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Um, I'm Aspie. Sorry, but I am aware what autism is, and I happen to be high-functioning autistic.

Content warning: mention of infanticide

I have a serious issue with your description of the first one, specifically the "offensive username".

"Autistic" is not a bad word. It is not derogatory, it is not an insult, it is not offensive. Are there people who use it as such? Yes, but #!$@ them.

Is it that they might be self-identifying as autistic, and are unafraid to claim that label? If you call "self-identifying as autistic" offensive, that's really, really not okay.

Is it that they might be headcanoning Duo-the-character (possibly Duo Maxwell, possibly someone else, that's really not the point) as autistic? That, too, is not offensive, and it's really not okay to say otherwise, especially if the person originating the headcanon is autistic themself.

Do you have to agree with their headcanon? No. Is it hurting anyone or anything? No. Is it possible that an autistic person might have a much more nuanced understanding of what autism actually is, and how it looks, than an allistic (non-autistic) person? Very much so. Has a creator explicitly said that some character is allistic? Death of the Author, baby.

*sighs* Look. As you may be able to tell, this is a major hot-button for me. Hi. I'm autistic, and I find the characterization of "TheAutisticDuo" as an offensive username to itself be incredibly offensive. I don't fit the expected societal norms for an autistic person, because standard autistic stereotypes really, really aren't one-size-fits-all. There's also a lot of institutionalized sexism in autism diagnosis, which I won't get into in this post, but am happy to talk about if anyone's curious.

Organizations like Autism $peaks (which is spelled with an S, not a $, but I point-blank refuse to let the Board auto-harvest that for advertising links) are also incredibly damaging to the autistic community. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if this is where the "offensive" description ultimately originates from. They have no autistic people involved anywhere in their organization, and are primarily composed of Autism Parents TM (which is not the same as parents of autistic folks, to be clear).

Far more damning, though, is that they do stuff like supporting parents who murder their autistic children. Unfortunately, they're also the main and only """""autistic voice""""" most people are aware of. They also promote therapies like ABA, which is focused not on helping autistic folks, but rather on forcing them to pretend like they're allistic, in incredibly damaging ways. There's something like an 80% PTSD rate among ABA survivors. (I don't have sources immediately to hand, but if anyone is interested, I can dig some up. I can also go into so much more detail about Them, but I won't unless someone explicitly wants me to.)

To be clear, now that I'm past the initial "you said what" rage, I'm not actually angry at you. I'm angry at and about the rampant societal ableism and stigma surrounding autism and autistic people; I'm furious at organizations like Autism $peaks, who essentially consider my life less valuable for being autistic; and I'm heartbroken by the harm and discrimination my community faces every day.

April is Autism Awareness Month. This year, don't "light it up blue" with Autism $peaks; listen to the #ActuallyAutistic community, and go #RedInstead.

... This, I suppose, has been your Autism Awareness Month lesson. It's something I think is really important to put out there, but I'm sorry I've ended up shoving it down your throat.

~Fire Sidoni

That good advice. I'll keep it in mind going forward. I'll make a new post sometime later on when I start re=posting my works.

I'm another newbie! Have some explosive chocolate!

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7ou-888298870

It was a good game and I think with a couple of tweaks that SMF could have had a serious chance at taking me out.

Or not...?

No audio from me, sadly, but hop into chat whenever you lot want.

https://play.pokemonshowdown.com/battle-gen7ou-888298870

D&D finished early, so I've got about an hour and a half before dinner.

As I am informed by LGBTQ+ people in my circles, the main take-away message about writing gay people (or people of any minority) is that they are people first. We all have the same basic psychological needs. Identity and life experience, and how they interact, in all their infinite variety, color how we go about fulfilling those needs. It's important to be aware of the stereotypes and the history that created them in order to avoid perpetuating harmful ideas, but basically, as long as you're treating all your characters as complex human beings, regardless of sexuality or whatever else, you're probably fine.

Like the article says, take the feedback on board and give it serious and respectful consideration, but you can't please everyone all the time. Don't let it scare you away from trying to do something good with your writing.

~Neshomeh, demi/straight woman who sometimes writes gay men and is still working hard to wrap her head around the idea of attraction to women.

Date and time of your choosing. I'm on Greenwich Mean Time, for reference. =]

We're not exactly heavy on the pitchforks around here. And seeing as I don't know what's up, I don't know how to help too much.

Speaking for myself, I think most of that advice is pretty sound, honestly. Although I have a bit of my own.

1) Accept that you cannot please everyone: there are a lot of different opinions about how to write LGBT characters. Especially from LGBT people. You won't make all of them happy and it frankly shouldn't be your goal to, because the inherently conflicting nature of all the different opinions means that you'll wind up with a character with no personality. Some LGBT people believe that straight people shouldn't write gay characters, or shouldn't write about certain aspects of their experience, like coming or what ever. Do your research, try and get the tricky stuff right, but don't listen to those people and subsequently avoid writing key scenes in the life of your characters because strangers on the internet said you shouldn't write them.

2) Personality: different people approach things differently. Personality, not sexuality, is the primary discriminator here. If you know that a character is gay or lesbian or bisexual or trans, look at who they are and how they got to where they are. That's going to inform a lot about how they act. It will also do a lot to tell you how they handle their own sexuality: not everyone is flamboyant and all out there. Some of us (*cough cough* me *cough cough*) would rather go sit imn a corner and read or whatever.

...Honestly, the article pretty much covered all that. Huh.

So whenever you're free this evening, come find me! I'm not lurking anywhere just yet, though, so that might be a bit more challenge than we're supposed to do. =P

I have no idea what my screenname will be yet, though. |D Expect 'S.M.F.' if the site allows.

And this evening should still work for me, after that busy slot for you.

• A thousand cuts by TheAutisticDuo
  
  A Borderlands story with a really, really, really bad sue, a bunch of canon-character corruption, a shitload of nonsense, and a pinch of a offensive username. Here's a link to the story AND my riff of it over at Library of the Damned:
  
  https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12518886/1/A-Thousand-Cuts
  
  https://literarytravesty.wordpress.com/2019/02/04/a-thousand-cuts-oneshot/
  
  - Indestructible by Alimoo1971
  
  Basically a badfic version of the Stargate SG1 episode "Upgrades", except with Sam and Jack becoming indestructible and- in the author's own words- getting "cool powers". Because of a asteroid. Yep. Here's the link:
  
  https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13165691/1/Indestructible

I'm free all day tommorrow and most of sunday (have work 4pm-730 server time, as well as Thursday and Tuesday afternoons.

Hello there, newbie! Have some chocolate and enjoy your stay! And don't worry, we don't bite... much.

He transforms into Kamen Rider Wizard.

Live footage of my self-insert agent throwing a fit:

"YOU'RE NOT EVEN A GATE!!! HOW THE HECK CAN YOU TRANSFORM INTO KAMEN RIDER WIZARD, THEN? AND EVEN IF YOU WERE A GATE WHO FELL INTO DESPAIR BUT REGAINED HOPE, YOU SHOULD NOT AUTOMATICALLY GET A WIZARDRIVER! SOMEONE HAS TO MAKE IT FOR YOU! HARUTO DIDN'T JUST SHOW UP WITH HIS WIZARDRIVER AND MAGIC RINGS FROM THE BRINK OF DESPAIR, NO, WHITE WIZARD MADE HIS WIZARDRIVER! BESIDES, HARUTO'S WIZARDRIVER IS UNIQUE! EVERYONE BUT HIM USES THE IMPOLITE ONE! HOW THE HECK DO YOU EXPLAIN ANY OF THIS? NO, YOU FILTHY STUS HAVE TO WARP AND BEND CANON TILLIT BREAKS TO SERVE YOUR OWN-"

Already mentioned this on the discord, but...
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8907116/1/The-irregular-rider
Trans-Dimensional hopping by a Gary Stu into the world of Familiar of Zero, somehow gaining the powers of various Kamen Riders in the process. The one good thing I can say for this is that it's SFW. Yeesh. Fortunately for any agents sent here, there's only one Gary Stu to kill off (and a whole bunch of characters to neuralize/exorcise) as far as I can tell.

For your gift, have five blank Rider Cards from the Kamen Rider continuum and a solid gold spork!

I'm free weekdays after 5pm BST and outside of around 2pm-6pm BST on Saturdays I should be free on weekends (although evenings would be preferable for me). You can find me lurking on the Library and Trivia channels of Pokemon Showdown under the username ThymeTwoDye

(Yes everyone else, Ihavenoinsurance has finally been retired as a username)

Novastorme

That's a good question, Thoth...

To be honest, I'm not sure how to correctly answer without leading to a misunderstanding.

Anyway, one of my critiques gave me a link following that fiasco to how to write LGBT characters.

https://hobbylark.com/writing/writing-gay-characters

I'm currently studying it right now while I'm re-working her origin story.

I bring color-changing chia pets as a gift. Would you prefer the hedgehog, or sheep?

No, 120 is fine. I don't know the tune off-hand, so I kinda assumed it was on the slow side.

Now that I think about it, it makes more sense at a faster tempo.