I don’t know if this is something you can speak on, but often when I write a character with any quirks I’m told that I’ve written an autistic coded character & that I’m insulting neurodiverse people. (This always comes from neurotypical people) Do you have any thoughts?
This may be kind of harsh, but I would say I don't listen to neurotypical people's feedback on potentially autistic-coded characters. However, being socially awkward, having intense interests, anxiety, and even being ace are all potentially related to being autistic. They all describe me perfectly. So, I could see why you received that feedback. I would suggest you determine WHY your character is this way and put it somewhere in the text. Some of this may go back to asking yourself why you write your characters this way. I know several authors who wrote autistic-like characters before they were diagnosed (professionally or peer-diagnosed). So they wrote characters like them. IMO, that is valid autism rep. If it is only one or two of these things in a character it could just be who they are. However, if one character has a whole lot of autistic traits...As a reader I would mark them as autistic-coded also.
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I don’t know if this is something you can speak on, but often when I write a character with any quirks I’m told that I’ve written an autistic coded character & that I’m insulting neurodiverse people. (This always comes from neurotypical people) Do you have any thoughts?
Apparently being socially awkward OR having certain interests OR having anxiety OR being ace makes a character autistic coded
This may be kind of harsh, but I would say I don't listen to neurotypical people's feedback on potentially autistic-coded characters. However, being socially awkward, having intense interests, anxiety, and even being ace are all potentially related to being autistic. They all describe me perfectly. So, I could see why you received that feedback. I would suggest you determine WHY your character is this way and put it somewhere in the text. Some of this may go back to asking yourself why you write your characters this way. I know several authors who wrote autistic-like characters before they were diagnosed (professionally or peer-diagnosed). So they wrote characters like them. IMO, that is valid autism rep. If it is only one or two of these things in a character it could just be who they are. However, if one character has a whole lot of autistic traits...As a reader I would mark them as autistic-coded also.