• They/Any

Artist & Image Appreciator

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Anonymous Guest asked:

are any of your characters neurodivergent?? I've been picking up A Vibe. Sorry if thats weird

So, funny thing about that, actually: I'm autistic myself (probably?? I was diagnosed with asperger's syndrome as a kid but haven't gotten an updated diagnosis since asperger's stopped being a thing), and even as an adult I feel like I'm constantly learning that certain behaviors I've always thought of as normal are actually Very Often An Autism Thing, and for years and years I've been writing these characters exhibiting these behaviors, and having them think the way that I think, and as a result I think I've kind of wound up writing most of my characters at least a little autistic by accident.

Vae and Shen, however, are autistic on purpose. Also, Caelle probably has ADHD or something. Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I never really explicitly address any of this both because these characters all have other, more important things going on and because the fantasy world they live in doesn't really have the same understanding of these concepts that we do. So even though they get that something's up, and they find ways to navigate their respective mental situations, they never call it autism or adhd or neurodivergence or whatever, they just sort of accept that people get built different and have different needs.

Somehow I feel unqualified to make these assertions about these characters even though I literally created them and I made them this way intentionally lol. I'm not gonna pretend I'm an expert on these subjects or anything, I'm just writing these characters based on my own experiences and the experiences of neurodivergent people around me. If I ever fuck something up in this regard please let me know


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in reply to @ChrisStapley's post:

Asperger's only really "stopped being a thing" so much as the name and separate designation dissolved since yknow, named for a nazi eugenics guy and he only made the distinctions For That Reason. If you got that as a diagnosis you are just on the spectrum, more toward the "you can mask enough it doesn't interfere with daily life" side

Yeah, I suspected I'd worded that part a little clumsily, I was mostly just trying not to make that little aside any longer than it needed to be. Also I always feel the need to put a little asterisk on My Whole Situation because there's a part of me that feels like I'm not allowed to call myself autistic because a doctor has not given me explicit official permission to do so, which is probably a very stupid way of thinking about things

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