Ramble on Parker and autism
Jun. 27th, 2020 09:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doranwenSo I started poking around at the Leverage fandom wiki, and I saw that several commentaries say that Parker is on the autism spectrum (TV Tropes quotes "a touch of Asperger's"). Which, I called that early on in my watching. The way she echoes the others, just a bit offbeat, at the very very end of The Homecoming Job, just that little out-of-sync, not reading the social cues right, that right there was a little ping to me. And her inability to grasp people's reactions to stuff emotionally, to know what to do or say… Oh yeah, definitely felt like it. But I was reading so many comments that argued about whether the writers said she had Asperger's or not that I didn't know for sure what they thought, until I saw the wiki line. I'm hoping that's accurate, at least, because I don't think simply having a messed-up childhood would explain some of her difficulties with social interaction.
And here's one place where I actually have some experience, because I also am on the autism spectrum. Probably mild Asperger's like Parker (though everyone's different in how it shows in them), though I've never been officially diagnosed. When I was a child, the only autism my parents had heard of was so extreme on the far side of the spectrum that people on the mild end weren't easily recognized, and I was a girl, so doubly difficult to recognize. They never thought anything was different about me, as I was their first child. So when I had long lists of foods that made me gag at flavor and texture, it was "all in my head", and I faced frequent battles at home (and eating at anyone else's home was anxiety-inducing). When I had difficulty adapting, it was treated as a character flaw, and I received lectures from my dad about needing "adaptability, adaptability, adaptability". When I had trouble with changes in routines and plans, my mom learned to tell me as far in advance as possible and be prepared for me to react emotionally. To adults, my intelligence masked my social ineptness, whereas to children, I was a target of bullying for a few years, before we moved and I was homeschooled for several more years. I attributed my difficulties with social interaction (I thought I was just years behind) to those experiences, which is sort of ridiculous when I look at it now; the vast majority of homeschooled children have better social skills because they're used to interacting with all ages (many homeschoolers are heavily involved in extracurricular activities outside the home) and seeing more perspectives than the limited ones of their agemates who are always trapped with others of their own age. (Look up the Zone of Proximal Development at some point, and then think how that applies when the majority of people one interacts with are all on roughly the same level instead of multiple levels both above and below.)
What helped me was I had a strong desire to learn about myself, to understand myself. I took personality tests and self-analyzed in hopes it would help me learn how to deal with people better. Gradually I was able to recognize when someone was bored of me jabbering away about an interest, and started to be able to control the urge to tell them all the things I found so interesting. I used my brain, naturally good with patterns, to pick up the patterns of basic social interaction, bit by bit. Much of it was not conscious, simply trying to mirror others as best I could. Things a child usually does automatically and which I was having to teach myself as a college student.
Now, I can "pass" for neurotypical much of the time, especially when I'm not in a mere social gathering. For instance, at work I'm very comfortable, and I've learned how to function fairly well at church. But put me in a social gathering that's just for chatting and talking (even with people I know), and my stress level goes way up. I can't focus on everyone in a large group, my processing of the emotional component to everything starts to fail and overwhelm me, and I just get worn out and want to leave. Even one-on-one, it strongly depends on who I'm with, whether they're someone I feel I can relax around, or whether I feel like I have to constantly be trying to act "normal".
Which brings me to Parker. If she does indeed have Asperger's, as I think she does, she can learn to act neurotypical, to learn the appropriate gestures and things to say or do, and The Broken Wing Job really does show her growth in that area - with a single neurotypical person she finds nonthreatening. But she's never going to be "normal", and it's not just that the only quirks left are her love for rappelling and skills as a thief, which it feels like the show showed us. I still struggle to read people - it goes too fast for me, which is why I love video; I can replay it and watch all the minute changes in physical expression, and feel like I'm actually feeling what the character feels. With people in real life, it's like a wall between us, with me just guessing on my side what's going on on theirs. For everything Sophie taught her about grifting, it just feels inaccurate to have Parker being perfectly good at it. And I'm not sure the show quite showed that, but the implication by the end is that she's now mostly "normal". Maybe that's just me and no one else sees that. But I want to see more acknowledging that she is still and will always be different.
And I don't think it's somehow wrong to recognize that being on the spectrum is a disability as well as a strength. It's a difference, and differences have negatives as well as positives. Realistically, I don't see it likely for Parker to ever be that good at grifting because of how much it requires of someone's social interaction skills. She can play limited roles, ones with set sorts of requirements (she does very well as wait staff, for instance), but to do what Sophie does? No, I don't think so. I think she can plan for Sophie's skills, which is why I see her learning to be Mastermind as realistic, but she can't actually do them, any more than she can fight as well as Eliot (though she fights very well overall because she's so fit and acrobatic) or hack as well as Hardison (she's learned some things, but we see her limitations there in The Corkscrew Job). And it's not like the show has tried to show her being up to Sophie's level - but I think she would have more trouble with it than they show, no matter how much training she gets. (I could never grift like that. Never. No matter how hard I trained.) I can train myself how to act and react in various situations (a friend in college once told me it was as if I had a giant lookup table in my head), but I will never ever be able to process body language and react to it as fast as I need to be. And I feel like to show Parker getting that good with it sort of denies the reality of being on the spectrum; it's for life. You don't suddenly improve the speed at which your brain processes some things just because you get training from people you love and trust. It doesn't work that way.
I haven't really been reading for that, but I'm definitely going to keep my eye on it more, to see how the fic handles her there. May end up writing a few fics myself…
And here's one place where I actually have some experience, because I also am on the autism spectrum. Probably mild Asperger's like Parker (though everyone's different in how it shows in them), though I've never been officially diagnosed. When I was a child, the only autism my parents had heard of was so extreme on the far side of the spectrum that people on the mild end weren't easily recognized, and I was a girl, so doubly difficult to recognize. They never thought anything was different about me, as I was their first child. So when I had long lists of foods that made me gag at flavor and texture, it was "all in my head", and I faced frequent battles at home (and eating at anyone else's home was anxiety-inducing). When I had difficulty adapting, it was treated as a character flaw, and I received lectures from my dad about needing "adaptability, adaptability, adaptability". When I had trouble with changes in routines and plans, my mom learned to tell me as far in advance as possible and be prepared for me to react emotionally. To adults, my intelligence masked my social ineptness, whereas to children, I was a target of bullying for a few years, before we moved and I was homeschooled for several more years. I attributed my difficulties with social interaction (I thought I was just years behind) to those experiences, which is sort of ridiculous when I look at it now; the vast majority of homeschooled children have better social skills because they're used to interacting with all ages (many homeschoolers are heavily involved in extracurricular activities outside the home) and seeing more perspectives than the limited ones of their agemates who are always trapped with others of their own age. (Look up the Zone of Proximal Development at some point, and then think how that applies when the majority of people one interacts with are all on roughly the same level instead of multiple levels both above and below.)
What helped me was I had a strong desire to learn about myself, to understand myself. I took personality tests and self-analyzed in hopes it would help me learn how to deal with people better. Gradually I was able to recognize when someone was bored of me jabbering away about an interest, and started to be able to control the urge to tell them all the things I found so interesting. I used my brain, naturally good with patterns, to pick up the patterns of basic social interaction, bit by bit. Much of it was not conscious, simply trying to mirror others as best I could. Things a child usually does automatically and which I was having to teach myself as a college student.
Now, I can "pass" for neurotypical much of the time, especially when I'm not in a mere social gathering. For instance, at work I'm very comfortable, and I've learned how to function fairly well at church. But put me in a social gathering that's just for chatting and talking (even with people I know), and my stress level goes way up. I can't focus on everyone in a large group, my processing of the emotional component to everything starts to fail and overwhelm me, and I just get worn out and want to leave. Even one-on-one, it strongly depends on who I'm with, whether they're someone I feel I can relax around, or whether I feel like I have to constantly be trying to act "normal".
Which brings me to Parker. If she does indeed have Asperger's, as I think she does, she can learn to act neurotypical, to learn the appropriate gestures and things to say or do, and The Broken Wing Job really does show her growth in that area - with a single neurotypical person she finds nonthreatening. But she's never going to be "normal", and it's not just that the only quirks left are her love for rappelling and skills as a thief, which it feels like the show showed us. I still struggle to read people - it goes too fast for me, which is why I love video; I can replay it and watch all the minute changes in physical expression, and feel like I'm actually feeling what the character feels. With people in real life, it's like a wall between us, with me just guessing on my side what's going on on theirs. For everything Sophie taught her about grifting, it just feels inaccurate to have Parker being perfectly good at it. And I'm not sure the show quite showed that, but the implication by the end is that she's now mostly "normal". Maybe that's just me and no one else sees that. But I want to see more acknowledging that she is still and will always be different.
And I don't think it's somehow wrong to recognize that being on the spectrum is a disability as well as a strength. It's a difference, and differences have negatives as well as positives. Realistically, I don't see it likely for Parker to ever be that good at grifting because of how much it requires of someone's social interaction skills. She can play limited roles, ones with set sorts of requirements (she does very well as wait staff, for instance), but to do what Sophie does? No, I don't think so. I think she can plan for Sophie's skills, which is why I see her learning to be Mastermind as realistic, but she can't actually do them, any more than she can fight as well as Eliot (though she fights very well overall because she's so fit and acrobatic) or hack as well as Hardison (she's learned some things, but we see her limitations there in The Corkscrew Job). And it's not like the show has tried to show her being up to Sophie's level - but I think she would have more trouble with it than they show, no matter how much training she gets. (I could never grift like that. Never. No matter how hard I trained.) I can train myself how to act and react in various situations (a friend in college once told me it was as if I had a giant lookup table in my head), but I will never ever be able to process body language and react to it as fast as I need to be. And I feel like to show Parker getting that good with it sort of denies the reality of being on the spectrum; it's for life. You don't suddenly improve the speed at which your brain processes some things just because you get training from people you love and trust. It doesn't work that way.
I haven't really been reading for that, but I'm definitely going to keep my eye on it more, to see how the fic handles her there. May end up writing a few fics myself…
no subject
Date: 2020-07-11 03:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-11 06:17 am (UTC)Now, they have Parker from S1 on able to make up stuff to bluff a bit, definitely "off" as far as tone, but she can do it within limited roles (stereotyped sort of things like law enforcement, for more general chatty social situations they're feeding her lines over comms in her ears) - and that alone I think is kind of out there, but maybe chalk it up to some natural ability that is unaffected by being on the spectrum (or strong enough to overcome some of it?). But by the end they have her grifting considerably more, and planning the cons, and while I think nearly every other area she's amazing at (she can plan a heist very very well), I'm not so sure she can plan a con as easily, because as the mastermind she'd have to adjust her plans on the fly based on the marks' behavior. I think she'd struggle with that some, but maybe that's just me… Could make for some interesting fic scenes.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-04 01:51 pm (UTC)Generally, the better representations are done by nuanced observers that didn't realize that having built a character off someone they knew, have replicated an aspect of someone on the spectrum. Plenty of people are undiagnosed, and if their lineage has made it work, they've not taken the socially imposed damage in the same detrimental ways.
There was a writer, that talked about getting told frequently how much a character "got me" and accepted that while they hadn't set out to do so, the character must be on the spectrum, at least for some readers. (As opposed to writers getting all bent about "no, you're understanding my characters wrong!") Said writer iirc started doing some research, so they could build a little more detail in without getting too far out of their knowledge.