I was recently diagnosed with autism, I'm 23 years old but I was never diagnosed as a child because I live in Latin America (Colombia) and mental health is demonized because...I guess no one likes having a person around who doubts their mental health or cares about it to take care of, which is sad, recently I have been working and researching about autism to apply things that can, to make my life less horrible the times when everything goes wrong, I had listened to the soundtrack of "to the moon" a long time ago i saw a flash that had the word autism next to the title of the game, I remembered it the other day and decided to investigate what relationship the game has with autism, I am very grateful to have seen this video, thank you very much, really...

I streamed this game myself back in 2020 on the Switch. Before that, though, I saw someone named NintendoCaprisun play it and back then, he did hint that he figured River had autism. At that time, I didn't know it, but I was also on the spectrum. Likewise, I didn't have the best exposure to what "autism" was from the media and stereotypes. On top of that, my mother NEVER wanted me looking into what autism meant because she didn't want me to think that there was "something wrong" with me. Flash forward, my mom has passed away in 2017, I'm on my own, and I have my youtube channel. When To the Moon was on the Switch, I immediately got it and wanted to stream it. When I got to these parts with River and her condition, it hit me pretty hard because it was like "I'm seeing a little of myself in here." That's when I remembered NCS, how he made his own theories about River, and how he mentioned similar experiences himself. All the pieces kind of clicked, especially the more they talked about it in the story, like how Johnny has that firend of his whose wife had "same condition," yet she acted differently as opposed to River. That's when I also remembered this saying about how if you know a person with autism, you know one person with autism. In other words, autism is different for everyone. So while some of those characters in fictional media might portray one side of autism, that's only one side and it isn't a "catch all" for everyone one the spectrum. Like you said, they may have good intentions in writing those characters, but the downside is that there's more to the spectrum than just the one character they're writing. There are many facets to it and while there might be some overlap between what you see/read versus your own experiences, there is that disconnect when you think about how perhaps they romanticize and overdo it a little like say with Atypical or The Good Doctor. I have some overlap with the main characters, but they aren't like 100% me and aren't an accurate representation of who I am as someone on the spectrum, but those are just two different cases you see in television. With River, it seemed a little more toned down and more "real" and believable. So perhaps that why she was so much more relatable and why I felt like I could see pieces of myself there in those segments. Granted, there are some other characters I've felt some connection with like say Mashiro from Pet Girl of Sakura House (who is an artist and theorized to be autistic) or Yuri from DDLC (again, theorized to be autistic, but shown to struggle connecting to people). To that end, those characters still resonate with me even now and will always have some meaning to me. But like I said, they still don't 100% represent me or every aspect of me. If anything, of those characters Yuri is the one who comes the closest only due to being seen as an outcast for being weird and struggling to talk to people. Anyway, my rambling aside, this was a very insightful video and I have likewise been a little more open about my own conditon and have grown to accept myself a lot more. I do wish I could tell my mother she was wrong for thinking autism was a bad thing, but oh well.

River is such a great character, I fully agree aah I love how her behaviours like the rabbits are connected to her autism but not... solely because of it? Like it's of course heavily connected to her individual past aswell - great way for the game to show autistic people as individual humans which is sadly rare! This was a great video and analysis, thank you for making this : )

I really dont know anything about this game, but i'm more than glad to hear about your experience with it, dearie 💖

Great insight, thanks for sharing your experiences.

Amazing video ! :)

I could name characters i feel but considering i'm not totally sure i do have autism or not, so nvm hah