#not informative

Please....spare some Valdemar lore?

Just a...crumb......a crumb of backstory...

[image description: a white person with pale lips, freckled skin and hazel eyes, wearing a white/blue/red check button-up shirt over a red long-sleeved T-shirt, wearing various stim toys. Two blue telephone cord bracelets-one half light blue and medium blue, the other a mottled blue--sit on their left wrist. A grey silicone chewable feather pendant hangs from a red rattail cord and drapes over their hand. A bead ring necklace made from two blue, two light blue and one red metallic bead threaded onto a silver split ring attached to a black cord hangs around their neck. They hold a red knock-off Tangle Jr in their left hand and sit in a dark teal train carriage chair.]

Stim Culture Is...

[image description: a variety of stim toys arranged on a black-tree-silhouette-on-a-starlit-blue-sky quilt cover. Toys include massage balls, putty tins, glitter tube bracelets, mermaid sequin zip pouches, stretchy squish balls, infinite cube fidget, a wooden nut and bolt, apple squishy, DIY doughnut squishy, unicorn squishy, coloured hedge balls, telephone cord bracelets, various coiled Tangles, fidget spinners, DIY chain link fidget, bead ring, Twiddle, fidget shape spinner, fabric balls, a feather chew pendant and a dulcimer chew pendant.]

I feel like it’s time for an updated photo of my favourite stim toys--although I took this before I got my snap and click, or else that’d be pictured above, too. I forgot to photograph a few things like my serpent puzzle, Disney Tsum Tsum plush, my hedgehog dusters and the only puffer toy I can use (my puffer carrot), so I think I’ll need to take another photo...

I tend to like small chews, Tangles and low-impact manipulative fidgets or things I can squish. I own fidget cubes, but I don’t use them that often! My DIY doughnut squishy has become my most-used squishy because of the texture from the painted sprinkles and the whistling sound it makes when pressed. There is no sign of the paint chipping or peeling, so if you find you go through commercial foam squishies too quickly, it might be worth the expense of the paint to make your own. Mine cost more to make than a commercial squishy, but it is so durable!

[image description: a cluster of dice sitting on a red watermelon slice pillow. The dice include several Magic: the Gathering Spindowns in various colours, a metallic set of seven polyhedral dice, a metallic gold and red D30, multiple translucent D6s in clear, yellow, red, purple, green, dark blue and light blue; a bunch of ornate Q-Workshop D6s, a large Q-Workshop light blue Spindown, six white Disney-themed D6s with black Mickey Mouse head pips, two opaque pink D6s, a glittery red D6 and a red translucent Nicol Bolas themed Magic: the Gathering D4.]

Autistic Stim Culture is...

Tipping your dice bag out on your bed at least once a day and sorting all the dice by colour, size, type and manufacturer before returning everything to its bag.

I can tell you at any given time exactly how many dice of each type I have in my bag. I find the organizing and the sorting to be soothing, but I also think it has something to do with the world inside my dice bag always matching up to the numbers in my head. The touching and handling of dice is a stim generally (the metallic purple dice are so silky to touch!) but the sorting, organising and counting aspect feels more specifically autism to me.

I once answered “no” to the “any special connection to numbers and counting” question on one of the ASD assessments, because I am not particularly good at maths. A couple of days later I found myself sitting on my bed counting dice and had such a facepalm moment. There’s the dice. There’s the way I’ve always managed the stocktake at previous jobs. There’s the way I’m always counting my other collections...

[image description: multiple red stim toys sitting on a black, white and blue tree-branch-silhouette-against-night-sky quilt cover. Toys include, from top to bottom: red and white polka dot marble maze, red and white polka dot bean bag, red-with-green-hair smiley face balloon stress ball, hedge ball, ladybird-shaped cool pack, D20 die, red and black ladybird roller bead keychain, watermelon slice squishy, plush watermelon zip pouch, apple squishy, red massage ball, bonks fidget, massage roller, black/pink/red camo tri-shaped spinner, red Ultra Putty in a silver tin, red cube spinner, white Antsy Labs fidget cube inside a red Zuru Prism, red ladybird popper, promo Tangle Jr Fuzzy, prickle/hedge dinosaur, knock-off Tangle Jr.]

Autistic Stim Culture Is...

Arranging my red stim toys on the bed just to take a photo of the pretty, and then remembering at least five objects that I forgot about.

I mean, come on. How did I forget my Wonder Woman Fidget Cube?