…can we have some more autistic thirteen pls?
oh my goodness, yes always and absolutely! Here are some thoughts I've been bouncing recently about autistic Thirteen & school over the years.
(Thank you in no small part to Bird + her Adams hcs for inspiring these. If you enjoy Adams in any way shape or form you should definitely check out her Adams meta).
For Thirteen, i think a lot of her time at school when she's younger is spent:
1) studying the other kids to mask and mimic their social behaviors, to try to fit in and make things easier (for her and her family, more on that in a sec);
and 2) when overstimulated, wanting to be left alone so she can read or be immersed in whatever she's working on (science project, art project, etc). she likes learning, she's curious. and I think as a child she wouldn't like being interrupted when she's deeply focused. she needs her space.
in my brain, I'm imagining that she knows she's Different even if she's not quite sure how; and she knows that she doesn't want to be another problem that dad (or brother) can't fix, so she decides she'll fix it herself. however, i don't think she fully realizes it's a problem until she gets comments from teachers about her behavior (examples of said behavior, from a post I did on Masking Thoughts: She sticks out at school, she's awkward, she's too loud or too quiet, or she can't handle things like lights and sounds and smells that the other kids don't seem to pay any attention to. Her teachers scold her when she doesn't have 'quiet hands' or when she 'can't keep her emotions under control'. It gets harder to make friends; the other kids don't talk to her much. She can act like them if she puts in the work, if she studies them hard enough and mimics and 'learns their language', so to speak; but she can't make herself be like them. No matter how hard she tries.)
In my mind's eye I see it happening as little seven year Remy being given a letter to take home to "her mom and dad" by her teacher. she opens it and reads it before she goes home that day, and it says something something concerns about your daughter being different something something social abnormalities, whatever words they wanted to use back then instead of saying people were neurodivergent. and i think that's when she gets it in her head that it's something about her that needs to be "fixed" and that SHE can "fix it". So she throws the letter away and her dad never hears about any of it. Which is extremely black and white thinking to me. And specifically she has this "fixing" thing in her brain because "dad can't fix mom, he doesn't need to feel like he can't fix anything else".
in high school I think she'd have learned to mask enough that i think she would have a small group of close friends, and a decent amount of acquaintances that she knows and gets along with but isn't close with. the only people that really know her are the 1-4 close friends she has at any given time (and it takes her a little bit to trust and let them in.) she'll hang out in a group if it's what everyone wants to do, but because of getting easily overstimulated and how exhausting masking is, I think she prefers small groups for sure. at get togethers or birthday parties i think she'd always break off and end up in a cluster with 2-3 others instead of being with the bigger main group.
i think when she's younger (like 14-15) she doesn't get why people want to go to school dances. she just stays home and enjoys a quiet evening. then when she's 16 (and for the rest of high school) she comes around a bit and learns to let go and enjoy; she agrees to go and has fun, but the second she's not enjoying it anymore or gets too overstimulated, she's outta there and figuring out a ride home lol
however despite her masking and mimicking others' social behavior to fit in, I don't think she would do any kind of drinking in high school at the parties she went to. i think she'd have too much anxiety about losing control (in the "i watched my mom lose control of her body" sense and the more general "control freak" sense as well).
hopefully you enjoy!! please always feel free to talk to me about autistic thirteen or ask for more thoughts on her. she is thee blorbo ever.
