Why Jacked Faction?

It's just autistic creative knowledge.

Image by Jacked Faction

As you may have seen in my early posts, I started this page with the working title: Jacked Fiction Lab. A fine title, but not quite what I wanted to convey.

When I was ready to choose a brand and buy a domain, I remembered the term “faction” as a way to describe an exaggerated telling of factual events, blending the words, and the concepts, fact and fiction.

The main definition of “faction” is a clique or subgroup, branching off or dissenting from a larger organization. The counterculture of neurodivergence (or insert your preferred term here) could be categorized as a faction of neurotypical society.

Meanwhile, “jacked” is a much more versatile word. Like a few other four-letter words in the English slanguage, “jack” can be used as a noun, a verb, or an adjective. It can mean out of order, excited, or increased, when used as a descriptor.

Any of these could fit the theme of neurodivergence and counterculture. To say that my brain is “jacked up” is my way of re-framing the unfortunately popular opinion that atypical is synonymous with broken. I’m not broken. I’m slightly out of order, I get excited about strange things, and I have an increased sense of irony.

Anyway, the root of the name is pretty much a coincidence. When I was just old enough to form full sentences, I randomly decided to call myself Jack. That nickname has stuck with me for decades, and in my process of unmasking, I’ve fully embraced it as part of my personality.

Also, how cool is “JACK: Just Autistic Creative Knowledge” as an acronym? That was a rhetorical question. It’s awesome.