pen farts

I've been toying around with this post for a while, possibly since that early episode where Jun-ho started to reach out for Young-woo's hands, then didn't. It was in my mind during all those shots of Young-woo twisting her hands together until her knuckles were stark white. I was definitely thinking about it during the episode where the young girl self-harmed by scratching her hand. And I thought about it today when Jun-ho pinned Young-woo's wrists as part of getting her into a hug to help provide the sensory relief she needed.

We're going to proceed with the understanding that while this does not and would not work for everyone, that it did and does work for Young-woo, and I'm going to assume that Jun-ho, for whatever reason, had a reasonable belief that it would, that it wasn't just something he was doing to randomly restrain her.

For us to proceed, I really need you to go read this very brief post from Julia Bascom. I really don't think the rest of what I have to say will make sense without it. (And HUGE thanks to the internet sleuths who were able to help me find an essay with "It was like ten years old? And written by an autistic woman and started with a gif from Glee? Maybe her name started with J?" because the internet is a gift.)

Julia Bascom's piece on Quiet Hands.

This was the first piece of writing I ever read that was written by an (openly) autistic person. I sobbed reading it 8 or 9 years ago, and still can't make it through without crying. I walked into the next preschool meeting with a print out and slapped it down on the table and said "My child will never hear the words "quiet hands." I didn't know this at the time, but the way they looked at me with horror and said "We would absolutely never -" was a gift from god.

(I don't know if I actually need to say this, but do not ever defend ABA on my posts, I will block your ass so fast)

Every time I saw Young-woo's hands, every time they flap and move at her sides, every time she twists them around each other, every time she splays them out to the point I can imagine the tendons creaking, every time they come up near her face because she's excited or thinking or just feeling -

I flinch.

I wait for someone to stop her. To tell her that she's doing something wrong, to scold her, to make her be still, to stop being so strange (yes I chose that word on purpose).

No one ever told me "quiet hands!" but I knew I wasn't supposed to enjoy the feel of things the way I do, that I wasn't supposed to find my fingers fascinating. That I shouldn't wear endless bangles just to enjoy them jingling against each other. That, it occurs to me now, I've avoided replacing the leather band of my old pandora bracelet because when I was in the library and my hand was moving because the weight and the sound of it filled me with glee people began to glare.

I was 38 years old and I stopped flapping because people could see me.

No one tells Young-woo quiet hands.

@kdramedies pointed out that when Jun-ho has to grab Young-woo, when he's concerned because she's hitting herself in the head and could seriously injure herself, he moves his hands off her skin as quickly as possible, brings her arms in so that he's compressing all of her.

But he never touches her hands. He never stills her hands. He never, ever, makes her hands quiet.

He doesn't ever cut off her voice, and so she can tell him.

Tighter. Tighter.

I'm going to go replace that bracelet now, I think.

Before I even get into this, I need to reiterate: I am relying on translations and translators here. I found this interview and it provided fascinating information, but I could be completely misunderstanding based on some small change the translators made, so if I'm out in left field here please someone tell me so I can correct myself.

While trying to find something totally unrelated, the almighty Google decided to toss me towards an interview with Park Eun-bin about developing the character of Woo Young-woo from a Korean media site. I'm PRETTY sure that Google isn't machine translating this, but I have no idea how English happens on the original site, but the language is smooth, which generally indicates that it was either translated by a person or written in English. Regardless. The article is linked at the end of this post.

I almost did not click, because hearing what actors think about the autistic characters they play is virtually always telling on themselves like WHOA (I'm looking at you, Benedict Cumberbatch, you bastard that I hate forever), but I thought what the hell, let's find out. The one thing I'd seen before was something about how Eun-bin felt like she was learning to be brave, which I thought was kind of sweet.

The first thing that struck me, though, was the sense of responsibility she seemed to feel for the role.

"I knew nothing about this. I was very cautious and afraid that I might create prejudice. I kept wondering ‘Is it okay for me to act this and that?’ Then I found the answer that rather than thinking about acting, I need to understand how I feel about it first. I added Eun-bin’s sincerity to Young-woo’s sincerity.

Based on context, I THINK that "act" is probably closer to portray here? I don't THINK this is Eun-bin saying something closer to was it okay for her, a (I presume) non-autistic actor, to play an autistic character? But still, the idea that she started from a realization that doing this wrong could seriously harm people...so often I see actors taking that the other way around, that they want to be "inspirational" or "show how the [insert disability/marginalization here] really struggle and how the world can be hard" or whatever. So the idea of first, do not harm...that was pretty powerful.

But then she went on to talk about how she prepared for the role. And when I read it, I...look, if you watch Sideways' YouTube videos, and you've seen the one about Les Mis? I keep thinking about how he says "And when you find out why...it's gonna give you a stroke."

Most actors seem to prepare for a role as an autistic person by going and meeting one or two autistic people, generally people with very prominent or visible disabilities, and then just trying to, like, be that person, but with no compassion or joy or suggestion that the person's life could ever be anything other than total misery forever.

Instead, Park Eun-bin did the literal exact opposite.

I didn’t want to imitate the character that had been embodied by the media, so I decided not to copy. I considered ‘Extraordinary Attorney Woo’ a work that I had to be careful and cautious about because I was afraid that I’d approach it in the wrong way or create perceptions. So I studied by text. There are four diagnostic criteria for people with autism spectrum disorder and I studied them. I also met a professor to ask for advice on autism and learned some general characteristics of people with autism. The result of my studies is Woo Young-woo that viewers will see in the drama.

Wait what the fuck?

This BLEW. MY. MIND. If you told me that an actor did this BEFORE I saw the results, I would tell you to gtfo and take your goddamn horse with you. How in the christing crap cracker was this going to work??

But I tell you. It did. It fucking did. And it explains something that I have been trying to figure out since this show started, something I haven't been able to articulate until I read this.

Part of the reason that Young-woo is so immense and powerful is that she is not a stereotype. She is not an amalgam of quirks and traits and oddities that have been mashed together into a person Katamari Damancy style. She feels like a fully embodied person, a total person who is just being a person while she does all the different things she does. I feel even more comfortable suggesting that Park Eun-bin knows why Young-woo counts to four before she walks through doors, or the particular nature of her finger flicks, and what level of overwhelm causes her to bang her hands on her head.

And it explains why there is no hesitation when Young-woo shows join. Because Park Eun-bin isn't just waving around a pile of weirdness and pretending it's a character.

Woo Young-woo is a person to her, and that's why she feels like a person to me.

So to catch up: Moon Ji-won has basically two writing credits on her wiki; Extraordinary Attorney Woo and a movie called Innocent Witness which I wrote about here. Both pieces heavily feature autistic girls, although the young girl (Ji-woo) in Innocent Witness is not the focus of the story the way Young-woo is. But lots of people have asked why Moon Ji-won has written about autism so much? Is she autistic? Does she have an autistic family member? 

Remember when I wrote about Park Eun-bin’s preparation for Young-woo and how it was absolutely bonkers that it worked? I wish I hadn’t pulled out the Sideways quote there (and when you find out why…it’s gonna give you a stroke) because how she got involved in writing about autistic characters is — look, I started using bonkers because shenanigans wasn’t strong enough for the stuff that was happening at the time, and now I need something bigger than bonkers?? I don’t even know what that would be. Bonkers+flapping, idek. Something. Drop it in the comments if you have an idea. [eta: It's bananapants. It goes madcap, shenanigans, bonkers, bananapants. This is bananapants. [/eta]

The autotranslated text of the interview is linked at the bottom, and huge thanks to @kanenesen for answering some questions about the finer details of the translation. 

Okay. Moon Ji-won was asked about how this was her second time writing an autistic character, and what drew her that way. She talked some about the connections between Young-woo and Ji-woo (whoever talked in the comments an age ago about Ji-woo growing up to be Young-woo, you freaking called it and I love you), and then said 

“I am not diagnosed as autism myself, nor I have autistic person I know of. Reason I got interested was: I was planning of writing some kind thriller, and thought of having autistic person as witness. so I started research about autism spectrum…” 

(there’s more, I’ll get to that). 

Is this for real? Am I on a prank show? HOW IS THIS WORKING HOW IS EVERYONE STARTING FROM RESEARCH AND HAVING THIS BE THE RESULT HOW I DON’T UNDERSTAND AND I NEED TO BECAUSE I NEED THIS MAGIC IN MY LIFE *MORE*. 

I’ve read this interview at least three times all the way through and that STILL gets me all-caps worked up. HOW. H O W is this working? How is someone starting from research, research we all know is incredibly biased and practically never includes autistic people, and given Tae Su-mi’s suggestion that there’s more support in the US for autistic people and we ALL know how bad it is here, it’s clearly not going to be better in Korea and

Okay. Another breather. Whew. 

And then it hit me. The key isn’t the research. The key is WHY Moon Ji-won decided to write this story. She wanted to write a thriller, and then thought “what if there was an autistic character here” and then she wrote the fucking story after researching what the character would be like. 

Most stories about autistic people start from a place of pity. They’re a mother or a sibling talking about either how hard it is to be us or be with us OR what a beautiful soul we have if people would just look past the twitching and flapping and not-talking and whatever other bullshit they’ve decided added up to autistic that day. There’s nothing good that comes from that place. 

Moon Ji-won said “I wonder what it would be like if the main witness to a murder was a girl who was autistic, let’s play with that.” This was…just a character to her. A vehicle for her story. Then, since the actress who had played Ji-woo had grown up, she was asked if she could do another story, perhaps a drama, with Ji-woo. Instead, we got Young-woo, and the author’s headcanon that Ji-woo is somewhere, watching Young-woo and admiring her. 

I’m freaking crying. I’m absolutely crying. Moon Ji-won loves us, loves the way we think and feel, and she wants us to be happy. 

Which leads me to the OTHER thing she said, which people are kind of, um, flipping out over a bit. 

So, here’s the autotranslated version from the link below: 

"At that time, I started researching data on the autism spectrum, and I was surprised to realize how attractive the many characteristics of autistic people are. A unique way of thinking, a quirk, a strong sense of ethics or justice, an excessively deep knowledge of a particular area of ​​interest, a great memory, perspectives, patterns, and ways of thinking. This is not the case for all people with autism, but it is a trait that is reinforced by the autism spectrum. I was attracted to it in that way."

The other version I’ve seen is closer to (and this is the translation by @kanenesen) 

"I started research about autism spectrum, then I was impressed that I found many traits of it charming. Unique thoughts, wackiness, strong sense of ethics or justice, impressive memory, visions and patterns and ways of thinking. Not all autistics are like that, but these are traits that are reinforced by autism spectrum. That's where I found it charming."

In asking, I’m hearing that the relevant word can be reasonably translated as attractive or charming, but since it’s what’s stressing people out, let’s talk about charming. 

I’m going to be That Asshole and drag out the dictionary definition of charming, which is: pleasant or attractive. People apparently find charming to be infantilizing? I find it unnecessarily high brow, something I associate with people who will always say sofa and never say couch, but to each their own context. The word “wackiness” annoys me, but frankly, if you asked me to back translate wackiness into any language, I’d tell you no. It’s a weird word that doesn’t have a really good context because it’s so colloquial and odd. 

So the idea that various traits of autism - and if you want to argue that the ideas she lists are not traits common in many autistic people, you’re just lying - are charming, pleasant, attractive. That’s…how is it bad? I mentioned it to my boyfriend, and he said “do you know how fucking good it would feel for my honesty, directness, and lack of interest in the social subtleties that people ask for to be called ‘refreshing,’ ‘charming,’ ‘a breath of fresh air’?” He pointed out that none of the words people use for us and our traits are kind. Even what he calls direct. He’s never called direct. He’s called blunt. (I’m called a bitch, and there’s sexism for ya). 

I get it, y’all. We are SO prepped to be hated. To be looked down on. To be treated like crap. To be seen as burdens, to be thought of as less. We are primed to be angry about this, and for good goddamn reason. I stopped going on Twitter much when the #actuallyautistic tag got taken over by autism warrior moms who wanted to argue with me that ABA was good, actually, and I have literally gotten into arguments about a piece I had published in Slate because either I was lying about writing it or I wasn’t autistic because I was too “articulate” (fuck do I hate that word) to have talked about being autistic well enough to be published in a major publication. 

I came into this show SO ready to hate every single moment of it. I was READY to be told I was useless, worthless, not good enough, to be mocked and made fun of and shown how thoroughly I do not fit into society unless I conform to society. 

I was so shocked when that didn’t happen. I’m still a little in awe every episode when I’m not taunted with my own hopelessness. I can’t believe that, over and over, I am loved. The way I think is loved. The way I feel is loved. 

So I don’t get it. I don’t get why we should fixate on a word, especially when the word is translated and it’s cultural context is lost (you literally translate je t’aime as I like you, but it means I love you, and if I don’t explain that to you, you won’t know). 

Everything else aside, Young-woo shows us, every week, what Moon Ji-won thinks of us. Of me. And man, do I ever feel loved. 

So my ex-girlfriend and I had this cat, and for some reason I don’t remember, she was absolutely dead set on this cat being able to go for walks. She would put the cat in a little cat harness and take him outside and try to get him to walk, at which point he would promptly lie down wherever he was and stare at her until she picked him up and went back inside. Once, she tried to encourage him to walk, and instead he just got dragged about three inches before she gave up. The cat was fine, she was furious, I couldn’t stop laughing. 

I ended up going out with the cat at some point, but instead of trying to make him walk like he was a puppy, I plopped my ass down in the California sunshine and held on to the end of the leash while he sniffed around. If he’d tried to bolt, I would have been able to keep him from taking off, but otherwise, I wasn’t interfering. I was a safety net. 

The director (Yoo In-sik) and writer (Moon Ji-won) gave an interview (yesterday? The day before?) about the extraordinary success of Extraordinary Attorney Woo. A couple different parts of their interview have gotten a lot of attention. I want to talk about a couple points in more detail, so I’m going to make a couple different posts instead of trying to cram everything into one long wall of text. My posts are long enough as it is. 

As part of the interview, Yoo In-sik described meeting Kang Tae-ho. He said (and I’m relying on Google Translate here, and it’s VERY possible that some subtleties are being lost) that when he first met Kang Tae-oh:

[Kang Tae-oh] said that his parents raised cats, but he thought that the relationship between Youngwoo and Junho was like a person who took a cat for a walk. When walking the dog, the guardian pulls the leash to go everywhere, but when walking the cat…keep one step away and follow the cat’s path…and that helps it not fall in too much danger (a few words omitted here and there because I’m 99% sure they’re redundancies caused by autotranslations). 

I read this and thought it was incredibly sweet and loving. The reaction of basically the rest of the autistic internet seems to have been, uh, not that. I want to talk about disability in relationships and why this idea - staying close but not trying to guide someone, just being there to keep them safe if necessary - is actually pretty great. 

As a human, I’m kind of a disaster. I am utterly incapable of remembering dates and times of things, I never ever remember that holidays like birthdays are happening (my poor, poor children), I lose the ability to talk when I get stressed, and I manage some pretty crippling effects of a lifetime of trauma from a half dozen different sources (and that’s the version of me I’m willing to share on the internet). I’m in a fantastic relationship with a wonderful, loving guy who is a fantastic partner, who loves me back, who pulls his weight in our relationship…and who covers for my ass when shit goes to pieces. He remembers that children have birthdays and tend to want presents on them, reminds me that people, as a general statement, like to eat food on a semi-regular basis, and lovingly points out that I am spiraling into anxiety and panic, and perhaps it would be a good time to hit the good ole strategies to find my way back to base. He’s like the bumpers in a bowling alley. He keeps me from going into the gutters too often. 

I think all couples do this stuff for each other, but in a relationship where a partner has a disability, that place where one person covers for the other can be, well, bigger. The idea that I need a person in my life who can keep watch over me, just a little bit, isn’t infantilizing, it’s just true. 

In the first episode of Extraordinary Attorney Woo, before Jun-ho teaches Young-woo how to dance her way through the revolving door, he helps her walk through by showing her when to walk. If you go back and watch that scene again, you can see that he walks through with her, his back to the spinning part of the door and his arms outstretched on either side. That door isn’t going to hit her, and if she happens to trip, he can catch her so she won’t get hurt. He’s a safety net while she deals with something unfamiliar. 

In the episode with the abusive husband, when the man starts to yell and Young-woo begins to panic, both Jun-ho and Su-yeon instinctively reach out, making themselves a barrier between Young-woo and the potential threat, protecting her from something she is not currently capable of protecting herself from. 

Both Jun-ho and Su-yeon open bottles for Young-woo without asking her if she needs it done, they just do it for her. They help her. 

But Jun-ho doesn’t talk for Young-woo if she doesn’t need him to (or if the scene calls for more than a two-hander in terms of dialogue). He doesn’t do her job for her or cover for her. He supports her, and he smooths the path for her when he can, so she’s less likely to trip and fall. He’s just there. Ready to catch her if she needs to be caught.

As autistic people, as disabled people, we are so determined not to see ourselves as a burden and not to allow other people to see us as a burden that I think we forget that not all support is burdensome. Blah blah blah one set of footprints blah blah blah. But like…it’s just honest to admit that when I have a trauma flashback and dissociate that it’s safer if there’s someone there who can get me some water and help me get somewhere safe and just kind of keep the world away while I recover. 

Infantilizing would be dragging the cat along like it was a puppy, forcing it to be something it’s not because you know better than it does. Keeping pace with the cat, making sure the cat stays safe, trusting that the cat is going to go where it goes but keeping an eye out in case it decides to, you know, play in traffic? That’s what caring for people looks like. 

And also, because I’m tired and feel like, yet again, pointing out the double standard in how people are talking about this show with a focus on a female lead: how often do we see dramas where the FL is nothing but - to quote Hannah Gadsby because I’m in that sort of mood - a flesh vase for his dick flower? Where the FL exists for no other purpose than to make the man’s life easier? 

If you thought it was sweet that Jun-ho opened bottles for Young-woo, if you liked that his first instinct was to make space for her to talk about whales and help her figure out revolving doors and protect her from a shouting asshole, you already liked the idea of his moving through the world with her and keeping her safe when necessary.

As autistic people, we talk about how people have higher support needs, and how they may have higher support needs at different times. What I read in this comment is that Kang Tae-oh and Yoo In-sik both see that Young-woo is a person who, at times, needs that support. Needing support isn’t the same as being a burden. And they see Jun-ho as a person who can offer support only when it’s necessary, meaning that Young-woo continues to navigate the world and grow on her own terms. 

I think it’s sweet, and kind, and one of the more realistic comments about disabled relationships I’ve seen.