fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2392 ]

[ SECRET POST #2392 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2392 ⌋

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I was wondering if you guys had any suggestions for what fictional characters in what fictional works might be relatable, reassuring/comforting, enjoyable, or informative to people on the autism spectrum. I've noticed that being told that your disabilities don't make you a defective person is not nearly as effective as being shown examples of how having a disability doesn't make someone a defective person.

Community.

Watch Community.

What I was thinking. Definitely Abed.

Have you read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time? Really good book. :D

I couldn't stand that fucking book. I couldn't muster up an ounce of sympathy for that gross, creepy, annoying main character, even though I'm I could have if the writer had framed him a bit better.

I can't speak for its writing quality, but every autistic person I know who's read it hates it and the way it handled its protagonist.

I may be totally unqualified to speak on its accuracy, but I personally couldn't stand the way the main character of that book was portrayed. However, the plot was kinda cool and it did make me stop and think about some things I took for granted about human behavior/thought though, so...*shrugs*

Boy, I should not rec books I read 10 years ago. :(

I dunno, it might just be different tastes? I don't have a really concrete explanation for why I didn't like the portrayal, it just felt off-putting. Which may well have been the point of the character, of course, but it didn't work on me. Maybe my empathy is just too idiosyncratic or something.

I don't know. My math teacher in high school recommended it and it was required reading for my freshmen class in college. I enjoyed the book, so I would have recommended it too, but obviously I would have been in the wrong too.

At least in the book, the character is identified as Aspergers, I don't believe a lot of other characters people have named are specifically called out to have Aspergers.

Re: Good characters for autism-spectrum people?

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-22 00:54 (UTC) - Expand

Data on Star Trek The Next Generation. Sometimes, he really comes off as somebody that's autistic :P I luff Data!

I don't think Data's behavior is all that similar to autistic people's. However, I do think his behavior is really, really comparable to autistic people's, if you know what I mean?

Like, he has all this behavioral programming that causes his demeanor to mostly not really reflect that of autistic people (to name one example, his impeccably genteel courtesy/thoughtfulness and adherence to uber-polite language outside of the whole "doesn't understand what an embarrassing question or TMI is" thing), but his inability to grasp certain ideas and behaviors and his attempts to figure them out are really nicely comparable to some autistic people's problems.

I haven't watched all of Alphas, but I think that show might have what you're looking for?

Yes! Alphas has a great character, Gary, who is on the spectrum and is much-beloved by his team and is central to the action.

I must ask, since I know it was cancelled, is it worth watching to the end? Is the cliff hanger awful or is there at least some resolution?

(I watched it on TV, but it disappeared. I recently saw it on Netflix.)

Re: Good characters for autism-spectrum people?

tabaqui - 2013-07-22 15:46 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Good characters for autism-spectrum people?

sootyowl - 2013-07-23 00:39 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Good characters for autism-spectrum people?

skeletal_history - 2013-07-22 21:53 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Good characters for autism-spectrum people?

sootyowl - 2013-07-23 00:44 (UTC) - Expand

Seconding this recommendation.

Gary is awesome. He's a baller. It's the right word!

...Guardedly recommending the YA book Anything But Typical, which has one of the most relatable and genuine-feeling autistic protagonists I've read, and touches on a lot of aspects of how non-autistic people treat us that most authors don't seem to be aware of.

It's not exactly a comforting read, though, and it doesn't exactly spend the bulk of the story with the main character feeling not-defective, even if he does get there in the end.

Why fictional? Get your hands on Temple Grandin's biography, or a copy of Oliver Sacks' "Mind Traveler" documentary, one of the episodes features an autistic artist.

If you're going to do Temple Grandin, I strongly recommend including other autobiographies (autiebiographies?) as well.

In my experience with her work, she tends to kind of overgeneralize a lot (and she occasionally falls into treating some kinds of autistic people as okay while framing others as defective), so while she's definitely worth tossing in I'd add others as well, like Daniel Tammet or Michelle Dawson or group-effort works like the Loud Hands Anthology or The Thinking Person's Guide to Autism.

...and I think I'm misremembering one of those names; I think Dawson is a scientist, not a memoir-writer. Damned if I can recall who I had in mind there, though.

I think the book was called "Adam" or "thanking Adam" or "waiting for adam" or something similar. Adam was autistic if I recall...

Diana Wynne Jones' "Charmed Life" and "Pinhoe Egg" (both part of the Chrestomanci series). They have a protagonist intended to be high-functioning autistic, but the author didn't mention it until years/decades after writing the books. Her reasoning was that the character (Cat) was who he was, he didn't need a label, but then people kept asking her so she finally admitted it.

As a kid I loved the books, still do as an adult, but I don't have much interaction with autistic people so I don't know if Cat's a fair representation or not.

The claymation movie Mary and Max is about a little girl from Australia who becomes pen pals with an autistic man living in New York. It's dark, funny, sad, and uplifting all at once. Warning for depression, suicide, drug + alcohol abuse and probably pretty much all standard trigger warnings, but it's very well-written, and while Max hasn't had the happiest life, he talks in depth about how he sees the world and how he doesn't view himself as defective or needing to be cured. Probably not a good thing to show to young kids, but it's streaming on netflix if you want to check it out for yourself.

Edited (i had it open in another tab and I STILL had the title wrong gdi) 2013-07-22 00:59 (UTC)

I loved Mary and Max. *_* Good example!

Have you read The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd? A very likable autistic POV character and a great mystery plot to boot.

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