I hear a lot about the autistic tendency towards honesty and authenticity, but what where are the other autistics who had their honesty and authenticity repeatedly and/or severely punished early on, and now feel conditioned to be inauthentic and insincere in social situations as a mask? It’s not that everything I say to others is an outright lie, but almost everything I say is very carefully tailored to be as watered-down, vague, inoffensive, passive and palatable as possible. It’s like I have such an intense, irreparable lack of understanding for what is expected/acceptable in every given social situation that I have to overcompensate by obsessively policing my own words and being myself and saying my genuine thoughts/feelings/opinions as little as possible.

It’s like knowing you’re supposed to color in a coloring page, knowing from experience you’ll be punished if you don’t, but not being able to see where the lines are drawn, so you color in as little of the page as possible in hopes that maybe you’ll be able to stay in the lines and avoid punishment, even if your art (or in reality- your self worth, ability to connect to others, etc) suffers as a result.

Watson: “Well, we could start by making the alternative so unappealing that he wants to leave the flat and go to Dartmoor for few days…?”

Mariana: *laughs* “Okay. What are you thinking?”

…

*the sound of balloons being inflated*

Sherlock: “A party. We’re hosting. A party.”

Watson: “Yeah, mate. Big old shindig.”

Sherlock: “W-W…W-W-Why? W-Why would we do that?”

Embracing Authenticity: A Journey Through Autistic Masking

The Autistic Teacher

We've recently come across an interesting video about the ego and autistic people [this one], which got us wondering about authenticity in the context of self-expression.

Feel free to expand on your choice in the tags/comments & please reblog for a bigger sample size!

We know that there are other factors that go into it, such as mental health, being a part of the lgbtq+ community, etc.

gone is the era of bitter sarcasm and dismissal of myself, i wish to enter the era of genuine joys and passions. never again will i mock myself before others can. i love what i love with no shame, no "haha im so cringe." i love undertale!! i watch bnha!!!! I unironically like using UwU, OwO, XD and :3!! i read furry webcomics from 2001!!! i doodle anime girls in my notebooks! i collect pokemon cards!! i use microlabels and take plushies to school and obsess over vocaloid and don't try to hide my autism through a mask of self-deprecation! being defensive and cynical isn't a good way to live my life, it doesn't bring joy to myself or anyone else!!!! the world will not take me alive, and i refuse to dampen my sincerity!!!!!!!!!

Holy shit the Mitchells vs the Machines is an absolute chad of a movie

...

The need to be Authentically Me In a fake society Isn't just a possiblity But a High Necessity

okay so im not a man i can't speak with an american accent im an okay singer but my vocal range is a little bit higher than required i have very little acting experience and i don't live/don't want to live anywhere near london but those minor details aside i know that if i was given the chance i'd be such a good Beetlejuice if the musical ever had a west end transfer you guuuuyyyyyys

pitch: a therapy to give us tools and resources on how to unmask as adults, because holy shit is it hard to disentangle the fedorahead people see from the fedorahead that i could be

Sneak Peak Sunday

tysm for the tags everyoneee @kiwiana-writes @14carrotghoul @heybuddy-drabbles @happiness-of-the-pursuit !!!!!

although I only post for about 1/4 of the wednesdays and sundays here, i am actually working on things! just at a comparatively very very slow pace.

I have (very recently, be nice) been diagnosed as autistic and am working through it my favorite way: writing fanfiction and projecting my issues on fictional characters. So, have the first few lines written for my So Far Untitled Late Diagnosed Autistic Henry fic with a dash of internalized ableism that he's really gonna need to work through

It's not a problem, it's just that sometimes Henry thinks if anyone speaks to him he’ll spontaneously combust. It’s fine, really, but if one more person looks at him like he’s a fish out of water, he might just believe it. He’s okay, but he also occasionally thinks about ripping his own skin off.  It’s fine. He’s fine.  It’s depression. It’s anxiety, or grief, or this is just what it’s like for all queer people trying to exist within a heterosexual world. Or... it’s any number of his other plentiful issues. Surely, there can’t be another thing wrong with him. 

there can be actually :) and it's not something wrong but its there buddy :) you just learned to mask through posture coaching and oppressive royal formality sweetheart :)

as usual, no pressure tags (and some who probably already posted, i'm constantly behind sorry): @affectionatelyrs @inexplicablymine @daisymae-12 @cha-melodius @ships-to-sail @sherryvalli @myheartalivewrites @cosmicalart and open tag to anyone looking to share what they've been working on!!

Sensory Symmetry

I got a question about this on AO3 and I’m going to talk about it here too because there are not very many resources on sensory symmetry.

Question on Ch. 1 of Authenticity:

I was just wondering if you could explain the part about Wild scraping his other elbow? He said something about making it feel even and I was just wondering about that and, you said how things in this fic were about how you felt?

So the thing he’s experiencing there is called “sensory symmetry.” Basically, you experience a feeling on one side of your body, your body will feel “uneven” until you experience the feeling on the other side of your body. I haven’t been able to find any research or scientific articles on this phenomenon unfortunately. I’ve learned about it through talking to other autistic people and listening to autistic creators on tik tok or YouTube.

Sensory symmetry is one of the biggest ways my autism presents day to day. If I don’t even out the sensations in my body, I will start to feel bad and overstimulated and sometimes if it’s a strong enough sensation, or it goes on for long enough without my evening it out, I will start to cry or have a meltdown.

Some examples of sensory symmetry in my life:

If I step on something with my left foot, my foot will feel wrong (idk how else to explain the feeling besides wrong) and in some cases even feel so wrong it hurts until I even out the sensations and step on the thing with my other foot.

I have a distinct memory of elementary school (one of my clearest memories of that time somehow) when we were walking in a line and I tripped and scraped my right knee in the carpet, and it felt so wrong and uneven that I pretended to trip again just so I could scrape my other knee and make my knees both feel the same.

I always open my front door with my right hand and then close it with my left hand so both hands touch the handle evenly.

If I accidentally bump into a door frame with one shoulder, I always turn and bump into it with the other shoulder with the same amount of pressure so both shoulders feel the same.

I did a quick search and found this recent article written by an autistic person about sensory symmetry here!!

(Disclaimer, I didn’t read the article thoroughly I just skimmed it so if they say anything weird I apologize 😅)

Feel free to ask for clarification on anything or ask any other questions you have!!! :D

while i totally believe cannibalism in nbc hannibal is a metaphor for love i also believe it's a metaphor for transition (not intentionally written that way but it just happens--it could also be a metaphor for coming out as gay)

bc think about it

will has this side to him he has to suppress

he then goes through stages of exploration, self-acceptance, and embracing who he is

this involves killing as an act of transition towards his true self (similar to how we have "deadnames", some people may even view transition as a sort of "killing" their pre-transition self so their true gender self can be born)

he is literally scared of how good it feels, which is very trans--being terrified of what it means to let that shell crack, fearing you are a monster for enjoying these things (which, the "monster as metaphor for queerness and social outcastedness" is a classic horror trope)

not to mention rituals, consuming/growing/literally having new substances inside the body that you did not experience before (human flesh as hrt), and engaging in acts that the world finds heinous but nourishes the body

his cannibalism is him becoming god-like ("Killing must feel good to God, too. He does it all the time") and we all know trans ppl are gods and goddesses and godexxes of the mortal realm

rly the list goes on

but basically season 1 will graham is eggy as fuck and season 3 is him finally becoming his full self and accepting love for who he is and thats so sexy and cool and transgender of him

I see the way some users brush aside Stranger Things' depictions of autism/openly decry it as less important/impactful than other forms of representation (or just miss the representation entirely because it doesn't fit their narrow definition of what autism is "supposed" to look like), and frankly it's...Egh.

Watching people say there's zero substance in a show that has So Much Substance for autists like me, who are represented quite thoughtfully and meaningfully...but in ways that people love to brush off or straight up ignore is, well, less than fun and painfully reminiscent of how we're treated in real life. We can acknowledge that a show is majorly lacking in its nuance in multiple areas while not discrediting the substance that means so much to other groups. We can multitask.

And I'm not going to express the full extent of my grievances here and now because a) it's not the time, and b) I know I'll get called sensitive (just like Will is sensitive, and Henry is sensitive, and--oh) if I talk too much about it anyway.

So really this post here is all I want to say about it right now.

But just know that I see it, and that like a video game narrator might say: James will remember this.

y'all are so lovely because I've spent nearly my entire life feeling like I'm annoying for being too excited about my interests and trying to bandage them like a bleeding wound because I've learned that even many friends would put up with it until I become Too Much but now I'm surrounded by people who actually love that I pour my whole soul into what I do and suddenly I am no longer as intimidated by my muchness

Fiction (and sometimes real life) has this tendency to frame a character's stubborn belief in people's goodness in the teeth of all evidence as a virtue. As in, not when the person being judged acts seemingly out of character. It's wise to give aberrant behaviour the benefit of doubt. But consistently apologizing for and ascribing good intent to actions that clearly show a bad character, and then refusing to accept that this person is exactly as bad as the trail of victims they've left behind prove them to be— this is not a mark of goodness and kindness.

Wilful blindness and stupidity don't showcase a generosity of spirit. That's simply the need to cling to your own preconceptions for the sake of your own comfort. It's not kind or fair to defend perpetrators at the expense of the people suffering because of them; and infantilizing and finding excuses for people isn't mercy, it's apologia. ("He was a good boy who fell under bad influence" "Ma'am, he's 28 and sold out his own family to pay his gambling debts.") In both fiction and real life, you should be able to look at the situation and choose to safeguard and defend the victimized and vulnerable first and foremost. To accept that you might be wrong, your faith might be misplaced, and prioritise safety, justice and accountability for all the people who are or might be suffering at your friend or family's hands. Because not doing that— not believing victims, apologizing for and defending abusers, centering the perpetrator's interiority instead of the impacted victim's reality— that's just the default evil of real life.

If you being a pure, loyal little cinnamon roll throws other people under the bus, then you aren't actually a cinnamon roll. You're just complicit, enabling and endangering.

I don’t know who needs to hear this but you don’t need to prove your blackness to people who have no interest in trying to understand you. I know it hurts when it’s you’re own people but they are just projecting their internalized racism onto you. People are just mad that they can’t put you in a box because you’re authenticity puts them off cuz it’s like “wait a minute I’m used to seeing certain people in a particular type of way so how does that work?” I have no interest in explaining myself to people who’s true goal is to make you hate yourself as much as they hate themselves.