#autism analysis

Basically, Stoic Roomba x Post-Soviet Depression find comfort in each other’s non performativity that neurotypicals or Western social norms tend to demand.

both him and sabo come off as polite at a distance but i think sabo is better at applying social cues and being traditionally polite. you can pretty much believe due to his characterization that he started from learning politeness and social cues in a healthy environment and then struggling very heavily with mental health due to the amnesia break. whereas ace you can kind of tell he came from an unhealthy environment and actively got better. with sabo, when he isn't polite or isn't kind it's much more obviously intentional and a calculated risk on his part.

Hi everyone! While I’m writing the next chapter and trying to survive Capitalism despite living its real-time collapse (I work two jobs, why chapter production is slow these days), I’d like to make a post like this while it’s still Autism Awareness month. Now, not to say you can’t enjoy the pink haired frilly goofy man. I never have though. I felt like he was a let down after Dartz, who is my favorite villain of Yugioh, I SAID WHAT I SAID. And I’m also saying you can enjoy your villains of Yugioh, and I will enjoy mine. All that out of the way, I would like to dive into an analysis of Seto Kaiba and who I felt were his good expies, Noa/Noah and Alister/Amelda. Anyone who has autism (myself included, I’m not 100% on paper yet but I’ve had multiple doctors agree with me), you know. There’s a Neurodivergence ESP, when you are talking to someone you just Know when someone else just isn’t neurotypical This is based off of their canon, observable in the show behaviors, trying not to lean into anything headcanon unless it slightly grays the area a little. Using dub names but will tag original names later (I just don’t like Amelda as a name...) But first starting with Seto himself, he’s very blunt and impulsive. Which isn’t helped by the fact he’s got a lot of money. So he can act on literally every impulsive thought he has. Man probably filmed that idea to send Duel Monsters cards into space the minute he had it in GX. He’s very egocentric, which a lot of people get confused with his arrogance. Not that he’s not both, but he really genuinely believes that any time his company is under attack, it’s because someone’s trying to take it over. Not that it’s the one sure-fire way to draw him out of hiding, it’s that everyone is out to get him. Always! (as an example, during Season Four his company gets bought out by the villains. He’s convinced this was ALL a ploy to take it over, when really Dartz needs him out in the open because he needs to kill him.) His special interest is Duel Monsters. Literally all his money comes from making electronics and technology specifically for playing his special interest. And he’s richer THAN the person he pays royalties to because Seto doesn’t own Duel Monsters. Pegasus does. All Seto did was invent the technology to play it, and fixing the rules to actually make the game playable (The rules of Battle City were his, after all.) He’s pretty close to being nonverbal, a LOT of Kaiba’s lines are actually thoughts in his head rather than stuff he says out loud, except when he’s delivering snarky comments or talking to Mokuba. He’s got a perpetually weird relationship with the protagonists because he’s not good with social cues or interacting with people in general. Not that he wouldn’t die for them, he’s not good at expressing it though. They’re his friends, but they gotta squint to hear what he’s actually saying. ----- Noah’s is going to be a lot shorter as far as canon behaviors go since we only have a few episodes with him really, and I’d also think of him as having both BPD and autism (which happens co morbidly, around 15% of BPD patients also meet the criteria for having ASD.) (There’s also that they all have some very intense levels of PTSD, but that’s another kettle of horses.) His biggest sign that he’s both is his emotional state of being when we encounter him in his half of Season Three. Not to say that his environment didn’t help him any, but I think it’d just made it more obvious. Both conditions affect mood stability, which cause intense emotions and a grandiose sense of self at the same time. But there’s also a sense of emptiness and a negative impact on self esteem, a diffuse of self (in TVTropes words, he definitely has a Superiority-Inferiority Complex.) Much like Seto, as well, social cues aren’t something he excels in. The idea of anyone being nice to him is confusing, but he really develops one bond (Mokuba), and he convinces himself he needs to die for him and the people he brought into the Digital World. But a few scenes before he steals Mokuba’s body briefly, he can’t comprehend why someone is being nice to him. He thinks he’s being slow and steady with the reveal he’s about to drop on the protagonists of being Gozoboro’s son, but remember that his entire arc is only a few hours of one day in Battle City (when they cut to Yami Marik being like ‘.... Where the hell did everyone go?’), so they’re not really there long before he starts traumadumping and infodumping about his own monsters. He’s so socially deprived that he’s A) going to tell you all what he’s been through because all he wanted was to be loved by someone who couldn’t possibly love him, and B) He’s going to tell you about his niche interest in computer programming to make the world he’s in more interesting, as well as the extremely niche tidbits of information he has about Spirit Monsters and their development in the game of DM. (Remember, the Deck Master system and the rules of their abilities is the stuff he made up. Pegasus still made the Spirit Monsters, don’t let the rules of the Season throw you. They’re using a database of every known card, they’re in a computer, and it doesn’t trip up the rule of Season Four of the Orichalcos. Because it’s being used by one specific cult and no one else. The cards in Noah’s deck, broken effects and all, actually existed in-universe, and given how all of the protagonists had never heard of them until the duel with Noah, despite Solomon owning a Card Shop and there being more in Domino, that means he was into the REALLY obscure cards of the game.) ---- Alister is probably the most neurodivergent of them all, to start he has a very one-track mind ability to hyperfocus. The only thing on his mind ever is getting revenge on Seto Kaiba because he’s the living body still. If Alister COULD kill Gozoboro still, he would. Unquestioningly. He’s got a very strong sense of justice powered by a black-and-white morality way of thinking. He is definitely someone you want in your cult to destroy the world, it takes very little convincing that someone is evil and needs to be destroyed. And he can’t be swayed from his opinions, either. He’s got very intense feelings that are being taken advantage of. He’s got a very declarative memory and trauma dumps with very little prompting. He’s got a comfort item that ties into his traumas, of course. He’s got some odd reactions too and is strangely very naive despite everything (aside from the normal response of ‘Who are you?’, doesn’t seem to question that he’s straight up hallucinating/receiving a mental link directly to Dartz the first time they ever speak. Not a ‘what the hell is going on, what is happening, where did the world go’, ect, ect. Just ‘This person can tell me what happened and who hurt me? Okay.’ ) Alister’s also got issues with social situations, the only friends he has you can count on one hand. And that comes with its own weird rules of That’s Just How They Talk To Each Other. (He does love Raphael and Valon, even saying that he and his ‘new family’ are saving the world.) Also, this one is semi-canon, semi- head canon, hence the disclaimer earlier. He’s got sensory issues and is sensitive to light (he wears sunglasses inside of buildings, and during the nighttime.) And his clothing, at least to me, suggest he gets hot easily but still needs pressure due to an aversion to touch. (His shirt is midriff exposing, but he also has like eight belts and a huge ass trench coat on. And heat intolerance is a littler-known sign of autism) ---- I never got anything that deep out of Seigfried. He really just that butthurt about his company. While my story doesn’t go past Season Four, I know how I’d fix Season Five.