#[ if anything in here strikes anyone who experiences asd themselves as wrong or uninformed up to current research; drop me a dm and i will

[vindictiveking]

:: HEADCANON // autism spectrum disorder.

Dimitri has always been a bit “FUSSY“ about certain things like texture and sound. He’s never really UNDERSTOOD most other children his age, either-- always far too EARNEST and LITERAL to pick up on things like pranks or jokes. As a kid, partly because he is the crown prince of Faerghus and partly because he doesn’t understand social clues for the life of him, he has trouble making friends with others. He doesn’t GET why some people are so afraid to talk to him, and other times he is too IN YOUR FACE and TALKATIVE when it comes to things that he is very interested in, so it unnerves people.

Dimitri, while undiagnosed because of the setting of Fodlan, is autistic. He has always been an EXTREMELY picky eater, refusing to eat anything that hasn’t been separated properly, and if it’s too mushy, he gags. This only gets WORSE after the Tragedy, when he loses his sense of taste. If he touches something that he categorizes as “BAD TEXTURE,” it can be incredibly DISTRESSING, and he will stim in order to try to make the feeling go away. All of his clothing is made of very soft material, because certain fabrics make his skin PRICKLE no matter how long he has it on. He HATES wearing jewelry, though as he grows up, he gets used to wearing it. While he doesn’t exactly have a problem with loud music ( he actually likes it, as long as it’s the right genre ), certain sounds and pitches make him want to rip his eardrums out.  If he gets FRUSTRATED enough about being unable to communicate what he needs, he can become visibly upset ( + stims ). If his core routines are broken ( e.g. taking a walk around the monastery at sunset, eating lunch at exactly noon, taking a specific path from his dorm to the classroom ), he can become very ANXIOUS.

He has autism meltdowns when he experiences SENSORY OVERLOAD, which can be caused by the things listed in the above paragraph. During a meltdown, he will sometimes curl up into a ball and rock back and forth. He usually ends up alternating between incessant stimming and holding his hands tightly over his ears. Often, when this happens, he tends to yell if ANYONE around him is adding stimuli to his already overloading senses. Other times, he goes NONVERBAL. He does not need to be melting down to go nonverbal, though-- if he has not had enough time to recharge his SOCIAL BATTERY between long periods of socialization, or after interacting with people he finds to be DIFFICULT to understand or read. He can also go nonverbal if overwhelmed by emotion, or when he’s being criticized.

As he grows older, he learns how to MASK his symptoms, which basically just means that he learns how to COPY allistic people in order to FIT IN. The adults in his life also condition him into SUPPRESSING his intense emotional outbursts for as long as he can instead of allowing him to EXPRESS them in a manner that will make it easier to deal with in the future. When his parents die, Dimitri isolates himself for a long period of time, becoming almost completely nonverbal for weeks save for when he talks to Dedue. He also suppresses all of the anger caused by this, not wanting to MAKE A SCENE and be scolded.

Because he HAS TO learn how to interact with many people at a time without trying to escape, Dimitri learns to let out his intense emotions only when he’s training or fighting. It becomes a terrible coping mechanism, as when outside of fighting, he does not really KNOW how to express these things in a MEANINGFUL manner. This makes him a bit more volatile, and though he has become extremely good at shoving everything down, he still, of course, has meltdowns. If he feels one coming on, he tries to ISOLATE himself from other people in order to avoid EMBARRASSING the royal family.