User blog:Jumpyninja/Epiphany - neurotypical/neurodivergent as positive/negative quality

As someone going down the road of The Autism Diagnosis Process, the topic of the neurodivergent brain has been on my mind. After creating a character for Shadowrun Hong Kong and feeling rather limited I started making another version of her on Chummer 5a, feeling rather limited again. I was trying to make a weirdo like me, but the weirdness was limited to headline stuff like psychosis, epilepsy and bipolar disorder. At best I could have ADHD and social stress but as a puzzle solving weird perfectionist that wasn't gonna cut it.

I began to consider the dreaded homebrew option, with no idea how to start. A duckduckgo search later and I came across this article and wanted to share my epiphany with you. I'm still not sure what this will mean in terms of karma cost or where variable weirdness like mine would fit on the badly misspelled "mental illness" table, but I thought this would be a good point to share my homebrew madness publically. I think that neurotypical should be a positive karma quality like being ambidextrous or having toughness. I believe that neurodivergent should be on the negative karma list, with its subcategories on the terribly mislabelled "mental illness" table. To defend my case before I'm labelled a hater, it should be on the negative karma list because Social Stress and Sensory Overload Syndrome are, categories have always sucked. Whaddya think so far? I'll share a snippet, then link the site of the article.

Snippet: What Is Neurodivergent? Having an atypical neurological configuration, for example a person who has a developmental disorder and/or a mental illness. The word "Neurodiverse" refers to a group of people where some of the members of that group are neurodivergent.

A neurodivergent person is defined as one whose neurological development and state are atypical, usually viewed as abnormal or extreme. The term was coined in the neurodiversity movement as an opposite for "neurotypical" - previously the term "neurodiverse" was sometimes applied to individuals for this purpose.

Several recognised types of neurodivergence, include autism, Asperger's syndrome, dyslexia, dyscalculia, epilepsy, hyperlexia, dyspraxia, ADHD, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and Tourette syndrome (TS). Left-handedness, transgender and homosexuality are sometimes also included.

Some advocates even believe that common therapies for the behavioral and language differences associated with autism, like applied behavior analysis, are not only misguided but also unethical.

What Is Neurotypical? The word Neurotypical (NT) is the the opposite of Neurodivergent. Neurotypical means being "neurologically typical" - within the typical (average) range for human neurology.

The term originated in the autistic community, as a way to refer to non-autistic people, and is used to describe a person whose neurological development and state are typical, conforming to what most people would perceive as normal. People whose neurological development is atypical are referred to as "neurodivergent". The term is most freqently used by autistics and people with Asperger Syndrome.

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(and btw, you've no idea how happy this article made me, I hope you enjoy it too! ^_^)