i am not a psychiatrist but i do find it really weird how autism checklists are so often focused on “outward” signs of autism rather than what is going on internally. i don’t know how to explain it but “do you make eye contact with other people” feels like a much less relevant question than “how does it feel when you have to make eye contact with other people?”
while i’m here, the other one that always pisses me off is “do you interpret idioms literally, for example ‘bull in a china shop’?”
well, no, obviously. i know what “bull in a china shop” means because that is a popular phrase with a clearly defined meaning. and if i hadn’t heard it before, then i would still not interpret it literally, because it has the cadence of an idiom and i would probably be able to work out from context what it meant. what is the point of this question
third and final complaint: “are you good at noticing subtext?”
i feel like the problem with this question is best illustrated by a conversation i had with a friend a while back, where i said something like, “i feel very safe with you because you don’t do subtle hints and you are always very straight-up with me about what you are thinking and feeling.”
and he laid a hand on my shoulder and was like, look dude i’m gonna be straight up here. i am subtle with you constantly and you simply do not notice <3
@luckyybones hope you don’t mind me screenshotting but you are actually so correct
Sometimes you send something you found online to a friend because you want to brighten their day, and sometimes you send something you found online to a friend with the precise attitude and bearing of a cat very carefully lining up their paw with the back of another cat’s head.
mastering ancient breathing techniques in the mountains of china to control my heart rate finely enough to jam out a sick tune on the hospital’s heart monitor
The doctors figure out after the sixth beep that I’m trying to play Wonderwall and they unplug my life support
I love you weird fanfiction. I love you unpopular kink. I love you unsanitized sex scenes. I love you fics that the mean girls make fun of on twitter. I love you monster fucking. I love you daddy kinks and foot fetishes and water sports. I love you stories about complex human emotions and bad choices with no consequences and characters hurting each other. I love you threesomes or polycules. I love you rare pairs. I love you furry art. I love you dark fantasies. I love you kink that’s so specific and self indulgent it was clearly written just for the person writing it. I love you ships that people think you shouldn’t be allowed to ship. I love you anyone who has the courage to put their art into a public space when that art is weird, or dark, or taboo, or something that will be considered unacceptable by the puritanical fandom police.
I once heard a quote by a dude named Alan Watts that went “A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So, he loses touch with reality, and lives in a world of illusions” and now when I get trapped in an anxiety spiral that likes to pop in too
I think the internet might be like this as well actually
