#if u have epilepsy or a language disorder and i got anything wrong/said anything problematic here pls lmk!

[autistic-beshelar]

Neurodivergent Link Headcanons (BOTW)

Here are... my headcanons for ND Link! I’ve tried to put them in fairly concise bullet points so hopefully they make sense. A lot of the autistic/adhd traits overlap, but I’ve put them in separate sections just to try and make this easier to read 

Headcanons under the cut!

Autism:

 - sensory seeking! Link needs constant stimulation and his preferred sensory input is touch, whether it’s rubbing his palms over tree bark or smushing his face in soft pillows. Auditory and visual stimulation are good too, but he’s very, very tactile. Of course taste is another big thing for him, he loves cooking and trying out new food and exploring different tastes, whether it’s sweet or spicy or sour, the stronger the better.

- he stims. SO MUCH. he has so many stims that I’m going to make a separate post to include all of them, but the main ones are rocking and flapping his hands.

- very good with gross motor skills, generally good with fine motor skills but there are a select few he struggles with - he has very poor handwriting, has to focus tying shoelaces, struggles washing his hair, overestimates how hard he’s brushing his teeth and makes his gums bleed

- poor interoception. Has a hard time telling when he’s hungry, or tired, or in pain. Sometimes he will walk around with an injury and not realise until he sees blood. Finds it hard to recognise negative sensations and his body tends to just interpret them as discomfort.

- very good at recognising and deciphering expressions and body language, but not particularly good at (or interested in) emulating it. He’s very astute and can pick up on microexpressions and hidden glances and the like, and can work out people’s true feelings or motivations, but in a social context he’s not necessarily good at responding to it.

- easily picks up on small details and notices things others don’t - this can be related to the former point, but also just in general. Also very good at pattern recognition which lends itself well to solving shrines.

- nonverbal. Mostly uses sign to communicate, or noises (usually with animals or people he’s comfortable with). Can occasionally manage to speak in short bursts when he has to, but it’s few words and usually stuttered, and if he gets at all stressed (which he often does if he’s forced to talk) he won’t be able to say much of anything. He can talk a little around Sidon and Zelda, they’re pretty much the only he feels comfortable enough to be verbal with, and they understand the way he talks and are patient when he’s slow or gets words mixed up.

- difficulty with eye contact. Either too little or too much, though usually it’s the former. He only tends to stare at people if he likes them, or if he’s angry with them or trying to make them uncomfortable

- echo echo lalia. Loves to repeat fun noises, especially animal noises, but sometimes words (sees a dog and just goes doggy doggy doggy doggy doggy for the next hour). He does this with sign as well, but tends to prefer making fun mouth sounds

- special interests in food and horses! Those twins at the stable were right. That’s all that’s on his mind. Food and horses. He really loves trying out new ingredient combinations and exploring different tastes. And he knows a great many horse facts. 

- forms connections with animals more easily than with people. This is partly because when he first left the Shrine of Resurrection he was alone in the wilderness, and partly because he doesn’t really talk, but it’s also just an autism thing. People are friendly to him, but he doesn’t tend to form deep connections with them like he does with animals.

- can tell the time by the position of the sun in the sky but can’t read a clock. What are those numbers on the slate. It’s a mystery!

- has mild visual processing issues, mostly struggles to focus on things like screens or pages, things look blurry or strangely coloured, or have a weird overlay.

ADHD:

- inattentive AND hyperactive AND impulsive, a triple threat

- gets the Zoomies. Often ends up conking out afterwards. Will run around chasing frogs all day and then just fall asleep in the middle of a field

- Can’t Stay Still. Has To Bounce Leg.

- nonexistent sleep schedule. Granted, he doesn’t sleep well or regularly what with travelling all over Hyrule, but even without that his sleep would be terrible

- sometimes zones out in the middle of a conversation. Good luck guessing whether he’s having a seizure or if he’s just thinking really hard about jellyfish

- alternatively, he will hyperfocus. Very good at hyperfocusing on shrines, or anything that involves challenges. Also good at hyperfocusing on physical activities.

- executive functioning… what’s that. Link doesn’t know. Link can’t organise to save his life and honestly thank god for the sheikah slate because without it he’d be screwed. Cannot schedule, cannot plan, cannot organise. 

- thrillseeking!!! He gets easily understimulated and needs adrenaline to survive. Will do anything remotely dangerous for fun and profit. 

- often thinks very quickly, usually jumping quickly from one thing to the next, but only about certain subjects (usually related to animals, nature, food, chaotic activities) and usually when he’s full of adrenaline. Although other times, especially when he’s tired, it’s just. Dial up noises. Head empty

- focus juice… for mentally taxing activites? Nonexistent.

Expressive language disorder:

(It used to be separated into receptive language disorder, expressive language disorder, or mixed, but these days it’s lumped together into developmental language disorder. However I use expressive language disorder for link because he specifically only has problems with expressive language (forming his own words) and not receptive language (understanding other people’s words)).

- gets words in the wrong order

- sometimes replaces a word with something else, especially if the signs are similar

- has difficulty with tenses (more so in verbal speech)

- often misses out words completely

- has quite a large vocabulary, but struggles with word recall. Will sometimes remember the word he meant to use hours later

- often flaps his hands in an attempt to remember a word, if he can’t think of it he will try to find an alternative

- c a n n o t  s p e l l. Sometimes when he doesn’t know the sign for something, he’ll try to fingerspell it, but if the word is hard to spell he’ll try and find an alternative

- finds sign much easier than spoken language, because its grammatical structure (particularly how it uses tenses and combines language with muscle memory) is simpler to use for him, and because it’s so expressive he finds it easier to get his point across

- his language disorder is a part of why he’s nonverbal (as well as that he has a bit of a stutter), so signing in general is just much easier, though not everyone knows sign, and he isn’t fluent himself.

Epilepsy: 

- has temporal lobe epilepsy

- mostly gets absence seizures and focal seizures

- absence seizures (essentially his brain ‘switching off’) are his more common ones. They usually only last a couple of seconds, and tend to look like he’s just distracted or zoning out (which he also does because of ADHD), though sometimes his eyelids will flicker, or if he’s walking or doing something he’ll suddenly stop, and go back to it like nothing happened. He isn’t aware of them at all. If they happen during something like a conversation with someone, he’ll just dismiss it as being distracted, though he does start to notice when he has longer absences and misses whole sentences, or has clusters of absences.

- focal aware seizures (auras) usually present as deja-vu, intense fear, or out of body feelings. He doesn’t realise they’re seizures for a while, since he experiences these anyway, and attributes the deja-vu to the memory loss, but eventually learns to tell them apart because his auras tend to come on very suddenly, though they can last a while

- he also gets focal impaired awareness ones, which tend to happen more when he’s very tired, especially when waking up/going to sleep. When he gets auras he’s still completely aware of his surroundings (and usually doesn’t have trouble moving, unless it’s a particularly bad one), but with impaired awareness he gets drowsy and confused, and won’t understand what people are saying

- usually his focal seizures stay just that, but sometimes they will become tonic-clonic seizures. This is usually only when he’s exhausted/injured/extremely stressed/otherwise worn down. Most of the time his auras come on soon enough to warn him he might have a worse seizure, so he can go somewhere safe (at least, once he realises he’s epileptic

- they’re arguably the mildest, but his absence seizures at the most dangerous, even though they’re usually short, because he gets no warning for them. He usually gets them a couple of times a day (especially waking up/going to sleep), but he gets them more frequently if he’s very tired, and if he gets absence clusters it makes it really hard to do anything.

- his main triggers are sleep deprivation, missing meals, extreme stress, and extreme heat. Which is unfortunate considering he spends his time running around Hyrule on no sleep and forgets to eat all the time.

in conclusion link is neurodivergent and i love him. thank u for ur time pls feel free to comment ur opinions and headcanons etc