#writing autistic

[ladyonyxsapphire]

3408 words written, updating my longfic WIP. 2000 words written in the last two hours. Thank you stimmies and Cava.

[it-be-sid]

Just to be clear;

the Autism Community doesn’t hate the “savant weird awkward genius” trope because it’s necessarily inaccurate (there are real autistic people like that) or even that insulting,

but because it’s ALL WE EVER SEE.

[myautisticpov]

This Week’s Writing Autistic

I’m putting together a glossary of words/phrases used within the community and in my other blog posts that allistic writers might not be aware of.

Anyone have any suggestions?

[myautisticpov]

How do I make it clear that a character is autistic when he doesn't know he is? I don't want to make it ambiguous because then people will claim he's allistic. Like ideally I'd want to have it stated somewhere in the story, but I'm not sure how to do that if he doesn't know. It seems weird to have another character "diagnose" him offhand, and that could possibly be interpreted as a joke or something. Hopefully that all makes sense, I'm kind of at a loss for what to do.

I had this with the main character of my Snow series. I knew that, later on in the series, I wanted her to go through the process of getting diagnosed, but I didn’t want it to be ambiguous in the first few books.

I have another autistic character in the series, and they’re pretty close, so I have her make it clear that she thinks the main character is autistic. The main character still isn’t sure, but I’ve definitely found that having another autistic character be sure of it helps to clear up the ambiguity.

Of course, there is still some ambiguity, and you will never satisfy everyone. There will always be readers who assume that they’re allistic without the character having a paper diagnosis in-universe.

The best you can do is word-of-God the hell out of it. If you publish it, include the fact that they’re autistic in the blurb and marketing materials (assuming you have control over them).

Other than that, it’s pretty much impossible to erase all ambiguity.

[myautisticpov]

I'm autistic and I'm trying to write an original story with an autistic protagonist who gets non verbal when he's extremely stressed (like me) but I'm having trouble getting across the feeling of it all, do you have any tips?

I actually just finished the first draft of a project where I’m doing the exact same thing, but I can’t decide if the way I’ve done it works. I’ll put a bit under the cut and you can see if you think I managed to get the feeling across or not.

“Is your hearing okay?” Hate asked as the lift took them up, placing two fingers on her ear to indicate what she was asking.

Claire frowned. The only word her mind would give her to describe the fact that it hadn’t been working, but now was, was “Maybe.” That wasn’t right. It felt right, like it should fit, but she knew that it didn’t. “Maybe” suggested that she didn’t know at all, not that it was intermittent.

She spent several moments searching for the word that was like “Maybe” but not, her hand tapping against her side as she tried to concentrate through the insufferable hum of the lift.

Eventually she shrugged. A shrug was like a “Maybe” but it fit more.

“Is it dropping in and out?”

Claire frowned. Not really. It wasn’t working before and now it was. She tried to translate the concept into words, but it was too big. Too bulky. She didn’t know which word would come first. There were so many to choose from and too many rules to remember regarding what would come next.

She eventually shrugged once more.

“Okay, well, just tap your ear to let me know when it’s acting up.”

[myautisticpov]

This week’s review is up!

And, yes, I know about the audio. Okay, I’m not even kidding, this is twice as loud on the original file on my computer. I have no idea why YouTube turns it down so much.

I recorded the audio seperately for next week’s video and I turned up all the settings in Audacity. It should be fine. You know, if I can sync it up properly...

Quick Review under the cut:

General Opinion: 5/5 Stars

Clarity of Autism: 3/5 Stars

Stereotype or Person?: 5/5 Stars

Accurate Autism: 2/5 Stars

Storylines of Autistic Characters: 4/5 Stars

Respect for Autistic Characters: 4.5/5 Stars

Overall Score: 3.5/5 Stars

[myautisticpov]

Review of the Autistic representation in The IT Crowd.

Apologies for the audio quality. I tried to compensate in post but it’s still quite quiet. I’ll have a better microphone for next time.

Quick breakdown of my review under the cut:

General Opinion of the Show - 5/5 stars

Clarity of Autism (From kind-of Word of God to expicitly stated in-show) - 3/5 stars

Stereotype or Person? - 4/5 stars

Accurate Autism - 5/5 stars

Storylines for Autistic Characters - 5/5 stars

Respect for Austistic Characters - 5/5 stars

Overall Score - 4/5 stars

[myautisticpov]

Hey, so the channel intro is up for my autism in media reviews.

The first review will be The IT Crowd and should be up in the next week.

I will try to caption this tonight but captioning is a special kind of hell for me, so I can’t promise anything (though I will try).