#i as an autistic person notice many many smaller details of her character that i connect to deeply

[xylo-bones2]

i would consider fae to be extremely good nd rep for Me, Specifically because i have never connected to a character on such a deep and personal level before in my life. like i look at her and i go Oh, That;s Me thats literally Me. (i mean i go by fae as well as basil for a Reason. ) however comma. i would have to say she is mid-to-decent rep at least for the average pyre viewer. it truly hurts me to say that but unfortunately not everyone is insane like me

[cosmosnout]

KH OC WEEK

Day 5: Unique

I’ve had a liiiittle bit of a miscalculation with how long making these entries would take, so I’ve decided to jump ahead a bit. Dreams and Connections ended up being such important themes for all my characters that I wanted to spend a bit more time on both haha.

Appearance

Appearance-wise a lot of my guys have a bunch of fun little details about them. Both Shiro and Merin carry many scars from being the most active fighters (and for being the most reckless ones).

Shiro bears a X shaped scar across their face that they acquire from fighting master Aced during the keyblade war. (There’s a scene in KHUX during the keyblade war, where master Aced manages to land some hits on the player before Ira comes to their rescue.)

They both also noticeably have small streaks of white in their hair along with dark veins overtaking their arms, which are caused by long exposure to darkness.

Another shared trait within the group is The siblings matching dyed hair, with Viktor having teal and Aiko pink-colored hair. This later on changes after a small time skip where they decide to swap colors.

Aiko also has a small heart tattoo on her shoulder and a bunch of moles covering her body!

Skills

As keyblade wielders each character of course has their own unique style of fighting and using their keys.

(Shiro is getting favorite child treatment sorry LMAO)

Shiro, as the oldest and most experienced fighter, has various different spells, keyblade forms, and abilities at their disposal. They’re most keen on melee fighting but are also quite the talented spell caster. (They especially enjoy fire magic)

Merin is the second-most experienced fighter and often calls upon darkness to assist her in a fight. (Even though Aiko strongly urges them against it, old habits die hard, I guess.) She is also decently strong, even without her keyblade, and uses her brute strength to get through enemies.

The rest of the group are actually not the biggest fans of fighting, but I’d say Aiko holds herself the best when it comes to using her keyblade.

Tähti does, however, possess a unique skill that allows her to listen to the hearts of others. This mostly manifests as different kinds of melodies emanating from the person they’re close to (displaying their current emotional state or just overall vibe) and occasionally as quiet whispers of the person's inner thoughts.

Other stuff

I think of Tähti as being autistic due to them having many neurodivergent traits that I relate to. (Feeling most comfortable being nonverbal, feeling easily overwhelmed, having a difficult time with social cues, etc.)

Tähti also appears a lot smaller and younger than Merin due to their previous person having an imbalance of light and darkness in their heart.

The darkness that spreads through Shiro’s and Merin’s arms begins at the dominant hand. (the hand they hold their keyblade in)

Shiro’s multicolored eyes represent their lost state of identity and also the balance of darkness and light in their heart. (Their original eye color is green, but it gets mixed with blue and yellow to represent light and darkness.)

Merin has a scar on their upper right arm, just above where the darkness is spreading, due to them attempting to sever their arm as they feared the darkness would spread further. Aiko thankfully managed to convince them not to go through with it.

I do also think that the darkness can eventually fade away as the person's emotional state gets better / once they stop using darkness for long enough.

@khoc-week

[doctorbunny]

MILGRAM theory time: Haruka!

This isn't going to go super in depth (famous last words) but there's a few heavily debated parts of Haruka's MV I want to share my findings/thoughts on because I think this is my new special interest and during my quest to get best boy's song to 1 million views I have been looking over his first MV with a fine tooth comb so to speak.

Disclaimer: As the Jackalope said in the "This is the MILGRAM" trailer, we don't necessarily know everyone's crime from just the first video, its possible that a lot of things will be re-contextualized in the second MV, however I am not psychic or bilingual and thus will only be working with content released before August 20th 2021 and translated into English (which could cause some language/cultural details to be lost on me as translation is not a 1 to 1 process).

TW for discussions of ableism, child abuse, murder and animal death. Also this is really long so sorry to all the people that follow me for non-MILGRAM stuff

Firstly, I want to start on the topic of Haruka as a person. He is disabled. He does not have 'the mind of a child' (although he is 17, making him legally a minor in both North America and Japan). He is not just 'child-like'. And he is not mentally ill (well he might be, in the sense that many disabilities like Haruka's have strong comorbidities [where a person has two or more conditions but neither directly causes the other] with anxiety, depression and PTSD, but usually when I see people talk about him 'struggling with mental illness' they go on to refer to aspects of his disability). Sometimes on tumblr, people like myself, will see canonical traits written into a character and identify them as being traits associated with our disabilities/mental illness and headcanon them as such. Sometimes this even involves saying things like "It's basically canon!" Although we understand that these characters were probably not the result of a writer intending to write a disabled person. When I say that Haruka is being written as a person with a neurodevelopmental disability, I mean the writer intended to write a disabled character and wrote them in a way that they wanted the audience to pick up on. As an autistic person (which is one of many neurodevelopmental disorders and also something I probably didn't have to specify because who else would be writing an essay about a series they got into a few days ago at 11 o'clock at night) I really like how Haruka has been written so far. There's definitely some parts of him that have been exaggerated so abled normies can pick up on his disability (namely how his MV 's main motif is really child-like drawings) but the writers also included a lot of smaller details I appreciate like how it is noted he avoids eye contact when talking to other people and is depicted as nervously pulling at his sleeves in official artwork, or how he says he finds his prison uniform (which has tight straps) 'relaxing' and when he gets nervous/tense, he will dig his fingernails into the palm of his hands. (These last two potential being examples of 'self stimulation' [aka stimming] where a person seeks out specific sensory stimuli in order to help regulate their nervous system/emotions, in this case the tight uniform creates a comforting, secure feeling [you may have heard about some people preferring to sleep under weighted blankets for this reason] and digging nails into his palms sounds uncomfortable/painful but is done in an attempt to deal with a greater sensory discomfort caused by the situation/environment) I also appreciate the depth he is written with, he struggles to communicate verbally but in his MV and interactions with other inmates is shown to have insecurities, opinions and a consistent thought process (this is all basic character stuff but unfortunately not always present in disabled characters)

Also I want to add that (in terms of what we've been shown so far) Haruka did not kill anyone because of his disability/mental illness. Disabled people are not inherently more innocent than abled people. But there is no disability/mental illness where a symptom is that you kill people and real people have to live with the stigma when you speak carelessly and suggest things like "Haruka is the kind of mentally ill person who kills people as a cry for help" ���� (or at the very least real people have to read BS like that and cringe). TL;DR Haruka is less child-like and more onion-like (as in, he has layers) 🧅🧅🧅

Now is the actual theory stuff, oops:

Every prisoner in MILGRAM is supposed to have committed murder in some way, obviously considering Yuno just had an abortion (which i personally do not consider an act of murder) whilst Mu literally stabbed someone to death, this definition is stretched a bit. But it is not agreed upon yet who Haruka killed/how many people he killed or why he killed.

In his MV he is shown to have chased after his dog into a forest, seen something off-screen, then beaten something into a messy pulp with a rock. Some people think the dog is a red herring and that Haruka actually killed his mother/the girl from the fireworks show/his brother. I do not agree.

First: I believe Haruka when he says he doesn't have a brother. The MV literally starts by Haruka looking in the mirror and then switching between the him now

and a really similar looking younger child who just so happened to be a key feature of his memories (I don't have the vocabulary to explain it but its like cinematic parallels that establish this is the same person at different points of their life)

Its not impossible that this is Haruka's secret younger brother, but i think its unlikely. I saw someone saying they had to be different people because Haruka looks less happy than the child but like, most 17 year olds are less visibly happy than when they were 7 (or however old the child is meant to be). Life happens.

So when Haruka is shown pushing the child around and eventually strangling him, this isn't meant to be literal (homicide or suicide), but a representation of how conflicted Haruka feels about his younger self, who may have committed the murder (if you've ever been kept awake cringing at memories of something you said in the past and wishing you could go slap some sense into your former self, this is like that but 10 times more self loathing). The lyric "I am always repeating yesterday," implies he might think about this specific past event a lot.

Moving on, its pretty well accepted that Haruka's parents were abusive in some way and Haruka internalised a lot of it: he constantly apologises, he says in his interrogation questions that his one wish come true is that "[he] want[s] to be loved" and describes in his MV how when he couldn't find the words he was looking for ("you're unfair") one of his parents "would get angry at me and say “You’re hopeless.”". He seems to know its unfair but also still says he 'loves' his family, possibly mistakenly believing it is his fault, but also showing an awareness of his situation (and how his parents might behave).

Now, the MV is stylised in a way that makes certain details unclear, but there is one clear detail showing that Haruka's dog was killed

This is the first close up of Haruka and the dog. Haruka's mother is just out of frame supervising, but they look pretty happy. Notice how the puppy has a silvery chain for a collar. Somehow, this dog gets out of the house but only Haruka is shown chasing after it (whether his mother was searching elsewhere or didn't bother following her disabled son into the forest is unclear). Either way, young Haruka is now in the forest, unsupervised.

By the time he finds the dog, there is already blood, suggesting it was initally attacked by something else.

is this a sigh of relief from a boy whose finally found his beloved pet or a jealous weakling glad that nature took its course and he is finally free of that meddling mutt stealing all his mummy's attention? /j

I think this shock at the discovery that 'there is blood on his hands' could imply that rather than literally getting the blood from his dog, Haruka has seen his already injured dog and realises that if the dog got out because of him (he is previously shown to be aware his parents seem to blame him for everything) then he is the reason his dog is injured/dying and will be blamed for it. (this scene plays over the lyrics "It’s fine, though it’s really not It’s really fine, though I don’t really think so When I tried to understand it, You’ll make that disappointed face again" suggesting he is trying to avoid making his parents disappointed and letting the family pet escape into danger is something that could make them very disappointed)

now we get into rock murder (this is present-day Haruka implying that this is either: not how the scene really played out; the writers really wanting the audience to know that this was Haruka's doing and not someone else's; or this turns into a separate incident that happened much later [although note that the red sky and blue moon is the same as when young Haruka first appears at the start])

b the corpse is beyond mangled now, but its clearly the dog because the silver chain collar is still there, to the right of the body. (circled in red for your convenience :3)

My hypothesis is: Haruka didn't set out to kill his dog, but upon finding it injured (we don't know the severity aside from bleeding and also it not being able to run away from Haruka kneeling down above it w/ a big rock so it could range from treatable with a lot of vet help to already on death's door, TBH I don't think Haruka would know the difference) He knew he'd be blamed for this; made into a villain who let the poor puppy come to harm. He panicked and killed the dog out of some idea that it would make him the victim here (since he'd be found crying over a dog corpse, which might make a parent go comfort him rather than getting angry about what could've happened to the dog). This is over the lyrics: "I cried, I screamed I wanted to be a pitied and loved weakling I was in denial, I was in denial I just had to make sure I’ve become a victim, I’ve become a victim" (there's another theory that he was also jealous of the dog, which could work here too, since this is not some calculated plot; rather its a rash decision) This ties in with his Japanese song title (translated as Weakness) which is a play on a phrase sort of like "The strong eat, the weak do not" to become "The weak are eaten by society" or "The weak eat each other to survive" [once again I am reminding everyone this is based on second hand information from the youtube comments section (from users mitchki and Alphaistic) because I do not speak Japanese] This second meaning (The weak eat each other to survive) makes sense under the reading that Haruka killed his dog in order to 'survive' making his parents disappointed for the dog escaping.

Miscellaneous points:

We don't know where Haruka's necklace came from yet, it must be a gift since the most expensive thing he's ever bought was cotton candy. The younger child in the video isn't wearing it and neither is his mother or the girl in the purple dress.

Haruka's home seems quite big, at the start we can see a large flower garden outside the window and there's a forest in walking distance. This might suggest his family is quite wealthy

Haruka probably did go to school at some point as homeschooling is not a legally accepted as an alternative to public schools in Japan. (However it is estimated that up to 5000 families homeschool, this is uncommon) A lot (about 62%) of Japanese schools apparently have a 'special needs' classes and there are about 505 schools focused on educating intellectually disabled students (although I do not know which sort Haruka would've needed as whilst intellectual and development disabilities can be comorbid they aren't the same). Now, if children aged 7-14 don't go to school, their parents receive a fine, but its possible that if Haruka's parents are wealthy, they just paid it to avoid sending him to school. (This might imply they wanted to hide him or were generally ashamed of him in some way) However high school education (for students over 14) is not legally required and its likely that even if Haruka went to elementary/middle school, he hasn't been around people his own age in at least 3 years. As he seems quite lonely and glad that the other prisoners give him attention.

I don't think Haruka's parents are divorced and if they are, its not his father who left. Haruka mentions in the 30 questions that he thinks he disappointed his father. But still includes him as part of his family ("My father and mother and me"). A theory I've seen is that his father was disappointed by his son being disabled and left. but developmental disabilities (especially in non verbal and semi verbal children like Haruka) can be diagnosed before the age of 3, so I feel it is unlikely that Haruka would bring up his father if he left that early in Haruka's life

All MILGRAM prisoners have covered one of DECO*27's older vocaloid songs (DECO*27 is a well known producer who composes the music for MILGRAM) Haruka covered 'Two Breaths Walking' (https://youtu.be/puXLfVWrz2Q) which is about a boy's first relationship and how his mother's jealousy set him up for failure as the relationship becomes toxic (specifically it has some very funny out of context lines like "Whose breasts are you sucking on now?") so yeah, mommy issues: the song (Also: some people say in the song, the boy kills the girl at the end, but this isn't literal, TBW is the first of a trilogy of songs about the same relationship, it is followed by Android girl then Two Breaths Walking: Reloaded and the story resolves with the couple reuniting as adults and getting in the relationship again, although its not necessarily as abusive as before, its still implied to be codependant ending on the line 'We should live like oxygen tanks, sucking breathe from the words each of us exhale, until our last breathe')

In all seriousness, the scene where younger Haruka is walking through the city with his mother but it keeps repeating until older Haruka pulls the younger one away might indicate an attempt to focus the happier memories of his parents (since this is also over the lyrics "Why is it breaking? Tell me why? Please don’t change If I tried and couldn’t say it, You would get angry at me and say “You’re hopeless.”" which depict a worse scene) I think both his parents are still physically present but have become far more emotionally distant, not giving him as much attention, which exacerbates his loneliness from not having any friends his own age to talk to

And if one of his parents did leave? I think its likely his mother since she is shown disappearing out of his reach after the dog-incident (inferring she got angry/disappointed in Haruka anyway) This could also be where he got his necklace from: Its something his mother used to wear (although this is 100% a guess) and that's why its shown to be important to him

This one is just me, but i didn't realise until a rewatch that when Haruka is watching the younger him and the girl running together, the background has fireworks. Haruka mentions fireworks being a key memory to him so I wonder if this was one of the first/last times he got to make a friend...

On three separate occasions in the interrogation, Haruka mentions not liking animals. Despite this, he is depicted as sleeping with a rabbit plush and on his birthday art (I'd include that too but tumblr only allows 10 pictures per post, so here's a link) he is standing next to a giant blueberry and strawberry cake with two bunny themed biscuits at the side. Through my experiences of seeing Japanese fandom art on pixiv, sometimes rabbits are used to insinuate a character is cute and timid in fanart.

Meaningless details: Haruka sleeps with his necklace on; he sleeps on a bed and not a futon; at first I thought he woke up holding his plush's hand but his hand is merely next to the toy; and considering the state of the pillow and blanket, I wonder if he moves a lot in his sleep or if the is just because in this case he seems to be waking up from a nightmare about the dog incident...

Final note: I've spent so many hours writing this I don't remember if i was building up to any big finale or not but I hope you enjoyed reading this! Feel free to add on in the comments/reblogs.

[bbq-hawks-wings]

Who are your fave characters in bnha (aside from hawks) and your least liked. In a "i dont like this one as a character or/and as a person" kind of way or even they're just meh to you.

This is a good and surprisingly complicated question! I'll try to give at least three from each category with my reasoning as I like most of the characters for one reason or other but marking down favorites and least favorites is not as straightforward as I first thought.

I love that most of Horikoshi's characters are either loveable, likeable, enjoyable to hate, or leave a benevolently indifferent impression. There's not really many characters that get on my nerves for just existing.

Except Mineta. He can die in a ditch. But that's too easy for our purposes he doesn't count. This time...

Mina is a character I just really am drawn to every time she shows up. She's described as a people person, and as a cautious introvert who often feels the need to put on appearances to make friends in a "you do not have a high enough friendship level to unlock my tragic backstory" kind of way, I feel like if she were a person I could just relax and enjoy myself around her. She isn't dismissive of people's real fears or insecurities and prefers to let herself be the best she is right now in all of her dumbass glory. I really, really love her even if I don't give her a lot of love often.

Iida is another character I gravitate towards despite not showcasing him often. I'm just always happy to see him and his dorky, admirable self. It's like you could look up "square" in the dictionary and his picture would apply to basically all possible definitions, but it's a good thing. He's conscious and proactive even if he seems overbearing, and it's just his way of protecting his family and friends' security and happiness. It makes me feel like I would be safe and cared for in his presence, you know? Bonus points for his wholesome adoration of his big brother (who is also a majorly underappreciated background character, imo), and I can't help but headcanon him as autistic. I literally can't not see it every time he shows up at this point.

Gotta give the last spot to Fatgum. Another detail about Horikoshi's character writing I adore is that the "obvious" thing about a character usually does not end up taking up the bulk of their characterization or is usually never focused on for too long. They have lives and identities outside of one or two traits. Being huge and fat like Fatgum in a Japanese society that usually runs smaller and thinner than the rest of the world (and that is never canonically shied away from) would usually be focus of his entire character in most other series. Here, it's just a blip on his entire sheet - an important one to be sure, but it's just been embraced as a part of who he is from so far back it's beyond old news for him. Confidence, focus, determination, and enabling others' personal growth is where it's at as far as he's concerned, and I am here for it! He's just so set and comfortable in his skin that he's got more than enough to give others a boost if he can offer it.

Horikoshi has a lot of empathetic characters that feel more like people than tropes (especially in the world of anime overrun with cookie cutter personalities to fill flashy but otherwise empty character designs), so there aren't many characters I just genuinely don't like or care for. That said, there has been a pattern I've been noticing, and wouldn't you know it happens to correlate with traits I don't like in real people, either.

I cannot stand people who can never admit they can be wrong. I mean those people that might say how everyone in their family or all their last group of friends hate them/left them or how their ex was crazy and when you ask if maybe they had any idea why they go, "OMG, I don't know! 😭😭😭 I just can't seem to find anyone who will love me for who I am, warts and all. 😇😇😇"

Sure, Jan.

So about the villains! To be fair, not even close to all the villains fit this bill. Most of them I either unironically love (like Rappa and Gentle Criminal) or love to hate (Dabi and Shigaraki). It just so happens that no "hero" character happens to grate or push my buttons in a way that leaves me either negatively ambivalent towards them or outright hating them. (Save one...)

Toga. Get your pitchforks, folks! BBQ is on the menu! I actually don't hate her or even dislike her. She's just not a character I can have sympathy for for very long. In a situation I couldn't just walk away from and hope to never see her again, she'd get some stern words a la Ochako a long time ago. Especially at her age I get where she's coming from and how she feels, but while asking people to just conform without question under threat of punishment is not inherently good, it's not unreasonable in her case and it's troubling she seemed to one day snap and decide she was being unduly repressed and killed someone when she looked like she otherwise had a normal life. I completely give her some grace for clearly having an "pretend it isn't there and it'll go away" kind of help, but she's capable (at least now) of realizing why people are repulsed by her behavior and that it's not unfounded. She needs much better help than what she got and certainly more than what the League offers.

I have similar problems with Spinner. He has a reasonable-enough justification for wanting to lash out at broader society, but he largely refused to help himself before the League of Villains and he'll always be working with a handicap in my book thanks to that. If he was living with parents and couldn't escape to a larger city with more inclusive attitudes towards heteromorphs I could understand, but it looked like he lived alone and either managed to finance his lifestyle or supplemented with government aid anyway, so points lost there as well. He relies on others to give him meaning, first Stain and then Shigaraki; and even then only acts on it because they give him permission to act out his aggressions in an environment that doesn't hold him accountable for it or ask him to do something constructive to change it. That came out harsher than I intended, but I really am not able to give him much room either way in this case.

Monoma. Ah, yes. The Exception™. Sorry, buddy. It's not like I don't get it. You've got a lot more in common with Bakugo than you probably like, but your brand of inferiority complex is just... Unhinged? Grossly inappropriate and misplaced? My dude, you gotta stop trying to knock others down to make yourself feel better by comparison, you can and will destroy your life doing that. I get that having a quirk that requires you to play second-fiddle is infuriating, but that's where you really need to leverage your individuality and be certain what defines your character in a vacuum. At that point you can find a way to leverage other's quirks in ways even they can't because of the sole fact that they aren't you. I know easier said than done, but I am rooting for you, buddy!

That was fun! Thanks for the ask! It's interesting to break down my gut feelings about the characters like this. I enjoyed it a lot!

[lavender-buck]

Hello, Laurence! I am writing a novel and I need your help. I am writing a character with autism, and I most definitely want to portray him as accurately as possible, seeing that I don't have it myself. The story is told through his best friend, Zyah, and I was wondering how to portray his autism through his friends without butchering it. You do not have to answer this question if you don't want to, but it would certainly be helpful so I can his autism as accurately and real as possible!

Hello Anon! I can’t answer very well in just one ask, but I can vaguely give some tips on stuff some people tend to slip up on/not think of! I really don’t mind this so don’t worry, I’m happy to educate people! If you would like something more in-depth or accurate to what you’d like to know, feel totally free to come off anon asks and message me, or you can send more asks like this. It’s up to you. c:

Don’t try too hard to shove it in there. To be honest, a lot of people just think I’m a little bit weird if they don’t know, all they see is a guy who gets a bit excited sometimes and is a picky eater and other very small details like that. Unless your character is severely autistic, remember that he’s still just like any other person too.

On the other hand, I still stim in public and touch things a lot if I think they’d feel good, so there’s no shame in him showing it either. It depends. I also sometimes get overly excited in public and my mother says I raise my voice or talk very fast, and once I calm down and look back on it I notice it too. Excitement and stimming are hard to stop even in public! So are negative sensory experiences, but I’ll get to that.

Stimming can be anything really, but we do it a lot and it’s most commonly flapping our hands (”Happy flaps”), making small noises (Clicking, tapping, rubbing clothing fabric together), touching or adjusting our clothing, touching something we like (A keychain, shirt, rock, etc), rocking on our feet, bouncing, swaying… You can be creative! I wave/shake/jiggle my hands in front of myself and my mom calls them “Jazz hands”, and I sometimes do them with a fist instead. A little bit off track but my mom finds it really funny and laughs and waves her hands too because she knows it means I’m happy about something. Even if he won’t do it in public, most of us will do it with our friends and around others we feel safe with. 

Bad sensory can be anything too, so be creative. Though it’s most commonly food, clothing, lights, sounds, or showers. Some of us may not like a certain fabric or shirt cut. Some of us may HATE crunchy foods. Some people hate certain noises. When faced directly with the bad feeling, as a child I would literally find something sharp like a pen and stab myself with it or rip my flesh out in chunks just to focus on any other feeling. I got angry and screamed and cried. Some of us gag, some of us get violent, some of us just cry in a ball… I’d rather have my finger chopped off than eat a hamburger, to be honest. I won’t go into detail but I hate the texture and flavor and it makes me sick for DAYS just thinking about it. Sick as in like… HURK– BLEEEEGGHHH. Now’a’days I can hold it together kinda but if I wear a fucking sock I’m gonna bawl my eyes out and find something to destroy as violently as possible even if it’s just an empty cereal box. That shit does NOT feel okay. Your main character may have to help his friend with this a lot, so be prepared to think of what calms your autistic character down. Pressure stimming (Hugs or heavy blankets), soft talking, etc?

Onto a lighter note! Let’s talk about special interests and obsessions. An autistic person can have more than one, contrary to popular belief. Usually though they’ll have one BIG one, a favorite thing, and one or two other smaller things. For me, my big thing is Armin and my smaller things are taking care of animals (I particularly love fishkeeping and dogs though) and cooking. They can also change! When I was a child, my special interest was Pokemon! I would memorize all the names and numbers and Pokedex entries in English AND Japanese and look up every bit of information possible and buy ANYTHING Pokemon I saw regardless of WHAT it was and I would never shut up about it and I’d talk about it until my mouth got dry and my spit foamy. Special interests can be ANYTHING. I know of a boy who’s interest was trains. I know another who’s into dinosaurs. I recently talked to one guy who was into Lush products. Literally. ANYTHING. A person, an animal, a hobby, an item, a machine… Anything can be a special interest. What are your character’s special interest(s)? How do they react when they see it or talk about it?

How about childishness? This can be controversial. Some autistic people are mentally younger than their physical age, while others aren’t affected. It depends on severity of the disability, and what symptoms they have. For example, I have an adopted cousin in his mid-20′s but he’ll always be an 8 year old boy mentally. Meanwhile there are people like me. Some people even temporarily regress in age. Autistic people being cutesy-wootsy babies is a very harmful and popular stereotype, though it’s true for some. Just not NEARLY as many of us as you may think. I myself have a LOT of childish habits, to be honest. I can ignore it and fess up but I feel like most of us do temporarily or partially regress at least SOMETIMES. This does not discredit us from being functioning human beings though, and it does not make us actual children if we aren’t literal kids. I can like my stuffies and blanket and being babytalked and still get my taxes done, and so can other autistic people. Is your character mature? Are they mentally stuck at one age? Do they act small and young and vulnerable when they’re upset or after calming down from excitement? Do they secretly or even openly carry stuffed animals around, watch kid’s shows, etc? Does this affect them in any way?

F O O D. Most of us will practically jump off a bridge for food, or at least certain ones. Maybe it’s the texture, or flavor, or smell, or the fact that they stim with their mouth, but food is a Godsend. I like to feel things with my mouth but I know better than to do that because of germs or choking hazards. So when I eat, I LOVE EATING!!!!!!!!!!!!! CRUNCHY FOODS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ALSO GRAINY FOODS!!! We will eat anything we like, it seems. Sand is one of my favorite things in the world, and as a kid I used to go to the beach hungry on purpose so I could eat as much sand as possible. To this day I still drool thinking about the texture, it’s so GOOD in your mouth. It is not pretty, no, but it is funny in a gross way and I joke about it a LOT. I had to be curbed off literally eating sand and rocks, and now I cope by putting way too many bread crumbs on my mac ‘n’ cheese (My mom says my personal mac ‘n’ cheese bake is like eating on the beach on a windy day, haha!) or eating grits, or crunching hard candies into that texture. I also now have to portion my food very carefully and with rules because I would over-eat SOOOOO badly. A ton of us over-eat because we love eating SO much. What foods does your character like? Do they eat non-food items, or want to? Is this an endearing trait of theirs, or a weakness/gross one? Do they find it funny, or is it embarrassing? Does it make them chubby?

Last but not least, read through the first thing I said again. People tend to try too hard when writing autistic characters, which only pushes them to seem like the fake stereotype. Write a person, not an illness - We’re just people with interesting quirks and like I said most people don’t even KNOW I’m autistic, they just think I’m a tiny bit eccentric. There are definitely challenges or noticeable things when you have an autistic friend or loved one, but all in all we’re just people. 

Good luck, and feel free to message me or something if you need more or I didn’t answer how you needed.