When you said "L is one of us now" I was like YES HE IS! I love how you're so vocal and unapologetic abt L being autistic and I don't know why it's so important to ppl that L is absolutely not autistic and just 'eccentric' (tho i have my suspicions... the amount of fics I read in which L gets together with Light and slowly learns how to be 'normal' through the power of love is depressing honestly... those guys couldn't erase L's weirdness if they acknowledged he's autistic, so they don't -_-)
Yes, that’s very important to me, so I’m glad my efforts are appreciated! I do understand why other people don’t want to be as vocal about it as I am, but yeah. I just don’t want to leave any doubt about how we have very real and very good reasons to interpret L as autistic.
You know, when I first joined the fandom, I was surprised to see how dismissive and aggressive certain people were about this. Even before I read the manga, I’ve heard about this “headcanon” and could already see why it was such a popular one. The RP theory, on the other hand, is among the top five most far-fetched fandom theories I’ve ever come across and I’m in the ASoIaF fandom (it’s almost as, well, illogical as the “corn code”) (I’m kidding; the corn code makes more sense). As I said many times before; I don’t think absolutely everyone who believes/believed that theory is actively anti-autistic, but refusing to let it go despite the overwhelming evidence against it seems… quite desperate.
But thinking L is autistic is harmless. And yes, I do stand by it when I say that: this theory came to be because of how we can relate to him. I realise that he’s a grey character and that some of what could be seen as autistic about him seems cliché, but that doesn’t make it any less real. That doesn’t make him any less important to us. It might be hard for non-autistic people to grasp but L’s an inspiration for many of us, a comfort, even. That matters far more to me than his “cold-heartedness”. For one, that’s not what his character is mainly about anyway, and secondly; it’s something we can relate to as well (some of us, at least). We don’t need non-autistic people to protect us from our own headcanons.
L is a beloved character, seen as “cool” by most people and I heavily doubt that the few people who do not like him will suddenly start beating us up because of how we relate to him.
Also; “eccentric” is so often used as basically a synonym for autistic that I feel tempted to reclaim it as our term, lol. Not really, but if we examine typical “eccentric” behaviour, we usually think of people who are loners, people who dress and talk in a way we aren’t used to, people with special talents and interests, “genii”, people who seem weird and stubborn about the things they dislike…. in short: people with at least shallow autism traits.
I fortunately haven’t really seen fics of the sort you mentioned but, oof. Everyone can obviously write whatever they want, but the very concept upsets me, to be quite honest.
