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I've loved this book for decades. Read it multiple times. Thinking about it a bit, and I believe the Mc is autism coded.
Anyone else read this and agree?
Anyone have examples of this in other areas?
~~Jonah~~ Judah from Bojack horseman is very clearly autistic, but it's never mentioned or even the source of any plot point. He's just a regular character who happens to be autistic and has his own plot things and stuff.
Edit: misremembered the name
Vincent Adultman also feels sympathetic. Not straight autistic, but clearly heavily masking.
Well of course he's masking, he's hiding the fact that he's three kids in a trenchcoat
We don't say that.
I think you mean Judah from BJHM. AFAIK that show doesn't have a character named Jonah.
But Jonah from Ozark is also fairly autism coded although it's only ever directly implied once in the first episode when he's called r*tarded by his sister
You want an autistically-coded sci-fi main character? The Murderbot Diaries have you covered.
Caliban's war from the expanse series has a definitely autistic, arguably main character that is just delightful.
The ones that come to mind:
Wait why Gustavo? I think he's just masking as an oppressed gay (like all oppressed minorities do even if homosexuality doesn't hugely affect his behavior), but I would be happy to get more insight. To clarify, I watched Beter call saul and around 3 seasons of BB.
His unemotionality. The way he speaks formally. His precise mannerisms. The way he always seems to be putting on a facade, like he's an alien pretending to be human.
I don't think he was intended to come across as autistic, he just vaguely seems like it.
L from death note is a commonly given example I think.
TV tropes has a few categories that cover this. They don't limit the disorders to autism in most of the categories but the examples are more autism than anything else.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DiagnosedByTheAudience
Egon Spengler and his grand-daughter Phoebe from the Ghostbusters franchise. The character of Ray Stanz also has some traits, no doubt assisted by the fact that actor Dan Ackroyd is autistic.
Yeah definitely a thing. I'm not familiar with the book you had mentioned, but I know from the show Bones, the main character Temperance Brennan, is very autism coded. It's never officially indicated, in the show, what her deal is when it comes to social interactions, but it's been hinted on officially by staff and writers that she is autistic to some degree. It's not a very accurate portrayal of high functioning autism, however it technically counts I guess?
I actually read this recently and I don't think he's autistic, but he was definitely written intentionally to show how a fairly confident, competent person (bordering on smug, but not quite) would struggle on prism.
Hank Hill from King of the Hill
No experience with that book, but a lot of literature has autistim coded characters. Lot, well sort of, debate in the Warhammer 40k communities about a fair number of autism coded characters there. I can't remember who all they've said since I avoid a lot of the conversations but if I remember right a fair number of Space Marines, and their 'traitor' brethren are 'autistic'.
I read Kyr in Emily Tesh's "Some Desperate Glory" as autistic.
I have heard heard some people claim that Jernau Morat Gurgeh (from Player of Games by Ian M Banks) is probably autistic, but personally i think he's more Ace-coded than anything else. Maybe you might think otherwise?
Personally I think a better example is Stafl-Preonsa Fal Shilde 'Ngeestra dam Crose, the Referrer from Consider Phlebas. She has a fixation on free solo climbing, and enough brainpower that supercomputers go to her for advice. I personally found the robot that was crushing on her to be super cute.
Is autism coded characters a thing?
Short answer: Yes
Long answer:
rules:
so in no particular order:
Autism coded characters are 100% a thing - I'd go a step further and say it's possible for a character to be Autism coded without the author realizing. Ultimately, all characters are based on experience (either the writer's own, or the experience of other writers they're influenced by), and I think it's fairly common for writers to draw on a particular archetype, inspired by someone they know or a character they've seen elsewhere, and implement that archetype without realizing that their inspirations (and hence their derivative creation) are autistic.
One of the most famous ones is Abed from the TV show Community, who supposedly wasn't initially written to be autistic, but when everyone pointed out that he was it led the showrunner to realize he himself was probably on the spectrum as well.
I've seen people suggest that Peridot from Steven Universe is autistic coded as well (although I'm not sure it makes sense for her to be literally neurodivergent, since she is an alien rock and doesn't have actual neurology).
I feel like I had a bunch of examples of characters who are autistic coded but not confirmed to be autistic, but they're not springing to mind right now. I've thought about this before because a bunch of them are great characters that I resonated with before even noticing their autistic traits (or mine). Someone already mentioned Judah Mannowdog from Bojack Horseman.
Oh, I've seen people say Lilo from Lilo and Stitch is autistic coded, and I guess I can see it. Also, obviously Sheldon Cooper is a negative portrayal of autism that the creators will never admit is autistic because then they'd have to admit he's a mocking caricature of autism.
There are some great characters from one of my favorite shows who I'm pretty sure are autistic, with differing presentations. But, while I'm happy to identify as a fan of that show, and happy to identify as autistic, I worry that identifying as both at the same time is playing into some negative stereotypes about both groups. But one of the characters is really into rocks and the other is really into kites. Iykyk.
I briefly googled autistic coded characters to try to refresh my memory, but have only included characters I have personally previously formed opinions about, since that seemed to be what you were asking for. But if you just want a bunch of discussions and lists, googling "autistic coded characters" will get you a lot of different takes.
In general I feel like autistic coded characters are often better representation than explicitly autistic characters, because when a piece of media explicitly labels a character as autistic, they can often lean into making Autism their only personality trait, or even make it a selling point of the entire work. Autistic coded characters have the luxury of being an actual person that happens to be autistic, instead of a walking billboard for the writer's research on neurotypes.
The old Matrix/Celeste thingerdiedoo.
Also I think they used things in SU to skirt past making things "technically" too queer.
Randidly Ghosthound, from the series with the same name.
Never heard of this book but the title, the blurb above it and the art itself make me wanna read the fuck out of it.
I mean not to point in any particular direction but I do feel like Dead Eye is aut as fuck. But like you know - ppl gunna be whoever they are.
Also what book!?
It looks like catbox images aren't loading. It's "sentenced to Prism" by Alan Dean Foster
Never heard of it but I'll give it a checkie-weckie out =) Ty btw~