Research Lessons about the "autism spectrum" across the Pokémon franchise (WAAD Special)

[bdt2002]

This isn't the kind of thread I'd normally make, but I'll just be up front and honest when I say this... I don't care. Let the mods do whatever they want with this thread if I'm breaking any rules. For the record, I do apologize to the moderation team in advance. I've thought it over, and now's the only chance I have to speak up.

Today isn't just any normal day, for the uninformed. April 2nd marks the generally agreed upon date that we call "world autism awareness day". I've been preparing the post this thread for a long time now, so let's get right into it. This forum is one of the few places on the entire site where people can be up front and personal about the topics we hold dear to us, and our community needs that perhaps now more than ever before. I for one see no harm in trying to inspire others to take by my example and create opportunities like this for us to talk about how Pokémon has taught us about these more specific parts of our lives. Because that's what I'm viewing this thread as: an opportunity. I view this as my chance to allow you guys, especially anyone within the autistic community, to open up about some of the things we've learned over the years.

What I like to call "childhood franchises" are very special to me, and that's because these franchises, whether it be from books or movies or video games or anything really, have this awesome way of teaching us valuable life lessons while remaining within a predominantly innocent environment. The catch is that these lessons stick with us without us even realizing it most of the time, and in many cases people will either discover one of these franchises at an older age or perhaps come back to it after a long break, only for them to know what these lessons really meant because they're older and they know better. For me, those two franchises were Super Mario and- the reason I'm posting this here- Pokémon.

I mentioned earlier how I want this thread to serve as an opportunity as opposed to some motivational speech designed for a different forum. I'll give this thread a head start. During the fall/winter portion of 2021, I discovered a really neat article online that helped open up my eyes to many of these lessons, which I'll provide the link for here: https://autisticandunapologetic.com/2021/02/14/why-do-autistic-people-love-pokemon/

Consider taking a look if you have the time. Aside from this, I'll leave you guys with some questions to ponder as we (hopefully) grow this thread more over time. What kinds of things and/or lessons across the Pokémon media have left an impact on you or your own experiences? Maybe something or someone from a certain game or part of the show, maybe from the various manga collections, anything really. For the moderators' sake, let's try and keep the discussions as close as possible to the Pokémon media itself. There's several other places for us to talk about the more... personal matters that are not this forum or this thread, that's for sure.

 

[Nickeljorn]

I'm autistic and I once saw a meme that was a screenshot of a tumblr post saying "what if not only was the creator of Pokemon autistic but Pokemon was made for autistic people as well" and it had a list of reasons of one of the replies was "making eye contact with an NPC is a form of aggression."

 

[Nokocchi]

I should point out, as someone on the spectrum myself, that it was very recently disproven that neither Satoshi Tajiri nor any member of Game Freak or Nintendo have ever said that he had autism, nor given any evidence to this. It seems to have been started by a very long game of telephone of major news sources quoting other news sources without any solid, reliable origin source.

The creators of the video are confident enough in their findings that they even put out a monetary bounty for anyone that can find enough evidence for them admit they were wrong on any of the rumors they debunked in the above video, complete with making a follow-up video about being wrong.

On an unrelated note, the collecting aspect of Pokemon franchise is all I need to enjoy a game, as long as I can chuck spheres to enslave magical animals, regardless of the number of species I can do that with, I am content with the games. So there really aren't any mainline titles I can say I am disappointed in or dislike.

 

[Scorpio]

I should point out, as someone on the spectrum myself, that it was very recently disproven that neither Satoshi Tajiri nor any member of Game Freak or Nintendo have ever said that he had autism, nor given any evidence to this. It seems to have been started by a very long game of telephone of major news sources quoting other news sources without any solid, reliable origin source.

That may be true, but my thinking is that even having that rumor around in the first place shows how much the series vibes with people on the spectrum, such as myself.

 

[Nickeljorn]

Not super related but this thread has two weird coincidences relating to things that happened in my life recently.
One was that in March I called out a podcast host for sharing a claim about a historical figure in his podcast as fact (I won’t say what historical figure but they’ve been dead for less than 20 years and this rumor started around 1991) that came from a biography by a known sensationalist and was convincingly questioned by Newsweek when it first came out. He just doubled down and I wanted to ask a historian about it but I changed my mind because he was too convinced he was right and I was wrong after I went into detail on why the claim was most likely false that I didn’t think anything could convince him. So it’s another example of someone insisting something from a sketchy source was true just because they read it in a book.
The other example is that we were looking at colleges and reading about their autism programs and one of them had a video of the autistic students playing Pokemon Go.

 

[Choice Specs Heracross]

Well I have autism and my special interest is Pokémon - in particular their stats. I love the comment about the eye contact initiating battle XD

For the longest time, Pokemon was the only game series I could really play because I’m a hyper- empath with mirror touch synesthesia so playing games with blood and gore is
kinda literally painful :)

Also if anyone wants to talk about Pokémon or anything really feel free to message me because that’s kind of tough for us guys!

 

[bdt2002]

Well I have autism and my special interest is Pokémon - in particular their stats. I love the comment about the eye contact initiating battle XD

For the longest time, Pokemon was the only game series I could really play because I’m a hyper- empath with mirror touch synesthesia so playing games with blood and gore is
kinda literally painful :)

Also if anyone wants to talk about Pokémon or anything really feel free to message me because that’s kind of tough for us guys!

I second that last part. I also tend to second the part about Pokémon being my special interest. I hadn't paid too much attention to this thread after posting it, thinking it would be more of a one-day discussion sort of thing. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to keep the discussion ongoing for a little while.

Pokémon and neurodiversity have always had this weird connection in my eyes, where the topics seemingly have nothing to do with each other and in spite of this the neurodiverse community can't seem to get enough of this franchise. Those false rumors about Satoshi Tajiri probably make things a little bit confusing for outside viewers, but the bottom line is that these games do so many things right for us in a gaming society dominated by overly sensitive FPS games and yearly sports releases that play virtually the same every single time. There's almost a part of me that's wondering if the developers are consciously aware of this. It's come to my attention that autism spectrum disorder has... how can I put this? "Mixed feelings" about the disorder in Japanese culture. And believe me when I say that's the nice way of putting it. As such, I wouldn't expect any JRPG title, let alone the financial powerhouse that is Pokémon, to want to verbally address something like this in-game.

Why do I mention this? I mention this because of something I wish we could see more not just in Pokémon games, core series and spinoffs alike, but in other games too- and that, my friends, would be further steps in the right direction for representation and, more specifically, accomodation. Nine times out of ten this translates to accessibility settings, but it can impact other things too. In the case of Pokémon, one thing that would please me more than ever would be to see Game Freak (heck, I'll even throw in ILCA to the discussion, I'm that desperate) advertise more focus onto "desensitory features" (did I spell that right?) scattered throughout the player's experiences. Unfortunately, the litany of ideas I have for how they could do this would fall into wishlisting territory, but we can still look at official content from past games.

One feature I'd like to mention in this much-longer-than-expected post is Secret Bases, particularly in Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire. The reworks to the Secret Base system made a fan-favorite feature more accessible to newer and older Hoenn (and Sinnoh I guess) fans alike, and on top of that it let players create their own little "safe space" out within the game world that could be customized to the player's liking. Extra points must be given for the implementation of the Jukebox item, which can be placed in their to change the Secret Base's music and possibly help set whatever mood a potentially neurodiverse player is looking for a bit more, along with items like the Mood Lighting and those cute little Litwick lamps.

 

[Nickeljorn]

Well I have autism and my special interest is Pokémon - in particular their stats. I love the comment about the eye contact initiating battle XD

For the longest time, Pokemon was the only game series I could really play because I’m a hyper- empath with mirror touch synesthesia so playing games with blood and gore is
kinda literally painful :)

Also if anyone wants to talk about Pokémon or anything really feel free to message me because that’s kind of tough for us guys!

I've met people with mirror touch synesthesia who couldn't watch certain shows because of it.

I second that last part. I also tend to second the part about Pokémon being my special interest. I hadn't paid too much attention to this thread after posting it, thinking it would be more of a one-day discussion sort of thing. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to keep the discussion ongoing for a little while.

Pokémon and neurodiversity have always had this weird connection in my eyes, where the topics seemingly have nothing to do with each other and in spite of this the neurodiverse community can't seem to get enough of this franchise. Those false rumors about Satoshi Tajiri probably make things a little bit confusing for outside viewers, but the bottom line is that these games do so many things right for us in a gaming society dominated by overly sensitive FPS games and yearly sports releases that play virtually the same every single time. There's almost a part of me that's wondering if the developers are consciously aware of this. It's come to my attention that autism spectrum disorder has... how can I put this? "Mixed feelings" about the disorder in Japanese culture. And believe me when I say that's the nice way of putting it. As such, I wouldn't expect any JRPG title, let alone the financial powerhouse that is Pokémon, to want to verbally address something like this in-game.

Why do I mention this? I mention this because of something I wish we could see more not just in Pokémon games, core series and spinoffs alike, but in other games too- and that, my friends, would be further steps in the right direction for representation and, more specifically, accomodation. Nine times out of ten this translates to accessibility settings, but it can impact other things too. In the case of Pokémon, one thing that would please me more than ever would be to see Game Freak (heck, I'll even throw in ILCA to the discussion, I'm that desperate) advertise more focus onto "desensitory features" (did I spell that right?) scattered throughout the player's experiences. Unfortunately, the litany of ideas I have for how they could do this would fall into wishlisting territory, but we can still look at official content from past games.

One feature I'd like to mention in this much-longer-than-expected post is Secret Bases, particularly in Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire. The reworks to the Secret Base system made a fan-favorite feature more accessible to newer and older Hoenn (and Sinnoh I guess) fans alike, and on top of that it let players create their own little "safe space" out within the game world that could be customized to the player's liking. Extra points must be given for the implementation of the Jukebox item, which can be placed in their to change the Secret Base's music and possibly help set whatever mood a potentially neurodiverse player is looking for a bit more, along with items like the Mood Lighting and those cute little Litwick lamps.

I liked the ORAS Secret Bases a lot and spent so much time customizing mine.