Hello!
I’m autistic and have been writing a story where one of the characters is also autistic and completely nonverbal. The story takes place in a magical setting where everyone has latent magic, and it is considered a part of life.
My question relates to how my character communicates. In the story, he uses illusions to communicate through images and colors to show how he’s feeling. Sometimes his magic grow big with strong emotions creating very realistic illusions that affect the world around him. But that is related to how magic is connected to emotions in this world, and is shown to happen to other characters with their magic.
My problem is if this would be considered a magical ‘cure’ for his disability.
In this setting, Magic is as integral as technology is in the real world. (As in it’s a part of life and integrated into laws and such.)
In the story he has problems communicating with people he doesn’t know, since they don’t understand the meaning of a certain color or image. I plan on making it work like AAC cards, but want to make sure the magic itself isn’t erasure.
Is there anything I should avoid or steer clear of in regards to this character? Or ways I can add more context to the disability community in the story?
Hello,
Actually, that's a good idea. It's realistic. In a non-magic world, this character would rely on nonverbal communication and small verbalizations, which work exactly how you intend to make this magic work- the people who know the character can speak his language, understand what certain things mean, use their experience with him to read what he's projecting and respond accordingly. But when people don't know what certain things mean, they can't understand what he's trying to convey or might only be able to understand a tiny piece, not the clearer picture people who know him can get. It's accurate, you're just using magical abstracts instead of body language.
Erasure would be if his magical illusions were an audio of what he means (which can sometimes be accurate via echolalia or mimicking someone, but it's complicated and not going to work nearly as well as people think it would,) or a projection of text that spells out what he's trying to get across. What you're doing isn't that. This is remarkably close to how this works in real life.
Mod Aaron









