Yep, I’ve found myself using bongo as a replacement too.
JustCheetoDust
I’m still waiting for a “pop” auto-correct because there’s always someone wanting to be an ass about that being the word for soft drinks in the Midwest, and I haven’t used that term since leaving Detroit.
Yup, it’s like. Hi, you look like you’re stewing in impotent rage and anger. I would like to volunteer to be the red hot focus of your righteous wrath.
She left a urine sample in the half-bath, then Dina picked it up for a second, vanished into the shadows, and left them where she ended up. Sometimes it’s hard to be a shadow being.
a snow ʍousɐ
Also, her powers are controlled by her hat, which is why she will never take it off, lest some unfortunate soul try on the ShadowHat and be lost for eternity in the Domain of Shadows.
quarktime
Does Sierra ever GET pissed? We’ve never seen her display such. She seems so laid-back and mellow.
a snow ʍousɐ
Maybe she does, she’s just afraid of the consequences if she shows how she really feels. Not mello but yellow
GreyDefender
I didn’t think their post could be improved anymore. You proved me wrong.
I don’t know why, but for some reason I’m imagining Agatha reacting to this by taking a picture with a purple camera and saying “neat” like Bender would sometimes do on Futurama.
*raises hand*
People like Joyce’s parents probably wouldn’t approve of the ‘immorality’ of some parts, too.
Scar Man!!!
and transgender people might not like that episode where they had all sorts of transphobic jokes where Bender transitioned in order to use his “unfair male strength” to win the women’s robo-olympics
Can we get one of those awesome moments where everyone on the floor teams up using each of their quirks and/or special skills to get revenge on Mary in an ultra complex multi-step plan?
Everyone works together, everyone provides an alibi for everyone else (alibi being there was a floor meeting and there had been a rumor there’d be free pizza so everyone showed), everyone agrees they have no idea what exactly happened to her (and if they weren’t filled in on all the other steps, they probably don’t, so it’s not even lying on that point).
And after months of planning, what happens is that one of them says “Look over there!” while someone else uses an electric hair clipper to shave a patch on the back of her head.
My best guess comes from various bigoted christian sites I’ve come across that referred to same-sex couples as “pretending to be in love”. From her point of view, any same-sex relationship is rooted in sin and since you’re clearly going against god’s will then you can’t feel positive emotions like love for each other.
Actually, I’ll be generous. She probably thinks that about het relationships too, if the people involved have any interest in doing more than holding hands before having a family-approved wedding in a church.
This. She doesn’t view Billie’s relationship with Ruth as real. Just as a means by which they can personally attack Mary’s faith with wickedness. Certainly nothing with real emotional connection, with real love, with real giving a fuck whether the other person lives or dies.
It’s part of a whole nasty flavor of Pre-Millennial Dispensationalist Rapturist Christianity that views everyone else’s lives as not really real, more just a sideshow for the central conflict for your soul.
The suffering of individuals mattering so much less than whether or not Team Jesus or Team Satan is racking up the point in this particular encounter.
NZA
I honestly think she may really be that bad at understanding people, she reads as autism spectrum to me. Not the being a horrible bongo to people bit but myself and the majority of my immediate family are autism spectrum to one degree or another and a lot of her behaviors are very familiar.
Idontcarenomore
Autism is a good excuse for a lot of careless seeming behavior. However, I do not think Mary is at all autistic, of any sort of ‘ic’.
People don’t have to be medically/mentally ill to be assholes.
A lot of times it just takes the right flavor of genetics and environment. And being sure that your religion is the only ‘right’ religion in the world of course. If you don’t believe the way she believes: well you simply do not count, not for anything, you can’t possibly be on the same level as she is.
NZA
Okay first the idea that being autistic makes you less culpable for your choices is ablest as fuck and seriously condescending. And second a lot of autism spectrum people take offense to the mentally ill label just because I think differently then you doesn’t mean I think worse.
wwwhhattt
Also, everyone is on the spectrum, but people at the more densely populated end get to pretend they aren’t. (I think?)
Charlie Spencer
I think y’all put way more psychoanalysis into a comic character than Willis himself has.
A Friendly Trash Can
“Everyone is on the spectrum” is a false statement. If someone has any of the disorders that fall under the ASD umbrella, they’re on the autism spectrum. If they don’t have autism, they aren’t on the autism spectrum.
Regalli
Seconding A Friendly Trash Can. I mean there’s people in my family who I think are allistic but have a lot of autistic-related traits, but I’m pretty sure most of them are not in fact actually on the spectrum.
trlkly
They didn’t say it did. But it does change how we interpret what you do. Behaviors that would indicate a lack of caring in a neurotyypical person can be a social deficit in a person with autism.
Or it can indicate a misunfderstanding. For example, it completely changed how I interpreted your post. I can see why you are upset, and that you probably didn’t intend any rudeness.
Regalli
I mean I’m an autistic person who is also mentally ill, but yeah to me it’s a disability (and I do class it as a disability because like: I cannot open certain kinds of doors because of my low muscle tone) and not a mental illness. Neurodivergence, yes. Disability, yes. Mental illness, no.
trlkly
She’s not autistic. It just doesn’t fit.
DonDueed
Oh, Mary is an ‘ic’ all right. Hello, she’s the trickiest.
DonDueed
Dang you autocorrect for ruining my joke. “ickiest”.
ischemgeek
Mary is not autistic. Speaking as an autistic here’s a few reasons why:
1, Autistic people (like me) are generally good at emotional empathy. We are good at feeling what others feel when they feel it, and at feeling for others when we know they’re hurting. Many autistic people (me included) have a tendency to be emotion sponges (by which I mean we kind of feel whatever the crows around us is feeling) but can’t really identify what we’re feeling or where it’s coming from (alexithymia is heavily comorbid with autism). So, for me, in a room with someone who is anxious, I will begin to feel anxious, but at the time, I will have a hard time identifying that I am anxious, or that my anxiety is sympathetic. Mary shows no such tendency to feel what others feel.
2, Autistic people are bad at cognitive empathy – that is, the ability to read social situations, figure out what others want, and act accordingly. Autistic people (especially young ones who haven’t figured out functional scripts yet) can have a hard time with routine politeness like what greeting to use when, asking for permission to do stuff, etc. An autistic person often can’t pick up on social subtext at all: I can’t read sarcasm, I can’t pick it up if people are hinting at something to me (like one of my friends is in the habit of going “HINT HINT” to cue a social hint at me, and I still only pick up on what he’s hinting at about 1/2 of the time – and that’s with him cueing in so many words that he’s hinting at something he doesn’t want to say outright), and I have only picked up “unspoken” rules of social interaction by accessing resources like realsocialskills which discards social convention and comes out and states those social rules. Case in point: I genuinely did not know that as a guest in someone else’s place, if they offer something to drink, it is expected to accept even if you are not thirsty. Mary shows no such indications. She is pretty average at cognitive empathy – if she was better at it, she would be able to manipulate Ruth without the entire floor finding out about it. But she’s not bad at it in the way an autistic person is bad at it. Dina is bad at it in that way (Dina’s good emotional empathy coupled with her bad cognitive empathy are a big part of why I read her as autistic – and why a lot of others I know who are autistic also read her as autistic. Dina feels the emotions of those around her and gets overwhelmed by them, without really understanding what’s going on in the social mechanics of a situation – see why she got pulled along with the beach trip without intending to be).
3, Autistic people generally have very narrow passions. For Dina, it’s dinosaurs. For me, it is now heat transfer and calorimetry. We have stuff we care about outside our narrow passions (I quite like role-playing games and martial arts, frex), but the other stuff will usually take a second fiddle to our passion (see also why I tend to work too many hours a week). Mary does not have this narrow passion. She enjoys being nasty to people – but she doesn’t obsess over perfecting nastiness the way an autistic person with a special interest in nastiness would (or the way Dina obsesses over perfecting her knowledge of dinosaurs, or how I obsess over heat transfer and calorimetry applications).
4, Autistic people have trouble with communication to the level it rises to a disability. Some people are unable to speak. Some are able to speak, but they speak in an unusual or stilted way (Dina and me). Some are able to speak inconsistently (me). Some have comorbid speech disorders (me). All of us have a hard time communicating and interacting with others in a way deemed “typical” or “normal.” Mary does not have that difficulty. She is nasty, yes, but she is well within the bounds of normal for her age peers in terms of communication effectiveness (by which I mean, her ability to convey to others what she means and to get what she wants out of an interaction in a reasonable amount of time) – and in her previous subculture, she was probably very effective at it. Part of her wrath here has been that, like Billie, she used to be the big fish of a very small pond and she’s been dropped in the motherfucking ocean and hey look sharks.
5, Autistic people have sensory issues, which sometimes renders us incapable of dressing like our age-peers (I would suspect this is a big part of why Dina always wears track pants, soft-looking sweaters and a hat or a hood) or behaving in other ways like our age peers. See when Dina got overwhelmed by people at the party – too much visual stimulation led to a pretty textbook sensory overload and meltdown. Me, I can’t wear skirts (partly because trans but mainly because the swooshy feeling on my skin is just awful to me). I also like wearing heavy things like pleather coats because the pressure is good. Stereotypical as fuck, but I can’t handle tags on my skin. When I find clothing I like wearing, I buy as many of that article as I can. I’ve gotten better at dealing with visual stimulation but at one point, my wardrobe was black and blue and that’s it because I couldn’t handle wearing other colors. Even now, I don’t do patterns aside from subtle pinstripes. High pitched noises get me yelling and covering my ears as if I’m a fucking toddler (no matter where or when the high-pitched noise happens. Imagine being about to give a talk at a professional conference and then there’s feedback and you yell and cover your ears and a room full of hundreds laughs at you. That’s a fairly regular occurrence for me as a part of my disability). Certain visual patterns are physically painful for me to see, and I will yelp and avert my eyes. I don’t do eye contact because eye contact gets my brain stuck so I feel like a bug on a pin – eye contact is a very helpless feeling for me and if I do it with you I either trust you implicitly or I feel coerced into eye contact. Note that in general, the response to sensory overload as an autistic person is both immediate and involuntary. Dina crouched and covered her face. I yell and cover my ears and squeeze my eyes shut, or yelp and cover my eyes, or pull off the offending article of clothing as a few examples. Mary has not exhibited this on screen. She was annoyed by a sound, yes – but that’s not the same as autistic sensory overload. Dina’s meltdown at the party was autistic overload. Mary’s freak out over Carla’s skating was just Mary being a holier-than-thou asshole.
6, Autistic people have deficits in executive function (often called autistic inertia) which makes it hard for us to manage transitions, budget time, and remember to get stuff done. Dina is in the habit of neglecting her other classwork to study more about dinosaurs. She also forgets what she was intending to do during transitions and gets pulled along with the flow (the beach party). Finally, she has a tendency to forget important-to-her commitments (like forgetting to wake up Amber). For me, I have huge difficulty with transitions – to the point I need to wake up at six thirty if I’m gonna be at work in time for 9 and I have a 10 minute commute. It takes about two hours for me to triple S and have breakfast. I also need my phone’s calendar app – if it’s not in the app, I will forget about it no matter how important it is. I could go on with examples – but basically, executive function is a catch-all brain term for your ability to initiate, stay on task with, and finish actions, remember things, and keep your shit together, and autistic people in general have a hard time with this. Mary shows no sign of such difficulty.
Can autistic-coded characters be assholes? Most certainly. Take a look at BBC’s Sherlock, for example. Sherlock is a royal fucking asshole, and he’s also coded autistic as hell (and arguably is canon autistic because they’ve mentioned him having Asperger’s). They can also be between the extremes of perfect cinnamon roll (Dina) and asshole (Sherlock) – look at Saga from the Scandinavian show The Bridge (Saga can be an asshole and she can be nice at times, but she is always very autistic – and canon autistic representation!). I haven’t seen the USian version (my auditory processing is shite anyway as part of my sensory problems so I usually watch stuff with subtitles regardless of the language so I watched the Scandinavian version and it was amazing).
A manipulative autistic person would look more like BBC’s Sherlock than a Mary. Sherlock has studied the hell out of social interactions – how people work and why they do crime is his special interest. He’s gotten good at getting others to do what he wants – but at no point is his interaction something you’d call “typical”. He’s a weird guy, and you see that from pretty much the first episode. He also has difficulty with EF to the point he can’t live alone (that’s why he needs to live with Watson), like I do (yes, I can work and travel alone, but I can’t live alone. Last time I did, I nearly burned down my place 3 times in a month. Yay asymmetric ability distribution, another hallmark of autism! Imagine trying to explain to someone that yeah, I can travel to the conference, give a speech and make my way home but holy fuck no I can’t do small talk at the social after the conference. Not even “don’t want to” more “literal can’t unless you want me to piss off strangers and make a bad first impression for our group”). People think if you’re disabled, you’re equally disabled everywhere with everything and that’s really not the case for a lot of autistic people – me included. I can’t live alone, but I can travel internationally on my own – which is something most adults find harder than living on their own. I have a hard time remembering to pay those bills I have that don’t allow automatic billing, but I have a successful relationship. I can’t remember any appointment not written down but I’ve always been the first effective responder at any workplace accident I’ve been on-hand for. Autism is characterized by a “spiky” ability profile – I’m not really average at anything, I’m either very good or very bad at it. Dina shows this, BBC’s Sherlock shows this. Saga of the Bridge shows this. Mary doesn’t. She’s very average in a lot of ways.
Mary is not autistic. Her deficit (if it rises to a deficit level – jury’s still out in my book) is in emotional empathy, not cognitive empathy. She does not show signs of difficulty understanding social interaction rules (she does have difficulty with social situations, but it’s not due to a lack of social understanding, it’s due to culture shock). She does not show signs of having a special interest. She does not show signs of being vulnerable to sensory overload. She is not unusual in her dress or speech. She doesn’t have a “spiky” ability profile. I could go on – but long story short, Mary shows none of the major signs that would code someone as autistic.
ischemgeek
… Also, for the record: Someone being as malevolently nasty as Mary, even if they are autistic, is doing it intentionally. Autistic =/= asshole.
If I am an asshole to someone, I own that. That’s on me, autism or otherwise.
Hell, even if I’m accidentally rude to someone because of my autism, I still fucking well apologize. Because I caused another person pain and that it was unintentional pain doesn’t mean it wasn’t pain. I might include an explanation as a mitigating factor, but I still apologize. “I’m sorry – it’s noisy in here and I couldn’t make out that you were trying to get my attention. I didn’t mean to ignore you – sorry for that.”
Because I try not to be an asshole. I don’t always succeed at not being an asshole (I’m human after all), but I try not to be.
But yeah, I say this as an autistic: Autism is not a “get out of asshole behavior free” card. Autism does not excuse any form of harassment. It might take me a little longer to perceive a boundary if I’m not told about it explicitly, but once I know the boundary is there, it’s on me to respect it.
Scar Man!!!
+100
PlainMarie
That was very interesting and informative – Thanks for writing it up!
Thank you so much for this, it was informative and thoughtful. It answered a lot of questions that I’ve been too shy to ask differently abled people. Internet-hugs to you.
293 thoughts on “Blackmailed”
wheelpath
Spiteful bongos (yes I did type that myself) are the best type of bongos
Lipke the Articulate
Haha, I’ve taken to using “bongo” in place of the word that it replaces as well.
Doctor_Who
It’s only a matter of time before I accidentally do that in real life and people stare at me.
For like a week after seeing Fantastic Mr. Fox I kept accidentally saying “What the cuss”.
butts
I tried to remove the expression “son of a bongo” from my vocabulary, but somehow it just got replaced by “son of a whore.” Which miiiight be worse.
TheGrammarLegionary
I already do that, and I know a guy who just didn’t stop saying ‘cuss’ in place of every curse word in his vocabulary. For six years and counting.
Tacos
Yep, I’ve found myself using bongo as a replacement too.
JustCheetoDust
I’m still waiting for a “pop” auto-correct because there’s always someone wanting to be an ass about that being the word for soft drinks in the Midwest, and I haven’t used that term since leaving Detroit.
Orion Fury
As do I.
Renadt
I prefer casual bongos myself. With some exotic butters.
quarktime
Don’t be silly. Exotic butters is a contradiction in terms. Butters could never become exotic, his parents would ground him!
timemonkey
Seriously, Mary, you’re not just playing with fire, you’re dancing in it.
Stephen R. Bierce
*plays Duran Duran’s them song to A View To A Kill on the hacked Muzak*
Stephen R. Bierce
*THEME*
Bleh.
Stephen R. Bierce
Goodness I needed that bass riffing.
Bicycle Bill
I’ve got Esquire channel on the TV for background noise … and the movie they’re showing right now is “View to a Kill”.
Disloyal Subject
Hm, his phrasing put me in mind of Ring of Fire. (The Krewella one, not Johnny Cash.) Seems appropriate to Billie’s mindset.
thomas wrobel
Or this given timemonkeys avatar;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_903744xh8
JustCheetoDust
Like Dean Venture in the video for Shallow Gravy’s “Jacket.”
Cerberus
Yup, it’s like. Hi, you look like you’re stewing in impotent rage and anger. I would like to volunteer to be the red hot focus of your righteous wrath.
Leorale
Billie might see that as a perk, not a drawback. She is self destructive sometimes, and she may kinda want somebody to fight.
Scar Man!!!
Her religion believes in the power of dying for a cause. Billie could literally stab her and she would die certain that she was doing the Lord’s work
quarktime
Let her pay out enough of her own disembowelled intestines, and she’ll hang herself with them.
AngelBadman
There’s always Spite, children, there’s always Spite.
Doctor_Who
I hate Spite. Can’t I have Dr. Rancor or Crystal Enmity instead?
I’ll accept a diet Contempt-a-Cola if it’s all you’ve got.
dunedon
THIS … THIS is why I need a Like/Love button 🙂
Dana
Blech. This is Sierra Pissed!
a snow ʍousɐ
She left a urine sample in the half-bath, then Dina picked it up for a second, vanished into the shadows, and left them where she ended up. Sometimes it’s hard to be a shadow being.
a snow ʍousɐ
Also, her powers are controlled by her hat, which is why she will never take it off, lest some unfortunate soul try on the ShadowHat and be lost for eternity in the Domain of Shadows.
quarktime
Does Sierra ever GET pissed? We’ve never seen her display such. She seems so laid-back and mellow.
a snow ʍousɐ
Maybe she does, she’s just afraid of the consequences if she shows how she really feels. Not mello but yellow
GreyDefender
I didn’t think their post could be improved anymore. You proved me wrong.
Charlie Spencer
Sorry, but we do have Dr. Peever and CheezedWine.
The Other Mike
I’m usually good with an IBC (I’m Beyond Caring) Cream Soda.
AngelBadman
I am more a Mountain Screw You kinda soda drinker
Scar Man!!!
+1
Kamino Neko
Spite – Obey your thirst…for vengeance.
Scar Man!!!
your profile pic makes this go from a +1 to a +5
Deviant
So many flavours, but I’ll stick with old fashioned Choke.
Deanatay
Make 7, Up Yours?
Doctor_Who
I don’t know why, but for some reason I’m imagining Agatha reacting to this by taking a picture with a purple camera and saying “neat” like Bender would sometimes do on Futurama.
Brain goes some weird places at 12 AM.
Disloyal Subject
It could happen. Maybe Agatha likes Futurama.
inqntrol
Who doesn’t like Futurama?
Disloyal Subject
*raises hand*
People like Joyce’s parents probably wouldn’t approve of the ‘immorality’ of some parts, too.
Scar Man!!!
and transgender people might not like that episode where they had all sorts of transphobic jokes where Bender transitioned in order to use his “unfair male strength” to win the women’s robo-olympics
nobodybasically
Can we get one of those awesome moments where everyone on the floor teams up using each of their quirks and/or special skills to get revenge on Mary in an ultra complex multi-step plan?
Those always make me tear up with joy.
Mollyscribbles
Everyone works together, everyone provides an alibi for everyone else (alibi being there was a floor meeting and there had been a rumor there’d be free pizza so everyone showed), everyone agrees they have no idea what exactly happened to her (and if they weren’t filled in on all the other steps, they probably don’t, so it’s not even lying on that point).
Slartibeast Button, BIA
Galasso’s Pizza (and subs!) is happy to assist in your mysterious vengeance ritual!
Mollyscribbles
They’ll go there after; claiming it’s because there wasn’t free pizza as promised and everyone still wanted pizza, but really to celebrate.
Emperor Norton II
And if all the plans somehow involves pie, then we have… perfection.
shmid
But they all do.
Pizza pie.
Cattleprod
And after months of planning, what happens is that one of them says “Look over there!” while someone else uses an electric hair clipper to shave a patch on the back of her head.
Shiro
Oho, and the mask slips.
Also, as great as spite is…maybe she cares because it was her fucking girlfriend you destroyed?! How is that even a question
Fart Captor
We’ve yet to see any evidence of Mary caring about anyone but herself. It’s possible the very concept is foreign to her.
Mollyscribbles
My best guess comes from various bigoted christian sites I’ve come across that referred to same-sex couples as “pretending to be in love”. From her point of view, any same-sex relationship is rooted in sin and since you’re clearly going against god’s will then you can’t feel positive emotions like love for each other.
Actually, I’ll be generous. She probably thinks that about het relationships too, if the people involved have any interest in doing more than holding hands before having a family-approved wedding in a church.
Cerberus
This. She doesn’t view Billie’s relationship with Ruth as real. Just as a means by which they can personally attack Mary’s faith with wickedness. Certainly nothing with real emotional connection, with real love, with real giving a fuck whether the other person lives or dies.
It’s part of a whole nasty flavor of Pre-Millennial Dispensationalist Rapturist Christianity that views everyone else’s lives as not really real, more just a sideshow for the central conflict for your soul.
The suffering of individuals mattering so much less than whether or not Team Jesus or Team Satan is racking up the point in this particular encounter.
NZA
I honestly think she may really be that bad at understanding people, she reads as autism spectrum to me. Not the being a horrible bongo to people bit but myself and the majority of my immediate family are autism spectrum to one degree or another and a lot of her behaviors are very familiar.
Idontcarenomore
Autism is a good excuse for a lot of careless seeming behavior. However, I do not think Mary is at all autistic, of any sort of ‘ic’.
People don’t have to be medically/mentally ill to be assholes.
A lot of times it just takes the right flavor of genetics and environment. And being sure that your religion is the only ‘right’ religion in the world of course. If you don’t believe the way she believes: well you simply do not count, not for anything, you can’t possibly be on the same level as she is.
NZA
Okay first the idea that being autistic makes you less culpable for your choices is ablest as fuck and seriously condescending. And second a lot of autism spectrum people take offense to the mentally ill label just because I think differently then you doesn’t mean I think worse.
wwwhhattt
Also, everyone is on the spectrum, but people at the more densely populated end get to pretend they aren’t. (I think?)
Charlie Spencer
I think y’all put way more psychoanalysis into a comic character than Willis himself has.
A Friendly Trash Can
“Everyone is on the spectrum” is a false statement. If someone has any of the disorders that fall under the ASD umbrella, they’re on the autism spectrum. If they don’t have autism, they aren’t on the autism spectrum.
Regalli
Seconding A Friendly Trash Can. I mean there’s people in my family who I think are allistic but have a lot of autistic-related traits, but I’m pretty sure most of them are not in fact actually on the spectrum.
trlkly
They didn’t say it did. But it does change how we interpret what you do. Behaviors that would indicate a lack of caring in a neurotyypical person can be a social deficit in a person with autism.
Or it can indicate a misunfderstanding. For example, it completely changed how I interpreted your post. I can see why you are upset, and that you probably didn’t intend any rudeness.
Regalli
I mean I’m an autistic person who is also mentally ill, but yeah to me it’s a disability (and I do class it as a disability because like: I cannot open certain kinds of doors because of my low muscle tone) and not a mental illness. Neurodivergence, yes. Disability, yes. Mental illness, no.
trlkly
She’s not autistic. It just doesn’t fit.
DonDueed
Oh, Mary is an ‘ic’ all right. Hello, she’s the trickiest.
DonDueed
Dang you autocorrect for ruining my joke. “ickiest”.
ischemgeek
Mary is not autistic. Speaking as an autistic here’s a few reasons why:
1, Autistic people (like me) are generally good at emotional empathy. We are good at feeling what others feel when they feel it, and at feeling for others when we know they’re hurting. Many autistic people (me included) have a tendency to be emotion sponges (by which I mean we kind of feel whatever the crows around us is feeling) but can’t really identify what we’re feeling or where it’s coming from (alexithymia is heavily comorbid with autism). So, for me, in a room with someone who is anxious, I will begin to feel anxious, but at the time, I will have a hard time identifying that I am anxious, or that my anxiety is sympathetic. Mary shows no such tendency to feel what others feel.
2, Autistic people are bad at cognitive empathy – that is, the ability to read social situations, figure out what others want, and act accordingly. Autistic people (especially young ones who haven’t figured out functional scripts yet) can have a hard time with routine politeness like what greeting to use when, asking for permission to do stuff, etc. An autistic person often can’t pick up on social subtext at all: I can’t read sarcasm, I can’t pick it up if people are hinting at something to me (like one of my friends is in the habit of going “HINT HINT” to cue a social hint at me, and I still only pick up on what he’s hinting at about 1/2 of the time – and that’s with him cueing in so many words that he’s hinting at something he doesn’t want to say outright), and I have only picked up “unspoken” rules of social interaction by accessing resources like realsocialskills which discards social convention and comes out and states those social rules. Case in point: I genuinely did not know that as a guest in someone else’s place, if they offer something to drink, it is expected to accept even if you are not thirsty. Mary shows no such indications. She is pretty average at cognitive empathy – if she was better at it, she would be able to manipulate Ruth without the entire floor finding out about it. But she’s not bad at it in the way an autistic person is bad at it. Dina is bad at it in that way (Dina’s good emotional empathy coupled with her bad cognitive empathy are a big part of why I read her as autistic – and why a lot of others I know who are autistic also read her as autistic. Dina feels the emotions of those around her and gets overwhelmed by them, without really understanding what’s going on in the social mechanics of a situation – see why she got pulled along with the beach trip without intending to be).
3, Autistic people generally have very narrow passions. For Dina, it’s dinosaurs. For me, it is now heat transfer and calorimetry. We have stuff we care about outside our narrow passions (I quite like role-playing games and martial arts, frex), but the other stuff will usually take a second fiddle to our passion (see also why I tend to work too many hours a week). Mary does not have this narrow passion. She enjoys being nasty to people – but she doesn’t obsess over perfecting nastiness the way an autistic person with a special interest in nastiness would (or the way Dina obsesses over perfecting her knowledge of dinosaurs, or how I obsess over heat transfer and calorimetry applications).
4, Autistic people have trouble with communication to the level it rises to a disability. Some people are unable to speak. Some are able to speak, but they speak in an unusual or stilted way (Dina and me). Some are able to speak inconsistently (me). Some have comorbid speech disorders (me). All of us have a hard time communicating and interacting with others in a way deemed “typical” or “normal.” Mary does not have that difficulty. She is nasty, yes, but she is well within the bounds of normal for her age peers in terms of communication effectiveness (by which I mean, her ability to convey to others what she means and to get what she wants out of an interaction in a reasonable amount of time) – and in her previous subculture, she was probably very effective at it. Part of her wrath here has been that, like Billie, she used to be the big fish of a very small pond and she’s been dropped in the motherfucking ocean and hey look sharks.
5, Autistic people have sensory issues, which sometimes renders us incapable of dressing like our age-peers (I would suspect this is a big part of why Dina always wears track pants, soft-looking sweaters and a hat or a hood) or behaving in other ways like our age peers. See when Dina got overwhelmed by people at the party – too much visual stimulation led to a pretty textbook sensory overload and meltdown. Me, I can’t wear skirts (partly because trans but mainly because the swooshy feeling on my skin is just awful to me). I also like wearing heavy things like pleather coats because the pressure is good. Stereotypical as fuck, but I can’t handle tags on my skin. When I find clothing I like wearing, I buy as many of that article as I can. I’ve gotten better at dealing with visual stimulation but at one point, my wardrobe was black and blue and that’s it because I couldn’t handle wearing other colors. Even now, I don’t do patterns aside from subtle pinstripes. High pitched noises get me yelling and covering my ears as if I’m a fucking toddler (no matter where or when the high-pitched noise happens. Imagine being about to give a talk at a professional conference and then there’s feedback and you yell and cover your ears and a room full of hundreds laughs at you. That’s a fairly regular occurrence for me as a part of my disability). Certain visual patterns are physically painful for me to see, and I will yelp and avert my eyes. I don’t do eye contact because eye contact gets my brain stuck so I feel like a bug on a pin – eye contact is a very helpless feeling for me and if I do it with you I either trust you implicitly or I feel coerced into eye contact. Note that in general, the response to sensory overload as an autistic person is both immediate and involuntary. Dina crouched and covered her face. I yell and cover my ears and squeeze my eyes shut, or yelp and cover my eyes, or pull off the offending article of clothing as a few examples. Mary has not exhibited this on screen. She was annoyed by a sound, yes – but that’s not the same as autistic sensory overload. Dina’s meltdown at the party was autistic overload. Mary’s freak out over Carla’s skating was just Mary being a holier-than-thou asshole.
6, Autistic people have deficits in executive function (often called autistic inertia) which makes it hard for us to manage transitions, budget time, and remember to get stuff done. Dina is in the habit of neglecting her other classwork to study more about dinosaurs. She also forgets what she was intending to do during transitions and gets pulled along with the flow (the beach party). Finally, she has a tendency to forget important-to-her commitments (like forgetting to wake up Amber). For me, I have huge difficulty with transitions – to the point I need to wake up at six thirty if I’m gonna be at work in time for 9 and I have a 10 minute commute. It takes about two hours for me to triple S and have breakfast. I also need my phone’s calendar app – if it’s not in the app, I will forget about it no matter how important it is. I could go on with examples – but basically, executive function is a catch-all brain term for your ability to initiate, stay on task with, and finish actions, remember things, and keep your shit together, and autistic people in general have a hard time with this. Mary shows no sign of such difficulty.
Can autistic-coded characters be assholes? Most certainly. Take a look at BBC’s Sherlock, for example. Sherlock is a royal fucking asshole, and he’s also coded autistic as hell (and arguably is canon autistic because they’ve mentioned him having Asperger’s). They can also be between the extremes of perfect cinnamon roll (Dina) and asshole (Sherlock) – look at Saga from the Scandinavian show The Bridge (Saga can be an asshole and she can be nice at times, but she is always very autistic – and canon autistic representation!). I haven’t seen the USian version (my auditory processing is shite anyway as part of my sensory problems so I usually watch stuff with subtitles regardless of the language so I watched the Scandinavian version and it was amazing).
A manipulative autistic person would look more like BBC’s Sherlock than a Mary. Sherlock has studied the hell out of social interactions – how people work and why they do crime is his special interest. He’s gotten good at getting others to do what he wants – but at no point is his interaction something you’d call “typical”. He’s a weird guy, and you see that from pretty much the first episode. He also has difficulty with EF to the point he can’t live alone (that’s why he needs to live with Watson), like I do (yes, I can work and travel alone, but I can’t live alone. Last time I did, I nearly burned down my place 3 times in a month. Yay asymmetric ability distribution, another hallmark of autism! Imagine trying to explain to someone that yeah, I can travel to the conference, give a speech and make my way home but holy fuck no I can’t do small talk at the social after the conference. Not even “don’t want to” more “literal can’t unless you want me to piss off strangers and make a bad first impression for our group”). People think if you’re disabled, you’re equally disabled everywhere with everything and that’s really not the case for a lot of autistic people – me included. I can’t live alone, but I can travel internationally on my own – which is something most adults find harder than living on their own. I have a hard time remembering to pay those bills I have that don’t allow automatic billing, but I have a successful relationship. I can’t remember any appointment not written down but I’ve always been the first effective responder at any workplace accident I’ve been on-hand for. Autism is characterized by a “spiky” ability profile – I’m not really average at anything, I’m either very good or very bad at it. Dina shows this, BBC’s Sherlock shows this. Saga of the Bridge shows this. Mary doesn’t. She’s very average in a lot of ways.
Mary is not autistic. Her deficit (if it rises to a deficit level – jury’s still out in my book) is in emotional empathy, not cognitive empathy. She does not show signs of difficulty understanding social interaction rules (she does have difficulty with social situations, but it’s not due to a lack of social understanding, it’s due to culture shock). She does not show signs of having a special interest. She does not show signs of being vulnerable to sensory overload. She is not unusual in her dress or speech. She doesn’t have a “spiky” ability profile. I could go on – but long story short, Mary shows none of the major signs that would code someone as autistic.
ischemgeek
… Also, for the record: Someone being as malevolently nasty as Mary, even if they are autistic, is doing it intentionally. Autistic =/= asshole.
If I am an asshole to someone, I own that. That’s on me, autism or otherwise.
Hell, even if I’m accidentally rude to someone because of my autism, I still fucking well apologize. Because I caused another person pain and that it was unintentional pain doesn’t mean it wasn’t pain. I might include an explanation as a mitigating factor, but I still apologize. “I’m sorry – it’s noisy in here and I couldn’t make out that you were trying to get my attention. I didn’t mean to ignore you – sorry for that.”
Because I try not to be an asshole. I don’t always succeed at not being an asshole (I’m human after all), but I try not to be.
But yeah, I say this as an autistic: Autism is not a “get out of asshole behavior free” card. Autism does not excuse any form of harassment. It might take me a little longer to perceive a boundary if I’m not told about it explicitly, but once I know the boundary is there, it’s on me to respect it.
Scar Man!!!
+100
PlainMarie
That was very interesting and informative – Thanks for writing it up!
Badgermole
Thank you so much for this, it was informative and thoughtful. It answered a lot of questions that I’ve been too shy to ask differently abled people. Internet-hugs to you.