#mostly bc i either dont remember their names or bc theyre young. usually both

[theneighborhoodwatch]

i would be a fool to deny that wally has, as the kids like to say, a touch of the ‘tism, or that i find him an ultimately sympathetic character, but i must admit i dislike the implication i’ve seen from a few folks that either:

A) because wally is autistic, he cannot possibly be doing anything morally dubious

or

B) if he Is doing anything morally dubious, then we can no longer count him as an example of Good Representation™, and must instead rely on the other characters to pick up the slack

maybe i’m jumping to conclusions here, but like, i dunno, aside from the obvious fact that disability rep shouldn’t be treated like a competition between characters - i like wally in part because he’s given a level and a Type of moral complexity/ambiguity that i rarely see in visibly autistic characters, even in indie productions. i have a hard time imagining the kind of person for whom that’s a bug and not a feature.