Crazes/obsessions

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I think the longest obsessions I've had are Harry Potter and Billy Idol. I'm crazy about both in an unhealthy way. However, I do switch in between obsessions such as KISS (the band), astrology, The Sims 3, and certain religions plus Harry Potter and Billy Idol. It's funny how those are my main interests and I don't focus on anything else but those.

I wonder if that's what they mean by people with AS have narrow interests.

I have a mix of lifelong interests : music (piano, singing, composing), writing texts and learning languages. I have started with those things between 3-6 years old. And I have short term obsessions. I can switch between them and also discover new ones. For example, photography : I will focus on that for months, start a project or continue a past one and then I will stop for months until I want to restart with that. During that time I will focus on something else, reading for example. I will read a certain type of books : grammar books, theater, books about Asperger... or read in a special language for months/years...
Same thing about music/cinema/series. I will listen to a special playlist over and over again for weeks/months/more, watch a certain category of movies or series. At a moment I was focusing on turkish pop music, films about dance and 2 turkish series. Now I'm focusing on a french singer + songs I used to love as a child and a french serie I watch daily.
Recently I've discovered new obsessions : create animated gifs, create cartoon-like "photo montages" and go to the lake as often as I can to observe fishes and ducks.

I was obsessed with HP fan fiction for a long time (no other genres, just HP).

This is kind of fun, thinking about old interests makes me nostalgic.

I used to build complex train tracks all around the house and outside, where food and various other functional items could be transported between different rooms (such as the kitchen, living area, etc). I made all these different Warcraft maps for my brother to play (I wasn't really interested in playing the actual game myself at the time, just wanted to make the maps and watch my brother "win"/"solve" them. He was an important part of the process). My inventing and building people traps obsession got me into a lot of trouble because I kept injuring other kids (the traps were too effective and I hadn't developed empathy at the time). That naturally led to inventing different children's "rides", which were far more successful for obvious reasons. I had basically no interest in dolls or soft toys unless there was some utilitarian purpose for them (like trialling out the transportation carriages in my rail networks). For a while I was obsessed with hiding and spying on people and writing down everything they said in a little notebook. That one also got me into trouble.

Hi Nick, glad you could join the cool kids' table I can't say that I've ever had a special interest that lasted less than a year, my shortest was two years, my longest, six (not including the three current interests I have right now which have been going on for about an average of a year and a half to two years). When I was younger, I used to have interests that were far more narrowly focused, and which didn't consume everything I did, for instance, between second and fifth grade, I pretty much exclusively read books by Beverly Cleary to the exclusion of all others, rereading them as many times as necessary, but that interest didn't affect the rest of my life, just my reading habits. Before that, I don't really remember having any active special interests, though I'm told I was a big fan of Winnie the Pooh before the age of about five.

I have primary ones, these tend to define an entire lifetime. Music, writing, poetry. They cycle through one another and always return refreshed. It's the detours that have been odd: communism and transgenderism -- but both have their literary traditions, so there. For me, it's not the duration but the intensity.