[BizarroLand]

One of my best friends is autistic. He's definitely a weirdo at times (I mean that in a positive way, for instance he likes old movies and watches them constantly, but when he says a movie is good he has never been wrong) but he's a good guy, would never betray anyone and is always social and fun to be around as long as it is inside of his comfort zone.

[NaturalPhallacy]

>but when he says a movie is good he has never been wrong

I have a crazy anecdote like that too. My severely (barely verbal, had his own barely intelligible language) step brother would watch like a grand total of two movies on repeat. So many times that for a decade afterward you could say a single line from either movie, and I could finish the script for you.

Those two movies? Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Willow.

After a couple of decades of a break from being forced to watch them I finally did, and they're exemplary.

WFRR is objectively incredible: https://medium.com/labjorfaap/who-framed-roger-rabbit-bumpin... as a production, and as work of art.

And Willow is one of the best fantasy epics ever made, IMHO.

He was maybe ~6 when WFRR came out on VHS could already spot a good movie. He's probably still mentally a poorly functioning 6 despite being 36 now, but there's a lot more to him than his obsession with Christmas. :)

I feel like in the years to come we're going to learn a lot from and benefit greatly from autistic folks. (I also might be one.)

[zepto]

> for instance he likes old movies and watches them constantly, but when he says a movie is good he has never been wrong) but he's a good guy

You make it sound as if liking old movies should be cause for suspicion!

[BizarroLand]

The parenthetical is evaluated separately from the sentence. It would equally read this way:

He's definitely a weirdo at times but he's a good guy, (I mean that in a positive way, for instance he likes old movies and watches them constantly, but when he says a movie is good he has never been wrong)

as the way I originally wrote it:

He's definitely a weirdo at times, (I mean that in a positive way, for instance he likes old movies and watches them constantly, but when he says a movie is good he has never been wrong) but he's a good guy

The "but he's a good guy" never syntactically follows the information about the movies, it is always tied to my opinion that calling my friend a "movie fanatic" isn't a strong enough descriptor and he teeters on the verge of being weird about it.

[throwawaygh]

Nah. The "but" differentiates a positive trait from a neutral trait, and the parenthetical phrase clarifies that the neutral trait isn't necessarily bad.

[zepto]

Yes. The fact that you have to qualify that the ‘neutral’ trait isn’t ‘necessarily’ bad implies that you think people might think it was bad.

You wouldn’t need to qualify it otherwise.

[jjk166]

People might think anything is bad.

[zepto]

Yes, which is why we only qualify it when we are implying it is a possibility.

Your comment doesn’t make you look stupid or casually dismissive.