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To get some things out of the way to try and prevent this thread from getting derailed too quickly:
* I am Autistic - formally diagnosed by psychologist professionals. I can speak for myself.
* I am aware that I do not speak for all Autistic people - many of whom are very different from myself.
* If this topic makes you uncomfortable, no shade if you want to use the 'hide this thread' option. It is on the forum listing on the right side just past the number of posts announcement and is a hyperlink that look like this: ∅
I know that these types of topics can be very emotionally charged and can make people very uncomfortable. But I think it is important to face that rather than hide from it.
The last time I asked about this, in addition to a bunch of misguided pushback saying that Autistic people shouldn't be allowed any representation at all, I found out that for Paizo Iconic characters, all of neurodiversity is only represented by one Iconic in Starfinder with ADHD. No representation for Autism at all.
Why Autistic representation is a hard thing to do
I'm actually going to start with this instead of my next subject because this is a more valid reason to not include any Autism representation.
It is hard to accurately represent Autistic people. The differences in how an Autistic mind processes information, emotions, and senses is very foreign to non-Autistic people. It isn't something that can be fully understood just by study. And it isn't something that can be portrayed believably and accurately by someone who doesn't understand it fully, so the majority of current Autistic representation is based on stereotypes and misinformation.
To mitigate that, I offer two things.
One, I am offering myself. I am Autistic and am very open about it. I am knowledgeable about the current information on the subject. And most importantly, I have the innate intuitive understanding of Autistic behavior that comes from having an Autistic mind. If anyone - Paizo writer or not - wants to ask me about being Autistic, I will do my best to answer honestly and respectfully.
Two, I will point you to the #ActuallyAutistic community. Yes, that is a real hashtag used on social media that supports hashtags and will get you in touch with other Autistic people who are openly sharing their experience. You don't have to just take my word for things.
What Autism is and what it is not
Autism is a neurotype - a way that the brain is built and wired. There are several neurotypes and they often are not mutually exclusive. The most common neurotype (and therefore the one given the somewhat ableist name of 'normal') has the name 'Allistic' - so if you look into any of the #ActuallyAutistic information and see that term, that is what it means. In addition to Allistic and Autistic, there are other neurotypes as well: ADHD, Dyslexia, Tourette's Syndrome, and being left-handed or right-handed are all neurotypes.
One important thing to note is that neurotypes cannot be changed. It is not possible to rewire someone's brain. It is possible to hide one's neurotype behaviors - such as a left-handed person learning to use their right hand for common things. This does not change their neurotype.
Another important thing to note is that people with different neurotypes are still human and still exhibit many common human behaviors. Also, behaviors caused by a particular neurotype are not always exclusive to that neurotype. Right-handed people can do many things with their left hand. This does not mean that right-handed people are 'a little bit left-handed'.
Being Autistic often feels like being a min-maxer of the IRL world. That isn't entirely accurate, but as a one-liner that would be understood by the people on this forum, it isn't too bad. A more clinical description is that an Autistically wired brain causes:
* Differences in executive function - the ability to consciously choose what tasks to do and how long to spend on them. Autistic people are generally very single-task and hyper-focus on that task. Interruptions and changes to plans become very disruptive.
* Sensory differences of heightened senses, lowered senses, or discrete-valued senses. These can be classical senses like touch, vision, hearing, and smell or they can be interoception senses such as pain, hunger, or body position.
* Differences in emotional processing, often causing emotion processing delays or an inability to define or describe the emotions being felt.
The traits and behaviors of Autism can generally be traced back to these differences. Lack of eye contact is primarily due to sensory overload and single-task executive function - it is harder to focus on what you are saying while also watching your face move. Flat affect and lack of nonverbal communication cues are primarily due to emotional processing delays. Things like that.
Autism is not a mental health condition, a learning disability, or a learning hyperability. These are all co-occurring conditions that affect Autistic people at higher rates than the general population, but they are not actually part of being Autistic. Also, non-Autistic people experience these things too. For example, Kim Peek, the IRL person who was the inspiration for the savant character in the movie Rainman, wasn't actually Autistic (though he was misdiagnosed as Autistic initially).
Muddying the waters is the fact that about 30% of the diagnosed Autistic population also has some form of learning disability or intellectual disability, and that a staggering, but unspecified number, of Autistic people also have mental health problems - primarily PTSD and Depression. But these intellectual disabilities, savant syndrome, and mental health problems are not inherently part of Autism.
Why Autistic people need representation
This is the most important part of this entire post. But it has to be put last because all of the other things have to be said first in order for this to make sense and not just get bashed on.
Autism is, very rightly, classified as a disability. However, there is little that is inherently debilitating about being Autistic . The disability is caused entirely because society does not accept us or normalize our behaviors.
I want to present for consideration two other things:
Being left-handed was stigmatized and maligned for many centuries. In fact, to this day the name for being left-handed - 'Sinister' - is generally used as an insult and is only prevented from being one of the forbidden words like the n**** slur and the r**** slur because it has become completely disconnected from its original meaning of describing being left-handed. Historically, left-handed people were accused of all sorts of things based entirely on superstition, and forced to use their right hand for things such as writing. Left-handed people were (and to an extent still are) at a disadvantage in society because tools are designed for right-handed use and using their left hand for things would invite criticism, fear, and being ostracized from society.
For at least many decades, being LGBTQ+ has been stigmatized and maligned. Such people were ostracized from society - often even officially such as the United States military's policy of "don't ask, don't tell".
In both of these cases, there is nothing inherently debilitating of being in those categories of human being. It isn't the left-handed people or the LGBTQ+ people who need to change - what needs to change is society's acceptance of such people. And one of the best ways of changing society is to have accurate and meaningful representation in popular media and the stories that we tell.
And it is the same for me. I cannot change being Autistic. I was born Autistic, I will die Autistic, and only my fleas will mourn me. So as difficult as it is to change society, changing society is the only option that I have to try and improve the conditions of life for myself, my Autistic children, and other Autistic people in the world.
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I think it's an intriguing idea.
From what little I know about Autism, it's a rather broad spectrum.
How would you represent it authentically?
If you were to make Finoan an Iconic, what about them would identify them as Autistic?
Anecdote; Back in the late '70's through early 2000's*, I had a friend who was a fellow gamer. He had some odd quirks, brief physical spasms, and difficulty verbally expressing himself. He was also a good writer, good enough to be published, and a fine Dungeon Master. Looking back, I realize he was most likely on the Autistic spectrum, but at the time we didn't have that terminology.
*Yes, I'm old.
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I think it's an intriguing idea.
From what little I know about Autism, it's a rather broad spectrum.
How would you represent it authentically?
If you were to make Finoan an Iconic, what about them would identify them as Autistic?
It is definitely a broad spectrum. Which does pose a bit of a problem that no one character can represent the entire spectrum. So, much like the several LGBTQ+ characters, there may need to be more than one eventually.
As for what to portray on any one character, it should be an accurate mix of both beneficial and negative traits. Focusing only on the positive will cause an inspiration porn effect and make people think that being Autistic is easy, and focusing mostly on the negative will play into stereotypes and make people think that being Autistic is hopeless.
On the positive side, things like 'special interests' that cause mastery over a particular topic or two, hyperlexia, resistance to peer pressure and bystander effect, deep and loyal friendships, and attention to details.
On the negative side, things like sensory problems like clothes or water triggering touch sensitivity, emotional processing problems like meltdown or flat affect, masking and the problems that doing that causes, communication difficulties, being bullied, and other problems in relating and socializing with other people.
Any one Autistic person or Autistic character is going to have a specific set of these traits.
* I'm also pretty old. I don't quite reach back to the 70s, but I do remember the 80s.
I think it'd be pretty cool to have an Autistic iconic. I don't think it'd be very helpful for someone to slap the label on an existing iconic either, though I briefly considered which ones could be.
I want to see a Chef class (I've said so plenty of times that food and drink is already borderline magical, don't get me started) and I think it'd be great to have the Chef iconic be Autistic. Maybe they start adventuring to have an excuse to get away from the bustling environment of the professional kitchen.
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For what its worth i support the idea Finoan.
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I don't think it'd be very helpful for someone to slap the label on an existing iconic either,
Perhaps surprisingly, that would actually be fairly believable.
Many Autistic people, including myself, are diagnosed later in life. I self-identified at the age of 34 and was finally officially diagnosed at 42. These late-identified people spend a lot of their life hiding or masking their traits (generally unconsciously or out of habit) and do so at great expense to their overall well-being. Especially their mental health and sense of identity.
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I would welcome more representation for neurodivergence amongst the iconics as long as sufficient care and attention was given. And I have a lot more confidence in Paizo's ability to do this respectfully than I do in certain other organizations [Please let us not name names lest we trigger a fandom war].
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For what its worth i support the idea Finoan.
Thank you.
I am very grateful to all of the people here so far that the response has been so positive. Writing that OP and posting it was honestly quite terrifying.
I don't think it'd be very helpful for someone to slap the label on an existing iconic either,Perhaps surprisingly, that would actually be fairly believable.
Many Autistic people, including myself, are diagnosed later in life. I self-identified at the age of 34 and was finally officially diagnosed at 42. These late-identified people spend a lot of their life hiding or masking their traits (generally unconsciously or out of habit) and do so at great expense to their overall well-being. Especially their mental health and sense of identity.
I see both sides. Later in life diagnoses are certianly something people can identify with, but applying the diagnosis to an existing character could run into problems with stereotyping or coding.
I see both sides. Later in life diagnoses are certianly something people can identify with, but applying the diagnosis to an existing character could run into problems with stereotyping or coding.
That is also valid. It would definitely have to be the right Iconic to do that.
I'm just noting that the idea isn't completely off the table either.
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As someone who is blind, but not autistic as far as I know, I hope I am coming across as someone who is in the same camp, even if not necessarily in the same tent.
Absolutely. Happy to hear from you.
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Thanks for posting, Finoan :) I'd be very on-board with this - it's especially frustrating how uncommon neurodivergency is in fantasy settings, it feels like it is erased from both history and our pop-culture view of history. I think part of the problem with doing it so far is that Paizo tends to avoid just outright stating labels (e.g. they prefer to write a blog about Quinn's interest in men than say he's a gay man in the short descriptions we get of him, or talk about the history of someone who has transitioned rather than give them an exact label), and I think it would feel a little odd to just state the label in this case. One could definitely do it in an extended blog post on the subject - like we recently got for Quinn! - but another interesting avenue for it is that the resumption of Pathfinder Tales with Godsblood features a set of iconics as the main characters of the story. That gives a lot more room for a really interesting exploration of neurodivergence in fantasy, and I think would be a lovely place for it to happen :)
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I genuinely thought we had one already, but I might be getting mixed up with Magic: the Gathering, which I know has an autistic Planeswalker.
As an autistic fan here, I'd quite enjoy this!
I always kind of read Mios as being on the autism spectrum, TBH.
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I think part of the problem with doing it so far is that Paizo tends to avoid just outright stating labels (e.g. they prefer to write a blog about Quinn's interest in men than say he's a gay man in the short descriptions we get of him, or talk about the history of someone who has transitioned rather than give them an exact label), and I think it would feel a little odd to just state the label in this case. One could definitely do it in an extended blog post on the subject - like we recently got for Quinn!
That is something to also consider.
I think it would ultimately be better to have it officially confirmed in this case because otherwise it is very easy to miss. I have been playing myself as an Autistic person on these forums for several years and I expect that until/unless I state it fairly directly, that many people wouldn't ever notice.
At least not directly. Not by name or label.
I also think that opening the door to some of the darker side of Autism would be ultimately beneficial. It definitely isn't all rainbows and roses. Being able to recognize something going wrong when it happens, and exploring and modeling through role-play what can be done to improve that situation could be very positive.
For example, do you know what the best thing is that you can do to help an Autistic person who is having a meltdown? Or what the difference is between an Autistic meltdown and a temper tantrum?
but another interesting avenue for it is that the resumption of Pathfinder Tales with Godsblood features a set of iconics as the main characters of the story. That gives a lot more room for a really interesting exploration of neurodivergence in fantasy, and I think would be a lovely place for it to happen :)
That would probably be an excellent place to do something like this.
I think a roleplaying game - especially one where everyone is going to be interacting with their own friend groups, who likely don't know more than them about autism - is a poor place to be educational about how to handle a meltdown. That would pretty inherently require a GM - most likely a neurotypical one - acting through what they THINK a meltdown is like.
That is a good point. I would agree that NPCs in an adventure (played by the GM) or playable PFS pregens (played by players) would not be a good place. For the reasons you mention.
I was mostly thinking of the blog posts and other such stories written - which is where I primarily see Iconics being used.
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As a complete side-note, Read the Air does indeed look like it was tailor made for an Autistic character to use. But the implementation of it falls completely flat.
Mechanically I can cast the spell in order to ... make two skill checks that I already could make. With only a +1 bonus to one of them.
So my character already has to have the skill proficiency and preferably the attribute bonuses built into the character in order to use the spell for what it is written to be able to do.
A much better idea would be to have it give a 'as though you were trained' type of bonus like Illusory Disguise does.
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Well said. I haven't thought of anything useful to contribute to this conversation, so perhaps instead I'll simply contribute my agreement and interest in a potential future (or existing) autistic iconic.
Part of me wants to say I could see Thaleon, the iconic Psychic, as a neurodivergent rep of some description, albeit I wonder if "autism/adhd gives you weird psychic powers" is necessarily the best way to handle a first neurodivergent character reveal.
There are groups like ASAN (the autistic self advocacy network) who consult on representing autistic characters in the media, in addition to their other activism. That's most likely a better place for Paizo to get writers or consultants than any one of us random forumgoers or a social media hashtag.
I looked up and researched ASAN a bit. It looks like it could be a useful organization if you could get their attention. Not sure what their demand and schedule looks like.
The reason being that it is both created by and currently run by Autistic people.
After the train wreck that is Autism Speaks and the blatant ableism I experienced when trying to go to my state's Vocational Rehabilitation center, I don't automatically trust any Autism support or advocacy group - especially ones that are for-hire.
Yeah, I'm into the idea. I'm actually pretty surprised there isn't one already, as I'd be shocked if the Paizo creative team didn't have at least one person with the diagnosis, and probably others undiagnosed. It raises an interesting question for me about whether people on Golarion actually know what autism is, though. Every PF1 mental health professional NPC I've read about was secretly performing horrible experiments on the "lunatics" of their asylum. It evokes a much darker point in the real world history of neurology and mental health. I haven't seen any mental health professional NPCs in PF2 yet, probably because those portrayals in PF1 didn't age well and Paizo is much more careful about ableism and such.
PF2 also put inclusivity as a higher priority than "realism." (Realism is a pretty wonky hill to die on when you have dragons and stuff.) Pathfinder was always pretty inclusive in the sense that anyone who displayed bigotry or discrimination was a villain. Rise of the Runelords only had one family that didn't support the gay couple in town, and that family had mob ties. Carrion Crown had an NPC whose misogyny led him to target women with weapons and armor first in combat. Stuff like that. But in PF2 those prejudices don't seem to exist. It's probably more like the PF2 stance on slavery, where it exists but adventures won't talk about it. They definitely seem cautious about ableism-- Abomination Vaults listed it as a content warning and I'm still not sure what it was referring to.
There's also all the assistive items that have been published. Things like prosthetic eyes and limbs are awfully common, cheap, and flawless for a world that's ostensibly less technologically developed than our own. Same thing with adventurer chairs that climb ladders. Golarion being able to diagnose mental disabilities with modern/real world accuracy would be more believable than the support options for physical disabilities.
I don't know, I am certainly not against the idea. But I am not sure how well they can represent it via an Iconic.
I also don't want it to be furthering the fetishisation that is so common in geek media regarding autistic representation. The best way to sidestep that issue is with fleshed out characters that have story involvement, which could occur with an Iconic... but is unlikely to because of how/why they exist.
For the record I am also on the autism spectrum, my father was also diagnosed in 2020 and I am pretty confident my late grandfather and my aunt on my father's side are also.
But it is extremely broad and more inherently formative to who someone is than sexuality, gender or in many cases physical disabilities are. Not more important mind you, just more formative as it touches on literally every aspect of life and who someone is by its very nature.
What I don't want to ever see are mechanical representations of autism or any other neurodiversity in game, but I generally trust paizo not to muck that up.
I guess it will depend on the iconic and trusting in paizo not to look for an "autistic class" to associate with it.
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We are also on the spectrum as well as several people near and dear to us. I think having autistic rep among the iconics would be super cool, as well as just in general in the game.
I would also push back on the idea that autism is more formative than other aspects of one self. For some it might be but for others other aspects might be more so or simply equally as formative. Even more so the way those things intersect with one another can be quite significant.
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Yeah, there are lots of ways to do it wrong.
But doing nothing is not helping either.
Taking another risk and talking about things more specifically...
About 2.5 years ago I went to Vocational Rehab looking for assistance improving my employment prospects and accommodations. I asked them to communicate with me primarily in text form - ideally real-time text messaging like SMS or an app like Discord. Email would be a lesser choice because it is generally not treated as real-time and conversations over email aren't really conversational.
This is what I got from one of the people there:
Many neurotypical people have an easier time understanding and interpreting verbal conversation than email or IM. There is a feeling that meaning can get lost in an email or IM and it is difficult when one is unable to read body language or tone of voice. I believe this is why **** and even ***** before wanted to meet with you in person, I know it is why I would like to meet with you in person to make sure that we are on the same page.
And when asking about accommodations to get employers and coworkers to not get upset with me when I ask clarifying questions when given vague instructions, I get:
it is less about the question itself but how it is asked/presented. Communication is less about the wording choice and more about body language, nonverbal cues, and tone of voice. All of these are hard for someone on the spectrum to understand, but they can become proficient with practice.
Both of those responses are phrased to be very reasonable. They 'sound' good.
Until you realize that:
Deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction, ranging, for example, from poorly integrated verbal and nonverbal communication; to abnormalities in eye contact and body language or deficits in understanding and use of gestures; to a total lack of facial expressions and nonverbal communication.
Not effectively using nonverbal communication literally is the disability.
What the vocational rehab people told me is very much the equivalent of telling Perpdepog that they "just need to learn to see better so that they can read like a normal person. That is what is expected at vocational rehab and that is what is expected by your employers."
And the worst part is - when I bring this up to most people, they side with vocational rehab and tell me that I am the one in the wrong.
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Again, thanks for the support.
And yeah. That is why I say that I can't change myself. After 40+ years of practice, I am as good as I am going to get. I can only try to change society instead. So as hard as that may be, at least it is theoretically possible.
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I think it'd be pretty cool to have an Autistic iconic. I don't think it'd be very helpful for someone to slap the label on an existing iconic either, though I briefly considered which ones could be.
My wife didn't realize she might be autistic until her 40s, and it took years after that to get a diagnosis. Having an existing character turn out to be autistic is entirely valid, as long as the character is good representation. This is something people can mask for a VERY long time, and may not even realize it.
I think this is a great idea if they can get a writer who doesn't just lean into tropes on it.
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Yes for Autistic representation.
I saw recently a video on LinkedIn where an Autistic lady used a narrator's voice to express her inner thinking during a (fake) job interview.
An iconic's story could express this pretty well IMO : the Autistic iconic's view on what is actually going on in their mind during an encounter.
I don't know why but the idea of an Autistic iconic immediately brought Ezren to my mind.
But several others could be fitting too I think.