Introducing Two New Tags

There is an entire blog, @cripplecharacters, you can start with. Please, this is what we're here for. To make sure people don't write stuff like this.

We shouldn't be your only stop and as OP said, sensitivity readers are worth the investment, but we can help, too. Please utilize disabled sensitivity services. We're here because we want to help you represent your characters right.

ive been thinking a lot about the whole sia music think lately and ive said this before on my other blog but if youre allistic and working on a story involving autism/an autistic character please please get an autistic sensitivity reader (ideally more than one tbhhh) and, in addition, if you can please compensate them.

if you cant afford to compensate a sensitivity reader because the story youre working on isnt something you expect to be able to monetize like thats understandable especially right now. you should still seek people out. odds are you will find someone willing to give your work a once over and provide some thoughts, but like, if thats the case expect the kind of work you would naturally expect from a freeby. reading and giving feedback on another persons writing IS work and it honestly can be very draining work especially when it involves essentially asking a marginalized person to encounter and correct microaggressions they already are forced to deal with in life. that deserves the proper appreciation.

like if youre writing something about an autistic character and reach out to me ill definitely give it a look because this is something i care about a lot and i really want to see better depictions of neurodivergence in media, but if im doing this for freesies im going to be a lot less willing to get into circular arguments about what gets a pass and what doesnt or give you super detailed advice on how to fix a particular problem.

if im taking the time to review your potentially insensitive writing for nothing but my hope that itll do some good for the community, dont expect me to hold your hand. seek out sensitivity readers. pay your sensitivity readers.

Less “some people need everything to be explicitly explained” and more “some people can understand things without an explicit explanation”. Why the fuck even is the latter default.

Sorry to get preachy outta nowhere but if you are a person who's never had a phobia PLEASE don't say shit like "it's not dangerous" or whatever because phobias, especially IRRATIONAL phobias, don't fucking work like that.

I personally have a specific phobia that, when triggered, used to make me spasm and hyperventilate and cry, and it was super embarrassing because I was fully aware that there was nothing really wrong. You can experience the effects of a phobia while objectively knowing you're safe! And STILL I would get people telling me to chill out cause I was fine.

I've gotten better at managing it. I can thing straight and control my breathing and not feel *emotional* fear, but my body still locks up and my heart still goes crazy and I still have to focus on breathing.

I am aware that it doesn't make sense. I am aware that I am not in danger. I'm practiced enough that I can sit still and have a conversation through the experience now. But it's still a phobia and no amount of reminding me how irrational my body is being is going to fix that- it's just gonna piss me off on top of it.

Fuck it I'm taking back the pyro tags and flooding them with info posts myself I'm tired of this shit.

Ask box is open for questions, shared experiences etc

Can y'all please stop using words like "delusional", "psychotic", and "narcissistic" as insults. These are terms used to describe mental illness. Mental illness does not make people evil, stop acting like does.

I'd love it if more people understood the difference between hallucinations and illusions. So let me try to explain with examples. [TW: examples of auditory hallucinations and illusions described as you experiencing them]

1. Imagine you are home alone with your windows closed and it's silent. And then you hear unfamiliar voices talking about you, it sounds like they are coming from another room. You go to check but no one is there. Your brain created entire voices of people out of thin air. This is a hallucination. There is nothing but your brain creates something.

2. Now imagine you are in the same scenario but your windows are open but the curtains are closed. You hear your neighbors having a conversation, and you hear it as them talking about what you are doing in that moment. They couldn't possibly see what you are doing, so realistically they can't be talking about you, but your brain makes you change the words and hear it that way. This is an illusion. There is something but your brain changes the real thing into something unreal.

It's not always easy to know the difference when you are experiencing it. But if you do know which one it is (nothing there and something unreal appears or something there changes to something unreal) then I think it can be really helpful to label the symptom accurately.

For me it was helpful to gage the effectiveness of my medication. I noticed that I have more illusions than hallucinations, and for me that was a sign of improvement. It can also go the other way, to see if your psychosis is getting more severe.

These days there are legal systems in place for adopting an adult, even for adopting someone out of adult foster care (like someone could probably adopt Genie Wiley.) That's probably the closest example to what they did.

…how does adopting an adult even work..? I’m a little thrown off by that part, but regardless it seems to have been the best thing that could’ve happened for Horace. He sounds lovely, and it seems a shame the world couldn’t have had him in it for longer.

I honestly don't know. Horace was a ward of the state, as his family had handed over all rights in 1921. Unfortunately, my grandparents and my uncle who adopted him have all died so the specifics are unavailable to me.

Okay.

People with low empathy are great.

Not despite it, or because of it, y'all are good ppl because you are people.

Ppl with lower empathy can be friendly, loving, caretakers.

a thing about being severe autistic adult on internet is people expect u know everything, every non-said/clearly stated boundarie, every slang, acronym, people mad when ask what things mean, need plain language, people rude because "how u not know this simple basic thing?" i feel so rejected and out of place.

i dont navigate things same as you, my brain works differently, i dont know lots things and often dont know how to search how to find dont know how to make sense how understand it hard makes me so frustrated and angry and sad.

people are so mean

Communicating about problems is hard for me.

I don't know why. If I'm having a problem like I'm sick or I'm having a migraine or I can't do something, I can't just tell people that verbally. It gets harder to make my thoughts come out of my mouth. I stutter and I pause and I use a lot of filler words and even then, usually I can't actually say what's wrong. If I can manage to say it, I can't... like, if I tell my manager that I can't do a specific task right now and she pushes back and says there's no one else to do it or that if I can't do it she'll send me home, I can't stick up for myself. The second I meet a tiny bit of resistance, I always fold. I always try and force myself to stick it through. Even if it's an issue where I really, really need to go home, I can't communicate that with my words.

Writing out what I need to say is better. I can write out my thoughts and feelings way easier and better than I can speak them. So I write down what I want to say. I explain the issue, and I explain why said issue is causing a problem and why I need some intervention here. But even then, actually communicating with that is hard. Because it's hard to just hand my manager a note. It feels weird. Like, socially, it feels like I thing I absolutely should not be doing. But say I manage to give her the note. Now I need to explain why I am handing her this note and we're back to the first problem. And if she chooses to push back, I still can't help but fold.

I don't know what it is. But it's hard to deal with