#ty ily sorry for the tag rant hahah <3 <3 <3

[trashcanwithsprinkles]

This might be a bit random but would you say you have any thoughts on Neurodivergent readings of Zhongli (more specifically autistic)? I was thinking about it in the latest chapter of JG amd even before then too. as an autistic person myself i feel he reads very heavily as such, especially when talking about his human mask and feeling like he doesn't need to force it as much with childe, and his issues with human expression in smiling etc. but I think it's then an interesting debate between that and the fact that, well, he's just not human. that all comes from a place of being an entirely different species, unevolved and unrelated to human brains and how they think and read social patterns, and I feel we don't really have any way of telling if ZL has any divergent tendencies among dragons right? and even then he's half, too, so that affects things.

anyway sorry for the ramble I was mainly wondering if you had any opinions on the matter, or if you intended the parallels I definitely see while reading your Zhongli! love your work as always <3333

i think i might've commented on this at some point but never directly, so here – i do have thoughts on the matter!

as you mentioned, it's difficult to tell with characters that aren't human, because you can't call something 'neurodivergent' if the bases for their neurotypical-ity are not the ones by which we measure this stuff. so, to me, ALL non-human characters are neurodivergent-coded. they may not be neurodivergent, technically speaking (like how you mentioned, maybe all dragons are just like zl), but to us, they read as such. so, coded. ultimately i do think there is merit in labeling them as neurodivergent because, even if they, again, technically aren't; we are going to run into problems if we attempt to treat them as neurotypical, so we might as well say yeah, neurodivergent. it is also kinda correct anyway – they do diverge from us. that's a fact. it's like saying dogs are colorblind. if all dogs see in the same range, then you can't say your dog in specific is colorblind (unless it actually is but that's beside the point); but compared to us, from our perspective, for what it matters to us and how that will translate into how we treat them then yes! dogs are colorblind! i think i mentioned it once in conjunction with characters like alhaitham. to me, zhongli is neurodivergent-coded, while alhaitham is neurodivergent straight-up. because (as far as we know) he's human, so his brain should, in theory, be like ours.

as for which flavor of neurodivergency zl is coded to have in specific i would agree with you on autism! but then again, i'm not an expert on these things, i don't know the exact ins and outs and the specific characteristics that constitute an autistic character – i just write them the way i perceive them, with the quirks i perceive them to have. not to get preachy but i think that's the better way to write characters in general, since that's how real people work, after all. people with autism aren't born fitting some parameters that will make them autistic – they're born with specific quirks that we then interpret as autism, and even then you don't necessarily get two people having the exact same experience with this. most of these terms are umbrella terms regardless as to how well-defined or how big or small the umbrella is.

so yeah!