If it would be fun, can you please tell me some Bakura things I wouldn’t know if I haven’t paid any attention to YGO since the end of the original manga?
His favorite food is roast pork and his least favorite food is... uh... chickpea paste or something that's basically hummus. Which is blasphemy in my opinion and a bit odd considering that he literally eats raw garlic in the manga. Also did hummus exist in ancient Egypt? Idfk.
By the by, pork was considered an unclean food in ancient Egypt and you only ate it if A, you were super poor and couldn't afford anything else, or B, didn't give a fuck about the gods. So, you know. Struggling orphaned child giving a middle finger to the gods who abandoned him.
If you haven't seen me already post about this, he is shorter than Ryou and as a gemshipper I find that fucking adorable. Smol king!
Kul Elna is based on Deir el-Medina, a real-world village of ancient Egyptian tomb builders who became tomb robbers because they weren't making enough money to survive. However, there is also a modern village in Egypt named Kurna/Qurna/Gurneh that is also known for its tomb robbers - there was a famous family called the abd-er Rassul brothers who had an "uncanny ability" to find tombs. They discovered the famous royal cache of mummies in Deir el-Bahri in the 1870s and were ratted out by other Kurnans to local Egyptologists in the 1880s, which is how we know about the cache. Anyhow. Kul Elna - or how it's written in Japanese, Kurueruna - sounds a lot like Kurna and I think that's very interesting.
By the by, one of the ways the abd-er Rassul brothers found tombs was by watching the way water ran through the Valley on the rare occasions it rained. So I think Bakura would have enjoyed the rain. I also feel like he'd thrive in the chaotic and obscuring environment of a desert storm.
I had more typed up but was veering more and more into headcanon, so I'll stop here. I could go on forever, lol. Thank you!
toushindai said: hello this post is four months old but I love it, thank you for it. you mentioned vibing with Breq because she’s aro/ace but did she seem autistic to you as well? she pings that way for me with like. alexithymia and feeling of “everyone expects me to be ‘human’ but I’m definitely something a little different from that”
(oh wait wasn’t there a thing once where you had to @ people so they could see you said a thing to them??? @toushindai just in case)
Thank you!!! <3 Okay time for Talk About Breq then!
Short answer to “does Breq ping autistic for me” : Yes and Maybe?
Long answer:
The Ancillary books are peak comfort books to me. They are absolute comfort food in book form, except that sometimes comfort food is like “this is bad for you that’s why it’s so good” or “this is kind of garbage but I like it because it’s my garbage”, but these books don’t require a compromise.
My other peak comfort books are the Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander, but those are more like “I grew up with them” comfort books. They are familiar, they give me feels, they are what I think of when I think of Fantasy, I could read them at any moment no matter how I feel and I will enjoy them, I used to root for Taran like “I WANT ADVENTURE AND TO BE SPECIAL” and I’ll never stop rooting for Eilonwy but now I’m like “I love all these adults who are hoping Taran will get to the 4th book and get some common sense faster, especially Coll who is the epitome of a Link bless him”, and the way Eilonwy is framed can be problematic, and other things, but comfort and I will overlook it. I have known these characters and watched them struggle and grow and get killed off by the author all my life. I have read these books to death. They are comfort.
The Ancillary books were instant comfort on the first reading. And it’s not just the singing-crying-singing-while-crying wholesomeness of the character intimacies. Something about the writing is so comfortable.
And I wonder if it’s because it feels familiar and autistic.
I have been on the internet too long and in literature classes too long lol, I immediately want to start in on justifications and rationalizations and “well.....”s. There’s a lot of places this could be coming from. I liked best one of the literary theories proposed by Fish? Which had chairs or tables or something? Look that class was traumatic and I don’t remember Anyway the way I’d summarize my takeaway is, you get out what you put in. The author clearly was writing with intention, but the author isn’t standing here telling you exactly what they meant and maybe if that was what they wanted they should have just written those exact words, but the interpretation you come away with will depend on the experiences you bring to the table (and people who have experiences similar to you will likely read a thing in a similar way).
So, maybe I see autistic tendencies in these books because I am autistic myself. Maybe the things that strike me as autistic are just a consequence of the way the narrative has to be structured and have nothing to do with autism at all. Maybe Breq is totally autistic, but the fact that autism is underdiagnosed and goes unrecognized in society when it’s not Presented Exactly This Way means Leckie could have done it without knowing she was doing it. Maybe these books feel so comfy and autistic because, uhhhhhh I’m trying really hard not to be that joke in Hannah Gadsby’s comedy routine Douglas that was like “All of you who came up to me and told me I was autistic, thanks you were right, also have you considered that y’all are probably autistic too because this is yet another thing we do”, anyway I don’t really know Leckie I don’t know her life and it would be rude of me to speculate things for her as she is not a fictional character laid out for me, all I know is that it’s a fact that our own personal biases are reflected in our writing (but backward extrapolating things about the author from the author’s writing is not reliable). Maybe the fact that Artificial Intelligence basically means Artificial(ly created) People means that obviously there would be neurodivergent things about Breq; ships and stations are people, but they are not human, and they are especially not neurotypical humans.
Hmmmm there might be more but anyway, this is really just me talking about My Interpretation Through An Autistic Lens.
Re: alexithymia, I feel like that’s not a very big thing for me (either I don’t get it so much or else I haven’t identified it in me), so I don’t really have much to say on that topic. In a non-personal sense, I feel like that’s surely a thing for Breq. Maybe it’s the “Seivarden’s not my favorite that’s all” vs “I hate Seivarden and wish I could quit her” vs “seriously why can’t I quit her” vs “Breq has guilt and grief over not being able to save Awn that leads her to be unable to abandon Seivarden, who she thinks is a jackass, because Seivarden is within her reach and can be protected and Breq wants people to be able to live and be happy and be swaddled in blankets and not get killed by Anaander Mianaai and the society Anander Mianaai created.” Maybe it’s the “I don’t know why I do the things I do.” Maybe it’s the Breq: “I had complete control of my face and no one could tell what I was feeling” Person: “Please don’t murder me” “Please sit down your hip is killing me” “You have been crying for the past fifteen minutes are you okay????” (The other alternative is that Breq is lying, or Breq is lying to herself to make it definitely true that she is definitely not Having Emotions, which is how I generally interpret it, but I feel like alexithymia could maybe work like this???)
The Singing
The singing has got to be a stim. Even if that’s not how it started (both in the book and in the meta), it’s just...it’s got to be. It is easy to overlook because Breq doesn’t mention it constantly, but we are told repeatedly by other characters that Breq makes noise almost constantly. IDK the “stimming is self-regulation” definition never makes sense to me, but Breq stims in the definition that I know in myself. Breq sings like breathing. Breq sings thoughtlessly, constantly, because she exists, while doing other things that are actually important and get narrated. Breq sings leisurely, deliberately, picking out a song and enjoying the singing of it (and narrating it to us, because it’s important). Breq sings because she is desperate, frustrated, unable to cope, and it is the only thing holding her together. Breq sings because she is upset. Breq sings because she is content. Breq’s behavior is a communication once people get to know her, because they can tell what mood she’s in by her singing (and not just whether or not she is singing), and I’m sure it’s not info conveyed by the songs themselves.
(The singing is also a special interest. Aaaahaha oh gosh remember that time when the children came over and were like “I have a song for you” and One Esk very intently said nothing and made no reaction at all because obviously FUCK YEAH NEW SONG, PLEASE START THE SING, and Daos Ceit[’s friend I think, I’m in the middle of a reread and I always forget that My Heart Is A Fish Child is not Flower Bearer Child who is Daos Ceit, SO HERE HAVE THIS EDIT] had to be like “uhhhhhh.....do you.........want to hear it....????” still doubtful of my identity, likely uh-huh yeah or doubtful of your communication skills.)
Also: the way Breq talks about how bodies get stressed and need things, and how certain things need to be done to take care of a body so it is comfortable, and how nice it is to be able to switch out an overstimulated body for a body that is comfortable so that you can handle a situation without having a meltdown, and how horrible it is to have only one body and it is stressed and overstimulated and headed for a meltdown so you can’t stop yourself from being angry and shooting yourself in the foot, because society (and Anaander) gives you no option to take care of your own comfort and prioritize your own needs.
Another thing that I guess feels very familiar to me is the way that Breq compartmentalizes, and masks, and exists. I mean, I dunno, did your average reader of the book, like, actually need the explanation of how One Esk is both Justice of Toren and separate and how Breq’s identity as Breq relates to all that? I know that it is self-evident to me because of how my mind works because I am autistic but I am genuinely curious if this was not obvious to other people. (And Anaander too. Like wow Anaander how did you not see that coming.) And Breq attempting to act like A Human Being in order to manage Living In Society is, to me, the definition of masking. It is not a lie, it is not a full persona, it is a survival strategy that you don’t always have a choice in adopting.
A tangent to that is the way that Breq analyzes the world. It feels extremely natural, maybe because it also upon inspection seems extremely autistic. It’s another one of those “maybe that’s just how the narrative had to be structured” things--Breq doesn’t actually know what people are thinking and feeling, Breq is the only viewpoint, and the author sometimes wants us to have a good idea what other people are thinking and feeling. But that doesn’t negate the fact that this feels like a very autistic approach. As a ship, Justice of Toren was supposed to anticipate and satisfy the needs of its crew, pulling biological data to supplement past observation to provide context for the current moment. As a ship that is expected to be a human being, Breq laments that lack of access to data but still takes the same approach. When describing people’s emotional states or intentions, she often hedges with “I thought” or “it seemed to me” kinds of phrases. She studies and tries to interpret body language. She considers the context of what she knows of the person, how past conversations have gone, how the conversation so far has gone, how her actions might be affecting the other person. She is constantly analyzing, scrutinizing, trying to navigate, trying to figure out what is actually going on. As an autistic human being who is expected to be a neurotypical, I feel I am similarly called upon to be a mind reader, trying to decipher “what is that body language are they mad” “what is the socially correct response to an older adult stranger in the grocery store telling me that their elderly parent just passed away” “is this a joke, does this person joke with me a lot and should I assume it’s rhetorical” “what is the correct way to interpret this because this person does not actually want to know if I, yes or no, know what time it is” “how did we get here was this a topic jump or did I completely misunderstand the context.” The amount of energy that Breq has to put into analyzing other people’s motivations to give you a well-rounded narrative is the same amount of energy I have to put into just surviving interactions during a grocery store trip without being shunned for being a horribly rude b*tch.
Seivarden feels familiar too. I know a lot of what we see is recovering addict Seivarden, but I feel it is important to remember that this cannot be separated from the reasons Seivarden became an addict in the first place. (Also I guess the internet did imply to me that addition is common in autistics because it either helps turn down the world or makes you stop caring that you can’t turn down the world? IDK alcohol burns too much and other things would require effort and honestly I’m even afraid of being sedated because I might stop masking and I do not ever want my most real self to be experienced by anyone but me.) Seivarden is unable to cope with stress and life and sensory input because she is in withdrawal, but Seivarden has never been able to cope with stress and life and sensory input. See the whole bit about being steady. Seivarden flew under the radar as steady (as did so many others with privilege) because privilege is a kind of support system. Seivarden had a good name (so was less likely to be judged or judged as harshly for erratic behavior), Seivarden had money (so could afford conveniences to reduce stress and make life more comfy), Seivarden had a respected job (see both above, plus the literal support system of a ship tending to her needs), and if things hadn’t worked out as they did Seivarden could have gone on one of those prolonged meditation retreats that privileged citizens can afford and definitely aren’t doing for mental health reasons when the stress got to be too much for her to maintain the illusion of coping.
Seivarden had a meltdown on her first mission and went in a moment from “I’m doing great everything is under control” to trying to bash or shoot someone in the head to make the noise stop. I feel I have a good argument for meltdown here because Seivarden is generally a dick in unthinking ways rather than actively kicking the crap out of people; shortly after, Seivarden demands that Esk shut the prisoner up and it is implied that Seivarden is too privileged and ignorant to realize she is asking Esk to kill the prisoner (ie, Seivarden is not intentionally asking Esk to kill the prisoner, or Seivarden would have said that). The meltdown is uncharacteristic violence for Seivarden.
(Punching a wall and breaking her hand and then attempting to punch the wall more was another meltdown. Giving herself alcohol poisoning was another meltdown. I lost my links to all the blogs I’d been reading but someone had described how it was not that he was actively suicidal, but life is constantly too much and there is no escape and the only way to say “I would like to stop the world and get off now” is to die. Given that Breq is like “why won’t you just go register your intent to commit suicide if you have a death wish” I feel there’s a case that Seivarden does not want to kill herself, she just wants to be dead most of the time. I understand this feel because I am also autistic and would also like to be dead all the time because I will never, ever be able to escape other people having control of my body and my comfort--and hurting me and causing me distress and discomfort.)
Well that’s a downer to end on but I wrote A Lot and I am Le Tired and I probably have lots more but it’s not on the top of my head.
tl;dr - I guess I don’t think “Breq is autistic” to myself in those exact words but I do think “well obviously Breq wouldn’t be a neurotypical human, being a non-human person” and “wow these books sure feel autistic and seem to have a lot of autism in them haha” so I mean really that’s kind of the same thing, I clearly seem to think there is lots of autistic coding there, thanks for encouraging my Ted Talks
LOL between your "spike trap below" post and the actual spike trap post, tumblr stuck a recommended post of... a very beaten-up-looking Zagreus. Tartarus simulator on my dash this morning.
BIG yes to Hades/Persephone/Nyx. Persephone and Nyx are totally in love and no one can change my mind. concept: the three of them had never thought it would work before, given what a mess the olympians make of their own affairs--but now that they see that Zagreus is making things work respectfully on his own end, they conclude that maybe they, too...
Yesssss, I love that idea so much! Persephone comes walking into the Great Hall and Nyx just realizes how much she MISSED her, how much that little bit of sunlight made her darkness shine all the brighter, and Persephone just has her breath taken away because she forgot how regal and imposing and absolutely beautiful Nyx could be, the one who first showed her how beautiful the darkness really could be, even as she missed the light of the surface, but neither of them really act on it, because, well, it isn’t the time or place and so much was still shaky. But, Zagreus really changed everything for them both. He showed them they could make things better just by pure stubbornness and good heartedness, and then when they see how happy he is with his two lovers, it’s just... If he could show them the way back home, why can’t he show them the way in this, too?
