[valictini]

How does Loop feel about Bigfrin?

Internally screaming, mostly

[ricky-tiki-tah]

I love how the biggest space guys on tumblr right now, Dr. Captain Ryland Grace and Simon the Convict, are played by Mark “send me to space I don’t care if I don’t come back” Iplier, and Ryan “oh my god please don’t send me to space. Why are you sending me to space?!?” Gosling.

I just think that’s hilarious

[thatoneambiguousanon]

And that’s how Puzzles ended up completely stoned for an entire day

[ryllen]

[heart-aflame]

The detail of specifically Smg4 and Mario being the ones who get backlash during the gun training part of Western spaghetti is kind of great, because even though Wren is in control of the simulation, those two are who Mr. Puzzles dislikes the most at the time so he probably had some minor influence in how that went for them.

It probably could have gone worse for them if he hated them more of course, but the stronger hatred would come later. It's a subtle sort of foreshadowing just like the train episode had with how certain moments went down.

[heart-aflame]

Just realized but Mr. Puzzles literally got Isekai-ed, like some sort of anime protagonist. He probably thought that was really cool for a few minutes, before he remembered the Problems that came with the trope and also everything else.

[banana-teatime]

"A creature is theorizing the mushroom city and messing with Mario's favorite food! Oh the horror! Can the gang find out what's going on? Or is it to late for his spaghetti?...and I guess help the city folk too."

Have an AU Poster I made! My new SMG4 Au: Cursed! I was planning to make a 30 min long ANIMATIC video coming next year? But I'll write the script and go from there lol I wanted to do a parody and have no idea when this takes place in the timeline

[livzees]

tease that gunman NOW

[heart-aflame]

Why does Puzzles drive a toy car when he has a huge house during the brainrot arc? Does he just think it's funny to do that? Or is it just to make a joke about how absurdly long his fucking legs are?

[vantablackdraws]

Interrupting my usual posting nonsense with some ISAT doodles I did a while ago

[zamination]

i really hope there's gags about puzzles being freakishly tall in CAV. can we get a reference to that accidental star wars scene where a stormtrooper hits his head on a doorframe? that'd be cool

[loop-lover-central]

This one's for you Siffrin and Loop enjoyers (me. it's for me)

[heart-aflame]

I do like that when he uses the remote on his head, it sounds like its hurting him. Like it isn't electrocuting him, but hes actively using his own head to control this extremely powerful artifact while at his least powerful. If it didn't end up sending them all back to past events, I could see it backfiring on him and causing a similar issue like when he brainwashed himself from the meme factory defenses.

Only much more dangerous because while he might stay brainwashed, other people probably would be pissed enough to break out and destroy whatever story is going on at the moment while Puzzles is too mentally injured from the apparently sentient remote to defend himself.

The remote having control of the parody sounds kind of cool though, ngl. it'd probably have its own weird fun with this ability it didnt have before, so maybe it'd keep everyone in control better than Puzzles would with its power as well as his own?

Kinda wish he had just been his head during the chain chomp bit, so we could see him disoriented more as he regained his body as a distraction for him not to realize he didn't have the remote, but his constant terror the entire time was great regardless.

Idk, I guess I just thought it was a nice touch that they made using it the way he did cause him harm, when they could have just made it act how it normally would when people generally just press a button instead of connect it to their body. Like hes actively screaming in pain but you can barely hear it over the sounds of the remote doing its thing, making it look like his head is just some TV instead of himself with the visuals showing past events, and only brief flashes to his different agonized faces.

[mothric]

thinking about the time a former housemate said to me "hey I put these box fans in the living room because it's hot" while gesturing to the fans that I was actively sitting in front of because it was hot. and I said "okay thanks." and she kept standing there like she was waiting for something else so I said "am I blocking the airflow? do you need me to move?" and she said no I'm just letting you know they're here, in the living room, for circulation. and I said well yes, I did put that together. I am enjoying them. thank you. and she looked confused. so I asked "am I meant to do something with this information or are you just informing me?" and she said no I'm letting you know they're here because It's Hot In Here. she seemed a bit aggravated, and her emphasis seemed deliberate.

it took me asking three more times before she finally told me she wanted me to leave the fans where they are instead of moving them to my room or something. and I said oh! I had no intention of doing so but thank you for letting me know what the expectation is.

about a month later she brought up that conversation as the moment it actually clicked for her that I Am Autistic And Will Not Magically Intuit The Unspoken Request You Didn't Ask Me.

[mothric]

I have observed enough allistic communication to know that generally, if somebody points something out to you that you can already see or are already clearly interacting with, they are making an indirect request. but as I don't know what the request is, the only way forward is for me to guess (and likely get it wrong), or prompt the allistic to tell me clearly what they need.

however, allistics don't realize they do this, so asking them to say the unspoken surprises and confuses them. this is not their fault. allistics can be quite emotionally fragile and perceive directness as confrontation, so they habitually rely on indirect speech and coded language to preserve others' feelings. this is why they may find it difficult to be direct, even when asked. I have found that with enough gentle encouragement and reassurance that they are actually helping you, you too can achieve successful communication with your allistic friend or loved one. :)

[mothric]

I've seen more than a few replies saying "I'm not autistic and I wouldn't have gotten that either / your roommate's an outlier / nobody could have gotten that." fair enough, it was a pretty specific situation and it seems she genuinely didn't communicate well. as I often run into issues with indirectness, it scanned to me like all the other times I haven't been able to read between the lines. so let me give a few more examples of this phenomenon that may be more common:

"You left your dish in the sink." > the hidden request is "please clean your dish, preferably right now." since it's phrased as an observation, I don't immediately intuit the request and instead think my housemate thinks I forgot about it. so I reply "oh, I know." housemate thinks i'm sassing her and gets annoyed with me. only then do I realize she was asking me to do something about the dish in the sink.

"There's hot soup on the stove." > said to me while I was preparing a sandwich. the hidden request is "please eat the soup." since it's phrased as a statement of fact, I don't immediately intuit the request and instead think my mom thinks I didn't see the soup. I did see it, but I wanted a sandwich instead. so I reply, "I saw it, thank you." mother thinks I'm being rude and gets annoyed with me. only then do I realize she was asking me to do something about the soup (and furthermore is offended I am eating a sandwich instead).

"Your bread is on the counter." > the hidden request is "please remove your sliced bread from the counter and store it elsewhere." since it's phrased as an observation, I don't immediately intuit the request and think my roommate thinks I meant to store the bread elsewhere and forgot. when I reassure her I know it's there, she gets annoyed. only then do I realize she wants me to do something about the bread on the counter.

"You can turn up the heat, you know." > said to me while I was scrambling eggs slowly over low heat. this one really confused me because of course I knew I could turn up the heat, but I had no reason to as I was only cooking for myself. when I ignored the statement because I was focused on my task and had nothing to say, my mother added, "the eggs will cook faster if you do." sure, I'm aware of this too, but I don't want to cook them faster. I won't get the texture I want. when I reply, "I don't want to, though," mom thinks I'm being rude and gets irritated, then asks me how long I'm going to take. only then do I realize she was telling me to cook faster (because she wanted the stove), instead of simply informing me I could.

"There are donuts in the break room." > a more benign example, but similar outcome. once again I hear this as a piece of information being given to me, and thank my coworker for telling me. when I don't immediately leave my desk to get donuts because I'm finishing a task, my coworker hovers and says, "well? aren't you getting some?" only then do I realize there was actually a hidden invitation, and I was supposed to respond to the hidden part and say, "I'll come get them in a minute," or "no thank you I don't want any."

as I said, I've learned over time this is something many allistic (non-autistic) people do (as well as high masking autistic folks who have learned the social rules and wear themselves out following them rigidly). despite what I've learned, my default autistic response is pretty much always to take the words at face value (especially when I'm distracted or multitasking), before remembering I have to translate them. and while I can make a decent educated guess in most cases, sometimes I just cannot and simply ask, "what are you asking me?"

unfortunately, many allistic people suffer from an inability to take words literally just as much as they struggle to speak literally, which can further obfuscate communication. this is why I emphasize gentle reassurance that you are not criticizing them, but asking them to help you, a person in need, by clarifying their intent. people generally like to be helpful and I have had moderate success with this approach.

ONE MORE THING: I have a bias! this is very US-centric, as that's where I live. some cultures around the world are extremely direct, so autistic people in those cultures may not have the specific issue I describe here. however, every culture has its own set of social norms that include a complex combination of nonverbal visual cues, body language, tone/emphasis, and countless other unspoken expectations for what's considered polite or "normal." the double empathy problem doesn't evaporate in cultures that value direct speech. autistic people just face different problems. thank you and be good to each other

[mothric]

Even More examples of statements that allists in indirect cultures think are direct, pulled from the comments and my own experience (and in my case, missed until well after the fact):

"I'm putting the kettle on." (not just announcing what they're doing, they're expecting you to affirm whether you want tea or not.)

"Boy the trash is full." (not just voicing an observation, they're expecting you to take the trash out.)

"If you leave your window open, bugs will get in." (not just giving you information to decide what to do with, they're expecting you to close the window.)

Any variation of "do you want to do [unpleasant task]?" (you aren't actually supposed to say yes or no, they aren't asking your opinion, they're telling you to do it and saying you don't want to is rude.)

"Let me show you how to do something." (they want you to do it this way, they aren't just sharing an insight that you can choose to incorporate into your habits or not)

"Mm that food smells good." (might be complimenting your cooking, might be hoping you'll offer them some.)

"What are you watching/playing?" (might be curious about your interests, but might also want you to invite them to join.)

"Company's arriving in 15 minutes." (this one was from a mom to her kids and she wasn't just giving them a heads up, she was telling them to clean up.)

"Sorry my desk is such a mess." (APPARENTLY this was NOT a comment on her own desk but implying her COWORKER'S desk was messy and she wanted them to clean it??? sorry to the commenter who shared this one but that sounds genuinely deranged and you can't convince me this is common even for the most indirect allists out there)

to everyone saying this is simply a direct vs indirect culture issue, yes you can have communication breakdowns between people with differing degrees of directness, regardless of their neurodiversity status. what I am trying to illustrate is that autistic people in indirect cultures will miss these indirect cues at much higher rates than others, because we do not pick up on social norms at the same rate or proficiency as everyone else, because of our autism. essentially making us "direct-culture" people by default. some autistic folks do learn and practice those norms (some of us are literally traumatized into doing so), but it's something we often must remind ourselves to do, manually, and it can take a lot of extra effort. this is why high maskers end up in burn-out if they cannot learn to unmask btw.

(thank you also to everyone weighing in from around the world! I do hear Germany and Finland are more direct cultures so "taking things too literally" may not be as much of an issue there. this highlights the inherent bias of the DSM-V which assumes US cultural norms when evaluating for autism. another post for another day.)

[banana-teatime]

Wanted to sketch my newest fixation with their 'adopted daughter'

[heart-aflame]

Puzzles decided to keep his nervous system so he'd still have feeling when he touched anything and that was probably a terrible idea on his part when he ended up getting into fights more than he ever expected he would.

A sense of touch is mildly detrimental sometimes when your own head can shock pain into your system and someone-Mario-greatly enjoys punching you in the face at every opportunity.

[arbuzyansky]

When Beetlejuice and Lydia find themselves in a situation where everything is bad but there's potential for the most inappropriate joke, they instantly make eye contact just like: