(thread, 1/4)
Screw it, this thread has been bubbling under the surface of my brain for a year. It's now or never.
Granny Weatherwax is not just great autistic representation, as a person on the spectrum I consider her to be the BEST fictional autistic character in any form of fiction, ever. It's not even close.
And I'm excited to tell you why! Y'know, in case you needed a seventy-third reason to love Pterry.
Now, to get it out of the way - a major reason Granny is such a great character is because she is very much NOT "the designated autistic character". More on that later. There are other characters in Discworld that have traits that can be interpreted as autistic - Carrot for sure, Vetinari in some ways, and a good number of the Unseen University wizards. More on that later, too.
But I do think Granny is unique even among those.
Broadly, I've seen good autistic or autistic-coded characters I liked or even loved. But they often have the same stumbles. And they're almost universally men. They are also often either played for humour, valued for what they can DO rather than how they ARE, and are very often just avatars of autism in the story. Which is appreciated because inclusion etc., but it's clumsy.
And most autistic characters are just... bad. They are walking human intelligence on two legs - which is why I hate the fact that for a lot of my life, I was praised for my extraordinary intelligence and I grew to resent it. No, it's not a humblebrag. It's a regular brag (LMFAO). But more to the point, intelligence is just a mental skill. It's not core to the value of a human being.
Which is why autistic characters often feel like awesome robots. And which is why I often feel like a... less-than-awesome robot. And at worst, autistic characters just have straight-up bullshit superpowers (*coughSherlockcough*).
Also, autistic characters are pretty much universally complete assholes.
Enter Granny Weatherwax. She's autistic - I don't consider her "autism coded", she just is autistic - but she's valuable in the exact ways autistic people can be valuable. As a person, as a member of her community, as a professional and as a champion of good and morality. She is the kind of autistic person I aspire to be, and what I think autistic people can be at our best, in ways that are less accessible to allistic people.
Now, there were initial stumbles. I do not love how emphasised her literal-mindedness and cluelessness is in "Wyrd Sisters". It's not cringe or disrespectful, mind you. She was a great character even back then (and it helps that it wasn't her first appearance in the books). But it was turned up maybe one notch too many.
Luckily, that turned out to be just a thing about her, and in most books by other authors it would've become 30% of her personality.
#WomensDay (why not, it's relevant) #InternationalWomensDay #Discworld #TerryPratchett #ActuallyAutistic
