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ashintheairlikesnow · 4 years

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hi ash! i know you said before that you're not autistic you just did a lot of research to depict chris realistically- do you have any advice for finding resources on writing disabled characters that isn't like... horribly abelist? im writing someone with an intellectual disability from head trauma and who is nonverbal, and i want to get it right but everything online seems very autism-speaks-y. im autistic and semiverbal but i dont have an id and i want to be realistic and respectful.

I cannot speak with any expertise or sense of speaking from enough experience to be taken as an expert here, and defer as always to those with lived experience with intellectual disability!

But I will give a few more general tips for what to do when looking to write a character with a neurological makeup that doesn’t match your own, as far as what has worked for me with Chris:

1. The story should never be ABOUT their lived experience if you do not also have it. Chris’s story is not about autism, or being autistic. I would never presume to try and write a story like that because, whatever my intentions, I don’t have that knowledge that comes from living it. I would at BEST be taking the experiences of others, their voices. At worst, I would be someone standing with a megaphone shouting over those who deserve to be heard.

Making the disability what the plot revolves around is... generally just not going to be a good idea, in any sense. It’s moments like this where I feel like it’s best to defer to the writers who have lived it, instead.

This is not to say “never write someone different than yourself”, because... I don’t think that’s at all good advice. I think that way lies stunted writers who never push themselves. But it does mean “do not center the story on this thing if you have not experienced it and don’t have that knowledge and understanding”.

2. At the same time, don’t try to be coy or dance around or hide the disability behind purple prose or refuse to acknowledge its reality. Trying to make a disability sound cute, or talk around it instead of speaking it out loud, can be minimizing or shaming in ways that I think it’s easy to miss, if you don’t live with that disability yourself! To me, this touches on one of my hugest pet peeves - characters who are written as having a particular neurodivergence in media, or shown on tv, but they never expressly admit to it or name it.

I know I hesitated with Chris, more because I didn’t feel comfortable giving him a diagnosis until I understood autism better myself, and I do regret how long it took me to embrace that reality about him. I just thought it better to err on the side of researching before I embraced. But I do feel some guilt about waiting so long when I had readers who were identifying so heavily with him, and I kind of knew, but just didn’t feel comfortable owning it yet.

3. On a related note - disabilities in a story that become melodramatic tragedy or turn the disabled character into a ‘redemption story’ for an abled character. This is so, so prevalent in common media and pop culture and once you recognize it for what it is, it’s so hard to not see it in so many places. Think of how many movies, novels, etc contain a disabled character who exists to teach abled people some virtuous lesson about living life to the fullest or ‘what it really means to be human’ blah blah blah blah blah. Don’t do that. Please. (I mean, I kind of feel like you definitely won’t, but I’m just speaking very generally here). If you find the story going in a direction in which abled people learn something from the disabled person, please think very carefully and critically as to why the story is heading in that direction.

Language alone can also be a problem here - think about the difference between openly describing a character moving around their life with a wheelchair vs. calling them “wheelchair-bound” or “reliant on a cane”, when the cane or wheelchair may actually represent freedom to that person - an aid they need, yes, but one that allows them to live with far more agency than they might have had otherwise.

To describe them, especially from their own POV, as “wheelchair-bound”, may ring false to disabled people who understand that the wheelchair isn’t a cage, but a tool that allows that individual person to feel less caged by being able to more freely leave home.

(This varies person to person, just providing an example)

4. Educate. Research. And don’t just do so by asking people with disabilities to tell you their stories. I often express gratitude to the autistic readers, those with ADHD, etc who spoke up about Chris, talked about their own experiences, identified with him, found him very resonating for aspects of their own lives.

These stories, this information, this sharing of their lives was given freely to me, and I’m fucking amazed and grateful for how welcomed Chris was, and how willing readers were to share about themselves when talking about him.

Their willingness to speak about these things is something I treasure. But I absolutely would never believe that a single person owed me the story of their life to make sure I got Chris right. That was my responsibility, you know? I try to keep in mind the concept of ‘emotional labor’. Asking a disabled person to be your resource is asking them to give, and give, and give of themself. They may want to give you that kind of labor, they may not. But I definitely wouldn’t ask it of anyone without understanding it was something they were happy or felt comfortable giving.

Research, on the other hand, is essential. You mentioned things being “autism speaks-y” when trying to research on your own, and oh god, do I feel you. It sucks that autism speaks is the first thing to pop up when trying to research the lives of autistic people - and in my research, I was lucky to already know AS sucks and write them off and anyone who heavily referenced them as not helpful. I can see how someone might not know that, though, and stumble on them and believe they were a helpful resource for writing autism when they... well. Nope.

Try to think about the express disability you are writing for this person, and why, and then go research! I looked up “books on autism recommended by autistic people”, and found some invaluable books, yes, but also papers published online, websites, etc! Each of them vetted and looked over and recommended by autistic people, so I knew I was getting information that came from people with those experiences and that understanding. A good example - I picked up a book on the history of diagnosis and treatment of autism in the United States, mentioned it here, and @redwingedwhump recommended a book called Neurotribes... which turned out to be immensely more helpful, spot-on, and provided some really excellent foundational information I wouldn’t have found in the first book at all.

There’s a lot of information out there on Traumatic Brain Injuries and their lasting effects on individuals who receive them, so I would start there. What you’re describing sounds like a TBI with lasting effects! So I would start your research there, and also look up being nonverbal separately, as well as combining the two. Make sure you’re not just looking at the top links - often paid ads or problematic organizations that are able to pay more for better exposure - but also scanning for blogs, nonprofits, lived-experiences stories, too.

I found a lot of information on the second or even third page of results i would never have seen if I only stuck to the first. Remember the algorithm on search engines is usually showing you what other people are clicking on, not necessarily the best source.

5. This is one you the asker already know, but I want to include it for general reasons: do not ‘dumb down’ the thought processes of a nonverbal or semi-verbal person. I see this in fiction surprisingly often, and I think it’s this sense we have as abled people (’we’ just meaning I’m including myself) that being verbal is required to have a highly complex thought process, and it’s... it’s just fucking not. Speech and though are related but not completely wound around each other, and the ability to verbalize is not the same as the ability to think.

Like I said, I know you know this, asker, but it’s something I see in fiction/media and it drives me up the wall. So I wanted to include it.

6. For the love of God, do not use medical terminology unless you actually know what you’re doing/talking about. Many disabled people or those with serious medical conditions become what amounts to experts on their own diagnoses, because they have to. They have to be experts to receive the care they should be able to rely on. If you constantly fuck up terminology - trust me - it will be noticed, and it will take people out of the story or hurt their ability to suspend disbelief while reading.

There are ways to do medical scenes/conversations with doctors that avoid falling into this problem! I would just be very very careful to heavily research before using any complex terminology.

7. This disabled person does not exist to evoke pity. They are a human - nuanced and multi-layered - living their life, and their story should always, always reflect that. I don’t really have anything else to add to that.

I would love to hear further advice from anyone with anything else to add.

#writing advice #writing

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bigskydreaming · 5 years

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fhalkfhaklfhlkak i hate this

TW really truly literally ruined the word ‘spark’ for me. Like the whole damn word. I hear it now and I’m like, NOPE, like...idk, some people who cringe when they hear the word moist or panties. Apologies to anyone who hates those words and cringed, i dont actually know if thats a thing or if like, I just have weird friends. Probably just the latter.

But anyways, Im just like...lmfao. Its so visceral too? Like I have this one original project, Waveriders, that I’ve been fiddling with off and on in the background of other projects for awhile, might have talked about it on here, idk, I don’t keep track.

Basically its a far future sci-fi novel/setting for linked shorter works set on a gas giant that was settled by humans who figured that they can’t possibly be stepping on anyone’s toes there, its a freaking gas giant, hello, no one’s home, right? They literally have to make their own ground by using technology to form anti-gravity wells in the habitable zone of the atmosphere and like, make floating cities and then these kind of buoys scattered across the planet that create these electromagnetic currents that flow in specific ‘routes’ between the cities, and people travel between them in these flying ships that use magnetized hulls and solar sails to ride these currents, and blah blah blah, yada yada yada, bc like, why would I resist an opportunity to have floating cities and sky pirates and ancient cyborg machine dragons? Doesn’t make sense.

Anyway, so couple thousand years after settling this planet, and by then for Plotty Reasons there are people who have what’s called waveriding abilities, like they can ‘hack’ certain wavelengths or types of energy and manipulate them in various ways, but only one kind of energy per person, and they each have their own little names and niches.

So, y’know, basically just like ATLA, except for like, its energy powers and there are cyborg machine dragons and floating cities and sky pirates, obvsly. Plus areas of totally fucked up gravity called the badlands that are all like, criminal underworld metropolis because normal people are like lol nope, we like it when up is up and down is down, all of this is very just...nope. And also because shocking and totally unexpected plot twist, they were totally wrong about the planet being uninhabited just cuz it didn’t have Earth type ground...like, so in addition and on top of and in conjunction with all of the above and whatnot, there are these beings called Chaos Angels, that are basically like sentient quantum waveforms that can take any shape or appearance, but just, have no physical substance and yet are really good at faking that they’re not totally there when they fuck with humans, which they do a lot, because well. Why not, y’know?

But other than that, its exactly like ATLA. I’m a derivative hack. I disgust myself, truly I do.

BUT the point of this particular synaptic misfire aka ADHD ramble, is that so, okay, these different types of not!benders are all called waveriders as an overall umbrella term, but with ten different subsets of this in total, right? So people who can ‘hack’ light and manipulate it in various ways are called brightriders, and people who are tuned into soundwaves are called echo-riders, and some can manipulate the more electricity-skewed side of the electromagnetic spectrum and those are shockriders and the ones who skew more to the magnetic side are steelriders but I’m probably gonna change that because it sounds like a porno? Yeah no, just saw it outside of my notes for the first time and can confirm, definitely sounds like a porno so they’re not gonna be called steel-riders, but they will be called something steel-rider-esque. You get it.

And then there are the five weird ones that people aren’t totally quite sure how their waveriding shticks work because the kinds of energy they hack aren’t like....the kinds that work in the same way as the others with their easily discernible and patternistic wavelengths, and scientists and scholars are always arguing like but skyriders aren’t even in the same FIELD as the other waverider types because gravity isn’t even an actual ENERGY, just because we talk about gravity waves doesn’t mean they’re remotely the same thing as lightwaves, they make no SENSE, and I’m just like hahaha, I am your god, fictional scientists. Fucking deal with it. Plus it does make sense, you just don’t know the Secret Rules and Logistics that I do, pfft.

Anyway, so the other types are boomriders who hack kinetic energy and skyriders of course obviously manipulate gravity, and then the last three are really weird, and super rare and thus don’t really have set names and just have lots of nicknames and are often just thought to be rumors. So those are the bio-riders who manipulate chemical energy though it often gets mistakenly referred to or just handwaved as being ‘life energy’ as though that’s a thing, ugh future way advanced people are so dumb sometimes, honestly. But so they can manipulate biological processes in various ways and do things with healing and also hurting, and basically just don’t piss one off ever. Like. You’ll die. And then there’s the psi-riders, who are essentially psychics and hack brainwaves, and I’m not at all bitter that I lack the balls to just go for broke and call them ghost riders like I want to, because ghost riders obviously sounds way cooler?? But also, Marvel would definitely sue?? Because they’re just, like that.

And like, the last of the Weird Ones are the ones so super rare and also so hard to actually....tell if someone actually IS one, that most people think they don’t actually even exist and are just an unsubstantiated like, theoretical idea some scientist had once while high and then just, never shut up about so eventually the idea caught on. And those are the quantum-riders, or luck-riders, basically they theoretically manipulate quantum wavelengths in ways that are almost impossible to identify, like theoretically they wouldn’t even know they were doing it? Anyway, so lots of times, what are actually quantum-riders are just jealously thought to be like, really fucking lucky assholes. Even though the way their powers work really don’t have anything to do with luck or even probability, specifically, like that’s a simplistic approximation and its more like they manipulate possibilities but also shut up me, nobody cares.

ANYWAY, people who can count and who actually bothered to would probably notice by now like the funky little geniuses they are that all of those still only adds up to nine. And that’s because of the last one, the one that SHOULD go up in the brightrider, shockrider, notpornIswear!steel-rider hierarchy or taxidermy or whatever the fuck. And these are the ones who manipulate what’s essentially thermal energy, or more accurately the microwave-skewing side of the ultraviolet spectrum whereas brightriders are just the ones who skew more to the infrared side of it.

And the long and short of all of this Unnecessary-ness and the source of my fit of pique and ensuing ramble-palooza....is that ORIGINALLY, they were SUPPOSED to be called sparkriders.

But OBVIOUSLY I can’t call them that anymore, because like. I tried, and I was like ugh you drama queen slash whiny pissbaby, it was just a shitty teen supernatural show and SPARK WAS NEVER EVEN CANON, do not let THEM win and ruin a perfectly good classification name! But I did. I did let it ruin them, and its. Well. Its a problem, because I kept thinking up ways to kill off the sparkrider characters for absolutely no reason at all instead of like....thinking up ways to make the plot do what it was outlined to do in their parts of the story.

This may come like, way out of left field, and just SHOCK and STUN and BEWILDER some of you, like....no way, srsly? But yeah, true story, among my many canon mental neuroses like ADHD, PTSD, magical depression hour and super fun anxiety like....there is a tiny possibility (aka actual diagnosis) that while I don’t talk about this much, or ever really, I do have a smidge of ye old OCD? Its not like, a big thing and doesn’t really affect my daily routines and that’s pretty much why I never usually bring it up or list it alongside the rest of the crap on my neurodivergence resumé or whatever, because like, there’s already WAY too many misconceptions out there about what OCD actually is and what constitutes it, and tons of people are always jokingly but also thinking they’re kinda half serious, like ‘oh I’m so OCD about this and this and that’ and its like. LOL. Are you though? You sure?

Anyway, but point being, the way mine manifests for me is like...not actually a problem? Like, I don’t actually have any REAL complaints about it at all, just half-assed little fits of pique ones like this, which is the other part of why I never bring it up, because too often ppl just can’t fathom that OCD or even any kind of neurodivergence can be...WANTED, or a good thing, and lololol, that’s ableism, folks. But its true, I don’t actually mind mine at all, even if it occasionally makes things frustrating, when I get stuck like I am now. But the flip side of it is....its actually a pretty huge part of my creativity and just the way my mind works in general....like, what people accredit to me being particularly insightful about character analysis or drawing connections or stuff like that in meta or fics or my novels or worldbuilding...that’s what it is. That’s my OCD in action.

My brain like...REQUIRES that I find patterns in....pretty much everything. Even day to day mundane stuff too, though like I said, its mild enough there that it doesn’t fuck with my routines too much, but like, I have to order things into nice, neat patterns and groupings. And if there aren’t any that are immediately obvious, I kinda pretty much HAVE to dig deeper until I find some on a slightly deeper level, something beneath the surface or first glance, and keep going until I find something.....or worst case scenario, I have to like....add stuff and embellish and fill in gaps with my own ‘content’ until I have the rough edges rounded off into something that CAN be stacked neatly atop some other part of the story or whatever it is I’m focusing on? And the obsessive-compulsive part for me is like, lol, I gotta find it SOMEWHERE, SOMEHOW.

My brain literally won’t shut off or grudgingly accept being diverted to a different subject until I’ve made some kind of pattern or flowchart or classification system. It will literally keep me up for hours, going over the same things over and over from every angle until I find SOME way to....reassemble or restructure it in some nice, neat little order of some type. I mean that’s basically what it is. My brain insists on me forming some semblance of order out of any glimpse I have of what I would otherwise term creative chaos. And it won’t give up until it gets what it wants, which when you throw in my ADHD and how often I’ll get derailed off on slight tangents but with my OCD then sooner or later forcing me back to the original focus, rinse and repeat ad nauseam....like. LOL. I learned to operate on very little sleep from a pretty young age by necessity, its just...my brain, dudes. Its just like that.

But the perks are like, I pretty much think this is WHY I’m so creative....because my brain, for as long as I can remember, has always just kinda....forced me to be? Also probably has a lot to do with well...eh, I don’t need to talk about that right now. Whatever. Anyway, point being, so....I do like the end results very much so, and for all its....Why Must You Be Like This eccentricities, I’m quite attached to my brain and would not be very likely to agree to a trade even were one possible. I mean don’t get me wrong, I could do without the PTSD and anxiety, if we’re just, like....talking some pruning shears or whatever, but the actual creative machinery, I’m keeping. Ultimately it just means I really fucking like patterns and finding patterns or making patterns where previously there were none, or at least none that were easy to spot.

But ugh, man, these are the rare times when I’m like omg, just call it a day, we don’t ACTUALLY have to come up with the perfect replacement name for that one relatively small and insignificant detail of a much larger story that isn’t even in the Top Ten list of my main priorities at the moment. And my asshole of a brain is just like....yeah no, we gotta. You know the rules dude, you decided it was official, that name didn’t work anymore and was never gonna, so now we gotta find a replacement or else things will be UNEVEN?? The pattern will be...missing a piece? There will be CHAOS AND ANARCHY IN THE STREETS THAT RUNNETH OVER WITH BLOOD? IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT??

And so I’m like....literally sitting here googling synonyms for spark because I’m just like that sometimes, lmfao. Oh and of course its gotta be a GOOD replacement, naturally. I can’t just shoehorn in a somewhat acceptable substitute that in the back of my mind I’m expecting to only be temporary, until I come up with something better. See, because my brain will KNOW, and it will NOT be okay with that, because that is CHEATING. And my brain, apparently, has strong feelings about cheating, which is weird and fairly unexpected of me, IMO.

Anyway, kudos to anyone who actually read through that instead of scrolling, I honestly have zero idea why I felt like sharing it, I just did and thus I did. *shrugs*

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otdderamin · 7 years

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How the "Wednesday Club" Helped Normalize Autism

Geek & Sundry has a new show called the "Wednesday Club" where Amy Dallen, Taliesin Jaffe, and Matt Key discuss comics to make them accessible. Wednesday at noon PST on Twitch and Alpha (taking questions from Twitch chat). It's a fabulous show. They do a good job of talking about broad topics without getting too into the nitty gritty of a particular story. They're really good about checking themselves when they do get detailed and explaining the specific character, comic, or plot better. It's easy to follow even if you're not already familiar with the comics they're discussing.

This week's episode was talking about "Legion (TV show) and portrayals of mental health in comics." I was really psyched for it. As in--this is not hyperbole--I woke up in the same horrible pain my disability's inflicted for the last few weeks, dragged myself out of bed, forced myself to eat a peanut butter sandwich with an unhealthy amount of ibuprofen, and staggered into my chair to watch this episode. Use that to gage my expectations for how good I was expecting it be. It was mind-blowingly better.

This is just one example of what made this episode incredible: A viewer, who identified themselves as autistic, asked about comic book recommendations for people with autism. Everything about how they took the question, how they answered it, was so spectacular. I was too engrossed and shocked to really process what I'd just seen the first time. Partly because it was so bloody normalized. I went back a few hours later, rewatched this part, and started crying. Half from joy that this happened, and half from sadness that this isn't just normal. They took the time to answer a question to the best of their abilities that almost any other show would pass up as unimportant or inconvenient, especially if it challenged them.

That whole nine and a half minutes was a textbook example of how autistic people constantly ask to be treated, and almost never are. They gave him agency and authority over his life, and respected his perspective as valuable and interesting. They just generally acted like he was any other human being, and greeted him with warmth and enthusiasm. It should be obvious that that's how you treat anyone. I should not be talking about like I just stubbed my toe on the Maltese Falcon half-buried in a sandy beach. But I am because it's that rare in real life. I've never remotely seen it in front of a live camera. I'm writing this, transcribing this, and sharing this because good examples of how to be a decent person are how we educate ourselves out of ignorant bigotry and stigma.

I'm not autistic, but I am neurodivergent in a way that's given me a lot of similar experiences to my friends who are. One of those close friends, who I met through D&D, is a teacher and autism rights activist. I've run most of these thoughts by her to check myself through her perspective. I don't want to speak for her, but I do want to help amplify her voice.

Her research has put her into contact with good examples of the everyday abuses perpetrated against autistic people by mainstream medical professionals, ignorant people, and other bigoted people in power. They show how autistic identity is erased and despised, their personhood stripped. Not in a way that helps any autistic person manage better in the world, but in a way that seeks to hurt them. She frequently shares some of these examples and deconstructs why they're awful. If you're not autistic, it's important to understand the context of what autistic people frequently face because it will help you understand how truly spectacular this response was.

Neurodiversity

I have personally found the framework of the neurodiversity paradigm to be useful, if squishy. The bounds of 'neurotypical' to 'neurodivergent' are their own debated spectrum. Sadly, simplicity is useful, but untrue; whereas complexity is true, but useless. There's not a lot of debate that autism is neurodivergent. This episode is labeled as discussing "portrayals of mental health in comics." But it is perhaps more accurate to say that it discussed neurodivergence in comics. Autism is not a mental illness, it’s a consequence of how a person is neurologically wired from birth. But there's a reason we tend to talk about managing it and experiencing it similarly to a mental illness, and neurodivergence is that reason. To varying degrees, neurodivergent people mentally function differently than people their society deems 'normal' (neurotypical). I'm not wired like my autistic friends, but because all of us never did and never could pass for normal because of our wiring, we have a set of shared experiences. We understand elements of each other's personalities where our brain wiring creates the same pattern, which may not exist at all in neurotypical people. Same reason I can commiserate with another mentally ill friend about where we overlap, but we have to explain the rest.

How autistic people are frequently & abusively described

(Collecting these made me want to throw up and cry in disgust.)

"Autistics as Undomesticated Humans" https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-imprinted-brain/201608/autistics-undomesticated-humans

My friend's response: "I don't believe they ask this in the US, but when I was institutionalized in Germany, I was told that I was not worth treating because I would use up resources and kill myself in the end anyway. Eugenics is alive and well and applied to autistics daily." https://twitter.com/Alice__Kirby/status/835209015445553156

This "treatment" gave my friend PTSD. https://twitter.com/tbccautismABA/status/830511026730856449

Philosopher Peter Singer: "For me, the knowledge that my child would not be likely to develop into a person whom I could treat as an equal, in every sense of the word, who would never be able to have children of his or her own, who I could not expect to grow up to be a fully independent adult, and with whom I could expect to have conversations about only a limited range of topics would greatly reduce my joy in raising my child and watching him or her develop." http://www.thismess.net/2017/02/peter-singer-milo-of-philosophers.html

Unpack the very idea that if, very hypothetically, vaccines cause autism (they don't; dear gods how many times does this need to be proved), risking your child dying of a preventable disease is better than risking them developing, living with, autism.

How autistic people describe themselves

"autism is just the way our brains are wired. we still have unique personalities." http://autpunk.tumblr.com/post/157740045930/oops-i-think-im-autistic

"We are not made wrong, or wired wrong, or something to be fixed, or worse—eradicated. … We are different. Innately born to see the world through an alternate lens. … We understand the torment of living in a world, where you not only feel like you don’t belong, but are told from the authorities that be (parents included) that your condition, your being, your very existence has 'affected' everyone around you." https://everydayaspie.wordpress.com/2016/08/09/affected-by-autism/

Everything the "Wednesday Club" got right in their response

Saying that it's great that an autistic person is being open about it. That it's not something to hide. (Autistic people as so often punished for that. Even autistic rights activists that identify themselves as autistic can lose standing with professionals who claim to want to help autistic people.)

Showing that a question from an autistic person is worth answering. (This rarely happens.) It's worth answering thoughtfully, seriously, and honestly, equal to any other question. (This practically never happens.)

Casually saying that autistic people and non-autistic people are friends and understand each other. I cannot overstate how normalizing that one sentence was. (Not can be, not should me, not technically capable of being, but are. Far from can't, or doing the autistic person a favor.)

Differing to autistic people as the authority on their experiences, on who they are. Not pretending you know better because you're not autistic. Saying that autistic people are different from each other and don't necessarily have the same experiences. (This barely even happens at autism conferences after autistic people have fought tooth and nail to be heard there for years. A lot of medical professionals claim they know the experience of autism better than the person experiencing it. That the autistic person should have no agency in helping them manage their lives. The worst abuses are derived from that line of thinking.)

Acknowledging that autistic people are a marginalized group who are looking for their own strengths, and need and want their own community of similar people.

Says that getting depictions of autism wrong is harmful. "Because in getting it wrong, you can perpetuate a stereotype into a wrong direction, or you can normalize something that shouldn't be." Saying that depictions of autism, even tacit ones, can be problematic. (Legitimately the first time I've seen "problematic" used anywhere near a discussion of autism as if they were any other marginalized group facing discrimination.)

Saying that there aren't a lot of direct depictions of autism in comics, but there are not‑labeled‑as‑autistic characters who have facets of their personality that autistic people can identify with, and those are still useful. (Autistic people are often maligned by bigots as incapable of understanding other people.)

Saying that not being normal is interesting, that sometimes crazy can be a super power. (For any neurodivergent or mentally ill person that's up there with "bullet proof black man" as an empowering statement of power of character to a marginalized group.)

Saying that the opinions of autistic people are valuable and interesting. Saying that an autistic person's draw to special interests, "wonderful hobbies," is fascinating. Saying, repeatedly, that autism can make someone valuable in ways no one else can be. (Autistic people are often ignored and erased. Their hobbies are often treated as boringly narrow, and derided as a waste of time. The contributions of any neurodivergent person are often treated as inferior to neurotypical people. Or exploited while denying the person respect or accommodations that would help them thrive.)

Acknowledging the feeling many autistic people have of "not being human." Acknowledging that many autistic people feel like they're mimicking and scripting social interactions with neurotypical people. (Because neurotypical society refuses to acknowledge or accommodate how autistic people experience the world.)

Acknowledging, like it's obvious, that autistic people can and do fall in love. That they can and do enjoy conceptually challenging art. (Autistic people are described by bigots as incapable of feeling emotions and lacking 'theory of mind,' the ability to understand that other people have different thoughts. Imagine being told that to your face by people who claim they know you better than you ever could and are thus there to help you. Imagine being told that as a child. Do the math on the psychological abuse.)

Showing an actual desire to give a better, more through answer. Acknowledging that they don't know as much as they could, and should seek more knowledge. That this question is worth researching. Taliesin followed up on Twitter saying, "we're gonna revisit it at some point, once we've dug a bit deeper." (Autistic people are routinely dismissed as unimportant, and inconvenient, their identities erased. A non‑autistic person's life being 'affected' by an autistic person is almost always used with negative connotation. But the Wednesday Club tacitly said, "Thank you affecting us," and that is basically what moved me so strongly.) https://twitter.com/executivegoth/status/837213450778468352

To Amy Dallen, Taliesin Jaffe, and Matt Key, thank you. THANK YOU. You helped normalize autism. You helped keep someone's identity from getting erased. Your actions told someone they matter who, I suspect, has repeatedly been told and shown that they don't. You have garnered a tremendous amount of respect from me.

I have only one request for Geek & Sundry: make this episode available on YouTube. Help me share the best of what your network stands for with others. If you want people to tune in for this show, let them see this episode.

Transcript

Times from: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/125658409

01:10:23 Taliesin: "Somebody, actually, I want to say AutisticCosplay, which is a great handle, was asking, 'I'm not a Marvel or DC person, but people have told me I should look in the X-Men because I have autism.' And I don't know if-- You should read the X-Men because they're fun. But what would be a good comic book-- I'm trying to think of a good comic for someone-- I'm trying to think of my own friends who are on the spectrum and what they read."

1:10:46 Amy: "We'd love recommendations from anyone in the audience who is in this category."

1:10:49 Taliesin: "I'm really digging Shade the Changing Girl in that direction, actually. You read the first issue… So, this is a reboot of a new… It's a little psychedelic, if you're down. It's not a classic superhero, it's kind of a--"

[Amy puts out the comic.]

1:11:02 Taliesin: "This is the original."

1:11:03 Amy: "Got the classic here."

1:11:04 Taliesin: "Shade the Changing Man."

1:11:05 Amy: "Well, the semi-classic. Once again, like Doom Patrol, this was an older, '60s, character who got revamped under this wonderful Vertigo wave of DC reinvention."

1:11:14 Taliesin: "And crazy is his power."

1:11:16 Amy: "He wears something literally called a 'madness vest.'"

1:11:19 Taliesin: "And he's maybe from another dimension, but he makes people crazy-- So, again, problematic. But the new version is a popular girl, she's kind of a bitchy popular girl at a high school somewhere in the Midwest, who…"

1:11:36 Amy: "Previous to the events of the book, has fallen into a medical coma."

1:11:40 Taliesin: "Yeah, she was, not to give too much away, but she went skinny dipping with her kind of friends, with the kids who hung out with her because they needed to hang out with a popular person. And she hit her head, and they all just disliked her so much that they took a while dealing with it. So they're all [feeling] guilty. And then she woke up weird. And that's because there's a thing living inside of her that is shade."

1:12:04 Amy: "There is an alien creature using the power of the madness vest."

1:12:07 Taliesin: "So, it's not really even human anymore. So, it's this very off-kilter, not normal… thing. And they just think it's trauma, but maybe it's not, and I'm really liking it."

1:12:19 Amy: "I want more good recommendations. So, I'm wondering--"

1:12:22 Matt: "I don't know anything about what you-- I feel like an idiot."

1:12:24 Amy: "It's a really good, a really fun book."

1:12:26 Matt: "Whose is that!? I want to borrow that comic!"

1:12:28 Taliesin: "It's mine."

1:12:29 Matt: "Can I borrow...?"

1:12:29 Taliesin: "Of course you're going to borrow it."

1:12:30 Amy: "But the new one, Shade Changing Girl, which we might have a picture…"

1:12:32 Taliesin: "I have a copy here somewhere. Oh! Did I put a picture of Shade the Changing Girl in the…? I may have brought a digital copy of it, 'cause I don't own a physical copy of it. There should be a Shade in there."

[Comic is brought up on the screen.]

1:12:40 Amy: "The X-Men in general are turned to by people in all sorts of marginalized groups because they're almost always telling stories about people who don't fit in or don't feel normal, and the way that those people can find their own strengths, and find community, and come together. Which means they speak to tons of people in different groups. I'm curious about, specifically, heroes or things for people on the spectrum, and I'm not sure off the top of my head."

1:13:07 Taliesin: "I know; I'm feeling like a mild failure here."

1:13:10 Amy: "It's interesting, because one of those examples I eluded to in the intro was-- it's the dangers of applying labels to comic book characters. And there's a chance that I'm remembering this wrong, but I think it was James Tynion, who has been writing Cassandra Cain, who was talking about the fact that in some versions, Cassandra Cain, who, as a character became Batgirl, and was nonverbal for many years,"

1:13:38 Taliesin: "Completely."

1:13:38 Amy: "that she has been-- in some cases, people identify with her who are on the spectrum or who are borderline non-verbal. But there are other-- I think-- And please-- I'm worried to even say this because I need to fact check it, but I think it was James Tynion who was saying he was reluctant to but that label on it because the Cassandra Cain character has a history of specific traumatic abuse, that he wasn't sure-- that's not exactly fair to say-- that doesn't resemble the typical, if there is such a thing, experiences of a person who is on the spectrum. So, he'd rather treat her without that label then get it wrong. Or imply it where it doesn't belong."

1:12:16 Matt: "Yeah. Because in getting it wrong, you can perpetuate a stereotype into a wrong direction, or you can normalize something that shouldn't be."

1:14:25: Amy: "I should have checked on this before I said it. This is a memory of, probably, a Twitter conversation that I saw months ago. I should really nail down."

1:14:34 Taliesin: "I will saw, one of the great things-- I've been having this quote saved for the correct moment. 'One of the great things about comic books,' and this is paraphrasing Grant Morrison, who said, 'Sometimes superheroes exist to settle complex moral arguments by beating each other into the ground. Don't laugh, that's the way we deal with things in the real world, too.' But the nice thing about super heroes, though, is that they do break down these complex stories into more symbolic and metaphorical struggles. Which is why, sometimes even when they get it wrong, it's still useful. I had a weird thought for our AutisticCosplay friend, The Vision. The Vision book. It's very…"

1:15:10 Matt: "In fact, the Tom King... Oh! The reason why-- Oh my god, that's a good call."

1:15:14 Taliesin: "So, you all know The Vision from The Avengers. Now, it's kind of dark, and if you know The Vision from the Marvel movies, he's an android."

1:15:26 Amy: "A synthesoid."

1:15:27 Taliesin: "Synthesoid. And the book, he has built himself a wife and two children."

1:15:34 Matt: "And a dog."

[They discuss when in the story the dog was built.]

1:15:56 Taliesin: "And I would be curious-- Actually this is not a recommendation. AutisticCosplay, I actually would love for you to pick up a couple issues of this and tell us what you think. 'Cause I would be genuinely fascinated by your opinion of it, of how you feel. It's not a representation of autism, necessarily, but it's such a spectacularly interesting point of view, and it creates one of my new favorite characters. The Vision's daughter is now a character."

1:16:21 Matt: "Viv."

1:16:22 Taliesin: "Viv, in the Champions. And I cannot wait for the cosplay of this character. She's so cool! And so, I would be really curious to see what you think."

1:16:32 Matt: "I'm going to…"

1:16:34 Amy: "They're struggling with emotional issues and relating to people."

1:16:37 Taliesin: "Yeah, 'cause they're whole thing is they want to try and pretend to be-- they're like, we're going to try and be human, and we're going to be a human family, but they're not."

1:16:48 Matt: "Yeah. I want to tread carefully in saying this, because I myself am not autistic."

1:16:52 Taliesin: "We are in tread carefully territory."

1:16:53 Matt: "No, I know. But I also want to make sure that I'm respecting those of you who do deal with this. But it does feel like, even though they never label Viv, or Vision, or anyone in the family as having autism, or being on the spectrum in any way, their behavior, and their interaction with the world, does seem to 100% mimic…"

1:17:14 Taliesin: "Fall into that direction."

1:17:15 Matt: "or fall into that category in a way,"

1:17:18 Taliesin: "It's very analytical."

1:17:18 Matt: "that someone with autism might be able to actually really identify with that character, but still see the strengths of being who that person is."

1:17:26 Taliesin: "And then watching these analytical characters fall in love, and experience theater. One of the characters falls in love with Shakespeare and starts really identifying really heavily with Shakespeare. And there's this intense romantic relationship that one of the characters… It's fascinating."

1:17:44 Amy: "There is also-- You get really heartwarming stories like one that went around after Guardians of the Galaxy hit theaters,"

1:17:49 Taliesin: "Draxx."

1:17:50 Amy: "Where someone said, 'My brother,' I think it was they were talking about their brother, they watched the movie and their brother was just incredibly struck by watching Draxx."

1:18:00 Taliesin: "In the movie!"

1:18:00 Amy: "Literally for comedic effect, in the movie, their brother said, 'That's how I see the world!' And so, that's one of those, without intending to necessarily create a representation in an old hero, they did something that reached that viewer in a really special way."

1:18:18 Taliesin: "Please don't read Draxx in the comics, by the way. Nah."

1:18:20 Amy: "Quite different!"

1:18:20 Taliesin: "Not yet, not yet!"

1:18:21 Matt: "Very different. But I think there's something to be said for seeing-- I feel like so many times-- And I know this from my dealing with depression, you can feel-- I'm saying, me dealing with my depression and extrapolating that to someone who's dealing with autism, and that's the best that I can do. But it's good to see people who I know are depressed, who also kind of are able to manage it and see their own value, and continue to push through into the world and do their own thing. And I would imagine that someone with autism, on the spectrum in any capacity, would also enjoy that. And see that Draxx actually has an immense amount of value, and is invaluable to the team."

1:19:09 Amy: "Not related to his ability to pick up social cues."

1:19:09 Matt: "And despite his shortcomings or whatever else, despite all of that…"

1:19:12 Taliesin: "Which actually just makes him adored, and fabulous, and fun, and great. Without that he'd be less of a character."

1:19:18 Matt: "So, there's something to be said for, yes, this is something that you have to manage, and maybe something that you have to deal with, and maybe even something that you get made fun of, but that's also a wonderful part of who you are."

1:19:30 Taliesin: "And we have this-- Thanks to these cameras we have this wonderful community of people who can litmus test some stuff for us and tell us what they think."

1:19:38 Amy: "Are you checking us? Because that's important."

1:19:40 Taliesin: "Please! I'm so excited. I'm so excited to have people read some of these books, and I want to hear what you have to say."

1:19:47

#essay #wednesday club #autism #neurodiversity #comics #Geek & Sundry #Amy Dallen #Taliesin Jaffe #Matt Key #GSA

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