as small as a world and as large as alone, I'm an autistic writing an adventure based story...

10:20pm October 7, 2014

Anonymous asked: I'm an autistic writing an adventure based story that takes place in current day USA. A couple of the main characters in the story would likely be diagnosed with autism or ASD, and I'm wondering if I should officially note their diagnosis in the story itself or not, and why. I've heard both sides argued and wanted to get your take. Thank you.

nicocoer:

stargatecoffee:

nicocoer:

autisticadvocacy:

ASAN wants to encourage rich and diverse representation of autistic people across all forms of media, relfective of a variety of life experiences, which may or may not include a formal diagnosis. We as an organization don’t have an official stance on if the author explicitly reveals a diagnosis/neurotype, so we are going to give just a few un-official thoughts.

The most important thing that many of us here feel about Autistic representation is that it comes off true to life. There are plenty of works out there that some of us feel weren’t great representation even though though a diagnosis was referenced because it felt like someone sat down with a DSM-IV and ticked off traits in an extremely obvious fashion. In real life how many autistic traits are expressed is varied both in intensity and in specifics of how they are expressed- and not just from person to person, but over time in an individual. Remember to think about the diversity in expression of traits as you write.

More specific to your question is the issue of how an audience will read a character that isn’t explicitly stated to be Autistic. You can have a character that is brilliantly written as a real to life autistic, but because of cultural sterotypes some readers will argue for hours with people who catch it. A lot of characters who have disabilities that are not explicitly stated in text end up having staunch “defenders” who object to any statements saying that character is disabled. Just by not falling into a sterotype a character can have their disability erased by the audience, who isn’t used to realistic depictions in media.

For an example of how this happens, look at how people react to the Glee character Brittany- who has had experiences very real to the real life of teens with Learning or certain intellectual disabilities- if you point out those parts of her character. There are people who will viciously argue with anyone, even (and sometimes especially) people with those disabilities themselves, that she can’t be disabled. And that’s a character that has had so many disability references the only more explicit thing to do is have the director come on screen waiving a diagnostic paper into the camera while yelling “Look she’s disabled deal with it!”.

And yet true to life, non-sterotyped representation is what we are looking for. It makes it very difficult to have good stories with good representation that do have an impact while not explicitly stating a disability.

A lot of times how something comes off tends to depend on the character and what is natural for then to say or have narrated internally. Flow is an important thing in writing, so if you chose to disclose finding a way to make that disclosure organic to your story will be important. There’s the risk of coming of as a sort of very-special-episode story if it’s too out of character/the flow how a neurotype is revealed. But if it becomes a foot note- such as in a character list or appendix- it doesn’t always register as canon for some readers.

Do any of our followers have anything to add for the asker?

I only put one example of disability erasure in the ASAN post, but there are lots others! I picked that one even though she’s not autistic because it was the one that I felt most clearly made the point.

For another example you could take Parker from Leverage. I and a number of other people read her as Autistic. (Some read her as having another disability, w/e.) But because she’s a fun person, someone who can be very engaging, depicted as romantically desirable, and eventually develops grifter skills around lying and giving people what they want there are people who will argue with me to their last breath that she CAN’T be autistic. Even though we’ve seen how much Sophie had to break those skills down into component parts when teaching her, and how much it’s implied more training happened off screen. Even though there are plenty of people in real life who are seen as romantically desireable who also happen to be autistic. Even though there are brilliant entertainers, engaging, passionate, and simply good at their jobs who are autistic.

Apparently there are also people who argue that Abed isn’t autistic- even though the show explicitly references it- but I’m not as familiar with those arguments. I don’t read enough Community Meta I guess, whereas I’m more familiar with Glee Meta than Glee canon anymore.

We have such a strong static cultural image of what Autistic (or even just disabled) looks like that any deviation from it gets used as “proof” that the character isn’t autistic/disabled, rather than acceptance that the writers are showing how diverse disabled experiences are.

So uh yeah there’s that.

^emphasis is mine

I’ve had similar arguments for believing Daniel Jackson from Stargate is on the spectrum. There was one lady a few years ago who, in response to a parenthetical aside I’d made saying as much in a longer post about how people will view the characters on the show differently, jumped in and proceeded to tell me point-by-point the symptoms of Asperger’s and why there was absolutely no possible way that Daniel could have it. But all the the examples of symptoms she gave read like she was just copy/pasting the DSM and not describing an actual Autistic person. And her examples of why Daniel didn’t have those symptoms were pretty much all about how he was essentially “too normal” to be disabled in any way. And when I brought up to her some of the reasons I thought he was on the spectrum and that I’m on the spectrum myself she still refused to consider that maybe he had some of the traits.

I didn’t know this person, yet she didn’t even think to ask why I thought the way I did. She just decided to tell me why I was wrong.

I recently asked Michael Shanks, the actor who played Daniel (for 10 seasons so I’m going to assume he knows his character very well), if he thought Daniel was on the spectrum and his response was that “of course he is. He has all the identifiable signs.” He brought up that Daniel will make make leaps in logic and not quite get why no one else has made that leap with him, that he gets really sucked into his work to the point that sometimes he forgets things are going on around him, and that occasionally he’ll answer questions that no one asked and volunteer information.

So it really goes to show how people can see the same character so differently.

SHANKS SEES DANIEL AS AUTISTIC OH BE STILL MY HEART.

For those that don’t know, I LOVE STARGATE. SO SO MUCH. ALL THE LOVE. I’m not as fandomy in that fandom currently, but… yep. And I’ve loved it since the cheesy movie, pre-Shanks, when I was maybe too young for it and just… yep.

Daniel did always strike me as… well, as someone like me a little. (Struck my mother that way a bit too.) Both before and after we realized what was up with me was that I’m autistic, there was this mix of kinship-feels and crush-feels when watching.

But it also wasn’t a feel I wanted to deal with sharing with people as much because people are jerks and honestly it hurts more when it’s a character you grew up with. I imagine the level of betrayal feels about Bones would be even worse if I had been as young when it started as I had been when introduced to stargate. (As it is I have a lot of betrayed feels about the direction Bones has gone in the last couple seasons disability wise.)

This makes me very very happy, thank you stargatecoffee!!!

I really, really hope I manage to pull off my NaNoWriMo project. Because I really, really want people like my autistic main character, who has roughly the same type of autism as me but without the features that make me able to communicate about it in English, to be represented in literature. And if I don’t see them written, I might as well try to write it myself. I only fear I won’t be able to do her justice, because I already love her and want her and her sister to come off realistically. Her sister is either nonautistic or barely on the spectrum and probably undiagnosed, but has a severe physical disability similar to some of mine. A lot of the story has to do with their relationship to each other, given their parents take care of them into their twenties, plan on doing so indefinitely, and are living in a fairly isolated location. I just badly want to see this work – some way, any way, anything that comes off as real. The main character is diagnosed and that will be made obvious in the book. But even though her autism is central to who she is as a character, autism is not the main point of the story. The main point is relationships – hers to her sister, and hers to her physical surroundings in the redwoods like where I lived as a very young child and young adult.

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