Niko

!TW: toxic relationship, implied SA, whump ig under the cut! (nothing really explicit tho)

Maybe i'm reading too much into it, and i kinda doubt they would go there, but the way Jax's torment went about read as Very sexually violent to me. Like being gripped by the ears (hair) and then forcibly stripped, while all the people he actually cares about laugh at him, and then the way he like. Clutches the shreds of his skin to himself is very similar to how you'll see victims in media holding the remains of their clothes?

Idk i feel like theres layers to it, like the flashes of the real world from jax's pov in episode 7 have been interpreted in a lot of ways, for me personally I've always seen it as him running away from something, and that's why he's so hedonistically violent in the circus, bc it's a form of escapism (ie the circus, while awful, was significantly better to him than his irl situation.) We also haven't seen abstraction from the pov of anyone else whose abstracted, so we don't know if him being naked is normal?

Idk theres a lot of things that can be read as just jax being...jax and being deeply insecure, but theres this extra layer that I cant really ignore? Like him being so particular about touch, usually him initiating, rejecting the touch of others, Almost allowing himself to be comforted by pomni's hug in ep6 b4 he starts going insane abt it and pushes her away. The punishment in ep 4 where hes like. Yanked around and pushed up against the TV the first time i watched it also read as violent, with sexual implications as well. The maid dress? Idk the like implications of forced exposure that makes him Severely uncomfortable before he forces himself to get over it? I feel like that could all go either way. I'm sorry if this is worded weird I was trying to be delicate in my explanation of why I was reading it this way.

this may sound silly, but do you think that any of the TADC characters is neurodivergent?

Hiya!!!

Oh yeah totally tbh! :D

Pomni I think is somewhere on the autism spectrum, though very definitely on the high functioning side - she's very selective about touch, somehow equal amounts anxiety-driven and reckless and tends to have very little verbal filter, often blurting out whatever she thinks in a deadpan manner and tends to shatter and get aggressive in response to high stress. She's also fairly content just quietly observing the people around her and, when it's a focused heart to heart conversation, is VERY careful and deliberate with her phrasing - which could imply a sort of hyperobservance that can happen as a side effect from masking, especially since she seems very self-aware and clearly reflects often. She's probably been in therapy before.

Jax I can easily see having ADHD - the selective attention span, emotional dysregulation, RSD, fidgeting (mostly thinking of his foot tapping), he's prone to sensory overload and yet he's simultaneously easily bored. His self-hatred also feels like it stems from not meeting a certain standard one way or another - be it masculinity, or not being "good enough" to keep a friend from abstracting... Even how quick he is to assume someone's blaming him for something, the jokester persona and how he tends to double down on definitely accidental slip of words and actions as totally planned and intentional is a very common coping strat for people with ADHD. More importantly: I don't think he knows he has it. This man has never been to therapy in his life. There's definitely also some strong depression in the mix as well, but that's more consequential mental illness than a neurobiological disorder.

Also, if Gangle - with her avatar being so centered around duality and fragility - doesn't have bipolar disorder I'll be immensely surprised. I feel like she might be on thr autism spectrum as well, but that might just be more bc she reminds me of my sister so much that I'm projecting a little bit lol.

Zooble I feel is actually very neurotypical and is only afflicted by their body dysphoria and the resulting depression/discomfort of that.

Ragatha I feel could also be high masking autistic with how hard she tries to relate to others and always falls short because she resorts to tactics that she learned is theoretically supposed to help, but she doesn’t actually, fundamentally understand what the problem is. She also fidgets often, has shown signs of emotional dysregulation... It would fit, I think. There's also that bout of selective mutism she had when she was too emotionally overwhelmed to speak in her ep6 convo with Kinger, but that might also be a trauma response from how she was raised - i.e. her thoughts, needs and feelings didn't matter and she was expected to not make herself a problem at all times, so she defaults to silence in times of crisis.

digitaltober day 10 - royal