Since the last neurodivergent!Din post I made provoked so much thoughtful discussion (thank you for that, if you interacted!) I've been thinking about the possibility of Din potentially being nd more and more. Specifically, the way his upbringing in his covert would have impacted on him if he is indeed neurodivergent and I have some thoughts.
I think the way Din was raised would definitely have helped mask his autistic traits successfully in some ways, but also made them stand out more once it came to interacting with people from outside his covert.
Think about it... once he was taken from Aq Vetina and raised by the Children of The Watch, from a very young age he never had to show his face to anyone, ever again. So the tribe that adopted him never got to see the pain and terror that he was experiencing due to the trauma of losing his parents. Which, if he is neurodivergent, I can imagine his new caregivers not realising how upset he was. It's heartbreaking to think about Din experiencing incredible emotional pain following the trauma of losing his parents, yet struggling to communicate it to anyone in his tribe. You tend to realise a kid is upset based on how they look and if the tribe couldn't see his face... I can't stop thinking about baby Din crying behind his helmet and it hurts.
Plus, because he swore the Creed and had to hide his face forever, there was no need to make eye contact or pressure to learn that skill. Which granted, is a skill he doesn't need, but it's still a part of communicating with others that he never learned. When we see him at the beginning of the series, the way he communicates is very direct which was probably fine in his covert but outside of it, he could be viewed as rude. To me, at the start of the show, it feels like he doesn't necessarily see the point of talking, beyond the bare minimum. Which is a mood. Even though he talks far more as the series progress, it's still quite direct communication and he doesn't really participate in small talk. He speaks a lot to Grogu, a child who cannot communicate back to him.
When it comes to adults in the show, every time we've seen Din interacting with groups, it always feels as though he doesn't quite fit in. His covert don't seem to like him that much, he didn't fit in on Sorgan with Omera, he didn't fit in with Xi'an and co in The Passenger, he didn't really fit in with Greef (and Cara) on Nevarro in Season 2. The last scene of season three is not him on a unified Mandalore... once again, he's alone. He's always been an outsider.
Also, the way he was raised by being hidden away on Concordia, it formed the views that we see beginning to be tested throughout the series. The fact the formative years of his life were spent with a tribe with a very strict Creed, it means he learnt what Mandalorians are from his covert and nowhere else. To an autistic person, who can have very rigid and literal patterns of thought, he might have truly believed the Way he follows is the only way to be Mandalorian. I think this is also why he's so certain that Bo-Katan is not Mandalorian when they first meet, because to him, she can't possibly be. But actually, the more he learns about her and other Mandalorians, the more he's happy to admit he's wrong. Something that neurotypicals often fail to do with grace.
I think season three more than proved that Din is not a zealot, he's actually incredibly compassionate, tolerant and accepting of difference. And there's a possibility that the reason for that somewhat sudden shift is that he could be autistic.
That's why, again, I think his open-mindedness is precisely why he is such a comforting character for neurodivergent people or indeed anyone who doesn't fit in with the norm... because it really does feel as though we could be our true selves around him and he wouldn't judge us or make us feel bad for being different.
Please please let me hug him.
14 notes
·
View notes
4k followers!
Ngl this is making me emotional 🥹 I remember last summer i saved S4 of Stranger Things until my holidays to properly enjoy it so I was thinking it's been about a year since i became obsessed with steddie. I checked and: on the 7th of August I shared my very first steddie fic on ao3 after years of barely writing anything at all, and i stopped being a near-dormant bastille blog on here a week later. In the year that followed, I gained all of you as followers, I found some truly wonderful people on tumblr, made lovely new friends on discord, and uploaded about 20 fics on ao3. It's been a year with a lot of personal changes and the fact that I've had this support system has truly made my life much better. I've been in multiple fandoms before, but never to this degree and with this amount of creativity, so I'm honestly insanely grateful that that happened!
I thought it'd be nice to celebrate so I'll share a list of my current WIPs and you can send me the title + either a ☕ or a 👀 emoji. If you send a ☕, I'll spill the tea on what it's about, and if you send a 👀 I'll give you a lil snippet of what I got so far 😄
Roadtrip summer challenge
Edancy siblings
Eddie in prison
Nun!Robin
Wayne POV
Love, Simon AU
Orrr if you just wanna talk about random stuff you can literally send me whatever, I always love to chat about basically anything 💜 Just join my lil party i guess 🥳🥳
17 notes
·
View notes
Hello I'd like to take a moment to say that
it is not easy to digest a back-handed compliments, especially in comment section. “it could have been better...”, “you should have gone with your writing style”, “experimenting doesn't suit you.”, “i was so confused reading this...” etc etc.
They're like a chain reaction; one states and others join in but I've never seen someone leaving encouraging comments and others joining in ( very rare. )
Needless to say that it takes ample amount of patience and time to write, to describe, to frame a post. And y'all just read in few minutes, mostly half-and a hour ( for 10k wc fic )
Reading takes time, reading takes attention, reading takes patience too. All I'm saying is, don't block an artist's growth. Experiments are part of an artist's journey. We aren't always at the top of our game. We are more aware of our flaws than you think :) We are never going to be flawless but all we can do is to be almost perfect.
44 notes
·
View notes