Shoehorning: Ambiguously Autistic

This seems like a valid trope, but a lot of the examples seem to be added on the basis of "some fan somewhere said so" or "the character sometimes acts kinda weird," even though the latter is explicitly stated in the description to not be enough.

edited 23rd Jul '11 2:53:40 PM by INUH

90% of the examples, aren't. Most of them actually have a genuine in-canon, explicitly, out-right stated reason for being the way they are. The ones that don't are generally already covered by Bunny-Ears Lawyer, Cloud Cuckoo Lander, Strange Girl, The Ditz, Lack of Empathy or a plethora of other tropes. As it stands it is a dumping ground for people that want to Entry Pimp their favourite fandom's resident Quirky Character (regardless of why, how, or even if, they are quirky).

This isn't the first time this has been raised here with the exact same issues either. I propose either a full on cut (because "character acts a bit odd by someone's standards, but have no real explanation for it" is not really a trope) or failing that a complete example sectionectomy and a YMMV label (looking at usage it seems to be mostly on YMMV tabs already so making those tropers good judgement official is the least we can do). Personally I don't think it is worth saving.

edited 23rd Jul '11 3:55:39 PM by CrypticMirror

Hear, hear.

Seconded.

I feel like this is salvageable. While people aren't doing a very good job of providing genuine examples, genuine examples do exist.

edited 23rd Jul '11 3:58:29 PM by INUH

so better write up, massive cull, and make it a locked page? That (and a subjective banner) is pretty much the only way that it is gonna keep free from the shoehorners (both on the page and throughout the wiki). Plus I feel it isn't different enough from all the Quirky Character tropes we already have, all of which do a much better job of explaining why each character is quirky and the narrative function of that quirk.

edited 23rd Jul '11 4:03:08 PM by CrypticMirror

I agree. Some even cite Word of God. I think it would be better to add more clarity to the definition, and see how things progress from there. At the moment, the description invites subjectivity.

edit: ninja'd

edited 23rd Jul '11 4:06:05 PM by Xtifr

Yeah the subjectivity of the current write up is so obvious that it seems (going by the usage count) that most of the tropers on the wiki have decided it is a subjective trope and mostly only place it on YMMV tabs. If we are keeping it (which I don't think it deserves) either it is YMMV and we just keep the majority of the wicks where they are and rehome the others to the YMMV tabs, or we have to go through all those YMMV links, check they are valid and if they are move them to the main page. Either way it seems like an awful lot of work for something that if it is a trope, is a pretty weak one.

edited 23rd Jul '11 4:11:08 PM by CrypticMirror

Sandbox.Ambiguously Autistic

There you go.

If you think a better write-up can save it from total subjectivity, give it a shot.

Put your write-up on that page, separated by a line and numbered in sequence.

Do not rewrite someone else's proposal without checking with them first to be sure it's ok.

edited 23rd Jul '11 4:23:21 PM by Madrugada

Bumping this up. Just came across this trope, and the whole damn thing seems suggestive to me.

The article itself has a hidden note at the top of the page saying this is about "Kooky" characters, and not characters who actually have autism.

So.... Just because a character acts weird by society's standards, but it's never explicitly stated that there may or may not be something actually wrong with them, we're allowed to add them to the page? What makes this trope Objective again? Sounds to me like anyone can add anything to the page just because a character acts weird.

Looking through the examples, I'm coming across lots of examples of "Believed by fans" and "Theorized" and the like. This needs to be either moved to YMMV or properly defined what can and cannot be used as examples, and not just because "Someone thinks so, so it must be true".

I think it's a trope, and honestly I think this whole problem is that horrific description that basically says "Anyone who is weird might be autistic!" which is just plain wrong, and doesn't even describe the symptoms of autism for someone to use as a checklist to see if their character fits.

We have a High-Functioning Autism page about the actual syndrome, we should rewrite the trope around what actually makes someone autistic and what things a character can do to lead to the conclusion that they might have this condition.

Yeah but that's still just going to result in a lot of the current examples being put up there just because they might exhibit one or two traits during a 1-off scene or episode. There are examples on the page currently where it's actually explained why a certain character acts the way they do, but it's only theorized that they have some form of autism just because they happen to exhibit socially repressed behaviors and such.

For example: Star Ocean The Last Hope: "Lymle's condition is evocative of autism. Her emotional maturity is stunted, she has savant-level intelligence focused on one very specific field of study (Symbology), and she shies away from social contact. The in-game explanation is that Lymle accidentally opened a portal to Hell when she was six years old, and her mind effectively shut itself off to protect her sanity, trapping her mental facilities at that age."

It's explained why she acts the way she does, but it's still suggestive to imply that she has autism when the game doesn't call it as such or imply any such condition, or even consider it a condition in the first place.

You know, maybe we could just do this the way psychologists handle the diagnosis - I mean, describe the DSM's actual diagnostic criteria for autism (probably with some explanation for laypeople), and say "The character must exhibit at least X of these traits, and they must show the traits consistently rather than just once or twice, and there must be no other obvious explanation for why they behave this way." (We might also include some other valid evidence that's specific to fictional characters, like if Word of God mentioned that the character is based off a real autistic person, or if the character is explicitly implied to have some kind of neurological disorder but the specific disorder is never stated, etc.) That way the "character might be seen this way because she is kind of socially awkward and has a nerdy interest" examples are explicitly disqualified.

edited 1st Aug '11 12:50:23 PM by dangerwaffle

I like this suggestion.

Eh, I cringe at the idea of making tropers into armchair psychologists but hey, it beats what's there now.

Well, the whole idea of this trope kind of entails making tropers into armchair psychologists, doesn't it? (I mean, if you assume it actually has to have anything to do with autism — if it's really supposed to be just "this character acts so kooky it must be some kind of neurological issue," the trope really, really needs a completely different name and, honestly, that sounds uselessly subjective anyway.)

As an example, here's the kind of character I think could actually fit this as an objective trope — Barb from Anathem. He's consistently not very social, other people find him severely obnoxious because he has a complete absence of tact and is oblivious to social cues, he's single-mindedly obsessive about understanding new mathematical and philosophical theories even compared to the other characters around him, all of whom are nerds who devoted their lives to academia, he has difficulty understanding jokes and non-literal language, he is specifically noted several times to have a total inability to interpret or even notice facial expressions, and the narrator explicitly thinks to himself (seriously, not as a joke) that it must be something atypical about Barb's brain structure that makes him act so odd. Autism as a diagnosis doesn't actually exist in the setting, but I think it's pretty obvious that the author was thinking of high-functioning autism when he wrote the character — Barb is Ambiguously Autistic in the same sense that Miracle Max is Ambiguously Jewish. Big difference from most of the "this character acts mildly weird, so he's probably autistic" examples currently on the page. If we can collect characters who fit that many of the criteria, I think this has a shot as an objective trope.

edited 1st Aug '11 2:57:43 PM by dangerwaffle

A note about this trope's history, because many seem confused:

1. It was originally called PDD Not Overtly So, and the trope description was basically "I can't believe it's not Aspergers Disorder" with a lengthy Useful Notes-style list of the common symptoms of someone with an Austistic disorder might have. That proved to be a massive wall of text that most tropers adding examples didn't bother to read. Eventually, it was redirected to the more sensible name of Ambiguously Autistic. Then it was split off to the Useful Notes page for Aspergers Disorder and High Functioning Autism, with some notes on the main page about how examples should still fulfill the criteria for having an autistic disorder.

2. Then, all references to autism were removed from the trope definition and that's when the entry-pimping really began. While it's clear that most editors are aware of what the trope means, a lot of examples have characters who were either created well before fictional characters with autistic traits became mainstream (therefore whatever autistic subtext exists is purely coincidental) or they clearly don't have it but they're assumed to have it because they have 1 or 2 signs of a mental disorder but not nearly enough to even remotely suggest it.

3. It's on the YMMV pages because it used to be on the YMMV index. I think Fast Eddie removed it from there but I'm not sure.

As far as going for an armchair diagnosis, that's counter-intuitive because of the aformentioned subjectivity. Take Ambiguously Gay. You don't need to be a psychiatrist to know all the stereotypical behaviors Hollywood associates with being gay. Similarly, with autism, we've got The Rainman because we know the stereotypes Hollywood associates with being visibly autistic. The problem with this trope is the "disorder" its trying to cover is so subtle that it can only be subtextually-hinted at and people are mistaking non-examples as examples.

Rescuing the trope will require a substantial rewrite to make the barometer of who fits and who doesn't more clear than "They behave like they're autistic because they're a robot", and possibly even a separate trope like Most Definitely Not Autistic to cover characters with alternate explanations for their weird behavior.

We come back to the central questions of is this salvageable, and is it worth the effort needed to salvage if it is? I say no on both counts. Personally I think the only place this should go is the cut list.

edited 1st Aug '11 4:20:26 PM by CrypticMirror

The problem has now become people getting fixated on the word Autism.

It is about people who are far enough off the mainstream in their behavior that there is probably a medical diagnosis that could be applied, but the writer is not applying it.

Maybe a title that doesn't push anyone's specific-diagnosis buttons would help.

I agree. There are plenty of characters which objectively seem as if they might have some kind of psychiatric disorder which this trope excludes by being so specific.

edited 1st Aug '11 4:30:34 PM by NoirGrimoir

If the idea is "character acts weird enough that they must surely have a disorder," then yeah, it definitely needs a new title; the vast majority of uses and examples seem to be "this character shows some behaviors associated with autism, regardless of severity," more or less the exact opposite of "this character's behavior is very far outside of social norms, regardless of whether it's autism or something else."

But if we're going to broaden it, is the idea "this character seems to fit some specific recognized disorder, but is not diagnosed" or "this character's behavior is so outside of social norms there's got to be something weird going on with their brain, whether or not it's an actual known disorder"? Those are pretty different, and the latter seems destined for subjectivity.

Edited to add: I tried a quick rough writeup on the Sandbox page for the "if the character meets at least 4 of these traits, they can be considered Ambiguously Autistic" approach mentioned above. Have a look, try writing your own version, etc.

edited 1st Aug '11 5:24:45 PM by dangerwaffle

I don't think this should be cut entirely. I've actually used the trope for one of the work pages I started, because the character was in fact intended by the author to be have a degree of autism, but was written in first person perspective by a character in the 19th century that would not know what autism is, therefore the works will never flat out say that the character has autism, The trope was actually one of those suggest to me by the author of the work in our e-mail discussion when I was setting up the page.

I think that we should also look at the laconic and "playing with" to get a better understanding of the intent of the trope:

Basic Trope: A character in a work exhibits many traits commonly associated with autism, but whether or not they are autistic is unclear. When a character's quirks make you wonder if they have some sort of mental disorder.

I don't think this is illegitimate, but it might be worth moving it into a YMMV category.

The protagonist of the tv show Bones is another case where we have Word of God that ambiguous autism is exactly what was intended.

At the very least, the trope description needs to make it clear this is a "negative" trope indicating a character has social/mental problems of some kind, so as to discourage entry-pimping of every perfectly well-adjusted protagonist or supporting character who happens to be of above-average intelligence and has a preference of sameness.

If we make this a negative trope then it will be used to entry pimp every character that people don't like.