#oracrashingout

and zayne says that they're a couple and he knows that bc one penguin just randomly carried a stone in his beak to give to the other penguin and im like BABE THATS LITERALLY YOU

because for some reason I have become the autistic zayne propagandist of tumblr so here we go

tried to waddle like a penguin as a child. also knows everything about penguin mating rituals apparently.

his love language is clearly an imitation of penguin behaviors (penguins give stones to express devotion, he gives candies to express that he cares because he literally can't say things like a normal person. hes a fucking autistic penguin)

can apparently tell every kind of flower apart by SCENT

rejection sensitivity so high he became a heart surgeon after he accidentally caused one (1) injury and tried to resign after he was FALSELY accused of malpractice

when you touch a part of his body he names a fact about that body

refers to your body parts by their full scientific names all the time

in his myth, the majority of books in his GIANT LIBRARY TOWER were about jasmines. where the fuck did he even FIND those

as a child he tried to comfort MC by leaving an unexplained and unnanounced box of snowballs vaguely shaped like seals at her doorstep. note that this was an entire box full of them like where did he even come up with this

during the "meet the parents" thing in the cafe interactions he's the only LI to very aggressively avoid eye contact during the entire dialogue

he obviously has a safe food (dessert) and a very unsafe food (carrots)

in the caleb five big booms arc, zayne gave hands down the most contextually weird explanation of anything I have ever seen, gave mc a pep talk (in the most monotone voice since amazon echo, mind you) out of NOWHERE, then slid mc an ipad looking thing (only mentioning it was willed to her by her dead grandma, not mentioning AT ALL that it contained life changing information, nor that grandma josephine actually asked him to take care of her after her death) and a candy. this man is the social interactions final boss

we learn in the wedding card story that during med school he struggled with executive function when it came to taking care of himself properly, basically lived off the bare necessities for survival etc. it could just be depression/exhaustion but from the phrasing of it it sounds like a deeper issue

in a text conversation with him, you find out that he apparently named a squirrel that comes to the hospital garden at times after a receptor-inhibiting drug. He named the squirrel fucking Clopidogrel btw. Of course, nothing about this is inherently and clinically autistic but I mean come ON now

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Despite seeming somewhat averse to eye contact, he also holds rigid rules about eye contact being a necessary part of politeness

His students say he is strict, which again highlights rigid rule-following

One of his regularly commented on character traits is that he seems cold and robotic.

His jokes often concern and terrify people instead of making them laugh (such as in his A Pure White Heart Anecdote)

His social habits and rigid rule following frequently cause him difficulty in his relationships (romantic and otherwise) as well as his career.

In the meet MC's family interaction he also explicitly says "im a picky eater" for his flaws

when he was a kid he wanted to fly but he already knew why humans couldn't fly so instead he tried to decrease his bone density. (it's giving me as a kid bc i knew babies were made with a sperm and egg but i didn't know HOW those two met so I asked my mother in complete terror whether my dad was in her tummy like me. like fully in her stomach)

in the "animal tails" text exchange if you suggest he's bad at expressing emotions he says maybe you just need to get better at reading emotions. this suggests he isn't trying to be a standoffish Ice Prince. he is legitimately trying his best and as far as he understands thinks he's being genuine and clear. I thought I'd be the only one that was getting spectrum vibes from the boi lolol

alsoo could be a stretch but there is a photo booth pose specific to only Zayne called "clutch claw" where he has his hands dangling in front of him. my first thought was it's almost like the T-Rex hands which I recently found out is a common thing people on the spectrum do

He is the only one who smiles when you open the notebook for reminders and period tracking. This is, again, obviously not concrete on its own, but it does lend to the idea. He obviously struggles with being misunderstood or people believing he is cold, but the notebook is proof he's paying attention and cares, so of course he's happy to see us open it and see that. Or even just to use it to give him the chance to prove it in a way that is "meaningful".

In the Glittering Lights tender moments, he misinterprets MC's excitement and gives her an awkward high five.

when you let him decide what clothes to wear he wears sunglasses indoors, light sensitivity

When you catch Fluffy Thistle plushie with him, he gives a fact about cacti flowers, following with the fact that he once ate a cactus.

you are NOT immune to my "each LI has a different MC" propaganda

Zayne's MC: no I DON'T want to put deeper thought into the root cause of my crippling self hatred. do you wanna pretend we're penguins and waddle around linkon city or not babygirl the plushie lore won't write itself.

Xavier's MC: Wait so WHO are you. WHAT are you doing in this forest. WHAT are you doing in my apartment building. And for gods' sake can you lock the fuck in my dude your work ethic is atrocious

Rafayel's MC: Listen here twink tell me about the rich history of lumerian culture or I'll smack you so quick you won't be able to say jiminy cricket

Sylus' MC: I am completely unable to express my feelings for you verbally but that's okay because you can't do it either so let's just go shopping and abuse the power of sarcasm.

I have an entire Pinterest board dedicated to Robert Pattinson news article titles I took this so seriously guys

there's such a simple answer to this whole thing, and it's that anyone can play the game, but the game isn't obligated to give you an option to change the gender of the MC.

can you make your mc look more masculine? sure, if that's what you want to do. i've seen plenty of people do that.

would more masc hairstyles be nice? sure, it adds variety.

but is the game obligated to make a whole new male 3D model, implement it into all the animations, get an entirely new voice actor for it, add a voiced dialogue option for every message that says she or her, and all that jazz, just because you don't like the main character's gender? hell nah. that's so much time, money, and effort for something comparatively useless considering the mc's personality isn't even guaranteed to be similar to yours, so it would never be an accurate version of you.

like, self-inserting yourself is entirely up to you and how you choose to interpret the material they give you. for all they know, you could be a dude who dresses in drag and goes by she/her pronouns. but the mc is the mc, and you gotta make do with it. same goes for otomes that have a male mc.

in the end, no matter what genre it is, a game is telling a story, and the "you" is still a character, since you don't get to write your dialogue and actions for yourself. asking the game to spend so much time and money to change such a core element of itself instead of simply imagining it up in your head is pretty similar to asking the author of a book to change the plot instead of reading a fix-it on ao3.

so, essentially, i do not give a flying FUCK who plays LADS you could be a duck or a goose or a pig for all i care, but if LADS didn't make the game the exact way you wanted the game made, that's not a homophobia or a transphobia problem, that's a you problem, and you need to be introduced to the concept of self insert fanfiction and commission some yumeship fanart.