As someone who is autistic, who has a son who is also autistic, I had to smile and cheer at Alaina. She strikes me as being autistic.While I’ve often thought of characters in other fandoms as autistic, this is a first for Slayers!
The whole communicating through Lina with slips of paper. I so relate to that. I don’t like speaking verbally. I can do it, I have a lovely voice and enunciate well and all that, but I don’t like doing it, I’m even comfortable with public speaking and the like, but it takes a large energy toll on me to do it. Writing increases my emotional energy, speaking decreases it. And when I don’t have much emotional energy I actually have my own improvised sign language that my husband knows and just goes with it. The other day a place I wanted to enroll my son in swim lessons with contacted me and set up lessons through text messaging, and I was over the moon that I didn’t have to talk to them over the phone about it!
I’m not sure why writing comes so much easier. Reading makes sense. Because of auditory processing issues I have a hard time comprehending what people are saying, especially in noisy environments, and reading words is more solid and reliable than listening. But why writing comes more easily than speaking I don’t know, and it is a paradox many on the spectrum struggle with.
So thus far loving Alaina and relating to her struggles to talk with people she doesn’t know well, and I wish I had the bravery to be that insistent that people communicate with me in ways that I am the most comfortable, and looking forward to seeing where things go with her.
