Boundaries for AmbiguousDisorder

I have to ask since this trope has undergone TRS for several times.

From what I see, that trope describes while a character acts like as if he has a mental disorder, Canon never stated what kind of disorder he has.

So, does that include the situation where, while never unnamed, since the character's behaviour fits a certain psychiatric disorder so much that the statement "Alice as [name of disorder]" has became Word of Dante? In other words: the creators did not name it, but the viewers don't think it's ambigious what disorder Alice has.

Thanks for the help!

Hi, I'm bringing this discussion question back from the Dead in light of the ongoing problems with tropers making armchair diagnoses.

Ambiguous Disorder and Hollywood Autism are both way over-used.

The above troper is correct: Ambiguous Disorder is when canon (either Word of God or on-screen evidence) shows, to quote the first line in the description, "Behavior that is way beyond ordinary quirkiness." However, the trope is over-used for almost every example of "ordinary quirkiness" out there, usually with the implication, or so it seems, that X has Autism.

X has Autism because they don't make eye contct. Y has Autism because they are sometimes awkward in social situations. Z has Autism because they talk really fast, and talk a lot, when they get nervous.

There's a lot of issues with this and the over-abundance of irresponsible armchair diagnosing. First off, many people with clinical and personal experience of disorders like Autism, including some who have the qualifications to make a diagnosis, often get a diagnosis wrong. Not everyone in the field just goes along with the DSM, and even for those that do, the DSM has gone through a number of revisions. Second, many people regardless of their familiarity or lack thereof with mental disorders could come to very different conclusions about specific characters who fans through YMMV and WMG allege have "Autism." Of course, these are the appropriate places for tropers to discuss audience reactions and fan theories. However, this often doesn't stay confined to those pages (or to the Forums and Useful Notes) and bleeds into Character Sheets and Main Pages for Works. Sometimes tropers who "see themselves" in the characters can get defensive about this and make a lot of polarizing statements on the character and works pages that allege that anyone who disagrees just doesn't understand the subject, which, again, is discussion and belongs elsewhere than on those pages. I think that should be a decent compromise given that the T Vtropes community includes people with personal experiences of mental illness, people with clinical experience, and people with both, and there a multitude of opinions and interpretations of the evidence therein.

Sometimes people get around this by calling it an "Aversion" of Hollywood Autism, which is still invoking Hollywood Autism and its requirement that a diagnosis be specified in canon, by Word of God, or on-screen evidence. If a character is stated to have Autism (or ADHD, Intellectual Disability, etc) and the on-screen portrayal is well-researched, realistic and nuanced, then this (or Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!, or the relevant trope) is "averted." But if there's on-screen evidence of a disorder without a stated diagnosis, it's Ambiguous Disorder.

Everything else is speculation (WMG), audience reaction (YMMV), or fodder for a forum discussion or useful notes.

edited 13th Feb '18 5:14:00 PM by FTD