#(musical version elle woods and a roman teenage boy from a terrible children’s movie if you’re wondering)

[medicallymercury]

I don’t wanna be bitchy but this defence of “it doesn’t matter if the letter said that Dylan’s autistic” that people use whenever someone criticises how Casualty went about that storyline kinda irks me because

1.) it did, he is

2.) that’s not even really what people are criticising

3.) I’m sorry, YES IT DOES

not even just on a level of “it matters that Dylan is autistic (and knows he’s autistic) to the many people who have seen themselves in him and his experiences for years” but also just…

even if this wasn’t a storyline about a character who clearly already knew they were autistic before they supposedly ‘found out’, even if this was about a character a realising you’re autistic in adulthood storyline would work for, it WOULD matter that they are autistic and have just found out!!

I’m saying this as someone who realised I’m autistic a couple years ago, obviously not in adulthood, but late enough that it felt like and still feels like I realised it ‘later’: it does matter! like, of course, it doesn’t change who you are or how good you are at your job or anything like that, you are the same person you were before you found out, but it does change your total understanding of yourself and that is a massive deal, maybe if I put it like this: finding out I’m autistic didn’t change who I am but it did (massively) change my understanding of who I am - and that has impacted how I live my life

even if they had done this storyline with a character it actually worked for, I wouldn’t want the final message to be “it doesn’t matter” with, like, no follow up - I would want it to continue with showing how finding out you’re autistic later on leads you to change certain aspects of how you live your life as you go from viewing your autistic traits as ‘problems’ you have to deal with to recognising them as just autistic traits you maybe need accommodations for

I’m really worried this post might get misconstrued as me agreeing with Patrick or saying “it does matter that Dylan is autistic, it changes everything about him” NO!!! finding out he’s autistic (massive quotation marks) does not change who he is as a person or how good of a doctor he is, but it WOULD change his understanding of himself and how he lives his life with that new understanding and, frankly, they can’t do that kind of continuation with Dylan only now living as someone who knows he’s autistic because he has lived as someone who knows he’s autistic for as long as he’s been on the show