> Sure, it may be my car, and I may have control of the radio, but I don't always act upon the need to adjust my environment.

But in the context of the beginning of a game, people without autism are probably confused. Why isn't the car's environment already tuned to the character's exact specifications?

I get some of the potential reasons why after playing the game for a bit. But I still would have liked to see a callback to this. E.g., if I drive to lunch with coworkers I could choose to mask by letting the passenger tune the radio. Then the next morning I get a painful sound when I turn on the car. Ah, I get it now! That seems like more satisfying gameplay-- maybe the game already does it and I died too early to see!

We're definitely reading too far into this, but the game does incorporate this concept, so I'll make the case.

You don't get to choose every option every day. Some days you're on, and you make (almost) all of the right choices for your wellbeing. But not every day is like that.

Optimized and tuned for what?

Try tuning your entire environment and then maintaining it all the time. Best I can do is get it into a failure mode that isn't a disaster.

Mapping anything into a perfect system fails. So I'm surrounded by half working shit that works well enough that the energy from the shittyness that it sucks from me is made up by the fact that it's good enough to not crash out over. But I will still stress. Because I do want to fix the Bluetooth but I also have 8000 other things at home to perfectly tune as well.

My shoes are a year and a half old. A little stained, a little green from mowing the lawn. I sure as fuck don't want to go to a shoe store and tell the poor young worker there that I don't need their help. I'm not buying shoes without trying them on, so internet is out. When the soles fall off and the social impact is great enough, I'll replace them.

I haven't cut my hair in a year and a half because the hair dresser lady that I went to for 15 years moved away. Staring into a mirror while someone talks to me and cuts my hair is a fucking nightmare. I know this makes me look unconventional, but worth it for now. I have to carefully wash, condition, dry, and brush my hair. It's more work. But it's optimized.