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Depictions of autism in media very rarely focus on anything other than what's perceived as the upsides.
Like all other forms of entertainment and marketing, it's not realistic, it's designed to present something appealing to a mass audience.
I'd say Tina Belcher is a fairly good depiction, and people love her character.
Yeah I commented that the best depictions I've seen of all these identities are usually kids cartoons, Bob's Burgers is pretty family friendly and decent for the most part. The Marshmallow character is another. There's an episode that kink shames Pesto for his adult baby diaper fetish though, or rather using the fact that Pesto is ashamed of it himself. Marshmallow has no shame about what they are. Overall it's positive even with the few issues.
I think it’s also in the current day spirit of unquestioning inclusion. Producers can’t make a more nuanced or even unlikeable neurodivergent character because there would definitely be backlash for harping on a marginalized group. Even if the character is written with the best of intentions in mind
Flash news people like fiction not as a representation of reality but as a stylized, idealized versión of it, that's why you see beautiful people, not fat, ugly or old. So it's autistic quirky and not every day autistic.
I'm aware it's an impopular opinion but that doesn't make it less true. And you can gauge it by how popular it is.
Also romanticized.... Mental illnesses...
Also it's funny to hear about unfairness in media or Hollywood. Such as women are expected to be beautiful and not be over 30. There's a lot you can say about it, but something about it makes me feel it's deeply hypocritical.
I don't understand the confusion here. Yes, it's interesting and entertaining to watch people on TV deal with issues that don't affect me and that I don't have to accommodate, and it's not interesting, entertaining, or fun to watch my brother deal with those issues in real life, or that we have to walk on eggshells at family holidays so my brother in law doesn't have a meltdown. Duh. It's also entertainment to watch a show where an important character dies, but extremely difficult and uncomfortable when your actual friend loses a spouse or child.
Society loves things that are difficult on TV, and in real life society prefers things that are easy.
Wednesday from The Adam's Family and Eddie Munster are nuerodivergent?
Yeah. People have a tendency of labelling anyone that is depicted in TV shows as socially awkward as autistic. That's why so many people on twitter who simp for Dahmer on twitter refer to his supposed autism despite the fact that he was subjected to multiple psychological evaluations and never was accessed as autism.
Wednesday was socially awkward, sure... But the Munsters? From what I remember, they were depicted the same as any other sitcom family of the time; except they were physically monsters. To be fair, though, I barely remember the show from when it was on Nick at Nite when I was a kid; I might be conflagrating memories.
I never once got that impression. Seems like a stretch to me
Also outside of cosplaying who is "obsessing over" them?
"Why does everyone love that imaginary character so much,when they could have loved me instead? I do deserve it more, after all!"
They're both, at their core, fish out of water stories. Akin to 'someone from the East coast moved to the south and both people do things differently'.
People are projecting, otherwise.
In general, I like all people more as a concept than in person.
Wait you think Wednesday is supposed to be neuro fucking divergent? The Addams family are macabre. They enjoy inflicting pain on themselves and others. They're obviously creepy and quirky. They're bizarre. They're morbid. They're antiheroes, maybe. They could even be argued to be sociopathic, sadistic, cruel, or just mean. But that's their entire shtick, you absolute massive twat. They're an antithesis of a typically-portrayed family, the one with the white picket fence and the golden lab. What they are not, nor has anyone involved with their creation ever claimed they were, is neurodivergent.
But sure, just randomly make something unrelated to you completely about you, cause that screams neurodivergent, not narcissism.
Honestly kinda hate it when the Addams family are portrayed as actual criminals. Kinda makes me root for the stepford wives who keep protesting their existence, which defeats the point.
You've just described a lot of autistic people though. And specifically in this era where characters are given an extra dash of "autistic-coded writing" yeah thats the popular consensus is that Wednesday represents an autistic character.
My favourite character is Abed from Community. Wondering what other autistic people think of him?
I like Abed. In general he’s just a cool guy, but I think the portrayal despite on the surface seeming stereotypical actually has lots of depth. I especially like how he’s seen as “socially inept” but then knows more about the characters than they know about themselves.
Rewatching Community for like the 5th time, and I love Abed- especially how the show makes it clear he's not always the easiest to deal with, and not just some freakishly-smart supergenius who's always two steps ahead of everyone. He seems smart because he can read patterns in peoples' behavior, but he's otherwise just as human and imperfect as any of the others.
He's shown to have a lot of insecurity about the gang sticking around, and expects them to eventually give up and abandon him because everyone gets sick of putting up with his quirks eventually. They never do, of course, but it's something I relate to a lot. It sucks to deal with, but it's nice to have a character to relate that to.
That's okay. They prefer nondivergent characters more than their real counterparts as well. We really just should all develop catch phrases like Hidily Ho, Neighborino! or Your pitiful rebellion is no match for the power of the dark side.
I don't believe any of these characters are meant to be coded autistic. People just like wacky characters who say things without filtering themselves because we aren't actually able to do those things and get away with it in normal society.
I recently made some fellow ND friends and I can't honestly say that I don't blame the normies.
I mean to be fair a lot of characters like that get popular because a lot of autistic people identify with them and there are a lot of autistic people in fandom spaces.
I’m not with “coding”. It’s like a backronym, the characters are written, the actor and director interpret them, we see them and apply our own interpretation. Our interpretation tries to reverse engineer all of that and then put the character into a known box. Helluva game of telephone.
A character written to be autistic (or have gay affections, or whatever else) is not “coded”, they’re written to be gay or autistic.
Now, that’s not to say that writers, directors, and actors don’t all have biases and may have chosen certain traits knowingly or unconsciously and applied them to a character. There are definitely characters that do appear to have non-normative traits like BBT’s Sheldon, but the show left his character hanging. I can imagine why. If they said he was ASD the ASD community would vilify the show with “That’s not who we are!!!” and “Don’t mock people with ASD!” Justifiably.
But the wiki on the show says this:
Co-creator Bill Prady has stated that Sheldon's character was neither conceived nor developed with regard to Asperger's, although Parsons has said that in his opinion, Sheldon "couldn't display more traits" of Asperger's syndrome.
The ASD community would be right. There's no bigger insult than being connected with Big Bang Theory
Big Bang Theory is nerdface.
People used to tell me that I reminded them of Sheldon from tbbt as though that was a compliment.
I get that often on my tours. I hate it every time and it's increasingly difficult to hide it.
Of course they do. It is fine when they can simply watch without having any personal skin in the game.
Similarly, everyone loves characters more than real people.
i feel like a lot of these characters produce a weird type of voyeurism. It's like bringing out a fictional version of a real person to gawk at. Not as bad as the modern "freak show" nature of channels like TLC were they parade out people with issues that are different from the norm. EG my 600 pound life, the ones where they follow people with OCD, etc. However still, kinda, getting to a point where it's basically using neurodivergence as a trope, or archetype maybe, to entertain the normies, so to speak.
I don't know, it just weirds me out. It would probably be better if there was more realistic, and positive (without making their condition something that makes them some sort of like super heroesque character) portrayals. Though, any type of divergence, illness, etc. that affects behavior is, still, portrayed very poorly, over all, in the media.
What is often described as autistic in Hollywood is usually an advantage, such as determination or a razor-sharp mind and good memory. However, the truth is different for many of those affected, as they do not have pronounced insular talents and often experience disadvantages with their tics and social problems. It is harder for others to overlook such flaws when there are no obvious advantages.
Taking photos of my autistic hand gestures to show people on the internet.
Readers are enamored of Stephen King's Holly character. Yeah, she's cute to read about, if your ex-wife didn't act like that. Not so fun IRL.
I believe Holly is supposed to be autistic, and me ex isn't that I know of, so I do NOT mean to offend. Just saying, I get the point of the meme.
My daughter is autistic, eat up with ADHD and sensory processing issues on top. She's 10 and I just got her and my son back after a 4.5-year court battle. That little girl is extraordinarily difficult to deal with, even with her meds.
I've probably hurt someone's feelings with my poor attempt to empathize and I'm sorry if I did. 😓
This is honestly painful to become aware of
To be fair, most things are better as a concepts than practice. Especially so for fictional characters.