General Question: what were your past obsessions ?

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as a kid it was Trains and Robotics
Tho the Railway, its history, and train sets still hold a place in my heart.
as a teen Then it was medical in the military. M*A*S*H es would be a good example thee
young adult (18) I got into PC Gaming, Video games, and the anime community. ()
Then that became Movie collecting . Ive got a room thats you coulde call a Blockbuster video store. and a knowlege like IMDB (the internet movie database.) Im one of those see it once encyclopedia types. the same with anime I can say the same.
now its Autism and Aspergers is my new obsessions.

The constants that have been thru and thru are Music, and Furry fandom (dont critize me ok ). anyhoot
so what are yours folks. what are your obsessions and your past ones

Military
Martial arts
Suicide, death
Eating, fat
$$, socioeconomic class
Education
The meaning of "life"
Structural engineering
Autism
Myers Briggs
Names

Childhood special interests:
Sesame Street and The Muppet Show (I was obsessed with Grover, Jim Henson and Jon Stone)
Climbing anything, especially to seek privacy (attics, especially)
Hiding in small places or making forts
Collecting coins and arranging them by year, value, size, etc.
Elton John and Art Garfunkel
Pinwheels
Coloured light

Adolescent / Adult special interests:
19th Century British Literature
Charlotte and Emily Brontë (bio, literary criticism and history)
Stormy weather
Ancestry and Genealogy
George Harrison
Simon and Garfunkel
Coloured light (continued)

I also have an obsession with egg cups although I don't collect them.

I might not remember them all, especially the brief ones, but I'll see what I can do. I don't think any of them have ever completely gone away, past obsessions will still catch my attention and are liable to resurface as a main obsession again at any time.

My very first was arthropods. The earliest clear memory I have is when I was probably 2 or 3 and was holding out a book to a spider on the floor and calling "Here, spider!" because I wanted to hold it but didn't want it to bite me, and my parents say one of my earliest words was "caterpillar."

I also loved scary stories as a kid and would read any I could get my hands on.

I think after that I broadened to animals in general, then narrowed to cats, then switched to dragons. Current specific animal obsessions include bats of any kind and barreleye fish.

Then I switched over to pretty much anything supernatural/paranormal, then narrowed to demons, then the show Supernatural (which I had to force myself to give up when they crossed my religious line one time too many - gosh, that was hard). Next... I think it was the show Grimm that finally replaced Supernatural. I also developed an obsession with wendigos when I first encountered one in Supernatural.

Then I think maybe I went back to dragons, this portion of my life I don't remember as well.

At some point I decided I really ought to watch most/all of the classic/popular horror movies, so I watched all the ones they had on Netflix. When I watched Hellraiser, I promptly became obsessed with the Cenobites.

Scattered throughout are stories I've been writing.

Whateverbook I'm reading, game I'm playing, etc. is very likely to become an obsession at least for a few days (most recent is Animal Crossing, some games that I took a particular interest in are Bioshock (just the first one, really), Alan Wake, and Dragon Age (first and third games, I don't really care for the second one)). I also am a big Pokemon fan and will become obsessed with new games when they come out, especially the Mystery Dungeon ones where you get to play as a Pokemon (Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky are my favorites).

On occasion, I even develop an obsession with something I don't actually like. The ones I remember are the band Slayer (don't actually like their music much, but for several weeks I still felt the need to listen to it) and several movies, The Human Centipede, Septic Man, and Thanatomorphose (all of which are major gross-out movies (though I hear the first Human Centipede isn't actually that graphic) that I absolutely never want to see, yet I felt the need to find out every last bit of information I could about them and would have actually watched them if I'd had access to them at the time (thank goodness none of them were on Youtube when I checked)).

Speaking of disgusting bad movies (well, I actually don't know about the first Human Centipede movie, but the reception of the other two was generally very bad, from what I saw), I have an obsession currently in rotation with the movie Body Melt (which I did find free to watch on Youtube - but I would advise against watching it unless you're prepared for a fair amount of nudity at the beginning and lots of gross-out stuff. Only one person actually does any melting, but that certainly does not mean that what the others experience isn't just as gory and gross.). It's really a very bad movie, made of three or four different stories very loosely tied together, and I skip the parts of one of those stories because it doesn't do anything for me, but I'm a sucker for body horror, I've discovered, which Body Melt is chock-full of.

I was also obsessed with ASMR videos for quite some time, particularly from a few specific people.

And at some point I saw mention of something called the SCP Foundation and hello, instant obsession (hence my avatar choice ).

Currently I'm between obsessions, but I feel a few old ones trying to come back now that I've overdone myself on Animal Crossing (primarily the story/stories (three different stories that end up merging into one) I'm currently working on and SCP Foundation).

Wow, sorry for rambling a bit on some of them and making this post even longer than it needed to be, but hey, what do you expect when you ask an autistic about their obsessions?

I'm trying to remember specific things I've been interested in throughout my life, but most of them are pretty much all related to either video games, science/technology, or animals in some way. I do know that when I was a child I was obsessed with dogs and primates. I've retained the interest in primates, but in my mid-teens it mostly narrowed down to great apes and anthropology/human evolution.
Since I was a toddler I've also been obsessed with video games. A few specific games have been The Legend of Zelda, Animal Crossing, and Super Smash Bros. I'm currently interested in the idea of collecting Nintendo consoles and learning to repair them, but that's not something I'd actually be able to pursue for awhile. I've also for some reason started to have the urge to collect information and catalog things from video games. I currently have around 500 screenshots on the Switch of just objects and dialogue from the new Animal Crossing game. lol

Past ones that aren't current include stuffed animals, musical instruments, coins, poetry, comic books, anime, fighter aircraft (mostly F-16s and F-17s), model trains, some boys ...and some girls (<_<). Just kidding, I'm still into the last two XD

My obsessions (special interests) began when I was 11. I didn't have any before then.

The menstrual cycle
Colourblindness
Spanish
Men
Certain people I knew of
Pubs
Buses
Grange Hill

Hmm, I'm actually having a difficult time thinking of them. Out of the ones I can recall, they all tie into my current interests. Not entirely sure what that says about me.

For instance, my school had an educational computer program to teach students spelling. In one of the levels there were these simplistic creature designs and I became fascinated with them. Whenever I played the game I wanted to know more about these animals, why they were there and how they lived. I used to draw them repeatedly, then once I got bored of that I tried altering the designs just to see how they'd look. Fast forward to eighteen years old, I was still designing imaginary creatures. Haven't done that recently.

As a child I used to have a paracosm. I even made leaflets advertising pretend events happening in this imaginary world. Go figure I'd end up getting into graphic design later on. I used to write stories but I haven't had much inspiration lately. Except for a potential comic idea. I think the idea might be lacking a little though.

Personally, I think if I'd known about steampunk as a child I probably would've been into it. The future mixed with the past was an interest. I had a concept about a bunch of robots taking over but using outdated technology. The idea of futuristic robots using a buffering computer in an internet cafe` just seemed rather amusing to me. It still does.

When I was younger I used to be really into the Rainbow Magic series. It seems weird now, since the stories are rather bland and when I look back on it I wonder why on Earth I cared about it so much.

At one point I was interested in researching different dog and cat breeds. I don't do much active research into that area these days, but if you bring it up I'll want to sprout facts at you. Genetic engineering, recessive and dominant genes, epigenetics, why certain animals developed particular traits...consider that subject area a theme I'm fascinated with. Fairly recently I got into a conversation about cats, and after I had finished the other person gave me an amused look. Then she responded "I'm guessing I hit an interest there, huh?"

One time I had a mock science exam with a question that asked us about cat genetics and my first thoughts were "Finally! Something I know about!" then I wrote about two pages on it easily. For a brief moment I wasn't stressing about being in a exam, I was just happy to write my response.

I was interested in psychology, especially particular parts. How perception varies between individuals (why what was apparently obvious varied between people), creative thinking (what is this box I've heard so much about, and why am I being told that I'm too far outside of it?) and the idea of maturity. I was always an inquisitive child, but I lacked the confidence to put forth my ideas. Usually because when I did I'd get in trouble for it at school.

Although my time with my school counsellor was absolutely terrible, she verbally abused me and ran away, it did make me ask a whole lot of questions about how the minds of others worked and why people seemed so fascinated with mine. Now it's more of a casual interest. Well, more casual than it was. Unless you get me going, but that'd end up taking over the whole thread.