Life of an Aspie is a comic idea I've had bouncing around in my head for well over 4 years and only recently did I finally bring it out of my head and onto digital Manga Studio paper.
About 5 or so years ago, I really got into reading shoujo manga and fiction where the main protagonist was female instead of male as I thought that was literally the coolest thing I had seen in my life at that point. After reading quite a lot of shoujo manga, I began to notice that most of the ones I read that had a main focus on heterosexual couples shared quite a few similarities or clichés to put it another way. In fact, I counted so many among the lesser known titles that I went cross eyed trying to keep a tallying score of how many clichéd tropes or plot devices that I had seen used in similar if not the exact same situations before.
That said, there were a few shoujo manga I read where the author either played around with or actually broke some rules of shoujo to tell their own unique story. i.e Dengeki Daisy was one such shoujo manga where I was instantly hooked after a few chapters instead of clicking the X button after about 8-10 chapters. To give an example, the main protagonist and the main male character don't actually hook up at any point, but instead are close acquaintances not to mention the female in that story is too clever by half and able to take care of herself in most situations without really needing the main male character's help.
Anyway, Life of an Aspie began life as a for fun drawing I did of a school girl who would later become Susan Graham, the comic's main protagonist and as you may have guessed, all American to boot. I did this because I felt it would be unique in a way to have the main character be from the United States, yet has lived in Japan for most of her life. Susan's asperger's (which is similar to autism in a way for those who don't know what Asperger's Syndrome is) came to me later when I was trying to find other ways to help her stand out from the myriad of shoujo protaganists. I have a mild case of it myself, so I guess you say Susan's case of Asperger's isn't all that different from my own except for maybe one or two traits that would be unique to a female aspie compared to a male one.
The idea of her swearing off boys during her high school career was another early idea I had for Life of an Aspie as I thought it would be fun to occasionally ship tease Susan with various guys, yet have her remain boyfriend free for the entirety of the comic's run. You could say that her being an aspie plays heavily into this. Overall, Life of an Aspie is a shoujo/slice of life hybrid, but at the same time is unique in ways that you the reader will just have to wait and see unfold as the comic progresses. I want to tell a humorous tale, but also an at times serious and/or inspiring tale.
I want the reader to be able to relate to the various characters in Life of an Aspie the same way any aspiring webcomic author wants the reader to be engaged with their own characters, but more specifically, I want readers who fall somewhere on the autism spectrum to be able to kind of look up to a character like Susan not necessarily as a role model, but as a character with flaws and faults who ultimately is still very much a person the same as anyone else at the end of the day for I feel the autistic community gets too much of a negative rep on the internet or is plain misunderstood at times even in an age where the internet is used to get people active about societal issues and various minority groups such as those who have autism/Asperger's.
