I was never officially diagnosed but according to my parents I exhibit many traits of someone “on the autistic spectrum” (such as sensory sensitivities, difficulty with social cues, etc) and I was classified as “gifted” when I was in elementary school, so I like to write characters like me, who are also on various parts of the spectrum. I usually consult Pinterest, youtube, and my friends who are autistic for outside sources for this. It’s not perfect, but I’ve never read a story with a well-represented autistic character before (except the curious incident of the dog in the night-time which I related to in a big way even though I have almost nothing interest-wise in common with Christopher; and NEWT from fbawtft but that’s not a book and not all the fandom accepts him as autistic) because usually autistic characters are terribly over-exaggerated. Though I find Sheldon from the big bang theory funny, not all autistic people act like him. I relate to a few of his quirks, but not all of them. We have emotions. We still empathize. We don’t always go through routines in a rigid way. My routines are just routines, and though I’m distressed when they’re disturbed, I’ve learned how to deal with that. A main trait of being autistic though is just finding it harder to follow social cues and express our thoughts and emotions in a way others understand. Autistics can still act like non-autistics, and for many of us we’re not that far on the spectrum. We don’t need to act autistic 100% of the time to be autistic if that makes sense. Autistic women are even more rare, as we usually display the signs of autism in different ways than autistic men. I’d like to better represent the less sheldon-like autistics out there like me so we can read about characters like us in books! I’ve always wanted to feel really connected to a character, and though I do love many characters there are only a select few that I really understood, and that was because they were portrayed as showing signs of autism, whether the writers intended for it or not. I’ve actually cried many times watching Newt or reading headcanons about him or other predicted autistic characters because FINALLY someone like me who has the struggles I deal with every day is a normal character and not treated like an outsider. (Not making eye contact gah I struggle so much with that, I had to really focus on eye contact with people and sometimes I just don’t know if I’m doing it right so I’m very happy to see when characters struggle with eye contact because it seems like the rest of the world just does it so perfectly.) It doesn’t change who I am, because I love who I am, but it does help me when I feel like no one around me has really accepted me as the same as them. And I’m really sorry but my first autistic character is male and white because he was in my head and now I can’t change him because he’s a character now and I’m attached. But I do have others!! I didn’t realize until recently that most autism portrayals in tv are white and male so that’s kinda weird but I didn’t intend on doing it. It shouldn't matter though, because I am putting my own experiences into him, and he's a sweet person, I'm very proud of him.
I also like creating characters with some sort of physical disability. I know it’s really popular lately to have a mentally ill character, like one with depression or anxiety, and mental health representation is great, but to be honest I don’t always like reading about characters who want to x themselves. I can’t take it, as a sensitive person, reading about self harm and x-ing yourself so much. I have a bad past with previous people in my life who really didn’t help me at all, and they had these negative thoughts, and I nearly just fall apart reading about characters with bad depression. I never read about characters who are blind, deaf, chronically ill, use a wheelchair, or have some sort of non-mental disability. I don’t choose not to read these stories, they’re just not readily available. It's hard to find them. These characters deserve stories too. I really try to strive for accuracy in the stories I tell about my characters. I want to properly tell the story of a girl solving a cold case, who happens to be deaf. Being deaf doesn’t stop her from being an amazing detective. I want to properly tell the story about a boy overthrowing his new alien government, and he has epilepsy. Though he has roadblocks along the way because he has epilepsy, he can still do what every other YA protagonist does: show the adults who are more than twice his age how to run the government. Usually when I read books with people with disabilities the disability is the focus of the whole book. There’s no real other conflict. Like Wonder, for example. Great story, one of my favorite middle-grade books, but it really just focuses on Auggie and his transition into school, which he has trouble with because kids only see his face. I want to create stories where the disability is just another trait of the character. The character struggles with their disability, but it doesn’t define them, and there’s a whole other plot out there, not just the disability-focused plot. I just want to write something that people will enjoy. I want people to love my characters. I want people to see themselves in my characters, and want to meet them. Thanks for reading my rant :)
