I accidentally wrote a whole essay in the tags of another post, and then realised i'm not 100% certain the op is comfortable with proshippers, so i'm making my own post <3
(also just to be perfectly clear; i'm rambling in general, not @ OP. i'm just Full Of Thoughts that I don't get to express very often)
funnily enough, as an autistic person myself, i do have at least one favourite character i kinda treat like this (if you know, you know) but the difference there is;
1) i have plenty of other autistic headcanons that don't fall under this, and
2) the reasons for those traits are unrelated to his autism-coding
('coding' in the projection/headcanon sense, not the canon sense. I don't know how to explain it but; I write him like he has autism but he physically can't because he's not human. he's only Actually Autistic in modern!aus)
he's heard of sex but knows very little about it because he's a puppet who doesn't care for human biology. and his appearance gives people the impression that he should already know. and he hates socialising. so it just never comes up. (also on a meta level it's because I have an innocence/virginity kink lmao)
he doesn't swear because he actively thinks he's above it and doesn't need to (semi supported by his eng va lmao though i don't play in eng)
he doesn't have assigned parents as such. but he still needs to be sat down and taught some things about societal interactions that never came up for him before because he's never let himself have genuine friends, only business relationships.
(and I've seen a lot of other people portray him like he's a rowdy teenager, and also call one of his equals/friends his mother or aunt, but I blame that at least partly on eng voice direction influencing character perception, and partly on these fans doubling down on the idea of "family" to avoid shipping these characters with each other, tbh)
literally none of these traits on their own (or even together!) are inherently ~that bad~ to have on an autistic/autistic-coded character. you just have to ask yourself. is it ALL your autistic characters? is it BECAUSE of their autism? (it's okay if it is because of it, you just have to acknowledge it within yourself. it's called a spectrum for a reason)
and most importantly!!! does it at all bleed into your worldview of how you expect every real life autistic person to behave? because if it does, THAT'S where the issues start.
and like. i know that common stereotypes are annoying at best and hurtful/harmful at worst. that you want to stop seeing them, want to start seeing some variety, want to see yourself represented, a lot of times.
but, the correct response to common stereotypes is not to avoid them in your own writings entirely, or to condemn everybody who writes them, but to deconstruct and question them. because, if you course correct too hard and avoid/condemn them entirely, you're just going to harm the real life people that DO fall into those stereotypes by suggesting that it's harmful to portray their experiences, yeah?
it took me a long time to stop fretting over "but, this character can't be X thing AND Y thing because then people might think I'm [insert appropriate -ist or -phobic word here]!!!" like... i don't know how to describe it exactly, but there's something just so anxiety-inducing about worrying over how every tiny detail about a way you portray a character might be misconstrued as you holding harmful views.
I don't think that all autistics are sex-innocent, naive littol babies (I'm autistic and I'm certainly not that!! a virgin, sure, but that's unrelated) I just write this ONE character in a way that kind of aligns with the stereotype. that's all there is to it. and, if somebody pointed out how my portrayal aligns with the stereotypes, and then dared to call me ableist for it? mate, i'd be wanting to throw hands tbh
