass hands that apparently meant to some parents that I couldn't play with their kids, but I don't remember that, only my mom does.

This whole post feels like a bit of a downer, I'm going to go get a cookie.

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.

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.

I despise pedantry

I am pedantic myself but at least I have the decency to know what I'm being pedantic about and be either joking or mostly right, unless I swallow my words.

We already have to deal with the lack of media literacy nowadays with people who need to go back to Language classes, but it's worse when there's people who act smart and fail at the most basic language conventions and get pedantic about it.

Have you ever heard of a F*CKING METAPHOR? Mind-reading doesn't literally mean flicking the folds of someone's brain like the pages of a book, you're being pedantic about nothing! And I'm using a quote from a book to illustrate my point about what all these people sound like to me.

And yes, I may have done a similar thing when I said that swords don't make ringing sounds when they strike, but the difference is that I disclaimed that swords only ring when they're blunt, which is technical accuracy and not me mistaking a metaphor.

And I'm autistic, I struggle with literalism sometimes but even I can understand metaphors and what words mean, so claiming autism just so you can be pedantic is no excuse and quite frankly, very ablest to try and accuse others of ableism when you're making it seem like every autistic person struggles with the most basic things, this is how people think autistic people are racist and homophobic.

Even Drax "Don't Ever Call Me A Thesaurus" The Destroyer can understand what "mind-reading" means, and I'm sure you can too. But, if you're trying to be a pedantic nincompoop: then either I can guess you never went to Language Class, unlikely given the fact that you've been using a thesaurus as a v*brator with how far up your a** it is; or, more likely, you know exactly what it is I'm talking about and you're choosing to be so obtuse that you loop around back to being narrow and acute, PLEASE!

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.

One of my favourite things in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic that I haven't seen people really talk about is the fact that when Rainbow Dash was supposed to do the entrance exam for the Wonderbolts Academy and everyone was trying to help her with the History of The Wonderbolts, not only did the show display the fact that Rainbow Dash has ADHD without telling us but they also had the others accommodate Rainbow Dash's learning style rather than force her to try and learn the way the others do.

Like she couldn't pay attention to Twilight's lessons because Twilight is a focused academic so she found it understimulating and everyone else's methods were either overstimulating or confusing for her.

Side note: the fact that the others all had their own way of teaching Rainbow Dash this information and knew the history off by heart implies that they studied the History of The Wonderbolts and memorised it using their own methods and tried using that to help Rainbow Dash and I think that really shows how much they care about each other that each of the Mane Six actively studied something Rainbow Dash is interested in to try and help her.

But side note aside, the fact that they didn't just have Rainbow Dash turn around and randomly study in the middle of the night and instead had Twilight discover the way Rainbow Dash processes information and then work around to try and accommodate that to teach Rainbow Dash was really beautiful and shows how people process information differently.

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?