disco

I thought about Katsuki getting punished by Mitsuki for every autistic trait he displayed as a kid and I made myself sad. especially because he had a GREAT model for what an autistic child with a supportive adult could look like: Izuku & Inko. but if he tried to stim alongside Izuku, he was in trouble.

he's not allowed to rock up on his toes or flap his hands or shake his head around like Izuku does. he doesn't get to hug himself or make soothing noises or talk to himself. he can't script phrases from the hero footage that he likes watching, because that's not allowed. Izuku can script all he likes, and Inko will figure out what every phrase is supposed to mean instead of making Izuku change for her sake.

but Katsuki's mom says that's weird. he needs to use the right words to tell her if he wants something, or he's not getting it. he can't even stim in more subtle ways like playing with his fingers or his hair, because she'll yell at him if she catches him doing that, too. no wonder the poor baby is so dysregulated all the time! he's got to be Perfect 24/7 and he doesn't know how to do that

that would also contribute to his resentment of Izuku when they got older. he wouldn't register that being forced to constantly mask your autism versus never learning to mask at all are each a struggle in their own right. he'd just see that Izuku is allowed to indulge in all the traits Mitsuki hates about Katsuki, and it's not fair. Katsuki wants to be openly autistic, too, but it's not allowed. why is Izuku allowed to break social rules, huh?! why is Katsuki not allowed to break the same rules he does? ugh. nerd. >:[

(Izuku very much is not being allowed to be autistic. he's getting bullied HARD for acting the way he does. Katsuki is doing a lot of the bullying. this does not cross his mind as being hypocritical or contradictory until they're in high school)

Katsuki is autistic and his support needs aren't being met until he's nearing adulthood poor baby send tweet

moot, you're so right, thank you for blessing my inbox with this 🥹

i've been in both places — my mum didn't recognise my autism as a kid, so i was never diagnosed and she just thought that i was strange or naughty as a kid. but i was allowed to express the "harmless" symptoms of my autism, and i never learned to mask until i went to a new school and was bullied severely. then i was masking constantly. i've only recently been diagnosed (i was diagnosed last year, when i was seventeen), and i've been trying to unmask and express myself how i want to — but now that i'm no longer a child and my autism impacts me in ways that are inconvenient to her, my mum has a problem with me expressing my autism. so. my babies 😭 anyway, enough about me yapping, onto The Boys

it must've been absolute hell for katsuki, growing up with mitsuki. he would've literally been abused into masking, no wonder he's Like That. i can also really see mitsuki not understanding/recognising symptoms of autism. he's not stimming, he's just being weird and aggressive and embarrassing. he's not scripting (i know it as echolalia so i hope i'm using it right), he's just being confusing and annoying and uncooperative. he doesn't have problems with volume control and tone, he's just being rude and argumentative and looking for a fight. he's not lashing out because he's overstimulated, he's lashing out because he's a horrible brat. he's not hiding in his room because he's burnt-out, he's hiding in his room because he's ungrateful and antisocial. etc.

i feel like she'd interpret everything in the most bad-faith way possible, because that's apparently just how she is as a person.

inko, on the other hand, knows what autism looks like. she knows that her son's autistic, because she knows that her husband's autistic. and she also sees those traits in katsuki, so she tries to help as best she can, but he's always masking and suppressing himself, so she figures she'll leave it to his parents and focus on izuku.

but yeah, he's literally being abused and treated badly for his symptoms. his needs aren't being met and he's constantly being pushed to his limits or outbursts (katsuki w IED sneak), then punished for reacting to that abuse instead of just rolling over and taking it. actual example from canon; when he's chained up at the sports fest and "going crazy". he's demonised for being distressed whilst publicly restrained and gagged.

i'd be thrashing and screaming too, because who the fuck likes being restrained against their will??? i, as an autistic person, certainly fucking wouldn't.

on a side note i just had a thought ... it would be kinda hot to force rindou to make videos with other children.... sjskjsksjsksksk sorry if these questions have been answered before loving the series so far !!!!! (*^3(*^o^*) 💞💞

We'll get more into the commission ring later in the series, actually. It ends up coming up in part 5, so some minor spoilers here.

Technically, it runs very deep and there were different branches and types of films being made depending on who/what was involved. The shit is usually dropped before they turn 13, so Touya would've been dropped anyway if the fire didn't happen. They specifically don't use kids they intend to be heroes for it, so like, Hawks and Bounce Boy wouldn't had been involved because they were being trained to be heroes. Can't risk those videos being found of top heroes, or risk "fucking up" their future top heroes. Different type of trafficking there.

Stain was involved too, though his own thing was probably a little differently. You should ask @hearth4dayss about Stain's hero commission ring shit, because it'll come up later for both him and Dabi, and Stain has his own whole thing going on with it.

In this case though, unlike the lab for example, Touya was not favored or special or anything like that. He was kinda just another number, just another person they used. Since he was already pre-groomed and had all this normalization of being mistreated, Touya (or Rindou to be more specific) was more involved in heavier more violent films; like faux snuff, hardcore & hurtcore, and black market quirk baby bullshit. Other kids were not involved with Touya specifically, it was only adult men within the commission or heroes with their identities hidden in the films because, again, this would look really bad coming out. Touya learned to think he was something special, and this was a special opportunity he was being given bc he didn't see the other victims, but a lot of that was manipulation. They knew Touya wanted to be in the hero world, wanted Daddy to approve of him and daddy's cool hero friends to like him, and they told him it was a special thing he could do within the commission and maybe he could get a chance at being a hero if he did it and proved himself (all completely lies,b they had no intention of making him a hero esp bc his quirk is defective.)

It was definitely a regular thing, probably at least a couple times a month outside of the programming itself. There's a lot of "movies" that were made, a lot of Touya, and they were distributed within the hero commission through trading collections, most of which never made it to, like, the Internet or anything like that. That'd be too risky. A lot of heroes were involved, especially older generation heroes, but also just a lot of commission workers. Again Touya was not the only one, there were many more. Most of them are probably dead.