I’m not sure whether any of my fellow panelists are as …uh, hypervigilant … about preparing as I am. Over the years I’ve learned that other people don’t necessarily do things like make spreadsheets of what they (and their Labubus) are planning to wear, let alone write essays about what they’re going to talk about on a panel.
But I’m like that. So are my Labubus, and they outnumber me, so there it is. (Shrug)
I’m going to start with my second panel, which is about Neurodiversity and Storytelling. For that one I’m wearing a tie dye, as tribute to Steve Silberman, who was both a notable Deadhead and the man who coined the term “Neurodiverse.”
I’m going to assume that we’re smart folks and it’s 2026, and we don’t need any kind of “what is autism?” or “what ADHD means” preamble before launching in, but I’m going to read the room on that.
I might riff on Steeve Silberman a little, and re-read NeuroTribes to prepare. It’s a brilliant book that I recommend to everyone interested in neurodiversity. It made me think about all the cognitively unusual people I’ve encountered in life – schizophrenic lawyers, Mensa geniuses, musical savants who don’t talk very much, all those artists navigating the border between brilliance and madness.
I’ve never been diagnosed with anything in the major mental health spectrum, just occasional flourishes of anxiety and depression. I grew up in a time when getting diagnosed with a mental illness was something everyone wanted to avoid, and I have friends my age who did get diagnosed, and then they dealt with issues like involuntary commitment and having it used against them in custody hearings. I’ve known people who have been diagnosed with things people consider extremely serious, like schizophrenia, and bipolar – but they’re walking around, having lives, functioning better than me in some areas. There are a lot of people in the legal profession with complex psych issues, and one of the main reasons is that hardly any legal jobs do drug tests, which is one way that stealth neurodivergents get busted. You can mask all you want but once they find out you’re on Adderall, or antidepressants, or drugs that relieve hallucinations or compulsions, you enter “risk management” territory as far as a lot of people are concerned.
I was diagnosed with being gifted, because I was one of those early readers who latched onto books when I was about three, and I haven’t put them down yet, although occasionally I take breaks. Giftedness does count as neurodivergence, plus it’s probably the only desirable one, even though there’s considerable overlap with things like autism and ADHD. To the consternation of people who claim to be “sapiosexual” and then that genius they fell in love with turns into the parent of kids who have behavioral issues and independent education plans.
I feel like a younger clone of me growing up these days would probably get a diagnosis. I have a lot of neurospicy features as well as things that were dismissed as affectations and eccentricities earlier in my life. And the more familiar I become with neurospiciness, the more I’ve learned to notice it in others.
One thing I have definitely noticed over the last few years is that some stories – and some music, and some visual art, and so on – have a lot of neurospicy fans. Probably Star Trek is the classic example, although I’m one of those weird SF fans who never really liked Star Trek precisely because their neurodivergent-coded characters were all robots and aliens. Some neurospicy people really like identifying with Spock or Data or the Doctor. I felt more of an affinity for neurodivergent-coded characters like Radar on MASH, or the Professor on Gilligan’s Island – weird and nerdy, sure, but part of the team. Or the ones on shows like Bewitched and the Addams Family, where a family that’s a little bit different is constantly evading nosy neighbors with unwelcome comments.
I had a flash of insight at a BTS concert recently, where I saw plenty of fans with things like headphones, and puzzle piece charms, and all the little things that tend to communicate "autism." Autism is a topic that comes up frequently in the fan groups for some bands. Given that the originator of the term “neurodiverse” was a Deadhead, it’s probably safe to say that lots of autistic people enjoy music that is accompanied by visually overwhelming elements like light shows and colorful outfits, and good rhythms, and a crowd that goes out of its way to be kind.
Anyway my insight was “I wonder if artists who don’t appeal to neurodivergents have any future in this modern world?” Because neurodivergent fans will do free, volunteer-based PR out of sheer love once they find a type of art that greets them with open arms. Neurotypicals will buy tickets and show up, but the neurodivergents camp out in line overnight. They are the ones that go over and above, working on fan communities, making fan art, obsessively voting in polls, nagging their friends to check out this song, read this book, look at this video.
You can usually tell whether an intellectual property appeals by neurodivergents by the fan art. Some fandoms will give you a blank look when you bring up fan art, because their fans are nice respectable neurotypicals who would never act like that.
Other fandoms are full of people drawing pictures, dressing up in costumes, making items to give or sell to the other fans. Science fiction conventions and all their derivatives are probably built on this idea.
At this panel we’re probably going to be talking a lot about subjective things, like the kinds of stories the panelists and their children, friends, associates enjoy, but the main thing that intrigues me here is: “what is it that makes a particular piece of art popular with neurodivergents?”
With maybe a little attention toward “what art is neurodivergent kryptonite that will make the typical neurodiverse story consumer take one glance and do a hard avoid?” Or even worse, an organized boycott, but we'll leave that alone for now.
From my wanderings, I can report that the following intellectual properties are neurodivergent magnets:
Star Trek, Star Wars, the Grateful Dead (and other jam bands generally but especially Ween, Phish, and Billy Strings), K-Pop bands generally but especially BTS (member Suga does a lot of charitable work with autistics), Dungeon Crawler Carl, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Pokemon, Kpop Demon Hunters.
And this is a science fiction convention so probably you’re already thinking of more. You could probably find some overriding themes there, such as “colorful visual overwhelm” whether done with lightsticks or a crowd dressed in tiedye, or worldbuilding so detailed that squatters move in and start writing fanfic.
I think one of the most important parts is that neurodivergents can see themselves being an accepted part of the world described by the movie or music or literary work, rather than a disruptive distraction who needs to be gatekept. Jam band and K-Pop music are both types of music amenable to people who want to get up and move around, as opposed to sitting quietly like a chamber music audience. Certain IPs are friendlier than others with regard to self-insert fanfic.
Neurodivergents like fandoms that are cool if they want to get up and dance, or if they want to draw pictures and write stories. They’re not as big on age-restriction, which sometimes happens in neurotypical art, like sometimes a band’s followers are entirely within five to ten years in age, or a movie might be completely unfamiliar to those outside a narrow demographic. Meanwhile at K-Pop and jam band shows there are teenagers, and old relics like me and older, and everyone in between.
From an authorial standpoint, neurodivergents seem to appreciate stories where different generations get together. Elderly mentors and smart-ass kids are equally welcome. Give them a world full of same-age people and they’ll probably associate it with stressful situations, like school. Which doesn’t make them averse to school stories in general, one of the few things the Potter franchise did really well was come up with a school setting that appeals to neurodivergents. Monster High is doing well too, and you probably know a lot more.
What do neurodivergents dislike? Well as a matter of fact, there’s a controversial thing called “pathological demand avoidance” or “PDA” or “persistant desire for autonomy” – go look it up, many words have been laid down amounting to the idea that neurospicy people particularly hate being bossed around, scolded, demanded, ordered, compelled, et cetera.
(I’m pretty sure I have a variant that has to do with scoldy political memes and authoritative signs, but it’s probably part of a constellation of reasons that make me well suited for a career in law where I get to frequently respond to scolds, demands, and orders with responses like “says who?” and “sorry, I can’t disclose that.”)
The basic idea is that neurospicy individuals spend a lot of their childhood enduring lectures by scoldy adults trying to reason them out of being neurodivergent. The last thing they want to encounter in their recreational media is more scoldy adults, making demands. Go ahead, waste millions of dollars producing scoldy television shows telling them how to be nicer citizens – they’ll just sneak off and watch Skibidi Toilet on youtube instead.
Another thing neurodivergents often dislike is something I’ll call “cool kids energy.” I could call it “mean kids energy” too. Cool aka mean kids are the neurotypical majority kids who tend to bully those who are different, and some stories center them while making the oddball kids the butt of the joke. Neurospicy kids are more likely to sympathize with outsiders and weirdos and greasers than jocks and cheerleaders and socs.
(Not always! Some movies go out of their way to claim, for example, that a female character is a hideous bullied outcast by having her wear glasses and a dumb haircut despite being a gorgeous Hollywood actress with expensive-looking teeth. This kind of thing often leads to audience backlash, since nobody wants to be conned into sympathizing with a bullshit outsider who turns out to be some cheerleader in disguise.)
One thing you might want to consider, as a writer or other type of content creator trying to appeal to the neurodivergent audience, is paying actual neurodivergent people a small sum to beta read your stuff. A lot of neurodivergents are under-employed yet still need shiny toys, cannabis edibles, soft t-shirts and other necessities. You’ll probably be surprised at the deficiencies they do spot, and they’ll appreciate being the one handing out demands for a change. You can find them online. Neurodivergents are online a lot.
I’ve been avoiding mentioning it, until the very end, but if you’re going to play with, or for, the neurodivergent audience, be aware that backlash can be a motherfucker.
Prime example: singer Sia, a woman with questionable judgment regarding working with minors, produced a movie about an autistic girl that included a ton of ugly stereotypes, “inspiring disability” glurge, and a depiction of the girl being held in a potentially dangerous chokehold. It was met with organized resistance by autistics and their supporters, and it died a miserable death at the box office.
There are some high profile people in the science fiction community who have clashed with me, and others, regarding the subject of neurodiversity. They’ll say things like “we should resume using the term Asperger’s Syndrome” when Asperger was a Nazi who sorted neurodiverse kids into the employable and the euthanizable. Sometimes they give voice to ideas like autism is something confined to nonverbal boys, or ADHD is caused by trauma, or people with Tourette’s are expressing their subconscious in a Freudian way. Those are all opinions that would probably be met with backlash if said by someone with a lot of bandwidth. Bottom line: don’t trust old neurotypicals with regard to what is offensive to young neurodivergents.
Talk to the young neurodivergents instead. Get them to share their music with you too, or maybe they make fan art. Slip them a Ben Franklin under the table and ask them if your wizard story contains anything particularly triggering from a neurodiversity standpoint, or if it needs more dinosaurs. It could be the start of a beautiful friendship.
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| If you're trying to attract a neurodivergent audience you'll get a lot farther with dinosaurs than you would with puzzle pieces and similar crap, just saying |
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