#all of the autistic characters i love in media are unintentionally written like that so maybe im.just adjusting to like

[mikuni14]

I am very sorry that you felt hurt by my words. This, of course, was not my intention. That's why I clearly stated that I may be wrong in my assessment of the character Taishin due to a different reading of him. I want to make it clear that my criticism of Taishin is a criticism of how he was WRITTEN as a character, it is not a criticism of a fictional person, and it absolutely is a criticism of any living person!

I intentionally and specifically avoid using medical, psychological terms in relation to characters from the media, unless they are described as such in this series. I don't have professional tools for diagnosing people, so I didn't call Taichi or Chu Sang Wu autistic, only using the word "neurodivergent", also with reservations, because I don't know if it fits this situation. I'm not a doctor.

I am aware that Chu Sang Wu has exaggerated features, but as a character he was written logically for me and what is important in relation to Takara's Treasure is the reaction of those around him to him. Sang Wu also behaves rude and even problematic and Jae Young's response is many times "are you shitting me??", "is this guy for real??" and quite ordinary anger. Sang Wu is often mean, acts like an asshole and also says unconsciously rude things to which his love interest, but also the girls from the series, react by either accepting and adapting to him or not accepting his behavior. Jae Young, for example, often adapts to his flow, but also yells at him, sets boundaries and tells him what he did wrong. This is what I also miss about TT, because everything Taishin does is romanticized and treated with an "aawwww" by his friends, Takara and the viewers. He is perfect and can't do anything wrong because he is so kawaii, awkward and a country bumpkin, which infantilizes and frankly harms him. I agree that Taishin, in his eagerness to get to know Takara, could have gone so far as to look into his bag, but Takara saw it and did not react, which gives permission for such behavior, but also unintentionally shows this young man as a child. Chu Sang Wu is also a student, he clearly has zero experience with people, he cannot "read" them, and he is also growing in SE, relying on the experience he often gains in difficult situations and advice from other people. He also makes stupid and bad mistakes and is awkward in relationships with other people, and he hurts them and he also often says something that makes everyone around him look at him in disbelief. AND IT'S FINE, it fits the story, it fits HIM. But is important to me: his character in love and non-love situations is the same.

"Suicide unfortunately is a very common topic in Japan to a point that it's general knowledge you grow up with. " more common than love and homosexuality? 🙂 Guys, is it really me who makes him look bad? 😉

Taishin reacted to his stalker exactly the same way I did, starting from him meeting a nice gentleman to being alarmed. He read it all correctly, like many other things in the series, just as he reads sadness and joy in Takara, who doesn't show any particular emotions. I feel at this point that in the series we have two Taishins, one outside of love situations, the other in love situations. And what bothers me is the inconsistency of these two characters. And yes, what bothers me also is infantilizing him, treating him like a child, forgiving him his behavior just because he is in this "love territory". Like ,Taishin asks Takara about same-sex relationships and asks if he can choose him, asks if he can call him if he's in trouble, and it's treated romantically, but at the same time the same show makes him sneak around, wait until Takara will leave to check his personal belongings to see what brands he likes, although, mind you, he could ask about that too! And this is treated romantically too! (And Takara sees this, and instead of approaching him and calmly telling him that he shouldn't do it and that if he wants to know something, he should ask him how he did it so far, he doesn't do anything about it.). Takara teaches him about stalkers, how to behave in social situations ("don't say weird things", don't worry Taishin, I wouldn't know what it means too lol!), but he doesn't teach him to respect other people's property. For me this is chaos.

Anyway, I assure you once again that my criticism is a criticism of the character creation and script, it is not a criticism of real-life people or... even Taishin who is a victim of that writing! 😄 Also I don't want to diagnose anyone, I don't know anything about it, so I have no idea whether Taishin is autistic or "just" awkward, airhead and clueless. I just see inconsistencies in how he is portrayed, which I tried to describe as best as I could. I'm sorry if any of my words hurt you.

Takara's Treasure - Ep 4

I admit that I watch Takara's Treasure with morbid fascination 😆 I don't vibe with this romance at all, I watch it like a scientist wondering what will happen and how the show will handle this relationship.

I read with interest the opinions about Taishin from people who explained his behavior and respectfully, but I disagree. (I would like to emphasize the word respectfully just in case 😘). First of all, I fully accept that I may be misreading this character because I may have a completely different background and character than those who understand him. That being said, I think the problem with Taishi lies largely in the script. First of all I think Taishi would be more believable in this story if he were YOUNGER. Second, the script is not consistent in showing his character, because sorry, but either you create a completely clueless person who is clueless about everything, or you make this character innocent, naive, or having difficulty "reading" people and themselves, and it applies to everything. Taishin correctly recognized the threat in the form of his stalker and correctly called for help, just as he correctly recognized the figure on the roof as someone who might want to commit suicide, rather than just standing and gazing at the clouds. Going out involves panic about what to wear, which is 100% just the behavior of an ordinary person. Somehow he got into college, and if I'm not mistaken, in Tokyo (?), so I assume he's a good student, which means he must have had some education. At the same time, the series portrays him as someone who is so clueless that someone else has to silence him so he doesn't sound "weird" (???), someone who has been still wondering about the concept of people being attracted to someone of the same sex, and is completely unable to connect the dots between how he panicked when someone invaded his space and him invading someone else's space by rummaging through their bag (edit: I forgot the most important thing, which is him interpretating of his feelings towards Takara, which the series shows as both comedic and romantic). For me it just doesn't add up.

We've already had characters in BLs who are clueless, uninterested in love, characters who are just figuring out what's happening to them, what this new feeling, new state, new reactions of their bodies are - including people in college. But these characters were consistent, their behavior was logical, and above all, it didn't make them stupid and problematic at times (I feel like if Taishin was not a sweet uke, but a macho guy, and Takara was a cute, petite girl, the reaction to him , his stalking behavior and "weirdness" would certainly be different). Ae from LBC analyzed his new feelings, consulted with his friend, Chu Sang Wu from Semantic Error had a whole meltdown because of his new, unknown feelings, Mork from My Ride was also confused about his feelings for a guy, in many other series the characters were surprised with their often new, anxiety-provoking, unknown feelings, they panicked, analyzed them, discussed them. But in each of these cases everything was logical. And series still can keep as much as possible that the characters are clueless and "do not fit into generally accepted norms" (that's why so many viewers identified with Ae - many called him our demi king ^^ and Chu Sang Wu as a neurodivergent character, or with Mork and him discovering his bisexuality as a grown man).

tl;dr imho Taishin should be clueless in all social situations, not just the select ones that fit the script. And he really should stop his stalking, strange actions and rummaging through people's things (and.. it's actually getting worse! and it's presented as funny, cute and romantic!). There are limits, and quite often legal limits to finding out something about your crush (in Chery Magic, Adachi/Achi had no idea that he was someone's object of affection and that that person knew almost everything about him, because his boundaries and right to privacy were never violated). Sorry to all Taishin fans but for me what Taishi does and what he says is not romantic or cute in any way 🤷‍��️

[llycaons]

I'm spending time with a very old and beloved friend and she keeps showing me old episodes of elementary and I'm just remembering how little I like this show help the copaganda and also it's just very boring and unpleasant to watch and I dont like anyones acting except lucy liu 😭 plus this episode has fiona, the autistic woman, and I personally really do not like how shes introduced since it seems overly clinical and tell dont show and I'm kind of uncomfortable with how they're treating her? and why wouldn't sherlock or joan (who was a doctor) know what autism is? theres a more natural way to work that in.

like. having an explicitly autistic character onscreen is extremely rare and I appreciate the effort but...idk maybe with more screentime we'll see more of her as a person and not as a token NA person who literally is scripted to say 'my brain works differently than yours does' with the implication that her brain also works differently from the audience's NT brain and this ep is not for NA ppl but education/entertainment for NT ppl like you know what I know what it is. It's very alienating. the audience is told 'this person is DIFFERENT' and maybe sherlock is implied also to be but thats not an approach I personally like bc to me it feels very much like the perspective is NT (in this episode) so it ends up doing the opposite of normalizing neurodiversity. but maybe in the next episode with sherlock that'll change! and I'd be interested in hearing other ND ppls thoughts on this character since characters like her are incredibly rare still

[ckret2]

How about 1, 2, 5, and 6?

1. Describe your comfort zone—a typical you-fic.

Is “born out of spite” or “born out of having a point to prove” valid? A typical me-fic is created when I see something done the same way frequently in a way I can’t stand and then instead of coming to hate it I become determined to do it in a way I do like.

But that’s not very specific, is it?

I’ve been trying to analyze the patterns in my writing lately in the hopes of lassoing the stuff I like together in order to wrangle my brain into FINALLY writing a novel that I like. Recurring elements I’ve discovered: skews toward villains, aliens, monsters, and looking at the world through their perspective even when their perspectives are awful; mad scientists are always portrayed as sexy and attractive; the autistic or autistic-coded character is being rational and sensible and anyone who doesn’t listen to them is an overemotional jackass and wrong; gender can go jump out a window; writing about “monstrous” love interests in a way that explicitly frames their inhuman traits as attractive through the lover’s eyes; eternal one-sided pining, never requited, can’t be requited, that’s boring; incapable of writing a romance without inserting it in an epic plotline of some sort; rigorously canon-compatible and any details that aren’t canon compatible are either the One Singular Detail I changed in order to allow this branched timeline to happen or else I can explain in five paragraphs the lore loophole I found that does, in fact, allow those details to be canon compatible.

That’s all I can think of off the top of my—

Oh, and breaking readers’ hearts.

I think that covers it.

2. Is there a trope you’ve yet to try your hand at, but really want to?

Sure love slow burns. Sure love writing them. Sure would be nice to finish one someday.

But uh I dunno. Maybe a soulmates AU? Like I mentioned, most of my fics come from “born out of spite” territory—when there’s a trope that I don’t like how it’s done, I try to do it in a way I do like. And it’s not that I don’t like soulmate AUs—I’ve just... never been interested in the concept of one.

So it’d be an interesting personal challenge, I think, to design one that meets the parameters of a soulmate AU but does appeal to me.

5. Share one of your strengths.

I’m a badass at metaphors.

I don’t have any examples on hand. You’ll have to take my word for it.

6. Share one of your weaknesses.

Sorry I already listed one flaw tonight, I’m all out of flaws.

No but uhhh... I always wonder how good I am at writing, like, neurotypical people. Most characters I see in most media don’t appeal to me because they’re, like... so bland/boring. But we’re talking about media that’s wildly popular, which means those characters must be appealing to wide swathes of the population, and is it, perhaps... because the characters and the audience that enjoys them are all neurotypical? I don’t know! Maybe! People have gotta give a shit about those characters for some reason, maybe they genuinely do find them relatable!

Or maybe some people are just built to like sitcoms.

I try to write characters that I don’t think are bland/boring, but the more and more I learn about how what I think of as normal life is actually heavily shaped by how I interact with the world thanks to ADHD and whatever else, the more and more I wonder how much the characters I’ve written in the past have been inadvertently skewed into neurodivergence of some sort because 1) that’s how I see the world, and 2) I’ve been previously undereducated on the specific/measurable differences between ND and NT worldviews.

Like, until I learned what time blindness was, I wasn’t aware that there was an alternative. I thought that navigating the world in a timely manner was a learned skill that other people had mastered better than me, not that they had an innate sixth sense for the passage of time that I lacked. It would be like if I’d learned how to drive without getting glasses, and everything looked like a blur and I couldn’t read street signs or speed limit signs, and I was trying to figure out how everyone else had “learned” to tell where other cars are and to squint at the speed limit sign during the .2 seconds it’s close enough to read without getting distracted by the effort of reading, without knowing that to everyone else they could just see the street and everything on it clearly.

(See! A free metaphor for you.)

So without knowing everything about how my various points of neurodivergence and such make my brain different, how often have I accidentally/unintentionally written other characters wired like me without meaning/wanting to just because I didn’t adequately understand the alternative? It’s something that’s bugged me for a long time, not knowing how good I am at writing the “default.” But just gotta keep practicing! 

[moiraineswife]

Ooooh yes autistic!nesta is my favourite thing ever. Do u have any more thoughts/hdcs??? Also do you have any book recs with canon autistic characters???

-Thank u friend. Okay have some pure headcanons of what autistic!Nesta might be like as opposed to like my flimsy EVIDENCE headcanons of the previous post: (heavy nessian emphasis on some of these just because) (I’ve also ficced some of these before…just because I can, so if a few feel familiar that’s why) 

  -Nesta loving the library at the House of Wind because it’s quiet and calm. No loud noises to make her jump and get her back up, no overly bright lights, no people to try and navigate. Just quiet. Soft, comfortable chairs with nice textures and good books she can lose herself in for hours. She admits issues with sensory sensitivity sometimes (which have not been improved by her making) and Feyre arranges for the room to be warded to filter and mute sounds and bright lights and scents so she gets a nice little controlled safe space that means the world to her. 

  -I still love Nesta reading romance books to try and get a handle on her relationship with Cass but I love even more when she goes as far as making scripts with them. She isn’t quite sure how to approach this herself but she can take on a role and mimic someone else (even if she feels a bit foolish). 

Cassian is…Baffled but he’s a switched on bat and he figures out what she’s doing quite quickly and does his best to play along and not make her feel self-conscious or uncomfortable. She’s trying to ask him out on a date and even if she’s going about it in a slightly odd way…She’s trying, he isn’t going to ruin it for her. 

(He does manage to gently tell her that he just wants her to be her, okay, he didn’t fall in love with some soppy heroine from her romance books, he fell for her, that’s all he wants. But he does it super tactfully so she doesn’t feel weird. He’s a good soul.) 

  -Speaking of researching aspects of her relationship with Cassian this definitely includes sex. She knows how it goes, basically, but she’s still afraid of somehow doing something Wrong and the solution to that is to find out as much as she possibly can about the subject. She probably tries books again but she gets quickly irritated with how wishy-washy they are on the subject, she doesn’t want elegant metaphors here, she wants the gory details. 

She ends up cornering Azriel and sitting him down and telling him that she wants to talk about sex. Az is..A bit confused but she’s blunt and to the point and explains things as best she can and he takes pity on her and does his best to put her at ease (and also ropes Mor into helping asap because she’s much better at this sort of thing (she is)) 

  -Once they’ve had sex, Nesta likes Cassian remaining on top of her because pressure. He’s…A little bit bemused by this because well he’s quite big and quite heavy and she’s quite small and…delicate, but she growls at him something terrible when he tries to shift off of her so he just…well alright then, sweetheart. (Nesta loves his bear hugs for similar reasons. They spend a lot of time squishing each other) 

  -Nesta needs certain things to be done a certain way (like if she’s researching something - her books and notes are very deliberately ordered and people messing with that (even unintentionally) bothers her) She’s happiest when she can have her routines and plans done precisely the way she wants. (She can get a bit bothered by Cassian’s impulsiveness, especially on dates because NO WE ARE NOT GOING TO JUST GO AND QUICKLY CHECK OUT THAT MARKET, WE HAVE DINNER RESERVATIONS FOR 7.14 AND WE ARE PRECISELY ON TIME FOR THEM NOW. NO DETOURS THAT WILL MESS EVERYTHING UP. CASSIAN NO. They solve this by letting Nesta have her dates be organised and perfectly planned while Cassian’s are more impulsive (if he isn’t actually disrupting any of her set plans she doesn’t mind because following his plan was her plan and that’s fine)) 

  -Nesta loves the rain, the sound of it and watching it. Same with the Sidra. It’s soothing, watching the water. She likes to nestle into Cassian and watch it and he has no problem with this at all. 

  -Nesta having super intense interests in things like history, certain plays, books etc that she will talk about endlessly. (She bonds with Rhys over a lot of these things, he’s perfectly happy to let her talk and engage with him, especially when he’s nearly as passionate about them as she is) 

  -Nesta having a deep love for calligraphy. 

  -Nesta continuing to wear the dresses that were typical for her in the human realm because the fabrics/shapes of the clothes at the Night Court bother her and the familiarity of those clothes is comfortable and comforting. 

-Nesta having meltdowns sometimes when she overloads because there’s Too Much sensory input, especially with her new fae senses. Cassian is very good at recognising what’s happening and helping her. He blocks out as much of the sensory input as he can and makes sure not to touch her but stays close for when she needs him, and will sometimes talk to her to help calm her down. Then he cuddles her because nice, soothing pressure stims help her fully calm down again. 

-Nesta being hypersensitive to cold therefore Cassian must keep her warm and wrapped up in a bat burrito at all times, like this is an emergency, Cassian, I need to be cuddled for my health, can you not see this!? Cassian just...Can’t find a way to complain about this. 

-Nesta taking a trip to the Dawn Court and meeting Nuan, who recognises Nesta’s experiences and quietly tells her that that there’s a word for what she is, and that she’s not alone. 

Nesta cuts the trip a little short so she can go home to Cassian. She cries in his arms for half the night because finally, she finally understands herself. They research autism together so they can both learn to understand it and how to best help Nesta cope. Nesta is a little surprised by Cassian’s enthusiasm and level of interest in the subject which he’s a little bemused by because this is a huge part of who she is and he wants to understand it/her better. 

-Nesta accepting and embracing herself and her autism and not apologising for a single piece of her and just god bless. 

As for book recs with canon autistic characters that are well written the only ones I can actually think of off the top of my head are both by Brandon Sanderson.

 The second Mistborn trilogy Alloy of Law has a lady autistic (!!!!) called Steris who is particularly dear to me and has a lovely little arc. The Stormlight Archive series has Renarin Kholin who has made me squeal repeatedly bc of visible autistic traits/coping mechanisms and I’m really excited for him hopefully having a much bigger role in upcoming books. 

Sanderson is an allistic writer, I believe, and I’m aware he’s made mistakes with regards to his autistic rep in earlier works. But I’m also aware that he’s actually listened to the autistic community and worked to correct those mistakes and Steris and Renarin are both pretty fucking awesome as far as autistic rep goes (and there isn’t NEARLY enough of that, in any form of media) bless his heart.

As a note neither series focuses exclusively on Renarin or Steris and I didn’t read either series for the autistic rep in them (that was just a bonus) but they’re both definitely worth reading for the rep and just bc they’re awesome, awesome books.