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Inspired by this post, which gave me the kick I needed to create my own for Runaan. Iāve always kinda pictured Runaan asĀ āZuko but instead of befriending Aang he grew up and married Ethari.āĀ
Iām not going to go into how precious this headcanon is to me. You have headcanons that are near and dear to your heart. This one is near and dear to mine. Letās go:
Physical traits
Sensory dampening
Autistic people often have sensory issues that result in them feeling overwhelmed, overloaded, or hypersensitive. It can result from a combination of mental and physical input, and autistic people develop a variety of coping mechanisms to deal with it.
One way to dampen an overload of physical sensation is with clothing. Loose and baggy works for some, tight and gently constricting works for others. It can turn overwhelming nerve input into a kind of white noise background so itās easier to focus on other information.
Runaan wears a lot of clothes on missions, leaving only his face and upper arms exposed. Iām not talking about layers so much as skin coverage. While thereās a variety of coverage among the assassins, Runaan is the only one with long hair covering his neck, long pants, high boots, and gloves.
Though Raylaās dressed very similarly to him, her hands are bare, giving her a more approachable and vulnerable look, as befitting a character trying to find out who she is.Ā
With all his layers of insulation, Runaan appears as if heās trying to separate himself from, or protect himself from, the world around him.
About those gloves and leather gauntlets. It seemed a little odd (read: foreshadowingly important) that those gauntlets would get a mention in Callumās Spellbook as part of Runaanās look, but theyāre in there. Runaanās gloves are black, a nice dark undistracting color. When he moves his hands around in front of him, he wonāt be visually distracted by the light hue of his own gloves. And he does use his hands a lot, as a major form of his communication with others, so keeping that contact to a comfortable level, both visually and tactilely, lets him touch and move as much as he needs to without overwhelming himself in the process.
Meditation
Meditation is another way to calm an overload of input, or to psych oneself up for something that will require a lot of focus.The first time we meet Runaan, heās meditating while the others set up camp.Ā
Raylaās been gone a while and heās probably worried. Itās her first mission, and he vouched for her skills, so he canāt just go traipsing off to find her. He has to wait and trust her, so he spends his time calming and focusing.Ā
We also see him meditating in the dungeon, several times.
Even though the room was dark and quiet, all that sensory input from his injuries mustāve been intensely stressful. Falling back on his meditative coping mechanism was the only tool he had to handle the stress and pain of his environment and situation. But all his years of using this technique means that heās pretty good at it. Every time Viren came in to pester him, Runaan was always able to keep his wits about him.
Stimming
Autistic people stim as a self-soothing technique when theyāre hit with intense emotions--good and bad alike. Theyāre basically a way to anchor during a storm of feels until it passes, by doing something familiar and repetitive.
Runaanās stim is clenching his hands.Ā His hands are very clenchy when heās stressed. With those dark gloves on, itās not terribly noticeable, but theyāre opening and shutting constantly when heās worried over Rayla and how sheās endangering herself/messing up his mission.
Runaan is an elf of action. His skill set is entirely physical. When Rayla acts insubordinate on the mission, he knows he should punish her--a harsh physical tactic--but he quietly refuses to do so. Instead, he talks to her. And though he keeps his voice calm for the most part, heās upset, nervous, off book. It takes him a while to be able to make eye contact with her (more on that later). And his hands start twitching, possibly because heād be far more comfortable with aĀ physical fix to the situation, a tactic heās far more familiar with but in this case heās deliberately choosing not to employ.
Long hair
Devon Giehl confirmed way back when that Ethari braids Runaanās hair for him (awww), and heās really good at it. Itās possible that Runaan had a very different hairstyle, or not much of a style at all, before he fell for Ethari. Autistic people sometimes struggle with haircuts or complicated personal hygiene routines. Some very much enjoy the asmr of having their hair brushed, or the comforting weight of long hair. A warrior needs to see what heās doing in battle. A Moonshadow needs to look stylish. Enter Ethari, who probably still cannot believe he gets to play with all this long glorious braidable hair every day.Ā
Maybe this beautiful hairstyle that we all love and adore and draw over and over in our art is Ethariās creation, tactically designed to bother Runaan as little as possible. Itās not hanging in his eyes or tickling his neck or bugging his ears. He has a clear line of sight in all directions. No dangling fringe, unlike almost every other Moonshadow weāve seen.
Those hair cuffs Ethari made keep Runaanās side tails out of his way when heās spinning in battle, too. Thereās basically nothing that will get Runaanās hair in his face.
And he hasnāt cut it in a very long time.
Interaction Issues
Processing time
Runaan comes across as a stoic and calculating character. He uses silence and stillness on the regular. These techniques can be used deliberately to give an autistic person time to process new information. Autistic people can have processing issues, hearing issues, and comprehension issues, and our first instinct upon hearing new information can be to blurt,Ā āWhat?ā because we donāt collect all the details on the first pass. Letting the mind continue to process for a few extra seconds can help to fill in the gaps, though. Remember this iconic moment?Ā
Runaan takes 17 seconds to make his way from āGive me the eggā toĀ āDonāt do this.ā He stands dramatically, the clouds part, itās all very epic. But he couldāve acted the second that Rayla defied him. He didnāt. Looks like he genuinely needs a minute to process what Rayla is doing and how to handle it. Itās very unlike her. He wasnāt expecting it. He has no plan for this. He has to stop everything and think. So he holds still and keeps his reactions under wraps, until he has formulated a plan. Runaan lives by plans and rules. More on that later, too.
The Kiss
Ā Autistic people can be sensitive to being approached and touched. And martial arts training does wild things to your personal space. You have none and all at the same time. Itās vastly more comfortable to keep everyone at armās length because there are so many options to choose from if they get close enough to touch.
An autistic person and their loving spouse can easily create little rituals--social and verbal cues--to be recognizable indicators of desired behavior. Ethariās line,Ā āMy heart goes out with this one,ā acts as a code that Runaan has heard over and over. Ethariās worried, and heās seeking comfort. So he prompts Runaan and patiently waits for Runaan to respond and initiate the kiss in his own time. And Runaan does so, with the smoothness of long practice. He reaches out, he steps forward, and then he also steps back, breaking the kiss.Ā
Ethari chases the kiss as long as he can, but he does let it go when itās clear Runaan is backing up. Itās clear that Ethari is an enthusiastic lover, and Runaan knows it. Though the kiss is complete, Runaan takes time to reassure his husband that he loves and trusts him, and he does that by ensuring a long moment of close eye contact and physical touch--both things that can take extra focus for an autistic person to offer. But for Ethari, itās definitely worth doing.
Eye contact
Eye contact can be stressful for autistic people, and we often avoid it when weāre already uncomfortable. When Runaan takes Rayla into the woods to tell her sheās off the mission for being too soft, he canāt look her in the eye for the first part of their conversation.
He keeps looking in her general direction from the corner of his eye, but he canāt look her in the eye and tell her she failed him. Itās too uncomfortable for him. He has to work up to it for a couple of minutes. And though he does manage to meet her eyes for a short while, he ends the conversation by walking away while heās still talking. As far as his plans extend at that moment, heās never going to see her again. He believes heās marching off to die, and he canāt look at her then, either.Ā .
This look is Runaanās emotional lockdown. Everything is tense and no feels are getting in or out. Hands totally fisted up.
Time Out
Autistic people can get so overwhelmed that we lose our temper, go nonverbal, or otherwise shut down, and we need to step away from the environment thatās caused the overload. Runaan lost his cool and yelled at Rayla when he learned that sheād lied to him about Marcos.
Losing his temper wasnāt good because he yelled at his daughter. But it was also bad because he lost his professional cool in front of his team. He had a little domestic right there in front of them. When youāre supposed to be in charge, especially in a culture that prides itself on cooperation and perfection, falling apart in public has got to be humiliating.Ā
The next time we see Runaan, heās taking a break in a tree with his second while the other assassins chill, clearly waiting on him. He might have been here five minutes. He might have been here for an hour or more.
My favorite part about this is how Runaan isnāt alone. His friend has come to sit with him, but silently. He doesnāt ask any questions, he doesnāt try to touch Runaan, he just waits. And eventually, Runaan gets his focus back and talks about the mission.Ā
This moment is also an instance where Runaan needs time to silently calculate until he creates a whole new plan out of nothing. In this case, heās deciding to set Rayla off the mission for being too childish to complete it properly, rather than executing her or otherwise punishing her as a full-fledged assassin. But first, he needs the time out, because he canāt make that plan until heās emotionally calm again.
āEnough Brooding, Elf.ā
When Viren dumped the coins out and Runaan saw that they were cursed objects that somehow contained his dearest friends, Lain and Tiadrin, he was so overwhelmed, shocked, and upset that he had his only eyeshake of the whole series, and he ended up going nonverbal.Ā
Everything that Runaan had done with regard to Rayla over the last several months turned out to be for nothing. She didnāt need to avenge her parentsā honor because they never ran away. Runaan didnāt need to fight with his husband and go into emotional lockdown. And he, his husband, and Rayla never needed to ghost Lain and Tiadrin in the first place. All that stress and emotional suffering was for nothing. And on top of that, the man whoād taken him prisoner had cursed his friends and imprisoned them this whole time. Runaan just canāt catch a single break. His voice drops into a stressed whisper as he says,Ā āYouāre a monster.ā And then, judging by the next words Viren says a whole scene later, Runaan doesnāt speak again.Ā
Viren leaves him alone after the coin threat backfires, because he realizes heās not going to get anything out of Runaan in his condition (and he could recognize this state because Soren is autistic-coded as well!). When Viren returns, he calls what Runaan was doingĀ ābrooding.āĀ
Brooding is generally defined as being two things: quiet, and thoughtful. No one broods out loud. But a nonverbal shutdown while chained to a wall is going to look pretty similar. Runaan canāt do anything to physically escape Viren, so his brain just switches off his mouth for a while. He has a lot of bad things to process and he has no room for responding to Viren in his state of extreme emotional distress.
Courtship Rules and Replies
From interviews with Devon and Iain, weāve learned that Runaan fell in love first, but that he also needed Lainās prompting to confess his true feelings to Ethari. One way to describe the difference between autistic and allistic peopleās thinking patterns is to call one oft them Microsoft and the other Apple. They can generally do the same things, but the ways they get there are always a little different. Because allistic people outnumber autistic people, they have generally framed the society we live in, and we often feel like we must rote-memorize the rules of the world around us instead of using our own system. This does create a strong reliance on rules, and specifically on knowing the rules before proceeding.Ā
If Runaan had never courted anyone before--or if heād tried to and it had gone poorly because Runaan didnāt fully understand the rules--he would be very, very hesitant to make the first move with Ethari.Ā
Additionally, Runaan was making all his good-faith efforts to show interest in Ethari via the proper channels, but meanwhile, Ethari was skirting the rules. He was interested in Runaan, but heās a playful elf and was teasing his suitor by pretending not to be interested That Way. This might sound cute, but to an autistic person, such a lack of hoped-for feedback would be intensely exasperating. Runaan was trying to communicate in what possibly felt like a foreign language, and he didnāt feel like he was doing a good job of it. He was probably doubting his metaphorical grammar and accent constantly. Autistic people arenāt always good with reading facial expressions or unfamiliar moods, so he didnāt pick up that Ethari was genuinely interested and just teasing him. He was too uncertain and vulnerable to take the matter to Ethari straight out, but there was an elf he trusted fully: Lain.Ā
Lain could probably see Ethariās interest when Runaan couldnāt. (And if I had to guess, Iād say Lainās clue was Ethariās intense eye contact, which Runaan wouldnāt notice if he was avoiding eye contact due to anxiety!) If Runaan was really so uptight and protective about his feelings, Lain wouldnāt have encouraged him to share them unless he was confident that Ethari would reciprocate. And because Runaan did trust Lain so much, he took that next step, confessed his feelings, and sure enough, Lain was right! Ethari loved him, too.
Free Time
Runaanās birthday post for 2020 told us that he would prefer to spend the day reading alone, but he considers Raylaās wishes and lets her decide otherwise. Runaan is more introverted than most and heās perfectly fine entertaining himself, but Rayla drags him to the adoraburr meadow to spend time together, and because he loves her, Runaan lets her do it. If he were truly uncomfortable, he could put a stop to the whole thing. But he understands that this is how Rayla shows love, and so he lets her show her love through shared companionship, instead of shutting her out and keeping to himself.
Special Interest Sharing
Runaan tells Rayla that thereās an instinct to being an assassin. He has it, and heās realizing now--only now--that Rayla doesnāt.
Callumās Spellbook tells us that he began training Rayla to fight when she was just a toddler.
Autistic people often have special interests that appeal far above everything else, and can last a lifetime. For some itās coding, photography, marathon running, or collecting something. Could be anything, really. Runaanās special interest is combat. Heās a deeply physical elf who feels very present in his world, and sometimes too present (hence the gloves and the meditation). Itās only natural that he takes the body heās got and trains it as hard as he can. Being ready for battle is a form of freedom for him. He can run anywhere and fight anything. His intense dedication to his training contributed to his promotions through whatever ranks assassins have, allowing him to contribute meaningfully to his community and his society through his service. Runaanās special interest has made him uniquely qualified to lead the assassins.
When we meet someone we like, we tend to use our special interest as a form of communication and bonding with them:Ā āI like you, so I will share this thing I love with you.ā
Lain and Tiadrin had a precious baby girl, and Runaan and Ethari helped them raise and care for her. And the moment Rayla could move around, Runaan was right there, showing her all his favorite little tricks and techniques, steadying her, patiently demonstrating and explaining every little thing. Stances, physics, trajectory, angle of attack, center of balance, weak spots. All the physical things he knows and loves, he shared with his tiny new friend.
Having a full-grown adult pay her the respect of assuming she could learn all these things, even as a little child, mustāve been so important to Rayla and her self-image. No wonder they bonded so tightly. He truly believed she could do everything he taught her--and he was right.
Mental Effects
Hyperfocus
Autistic people can experience hyperfocus on a new and interesting person or thing. The more ways a person, like say, Ethari, appeals to someone like Runaan, the stronger his focus will be on them. All free time--and time that isnāt free--will immediately be diverted to thinking about and experiencing this delightful new phenomenon.
Runaan is described as putting his duty first, and he takes his job very seriously. But this is also the elf who deliberately damaged his weapons in order to have an excuse to see Ethari and ask him to fix them. To Runaan, the one thing he and Ethari had in common was weapons, so thatās where he started. Runaan gave himself a crash course in Ethari and his interests and ways of expressing himself, and found a way to speak the same language in order to ensure theyād connect. He literally hampered his own ability to do his job in order to find a way to connect with the craftsman.
Once they were a couple, he threw himself into learning How To Boyfriend so he could continue to communicate his feelings to Ethari in an understandable way. It was of the utmost importance to Runaan that he be able to speak a language Ethari could understand, so that he could tell him how much he loved him, and so that Ethari would believe it and trust it.
Small Talk
Runaan learned Ethari as a language, and he learned Raylaās language as she learned his. He probably speaks Lain and Tiadrin fluently. But everyone has slightly different tics and cues in their speech, and they can all seem like separate languages sometimes. It takes true effort to connect with someone, to truly get to know them and all their little quirks. Runaan simply doesnāt have time to learn every single elf in the Silvergrove as a separate language. Heās learned how to connect with those he values most, and thatās all he feels he needs. Everything else is just small talk--a jumble of things Runaan doesnāt have room to care about beyond his special interest, his duty, and the few elves heās taken such pains to learn so well.
ADHD/autistic-coded fictional character(s) from The Librarians
Flynn Carsen from The Librarian(s):
I think he is clearly ADHD, but I read many people say he is (also) autistic-coded (as well as Cassandra), I'm curious to know what did you noticed in him that made you think it could be so (no judgment/critic intended, really I'm just curious!), I noticed some traits on him that are common in both ADHD and ASD (vocal stims, infodump)
I know, it's just a movie, it's hard if not impossible to consider these kinda things on a fictional character as many time they're coded to adjust to the story etc etc... (and probably many people reading this will wonder what's wrong in my head that make me want analyze so closely such thing... š )
but just for sake of curiosity I would really like to read in the comments what you people think about it and what characteristics you noticed that made you think "oh yeah, he's autistic!"
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Nimona is an unapologetically queer film. But similarities between Nimona & the autistic experience compelled me to write this piece. In it, I draw upon my own experiences as a late diagnosed autistic & connect them to a story that has won over my heart.
*spoiler warning for the movie*
Nimona is a story of two misfits. The titular character Nimona is a shapeshifting rebel with a tragic history of rejection. Ballister Boldheart (Blackheart in the graphic novel) is a newly knighted commoner (unheard of in this futuristic-medieval world) framed for killing the queen. Longing for a friend and itching for mayhem, Nimona searches out Boldheart toā¦
Autistic-coded Frankie is slaying the screen right now !!
Between the two episodes alone, we can see them stimming at one point (they kick their legs when theyāre excited/happy), they looked up the rules to being a good friend, and they made a comment that the others found funny (without intending to joke around) and proceeded to ask āwhy are we laughing?ā They were giving Draculaura advice about something and used the analogyĀ āitās good to share ice cream, but only if itās yours.ā They then proceeded to infodump about an experience they had with ice cream (or better yet, eye scream haha) and djkjkdkjskj omg I love them !!
By the way, disclaimer, these traits donāt necessarily make someone autistic; Iām just jumping on the bandwagon that people believe Frankie to be autistic :) Theyāre definitely autistic-coded. I am not autistic myself, but I have autistic friends, and I want to make sure that my viewpoint is in no way harmful/stereotypical. I love the route that Monster High has taken of having Frankie present these traits, itās just JDDJDJK I LOVE THEM SM :ā)
Also, shhh, this is definitely not the episode:Ā https://drive.google.com/drive/mobile/folders/1H9D3O37OUxnSceXb34fIUSjZF9eSCZLT