Just found out Symmetra is on the spectrum

As somebody with autism, I never noticed.

Can anyone explain why she is considered autistic? Or is this a poorly drawn out caricature of what people assume to be true about us (like atypical, which while does a good job, paints us unfairly)

To my knowledge:
We never see her stim.

We never see any form of compulsion/obsession

We never see her struggle to make any meaningful/deep connections

We never see her focus on one topic indiscriminately despite others trying to engage on other subjects.

We never see her have a meltdown in response to stress

We never see her become so overwhelmed that she cannot function

We never see her fail despite her “disability”

As somebody with autism, I want to see more people who can reflect the struggle I experience in day to day life. The constant fact that we don’t get a choice in giving up, every day is a fight and we have to face the real consequences of our existence. Finding a job, meaningful relationships, and even just existing. As I finished my first year of my masters program, you can see my progress here:

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Every day is a fight for those of us on the spectrum. Constantly trying to redefine how we see the world, and how it sees us. You don’t get to take a few “stereotypes” about us, attach them to a character and say “Ok, they’re autistic”.

If I’m wrong about all of this as while I enjoy overwatch and their characters, I have not noticed ANYTHING about Symmetra that would say she is anything other than a normal functioning adult with “minor” symptoms. So please let me know, as maybe I just misunderstood.

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lore will end up killing the game.

were not here to wave a flag, were here to game and forget about flags ; or so i thought.

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I want to be represented in a game, there is no reason someone with autism can’t be a hero, a warrior, or anything. We might not be as “good” as someone else, but our flaws are also strengths. I just want it to be real.

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I feel like she has an obsession with perfection, she’s all about order and harmony…
idk if that means anything but ok.

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That can be basic OCD. The symptom isn’t a diagnosis of Autism, it’s a codiagnosis that just has a high coincidental rate among us. I myself have pure O OCD (Pure obsession with little to no compulsion). So I would argue that is an attached symptom rather than a character defining “autism” trait. Or rather, a caricature of what people think of autism.

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yh I dunno, but as a non rich, non handsome, white male living with cancer every day is a struggle for me as well.

I don’t need nor expect any cartoon representation to go through my day. And I’m pretty sure that even rich, handsome and healthy people don’t experience life as an eternal bliss either.

In all honesty, I know it sounds harsh, but all this representation thing seems to be having the opposite effect than it was meant to. If you can’t relate to a character because they are of a different gender/sex/age/status and you NEED replicas of yourself to feel any connection, well that’s just sad.

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As for many spect of MANY heroes, Symmetra condition has been only exposed and never explored.

Dislaimer: I have no medical knowledge of the condition at hand nor I have documented myself so I might incur in few inaccuracies.

Or better… we might have seen only the “good” part of it. Some abilities that have been displayed by autistic ppl are a very well organized mind and a strong focus on order be it of mind or structure, which reflects in her ability to shape hard light into functional devices such as the Teleporter and the Sentries.

I never said that was the problem, I’m upset because my disability has been attached to what I would argue is an average person and marginalizes my own personal struggles.

Diversity is good, but do not take what you “think” is autism and apply it to a “average person”

There’s no such thing as a normal person. That’s my point.

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Normal in this case references averages, neurotypical, non neurologically different in biological functioning compared to those of us with this neurological developmental disorder.

Isnt it crazy that if we were to ask 100 people to define what they think is normal we would have 100 different answers?

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But you would also have an average that you could then define as a “normal” person.

She obviously has the extreme creativity that is normal within the spectrum. She doesnt really connect with people, shes usually just sassy and a bit rude.

She is a huuugggeee perfectionist, and anything less does stress her out. I mean, she even says “the true enemy of humanity is disorder”. She clearly really doesnt like anything different than perfection.
The way she speaks is very matter of factly, her sentences being very formal for what they are. Ive noticed a lot of autistic people are like this (while some others are not).

Shes intelligent and creative, traits that are veeeryyy common with people on the spectrum.

Honestly, I kind of get where youre coming from, but we dont really see any of the other heroes breaking down, I think the most we ever saw was Tracer stressed when Doomfist ripped off her accelerator.

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People on the spectrum demonstrate it very differently, We never see her outside of the game really so, hopefully she gets a short and we can truly see what it’s like for her. I also once saw this Idea that her visor allows her to control was she hears and sees to help her focus and keep her from being overwhelmed on the battlefield.

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We can be pedantic, well not be, we are.

Intelligence and creativity go hand in hand and doesn’t mean somebody has autism.

Basically, I guess you what I’m saying is, you can’t take our positive traits and not show the negative? Because if we were only our positive traits, would be by definition be “normal” people keep fixating on that word, so even though I hate using neurotypical, I will use that one instead. Autism isn’t some super power with no drawbacks, and its the one thing I really hate about atypical, it at least SHOWS some of that.

Also, I would argue order in itself isn’t perfection, the obsession with order, obviously is an argument for it but I feel like when they designed her it wasn’t “We’re making an autistic hero” and more “How can we diversify our cast? Oh she has traits similar, ok shes autistic now”

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Hi! Autistic person who loves Symmetra here.

Traits I’ve noticed in her/that jumped out to me:

-Special interests: She focuses on dance so much in her life that she ends up incorporating it into other fields, like her hard light manipulation, in novel ways. This is a thing I do with a ton of my special interests, bringing them into other parts of my life and seeing how I can work with them there. There’s also a decent argument that she’s getting some stimmy energy out this way.

-Overload: She actually does have a near-meltdown in the comic, when she’s surrounded by the the crowd. She stops being able to speak as clearly, and ends up disoriented and out of place. She’s able to pull out before fully breaking down, but she’s clearly doing poorly.

-Interpersonal issues: The meeting with the Rio de Janeiro team nearly goes poorly because she’s refusing to concede any ground on her point, she’s distracted by small details and loses focus, and because she’s not reading the room.

-Hyperfocus: She’s absolutely caught up in her work to the exclusion of all else.

Then there’s some stuff like her struggling to think of the world in anything but simple to break down black and white terms, there’s the fact she’s apparently noticeably on the spectrum to others at Vishkar…

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There is a line in her comic about people asking her where she fits in the spectrum.

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That would be interesting to see. I forgot to mention that in my original post but I literally cannot go anywhere without headphones as I will easily get overwhelmed from the noise going on. That has been the single best thing I’ve done for myself in treating my disability. Sensory overload is a huge thing.

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To be fair, the reason you don’t see this is because Overwatch skimps on character lore, so pretty much what we know about her comes from one comic.

We’ve seen her obsession over picture frames not being straight, when she should be paying attention to other stuff.

I’m also pretty sure she’s obsessed with her job, and order in general.

Besides, she mentions in the comic that she’s on the spectrum (it is a spectrum) somewhere.

For more indications of how being autistic effects her life we would need more Symmetra lore, I don’t think they could show it only through voicelines. That would mean a short, more comics, or even a short story (since that’s a thing they do now apparently).

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We don’t know how she stims. She might have small things, like biting her lips or picking her nails.

She does have a compulsion for geometry. In her comic, she’s in a business meeting when she stops halfway through a sentence to straighten a picture frame that’s crooked, IIRC.

There is also an obsession with cleanliness, as evidenced in her response to Torbjörn’s joke.

It can be argued that we do. Symmetra has no one.

Have you not heard her lines about order?

Again, we actually do. At the end of her comic, she freezes up when she has to make a decision and retreats into a status quo, as opposed to doing what she actually wants to. This is a meltdown response, just not identified as one because every autistic person expresses a meltdown in a different way.

See previous answer.

To clarify, in this situation she suffers a moral failure on account of a combination of stress and reluctance to change.

Not every person with Autism is the same. Symmetra was born with unbelievable intelligence, and raised in a very strict, organised and ordered environment. The way her autism expresses itself isn’t necessarily the same way that mine or yours expresses itself.

After thinking back on her comic, I do think that there’s a few steps in the comic that do hint at her autism, outside of the line that led to the confirmation, and I do identify with some of the ways she was portrayed as autistic.

Particularly the crooked picture frame. That can bug me like NO tomorrow. And I recognise her moral failure as something my autistic brother suffers from as well.

So no, I am actually quite all right with this portrayal.

EDIT: Reading the comic again, she specifically mentions getting stressed out from overstimulation early in the comic, when she gets lost in a crowd of protestors.

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