1:59am July 5, 2014

I want an autistic character who…

Perceives time in a completely nonlinear fashion and this drives the plot of the story and the directions it takes
Doesn’t do words, or barely does words, and when sie hears words, they just sound like sounds, and when sie reads words, they just look like squiggles, and this barely changes throughout the course of the book if it changes at all.
Reacts to the world around hir in sensory and pre-sensory ways.
Is always drawn from one sensory experience to the next, even if it means walking through traffic to get there.
Has bruises on hir face or other body parts from self-injury.
Climbs trees, balances on fences, etc. with preternatural grace, but looks noticeably clumsy on the ground.
Has hir own type and level of understanding of what is going on, even if nobody else, including hir family, ever gets that sie’s got a rich inner life that is all hirs and nobody else’s, and that actually makes sense, from a sensing perspective.
Is not necessarily white, straight, middle-class, rich, or able-bodied.
Does not look or behave stereotypically ‘angelic’ or 'serene’.
Makes noises all the time that make other people uncomfortable.
Has an entire 'language’ of hir own that involves elaborate hand movements, the placement of objects, speaking in pure intonation without speaking any words.
Is AFAB but not cis, may not be gendered at all (hence giving hir the same pronouns I’d use on myself). If not gendered, this is never presented as “autistic people are so alien they don’t even have genders!”
Needs significant help to get through the day in some areas, yet is completely independent in areas that always surprise people. May even spend a part of the story living on the streets fending for hirself and doing much better at it than sie did living in a house or apartment with assistance from family or staff. May prefer the independence of life on the streets, but be dragged back by a family that things sie’s “at too much risk” out there, not thinking how much risk sie may be in at home, or what relative freedom feels like for someone who has always been forced into what others want them to do. (This is all perfectly plausible, I’ve seen it happen, including with people labeled with severe/profound developmental disabilities. And I think there are ways I’d be more independent on the streets than at home. On the streets the situation is always forcing you onward, there’s nothing about being in an apartment that forces you to take care of yourself adequately.)
If hir IQ has been tested, it could be anything from 30 to 130. This may or may not affect how people actually see hir.
Sie has no alternative communication method that most people understand. Sie has never learned to speak or type. Sie has learned a small amount of picture symbols, but not enough to carry on a conversation with. Sometimes sie just carries around cutouts of picture symbols and spins them around in hir fingers, without regard to which one is which.
Sie spends a large amount of hir free time exploring things. This can be as little as a blade of grass or as large as the town, city, or rural area that sie lives in. People get worried that sie will get lost, but sie always knows where sie is. Sie is always puzzled by the fact that people freak out whenever sie takes a walk: Sie knows where sie’s going, sie knows sie’s coming back, why don’t they?
Sie is extremely sensitive to the emotions of others, to the point of feeling them as if they are hir own. This is a huge source of overload for her.
Hir visual system is also a huge source of overload, yet also a huge source of beauty. Everything falls apart so sie never sees a whole scene in front of hir at once, but the pieces can be rainbowy and shimmering and metallic and beautiful and sie spends a lot of time just looking at things.
Sie maps the world with hir body, not with hir eyes. Sie is highly kinesthetic, highly tactile, and keeps track of everything sie knows through the movements of hir body. Without being able to move hir body, sie is essentially blind and somewhat deaf to what is around hir. This creates conflict when people try to force hir to sit still.
Sie feels deeply. All of hir emotions are intense and vivid, complex and varied, and many of them don’t even have names.
Hir kinesthetic and emotional repertoires are both too complex and varied for words, yet contain the bulk of her experiences of the world.
Sie also perceives a lot of things in colors. Not the colors they are, but the colors they evoke in hir head.
Sie is an adult. Sie does not behave like a young autistic child who lacks language. Sie behaves like an autistic adult who has learned workarounds for all the things that sie has trouble doing, and is able to be confident and competent in these areas in a way that no small child ever could. Yet people treat hir like a small child. They assume that because sie can’t do things that young children can do, then she must not have hir own ways of doing things, ways that have been developed over decades of living in this world.
Sie has friendships with other autistic people from some of the programs she’s in, and one or two extremely close friendships in particular, but nobody notices they are communicating, because nobody else speaks their mutually comprehensible 'languages’. If they notice anything, it’s that separating them makes them highly upset.
With one of hir friends, they communicate by leaving objects in places that they know the other will look, and then exchanging those objects. One will quickly hide the object in their clothes, exchange another object for it, and take the first object home for their collection. In this way, they have 'collections of each other’ that allow them to see each other at a distance. Nobody has a clue where they get these objects, but they’re indulged in being able to keep them because everyone figures it’s 'an autistic thing’.
One or the other of hir friends may be put by others into an entirely different 'functioning level’ than sie is (either higher or lower), and they may be discouraged from seeing any similarities between the two of them because of that. (This happened to me and an autistic friend once, and I hear it’s not uncommon.)
When the friends see each other at the programs they’re in together, they always have each other’s back if something comes up, but nobody ever notices, they think it’s random. Because they still have trouble with the idea of autistic people being friends or communicating with each other..

And most importantly: Sie is the POV character. This is a story told from hir POV. This is not a view-from-above caricature of what it’s like to be 'that kind’ of autistic person. This is an autistic person extrapolated from my general 'subtype’ of autistic people, but with a smattering of very different traits from mine that made hir path in life look very different from mine in some ways. I would love to write this story someday. I would also love to write this story in a manner fitting for the way sie and I view the world: Not necessarily linear, and definitely not necessarily with that pseudo-universal story structure that everyone and their dog is taught in high school.

I want to do justice to a character who, but for a small number of fairly minor differences, I could have been. When I say the differences are minor, I mean the differences inside of us are very minor. The differences as seen by the outside world are quite major in some areas, and have led to our lives diverging massively from where they could have started in the same place. But it often works like that with autistic people: The difference between the one in gifted classes and the one who never makes it past picture cards, is a difference of a hair’s breadth in one or two tiny areas in brain processing. It’s just that those two tiny differences get amplified by the way our brains work and then those get amplified by the way our society works and suddenly you have two people who 'look nothing alike’ even though the two of them, if they were to meet, would find more in common than they had different.

Generally when you see a very “high functioning” autistic adult walk into a room full of “low functioning” autistic child, and one particular child, out of the whole classroom, one particular chlid perks up and stares at the adult and follows them around and wants to do everything with them? That’s a sign that the two may be the same autism subtype, but with very different expressions in terms of how the nonautistic world sees them. Only the two of them know the truth: that they’re barely different, and the differences are mostly surface-cosmetic stuff. I’ve seen and heard of this playing out in schools all over the world.

Anyway, I want a character I can identify with, and this would be my character. Or someone very like hir. I want to see hir done justice. I may have to do hir justice myself, because, being of the same subtype, I know roughly what goes on in hir head. And of course sie is so much more than hir autistic traits. Sie sees hirself as a poet, but a poet of objects rather than a poet of language. Sie may not use the word poet, sie has little need for words and little comprehension of them, but poet may be the word the narration uses, because the narration is going to be from hir POV, and will have to involve words.

And I feel like I have to do hir justice, because there are not characters out there like her. Not really. Not characters who carry their own stories. Not characters who are fleshed-out and believable as more than a walking talking syndrome. Not characters that people want to read because they have an actual personality that shows through.

And yes, there’s tons of autobiographical stuff here, if by autobiographical you mean that sie’s based heavily on me. But it’s more like sie’s based heavily on a type of autistic person that happens to include me and a large range of others. Sie’s hir own person, and sie’s different than me in a lot of ways that matter, and not just the superficial ones everyone will see. But I want hir to be enough like me that, when I’m done, I can say “Finally, there is a character like me out there. Finally, someone I can relate to. Finally.”

Maybe this NaNoWriMo I will actually try to write about hir – either short stories or a novel. I’ve never tried NaNoWriMo before but if I ever have the energy to do so, it will be this year. And I could use the externally-imposed discipline to get a rough draft of a story finished.

Any story I wrote about hir would be driven not so much by 'plot’ as by who sie is and what situations sie gets into. And it would not necessarily be driven by 'conflict’ either. Maybe it would, but I’d hope it wouldn’t, because I want the entire structure of the story to reflect hir worldview, and hir worldview isn’t going to read like a plot diagram. I do feel like I could do hir justice because sie is enough like me that I can put myself in hir shoes easily, but different enough that she’s not just me stuck into a story. And also because I’ve been in the system long enough to know how people in hir position are treated, and I share with her the involuntary autistic type of empathy that lets me know how that feels.

Anyway, I really want to do this, and I hope I’ll have the self-discipline to carry it through. Because I want to see hir fleshed out, I want to see hir as real, I want other people to be able to see through hir eyes, and my eyes, and our eyes together.