Autistic Characters

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1. Autistic special interests are different from regular interests in that they are different in intensity, focus, or restrictiveness. The DSM-5 uses what we'd informally call "special interests" as part of the diagnostic criteria for autism. Criteria B3 for Autism Spectrum Disorder is "Highly fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus; (such as strong attachment to or preoccupation with unusual objects, excessively circumscribed or perseverative interests )." An autistic special interest is really no different from a regular interest. The special interest will be more specific, more fixated, and more intense. As an example, I lose myself in my special interests so much that I forget to take care of my daily needs. My biggest special interest is the insects and their close relatives. I'm so deeply focused on this that I can identify by scientific name tens of thousands of insect species. No joke. Think of the special interest as a regular interest on steroids.

2. Jewel's auditory problems seem a lot like mine coincidentally. Her reactions to sounds you're describing are a lot like me. (e.g. GET AWAY NOW, or just shutting down) Now, sensory differences are a complicated beast. Autism can affect every sense, all 22 of them. That's right, we have way more than five senses. There's hearing, sight, tastes, smell, and all that, but there's also proprioception (where are my body parts in space?), chronoception (how much time has passed?), and balance. We have receptors in our blood vessels that measure the amount of CO2 in our blood; that's a sense. Light touch and deep touch are actually two different senses that are processed differently. Our eardrums sense changes in air pressure. (That stillness you feel before a thunderstorm? You're sensing an air pressure change!) I actually have a sensory over-sensitivity to air pressure changes, which seems to me to be incredibly rare even among autistic people. I don't typically have meltdowns in the face of sensory problems, but I almost always have meltdowns on airplanes. The rapid change in pressure upon takeoff and landing causes huge sensory overload for me.

Autism does several things to senses. The most obvious one is changing the intensity at which they're perceived. A sense in an autistic person could be oversensitive, undersensitive, or it could just be "normal." To me personally, the world is louder, brighter, and scratchier than it would seem to a neurotypical. But just the opposite could be true for another autistic! Their sensory system might be toned down! Most often you'll see some senses that are turned up, and some senses that are turned down. (Anecdotally to me however, it seems that senses are more often "turned up" than "toned down.") Sometimes, counter-intuitive things seem to be true in people with sensory differences. I know a few autistic people who can hardly go out in public because the world is too loud. The sound of a passing car is too much for them. But, these same autistics love to blast Metallica full volume through headphones as a means of sensory regulation. Odd, I know, but keep in mind that the brain is confusing, and the autistic brain is even more confusing.

Senses are commonly not just turned up or down either. Autistic people may have very specific sensory sensitivites. A specific (seemingly innocuous) sound may elicit an incredibly negative reaction in an autistic person. Some autistic people (myself included) have issues with specific textures. For example, denim rubbing against the skin might be perceived as a burning sensation. Sensory sensitivities are such a broad topic that it's impossible to pin down in one post. If you have some specific sensory differences in mind for Jewel I'm sure you can post here and someone with similar differences can relate what they're like. As for explaining them in relation to autism, it's probably easiest to just say "Jewel experiences and feels things differently." That simple. You can go into specific details as the plot demands. (Also, sensory sensitivities provide AWESOME opportunity for poetic language. I tell people how the electrical whine coming from an old TV bothers me by saying "the sound cuts through the very fiber of my being. Like a knife that slashes through consciousnesses itself. While the whine is going on, I cannot think, process, or perceive anything other than a growing sense to flee." As you can see, wonderful opportunity for the use of descriptive language.)

3. As others have said, including myself in the original post you're referring to, it's impossible to define or explain what I mean. You know it when you see it, but that's the only advice I can give. It's a distinctly autistic way of viewing the world, and I can't provide one specific example. I doubt anyone else could either. People have tried by saying things like "non-autistic people think in verbs, autistic people think in nouns," but statements like these only make things confusing. If it makes you feel any better, your way of viewing the world is just as confusing to us as our way is to you! So, welcome to the club of confusion! I wouldn't worry too much about emulating this. Unless we are following every specific line of consciousnesses Jewel is having, I don't think anyone would be able to tell one way or the other whether her thought processes are autistic or not.

4. Oh boy... say it with me: AUTISTIC PEOPLE FEEL EMPATHY. AUTISTIC PEOPLE HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR. These are part of a lot of stereotypes and they're very common misconceptions. The reason people often assume these is because of differences in communication. An autistic person may not show the standard cues of having empathy. So, because the non-autistic in the equation doesn't perceive empathy, it is assumed that the autistic doesn't possess it. This is not the case. Autistic people have a lot of trouble expressing empathy, but that doesn't mean we don't feel it. In fact, a lot of people on the spectrum feel empathy too a greater degree than a neurotypical. It's a similar case for humor and sarcasm. It's not that autistic people don't understand it. It's that we don't recognize it when it's put into play. The neurotypical sees "This person isn't understanding my jokes, so they must not understand humor." The autistic sees "I didn't know you were joking." Autistic people, as a rule, have an impaired ability to read social cues. So, they may not understand that humor is trying to be communicated. Autistics tend to have slightly more difficulty with sarcasm than with general humor, though it's usually not comically bad. Literal thinking can make getting sarcasm difficult for some, but most autistic people can get sarcasm if they know sarcasm was intended. I almost always have to ask people if they're being sarcastic or not, (I can't read voice tone) but this doesn't mean I don't understand sarcasm. My sense of humor is sarcastic actually.

Back to your original question, a few common tropes that are associated with autism (though none of these are autism itself, they're just co-occurring conditions) are synesthesia, epilepsy, photographic memories, extreme giftedness in science or math, anxiety and panic disorders, and occasionally intellectual disability. As you can see, there's a wide range of these both good and bad. Autism is defined by two things: pragmatic social difficulties, and restrictive repetitive behaviors. Anything outside of those two could be thought of as quirky little additions that show up in autistic people. Keep in mind though, that not every autistic trait will occur in every autistic person. I promise you that there are autistics who can make extended eye contact. There are autistics that aren't interested in any particular things. There are autistics who hate routine and sameness, wanting knew and exciting adventures everyday. There are autistic that may appear at first to be very socially adept, probably because they spent their childhood in therapies that taught them how to be "pretend neurotypicals." Don't feel like you need to cram Jewel full of all these little eccentricities, no matter how autistic they are.

5. Stimming is the act of performing repetitive movements or behaviors that stimulate one or more sense/s. And, for the record, it is no different than fidgeting. Stimming isn't just an autistic thing. Everybody stims in some way. Do you twirl your hair, bite your fingernails, or jiggle your foot when sitting? Because guess what those are; they're stimming! The difference is that autistic people stim in ways that are not considered "normal" and are seen as odd or disruptive. Hand flapping, rocking, chewing on things, and pacing are not fundamentally different than hair twirling or foot jiggling. The difference is that the latter things are done by most people, and thus are seen as "socially acceptable." The former are done by autistic people, and thus are not considered "socially acceptable. IME, socially acceptable stims are called fidgeting, and not socially acceptable stims are called, well, stimming. Stimming seems to be this thing that humans just do, and I don't think anyone is quite sure why.

6. So long as you present Jewel as a real human being and not some sort of emotionless robot you'll be OK. Don't infantilize Jewel, and don't make her out to be some sort of child in an adult body. If you want a good example of how not to portray autistic people, there are some Autism Speaks posts I can link you to, lol. I think it would be cool if you could have Jewel overcome her insecurities and become empowered by her autism in the end.

7. I could write a book on this one. If you want more specifics I can give them to you, but here's the short version. Meltdowns and shutdowns occur when an autistics ability to cope are surpassed. They're caused by being overwhelmed by a situation. I like to describe meltdowns as panic attacks on steroids. They're almost always accompanied by the worst anxiety one could ever feel, and they're essentially the epitome of awful. A meltdown is a complete loss of control. I have really bad meltdowns, and when I have them I'm completely non-functional. During a meltdown, you have minimal control of your actions. I tend to start hitting myself really hard. I bruise up my legs pretty badly during meltdowns. The only thing to do when one starts is to wait it out. Meltdowns could last minutes, or they could last hours. It's different for everyone on the spectrum. A meltdown might look similar to a tantrum a toddler might throw, the difference being that the toddler is intentionally making a scene to be manipulative whilst the autistic having the meltdown has minimal to no control over their actions. There's a song by the metal band Dream Theater called "Panic Attack." They lyrics to my are eerily close the describing the way a high anxiety meltdown feels. Here they are: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/dreamthe ... ttack.html

A shutdown is a meltdown turned internal. Shutdowns usually occur in autistics who have learned to recognize the signs of an oncoming meltdown, and have the self control to bottle it up inside. Shutdowns are just what they sound like: the person having one shuts down. This can happen to varying degrees, but it essentially means loss of skills and regression. Either way, meltdowns and shutdowns are not fun and they should not be romanticized in any way.

8. Feel free to ask me any specific questions you may need by messaging me or replying in this thread. I'll answer personal questions too!

I personally want less representation. I don't stand for everyone but I hate people knowing about me and the more symptoms they can recognize the more they'll know about my personal info. I like to pretend I'm neurotypical as long as possible until someone shouts out my secrets somewhere lol.

I'm already offended that your character is ashamed of who she is (do not mistake my intellectual indignation for anger). One may hate their autism for the handicaps it creates, but to feel inferior for being who you are, screw that. If Neurotypicals can't accept us as we are, that's their xenophobia showing, not our inferiority.

The "autistic way of thinking" is the very reason why you need to take a long, long time to research such a character before you begin to write her. What that phrase describes is a mindset askew from the normal, consensus-think of neurotypical society.

"Normal" people are a mystery to us, but not an intriguing mystery - an annoying one. "Normal" people do not make sense to us, their rationale and their logic are frequently anything but logical. When we challenge their unsupported conclusions, they act as though to question their hypotheses were an act of religious heresy. They are simply incapable of seeing a subject from any point of view other than the one they have been socially programmed to accept. As a result, many of us come to the (not unwarranted) conclusion that we are the only rational beings in the world, and all you so-called "normal" people are either stupid or insane. Why then, should we be ashamed of being different? We may be persecuted for our differences, but that doesn't make us wrong.

OTOH, our neurological dysfunctions also make us very vulnerable to bullying, intimidation and harassment. Because our sensory neurons are either too dense or hyperactive, or both, we are constantly bombarded by sound, light, fluctuations in temperature, baffling unreadable social cues, etc., in an overwhelming tsunami that makes it difficult to focus or to decipher the important from the trivial and meaningless. To our sensory system, all incoming data has the same value - everything is turned up to 11. That doesn't mean we HEAR sounds as LOUDER than you do - it means we FEEL them more intensely.

The only relief we have is to zero in on one idea, one obsessive interest, and focus on that one thing, until we get lost in it, and all other sensory stimuli fade into the background.

So there's a quick taste of life as an autistic character. It's only a fraction of what our disability is really like. We are a different species than the "normal" people. Thus the name of this site. We are marooned here, on what must be the Wrong Planet.

I finished a horror novel a couple years ago that features an autistic character, if you're interested. He's not the protagonist, more of a supporting character, but his role is extensive enough to see him as very different from his neurotypical friends, and there are a couple of scenes that specifically demonstrate what it's like to be inside an autistic head during something like a social meltdown and panic attack, and how awkward it is to form intimate personal relationships.