I love that Brennans reaction to Lou not liking crows is “well obviously he’s just wrong and ignorant so if I give him an endearing enough fact he’ll change his mind!”
Im like that about all of my many interests, "you aren't stupid or wrong, you just don't get it. Let me explain it to you." and everyone thinks I'm just being a know-it-all.
I love that Brennan is a warm, lovable, jovial, beautiful human being but, there is that undercurrent of “I’m not afraid of physical violence and if I catch you victimizing someone I will fight you”.
I don't have ASD, but like most of my family does. And that was also the moment where I went like "Wow yeah. I don't know if the diagnosis is necessary now 😅"
Peep me trying to laugh away the fact that the 3 places I eat from near my office all say "see you tomorrow" when it is their turn in the rotation, and "see you soon" when their turn in the rotation is ending.
I think the main reason he doesn’t have a formal diagnosis is that his parents were AWESOME and he didn’t grow up in trauma. Like, maybe this is the brain he’s got, but he had this rare gift of being around caregivers who went, “no, this is not disruptive. I treasure my kids.” And they MEANT that shit.
@@emilysmith2965 As the youngest and only allistic in a house of ASD kids, it sucked seeing my parents be so cruel to them for no reason. They didn't explain the diagnosis and their unique signs of ASD and used my ignorance as an advantage to generalise their flaws as autism related and villainise them to me. I knew they were doing this. It took a while to realise how much. And made sure to advocate for them, especially once I looked up more and more information about the symptoms/signs that ASD (which matched up a lot with each of them). I'm away from home, but one of my sisters is still home dealing with a new mood disorder and alcoholism/sobriety. It's not like it's just the autism stigmatising stuff, but my God is that part strong! Apologies for the rambling. I hope it helps you feel less alone in your experience, like your comment did for me
I 100% agree with this video. Sometimes you look at an online person and you're like "I don't wanna para socially diagnose you or put shit on you, but you must know that my autism has latched onto how you are"
Oooh I think he has lived with social deficits in some way or form, he has just also poured years into learning how to be charismatic and be a performer. And those are the situations we most often see him in.
The trick, I think, is putting a lot of energy into improv comedy 😭 That and being homeschooled enough to skip the trauma around socialization caused by being autistic in school. If you watch his interview on Study Hall it makes sense IMO. I did something similar, being homeschooled, and having a long standing special interest in communication. But I'm no commedian so I just have the superpower of appearing as a well adjusted normal person 😭.
Social deficits are a social construct. Just like how one autistic person might really like trains because they make sense to them, another might take the time to understand the underlying mechanics of being funny.
@@bodkie This - being able to recite train facts or sports facts or an entire standup special all come from the same place of special interest but how socially awkward each one makes you seem is based solely on cultural norms.
If you ever make a part 2, there is a clip you should include of Brennan saying that playing Ayda Aguefort (a canonically autistic character) was “really liberating” and “felt very natural to him” 👀
@@phoenixdragon1258getting better at unmasking literally helped me make better friends and become closer with the existing ones They wanted to get to know MEEE
I feel like he also said something like “I didn’t intend to make her autistic, I just thought about all the coolest people I’ve met and based her off them” or smth?
It’s so hard to realise how much work you are doing to mask how your brain actually works until you’re in an environment with people where you don’t have to do that anymore.
My favorite yada fact is that she wasn't initially written as autistic, but the fans kept pointing it out like "wow! clearly she's autistic coded, right? :)" and Brennan just went "that's brilliant, and she is now!" Just the idea that he made a fun character and then a bunch of fans connected with them so hard we got him to retroactively change the lore. Which is only posable when the person making the character is someone like Brennan (and the media in question is live play)
especially the stuff where he’s more aggressive and focused on information: *leans forward* “you think I fuck around?” “PEOPLE TAKE ADDERALL TO BE LIKE YOU ARE RIGHT NOW” “Isn’t the thing I said also correct and not the thing????” *reading verbatim with unending fascination from wikipedia* *gets WAY too excited about the mechanics of playing space pool*
“I am unfailingly nice. Like, nice and kind to the point where it might make you uncomfortable how sincere I’m being.” Two of my friends in college were talking about the first time they came over to my house and spent time with me and my family. One friend couldn’t put her finger on the right adjective to describe how our love made her feel. I thought of positive adjectives (welcome, safe, surprised, etc.) The other friend volunteered another adjective: Intimidating. As I was reeling from such a weird suggestion, the first friend said “Yes! Intimidating!!” BLeeM rarely fails to make me feel seen.
I think its funny how in the escape room episodes when sam first comes on the tv and Brennan is unfazed he holds an empty cup in his hand like he’s gonna drink from it while processing whats in front of him just so his hands can do something. Now THATS autism
Were getting Thai food? great ill have spicy chicken pad thai. west african? Jolof rice and puff puff. Vietnamese? ill have beef noodles. Chinese? whatever their house dim sung is and some sweet sour chicken balls...etc etc
No though because places will put some ungodly ingredients in your favorite dish and you wouldn’t have it be ruined if you just read the menu and were able to ask them to remove it! (Eg seafood olives or blue cheese)
Like my absolute favorite thing to get at sushi places are yakiniku rolls with cucumber but I can’t eat them when they put pickled onion, avocado or a lot of mayo in there
Nah I'm too anxious for that. Plus memory stuff, especially when anxious or stressed. I look at the menu multiple times to make sure I'm not going to forget what it's called sometimes because I'm paranoid about that happening. Plus got made fun of so much for just picking a safe food that I'm basically incapable of not looking at one now. I blank completely without a menu.
the “not hitting a joke because you got too excited thinking about the logistics of a hypothetical invention that was originally the setup to a joke” thing is SO REAL it’s genuinely not even funny.
"...Do you think I fuck around?" I have appropriated this for personal use, placed it in my tournament deck, and tapped it as an instant for three red manna, so many times. It has literally changed the entire meta of my conversations hence forth.
For no reason at all the thought that peeing in a pool from the edge is the most agresive thing you can do in a pool not involving actual violence keept looping in my mind.
When I was a kid, I had a lot of issues and we weren't able to find any answers as to why I had those issues, besides anxiety and depression, but that didn't explain all of it. We wondered if it was ASD, but even though I still have a lot of autistic traits as an adult, I do not meet the criteria for diagnosis. I was also a fairly bright kid, and my mom thought that maybe I was "gifted" and that was part of it. As an adult, I now know for a fact that I have ADHD and that that is what had caused a lot of my issues as a child. But the thing is that there is a lot of crossover between ADHD, ASD, and giftedness. Brennan is obviously a very intelligent person, and he has a lot of traits that are similar to common traits of people in all three of those groups, and I think that that is a part of why a lot of neurodivergent people (mostly with ADHD or ASD in this case) find Brennan to be so relatable. At least that's true for me anyways. And it's always very comforting to see him go through or experience things in a similar way that I do, especially since I look up to him so much.
The issue is neurodivergence is built around disability but some people are wired differently enough from the norm to be like, yeah maybe but also no according to the Diagnostic Manual but yeah weird huh
Also, when you are highly intelligent and your brain loves solving problems anyway, with enough time and effort you can cover the gaps most of the time. But when you get super stressed or are out of your comfort zone, all your carefully built adaptations come apart.
This. I think a lot of people don't see how being highly intelligent is also a curse in the social realm. I'm on a country where intellectualism is not appreciated, and the trauma that bullying and parental abuse entailed mixed with high capacity fucked me up socially for literally years. I needed a lot of trauma related therapy for me to act like an actual person. Surprisingly? Afterwards I became someone that everybody deems as likable and social, without that really being the focus of the therapy. I was just highly disregulated to a whole other magnitude. Trauma can fuck you up in mayor ways, I think that a lot of struggles derived from most neurotypicals are more related to trauma than what we want to realize (with this I don't want to diminish the struggles of other neurotypicals, I just think that when you go through trauma is way easier to learn how to navigate around the difficulties it entails.)
20:40 I don't know about y'all, but I'm definitely on team menu. Who knows what their prices are, it might be more worth it to just get two orders of egg rolls depending on what the regular meals include. And I'm certainly not just gonna give some random pizza place my ideal pizza's life story because they'll probably charge half of my left kidney for it. You gotta 👏 consider 👏 the prices 👏 As a caveat, the menu is only needed on the first visit (as long as they don't change their prices every other Tuesday, like some fast food places seem to). After that just order the perfect meal each time, regardless of the time of day.
I think context matters. Yes I would like a menu. I would also like to know if their sweet and sour sauce is the nice kind with a vinegary kick or the nasty red stuff from the cash&carry (90% of the chinese takeaways in my city use the same supplier) and whether their curry has mushrooms in it or not. But in the context of "shit they stop taking orders in 5 minutes" umm, shit, Singapore noodles, I've never know a takeaway get that wrong,
I only need a menu for sauces, drinks, desserts, and sides. Those always fucking change and my side dishes change even with the same places. For example while a common side for me is fries and a vegetable sometimes I'm in the mood for a loaded potato and corn or Mac n cheese or salad or soup. I gotta know what things come with my meal too, will I be charged for fries with my sandwich? Who knows? Gotta see a menu. Diners I lean into cube steak no gravy extra crispy hashbrowns and over easy eggs with toast, orange juice. Sometimes they got sirloin tips though and they saute them so sweetly it's delicious. Same sides though but swap toast for buttermilk pancakes. Oh and pho I do sometimes try different pho but I always go raw beef no onions with a citrus drink of some kind or either a Vietnamese ice coffee or Thai iced tea depending on if they use the right kind of fucking cream I like it SWEET damn you don't fucking use half an half use heavy cream and vanilla for the tea and condensed milk for the coffee. Some tea places man.... Fuck all American ass boba places for fucking up thai tea. Oh but for noodles n co same thing every time. Buffalo Chicken Mac, no onions, substitute cavatappi or spaghetti depending on my mood. Try it with the cavatappi someday btw those things hold sauce tight. So yes. That bit is right as hell.
I want to see the menu to remind me of all the words I need to order the thing, even if I usually order the same thing, otherwise, Autistic Brain may not find the words.
I’ve never related to anything more than when he said “whatever the fuck this is…” about the rabbit/tree tying your shoes metaphor as a kid during adventuring party. I used to get SO frustrated with my parents over that. It took me ages to learn to tie my shoes because of it. It wasn’t even that I didn’t understand the metaphor; I knew it was a metaphor, it just seemed like a fundamentally unhelpful one. Like just tell me how to actually tie my shoes! Just give me the steps!
Further moments: - another burrows end adventuring party bit when they were talking about Brennan getting asked to stop gasping at a magic show and Erika says well even though it’s genuine, people might think you’re patronizing them, and Brennan completely serious goes “I’m not, I *love* magic” - the recent fantasy high junior year intro where he talks about how awful it was for adults to call you shy when you were a kid
Finally. A group of people to whom I can be like “I relate entirely too much to the verbiage and most of the actions of Brennan Lee Mulligan” and it won’t be like “oh they’re trying to be cool” like no I too have to actively try not to talk like that and we did make up all the rules let me explain how I hyperfixate on specifically Genesis One of the biggest ones is like “incredibly blunt intrapersonal statements” whether that’s Evan kelmp’s many statements or “well the thing about me is the xyz of it all. What?” And the group-imposed need to “win” allistic interactions and then you tell them and they act like there aren’t win conditions Yes there are you pretending to be all coy about them doesn’t make them less real 😂 hold the discomfort for me when social norms I’m supposed to win are broken by me if they’re not real then
Oh my god I just remembered from the alligators in the pool story. Me and my older cousins were playing like, imagining their bunk beds were train cars, and we were doing high octane speed chase shit. Youngest cousin was like “??they are beds” and we turned to this fellow child our own kin and went “you have no imagination” 💀
I have an etymology special interest and the chesspie eggcorn conversation being implied to be boring makes me momentarily mad at Zac Oyama the person in real life every time the clip happens
Brennan thriving and being surrounded by a community of beautiful strange and wonderful people is like the most hopeful thing ever. Even Ayda being immediately thought of as cool and interesting and worth knowing was like. AAA
12:24 this The “ur being rude by not participating in hell” Excuses me. I’m not chronically afraid of being a person. Money isn’t real. You are your own sleep paralysis demon leave me out of it come back when ur ready for person time
The menu thing is where he loses me. I know what he means kind of. But I like knowing my favorite three to four things at any restaurant and no they’re not homogenized I will not order from a local restaurant like it’s the same as a different local restaurant across the country. How am I supposed to combine multiple flavors they specifically have if I can’t see one sandwich have aioli I want on MY sandwich The genie wishes are correct though.
I don’t know (or really care) if brennan has been or could be diagnosed as autistic by a professional, I just love that my favorite things about him are direct consequences of the behaviors/tendencies that would make him “weird.” In a representation sense, he’s not “cool in spite of being weird” or “cool but also weird”: he is beloved in many ways because he is “weird” in such a refreshing and familiar way. I also want to talk about my hyperfixations and fixate on rules, and seeing that not only accepted but celebrated is just 🎉
everything he does is both deeply relatable and/or aspirational. one of my favourite guys. i also have a crow tattoo because they’re fantastic little fellas. also i know it’s a character in a sketch but the “getting ice breaker questions right” makes me feel deeply attacked.
my fav part about the north dakotan impression is the australian spanish teacher proves he just doesn’t know anything about north dakota. which is valid
I've got ADHD and am probably autistic (according my autistic best friend and everyone i meet) and when I saw the way Brennan is I was like "oh i've never seen an internet person behave so much like me"
Brennan: my fiancé says adderall would do nothing for me because I’m like this all the time! (7:20) Also Brennan: I constantly drink coffee and need to be caffeinated at all times. Me: hmm, well, I guess he’s getting the stimulants he needs anyway 😊
I recently had a discussion with a friend from a different continent about how cool corvids are, but I'd like to add how cool Australian magpies are. They're not corvids, they're from a different family and they're mostly known as demon birds, cos getting swooped by them isn't uncommon and it suuuucks, but you just gotta give them a chance to get to know you and they will never swoop you, for years afterwards. They'll even teach their offspring that you're cool, if you're around for the next generation.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU- this is perfect. Ya boy is one of us. He may not be formally diagnosed, he may not even be *clinically* autistic to a severity which requires diagnosis, but he's one of us.
Was the "chugged a thing and a half of milk and got a bunch of cookies" story a "one time I was high and-" type of story or is that just a thing he does when he sees a cookie shop he likes?
My biggest autistic moment was making a comment about the lie detector video. Brennan said there were 4 holes in underwear, but according to geometry, there are only 3 holes.
If you plan on doing a part 2 one of my favorite brennan moments that absolutely screams the tism to me im pretty sure its in prompocalypse part 1 in the first season of fantasy high there is a moment when emily makes a joke about the boss they are fighting (trying to be vague to avoid spoilers) and brennan thinks she is being serious so is just sort of like 👁👁 and he says something like EMILY I CANT ALWAYS TELL IF YOU'RE MESSING WITH ME OR NOT ITS HARD TO REMEMBER ALL OF THE RULES ITS SO HARD (Edit: okay i just checked to make sure it is in the first part of prompocalypse and its at about the 52:50 mark)
the fact I KNOW he was thinking about the actual logistics of fucking the chicken dishes just like I was... and the strength to not state the pain of the buffalo chicken would be worth it when their responses would be so funny...
I did the same eraser stim in elementary school! Then I got hospitalized because nobody knew I was autistic and comorbid mental disorders started popping up left and right lmao
