Okay, so I really love Mass Effect 2 a lot. But holy fucking shit about the autistic brother series of missions. (Overlord).
Yes, I'm aware the game is old and came out in 2011.
It's also imperative to understand, when critiquing media, when it came out and what the culture surrounding the topic you're critiquing was like.
For 2011, for all I know, the rep was okay. They did get some things right. They got stim rocking, counting, and the need for quiet right.
I didn’t even know I was autistic then. It just wasn't as much of a topic of interest for me then.
I was pregnant with my second kid and doing an international move. The only gaming I did was games that could be easily dropped when I had to run after my toddler.
And the problem isn't so much the rep in the game (which is actually physically nauseating to someone like me. I'm autistic (AuDHD, Autistic/ADHD). I probably have some savantism regarding words and languages because I seem to learn, understand, and I dunno, get languages like many people don't.
It's that people still play these and maybe think that rep is fine.
As an autistic person, it isn't even remotely fine. And I thought Sandal Dragon Age was bad! Ha!
I'm not exaggerating when I say that series of events in ME2 absolutely, physically nauseated me and left me nauseated for a good hour afterward. That's the kind of thing that would usually have me tossing the series and never looking at it again because, generally, I try not to self harm.
Before defending it, ask yourself this. If you had a differently functioning brain, and you saw that series of images, depicting someone else with the same neurology, being abused like that character was abused... how would it make you feel?
They got the fact that it's usually people we're close to who abuse or murder us right. There's a new story almost daily if you're in autistic circles.
So while they did get some things right, and I hope they were trying... they bombed it bad.
The reason I feel it probably wasn't purely ignorance is that they actually used the word 'autistic' which is still rare to see actually said/written out, as if it's a dirty word. It's not. We're not broken, society and how it treats us is. And they did get a few things right.
Then they proceeded to utterly dehumanize and stereotype the autistic character, and because he's autistic, and labelled as such, it dehumanizes and stereotypes the rest of us. We're not all mathematical geniuses. I'm dyscalculic. I can't do math easily, I can't do anything over trigonometry at all, and I consistently get lost in the city I've lived in for 13 plus years even with GPS (all are symptoms of dyscalculia, which is like dyslexia, but about math and navigation).
Sometimes, I can't tell if the writers at BioWare knew stuff and were trying to point out how awful things are for certain sections of humanity, if they were just ignorant, or if their hearts were in the right place but the execution lacks. Regardless, they're harmful and ableist depictions. Yes, even mister 'Enchantment!'
No one like me needs to see images of someone like me tortured like that.
So, content warning on Mass Effect 2 for extreme autistic abuse by family. It’s incredibly graphic.
The answer we're presented with isn't okay either. (Might’ve been considered fine in the early oughts, but these days it most certainly isn't.)
'Schools for 'special cases' like David'... gods there's usually even worse stories of abuse almost daily out of those places than anything depicted done to David. The internet makes it really hard to hide shit like that if you know where to look.
Don't believe me? Look up the Judge Rotenburg school in Massachusetts. Where, to my knowledge, they still use extreme electroshock therapy on autistic children. In 2025.
Electroshock doesn't work for autism. There is no cure, it's genetic. And a great many autistic people wouldn't want a cure even if there was one.
Personally, I love being autistic. I love the things my brain can do. Society and how it treats people like me? That's another story.
I suppose the Overlord series of missions gave me a sharp smack in the face about why I do the autistic advocacy work I do. 2011 was around 13 years ago. That's it. And the rep is horrific.
A few things as a take-away on autism and autistic people.
1. High intelligence isn't a given. Many of us are, but just as many aren't.
2. Only around 10% of autistic people show any sign of savantism. We're incredibly rare within a rare-ish population.
3. Autism is far more common than you think. If you know 50 people, you know at least 3 masking autistics, who very possibly don't know they’re autistic and are masking without understanding that they're actually killing themselves doing it. Masking is incredibly bad for us. Many, many creatives are autistic and don't know it.
4. Autism probably isn't what you think it is. Media has absolutely used and abused us for a very long time. We're not Rain Man, okay? We're not that annoying dude in that comedy show I couldn’t bear to watch because the canon autistic character is always the butt of the jokes. That just bloody hurts.
5. It's not okay to dehumanize us by calling us computers or encyclopedias.
Sure, you'll likely hear autistic people joking about being a living computer or walking encyclopedia, but it's a joke. We're just as human as you are.
It's the difference of someone else saddling you with a potentially unpleasant descriptor, and you choosing it as a way to make sense of your world. Queers will get that. And there's high overlap between autism and being queer.
An autistic person can absolutely call themselves a computer or encyclopedia. I call myself a walking encyclopedia, but it's not so much because I'm autistic, as it is that have a life-long habit of reading encyclopedias and research papers for fun. I'm not dehumanizing myself by claiming that label because it does help me make sense of the world, and it's my choice. Did my autism mean I was more likely to enjoy reading educational non-fiction? Probably, but you could just as easily say it was the traumatic result of me trying to find any escape from a truly shitty childhood. Books of all kinds were my escape because internet didn't exist in private homes when I was a kid. We didn't have cable TV, so only got one channel, fuzzily, from an antenna. All I had were books.
We've said it a lot. If you've met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person. Our basic neurology is the same, but how our brains develop is entirely dependent on the demands we're presented with, what our interests are, and how much learning material and aid we get.
I'll stop blathering. You can support my autistic advocacy efforts by becoming a patron.
It really goes to show how much I'm loving these games that despite the horrific autistic rep, I'm still looking forward to finishing ME2 tonight and starting ME3.
That type of thing would honestly have me moving to something else if I didn't love these games.
