The curious incident of the dog in the night-time

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No, not really. I liked Lou, though he's not like me at all. He was ordinary, understandable, and the story felt like something narrated by a real person (unlike "Curious incident"). What I meant was, his thinking really feels very familiar and not out of the ordinary at all; and if there's something that's supposed to be stunningly "different" about it, then I just don't see it.



Maybe I should've put it differently. It's not his self-consciousness that I found troubling, or his musing about who he is. No, that's fine with me. It's just that the *way* one muses about oneself may be very different; and I wasn't comfortable with him thinking in terms of that black-and-white, oversimplified distinction of "normal" vs. "not normal". Perhaps he could still be not at peace with himself, only without "normal" almost in every sentence. But again, maybe that's just me.

After all, I still don't really know what" normal" is, so it feels unnatural when someone builds their relatiosnhip with themselves and with the world on that.

To ZannieMarie (too big of a post for quoting): Interesting thoughts there. I'm trying my best in my own story for the reader to LIKE Kipo, and the mention of how broad the Spectrum is and those who are in it.

Oh, and another thing in my story: As The Cure exists, so do the Curebies.

I forgot to mention this from earlier. I felt devastated that he made that choice. To me, what he did was unqualified suicide.

I felt the same way. That's why the end of the book made me cry. I wasn't really sure why he did it, but all I knew was, this was a dreadful mistake that could never be undone.

About “Curious incident”: I’m a mostly visual/associative thinker, and that says it all, I guess. This is not my perspective.

It was boring, really - I was part trying to follow that bland, sterile (to me) reasoning, part getting sidetracked by all those details Chris mentions only in passing. My imagination was running rampant picturing those things on his lists, like when he was explaining why he doesn’t like brown and yellow, or him driving his father’s car (what color was it? was the sun shining? were there tiny droplets of dew on it, so that when you were opening the door and touched the handle your fingers got wet?..), or him looking at that slip of paper with the faces on it whenever someone was talking to him. It bothered me that he never described his rat in detail and never mentioned what were its habits, for example, whether it liked to climb under his shirt and sit there, and if it did, how did its warmth feel against his body. I kept wondering what he saw through the train window while he was going to his mother’s. I was constantly distracted from the main storyline (which I thought to be quite flat anyway) by these things, and I had to check myself whenever I started to drift into this endless train of free associations. This is normal for me, it’s just that in this case there was little else for my mind to be working on, and there were next to no descriptions of what things were actually like – how Chris saw them – so I had to try and supply them myself. Coupled with a feeling of being unable to really relate to Chris, it didn’t make for good reading.

But, frankly, I don’t think it’s all about Chris being a logical/sequential thinker. He seems drawn out, schematic as a character – it’s as if the author simply put together various symptoms and traits, in a mechanical way, rather than trying to really create a living person. Most of these traits were taken to an extreme, too (the “objective logic” thing, the coldness, the tendency to compile lists and schemes, etc.) The result was a character who doesn’t look very plausible or realistic, or easy to relate to, to me at least. When I was reading the book, I hardly got a sense that the author really empathized with his character - because it’d be possible only with a character who is quite “rounded”, - and I, as a reader, found it even more difficult.

Actually, even before I was self aware, per se, I was very anti-cure in the fic and that comes across very strong, mostly from the Neurologist husband and his Neurologist friends. They also came out strong from the beginning against "pretending to act normal." So, obviously I've had those feelings from way back (of course I always knew I was strange and different so maybe that was why). Things have come up where people have suggested different drugs for things and the Neurologist always has a fit and says no one is touching her brain. LOL And I never allow her to talk to the Shrink although the NTs often do.

The amazing thing is that these very NT readers love those two characters more than the NT characters. They were meant to be temporary and they begged me to keep them. So there you go. Of course, they do fun things like gas a kidnapper with household cleaners.

[quote="ZanneMarie"][/quote]
Ermm... and where can one read your stuff (I've not been long enough to notice. Sorry. Or I'm being stupid, which wouldn't be a surprise)

Oh honey, it is hack fiction. I hate to even admit to it. These women (and one dude) begged me to write it and I did. I had to bring the Aspies in for self preservation!! !!

So, ZanneMarie, are you going to tell, or do I have to come over there are beat it out of you! (Flexes muscles threateningly - ooops, can't do that, haven't got any, these days).

(At first I thought you meant Chris and Kipo, but I know it's different, but I'll run with it)

Yes, I find that a bit funny too! If I ask what my friend's favourite character is they always say a split second later 'Kipo!'. My sister says that it's probably because of how innocent she is.

Plus, I have five brothers. I would just punch you in the nose and make it bleed. I was trained how to fight when i was young! LOL

I sent you a chapter PM.

My readers think they are the most interesting. They can't wait to see what they do next. When they cry about being lonely, then they get all distraught. When they are clueless, they get mad at the people talking to them. It's funny really. Letting them inside their heads is what did it. They got to see the world through their eyes and it changed their outlook.

That's EXACTLY the reaction I got! I've actually already written the scene where Kipo decides to take the cure or not...

I hope to publish my story as a book so that people get a better idea about how we tick.

This book is something I can read to calm down; I love the story, it makes me sad and happy at the same time. I think anyone should read it too!

What I'd really like to see is a book written from the perspective of an autistic visual thinker (with the stream of free associations and imagery adopted as symbols for feelings) who has something of an attention deficit and (hypo)manic tendencies. And who, most specifically, DOES understand metaphor and employs explicit comparisons to be able to get their emotions across.

I have the book, but what bothers me about most media relating to autism, such as this book, and the film "Rain Man" is that they protray Autistics as having every AS trait known, where as it is more accurate that Autistics will have some of the traits but not others,

using myself as an example, i have some big obsessions over Computers and Forumla 1, but i don't mind people touching me, and i can stand loud noises.

I think the charachter is supposed to be more affected than the average Aspie given his schooling situation and presentation.

There was one thing in the book that made me feel bad about myself. This was the smiley faces. Near the beginning of the book there are a few smiley faces. I didn't know what some of them were supposed to mean. But the kid in the book did-- and he obviously had a much more severe form than I do. I sat down with my husband and we talked about the smiley faces and what they might mean. I have the same problem with the newest version of MSN instant messenger. When you scroll over the little faces it no longer tells you what they mean.