So, I’m writing a fic, one of the more important supporting characters is a character I headcanon as autistic, and I’m writing that into the fic. I’m not the first person to have the headcanon, but I’m the first person I know of to write a longfic using it (not specifying character or fandom for this reason; I’m kind of anonymous on here). I’m putting my last year’s worth of “am I autistic?” research into writing this character. But I’m kinda nervous about actually posting the chapter when he shows up, for a few reasons: I haven’t said anything anywhere online but here about being/thinking I might be autistic, and while the character isn’t the main character and the story isn’t about autism, I’m still worried I’m going to get people saying “You shouldn’t be writing this unless you’re autistic yourself.” The character’s undiagnosed and isn’t himself aware he’s autistic. The story is set in Japan, which is not the best at public mental health education, and even in the U.S. (which is a little better on the education thing) there are people at his age (18) who don't get diagnosed 'til later in life, so I think this is pretty plausible. That said, I can see how people could have a problem with it. This is kinda the big one—this fandom is made of a couple of really nice people and a bunch of jerks. People will legitimately fight over headcanons (admittedly, mostly I’ve seen it with trans headcanons, but, for the sake of all that’s good, someone brought in a mangacap of a character’s birth certificate to prove he was AMAB and thus not trans, and that felt a little…overzealous to me). Like, there are nice reviewers but also ones that have passive-aggressively disagreed with my stylistic choices and attempted to mansplain linguistics to me. The ship wars get ugly. If it wasn’t for the source material being so interesting to fic about and one of my IRL friends being into it as well, I may have abandoned the fandom completely by now. So, I'm really worried about this turning into a source of drama. And I figure I am not the only person on here who has posted fic that they were nervous about getting backlash over. Does anyone have any advice?
Tumblr drama seems to be more about fads and jealousy then anything reasonable. If no-autsim-if-author-is-not-autistic is a trend in your fandom then you might get flack. Otherwise, you're probably safe.
Yeah, honestly, fics in the fandom with autistic characters, period, just aren't that common, and most of the ones I know of are a little older--circa the late 2010's or so. Those fics didn't get backlash, but to be fair, they were written in during the LJ period and by the fandom's more popular authors. Still, there isn't a general trend of people getting flack, and hopefully, none will start. Thanks for the reassurance!
