r/TopCharacterTropes • u/MeepMan324 • 5d ago

Hated Tropes (Hated Trope) Autism is the best thing ever

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  1. Because of her autism, music's worldview is really innocent and positive with bright colours and these stupid dances whilst in real life she gets chocked out by her "caretaker" (Music)

  2. Most videos Dhar Mann has on autism have them being these really smart people that solve a test or a spelling bee or win a competition

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378

u/KnownAd8350 5d ago

as somebody who also has autism, im just mad that its always 2 different extremes. all media portrays autism as either the worst or best thing ever!!! is there any media that's like "yo autism exists n shit" without going to those extremes?

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u/fizzydusk 5d ago

I hate how that’s how the public perception of autism is. It’s either the worst thing ever and completely debilitating and if you’re doing too well then you’re lying about your autism, or it’s a gift and amazing and wonderful and you’re not allowed to be upset about it.

Most days I feel neutral about my autism. For all of its downsides, it also shaped me almost completely as a person, and I like who I am.

20

u/YouKnowEd 5d ago

I think age plays a huge factor in perception, simply because of how it was treated/diagnosed previously. I was born in the 90s, and my school had one kid who was known to be autistic. He would have frequent meltdowns, some of which involved shitting on the floor. That was my only exposure to it growing up, so it was seen as this extreme thing.

But as I was reaching adulthood, things were changing. The idea of a spectrum became prevalent among laypeople, and diagnosis was happening for those who are less severe. I was exposed to people on the milder end and it updated my view. Even my older brother now realises he is on the spectrum, and that realisation has helped him navigate his career better.

Bit Generations above us? They will have already had solid perceptions set in place a long time ago, and those can be harder to shift.

Looking back I'm sure there were plenty of other people with autism in my school, but it just wasn't treated or identified the same then as it is now.

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u/chubbychecker_psycho 5d ago

I was diagnosed at 45. I had already developed a solid mask and people don't believe me until I take my mask off and let my face relax. I spent decades perfecting "happy eyes" and "this is how you move your eyebrows to show you are interested in the conversation" and (because my mouth is naturally downturned, like many people in my family) a little half smile at all times that looks not like a smirk (because they don't like smirks).

I'm a woman, by the way. My generation just called us "difficult."

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u/Virtual-Guard-7209 5d ago

Yeah when I was younger I searched for basically any psychology or self help book that offered ways to fit in. No normal 20 year old is reading unmasking the face and emotions revealed as guides to emote better. But here I am all grown up with a very convincing mask.

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u/YinTanTetraCrivvens 4d ago

I live in an Asian country where people don’t make eye contact or are allowed to show emotions, so it took me a while to realize “Oh, I’m masking and deliberately showing emotions to make people hate me less.”

10

u/SquareTaro3270 5d ago

I have found genuine peace and self-love from embracing my autism and how it has shaped me as a person. I had to learn to be kind to myself and proud of the ways in which I’m different from the majority of people. So I don’t mind my autism 90% of the time. It’s a part of me.

It is still hell on earth sometimes. Showering and doing dishes are both absolute torture with my aversion to being wet, all of my social difficulties growing up, lists upon lists of ways my disorder has made life difficult.

But it’s also the reason I became an artist. It’s why I connect with my other neurodiverse friends as well as I do. I’ve made peace with it and I feel like that’s not something that’s represented enough in media.

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u/KeySearch7373 5d ago

Neutrally autistic is how I feel about my diagnosis as well. It's just me, it's just how I operate. It's cool to have the knowledge and some tools to help regulate, but it's not a big factor in my life. I don't make it part of my external identity and rarely tell people unless I'm particularly overwhelmed and need them to understand where I'm coming from.

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u/YinTanTetraCrivvens 4d ago

Being autistic is like needing glasses. It has its disadvantages, but it can be managed. It’s not a friggin’ superpower or a curse. It’s… normal, like wearing glasses.

2

u/alex3omg 5d ago

Imo the spectrum is too wide.  It's hard to accommodate someone with autism until you meet them and find out their actual needs.  The word doesn't tell you much about their situation.  It could mean they take things a bit literally and need clear instruction.  It could mean they can't feed themselves.  The word is useless without additional context.  

For comparison if I said a kid was deaf you'd have an idea of what to do to accommodate them.  Even if there's a wide range of hearing loss, they might know how to read lips or not, etc, you're still on the same page for the most part.  

2

u/G-man1816 5d ago

People either see autism as a buff or debuff when really its that binding item in some RPG game that RNG decided you must have with upsides and downsides

1

u/VenturingHedonist 5d ago

I like my AUDHD most days. Mostly because I see what the normies aka sheeple are like. However I can acknowledge that it all upside. Just looking around my disaster of a house right now is a great example. Yet when I am working at the hospital I am ridiculously clean and organized.

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u/GonzoRouge 5d ago

Yeah, Abed from Community. He just likes movies and TV shows.

14

u/Devie_sevie 5d ago

Cool. Cool cool cool.

The funniest thing is that Abed’s autism is only really canon because Dan Harmon (the producer) found out he himself was autistic while doing research on Asperger’s while writing Abed

3

u/jackofslayers 5d ago

Celeste syndrome

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u/SuddenReal 5d ago

Still better than Sheldon on the Big Bang Theory.

9

u/Skreamie 5d ago

Apparently it's better in Young Sheldon

1

u/Benoit_Holmes 4d ago

They also have to pin him down when changing the clocks to daylight savings time, he has multiple breaks with reality when in high stress situations and, as Hickey points out, he is allowed to get away with selfish and ridiculous behaviour because the group treats it as whimsical.

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u/Whiteguy1x 5d ago

The pitt? Its fairly realistic about autism. One woman is a doctor with some difficulties and her sister is having a harder time with it.

The show isnt about autism nor is the main character autistic which probably helps

16

u/Luxury-Problems 5d ago

I think it helps that character never once verbalizes her autism. No speeches, no one liners, no super power shit. It's something that viewers picked up on.

In fact there is a scene in which her character is feeling down and thinks she doesn't have a special sauce. This would be the time for someone to even imply her autism but the other character tells her that her gift is her empathy and sensitivity to other patients. That she's excellent with patients, something that "autistic" characters are often portrayed as the opposite of.

7

u/Farigiss 5d ago

I teared up when they put Mel's sister (and in a later episode Mel) in a quiet room and dimmed the lights. Such a small thing but no one IRL has ever even come nearly as close to understanding me or my condition.

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u/jancl0 5d ago

The funny part is that there's actually a 3rd extreme. They're so "yo autism exists n shit" and are so normal about it that there's never a chance for them being autistic to come up naturally, and the writers don't even bother to try, leading the fan base to argue endlessly about whether it's actually autistic representation or not

That's the thing, you can't be too normal about it, or you wouldn't actually see it. It's very hard to find the balance between good representation and representation that exists without beating the audience over the head with your lack of subtext

26

u/Amaskingrey 5d ago

To be fair, all good representation i've ever seen (bar potentially one, where it might have been intended but is never outright stated) was accidental, with the best in mainstream media and just in general with camus's l'etranger having been written before we even knew autism was a thing

11

u/Releases_the_bees 5d ago

It's a book series but Mistborn had a character called Steris who's autistic. It's not outright said due to the time period but she just another character despite it impacting her ability to socially interact. It's shown to have both negatives and positive impacts on her.

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u/UnquestionabIe 5d ago

Helps that you get a lot of perspective from her point of view in certain books, see what she excels at and what she struggles with

2

u/spinningdice 5d ago

Huh, it never struck me that Steris was autistic, but now that it's been mentioned it makes sense. Though I don't think I ever completed reading the Wax & Wayne era books, they're on my list to pick back up again.

2

u/Releases_the_bees 5d ago

Yeah it's some of those things that once you notice it just becomes apparent.

2

u/lioness_the_lesbian 4d ago

Renarin from stormlight is also autistic!

1

u/lioness_the_lesbian 4d ago

I LOVE HER, relating to her a bit too much is actually what led me to getting diagnosed

14

u/Button-Masher117 5d ago

Judging by gay representation in movies, no, fuck you, 15 more years.

4

u/sonerec725 5d ago

Ironically some of the best autism representation is completely unintended and accidental. Laios from Dungeon Meshi is a great example.

3

u/Worried_Bowl_9489 5d ago

Heretic had a seemingly autistic character and didn't draw much attention to it

3

u/totally-normal-human 4d ago

YES. I hate both the extremely positive and horribly pessimistic portrayals. I just exist, my brain is wired in a certain way not everyone gets, let me be.

2

u/brionneverysexy 5d ago

I do not have Autism so my perspective is through my work with the community and people I know socially. Norma is Deadend Paranormal Park seems like a good representation of a person with Autism that isn't portrayed as idealized or as having high support needs.

Extraordinary Attorney Woo comes off as another good example. Its a Korean drama where Woo's autism is more up and front but despite her struggles she is an accomplished attorney

2

u/Adept_Advertising_98 5d ago

Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam. The main character Kamille is confirmed to have autism, though it's mentioned once in the show, but he does show some autistic traits, and comes up with the basic design of the Zeta Gundam, which is the mid-series upgrade, though there's no mention of the transformation(so Anaheim Electronics probably just implemented the transformation from their failed Zeta Gundam project they were working on at the same time, which had a worse frame than the Gundam MK-II), he just described it as a Gundam MK-II with better armor. He also starts out antisocial and kind of insane because he has a complex about his name, but he ends up getting a lot better.

2

u/UnquestionabIe 5d ago

To be fair the whole line with him calling himself "an autistic child" is based on how Japanese society at the time used the term. To them it translates to basically "closed off syndrome" and can be used just to describe a teenager having a moody phase. Still I personally believe 100% that Kamille (who is probably my favorite UC protagonist with Hathaway a close second) to be autistic due to what you described, coupled of course with the newtype stuff he's got going on. With of course the last parts of Zeta hitting extremely hard as a result.

My significant other was diagnosed as on the spectrum at a young age and only recently has she been willing to check out my Gundam interests. We watched the Hathaway movies and her immediate reaction to when Hathaway has a PTSD/newtype moment was "wow that's a great representation of when I'm feeling overwhelmed". The ending of the second movie especially stood out to her, to the point she's wanted to rewatch both of them multiple times.

2

u/AnEmptyPopcornBucket 5d ago

Fantastic 4 comics do a really good job of painting reed as autistic, making him very smart and able to hyper fixate to solve problems but also unaware and socially inept. It’s done really well in my opinion

2

u/tononeuze 5d ago

It's too much too ask for, apparently.

The current trend is to overcorrect for the superpower perception by insisting that the only true autistic people are nonverbal and/or those who need caregivers and that somehow the girls on TikTok saying "quirky" are gonna take away these resources.

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u/MlkChatoDesabafando 5d ago edited 4d ago

Tbf from my experience a good chunk of autistic internet spaces (which are presumably were a good chunk of writers do research) are indeed a weird mix of suicidal self-loathing and weird superiority complexes.

3

u/the-magnetic-rose 5d ago

Abed from Community is good autism representation imo. Dan Harmon, the showrunner, based Abed from himself and discovered he had autism when people started pointing out that Abed was autistic. He's not a savant. His special interests are movies and popular culture.

1

u/FriesExpert 5d ago

i think watch dogs but i hope someone else can elaborate

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u/nep5603 5d ago

Richeh from Witch Hat Atelier !

1

u/Chaincat22 5d ago

Not when it directly acknowledges autism, no. If autism is a defined, named character trait, it's somewhere on the extremes of the spectrum, rather than just a slightly different mode of being. There's some characters in persona where you can infer that some characters are autistic (Yusuke namely, he's "gifted" and "eccentric" but for all intents and purposes, he's not any better or worse because of his autism, just different and struggles with social skills) but they leave it to just that inference.

1

u/CeramicDrip 5d ago

Not just that. Everyone wants to be autistic or have something. Its just sad really

1

u/cognitive_dissent 5d ago

what's a media where autism is super cool? just chriosity not trying to be sarcastic

1

u/JustAFlyingSquirrel 4d ago

Maybe check out heartbreak high? Quinni's character is autistic and it is addressed but at the same time its not treated as a superpower or a curse. It just is. The actress herself is autistic and advocates for other really nuanced and realistic portrayals of autism onscreen

1

u/ParaEwie 4d ago

Yeah I hate that too

1

u/iloveseacreatures2 4d ago

Isn't the middle ground also stupid, since if the character is labeled to be autistic but doesn't really show any symptoms then they wouldn't actually be autistic?

Personal opinion, but I prefer when it's shown to be difficult to handle. It's not easy having this proclaimed "superpower"

1

u/Murdreed_Brotaids 5d ago

> all media portrays autism as either the worst or best thing ever

That's kind of how storytelling has always worked for everything.

0

u/syqesa35 5d ago

Nah you never see it portrayed as the atual extreme, the "He can't talk and he might bite a chunk of skin off you if he sees some dirt on the floor that wasn't here yesterday, or hit his head on the wall until he bleeds"

0

u/Platinum_Mirage 5d ago

I mean this is kid’s show, so I don’t know if it would interest you or not, but I feel like Carl the Collector does a great job at this. It was made by PBS Kids, and has been running since 2024. Two of the six main characters, Carl and Lotta, are autistic, and I feel they do a great job at showing autism isn’t something to be ashamed of, but it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows either. They have people on the spectrum involved with the show so it’s accurate (the voice actors for those characters I mentioned are also autistic) and show that autism is a SPECTRUM, and it isn’t the same for everyone.