#i'm projecting

hang it in the louvre

Reader who is competent. You're mature, you stomach things with a serious face, you're competent and you do your job skillfully, a truly outstanding soldier. Not a tremble to your hands when you look in the eyes of every man you shoot down, no hint of hesitation when you're wounded but still move with the team, when you guve backup, when you work like the best, because the 141 is where th best are.

And everyone sees you as that. As a good soldier, a great soldier. But when you're back in base and the most you give these men is a tight lipped smile and a nod before vamishing to the barracks, that makes them frown. Even Ghost tries to be around after successful ops, going drinking, leaning on each other for support.

But you dont. And that slowly starts making rumors grow, everyone hates soldiers who are too uptight, who don't relax, who is too serious.

It isn't until the one time an op requires you and the 141 to be in a bunker for hours after the mission goes south that they see it. How your act breaks so pathetically. You hate it, but how can you help it? There's only so much time until your nerves burst out like they always do, but instead of in the comfort of your quarters, you're here, in front of the men you admire, when you start trembling and breathing heavily, curling up in a corner.

Soap and Gaz freeze at first, frowning, confused. Ghost seems lost, not knowing how to proceed, and Price? His jaw tightens when it clicks for him, when he understands why the new recruit was so familiar to him. Like seeing a younger Simon, that same type of stray he's so used to take under his wing.

so. here's the thing.

Kaeya is the buggiest PC to ever happened to be born.

he can be walking with no care in the world, just chilling, chatting, and then he's folded in half, his chest aching, and he's carefully recollecting what the heck it is now. usually it's just a strained muscle, some awkward pose at sleep, some dumb decisions from the old days such as old wounds or scars or such.

and he's just. lying on the ground, waiting for it to pass, unable to talk as his brain is solely focused on pain, and this dumb body-rebooting happens when Diluc is nearby, and Diluc is freaking out.

he genuinely thinks his brother is having a heart attack. then he settles for aneurysm. then he decides against it and thinks it's kidney stones. then Kaeya takes a deep breath, stands up, dusts himself off, and says they should be going.

Diluc: to the Cathedral???

Kaeya, blinking: what for?

Diluc, at the verge of having aneurysm of his own: YOU HAD A HEART ATTACK??? LIKE. JUST NOW???

Kaeya: I think I'd be aware of it, no?

(spoiler: he probably would not. that's the reason why Diluc always brings Kaeya to the Cathedral to get his idiot of a brother checked up. especially if these random aches last for two-three hours and Diluc feels himself greying prematurely)

Whatever, go my archivist.

Tumblr I'm beefing with you where is the quality

Definitely all high-functionning, and they all got different flavours.

Rumi

I definitely aggree with everyone that Rumi is so PR trained that she's amazing at interviews and any interaction Huntr/x needs to have with pretty much anyone in pretty much any situation, but once in a while something that NEVER got covered in her training happens, and she just. like. freezes. Brain shuts-down. Reboot necessary. Situation does not compute. It doesn't happen often, and when it does Mira can usually take over and gets them out more or less scandal free. But it really doesn't happen often, PR was VERY thorough.

You can't tell me that smile isn't autistic. I don't even know why. It just screams at least neurospicy, if not specifically autism.

Her special interests include plants and music.

I think she's high masking in public especially, and she was with her girls at the beginning, but after a year or two of living with them, and them not looking at her weirdly when she slipped up and did 'not normal' stuff that Celine told her wasn't acceptable, she started masking less and less throughout the years at home. Also, I believe that Rumi might've mixed up some of her demon urges and neurospicy urges, though honestly they could overlap, so post-canon she stops masking completely at home.

Mira

Mira is definitely the most 'functional' of the three, if only because she has a high emotional intelligence, and has had to mask a lot more because of her upbringing.

Just a side note about emotional intelligence and autism, because I have Feelings about this: it is not true that all autistic individuals are bad with feelings or are 'cold' and 'unfeeling' and don't have facial expressions, etc. In fact, I don't think it's accurate to say that ANY autistic person is cold and unfeeling, though some DO struggle with parsing their feelings and relating to others/reading body language and facial expressions. But what I wanted to point out is that there is a fair amount of autistic people with very high emotional intelligence, and who are deeply empathetic and can read people very well (though for me at least it's because of extreme pattern recognition). That emotional intelligence can just present differently, with a tendency towards direct communication instead of subtle cues, and feeling more intensely. If you know the terms, normal EQ tests normally end up with lower scores for autistic individual because it calculates mainly cognitive empathy, and not affective empathy, which autistic people tend to have more of. Again, I am but one person, and autism is a spectrum for a reason, so take this with a grain of salt, but I just wanted to point out that there is a LOT of different ways autism presents. But back to Mira.

As a fandom I think we settled on Mira being from a rich family, and the movie told us she was a 'problem child', which doesn't really take a lot when you're the kid of a rich and powerful family and all that. So I definitely think she learned to mask very quickly, and had to learn to read people well, and knows how to act proper and all.

Though again, not all autistic people have no or very little facial expressions, it IS true that some of us (myself included) have a very neutral expression most of the time, even when talking. And Mira DOES have a very expressive face at times, but the neutral/kinda RBF default face is something I myself have, and it was noted in my diagnostic so I'm guessing it's a trait at least some autistic people share.

High EI autistic individuals also tend to have a strong sense of justice and fairness, profound loyalty to their family, friends, animals, etc., and a high degree of integrity and honesty in their interactions, which can manifest as being blunt. Sound like someone we know?

Zoey

Okay, the one everybody has likely been waiting for. The most 'typically' autistic of the three. Having been raised in America, I think Zoey had to mask a lot less (and I think she has a lot more stims than the other two, since I also headcanon her having ADHD as well, so she has a harder time masking).

First of all, I headcanon Zoey being a gifted auDHDer, which definitely could lead one to being an outcast, even more with the additon of bullshit racism. She definitely has perfect pitch (like Rumi tbh), and tons of notebooks that she has had many different organization systems for. I feel like she's the kind of autistic that loves writing down notes about literally anything. Rumi's demon traits? Yup. Things that make Mira happy? Yup. Things to do when her girlfriends aren't home? Yup. Though that one never works. If you think of it, it is likely Zoey has it.

Special interests include turtles (ofc) and writing/rapping. Also has had many micro hyperfixations that last a couple of days.

Also, I have just learned that autistic pebbling (or penguin pebbling) is a recognized autistic thing now lmao. Pebbling is a neurodivergent act of affection consisting of gifting small, often free, things to someone, like a pretty rock, shell, trinket, link to something they think the person will like, etc. It's to show that they care about the person and was thinking about them. The trinket is often something relating to a special interest of the person they want to give it to, to show that they listen. Honestly, I think Rumi and Zoey may be tied for who does it most often, because Zoey will go "oh shiny rock!" run back to her girls and pass it to whoever didn't get her last token. Rumi is much the same, except she stresses a lot more about if they will like it, and looks like an eager puppy while giving them the trinkets, and will actually cry in her room alone later if she thinks they didn't look like they liked them. Mira collects the trinkets bestowed upon her religiously, and has two hanging shelves in her room dedicated to them, one for each of her girls. She loves organizing and sorting them, finding it soothing.