Our love should be the brightest thing in the room

it took me asking three more times before she finally told me she wanted me to leave the fans where they are instead of moving them to my room or something. and I said oh! I had no intention of doing so but thank you for letting me know what the expectation is.

"You left your dish in the sink." > the hidden request is "please clean your dish, preferably right now." since it's phrased as an observation, I don't immediately intuit the request and instead think my housemate thinks I forgot about it. so I reply "oh, I know." housemate thinks i'm sassing her and gets annoyed with me. only then do I realize she was asking me to do something about the dish in the sink.

"There's hot soup on the stove." > said to me while I was preparing a sandwich. the hidden request is "please eat the soup." since it's phrased as a statement of fact, I don't immediately intuit the request and instead think my mom thinks I didn't see the soup. I did see it, but I wanted a sandwich instead. so I reply, "I saw it, thank you." mother thinks I'm being rude and gets annoyed with me. only then do I realize she was asking me to do something about the soup (and furthermore is offended I am eating a sandwich instead).

"Your bread is on the counter." > the hidden request is "please remove your sliced bread from the counter and store it elsewhere." since it's phrased as an observation, I don't immediately intuit the request and think my roommate thinks I meant to store the bread elsewhere and forgot. when I reassure her I know it's there, she gets annoyed. only then do I realize she wants me to do something about the bread on the counter.

"You can turn up the heat, you know." > said to me while I was scrambling eggs slowly over low heat. this one really confused me because of course I knew I could turn up the heat, but I had no reason to as I was only cooking for myself. when I ignored the statement because I was focused on my task and had nothing to say, my mother added, "the eggs will cook faster if you do." sure, I'm aware of this too, but I don't want to cook them faster. I won't get the texture I want. when I reply, "I don't want to, though," mom thinks I'm being rude and gets irritated, then asks me how long I'm going to take. only then do I realize she was telling me to cook faster (because she wanted the stove), instead of simply informing me I could.

"There are donuts in the break room." > a more benign example, but similar outcome. once again I hear this as a piece of information being given to me, and thank my coworker for telling me. when I don't immediately leave my desk to get donuts because I'm finishing a task, my coworker hovers and says, "well? aren't you getting some?" only then do I realize there was actually a hidden invitation, and I was supposed to respond to the hidden part and say, "I'll come get them in a minute," or "no thank you I don't want any."

as I said, I've learned over time this is something many allistic (non-autistic) people do (as well as high masking autistic folks who have learned the social rules and wear themselves out following them rigidly). despite what I've learned, my default autistic response is pretty much always to take the words at face value (especially when I'm distracted or multitasking), before remembering I have to translate them. and while I can make a decent educated guess in most cases, sometimes I just cannot and simply ask, "what are you asking me?"

unfortunately, many allistic people suffer from an inability to take words literally just as much as they struggle to speak literally, which can further obfuscate communication. this is why I emphasize gentle reassurance that you are not criticizing them, but asking them to help you, a person in need, by clarifying their intent. people generally like to be helpful and I have had moderate success with this approach.

the whistle system is ingrained in the children as something they should always aspire toward. children are encouraged to become white whistles, whose authority on the abyss is always respected, even revered in orth's culture. not coincidentally, every white whistle is a terrible person. this is hinted at when we learn about riko's mother lyza, who abandoned her as a baby to make her last dive into the 6th layer of the abyss, but it's made explicitly clear when riko meets ozen, the woman who was with lyza when riko was born and carried her up from the depths of the abyss. ozen forces a child, marulke, to be her maid and live with her deep in the 2nd layer, a dangerous place where no child should be. ozen takes sadistic pleasure in emotionally tormenting riko and physically abusing reg, and she also subjects marulke to the same punishment that the orphanage doles out. all of the black whistles who work under ozen know about this and have no problems with it.

we later find out that bondrewd, another white whistle, essentially kidnapped a bunch of orphaned children in a foreign country and brought them to the 5th layer to subject them to experiments that he knew would kill them, all in order to find a way to survive the curse of ascending from the 6th layer. bondrewd constantly calls the young girls in his care "cute", and judging by his daughter likening reg's ability to get erections to "papa poles", it's extremely clear that he sexually abuses not just her, but any young girl he comes across. this man pontificates about the importance of family and how it eternally ties people together, even if they aren't blood related. to reiterate in case it wasn't clear enough: his adopted daughter, prushka, was born in the abyss, and has no choice but to stay under his care, because stepping foot outside in the abyss alone and trying to ascend from the 5th layer would almost certainly get her killed. any white whistle making their last dive has to interact with bondrewd, meaning they all know about the kind of person he is, and are fine with it. the city of orth itself, and likely the government of the country it's in, depends on the abyss exploration industry which is headed by people like lyza, ozen, and bondrewd to bring wealth to its people.

made in abyss is brilliant in the way that it critiques the power structures that enable child sexual abuse. the cutesy art style puts you in the mindset of riko, a child who literally doesn't know how badly she's been abused because it's completely normal to her. that's exactly the thing that made in abyss is trying to communicate. in society today, child abuse is a routine, ordinary part of everyday life, and children are intentionally kept in extremely vulnerable conditions and denied the knowledge they need to identify when they're being abused because it makes them easier to control. adults abuse children because they benefit greatly from doing so, and they're actually very open about it. it's disgusting, and it's heartwrenching to watch these children suffer, but you can't pin the blame on any one person. it isn't that individual white whistles are bad and need to be dealt with; the very way that society is structured enables child abuse and rewards adults for perpetrating it.