the long version

I was a very small boy when I received the bite. My parents tried everything but there is no cure.

Dumbledore said that as long as we took certain precautions, there was no reason I shouldn’t come to school. Once a month I was smuggled out of the castle, into this place, to transform. The tree was placed at the tunnel mouth to stop anyone coming across me while I was dangerous.

I was separated from humans to bite so I bit and scratched myself instead. The villagers heard the noise and the screaming and thought they were hearing particularly violent spirits.

But I sucked it up because that’s what you do, and I was happier than I’d ever been in my life, because I had three friends.

Interestingly when I got older they still didn’t trust me and thought I was a spy.

Probably because it was really cool that I wasn’t human, when they could make jokes about it and use our friendship as an excuse to do something rebellious and exciting. They used to ask me to share my painkillers and my other meds. The tranquilizers were strong because they were made for a werewolf and Sirius especially loved to get out of his mind. It was also cool when they figured out how to use me to scare someone they didn’t like who then hated me for the rest of our lives.

It was pretty cool how I was so intimidated by them, too, since I’d never had friends before and everything.

This didn’t mean that I could be trusted to protect their family. I’m a fucking werewolf, guys. Clearly I eat faces.

Awesome.

this is a collection of tumblr posts so it may get longer

Maybe you know what's going on. If you don't that's okay. I don't want to use the person's name and maybe that's dumb but it just seems like such an archetypal situation that I don't see the point of causing drama. He seems unreachable. If you know who this is you already know. It's a non-disabled parent vs. disabled people internet drama thing. It is taking a lot out of me and I'm not even directly involved.

Zero

[I deleted this post immediately after making it]

has ted ever considered treating other people with 1% compassion? just do it! it'll be great!

One

also, before I go back to sleep, because I can’t yet thanks to this ridiculousness.

it happens to be a fact that at one point You Know Who wrote in an email to either Z or me (I don’t remember which, because it was a while ago and it was an incredibly horrible series of days in my life for reasons that had little to do with him but definitely exacerbated how much the situation upset me) something like this:

“when this started happening my friends started telling me that I shouldn’t try to talk to self-advocates because it wouldn’t end well and they wouldn’t listen but I tried to anyway and I’m really regretting this because everyone has been so mean to me and not listened!!”

okay dude, so let’s look at this.

basically he’s setting up the fact that he tried to engage with self-advocates (also known as disabled adults!) as, like, some kind of awesome favor. like, the baseline thing that you would expect would be that he wouldn’t do it. and his friends told him not to do it because self-advocates are not nice, or maybe just don’t understand these issues because they’re not smart enough. (but when it actually matters, we are smart and NLMC.) I mean, this is what I already don’t get, because if your work is about disability and making things better for disabled kids, how could you think listening to disabled people is anything other than vital? because one day your kid will be an adult who people are trying to decide if it’s worth it to listen to, or if engaging with them ~won’t be worth it~ or whatever.

but you’re trying to figure out if disabled adults are going to be nice/cool/~understanding enough to deserve your time. yeah okay. I hope you engage with your kid even if they wake up on the wrong side of the bed and aren’t reasonable or in a good mood. (disclaimer, my impression of You Know Who is he would do this because he seems like a really good dad, but I have NO IDEA why I am required to say this when I am disagreeing with him or why he thinks people are required to take his advocacy work into account when disagreeing with something he said especially because he clearly doesn’t give a fuck about what any of the ~disabled adults~ arguing with him experience or what our work has been like.)

anyway, this guy decides to be an epic saint and actually answer/talk to disabled people who disagree with him even though someone told him that the disabled people would just be dicks. and the disabled people in question…were dicks, in his opinion. so his conclusion is to like try to guilt-trip us because HE LISTENED TO US EVEN THOUGH HE WAS TOLD NOT TO BOTHER. because he’s the nicest guy in the world. and we weren’t nice back!!

but if you really care what disabled adults have to say then you just would listen and you wouldn’t think you deserve something for listening! AND if you think someone wasn’t nice to you (which I couldn’t disagree with more in this case) you would still want to engage because it’s important! you definitely wouldn’t be like “ooh this is starting to prove that I shouldn’t have engaged with you”

IN CONCLUSION, this is a really good way of making it sound like you want disabled adults to shut up and practically all you have done is say things like this!

Two

[obviously, this was also a direct comment on one of his posts]

Hi R, it’s Amanda. We talked a bit in comments and by email when this first happened, and (as I probably said) I can’t do this conversation well because it’s a big emotional/psychiatric trigger for me to hear people being told their disabilities aren’t significant. (I understand if you think I’m misinterpreting what you said or taking it too much to heart, but you said that Zoe lives independently and that isn’t true. That is a perfect illustration of why parents should not try to bring in personal information when having these conversations with self-advocates.)

So I apologize for messy/badly thought out parts of this comment. But I would like to point out that I’ve never seen Zoe try to represent the point of view of someone with a disability that’s different from hers or more severe than hers—just her own point of view. I feel that we start having this conversation where we argue the legitimacy of things that haven’t actually happened. I actually see you acknowledging/agreeing with a lot of things that Zoe said in her letter and I don’t really think there is a lot of disagreement when it comes to actual ideas. And obviously Zoe cares a lot about talking to you and engaging with you, because she is making an effort to do so and has initiated most of the conversations you’ve had.

The biggest difference of opinion that I see seems to be that you feel attacked but no one I know feels like they have attacked you. I didn’t think Zoe’s original post was that mean or aggressive, except for one word choice that she later apologized for. But you’re saying she turned you into a “bogeyman?” And that you wish you could have heard from her when you first made the post with suggestions of how to make it be more inclusive—but that’s exactly what her original post WAS. She linked it in the comments of your post because she intended for you to read it and think about it.

I think you’re a great parent who has done a lot of important work for AAC users. At one point in an email you said that my reaction really bothered you because I was a longtime reader of your blog and knew about your work. But I don’t see why or how someone is supposed to take your work into account when responding to something you said that they thought was offensive. A person can do good work and still say something that other people find worthy of addressing. Personally I’d be really happy if this conversation stuck to opinions and ideas and stopped being about anyone’s life or work.

(I have to say that when in posts and comments you have tried to talk about what any of us know or experience in our personal lives, you have often been wrong, as with the comment about living independently. Which is one reason I’d like you to stop.)

Anyway, I’m getting off track, but I have seen you say that you were turned into a bogeyman, take words out of context to turn them into examples of how you were insulted (like when someone wrote a post saying that you and Zoe had both made “dick moves” in the conversation, and you said that you’d been called a dick), Tweet about things that self-advocates have said to you in emails that you think were stupid or offensive, and tell people like Zoe who have been fairly polite that you would have happily listened if they’d been MORE polite. To me, it looks like you think you’re in this situation where people don’t like you and are trying to bully you. That is what is most confusing to me because I think you are wrong. If disabled people didn’t care about you we wouldn’t be trying to reach out to you and talk to you! Most of the things you’re calling attacks happened because A DISABLED PERSON WANTED TO ENGAGE WITH YOU. I can see why someone would say that this really makes it hard for disabled adults to talk, because no matter what we do, you react as if we’re punching you in the face. I really don’t get it, with the work you do for your daughter, that you make it seem like disabled adults have to meet an impossible standard for it to be “worth it” for you to listen. To me your work/parenting and your reaction to this situation seem like they belong to two completely different people.

Three

“People who are struggling just to live every day don’t have the luxury for discussions like this.”—one of Ted’s friends on twitter


HEAD MEET DESK
FOREVER

but….but….HE IS HAVING IT!!! so therefore he ALSO sucks

and you’re talking about it on twitter so you suck too!

everyone sucks! we all have luxurious not-really-disabled lives!

[Savannah reblogged this and pointed out it's kind of like "poor people can't have nice things if they're poor." it sort of reminds me of people taking pictures of homeless people who have cell phones and maybe that explains why it feels so hateful. the constant desire to assert that people in a situation that blows are actually having a great time.]

Four

you know, when ted and I talked by email he sort of (very unenthusiastically) apologized for doing the whole YOU’RE SO MILDLY DISABLED thing to Zoe, Julia, and me. I basically spilled my guts to him, I linked him to the page from the passing project where people talk about wanting to hurt themselves or become injured to opt out of “invisible disability.” (I have to make a new version of the passing project at some point because there is so much I left out, particularly in this area, because about three times more people talked about this kind of thing than I had room for.)

I tried to say, hey, I might be jealous of someone with limited speech because they get assumed to need support, while I’m presumed to either not need support or to be able to ask for it! But that is just a feeling coming out of my own shitty circumstances and it’s not VALID. And it’s really hurtful! So it’s not something I need to go around announcing, especially as a way to silence someone with limited speech.

so ted was like…okay. That makes sense. I was jealous too.

yeah, no. here ted was again yesterday, saying that people who can “live independently and self-advocate” (even though he’s talking to someone who doesn’t live independently, well never mind, SHE HAS A BLOG, obviously the most important ADL) have “privilege.”

now, the truth is I don’t really want to argue with this. I have privilege over, like, another lesbian who gets regularly perceived as a lesbian by strangers. for example I’m moving to Cincinnati which I’m told is kind of conservative/homophobic in some places, but for me, that doesn’t matter at all because no one on the street is going to assume that I’m gay. whereas someone who looks “more lesbian” has to think about this stuff when they think about where they’re going to live.

it’s complicated because passing can be tough, and especially in terms of disability, passing can lead to all these real problems of not getting support. being treated like I don’t have a disability, or seeing other people treated that way, actually sickens me, it’s just really horrible. so I’m not sure I’d use the word privilege when it comes to disability? but I’m not sure I wouldn’t either. what I do know is if I was talking to ted’s daughter about disability, I’d be aware that we have way different stigma experiences because she’s more “visibly” disabled, and that would probably be something I was thinking about just as much as I’d be thinking about how best to listen to/communicate with someone who has more limited speech and uses AAC.

but no one is talking to ted’s daughter! we’re talking to ted. so please someone explain how this is relevant.

different experience of stigma DOES matter, but I don’t think it means such a clear-cut, huge different in privilege that any non-disabled person needs to be telling disabled people about it over and over. or like going on his Twitter (seriously is he a high school girl??) and posting about how we’re “ignoring our privilege.” what does that even mean? what would not ignoring our privilege look like? do we have to start every post/comment we make with a little checklist of our privilege over ted’s daughter (as far as we can tell, since we’ve never met her, and like I said these things are far from clear-cut)?

now, here’s what I think. ted, despite being aware of what privilege means from a social justice standpoint, isn’t actually using it that way. ted just means that he thinks we have it easier than his daughter. which, as I said, is totally fine, people play those little games in their head and resent other people all the time for having what they think are easier lives. it’s when you decide that those feelings/games actually represent FACTS or are somehow political that…you become a huge fail.

imagine if I thought it was relevant whenever I argued with someone to be like, “You’re straight! You’re a man! You’re better-looking than I am! You’re from England, I wish I was from England, so you’re PRIVILEGED! Your parents sound like more fun than my parents are! STOP IGNORING YOUR PRIVILEGE.” now obviously in some ways this person is more privileged than me and in other, non-privilege-related ways they may also have a more fun life than I do, but like, this isn’t related to what we’re saying! also what if their parents aren’t more fun than mine are or they don’t feel like they are? aren’t I just making them feel upset and playing this weird game with them for no reason?

not only is ted saying all these kind of nasty and insensitive things about how great he thinks other disabled people have it, but he actually seems angry that we either choose not to respond or point out he is being ridiculous? like, he’s personally offended?

this really hurts because I am personally offended by being told I have it great and I very sincerely and unguardedly tried to explain this to him. and he was kind of like “I guess I don’t know as many diverse pwds as I should” or some other half-apology. but I would say it’s not just that he doesn’t know a lot of diverse pwds, but that his understanding of disability is really simple and flat.

his daughter is disabled and has a hard time, so therefore she has it the worst. even though she’s on the unified sports team for the most independent kids. even though she can walk and run. even though she can use AAC and can use some speech. even though she doesn’t look different like a lot of kids with brain formation conditions (like microcephaly and lissencephaly) do and therefore experiences less stigma in that area. keep in mind there’s no way I’d ever want to have this kind of contest with anyone, but there are plenty of ways that ANYONE has it better than someone else. his daughter is really disabled, he knows that because he knows her, so therefore he categorizes her disability as real/severe/significant and the rest of us who he disagrees with, or who have abilities he wishes his daughter had, are in the only other category he knows of, which basically amounts to “not real.”

what if we were all really disabled?

what if we all just looked different from each other, some people looked like conventionally cute kids and other people had different-shaped faces and heads or different facial features; what if some people could talk and some people could talk a little and some people could talk sometimes and some people could only say one word or no words; what if some of us could live on our own and some could but ended up hungry and unwashed and some people would die if they lived on their own; and what if some of us could stand up for ourselves in school and fight back if someone hurt us and some of us could write in a blog and some of us could give a speech and some of us were seen as fucking geniuses/miracles because we “made a full recovery,” but didn’t even have the “self-advocacy” to say no to unwanted sex because we were too scared or well-trained; and what if a lot of us had all these predictions made about us when we were kids, he will never type on a keyboard, she will never drive, she will never go to college, he will use a wheelchair, she will have seizures, he will never live on his own, and to some extent it doesn’t MATTER what we went on to do anyway because we still were kids who were talked about that way and when you make decisions about a kid you don’t know what they will do, if someone tells you that stuff about the kid, you accept it—so we live with that anyway. What if all of these people were disabled?

I worry, precisely because ted’s daughter, still very young, is gaining skills that were not predicted and is very conventionally normal-looking, that someday people will try and tell her she is not really disabled. and he has set himself up to be totally blindsided by that because he used to say that to other people, and he doesn’t understand why it is wrong.

Five

from my favorite story:

Lupin looked down at him with soft eyes. "He's hanging in there. Between the nightmares and the Dementors and the Death Eater attacks-- but Voldemort can't take Harry out. No matter how much he throws at him, Harry always pulls through."

"The Boy Who Lives and Lives," Neville echoed weakly, because that's what the Prophet was calling him now.

Lupin shook his head angrily. "The damn Prophet. Only a Qwik-Quotes Quill would call it living."

Joshua: I was wondering, do you see anything disabled metaphory about Prisioner of Azkaban?
me: about who?
I mean, Lupin duh, do you mean other people?
Joshua: cos my favourite part of the book was hearing about how James, Sirius and Peter turn themselves into animagi to understand and help Lupin with his "condition" I thought it was really touching and poetic. But like, is that like magical crip drag or just magical.. being willing to see the world from a disabled persons perspective rather than trying to make them "normal"?
me: that's always been my favorite chapter in any of the books, I used to read it over and over when I was a kid
like, I think James and Sirius are kind of like Freddie and Cook
well, you won't get to this for a while
but I feel like Remus is often characterized as feeling like he doesn't have a right to his own opinions because he owes them so much
Joshua: ooohh I love that analogy
the Freddie/Cook/JJ one
me: well, I think given stuff Remus says later, it makes a lot of sense.
um...yeah
I wouldn't call it crip drag or anything like that
I think I wouldn't exactly call it goodness or kindness, totally--but maybe that's what Remus needed
Joshua: no, I didn't think it was, but I thought i'd speculate that possibility!
me: like, they were doing it for fun, partly. I think they didn't totally get it
Joshua: were James and Sirius kind of dicks when they were young? I haven't read to this bit but I've had some naughty wiki glancing
me: I may be projecting/imagining, but I feel like James and Sirius probably didn't understand how much Remus didn't think turning into an animal was fun
Joshua: weren't*
me: so, hm, maybe we will call it crip drag
yup!
and Remus was afraid to say anything
me: JK Rowling also said this: "Lupin’s failing is he likes to be liked. That’s where he slips up – he’s been disliked so often he’s always pleased to have friends so he cuts them an awful lot of slack."

(by the way, here is very long post/essay I wrote on the Skins livejournal community about my love for JJ, which at some points discusses JJ's unequal relationship with Freddie and Cook.)

I think I'm in danger of falling in love with Lauren Lopez

She reminds me of the kid from Home Alone.



(I know, what happened to the tumblr? Soon I will post about something legit. I'm going to post about language and ASD people not necessarily being able to switch between different styles of speaking. If you recently had a conversation with me about this, my post is probably about you! I'm just trying to think of a fake name for you. I hope you're excited.)

the Eisley post finally (written before they left WB)

I used to really love this band. They were the first band I really got into on my own, at the relatively late age of 16, right after their first full-length album, Room Noises, came out. They seemed otherworldly to me--these beautiful, spooky-looking Christian homeschooled teenagers. They lived in Texas, a place I had never been, and they’d started writing music eight years before I heard of them, playing shows in their parents’ coffee shop and becoming well-known in the local music circuit. They finally signed to a label in 2003--they didn’t want to sign to a Christian label because they don’t make religious music, which is fine, but did they have to sign to Warner Brothers? Their label basically treats them like an embarrassment, not advertising them or having them make videos, and telling them to underplay the fact that some of their songs are about sci-fi and fantasy subjects because that might turn off potential listeners. And I have to wonder if their label is partly responsible for the fact that their second album, Combinations, was so much worse. I mean, I’m not saying there weren’t some really good songs on it, but most of it is just girly stuff--falling in love, breaking up, and having a lot of other feelings that aren’t clearly explained.

There’s nothing wrong with writing about girly stuff, but because the content of the songs is more generic it exposes what awkward writers the DuPree girls are. They know a lot of words, but they don’t know what all of those words mean, and they also seem to have trouble just putting together lines that sound good. Which means we end up with really bad lyrics like, “You will take the cherished people that I hold.” “That” is bad grammar! “Cherished” is a cheesy word! Even “the people I hold” seems like a needlessly roundabout way of saying “the people I love.” The DuPrees are extremely good singers, and in “Ten Cent Blues” the simple line “I can’t control my feelings” is stunning because of Stacy’s vocal quality. But soon enough, the awkwardness: “But then she chose to dissect me, and I was casted into poverty.” Number one, it’s “cast” not “casted,” and number two, are you a fetal pig? In “Ten Cent Blues” this awkwardness can be forgiven because the lyrics are dense, specific, and evocative, like a lot of the lyrics on Room Noises. My other favorite Combinations song, “I Could Be There for You,” has tenderly eerie lyrics (“Ring, ring, ring, ring, where are you hiding?/...You’re a cave, admitting who you choose, but I could be there for you”). But some of the songs, like the incredibly generic “Go Away,” are stripped of any intentional strangeness or magic, and all that’s left is the counterintuitive phrasing--instead of just saying he wants to break up, Stacy’s boyfriend tells her “we’re gone”--and obtuse exposition--”I could keep this all from you/Or I could make a statement based on truth/But then it all comes tumbling down.” These lyrics are boring and make no sense. I hope the next album will be better, but I’m not too optimistic, since the recently-divorced Sherri has written a song where she refers to her “apocryphal wedding” (so, Sherri doesn’t know whether her own wedding took place or not?).

But anyway, back to the nice part, the part about why I was so enthralled with this band when I first heard them in 2005. When it comes to the songs on Room Noises and the songs before that, the weird phrasings and hard-to-decipher subjects become charming if you notice them at all. While a lot more of these songs have sci-fi and fantasy lyrics, there is plenty of girly stuff on Room Noises. It’s just strange and thick with images. “I Wasn’t Prepared” is probably a breakup song, but for some reason the verses are about bees, and for some reason this is poignant. “Plenty of Paper” is a song about artsy, companionate love, but it casts the main characters as superheroes. “Lost at Sea” is another song that plunges you into a strange, vibrant landscape, so that when you get to the blatantly sentimental chorus--“I’ll always love you”--you’re moved and surprised. The band defends Combinations by saying they’ve “grown up,” but the love songs they wrote when they were teenagers seem much more real and intimate, more like love and less like a description of how love looks in People magazine.

I never listen to this band anymore, but this morning I woke up with the first song on Room Noises stuck in my head. It starts with a farmer crying about much he loves plants. Then he dies. Then he and his wife try to talk to each other:

Wife: I’m always wondering where you are, I’m always wondering where you are.
Husband: Darling, shouldn’t I be the one wondering? After all, I’m the one who is gone.

The two singers switch off in this vein for a while, before returning to the chorus, which tells us that plants make up for the hard times in life. Because plants are a symbol for memories, or something. Despite the gorgeously spooky harmonies, these lyrics are as sweet and idealistic as anything can be, but who cares? “Memories” was clearly written by some sheltered, geeky kids who liked to sit at home and read the Harry Potter and Narnia books, but those kids wrote with much more passion and creativity than the people they grew up to be. I just want them back.

SUPPLEMENTARY VIDEOS:



MEMORIES. This is from spring 2005 and is my all-time favorite video in terms of Stacy cuteness. I don't think she'll ever totally fall out of my celebrity crushdom, but I'd forgotten how infatuated with her I was when I was in tenth and eleventh grade. I obsessively read her xanga and basically thought she was the most beautiful, pristine, smart, wonderful, talented person EVER. The DuPree parents, who are sort of stage-parent-y, used to make a big deal out of the fact that Stacy hadn't started dating because she was EXTRA PIOUS, and I remember feeling really guilty about having a crush on her, especially since I'm a girl. As soon as this video started playing I got really embarrassed and had to put my headphones on, even though I'm in a room by myself.



LADY OF THE WOOD. This song is seven years old, and possibly my favorite--although maybe that's not what I mean. It is probably the pinnacle in terms of really genre-y spooky music, which is to say it's much more representative of the stuff they did when they were really young.





I COULD BE THERE FOR YOU/TEN CENT BLUES. These videos are from 2006 and 2008 (and the songs are on Combinations which came out in 2007). The first video isn't marked but it's from a show that A.T. and I were at. I got really excited when I heard "I Could Be There For You," "Like the Actors," and "Ten Cent Blues," because I was actually a little bored of the fantasy-ish angle and find those three songs to be really stunning. But the other songs on Combinations ended up being much worse and "Like the Actors" wasn't even on it, which is a travesty. (Full disclosure, I like "A Sight to Behold" too.) I feel disappointed by these videos because I was trying to find a particular video of Stacy wearing a sweater vest which led to me wearing sweater vests for YEARS.

I feel like I have too many videos of recent stuff so I will include this little bundle of awesomeness:



PRETENDER! This song is sort of nuts because: 1. it's from before Chauntelle stopped singing almost completely (which I think was about 10-12 years ago). 2. it's pretty obviously about how YOU SHOULD GET SAVED, which I personally think is nice. Not because it's about being saved in particular, but just because it's obviously very passionate and sincere. Some of their recent love songs have just seemed like really unconvincing attempts at emotion.

fictional characters

who strike me as having ASD and/or who I identify with as an ASD person without actually thinking that they have an ASD.

1. MAD MEN of course has Pete and Peggy, who pass in different ways, who compensate in different ways, who "improve" in different ways and are attracted and repulsed by each other for precisely that reason.

2. HARRY POTTER--Luna in a conventional way (i.e. she strikes me as actually having ASD). She was the first person I was exposed to that dumb conversation about, because Luna said something nice to Harry one time and real ASD people don't ever say anything nice or helpful, according to the people in that conversation. Also, Luna dresses weirdly because she likes to, while real ASD people dress weirdly because they don't know any better. Tiresome, because she's actually perfect as a realistic example of an ASD person, and I wish more intentionally ASD characters were like her.

I don't really think Neville has ASD, but he is my favorite character and it's easy to identify with the way life is a battle for him while he's in school. There's a really good fic, Night-blooming Heartsease, which really powerfully articulates the kind of determination I had to develop as a teenager--and yeah okay, it's slash, and has a pairing that squicks a lot of people out, but seriously, just read it anyway, you won't even care it's that good.

3. ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT--Buster of course! His impairments are probably caused by his upbringing and not something neurological, but I've always found him easy to relate to. For a while it was easiest to just explain myself by saying, "I'm young for my age." Although I don't have all the trouble with things like taking buses that I used to have (not as much, anyway), I used to just tell people, "Yeah, so I'm basically the real-life Buster Bluth." It made things a lot easier. I think that Tony Hale makes some acting choices, in terms of mannerisms, that make Buster read as someone with a developmental disability, but I don't know if this was a conscious decision.

4. FIREFLY--River Tam, especially in "Objects in Space." Again I don't think she is really ASD, but I love the message of that episode, which to me is about how the crew try to judge River's sanity and morality based on the things she does that they read as "crazy" or "odd," like picking up the gun, or having (in Kaylee's eyes) the wrong kind of affect after shooting people. She doesn't see context, she just sees objects in space. Then we have Jubal Early who also doesn't see context but is completely different--River sees guns as pretty objects, and Early sees "ordinary" objects as weapons, he sees the cheerfully, guilelessly sexual Kaylee as someone he can cow with the threat of rape. So I think the story is supposed to be, context-blindness and being evil or unstable are not the same thing. River is odd and good.

5. SPACED--Brian! I really love him because usually when you are diagnosing fictional characters, you have to go on social interaction alone, but Brian actually has the mannerisms and postures of an ASD person. Well, this ASD person, anyway. And like Luna and River and Buster, he is a good person, just different, which is nice to see.

I'm sure I'm forgetting someone. A lot of people, actually. But whatever.