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theexternvoid
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14 Dec 2010, 10:03 pm

Is this something you'd expect from an autistic or aspie?

Background: Senior English, teacher makes the class read "McBeth." The teacher explain the imagery in the story. A kid in the class notices that she mentions tons of blood imagery. McBeth describes his deeds with words like "My hands are covered in blood" or notes proverbial blood on his war medals. Another line mentions being waste deep in blood. He also notes that the story starts with a close loving couple and ends with the two McBeths well separated.

The teacher assign the class to do an artistic representation of the story. Note that the student does NOT have any pre-occupation with blood, death, and other morbid subjects. He just notes the imagery mentioned by the teacher and uses that for his art project: a before and after.

In the before it's a lovely picture of a young knight in armor with his beautiful maiden, Lord and Lady McBeth in their youth. The "after" side has two pictures of very old nobles. The images are separated to show their estrangement. And all the blood imagery in the play is shown literally: on their hands, on the war medals, up to their waists, etc.

Rather than using red magic marker, he thought that it'd be cooler to use real blood, so he used a fingernail clipper to make a small cut and smear the blood in the appropriate places. The teacher and class were horrified during his presentation but he didn't understand why they were so shocked. The teacher was especially horrified when she recognized the blood-smeared photo used for Lady McBeth was a certain real queen of England whom she perhaps liked.

So... Does that sound aspie or not? Again, bear in mind that the kid does not have a pre-occupation with blood and death. He just did that because that's the imagery that Shakespeare used.



buryuntime
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14 Dec 2010, 10:36 pm

The usage of real blood and not understanding how that might be seen as bad does. I don't see what was wrong with using the blood imagery, however. Using real blood is always going to look disturbed, and I think people associate it with transmitted diseases.



Arman_Khodaei
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14 Dec 2010, 11:48 pm

Too hard to tell. But, it is common for us with autism to understand why certain things shock people. I think the shock people of real blood comes from the phobia of people possibly being able to get HIV/Aids. I don't know. While we tend to notice patterns, others may have been able to pick up on those patterns as well. Does sound like he might have Asperger's. Does he have many friends? Is he what people call a "loner?" If so, then I would say there is a good chance this person is somewhere on the autism spectrum.


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AriNecromare1213
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15 Dec 2010, 12:15 am

Haha, Sounds like something I would do in HS. I would do it for the reaction. lulz would ensue.


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theexternvoid
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15 Dec 2010, 9:06 am

I certainly understand why this would horrify people. No need for an explanation for me. But the teen certainly didn't get it until after being told about sanitation and health concerns afterwards. And even after being explained he still thought he deserved a better grade because it "wasn't his fault" that he didn't know better; the teacher, he says, should have explicitly spelled out limits on the project before he started it.

Arman_Khodaei wrote:
Does he have many friends? Is he what people call a "loner?"

Friends: few. Loner: yes. And other symptoms as well.

I'm not really trying to get an on-line unofficial diagnosis of things overall. Just curious if that one act sounded like something an aspie might do due to not understanding the social reaction people would have with such a thing.