12. Bird brains

The classic example of impaired "social skills" in people with "Asperger's" is a person who constantly talks about their favorite subject, and doesn't notice other people's boredom or discomfort. I will explore this by presenting two people who like to talk differently.

Tobias likes to receive a lot of information at once, or give a lot of information at once. When talking to Jake, Tobias will try to talk about his favorite subject, roadkill, and doesn't notice that Jake is indicating he is bored, which he is showing by checking his watch, sighing, and trying to change the subject.

Jake likes to joke around and talk briefly about various subjects. He will ask Tobias how he is doing, then switch the topic to his own family and friends, then just as quickly make a joke that he hopes Tobias will laugh at and build on. Jake doesn't notice that Tobias finds all the agitating and confusing, and is expressing his feelings by humming, rocking around, and constantly changing the subject back to roadkill.

Jake and Tobias have different brains, but they're both acting the same. Neither person is observant about how the other person might be feeling; neither puts forth the effort to have the kind of conversation that the other person might like.

However, if a professional observed Jake and Tobias and wrote a report, the report would be about how Tobias couldn't relate to the "typically developing" or "neurotypical" Jake. Jake kept trying to have a give-and-take conversation with Tobias, but Tobias wasn't having it. The professional might even conclude by saying what a nice person Jake is for being friends with someone like Tobias.

But in fact, even if Jake is being "nice" by wanting to be friends with someone different from him, they're both failing each other in the same way. This is why I don't like the words "neurotypical" or especially "typically developing." People plug those words in to be politically correct, but if they still are framing interactions between "typically developing" and "special needs" people this way, then the words they really mean are normal and defective.

magic

me: Who was your favorite Animorph?
Mark: Rachel!!
me: Oh, of course [Mark is very fashionable]. [FFD] and I like Tobias.
Mark: (bursts out laughing) OH OF COURSE YOU DO.
me: What the hell does that mean?
Mark: Well, I mean Tobias is cool, but, he's kind of the strange one, isn't he?
me: Well, he's a bird, so.

(later a text message arrives)
"can you be the tobias to my rachel and can i like have dinner in your presence"

Whyyyyy

"The Animorphs freak out after their identities are discovered by the evil Yeerks — and they decide to recruit some more kids to join their team, in case the original members all get captured. So they decided to recruit disabled kids to be the new group of Auxillary Animorphs, because they figured the Yeerks wouldn't have bothered to infest a disabled kid. (So the Animorphs could skip the three-day screening period for new recruits.) And they figure the morphing powers would cure any disabilities. The leader of the Auxillary Animorphs, James, is paralyzed, until he becomes an Animorph and regains full mobility."--20 Science Fiction Characters Who Got Their Legs Back (linked at FWD)

MY HEART IS BROKEN

Animorphs was my fucking life when I was a kid. If you have ASD you maybe know what I mean, like I carried the books everywhere and constantly wrote fanfiction about them and always bought them on the first day they came out and talked to the characters and sat on the playground looking at birds and pretending they were Tobias. This went on for about two years, from the summer of 1998 when I was nine to maybe fall 1999/spring 2000 when I was eleven. By the end, I would still get excited when the books came out, but I didn't think about them constantly. Eventually I stopped reading them because they got really formulaic, but I held on longer than was really necessary because I didn't want to lose the joy of that devotion. I'm not sure I've ever loved anything that much.

But for Christmas this year my dad gave me a box with a card that said "From Ax" and it was the final book! I haven't read it yet but it's a pretty good example of how my dad is wonderful. Anyway, look at this unfortunate shit that I just found. Apparently the Yeerks don't infest physically disabled people! K.A. Applegate? HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?

DISABLED PEOPLE AREN'T WORTHWHILE CONTROLLERS?

YOU NEED WORKING LEGS TO CONVINCE PEOPLE TO JOIN THE SHARING?

I'm just going to try to believe it was the ghostwriters, because this makes me sick.

P.S. This actually doesn't even make sense because they're assuming that all physically disabled people are disabled in accidents. What about genetic disabilities? What about "accidents" that happened before you were born, like CP? Also, the idea that there's some "true self" that you return to after you've morphed--instead of returning to your physical state before you morphed--well, that doesn't make any sense, because explain how the Animorphs didn't end up with different haircuts or something that were more fitting for their "true selves." And they could morph clothes (well, leotards). LEOTARDS ARE NOT GENETIC.

ETA ETA: This means that if any of the Animorphs had braces, their teeth moved back. AAARGH.