#everyone:

I heard from a little birdie I can design the fankids for the fanfics.. :J

I LOVE UR FANFICS THEYRE SO GOOD

WAIT OMG OMG OMG THEY'RE SO ADORABLE AAAAAA THEY'RE GIVING ME THE BIGGEST CUTENESS AGGRESSION I JUST WANT TO SQUEEZE THEM (Cuphead will kill me first lets be real. Well for childhood friends au, it's Bendy who'll kill me first)

I'll be so honest i did Not expect anyone to be this quick (esp to the other two fics who's still in wip hell for now) but aaaa tysm for bendystraw fankids

colour! nuance! depth! detail!!! both men have clear design choices and their rage is depicted both in their eye colouring and body languages! overlay texture is present but hasn’t yet reached “holy god turn up the transparency for the love of god” levels yet

literally looks like fanart made by someone who actively despises the series. ZERO depth, loss of details, that overlay is literally beating my ass in my own home it’s so overpowering.

In response to your comment on this post:

Wasn’t sure if you were asking about autism in general or this character’s presentation on the spectrum.

I’ll summarize both: folks with autism essentially just process incoming and outgoing information differently than neurotypical people (often more thoroughly and at a significantly faster or slower rate). Because we live in a society that is not particularly friendly or accessible for people who are different in this way, we have to develop strategies to compensate like the ones I discussed in this post: masking, personas based on social context, etc.

The flow of a “normal” social interaction is not intuitive to us and when we respond slowly or in a manner that isn’t what people are expecting, they get offended or they treat you like you’re slow or stupid. So it’s easier to memorize a bunch of scripts than it is to flounder your way through every social interaction. -I imagine that this is even more intense in a culture that has very strict social rules and sensitivity to politeness (and what specific behaviors define that) based on a number of hierarchical variables.

Kim’s presentation is different based on each specific type of social situation and the calculated expectations within that situation. What he’s doing is following a script to appear “normal”. And he’s really good at it. You’ll notice he often pauses before he reacts to incoming information and often he lets someone else react first. It’s also why he doesn’t really know how to react to Chay’s cute little romantic gestures because it didn’t occur to him to add this possibility to the script. (Unknown variables! Unknown variables!) 😆

The other clue we get regarding Kim’s neurodivergence is how he processes and expresses emotions. He does NOT like being cornered into expressing what he feels on someone else’s terms (or timeline). And he prefers to express himself through actions (or music) than verbally. Outgoing information is harder and Kim is unable to effectively express himself verbally. Also his facial expressions are not usually particularly animated (this changes based on which mask he’s wearing).

And what is implied, but that we don’t explicitly see, is both the preparation and the recovery time from doing all this work. There is so much going on under the surface; the analysis of every interaction in order to adjust the future ones, the time spent working out where you miscalculated and correcting it, the rehearsals, the planning for every variable possibility you can think of, etc. There is a reason Kim is essentially a hermit. He lives alone and he spends a lot of time alone because that’s the only time he doesn’t have to put effort into mere existence. There’s also a significant level of stress and anxiety that all of these things produce - which also requires masking to maintain the “normal” facade - and adds to the downtime.

What Jeff portrayed well in this character is the idea that almost every interaction is a performance (and it gets exhausting). And the intensity of the emotions he doesn’t know how to express in a socially acceptable or expected way.

Kim’s character captured the isolation of neurodivergence and the grief of continually finding yourself alone because everyone thinks you’re broken and wants to change you to match their own emotional experience of the world instead of being willing to meet you where you are and how after a while, it’s just too painful to keep opening yourself up for the same result.