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To go with my Asexual Ramblings perhaps. *grins sheepishly*
Ramblings of an Aspie Fanfic Writer
To go with my asexual ramblings -_-; Fanfic seems to be an awesome tool for self-analysis, did you know that? Or possibly just writing in general. Whenever you write, it's coming from the bundle of culture and upbringing and mental twists inside you, and no matter how objective you try to be, there is always more of yourself than you think in what you write. Which is also awesome in terms of reading what other people write, especially when they're coming from times or cultures or outlooks different from your own, because then you get a glimpse, can try to see, some other way of seeing things ... *coughs* Anyway. Back on track, honey babe ...
Been thinking about this one a little more, recently. Possibly because it's actually been confirmed, now, that I actually have Aspergers Syndrome. By a professional and everything. Before now, I just sort of suspected, based on the fact that two of my family had it, and given my reactions to things it seemed ... more than likely. Heh.
In terms of my writing, there seems to be one area in particular that I think is hugely affected by my being aspie. Others, such as my obsession with language, with the weight and flow and shape and taste and meaning of words ... where was I? Right. Right. Ahem. Well, that's been shaped by my aspieness too, I think, but ... it's not the main effect it's had. And ... right, I'm probably going to have to explain a little first.
Aspies, in general, have a different way of thinking to most NTs (neurotypicals - 'normal' people, but I prefer to use NT because 'normal' is not a word I think should be used as often as it is - it covers too much, disguises too much, and takes away a lot of the individuality I see around me). Not ... not better or worse. We're not smarter or more stupid. It's not a matter of degree, it's more a matter of ... shape. Of mechanism. Aspie thoughts run off a slightly different OS to NTs, as my Dad puts it. Linux vs Windows, that sort of thing. Also, our thoughts seem to run more through different areas, in some ways.
Anyway. The major upswing of this, at least in everyday life, is that socially and often emotionally, we don't ... connect. Not properly, not in a way that translates. So ... Okay. I'm having a conversation with someone. They tell me something personal. I understand what they're saying, I understand the language, I understand the concept, I know what fear or anger or betrayal or confusion feels like, but ... It's not ... I don't connect to that, in them. I don't know how to react, how to give the right emotional signal that will help them. I don't understand what I'm expected to do. I sort of ... blank out. You have emotions. Good. You've told me about them. Good. Um. Now what? I can't ... give you mine, I don't know how, I can't fix your actual situation, so ...
Yeah. I'm bad at interactions. I'm also really, impossibly bad at seeing emotions in other people, unless they either say it straight out or give me lots of time to catch on. I don't connect expressions/words to the feelings behind them, not in real-time, anyway. So things like humour, relationship hinty type things, spotting signs of impending break-down, impending explosion ... all of that goes right over my head. I mean right over it. I never noticed when I'm getting hit on (if I ever have been, I honestly don't know), I never notice when I'm being spectacularly insensitive, I never notice when someone is obliquely hinting that they want something.
I also never see violence or anger coming until it hits, which is part of why I'm so fucking terrified of most people, I think. From my point of view, people just seem to randomly explode sometimes, and I never know when or where, or figure out why until much later. Which gives me the horrible impression that I'm living in a perpetual minefield -_-; But I digress.
How does this relate to my writing? Um. Okay.
See, I've gotten a lot of reviews of late (lovely, lovely reviews, have I mentioned I love you all?) pointing out how emotionally focused my stories are. How I seem to make such an effort to get inside character's heads and get to know what makes them tick. How I spend so much time focusing on how characters react to each other, interact, emotionally and otherwise. And how, apparently, good at it I seem to be.
Um. *grins sheepishly* See, that? That's ... sort of a side-effect of the fact that in real life, I am completely terrible at every last one of those things. I can't do that in RL. I can't do that fast enough, not in real situations, not with real people. It's only afterwards, when I've had time to think and see where I went wrong, that I get a lot of it (and we could be talking years afterwards, in some cases). In real life, I have all the experience of emotional interactions of a plank, or a particularly frosty ice-queen.
So ... I write about them instead. Screwy, I know. But ... do you know what a GIFT fanfic is, that way? What an absolutely gift those characters, those situations, are to me? Because they ... they stand still. They let me take all the time I need to understand them, to analyse their interactions, to see where they were and where they are, and try to understand how they got from one to the other. They're not looking at me, they don't expect me to understand them, they're just ... content to wait until I do. *smiles sheepishly* Fictional characters are everything real people aren't, as far as letting me understand them goes.
So ... when I write, when I reach out to those characters and those situations ... when you feel me trying to describe them, trying to feel what they feel, trying to explain it and make it make sense, trying to bring those emotions and motivations and desires up to the surface ... what you're seeing there is my trying via my writing to learn the empathy I'm so desperately bad at in real life. What you're seeing there is me reaching out to people who are content to wait for my comprehension, people who show me who and what they are and can wait until I get it ... and trying to do them justice.
What you're seeing, basically, is my fantasy that people, if you just give them enough time and effort, if they just give you enough time and patience, are ... understandable. My long-running fantasy that one day I will actually be able to understand, and use that understanding in the moment, while someone is actually looking at me. *bites lip*
And they are ... I mean, the characters themselves, they are ... beautiful. When someone gives them to me, in a show or a book, gives them to me and shows me where they came from, how that act, what they do ... It's a gift. I don't know how to explain that. It's why I can't ... why I get caught up in all of them, why I panic about large casts, because ... it's almost an obsession. They all have to be real. They all have to make sense. It's why Zachariah, or Raphael, or Lex Luthor ... why they have to have motivations. Why they have to have reasons. Why I have to write out what, if they were real, they probably would never spend time thinking about in themselves. Because ... because the people in my life are unknowable to me. Because they do things for reasons I don't understand, can't see, and that frightens me. So when I write ... I make the reasons ones we can see. I try to make them something explainable. Not forgivable, maybe, not particularly sensible, but ... explainable. Knowable. Because these characters are a gift, and I don't want to be frightened of them. Because these characters let me understand them, give me the time to make it something I can see and write and explain, and that ... that is such an awesome gift. I don't want to cheat them. I don't want to make them less than they are.
If any of that made any sense whatsoever -_-;
So ... that's ... I mean, that's sort of weird. Sort of ridiculous, really, that the thing I'm apparently good at when I write is the thing I am ridiculously bad at in real life. In fact, that quite possibly the only reason I'm good at it when I write is because I'm so bad at it everywhere else. That's ... that's almost ironic, really. Sort of ridiculous, yes?
So ... yeah. I just thought I'd ... think that out, set it in writing. Explain me to myself, some more. *shakes head at self* Like I said. Fanfic is a great tool for self-analysis. Heh.
Shutting up now.
To go with my asexual ramblings -_-; Fanfic seems to be an awesome tool for self-analysis, did you know that? Or possibly just writing in general. Whenever you write, it's coming from the bundle of culture and upbringing and mental twists inside you, and no matter how objective you try to be, there is always more of yourself than you think in what you write. Which is also awesome in terms of reading what other people write, especially when they're coming from times or cultures or outlooks different from your own, because then you get a glimpse, can try to see, some other way of seeing things ... *coughs* Anyway. Back on track, honey babe ...
Been thinking about this one a little more, recently. Possibly because it's actually been confirmed, now, that I actually have Aspergers Syndrome. By a professional and everything. Before now, I just sort of suspected, based on the fact that two of my family had it, and given my reactions to things it seemed ... more than likely. Heh.
In terms of my writing, there seems to be one area in particular that I think is hugely affected by my being aspie. Others, such as my obsession with language, with the weight and flow and shape and taste and meaning of words ... where was I? Right. Right. Ahem. Well, that's been shaped by my aspieness too, I think, but ... it's not the main effect it's had. And ... right, I'm probably going to have to explain a little first.
Aspies, in general, have a different way of thinking to most NTs (neurotypicals - 'normal' people, but I prefer to use NT because 'normal' is not a word I think should be used as often as it is - it covers too much, disguises too much, and takes away a lot of the individuality I see around me). Not ... not better or worse. We're not smarter or more stupid. It's not a matter of degree, it's more a matter of ... shape. Of mechanism. Aspie thoughts run off a slightly different OS to NTs, as my Dad puts it. Linux vs Windows, that sort of thing. Also, our thoughts seem to run more through different areas, in some ways.
Anyway. The major upswing of this, at least in everyday life, is that socially and often emotionally, we don't ... connect. Not properly, not in a way that translates. So ... Okay. I'm having a conversation with someone. They tell me something personal. I understand what they're saying, I understand the language, I understand the concept, I know what fear or anger or betrayal or confusion feels like, but ... It's not ... I don't connect to that, in them. I don't know how to react, how to give the right emotional signal that will help them. I don't understand what I'm expected to do. I sort of ... blank out. You have emotions. Good. You've told me about them. Good. Um. Now what? I can't ... give you mine, I don't know how, I can't fix your actual situation, so ...
Yeah. I'm bad at interactions. I'm also really, impossibly bad at seeing emotions in other people, unless they either say it straight out or give me lots of time to catch on. I don't connect expressions/words to the feelings behind them, not in real-time, anyway. So things like humour, relationship hinty type things, spotting signs of impending break-down, impending explosion ... all of that goes right over my head. I mean right over it. I never noticed when I'm getting hit on (if I ever have been, I honestly don't know), I never notice when I'm being spectacularly insensitive, I never notice when someone is obliquely hinting that they want something.
I also never see violence or anger coming until it hits, which is part of why I'm so fucking terrified of most people, I think. From my point of view, people just seem to randomly explode sometimes, and I never know when or where, or figure out why until much later. Which gives me the horrible impression that I'm living in a perpetual minefield -_-; But I digress.
How does this relate to my writing? Um. Okay.
See, I've gotten a lot of reviews of late (lovely, lovely reviews, have I mentioned I love you all?) pointing out how emotionally focused my stories are. How I seem to make such an effort to get inside character's heads and get to know what makes them tick. How I spend so much time focusing on how characters react to each other, interact, emotionally and otherwise. And how, apparently, good at it I seem to be.
Um. *grins sheepishly* See, that? That's ... sort of a side-effect of the fact that in real life, I am completely terrible at every last one of those things. I can't do that in RL. I can't do that fast enough, not in real situations, not with real people. It's only afterwards, when I've had time to think and see where I went wrong, that I get a lot of it (and we could be talking years afterwards, in some cases). In real life, I have all the experience of emotional interactions of a plank, or a particularly frosty ice-queen.
So ... I write about them instead. Screwy, I know. But ... do you know what a GIFT fanfic is, that way? What an absolutely gift those characters, those situations, are to me? Because they ... they stand still. They let me take all the time I need to understand them, to analyse their interactions, to see where they were and where they are, and try to understand how they got from one to the other. They're not looking at me, they don't expect me to understand them, they're just ... content to wait until I do. *smiles sheepishly* Fictional characters are everything real people aren't, as far as letting me understand them goes.
So ... when I write, when I reach out to those characters and those situations ... when you feel me trying to describe them, trying to feel what they feel, trying to explain it and make it make sense, trying to bring those emotions and motivations and desires up to the surface ... what you're seeing there is my trying via my writing to learn the empathy I'm so desperately bad at in real life. What you're seeing there is me reaching out to people who are content to wait for my comprehension, people who show me who and what they are and can wait until I get it ... and trying to do them justice.
What you're seeing, basically, is my fantasy that people, if you just give them enough time and effort, if they just give you enough time and patience, are ... understandable. My long-running fantasy that one day I will actually be able to understand, and use that understanding in the moment, while someone is actually looking at me. *bites lip*
And they are ... I mean, the characters themselves, they are ... beautiful. When someone gives them to me, in a show or a book, gives them to me and shows me where they came from, how that act, what they do ... It's a gift. I don't know how to explain that. It's why I can't ... why I get caught up in all of them, why I panic about large casts, because ... it's almost an obsession. They all have to be real. They all have to make sense. It's why Zachariah, or Raphael, or Lex Luthor ... why they have to have motivations. Why they have to have reasons. Why I have to write out what, if they were real, they probably would never spend time thinking about in themselves. Because ... because the people in my life are unknowable to me. Because they do things for reasons I don't understand, can't see, and that frightens me. So when I write ... I make the reasons ones we can see. I try to make them something explainable. Not forgivable, maybe, not particularly sensible, but ... explainable. Knowable. Because these characters are a gift, and I don't want to be frightened of them. Because these characters let me understand them, give me the time to make it something I can see and write and explain, and that ... that is such an awesome gift. I don't want to cheat them. I don't want to make them less than they are.
If any of that made any sense whatsoever -_-;
So ... that's ... I mean, that's sort of weird. Sort of ridiculous, really, that the thing I'm apparently good at when I write is the thing I am ridiculously bad at in real life. In fact, that quite possibly the only reason I'm good at it when I write is because I'm so bad at it everywhere else. That's ... that's almost ironic, really. Sort of ridiculous, yes?
So ... yeah. I just thought I'd ... think that out, set it in writing. Explain me to myself, some more. *shakes head at self* Like I said. Fanfic is a great tool for self-analysis. Heh.
Shutting up now.
