hxr design is very simple intentionally, and while trying to minimize the amount of lines it takes to draw hxr i decided to not give hxr a mouth. my worry is that writing an autistic character and then going "well actually shx's nonverbal because shx doesn't have a mouth so it's not actually because of the autism" might leave a bad taste in some people's mouths. (no pun intended) for the record if shx had a mouth shx'd probably still be nonverbal, but i don't want to word-of-god in representation.

the second thing is that hxr name is ":)". (smiley emoticon) this is not pronouncable so when i talk about hxr irl i usually just draw out ":)" with my finger. somehow it feels cliché to give my nonverbal character an emoticon for a name. is that actually bad or is it just my anxiety? (the reason shx's named that is that i'm bad at names) hxr closest friend is one of my friends' ocs and he's named "the optimal wizard", so it's not like shx's the only one with an unconventional name

another thing is the world shx lives in. very simple and wholesome, like something out of a very little kid's book. this means adls aren't really a worry, and everyone around hxr is pretty accepting of hxr autism, so it doesn't really disable hxr enough to get diagnosed. if diagnosis is even a thing in a very simplified kid-logic world. again, i worry this falls into the trope of never actually confirming representation. if someone sends in an ask like "are you autistic" i would absolutely say yes though.

(hxr special interest is birds and shx's very birdlike hxrsxlf, so her aac is a bunch of really shiny rocks that are enchanted to float into the air, if you're wondering how shx communicates)

i'd also like to note a couple of things. one of my hyperfixations is emojis, which bled into any symbols that need to communicate something clearly at a small size, which bled into aac symbols, which bled into symbol-based aacs in general. just felt worth mentioning

the second thing is that :) is a kind of underdeveloped character but i'm confident that's because of my lack of skills as a character creator and that i would write an allistic verbal character at least as badly if not worse.

attached are some drawings of hxr

thank you for your time and have a good day ^^ (happy eyes closed emoticon)

Hi asker,

First of all, I don't think there's anything off about your design. It really is a very stylized art style, in a way that the fact that shx doesn't have a mouth doesn't feel out of place at all. If you really wanted to, although you haven't, you could maybe include another character without a mouth that does speak to show that no mouth doesn't automatically mean nonverbal in this universe.

On the same vein, I don't think it's cliche for hxr name to be :). The main reason is because I don't think I've ever encountered any character with an emoticon for a name! That seems to me the opposite of a cliche. It's also something that I completely believe as something very reasonable for the universe shx lives in, based on the art style alone. Like, yeah, it makes sense that this character that reminds me of an emoji has an emoticon name. I don't think that's something you need to worry about given what you've told us about hxr and hxr world.

When it comes to diagnosing hxr, if it's not something that is feasible in your universe, that's okay. If you wanted to, you could include in something like a character profile something like "This is :), shx likes birds and is autistic!" Obviously I'm limited in that i don't know anything else about your story or world, but a character profile is something I've seen a lot in webcomics and in ask blogs. That wouldn't be out of place at all.

Hope this helps!

mod sparrow

400k words later, I no longer think they’re being dramatic.

If you have anti endos on your dni, you're breaking your own boundaries by following us.

Using an alt to interact after being blocked is block evading. Block evading is disrespectful.

And at the same time the urge to weigh yourself every 3 damn seconds because you wanna know what you weigh and then you have to double check and triple check and then change surfaces and check again and switch back and check and I'm just now realizing that's my ocd talking :3

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