Autistic Coding: What ‘Astro BOYD’ Did Right
I’m autistic. I am autistic and perpetually exhausted by robots in media. Particularly robots in media with the “longing to be truly human” storyline. It’s been done to death, and always in a way that just… hurts.
Astro BOYD made me cry. But it was out of sheer joy.
My brothers watched Star Trek: Next Gen while I was watching by proxy. Data is a very beloved character, and I have always hated him. I’ve never really understood why, as I adore Spock. I always assumed that it was because they were trying to have another Spock and that bugged me on principle. Which… it does, but that wasn’t the heart of the issue.
Data’s story is all about how he wants to be human. How he wants to understand humanity. Why was this hurtful? Because the show treated three crucial things as being fundamentally human: emotion, empathy, and sexuality. Now I’m not ace, so I don’t feel comfortable discussing how dehumanizing that aspect is (and it Very Much Is dehumanizing), but I am autistic. I have difficulty with empathy, social interaction, and emotions. And this shit happens constantly with robot characters.
Those stories have told myself and many others that there is something missing from us. That we’re not completely human. We’re robots. In fact, many of us have had “robot” thrown at us as an insult. I have not. But the implication still hurts.
Huey is very autistic coded. I don’t know if that’s intentional or not, most of the time coding isn’t, but the coding is there. The anxiety, the special interests, the speech patterns, and most recently, the stimming, and rejection from his peers for being… a robot. Oof.
Then he meets BOYD, an actual robot, who insists that he’s a real boy. BOYD knows he’s a robot. But he also knows he’s real. Huey knows it, too.
What made this episode stick out is that it wasn’t a story of BOYD wanting to be human. It was a story of BOYD knowing he’s human while outside forces insist that he’s not. Huey never questions it because he understands.
“He’s just wired a little differently.”
BOYD breaks down because everyone insists that something is wrong with him.. That he’s a weapon. That he’s not a real boy. He comes out of it when Gyro finally, finally comes back around and validates that, despite his origins, his quirks, the fact that he’s a robot, he is real.
And it’s something Huey already knew. Because he’s just like BOYD, and he’s real, too.
The story isn’t “I want to be human”. The story is “I am human”. And for someone who grew up with the opposite narrative, that means everything.
blakekathryn
titsay
areudirty
jacobvanloon
kaledo-art
turnnoffyourmind
yousharknotpass
prguitarman
