Magic and Othering
Everything Is True
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A piece of advice you'll frequently hear, when writing neurodivergent characters, is not to give them magical abilities. There are lots of potential reasons for this - many neurodivergent people in real life feel pressure to be superhuman, for instance, to compensate for their differences. But the argument I want to focus on is another one. You shouldn't make neurodivergent characters magical, says this particular argument, because to make them magical is to other them. It marks them out as different from anyone else and less relatable.
I think that this argument has a grain of truth in it, but is mostly wrong.
The idea that to be magical is to be different from everyone else is what this argument rests on, and it's not necessarily true. Even the idea that to be magical is to be better than everyone else (or to think you are) - what lies behind the "superpower" version of the argument - is not necessarily true. This is a cultural assumption rather than a universal one, and it's also individual within a culture.
In plenty of non-Western cultures, magic and encounters with the supernatural are considered part of everyday life. They might not be conceptualized as abilities or identities in the way that Westerners think of them - they might just be another thing that happens. If you're writing about a neurodivergent character in a culture like that, real or fictional, then there's no reason not to have them encounter magic this way.
Even in Western cultures, there are many small groups and subcultures in which people believe in magic. Pagan communities are an obvious example. There's no reason for neurodivergent characters to be exempt from communities like this. In fact, some neurodivergent people in real life may be drawn to pagan or New Age communities specifically because of their neurodivergence. For instance, some hyperempathic neurodivergent people find that these communities' concepts of energy, auras, and so on provide a system with which they can more easily understand what they're feeling.
And we don't have to let pagans have all the fun. Even some branches of evangelical Christianity have experiences that they interpret as supernatural gifts, communication with divine powers, or battles with demons.
Magic is part of life for many people. If you're writing in a fictional world with magic - or an urban-fantasy-esque variation on our world with a hidden supernatural side - there's no reason it shouldn’t also be a world with neurodiversity. And if you’re writing about “realistic” magic based in a real world culture, then you should obviously reflect the neurodiversity that is already present there.
That being said, I understand why people try to warn each other away from this kind of writing, because there are some classic and pretty awful ways it can go wrong. When a story about magical autistic people is bad, it's bad.
A good example is the short story “The House of Idiot Children,” which I've reviewed before. In this story, a neurotypical character discovers that some non-speaking autistic children have unusual spiritual abilities. The narration calls them "more angelic than human" and the whole point of the story is for him to be vaguely impressed by them before he goes on his way. At no point do the autistic children express anything about their needs, experiences, or preferences - even though the main character is employed specifically to help them communicate! In many senses, as far as this story is concerned, they're not really people.
Don't do that, okay? If you're reading this blog, I assume you've already read enough 101 material to know not to do that.
You should also avoid tropes that link every autistic person to a certain kind of magic, or that say a certain kind of magic causes or is caused by autism - unless you are doing something very, very deliberate with these tropes and being very, very careful!
The extreme version of making autistic people magical is to make them literally not human - but even that can be done, in my opinion, if it's handled carefully. After all, if you're writing a world where there are fairies or vampires or aliens who are disguised as humans, there's no reason why they all have to be neurotypical humans. Many non-neurotypical people struggle with feelings that we're not quite human, or enjoy fantasies of secretly being something else. Some are drawn to communities like the furry fandom where they can actively explore what it might be like to be something other than a human. There's really no reason not to put things like this in a story, if you want to.
I think my real rule is that, while non-neurotypical characters might not be human, they need to be people. Do they have needs, and does it matter when they express those needs? Do they have feelings, and does the narrative treat them as if their feelings matter? Do they have their own viewpoint (which is not necessarily the same as being a POV character), and is it treated as worth listening to? You know. Basic stuff.
Just be normal about it. Just have your non-neurotypical character interact with the supernatural in the same way that a regular non-neurotypical person would interact with it, and you'll be fine.