About This Shrine
I have lots of shrine pages dedicated to a specific special interest or hyperfixation of mine, but this shrine is dedicated to special interests and hyperfixations as a whole.
About Hyperfixations and Special Interests
I have autism and possibly ADHD, and I've known since around middle school that the way I engage with things I like is unusual. It seems that a lot of neurodivergent people have their own definitions of what hyperfixations and special interests are since everyone's individual experience is different. Here, I will talk about what I define them as.
A hyperfixation, for me, can last for as little as a day or as long as two or three months. It is usually a TV show or a video game. It can also be a movie or a book, but these do not last very long. I may also hyperfixate on a hobby or collecting a specific thing. When I hyperfixate on something, I get a huge amount of happiness from engaging with it, and I want to engage with it every day.
Sometimes, but not always, a hyperfixation on a piece of media is accompanied by a crush on one of the characters. This can be what causes me to hyperfixate on it, or vice versa. A hyperfixation ends when I become thoroughly bored with the thing or I become hyperfixated on something else. Hyperfixations on the same thing can come back - sometimes a couple weeks later, sometimes a few years later.
Even though they can be fleeting, hyperfixations are very important in my life. It makes me really happy when I have a new one, and there have been times where I felt like the events in my life aligned perfectly for me to discover my next hyperfixation.
Here is a list of every hyperfixation I can ever remember having (not including any of my special interests, even though sometimes I can hyperfixate on a special interest). Some of these were many years ago, and some were recent. Some are things I still love, and some are things I no longer care for.
Video Games
• Animal Crossing
• ARK: Survival Evolved
• Battleblock Theater
• Bugsnax
• Cuphead
• Domestic Dog Simulator
• Feralheart
• Five Nights at Freddy's
• Katamari
• Kirby
• Monster Galaxy (if you know what this is, hi)
• Nuclear Throne
• Overwatch
• Petz
• Pikmin
• Portal
• Splatoon
• Super Mario
• Tomodachi Life
• Town of Salem
• WarioWare
• Wobbledogs (years before it even released! I would just read devlogs over and over again)
TV Shows
• Adventure Time
• Carmen Sandiego
• Community
• Gravity Falls
• Hilda
• Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts
• Lego Legends of Chima
• The Lion Guard
• The Looney Tunes Show
• Pound Puppies
• Steven Universe
• Transformers Prime
Movies
• The Bad Guys
• The Mitchells vs. The Machines
• Star Wars
• What We Do in the Shadows
• Zootopia
Other Media
• The Backrooms
• Goosebumps
• Gorillaz
• Harry Potter
• Homestuck
• Satellite City
• Warrior Cats
• Yee
Other
• Enamel pins
• Funko Pops
• Littlest Pet Shop
• Specific kinds of physical media
• Stickers
• This website :)
A special interest, for me, is persistent throughout my life. I always have interest in them and they always make me really happy. I want to learn everything I can about them.
My biggest special interest is, and always has been, animals. I love animals - I always want to learn more about them and they are the most interesting thing in the world to me. It can be hard for me to hold a conversation in real life with someone I don't know very well unless it is about animals, and most of the media I have interest in engaging with involves animals. I have a number of other special interests that revolve around animals:
• Evolution
• Speculative evolution and biology
• Prehistoric animals
• Domestic animals/the domestication process
• Dogs
• Animal genetics
• Unusual coloration in animals
• Video games where you can breed animals
• Animal intelligence
• Animal behavior
• Bonds between humans and animals
• Bonds between animals of different species
• Animal rescue
My non-animal-related special interests are a little different. I am still always interested in them and they always bring me great joy, but they may not come with as strong of a desire to learn about them, especially media-related ones.
• Extraterrestrial life (I hope we find some in my lifetime!)
• Video games
• Physical media
• Animated movies and shows
• Toys and plushies
• Pokemon
• Spore
• Viva Pinata
• How to Train Your Dragon
• Undertale/Deltarune
• Spamton
Conclusion
Special interests and hyperfixations are different, but they do have some overlap, and they are both very important in my life. They help me make sense of the world. For example, there have been many times where I was able to better understand something by relating it to animals or video games.
Thank you for reading this, and I would love to hear about your own special interests and hyperfixations and your experience with them!
