Call Me Roe!

the woke left: young and fashionable. visible tattoos. often enjoys matcha, lavender flavoring, oat milk, and cold foam. pretty decent customers.

sweet old man: drinks very sweet iced lattes, pays in cash, puts all of his change in the tip jar. sometimes orders hot coffee and i get scared that his shaky old man hands will spill it and he'll get burned but that has not yet happened and god willing never shall.

evil old man: only wants drip coffee and declares it ridiculous that any other form of coffee exists. some variants only want americanos and these variants are even scarier. watch out.

sweet old woman: might need her daughter's help to order but is very bubbly and open to trying new things. compliments baristas freely and frequently.

evil old woman: does not want coffee and only wants sweet tea or soda. will not tip even if she spends three hours in the shop repeatedly asking baristas to fetch things for her.

errand husband: either stiltedly recites an order to you or shows you the order in their texts/notes app. needs to step out of line and make a phone call if you ask any follow-up questions.

grindset girlie: always wearing scrubs, an apron, and/or a name tag. orders the exact same thing every day and knows the exact change she'll need to pay for it. her regular order is both extremely caffeinated and extremely sweet.

#mamabear: is actively wrangling two to four children while ordering. order changes repeatedly because the children cannot decide if they want a muffin or a cookie or apple juice or chocolate milk etc. for some reason these women are always wearing an article of clothing or carrying some personalized item that says "mama" on it.

schoolchildren: band of two to eight adolescents hanging out after school. extremely indecisive but generally quite polite and tip well.

amnesiac in love: grown adult who needs their partner to tell them what they like. gets asked a question about their own preferences and turns to their partner to answer for them. generally acts like a shy child looking to their guardian for behavioral cues if you try to interact with them and only wants to talk to mommy i mean their wife.

it took me asking three more times before she finally told me she wanted me to leave the fans where they are instead of moving them to my room or something. and I said oh! I had no intention of doing so but thank you for letting me know what the expectation is.

"You left your dish in the sink." > the hidden request is "please clean your dish, preferably right now." since it's phrased as an observation, I don't immediately intuit the request and instead think my housemate thinks I forgot about it. so I reply "oh, I know." housemate thinks i'm sassing her and gets annoyed with me. only then do I realize she was asking me to do something about the dish in the sink.

"There's hot soup on the stove." > said to me while I was preparing a sandwich. the hidden request is "please eat the soup." since it's phrased as a statement of fact, I don't immediately intuit the request and instead think my mom thinks I didn't see the soup. I did see it, but I wanted a sandwich instead. so I reply, "I saw it, thank you." mother thinks I'm being rude and gets annoyed with me. only then do I realize she was asking me to do something about the soup (and furthermore is offended I am eating a sandwich instead).

"Your bread is on the counter." > the hidden request is "please remove your sliced bread from the counter and store it elsewhere." since it's phrased as an observation, I don't immediately intuit the request and think my roommate thinks I meant to store the bread elsewhere and forgot. when I reassure her I know it's there, she gets annoyed. only then do I realize she wants me to do something about the bread on the counter.

"You can turn up the heat, you know." > said to me while I was scrambling eggs slowly over low heat. this one really confused me because of course I knew I could turn up the heat, but I had no reason to as I was only cooking for myself. when I ignored the statement because I was focused on my task and had nothing to say, my mother added, "the eggs will cook faster if you do." sure, I'm aware of this too, but I don't want to cook them faster. I won't get the texture I want. when I reply, "I don't want to, though," mom thinks I'm being rude and gets irritated, then asks me how long I'm going to take. only then do I realize she was telling me to cook faster (because she wanted the stove), instead of simply informing me I could.

"There are donuts in the break room." > a more benign example, but similar outcome. once again I hear this as a piece of information being given to me, and thank my coworker for telling me. when I don't immediately leave my desk to get donuts because I'm finishing a task, my coworker hovers and says, "well? aren't you getting some?" only then do I realize there was actually a hidden invitation, and I was supposed to respond to the hidden part and say, "I'll come get them in a minute," or "no thank you I don't want any."

as I said, I've learned over time this is something many allistic (non-autistic) people do (as well as high masking autistic folks who have learned the social rules and wear themselves out following them rigidly). despite what I've learned, my default autistic response is pretty much always to take the words at face value (especially when I'm distracted or multitasking), before remembering I have to translate them. and while I can make a decent educated guess in most cases, sometimes I just cannot and simply ask, "what are you asking me?"

unfortunately, many allistic people suffer from an inability to take words literally just as much as they struggle to speak literally, which can further obfuscate communication. this is why I emphasize gentle reassurance that you are not criticizing them, but asking them to help you, a person in need, by clarifying their intent. people generally like to be helpful and I have had moderate success with this approach.

"I'm putting the kettle on." (not just announcing what they're doing, they're expecting you to affirm whether you want tea or not.)

"Boy the trash is full." (not just voicing an observation, they're expecting you to take the trash out.)

"If you leave your window open, bugs will get in." (not just giving you information to decide what to do with, they're expecting you to close the window.)

Any variation of "do you want to do [unpleasant task]?" (you aren't actually supposed to say yes or no, they aren't asking your opinion, they're telling you to do it and saying you don't want to is rude.)

"Let me show you how to do something." (they want you to do it this way, they aren't just sharing an insight that you can choose to incorporate into your habits or not)

"Mm that food smells good." (might be complimenting your cooking, might be hoping you'll offer them some.)

"What are you watching/playing?" (might be curious about your interests, but might also want you to invite them to join.)

"Company's arriving in 15 minutes." (this one was from a mom to her kids and she wasn't just giving them a heads up, she was telling them to clean up.)

"Sorry my desk is such a mess." (APPARENTLY this was NOT a comment on her own desk but implying her COWORKER'S desk was messy and she wanted them to clean it??? sorry to the commenter who shared this one but that sounds genuinely deranged and you can't convince me this is common even for the most indirect allists out there)

to everyone saying this is simply a direct vs indirect culture issue, yes you can have communication breakdowns between people with differing degrees of directness, regardless of their neurodiversity status. what I am trying to illustrate is that autistic people in indirect cultures will miss these indirect cues at much higher rates than others, because we do not pick up on social norms at the same rate or proficiency as everyone else, because of our autism. essentially making us "direct-culture" people by default. some autistic folks do learn and practice those norms (some of us are literally traumatized into doing so), but it's something we often must remind ourselves to do, manually, and it can take a lot of extra effort. this is why high maskers end up in burn-out if they cannot learn to unmask btw.

If I inform someone that there’s another way to do a task, they assume I want them to do it that way. If I inform them that there’s hot water (in case they want it for anything), they assume I’m offering them tea. If I express curiosity about something they’re doing, they assume I want to join in. I’m pretty sure people frequently assume I’m criticizing them, but I’m not sure how or why—I just get that vibe on occasion and haven’t linked it to any particular actions or statements.

Least fav? Oh well that's gotta be death by lava for sure

Researching dying in lava wielded results that are.. wildly different from how it is in minecraft, i guess steve is just so built that they can sink into it like liquid and not explode just long enough to really feel how nice and warm it is. Also technically their armour would be melting into them but hmm?

Not to mention losing all your stuff is another factor.

Another least fav death of theirs would be death by the void. Either in The End or if (well, WHEN) they find out how to break through the bottom bedrock layer and decide to check out whats there.

I imagine death by void would be something incomprehensible. Like after they die to it and respawn, they cannot remember the sensation except for the fact they hated it and fear it, they fear nothingness and to become nothing... and that their stuff is also gone again-

I've also imagined they'd hate situations where they have to kill themselves. Like if they fell down a ravine and broke their legs and dont have enough food to recover. Or if a creeper happened to blow up their lower body off. Situations where they have no out and its best to just put their stuff in a chest and die.

They don't have a fav death, dying sucks even as an immortal. The sensation is unpleasant, respawning is trippy and dizzy and they lose some memory on how to enchant and fix things.

But if they HAD to choose, I guess it'd be something that feels meaningful. Or especially personal.

@nuisance728383 asked: Has Steve (definitely not being a naive idiot at the time) ever tried to make a house in the Nether and subsequently make a bed?

It wouldn't be a proper Nether experience without the bed incident haha. They proceeded to build a proper Nether base, this time with Respawn anchors. Though beds still remained relevant...

Hmm no, but hoglins aren't the worst the Nether has to offer, Steve got used to them pretty quickly. Even joined in on Piglin hunts on them. The Piglins had no say in this matter.

and