not to be mentally ill on main* but my latest hobby has been deciding that everyone or almost everyone in a canon is autistic, actually, and reinterpreting all of their actions and language through that lens
oh this character is anti-social and has weird habits and loves speaking a certain way and loves talking about a certain subject-- he is fuckin autistic, my guys
like fuck it i've seen so many different kinds of autistic folks especially on tiktok, ESPECIALLY now that people know masking is a thing you could make a case for so many characters
Yeah I do the "well obviously they're autistic" thing too. Like in FFXIV, at least to me, it's so fucking obvious that Alphinaud and Alisaie (the pair of twins that follow the PC around for those unfamiliar) are autistic. Probably a couple others too.
(i mean it's said changeling children were just people trying to explain autism in the past, and urianger even began to come out of his shell around the faeries.......)
so even people that seem to perform way better socially might actually be aspec and taking off that limitation kinda.. idk, makes it more obvious to myself why it's so much easier for me to understand fictional characters than real people
the art of soul eater is v emotional and beautiful imo too, it's not the SAME as beastars but if you like paru's emotional use of black you will enjoy the use in soul eater
my first time reading through unbelievable gwenpool in like 2015 i decided within like the first three issues that gwen is autistic and that’s still something i firmly believe
Futaba from Persona 5 is all but canonically autistic, Yusuke though I'm actually stuck on because in his case it could just be really shitty socialization.
autistic also fits well with cid being apparently a miserable taskmaster to work under - he doesn't quite get that his own working pace is kind of absurd and that not everyone can really handle that level of Output
Not to get serious in a mostly light-hearted plurk, but pokemon being inherently autistic because of an autistic creator does bring up a Thought I've been having. As an autistic writer, does that mean any character I write is also autistic? Am I capable of writing a neurotypical character at all?
frankly characters that focus too hard on BEING NT get boring anyway bc the hallmarks people use to identify NT people are like, not really... interesting narrative points. they're perfectly fine attributes for a real human being but not like, novel
Like say I don't headcanon character A as being on the spectrum while I do for character B. So I want to write the characters differently, but... is that something I'm able to do, as an autistic writer? It's not really a Big Deal or anything, I just think about it sometimes.
neurotypicals are most likely to assume that MOST characters are neurotypical in the first place, and characters that are attempting to BE autistic or other ND portrayals are actually just interpreted as "weird" to them
so like whether or not YOU believably see the character as "not seeming autistic", neurotypicals are most likely to assume that character is neurotypical until proven otherwise in the first place
it's like with gay shit, straight people assume everyone is straight until proven otherwise and it's like straight isn't the default, blah blah, that whole shebang but applied to neurodivergence
And so back to light-heartedness. I was thinking about other characters and I landed on the Phoenix Wright universe (please keep in mind I've only played the original trilogy as I say this).
most of his decisions aren't spurred on by his own action, they're spurred on by the feys or by someone else he doesn't actually take on most of his cases by himself either
yeah he's 100% one of those cases that don't get diagnosed for like fucking ever because, like, depression is feeling sad, right? it's not depression if I'm just lying on the couch all day because I can't be assed to do anything--
honestly if he didn't conveniently remember he cared about people when people showed back up in his life he probably would never have pursued finding out what happened with Edgeworth, either
which is a reason why i'm always bothered people are like HE ONLY BECAME A LAWYER TO SAVE EDGEWORTH because like, there were. other fuckin motives, especially if you actually finished the trilogy, and it wasn't particularly 'saving' him as much as it was wanting to know why the fuck he started being such an exploitive asshole instead of a D.A.
Also apparently I read Nick's depression completely wrong (mumblemumble) years ago because I just. Never thought about it. At worst I just thought he was tired or maybe not a lot of time had passed or. Hell I don't know.
because they're supposed to be 'sad' and Phoenix really isn't THAT sad, or at least not an amount of sad that doesn't reflect the circumstances he lives with
it also doesn't help that in the very first game we don't get many reasons "why" he would get depression (obviously IRL it's simply a matter of having a chemical imbalance, but for storytelling there tends to be a motive)
but when we get into the flashback cases it makes a lot more sense why an art student who became a lawyer because he was saved by one when his girlfriend tried to frame him for murder might be more inclined to have a chemical imbalance
I think that might be what I thought back at the start of the second game. "Oh his boyfriend is gone, that is upsetting, I understand that." Fuck that was like over ten years ago now I think.
it was apparently a lot more apparent that Edgeworth Gave Up and did not actually try to kill himself in Japanese, but considering we're reading ADHD/Autism into this interpretation, phoenix's strong inner sense of justice also explains why he'd be pretty unforgiving about it
especially when what Phoenix wanted out of the situation was not for edgeworth to even give up being a lawyer, but to go back to being a DA like his dad
I think this is great! I have seen it go sour though way too often, though, with like.... idk, tumblrites for instance being like "oh, X character is autistic, so I am suddenly going to assign EVERY AUTISTIC STEREOTYPE to them"
wrt Phoenix Wright having depression.... I never thought of it that way tbh. I think partly because he is supposed to be the somewhat "normal" "everyman" but it makes sense
i am all about people reinventing this shit too as long as they give themselves credit for the interpretation instead of insisting there was any actual work done on the part of the creators when there wasnt
but i feel that way with supposed queercoding/queerbaiting too sometimes a character really IS written to be queer but sometimes YOU are doing the work to interpret them as queer, and YOU deserve the credit, not the creator
for instance it's really frustrating to me and other Puerto Ricans that Miles Morales is like "canonically" puerto rican but there isnt any visual information in his possessions to do so which might seem like "but no one is OBLIGATED to show theyre puerto rican, luc, that seems invalidating" BUT
part of the reason puerto ricans get made fun of by others is our tendancy to "show it off" and bring it up whenever we can but there is a cultural reason for that
so in the modern day, much like queer pride, Puerto Ricans continue to protest the suppression of our identity by being LOUDLY AND UNABASHEDLY PUERTO RICAN and REMINDING YOU WHENEVER WE CAN
so if Puerto Ricans were drawing him in Puerto Rican rep or writing about him being Puerto Rican, I would STILL say that the fans did more representation work in that regard than Marvel
and I see a lot of "how to write characters of color" that basically go "don't make them vaguely Latino/Asian/Middle Eastern/etc", do your research and pick something more specific than that
you cant just pick puerto rican as a way to make him more interesting there are OTHER types of Latino to be with plenty more reason to not be as connected to their culture
you could make a case for so many characters
As an autistic writer, does that mean any character I write is also autistic? Am I capable of writing a neurotypical character at all?
It's not really a Big Deal or anything, I just think about it sometimes.
I was thinking about other characters and I landed on the Phoenix Wright universe (please keep in mind I've only played the original trilogy as I say this).
Phoenix: YES
Edgeworth: Could make an argument for.
he doesn't actually take on most of his cases by himself either
sometimes a character really IS written to be queer
but sometimes
YOU are doing the work to interpret them as queer, and YOU deserve the credit, not the creator
which might seem like "but no one is OBLIGATED to show theyre puerto rican, luc, that seems invalidating" BUT
but there is a cultural reason for that
there are OTHER types of Latino to be with plenty more reason to not be as connected to their culture