On the context of 'Broken'

On the context of ‘Brokenness”

I never liked the word ‘broken’ to describe anyone. Not because ‘no one is broken’ but because it’s so flat and incomplete of a word. It has no form, or context. The word tells me nothing, because what exactly is broken and why are people so offended by it? In regards to disability, people think that ‘broken’ limits, dehumanizes and restructures a person around their disability ignoring the good and the positive skills they have. Yet when you do look at the good and positive you also need to balance it. It’s one the many reasons I feel like bringing this up and using some of the character I write with in my fiction. One that many already have known, for this essay, instead of Tikaani as my avatar pseudo-person its, Chiko my airbender original character which I think fits a bit better.

One of the most frustrating about disability narratives in fiction, is the idea that for the story’s arch to be completed the person with a disability must A) Accept his disability or B) learn to defeat it and be comparatively normal and like everyone else. Both are rather half-ass and shoddy endings, but most of these are written by able bodied people who never had a disability or that experience so they are just contextualizing as someone that woke up disabled than someone born with one. It’s one of the reasons I like Toph from Avatar. She is born blind so her narrative is not about her blindness but people’s perception and her ability to surpass that. In some way, Toph is broken, but her brokenness is not her disability but whole experience of being patronized and coddled by her parents, of her constantly having to match up to her sighted peers and putting walls among people because she is afraid of being seen as weak. With that all in context, she is a broken character. Brokenness is not about disability, it’s about social perception of worth, of value and reclaiming that word not as a flaw but as a paradigm. Brokenness should be part of the character’s narrative; it shouldn’t be a hurdle for the person to get over, because frankly, it never actually happens in real life. 

Chiko’s narrative is being used because I use Tikaani a lot his narrative isn’t about accepting and deal with a sudden disability but social stigma and moving against it. Chiko on the other hand has to deal with much in short time. For those that don’t follow the show or know the canon, this might be confusing and there is a special interest blurb about the show somewhere so you can do your own research. Yet, for those that are aware, the show brings up the fact that a race of people (Air Nomads) have been wiped out, Chiko is one of them and he and his family survives. Barely. His missing left arm is reminder of that massacre at his temple and it does haunt him. He does have phantom pains, he does deal with nightmares and flash backs and all that crap. His missing arm is a point of grief of him. The thing I want to bring up with Chiko, is that his narrative isn’t about his missing arm though it does feel like that, but honestly about his frustration of constantly being jarred around and dealing with a massive war. It’s about growing up on the battlefield and about being considered an outsider but not because of his limb but because of his social context. Chiko does seem himself as ‘broken’ but not in the idea that it’s because of his missing arm, but because he is considered unworthy to live, that he isn’t meant to be here and to him, surviving while others died, isn’t fair. He doesn’t get closure or sort of respite. His brokenness, his hurt, doesn’t go away if he gets a prosthesis or finds a stable home, the war will still be there and people will still die. Giving a disabled person an accommodation or a tool, doesn’t make their brokenness go away. Chiko’s value isn’t undermined by his brokenness, his love for his brothers and his willingness to never submit isn’t challenged by it. Over all, he isn’t less of a person for being ‘broken’. 

Which is I suppose the crux of the argument really. Tikaani isn’t less of a person, neither is Chiko neither am I. Brokenness doesn’t minimalize a person. Which is why next to ‘broken’ I hate the word ‘different’. People think that broken is a word that strips a person’s self and negates them but different doesn’t do that. I don’t believe that. Calling someone different, doesn’t negate that they are broken but accentuates it. It’s still isolating, negative and othering. Calling Tikaani ‘different’ doesn’t remove the fact he lives in a universe where his humanity is always in question, where is feared a shadow of a person and one that gambles with spirits. Saying that Chiko is different, doesn’t negate his missing arm. His nightmares or the fact his people are dying and being systematically killed (So much for Avatar being a ‘children’s’ show) and watching his whole world being set on literal fire. So I cringe when able bodied people saying that I am “differently abled’ thinking that my humanity isn’t questions or the alienation I feel evaporated by well-meaning sympathy. It doesn’t help. It doesn’t make me feel any less included. I don’t want to downplay either of my characters stories because I wouldn’t want mine negated for the sake of the comfort of abled people. I don’t believe calling me ‘broken’ strips me. No more than calling me different or special. I am either. I am just a wild satyr, an organic android, a bard with no song. 

I want people to see the brokenness and love it. Because it is a part of me it’s not separate thing. It is me.

The Monster That I Am

art work by Lucy Dreir aka Thug of my 'satyr-sona' Kalypso.

After spending about 5 years in disability right and identity politics, I have learned that I stopped caring about language and personal labels. What people call themselves is none of my business what they reclaim isn’t my problem until it comes one. But I guess this is a commentary on a word that I took offense to that now I want to actually redirect and reclaim. 

For those that have seen my art, I draw a lot of satyrs and fauns. I have bit of an attachment to them and other fae like creatures. I have made pair of satyr dolls (Santos and his mate Krysanthe which found loving homes when I raffled them off at Beltane) and I working on a third one and I have project in mine for a centaur doll. I don’t know when this attachment started or if this is a special interest but I’ve always filled my pages up with fauns and satyrs, dragon people, snake people and various kinds of nonhumans. I write about them and their lives in my stories as well. To me their lives are more interesting than any of the humans I write or draw. In some way I have appropriated my character’s nonhuman identities in regards to myself. I know that this is probably a response to the years of abuse and marginalization in which my humanness has been taken from me. As an autistic, I’ve been pretty much been swamped by the “changeling’ label and I’ve discussed ‘changeling culture ‘(the idea that our children has been taken by anthromorphed disabilities and we need to ‘free’ them from it) at length and frankly this isn’t a re-hashing of old news. In some way I took that label of ‘monster’ of ‘nonhuman’ and I embraced that metaphor. If I am not human to you, then a monster I’ll be. 

This is not to say that I am not human at all or that I don’t deserve to be treated like one. If there is an ongoing theme with my nonhuman characters, is that they don’t asked to be treated like a human, to subvert what makes them a merman, satyr, dragon folk or whatever. But rather for people to accept that difference, as valid as their humanness and that their satyrness isn’t something that needs to be tamed in order to live among human society but instead, for it be recognized that it’s ok. That it is alright to be something other than human. Granted, authors have been waxing identity politics with using fantasy races, aliens and robots or whatever, as a metaphor for race, gender, sexuality or…whatever. But in regards to that, I’ve noticed it’s always the human being the protagonist. He or she is face with the racism and oppression as someone that benefits from an unfair system and it’s about her or him realizing it and undoing it. It’s rarely about the nonhuman dealing with the unfair system and the expectations forced on him through it and when it is, there is the human acting as the audience avatar or translator. I never found that necessary really. I don’t need a normal person translating my autistic or transgender experiences to a cis or allistic person. This satyr doesn’t need to explain himself or why he does the things does, to you or anyone else. 

When I was working  on “Drinking the Styx, “ I wanted to make sure there were no humans in my story as part of the main cast that cast was going to satyrs and their experience didn’t need to be translated or explained away by humans or human sidekicks. I wanted to be clear that Hermes isn’t a human it’s one of the reasons I spent so long drawing him and his design. I wanted his eyes to be alien and strange, to be hard to relate to at first but eventually you see him with all of his satyrness, daddy issues and problems with mental illness. I shouldn’t have to soften him, maybe him less goatish for my readers. I don’t compromise. 

It’s the same reason I refuse to make Tikaani completely verbal, it’s the same reason I don’t always submit to the idea that I need to wear my ‘mask’ in order to be valued. I should be valued even when I am flapping, shrieking or talking to you plainly. My worth shouldn’t be based on how functional I am or how well I pass. Yet, it is. My identity as a ‘monster’ is measure how well I can hide my fangs, my horns, my long floppy ears any everything about me. It’s how well I can make eye contact, how well I speak, how articulate I can be, how well I can follow verbal cues (when I can’t process them very well) how well I can sacrifice myself for someone with little respect for my own needs. Those are things that people want from me, from others. 

When I do pass, I am seen as ‘over coming’ that I am ‘rising above’ something .  My disability mainly, no one actually realizes how much work it is and many autistics have explained this. But I want to continue to make it clear on how aggravating it is to pass, even when in spaces it’s ok to flap. Because in the end someone is going to see your fox tails and or goat eyes and jump twenty feet in the air and go “Wait! You’re not human!?”  I don’t see my disability as something to be compromised to make you feel better; I don’t see people being friends with a goat man like me, like it’s an act of charity. You’re not a better person for not starting at my horns or hooves. You don’t get good karma cookies for not mentioning that I am walking on my toes or chirping.

It’s being a decent human being, to a decent satyr.

 

On Notions of Rats and Cats

Just an notice, I know I have been very neglectful with my blog. It's not quiet dead...but I have been less than interested in posting. Tikaani misses everyone and says he's sorry that he doesn't feel like playing with folks.


Onwards...

It’s twenty passed nine and after making breakfast and coffee to start my week of constant repetition, I hear the sound of ‘clikclikclik’ nearby. My two young male rats (called bucks) are thirsty and I just filled their water-bottle with fresh clean filtered water. Dodger being the more inquisitive one sits on the water-bottle surveying the living room from the cage. Fagin his brother prefers to doze in the hammock or in the blanket nest that they made. Watching them play, investigate talk to each other in high-pitched noises that I can’t hear, I think about why I love rats and why I felt a need to write this essay.

Autistics tend to be required to have certain attachment to things. It’s a sort of litmus test to prove to that we are not some sort of organic machine but a real flesh and human being. In some ironic way I wonder if this behavior is what leads to the empathy tests in Blade Runner to find Replicas. If autistics like Thomas the Tank Engine and Lighting McQueen then they are read as ‘normal autists’ it’s expected of us to like machines with faces for some reason. To empathize with them before we start with bigger and better things, I liked Thomas, but I wasn’t obsessed with it as some autistics do, I prefer Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, especially Master Splinter when I was four and five. That was my first special interest. I wanted action figures and outfits and bed-sheets. I had a love for stories, connections and crime fighting I wanted more than talking trains. I wanted more than what was expected of me to be a good and proper autist. 

This doesn’t go away once you’re an adult; now you’re expected of have the right sort of sensory issues, the right sort of special obsessions, to be a virgin, de-sexed and naïve but brilliant. To be a “Gary” from Alphas or “Sheldon” from Big Bang Theory, if you not any of these you’re considered ‘atypical’ at best, or ‘poser’ at the worst. I have been in this conundrum before. Be accused that I am not what I said I am and so forth I don’t look at it with any sort of anger, just confusion. Suddenly everyone is an armchair neuro-scientist. Out of all the expectations I have to carry, one seems to grate on me. It’s one that many autistics have in common and share, yet I don’t seem to fit that stereotype.

You hear it from autists, you see it on webpages. “This is a cat, not a defective dog, this it’s happy being a cat”. There is even a book called “All Cats of Aspergers” that even continues this idea that autistics are like house cats. Autistics are routinely compared to cats; in fact most autistics I have met love cats and talk about them all the time. It’s almost expected of me by other autists than neurotypicals that I should have a hoard of cats and being devoting myself to loving them. Don’t get me wrong. I like cats just fine. My mother has two males at home, Garfield and Andy and I love them both. I was severely attached to our female cat Jade before we had to find a better home for her. Still though, I am not a ailurophile, I don’t have a bunch of cats in my apartment and even though Josh likes them I don’t have big interest in getting one (though, we have considered adopting one, right now it’s not possible with the boys). I am perfectly happy with my curious loving bucks who make me grin every time I see them scuffle, scamper and learn new tricks with me. I have nothing against autists that have and love cats; Josh my partner has interest in them and even acts on occasion like a big lazy ginger tom. 

Yet for some reason the idea that we should be compared to a domesticated animal unnerves me. For some reason it’s appropriate to put us on the same platform as animal that wholly dependent on people. Cats are not as independent as most people think. Looking at it for what it is, it feels like it’s another metaphor that autists need allistics to take care of them. I know most people don’t think like that, but I see that perception. But let’s look at how we raise cats. We declaw them, force them in house for their safety, neuter and spay them and we should. They are cats, they don’t have agency like people do, I believe in being a responsible pet owner. I don’t castrate my males as they are brothers and it’s going be a same sex cage, but if they get too violent I will be responsible. Since autistics everywhere are fighting against compliancy and patronistic ideals of the neurotypical majority; I find it almost ironic that many identify with cats and are quiet content with being compared to a house pet. If folks choose to use a cat as metaphor for their state of being, then by all means more power to you. But as for me, I don’t see myself as laid back cat that enjoys cream and fish. 

I am investigative, too smart for my own good and have an insatiable appetite. In many ways, I am like a rat. Curious, bright, active and finding comfort with my own kind, I am social and adventurous, a lover of new things and things to explore. In many ways I throw a lot of the stereotypes of a typical autist out the window. Despite the phrase, ‘if you have met one autist, then you have met one autist,’ people don’t seem to follow it very well, including other autists. We make comparisons and we gage each other, there has been pissing contests among autistics on who is more ‘autie’ than thou. Parents to it every day picking out what traits that their child has are ‘clearly’ autistic traits. Thus using it as measuring stick against other autistics. It’s clear that in the spectrum of thing that there are other things I should fixate on. Yet why are we painting ourselves with the idea that we should be tame pets, and why are those traits that make us an autistic used to measure others? Is it because we have to prove to NTs that we are really are pussy cats? That we have to give them some sort of reassurance that we’re not like those guys? Can autistics be like, dogs, ferrets, horses, ducks or even rats? More importantly, what value is it for us to be considered typical by NTs, why should we be their ‘pussy cat’?

-Bard.

It's a matter of perspective

Josh and I have been rather hopeful about a new crime drama that has been on TNT lately. Perception stars Eric McCormack as Dr. Daniel Pierce. A brilliant neuro-scientist who helps the FBI solve complex crimes with his unique perspective and insight on people. Oh and he's also schizophrenic...just thought I should add that in.

I have many mixed feelings about this crime drama but it looks like a good foot in the right direction. However, just because you're going the right way doesn't mean you won't get lost. I suppose this essay is kind of a review on the show but not an accurate one since I have only seen the first episode. It's also dissection on the perspective of having a dual sword of a disability and a talent.

The show is something I want to bring up to parallel what is going in the James Holmes case. There is discussions that he had a psychotic break and is diagnosed with schizophrenia. Not sure if the latter is true however and I did mention my irritation on the lie that schizophrenics are always crazed killers and the denial of the fact they are more likely the victims. Yet the show takes on many of the similar tropes I have seen before. One of them is the "disability superpower" trope. I don't know if it frustrates me or rather fascinates me that his visual hallucinations are the manifestation his subconscious telling him how to solve the crime. Could it be possible for a schizophrenic to have dissociative consciousness that whatever it takes it in, it comes out garbled and skewed? Possibly, it's very likely that most hallucinations cause by different neurowiring is simply a scrambling of what is understood and perceived. But the whole idea that his hallucinations manifest to help him use his active consciousness to solve the crime doesn't sit well with me (example of this is during the episode one of the suspects gets nervous when he sees Dr Pierce he later visits the doctor saying that he is going crazy and killed someone and wants Dr. Pierce to help him. Turns out it's a hallucination that is a clue to what is going in the case). I can't buy it for some reason, hallucinations don't always manifest like that, some are just plain nonsensical (the one my friend J had are pretty damn surreal). Maybe that is why Dr. Pierce is brilliant, maybe his brilliance is because of his schizophrenia. Or is it the other way around, maybe is born brilliant and his brain schisms causing the schizophrenic symptoms?

Perhaps this is the thesis of the essay. Am I good storytelling because I am an autist who sees things in different shades? Or am I an autist that uses stories as an accommodation to communicate? It's a chicken/egg question indeed and one that needs exploration. I have high hopes for a show that works to move pass the tropes and cliches of schizo-typal people. Who has a neurodiverse hero that treasures his neurodiversity and truly recognizes it. It's good to see folks taking that bent on disability than making it "teaching lesson" for the able-bodied.

Here we go again

With another shooting in the news the same usual suspects show up and without much ado, the Mental Illness and Developmental Disability community, pretty much gets bulldozed and scapegoated. Just like clockwork. I dread hearing about these dreadful shootings (not just because they are incredibly tragic), because once again we're the face of evil and violence. In weeks time schizophrenics, bi-polar and autistic adults (and teens) will be in the front pages of news blogs with tragic reports of there "aggressive" behavior and how were "time bombs" etc etc. Same song, same dance. It happened with the Virgina Tech massacre it happened with Columbine too, and now with the horrific Aurora Cinema shooting it seems that people keep conflicting Criminal Minds with real life.

Joe Scarborough said some pretty ignorant statements in regards to the shooting, and he got told off for them fortunately, but this just a slow change. Especially since Joe kinda missed the point. And to be a bit cynical here, people are going to continue to miss the point since this is always been sort of a hard lesson to learn. People with mental illnesses are not your killers. People with schizophrenic disorders, bi-polar, OCD, DID, Borderline are not your boogieman. Kassianne made clear point on this complete with stats on the real facts that we're the victims than the victimizers. In fact I have been hearing more frequently about the deaths of autistics lately. Yet still people continue to paint us as organic robots with no feelings or social awareness. I don't understand how hard it is for people to grasp that it's more likely that my neurtypical readers are going to to murder me or my neurotypical siblings than the other way around. Hell I should start profiling all the normies on my blog for Odin's sake.

I know what your people are like...

Gesturing Loudly

Today was my first ASL lesson at the Stonewall Center in Columbus. I have always been interesting in learning a new language, but I have some trouble learning verbal languages as I can't process aural information easily. I could do Latin, but it was less complex than say....learning Welsh (damn those dipthongs) so I want to try to learn ASL. For many reasons, one was to converse with non-speaking people that might rely on ASL as a form of AAC another was to converse with Deaf people and learn about another culture.

Also I want to talk to my friend Jay in his language most importantly.

Perhaps those are all shitty reasons in wanting to learn sign language, but wanting to understand another culture and another perspective is why NTs often interact with autsitics and maybe that is why they struggle.

I've talked to Jay before through text conversations about disability having a disability (Deaf people don't believe to be disabled) and living in a world not quite meant for us. I have had some interesting questions from him. He works with the DD community as a caregiver so when he found out that I was autistic he was curious. He asked me:
What is your functioning level? You are not severe?
I responded back (ignoring how fucking invasive that question is)
It's complex. I have good days when I can understand what is going on and I pass as a typical person well. Then I have days when I am like "rainman" Most of the time I can pass as typical. I have to. It's over whelming and tiring.
It's interesting when I talked to him. I saw a lot of parallels with Deaf culture and the sprouting autistic culture. He empathized with me, I saw in his eyes was we talked on a sheet of paper in the coffee house one Wednesday. I really understand Jay sometimes. I am not Deaf, but I get the fact that Hearing people are just as self involved and arrogant as NTs. I get the frustration of communicating to some one that doesn't see your language as a real language. I get it. I want to get it at least. I feel so unsure around Jay and other Deaf people. I don't want to be "that guy" you know, the allies that I rant about on my blog. But I really connect with Jay. I want to continue the friendship I have with him.

But maybe this is why I am writing this post. I live in a culture that has been scattered to the four winds. We don't have a collective language to exchange ideas and thoughts with. What we have a common feeling of oppression and exclusion. What is Autistic Culture? Is the question I am asking? It's something that I have been thinking about lately as I find myself walking into the Deaf community.

The problems with calling out "Fake Aspies"

The cold is keeping me from going outside today. Thank god. Home at Josh's I read the posts on my blogger and livejournal, trying not to scream at the monitor at the bullshit that I happen to read. With the fact that my dearest love is going to brave the cold to fight off the retail wolves. I figured I should bunker down with my coffee, and blankets. I decide I should write this essay.

For the last couple years there has been a divide lately within the general blogging and LJ atmosphere. I see this a lot in “snark” communities and communities of a less douchey nature. It's what I like to call, “Fake Aspie Call Out”. It usually follows when a someone says something rather insulting or bigoted and then hiding behind a diagnosis of aspergers or autism. Thus and individual will call them out on their actions and that they are not really an aspie. Now this is a problem. I've already discussed. My ethos with Self-DX people, personal responsibility and the privileges of being off grid. But one of my irritations is this internet-hero business when a NT (normally) calls out a person and invalidates the poster's diagnosis with anecdotal proof on what a real aspie is and that they are 'self-dx' (which is like the kiss of death in a blog) because said evidence.

This is problematic in many ways. First off, you're attacking the person for what they are. Yes the poster is at fault for using their identity as a shield. You can say: “That doesn't matter! What you said was still still sexism and rather rude!” You can call them out on their actions without attacking their diagnosis or assuming they are not really on the spectrum. Yes aspies shouldn't use their DX as a shield that is true, but assuming whether they are really autistic or not is not making them realize their mistakes. It just make them more defensive and reactionary to dialogue. It also has the unfortunate side-effect of making other auties and aspies less comfortable about discussing their DX or making sure to add reassurances that they are “real aspies” and that one is “fake”. It's also feeding the age-old notion that real aspies and auties should be submissive quiet and very welcoming of Nts “helping them”. If you shout back, resist or act like an asshole; then you are not a real autist but a fake one obviously taking the DX to excuse your behavior and ruining it for the real autists out there.

No actually, what's fucking it up for folks like us is this “real” and “internet” aspergers bullshit. I am sick of aspies throwing their fellow autists under the bus (not going to lie I've done this) and Nts knowing how a real autist should act (like after being told what is what, to be very apologetic and grovel at their feet of their typical overlord), and making the self-advocates job harder than usual (it's always been a pain in the crotch really). Is diagnosis blaming bad form. Yes, absolutely. No one should use their identity as a scape goat. But I know why they do. Getting something like autism (especially late in life) is tasking and sometimes traumatic. It's so much easier to use your new DX to rationalize everything. Over time one will learn to simply accept his or her's DX and take more responsibility for their actions. I use to blame my DX, sometimes I do when very angry and reactionary. It is a bad behavior but not one that Self-DX folks do exclusively. If someone is blaming their DX for their jerk-bag statement online. Don't assume that they are attention-fiends and only use their DX for pity. Some might be newly DX and haven't come to grips with it yet.

The idea that calling out the “Fake Aspies” is suppose to help the real autists, is based on two notions. Normal people are always jerks. Auties are never jerks. The deal is that SURPRISE you can be a dick and an autist. It's important not focus on one's diagnosis, but their actions and taking responsibility for your statements and apologize when wrong should also be just as important. For an aspie, if you are unclear with something or want to say something...snarky or you simply want to call someone out yourself. Call on their actions than what they are. If you don't understand something, getting another person that knows you to clarify privately. Might be helpful.

To conclude. Don't be an asshole to one another.

FlusterCluck: Disability in Fiction why I hate the "disability superpower" trope

This topic has been floating in my head for a long time and something that I want to approach it and actually talk about it.



aiffe brought this up recently in her post about TV shows she is watching and I responded to the parts about the show "Alphas" here. One of the issues I have within in fiction, or rather Sci-Fi and fantasy is the idea that people of disabilities needs a "karmic balance" or able-body "personal Jesus". It's something I've noticed in books and in movies when the disability is turned into a hurdle to get over or the disability must be balanced with a great power or skill in order to make up for the disability.


This is a big pet peeve and one I am going to address. While the link doesn't explain the problems concerning karmic balancing it did bring up the feelings of worry I have when I see a rise of autistic heroes especially within the Sci-Fi/Fantasy quagmire. It feels that writers have to make them a tragic hero or a naive one (like Lou Arresdale in Speed of Dark), they are normally male and asexual (and yes there are asexual auties, but their also NT asexuals too and queer auties, but autie in books/movies/tv have been portrayed as hopeless cases or asexual which is because writers want to dodge sexually active autists) and he must love numbers and math and be good at computers and in sci-fi books, must have superpower.


And this is where I sigh.


I have not seen an autistic hero, be female/queer/or sexually normal. I have not seen an classic autist be useful in a plot that isn't a plot tool. I haven't to seen a happy aspie hero, that is happily adjusted as he is and contributes to the story in other ways that has nothing to do with his disability. Instead, writers feel like they have to weigh in on their opinions on autism and thus their character ends up being a soap box, like Lou from Speed of Dark and Jacob Hunt from House Rules. While characters like Hikaru Azuma from With the Light are out there(a happy and severely autistic kid in a slice of life manga), they are few and far between and autistic writers are just as rare. Yet that is another topic....


You don't need to make your autistic or disabled hero "balanced" but giving him a superpowerful skill (now before someone shouts out 'what about Tikaani', I want to say, while I don't regret giving Tikaani edidic memory, I do think I should build more of his character and re-designed his savant talent in a way that wasn't used to make him "useful" then again Tikaani was beta character and his concept is in constant refinement, to maybe it's lesson learned), you can however develop him like all your other characters with his own talents and flaws and wishes in a way that isn't showcasing a litany of stereotypes. You can make an autistic character "quirky" and "awkward' but you don't have to point that out all the time (like in Hunt's rules) you don't have to make him male. You can give him a relationship that isn't tragic. If the story does have characters with superpowers you can give him one that compliments and balances the team (say that you have one super hacker, one with superstrength maybe the autist can be a shifter?) instead of a power that is following the "auties are good with math and science" trope.


Rambling aside of ideas to improve the auties in fiction problem, the crux is the reason the disability superpower is aggravating is that accentuates the idea that "Disability is bad" and needs to have something good to even out the bad of being disabled. The fact that only autistic savants are useful in stories is forgetting the fact that not all auties are gifted some are just mediocre all around. Disability shouldn't be painted as flaw that needs to be balanced. Disability should be a facet of a character that makes it whole.