What It Was Like Seeing A Character Like Me Onscreen

*I don’t own the title image. I found it on Pinterest. All credits for it go to BYUTV

A few weeks ago, I was crying while talking to my mom, and I was explaining about how hard it is to stay confident in being autistic without any good role models. I was telling her about how the ableism of our culture was getting to me, and I was so sick of never seeing autistic girls get their stories told. I was exhausted, frusterated, and so done with the lack of good disability representation in the media. All the characters with autism that I’ve seen were cliche and basic. Most of them were white 12 year old boys who liked trains and math. Either that, or socially awkward 30 year old men with weird character undertones that left me feeling uncomfortable.

And no offense to anyone whose autism presents that way, but that just isn’t relatable to me. I’m 16, female, and get mistaken as neurotypical most of the time. I can mask pretty well — although I’ve lost a lot of my masking skills over the last few years, after I begun to unmask more and more — and I don’t hyperfixate on math or trains (I failed freshman math XD). I’ve only seen a few autistic females on TV, and the ones that I have seen were typically not well represented. Take Smackle from Girl Meets World for instance. She’s geeky, awkward, and usually the punchline of most jokes. She’s made to seem like a caricature of autism, not a real representation.

Maybe that’s why I started crying when I saw the trailer for BYUTV’s new TV show, A Kind of Spark, based on the book by Elle McNicoll. The minute the trailer started playing, I was screeching with excitement (my sister was very confused at first XD). I showed it to my whole family very excitedly, and watched the first episode with my sister that night, feeling like the whole experience was unreal.

You see, A Kind of Spark is about three sisters, two of which are on the spectrum, who find out about women who were accused of witchcraft during the witch trials, and start realizing those women might have been on the spectrum, and were actually victims as opposed to the villains that England painted them as. It intertwines the stories of two teenage girls in the late 14th century, and three teenage girls in contemporary times.

I’ve never seen characters this realistic, this well represented. I love how the show normalizes autism, and doesn’t portray it as a tragedy or deformity. It shows very frankly the struggles that come with being autistic, but it also shows the beauty of it. It talks about stimming, masking, sensory issues, and more, all in a very natural matter. Each of the autistic characters are very different– none of them fall into clichés or tropes.

I wish I could make everyone watch this show. I’m only a few episodes in, and I’m already obsessed. I can’t get over how well done it is, how realistic it feels. This is the show I needed back when I was first getting diagnosed. I really hope this show is able to reach as many people as possible ❤

(Also- three of the actors are on the spectrum, so that’s super cool!!)

A Kind of Spark is free to watch on the BYUTV app and the BYUTV website, and I highly recommend checking it out! ❤ This isn’t sponsored by BYU or anything XDD I’m just obsessed with the show. Please watch it ❤