Characters with personalities with Autistic-coded personalities & experiences

General – Invisible Disability / Undiagnosed

‘Red: A Crayon’s Story‘ – allegory for invisible, undiagnosed disability and identity dissonance. It works for LGBQTI+ youth, but as a young autistic girl growing up undiagnosed and confused, this story hits me in the gut.

A Bad Case Of Stripes – Autistic folks, particularly multiply-marginalized autistics (women, BIPOC, poor, etc.) who don’t have access to support and accommodations, are often forced to mask our pain and natural behavior to fit in and pass as allistic. This leads to all sorts of mental health conditions (see below regarding exposure anxiety) and chronic trauma. We get extremely sick, and instead of encouraging us to relax and drop the mask, often we’re pressured to hide the effects of this stress, too.

Sophie’s Squash – (Miller) In both of these books, Sophie demonstrates challenges interacting with her peers, so she prefers the comfort and safety of befriending Bernice the Squash, who doesn’t come with the baggage of confusing allistic expectations. In Sophie’s Squash Go To School, Q loved that bernice’s babies turned into 2, was preocuppied by the concept of exponential growth more than the story itself. went a little over hte head of R2 at 4. But it shows how Sophie misses a classmate’s social cues and misconstrues an attempt at friendship as aggression. Not really about back to school, but takes place on the first month or so of school. i didn’t get a lack of consent vibe from the boy’s attempts at friendship, but i can see how folks might see that as problematic. Additional keywords: Making friends, harassment