#artemis should have been autistic in canon and i will die on this hill

[artemisfowl-chaos]

I get that it was never going to happen, but seriously, Artemis should have been confirmed as autistic in canon. Not just in terms of representation and diversity, but narratively.

The AF series has themes related to the "changeling" trope in folklore - Artemis (and the humans around him, but that's a different post) is changed by the People, and by the friendships he forms among them. So much so, that perhaps if you had not been following his journey, you would not recognise the boy who sells a lemur as the same person he becomes near the end of the series.

Artemis is very much the odd one out in his family - whilst his parents and siblings are concerned with "normal" things, and very much seem to be a "normal" family, Artemis still has the traumas of his childhood which cause him to find it harder to relate to this image of family, partially because he has found his own family, which does not include his parents.

The changeling, in folklore, is a child stolen by the fae, and will never return as themself - they are replaced by a faerie child. They are also ungovernable, and therefore their parents must eventually get rid of them.

Perhaps the part of Artemis's story which most resembles the changeling's is his journey to Limbo, and his return three years later. When he leaves Earth, he is a normal fourteen-year-old boy. When he returns, he is part fairy - he has magic, and Holly's eye.

Perhaps Artemis's cloning also counts - he is again no longer wholly human.

In Deny All Charges, we see Fowl Sr cast away Artemis as a child, saying that Artemis is no longer his son. Although in the Fowl Twins series we don't get to see Artemis's relationship with his parents, we can assume that it isn't great.

As an adult, Artemis is not close to his parents. He is not the son they wanted - either of them. He is too unwilling to change as suddenly as his father did, and he will not forgive them for his childhood. So perhaps, as with the changeling, he has become too unruly - not in a traditional sense, but in the sense of causing too much upset to the new structure of the family.

So Artemis is very much the quintessential changeling child - he is isolated from the rest of his family, preferring the company of others. He leaves, and returns not quite human, and his parents will never see him in quite the same way.

So where does the autism fit in? Well, many people have theorised that the changeling is actually an explanation for behaviours which today would be cause for an autism diagnosis.

One main characteristic of the changeling child is that they "display intelligence far beyond their apparent years, as well as possess uncanny insight."

Having unusual intelligence is not representative of all autistic children, but the second half of that statement stood out to me especially. Autism is often explained as "a different way of seeing the world," and that is precisely what this seems to be describing.

A child who preferred to stand in a corner, listening and observing, rather than joining in the conversation.

A child who had trained themself to notice people's emotions (since it did not come naturally to them) and so could tell when someone meant what they were saying.

A child who could not understand implied instructions, and had to ask questions until they found out exactly what they could and could not do.

A child who found telling untruths difficult, and so learnt to twist their words so that they could mislead others whilst uttering not a single falsehood.

A child who refused to touch a certain item, saying that it felt bad on their skin.

A child with a detailed, long-lasting memory, who would remember what you had promised, whether it was to them or to another.

These were the changeling children, who today we might diagnose with autism. (Each example I described is a legitimate autistic symptom, by the way, and most of them can also be linked to fae lore.)

These were the uncanny children, who were perhaps not quite human - perhaps they were faeries, then?

As babies, these children could not articulate their needs, or the ways in which they were different, or the way they saw the world - so perhaps it is no surprise that their parents saw them and thought their baby had been replaced by a faerie.

And many of the examples I described, I can, off the top of my head, think of places in canon where these symptoms (and many others) apply to Artemis.

It would have been so narratively satisfying if Artemis had been confirmed as autistic. I'm not surprised it didn't happen, but damn, I wish it had.