#dan.posts

[saiyan-druid-art]

Life update!

My partner and I have successfully moved across the country, leaving our beloved Texas behind. 🥲

We had great adventures there, but the climate (both meteorologically and politically) was becoming super oppressive. We were fortunate/privileged enough to have the opportunity to leave.

I wish we could've stayed & done something to make it better instead, but alas our physical & mental health came first.

Now we're up north, a lot closer to civilization, but also a lot closer to family & friends!

I'm so excited to get back into drawing again. Work has been busy and moving our lives & 3 cats from a studio apartment to a 2 bedroom house has been an adventure! Once things are boring again, I can start playing games & getting creative.

I miss you guys and I never intended for this long of an art break. (I was drawing for 2.5 years daily undefeated! 😳)

But thank you for sticking with me. I hope to create some newly inspired comics & art for you very soon! 🤠💙

[big-boah]

Autistic Thing of the day:

Autistic Catatonia 😵

I made a TikTok on this too with the same info (link here!)

I wanted to talk about autistic catatonia, which isn’t something I’d heard about until I researched it on my own. When I brought it up to my doctor, she said it made perfect sense.

Autistic catatonia affects, at minimum, about ten percent of autistic people. And the best way I can describe it is “getting stuck.”

I’ve dealt with this my entire life, I plan to do something, or respond to someone, and my mind goes blank and I just can’t move. If I fight it, my anxiety goes through the roof. I can’t talk or respond, only maybe stim a little or communicate using eye contact or eye gaze. For me, it can last anywhere from a few seconds to several hours.

Unfortunately, my bodily functions still continue when I’m stuck, so I have to be guided to the bathroom, need help in the shower, and kept out of harm’s way. My partner and I both have ADHD and have a similar thing happen but can still kind of move even if it's difficult, but that’s more executive dysfunction.

This is also a little different than derealization and depersonalization in that most people still feel entirely like themselves when these episodes happen, your inside mentality is the same. I can carry on commentary in my head during these episodes and I feel like I'm myself, just stuck.

Being catatonic is almost like every cell in my body is frozen in time. I know what’s going on around me, but my brain just can’t make that connection and that spark of purposeful movement doesn’t make it outside of my own mind. I wish there was a better way to explain it.

A lot of autistic people experience this differently. Some people have this and believe it's a shutdown (which is a little different because in shutdowns usually you can communicate.)

People with mild catatonia may feel like they've "gone nonverbal" and also feel physically stuck, although others can assist you to move if needed.

A lot of people have this experience when they're frightened of experiencing high levels of overstimulation. I've always said it's like my brain pressed pause on my life, because I wouldn't.

If you know someone who goes through something like this, make sure they stay safe, hydrated, and make sure to check in on them even if they don't respond. I like when my partner acts like nothing’s up, he will just hang out with me there. Some people like touch when they get stuck while others don’t. This can happen no matter what your support need level is in general. This actually happens often enough where it increases my support need level, I need to be supervised anyway. 😅

Once I realized this was a feature of my autism, I was able to come up with a plan with my loved ones because it happens about 2-3 times a week. Ever since I started taking ADHD meds it happens less, and research has found that benzo medications can actually prevent this from happening and help the episodes. Research needs to catch up to the rest of us on this one!

But if you experience this or periods of hyperactivity where you also feel like you can't interact with others on your own command, it may be autistic catatonia.

Hopefully this helps someone! 🤟🏻

[big-boah-2]

I love Arthur's cowboy accent. "Shore" instead of "sure", "fee-yesh" instead of "fish".

[dean-winchesters-adhd]

I was thinking about the Writer's Strike, and the inevitability of AI "assistance" in media/movies/shows/news because companies only make decisions if the outcome is "save money, make money" that's literally the point.

And I was thinking about how AI is at the moment and how it really can only create cookie-cutter storylines...then I realized that modern mass media and big networks only APPROVE cookie-cutter storylines anyway.

The Writer's Strike is an amazing thing! No one should be abused by their corporate overlords who unfortunately pay all of our paychecks.

And I think now is a good time for all artists to start forming more of a close-knit independent community and promoting each others' homegrown art/writing/media as much as possible. INDIE is where it's at.

Let's give the middle finger to big networks by not giving any of their cheap bullshit any attention, NOT EVEN HATE-WATCHING, and lets continue to do what we do so well on there. Supporting fellow writers and artists on a large-scale community level.

[big-boah]

He thinks he's in a 90's photoshoot:

[big-boah]

Wait a minute.

It is HE:

[saiyan-druid-art]

The next chapter of AMJ is drafted and it's 7k words long...sORRY in advance. 😂

It's the turning point for the story, and my amazing beta reader/alpha friend & I are making sure it comes across how i imagine 🥰 We're shooting for next weekend but it might be later, we'll see!

Thank you for being patient those who are reading along 🥹 Seriously, you guys are so supportive and it allows me to pick up writing after extended periods of time and not feel like people are losing interest or that I'm letting anyone down, which is a hurdle of getting back in the saddle 💙

[big-boah]

This is the kind of BS that makes me cringe.

STOP MAKING PARENTS THINK THEY CAN "CURE" THEIR KID'S AUTISM. Stop it.

(Image ID in alt text)

I have high support needs and went from an abusive/neglectful environment to a very supportive one about 10 years ago.

But did my autism change? No. Did my "challenging traits" change? NO. Actually that's a lie. They got "worse". More visible. Louder. Less speech, more AAC. More big stimming. It was because:

- I got older.

- New meds/changing medical challenges.

- I felt more comfortable expressing myself in my preferred style and I gave less fucks about what others thought of me.

- I became MORE COMFORTABLE in general.

This is the kind of shit we need to rally against. This is also why it's especially important to uplift voices of folks with higher support needs. We need to inform these "professionals" that, no, this isn't something that "goes away".

Seeing someone heal from environmental distress/trauma doesn't magically mean they're "cured" or even "getting better", it does not make "challenging traits" any LESS of a challenge for the AUTISTIC PERSON.

(And you know, eventually they need to update the diagnostic criteria to not just be based on little white boy science. Especially if it affects like 1-5% of the world population but that's a story for another day)