Many blossoms, some in focus. One is being visited by a bee!

A single spray of pinkish-white cherry blossom, with perhaps a dozen individual flowers

Two white flowers on the surface of a silvery pond, suspended by surface tension

Closeup on a single cherry flower, of a many-petaled variety, with many stamens visible

Went to the cherry-blossom festival at Lauriston Castle with @scrappapertiger.bsky.social at the weekend. It was lovely!

Here's some sakura in the Edinburgh-Kyoto Friendship Garden for you.
#hanami #花見 #sakura #桜

Lightbulb Moments: Being Autistic YouTube video by Thriving Autistic

Amazing news! Our Animations Lightbulb Moments: Being Autistic was just selected by NeuroVisions Film Festival via FilmFreeway.com !

youtu.be/3O6hy-usIug?...

Ink sketch of Fergus at a table with a coffee, a cinnamon roll, and a bottle of water. They’re looking up from their phone and their face looks like a ditto’s - with dot eyes and a big wobbly mouth.

What do you mean I’ve been playing too much Pokopia this is a perfectly normal sketch of @fergus.oolong.co.uk in a cafe

I’ve added to it!

The protagonist ditto-shaped-like-a-human wakes up on a couch in their house. Right in the foreground a cramorant (cormorant like pokemon) is staring directly out of the screen

Also I like when I load my game and wake up to this:

Work in progress on my stilt house

Work in progress on my stilt house

Our protagonist ditto relaxes in an azumarill themed bath tub

Ditto in human-ish form sits on a pikachu sofa in the middle of a town with construction happening in the background

Upstairs in my house, with patterned bedspread, many bookshelves, plants, and a slowpoke rug

Ditto imitates lapras

Glimmet, a toxic cave plant pokemon, says “I am cute. It is the truth. But you should not touch me.”

Volbeat, a bug pokemon with an admittedly shiny butt says “And it’s a pretty nice butt, don’t you think? So shiny!”

At a small construction site, magikarp flops about going “happy to help!”

Machoke asks what’s on my mind, “it’s gotta be…muscles! Am I right?” My dialogue choice: “I’m thinkin’ about bread”

I’ve been playing a lot of #Pokopia lately. It’s excellent & very hard to put down (think Minecraft + Animal Crossing set in a Pokemon world where humans have disappeared and all traces of humanity lie in ruin)

Here are some highlights (no story spoilers but shows a couple of abilities you can get)

‘if only I could figure out exactly the right words and put them in exactly the right order… I will finally be understood’. 🥺

excellent post (as usual!) from @scrappapertiger.bsky.social

A venerable wauzer looks directly at the camera, weightily, while receiving rubbing.

Kifl is 11 today!
🎉🎂🥳

Joanne on @zackpolanski.bsky.social: "he's like the neurodivergent person at the meeting, going 'I'm going to say the thing that everyone else is avoiding saying, because I don't know why they're avoiding saying it, because it's actually the point that they're talking round and round.'"

SO TRUE.

Oh no that is such an outdated post about my gender identity and weirdness more generally 🥲

We have more events happening for this year's Weird Pride Day (Wednesday) than we've ever had before.

@stimpunks.org and @amase.org.uk are co-hosting a round of Lightning Talks at noon PST/8pm GMT on the day, where anyone can talk for up to seven minutes on a weirdness-related theme.

'Writing Weirdness' premières tomorrow (Weird Pride Day) at 3pm GMT!

With @katefoxwriter75.bsky.social, @jlimburg.bsky.social, @scrappapertiger.bsky.social and @robinince.bsky.social.
youtu.be/Vc4Fzs8r6WQ?...
bsky.app/profile/weir...

I just got 208! But the typing started freezing so I couldn’t type properly :(

208 animals listed
𓃵🦡🦁🐦🐦🦘🦘🙀🐩🕊️𓅪🐦🐦🐍🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧𓆏🐸🐸𓆏🦎🪲🦑🐳🫍🐋🐟🦌🐼🐻🐻🐻‍❄️🐻🐻🐆🐅🦦🦈🐡鯉🐝🐛🐛🐛🐛🪳𓆣🪲🪲🪱🐛🦎🦈🦥🧑‍🎓🐇🐺🐨🐛🐛🐛🪲🦂🕸️🕷🕷🦈🦀🐛🐛🪲🪲🪲🐞🐞🐛🐛🪰🐛🪰🪰🪰🪰𓆦🪰🐛🐛🐛🐦🐦🦅🦅🦅🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🦆𓅯🦆🦆🪿🪿🪿🐦🪿🐥🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦𓅦🐦🦤🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐊🐸🐌🐌🪸🦆𓅣

Current high score 157 😀

rose.systems/animalist/

Dog sprawls between Sonny's arm and body, like a big hairy baby. Sonny looks at their phone.

Babydog.

Sonny looks down at the dog, who is lying next to them in some kind of trance.

That dog-trance in full. Kifl is lying on her back, gazing into nothingness, head slightly tilted, front paws folded by her chest, rear paws together. We are viewing her from above.

Side view of Kifl (dozing) and Sonny (poking at a phone, holding an empty bowl).

Kifl is in another of her in-between states on the sofa, this time propped up on a blanket and lying against @scrappapertiger.bsky.social.

Her eyes are open, but she is intermittently snoring.

The dog's paws are folded inward, horizontally, so they're like little furry spirals in front of her? I don't know how else to describe them. She's lifted her head, and she's looking nonplussed, because I had to convince her to look up for this photo.

Kifl doing an *extra* cute thing with her paws.

Kifl is upright yet floppy on the sofa, her left paw raised imperiously. I'm sitting next to her, reaching over to pet her (I'm a whore longhaired human wearing glasses and a bright yellow Derpy Tiger hoodie). Sonny's hand is reaching for her from the other side.

Kifl receives the attention she is due.

Photo by (and with) @scrappapertiger.bsky.social.

Wait. Is Santa Claus Just a Big Elf? We all think of Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas, as a big guy, but it says right there, in "'Twas the Night Before Christmas": he's an elf. How did we miss that?

Santa - or Captain Christmas, as he was also known - is traditionally an elf. Not a big Tolkienish elf either, a rotund little guy with eight tiny reindeer.

Merry Yule to all who celebrate!

www.fatherly.com/entertainmen...

Sonny (Kifl's other human) smiles on the sofa while Kifl pulls an amazing face, half-hidden by the cone she has to wear while she's recovering from surgery. She's mid-yawn.

"She's like a bunch of flowers!"

Schoolhouse Rock Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla (Pronouns) YouTube video by dawemmy

A tremendous educational video to share with anyone who affects to be confused about pronouns.
youtube.com/watch?v=koZF...

A soft green slide with a pale pink circle at the top showing two facing human head silhouettes, each with a heart inside, connected by curved arrows to suggest mutual understanding. Below, black text reads: “The double empathy problem decentres the idea of normalcy.” Attribution underneath: “Damian Milton, 16th Dec 2025.” Further text states: “From their talk: ‘Key Concepts in the Development of a Neurodiversity-Affirming Practice,’ Tizard Centre, University of Kent,” followed by a web link. The Autistic Realms logo appears in the bottom right, with the words “Neurodiversity Affirming.”

"The double empathy problem decentres the idea of normalcy"
A nice summary from Damian Milton in their talk today: "Key Concepts in the Development of a Neurodiversity-Affirming Practice" from Tizard Centre University of Kent.

Be yourself. No, not like that. This piece is a text version of the keynote I delivered for the PCE Europe Symposium in Glasgow, November 2025, on the theme of diversity…

Sharing a fantastic blog "Be yourself. No, not like that."
Written by @scrappapertiger.bsky.social who is part of our animations team at Thriving Autistic. Sonny also works as a Neurodivergent & Queer therapist & is in our Neurodivergent Practitioners Directory.

Blog:
medium.com/@sonnyhallet...

This is a really interesting and thought provoking piece.

There is too much in it for me to pick a standout section without being reductive, so I will simply suggest you take some time for yourself and enjoy reading it, as I did.

Thank you for sharing this, @scrappapertiger.bsky.social

I talked about diversity in therapy, experiences of minoritised trainees, what we can all do as a community, learning from outside of the therapy world, the radical potential of the person centred approach… I covered quite a lot I think!

Be yourself. No, not like that. This piece is a text version of the keynote I delivered for the PCE Europe Symposium in Glasgow, November 2025, on the theme of diversity…

Here’s a text version of my keynote at the PCE Europe Symposium last month.

medium.com/@sonnyhallet...

Promotional graphic for the book It Takes All Kinds of Minds: Fostering Neurodivergent Thriving at School. On the left is the colourful geometric book cover, edited by Rachael Davis, Claire O’Neill, and Sue Fletcher-Watson (Speechmark). On the right, text reads “Published December 2025” and highlights a chapter titled Embracing Monotropism and Flow by Fergus Murray and Helen Edgar, alongside a contents excerpt showing chapter sections. Along the bottom are three black-and-white illustrated pages labelled “Environments,” “Practice & Pedagogy,” and “Relationships,” credited to illustrator Sonny Hallett.

It's here!
It Takes All Kinds of Minds: Fostering Neurodivergent Thriving at School
Edited By Rachael Davis, @claruineill.bsky.social
@suereviews.bsky.social

Excited to finally share the chapter I wrote with
@fergus.oolong.co.uk alongside fab illustrations from @scrappapertiger.bsky.social

A tiny square concertina-style sketchbook, opened out next to the ink pen I used. The long strip of paper is covered in pen line drawings of animals, plants, mushrooms, etc.

A tiny square concertina-style sketchbook, opened out next to the ink pen I used. This is the reverse side to the previous image. The paper strip on this side is shown vertically, with pen and ink drawings of outer space with planets, stars, a satellite and a space while, fading down into clouds and sky with birds, waves, the sea and fish, a hammerhead shark, and deep ocean with a whale, a gulper eel and an angler fish.

A conference lanyard and badge. The badge has my name Sonny Hallett on it and my pronouns, they/them. Surrounding that is loads of ink doodles of animals and plants, including a tapir, a bat, a dolphin, butterfly, lemur, owl…

Reverse side of conference badge showing the conference logo and theme: growing in difficult and challenging places. Around it one doodled mostly plants, mushrooms, and abstract shapes

Finally home from Glasgow after four long days of conferencing at the PCE Europe Symposium. So tired no more words. It’s been a lot.

I did these doodles while listening to talks: