Hello, everyone. 31 year old Scandinavian here, hope this post isn't too rambling. I initially got an autism diagnosis as a child, but it wasn't conclusive - a lot of hem and haw about "well they tick some of the boxes, but far from all of them, and it'd be irresponsible to assign labels", so we all ignored it because if you ignore something, it'll go away, right? (It didn't go away and instead caused everyone, myself included, to ignore huge red flags throughout my childhood, until it came crashing down in college when my brain couldn't keep pushing the problems away anymore. I have since spoken with an actual specialist, who confirmed that yep, autistic.)
I discovered this forum when I was looking for non-clinical portrayals of autism, as it helps me identify and come to terms with how my own life is affected by it, since my brain's spent so much time trying to ignore it. I'm a bit of a literal person, and the closer something is to my own experience, the more likely I am to make the connection that "hey, this sounds like me, I'm not alone". (Conversely, if something doesn't exactly match what I'm looking for, my brain parses it as not even remotely related. My therapist calls this the "apple pie problem": information, to me, is rigid and I can't do much with it. I can have all the necessary ingredients for an apple pie, but unless someone tells me "hey, you could make an apple pie with these", the idea would never occur to me. This is also why I struggle a lot to identify myself with clinical descriptions of autism, because they're not identical to my own experiences, so it can't possibly be similar.)
As for a few things about me, I like video games (RPGs and such for the most part), drawing, and worldbuilding, mostly of the fantasy variety. I love plants even though I have an extreme phobia against insects and haven't a single green thumb.
I'm currently trying to learn how to code. Zero experience in the field, which will play well with my 5 minute attention span and terrible math skills, I'm sure.
Anyway. Nice meeting you all.