An Indecision, But A Large One

Brooklyn Eagle, New York, October 31, 1920

Albuquerque Journal, New Mexico, December 27, 1929

non-autistic authors write autistic characters all the time. they just don’t realize it. they’d rather not admit it most of the time, either.

the thing is, non-autistic people have met autistic people more than enough times. however, due to their stereotypes about autism, they often can’t identify it as autism. they see something is up, but they can’t put their finger on just what is up.

so they see people like us and they know the ‘archetype’ which is autistic people. they write us all the time: airheaded professors, awkward nerds, pent up geniuses, etc.

when autistic people point out how strikingly obvious it is that this character is autistic, they usually deny it, or at best, they say the character is ‘if anything, extremely high functioning’, which is more of a kick in the gut than a confirmation. we hardly get those, either.

so, here’s the thing: there are some characters that are very obviously autistic to actual autistic people. pearl from steven universe and papyrus from undertale are two of the most agreed upon examples that i’ve seen. nearly ever autistic fan of steven universe i met says, “yeah, she’s autistic”, and the same goes for papyrus. 

when we, as a community, bring this up, however, we are shot down. “oh, he’s not autistic.” i once was told that - ironic as it was - my headcanoning papyrus as autistic offended autistic people or hurt autistic people. but i’m autistic and they weren’t. 

two autistic people were both agreeing - damn, this character is blatantly autistic - but non-autistic people felt the need to but in and say how horrible it was to “project” onto characters with such a horrible thing.

listen, if you aren’t autistic and you’re reading this -

if an autistic person says a character is autistic, can you just shut up about it?

because if you’ve watched any amount of tv, read any amount of books, whatever - if you’ve consumed stories, there are tons of autistic characters in them.

just because neither you nor the media’s creators knows shit about autism doesn’t mean that the character can’t be autistic.

either way, it’s none of your business.

we have little to none confirmed representation that isn’t terrible and inconsiderately offensively written. 

find something better to do with your time.

whitby abbey, where dracula arrived in england

one of the things that makes autism a disability (and why some of us choose to label it as such rather than an “alternate neurotype”) is the stress. 

part of autism is just being incredibly stressed. overstimulation? stress. holding a conversation? stress. something happening to our schedule? stress. people talk about how often autism is recognized and diagnosed via our stress responses (like meltdowns) because it is just so common to see autistic people stressed because of lack of accommodations to how our brains work.

and this matters because stress kills. stress causes a lot of health issues, or it can trigger pre-existing ones by making certain chronic conditions flare up. i once had a psychiatrist very unhelpfully tell me i “just need to manage my stress” when the stress i was describing was things i could not avoid in neurotypical society and can’t “just get over”. i can do “self care” all i like but i cannot at the very base level change the way my brain inputs information and reacts accordingly.

babygirl ur upset stomach is cuz chemical reaction of food in yo belly created 8 demon chariot riders and they rode off each into one cardinal + intercardinal direction to go light beacons in nightmare towers etcetera

Bat cat character sheet

Morticia Addams from The Addams Family is autistic

House MD depicts an autistic who has gotten insanely good at reading people and is just in too much pain to use it for social engineering much beyond his weird little pranks and machinations. my dad is this type of autist, i think of it as the Frasier Crane type as opposed to the Star Trek type. you know. capable of being jocular, jovial, charming, even seductive, but it requires so much bandwidth its still extremely taxing. i have been telling you on this blog for ten years that it is in your best interests to become jocular. it will stun you how much better you are at reading people than the majority of neurotypicals. there's no reason for them to get good at it when they dont even know what there is to get good at. microexpressions are real and i can see them