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trashcanwithsprinkles · 3 months ago

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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!

#thank you <3 <3 #please i hope that last part doesn't imply i'm trying to shove autistic zhongli under the rug just bc i don't write w it in mind #like trying to distance myself from that but saying y'all are free to come up with headcanons #that's not what's happening #(i know most of you can tell but you can never be too sure on the internet these days)#i just genuinely do not think about that stuff when writing. sexuality is included in this bag of 'stuff'#i WILL point at zl in-game and go 'yeah you're autistic-coded'#but when i'm writing i don't have a doc open with medical info and memoirs and reddit threads about how autistic people behave #none of these characters have been confirmed to have one thing in specific (that i know)#if hoyo came out w a character and said 'this one has [this specific condition]'#then yeah i'd pull up some research to understand [the condition] for further context. because then it's been said explicitly #like writing a character from an etnicity you're not part of #but since right now a good chunk of everything is up in the air i'm just writing by what hoyo HAS told us #(and adding headcanons along the way obviously)#i hope that makes sense #i don't even know if i answered the ask properly lmao #i guess the parallels would be both intended and unintentional. i AM writing a neurodivergent character;#it's just that his neurodivergency in this case comes from the fact his brain just does not work the same way as ours bc again. not human #but since that's also kinda what happens to neurodivergent humans then yes. he's gonna look mighty neurodivergent to us #but yeah nd zhongli for sure. my autistic-coded man <3 #ty ily sorry for the tag rant hahah <3 <3 <3

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vengeancedemon · 5 days ago

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TIMING: current. LOCATION: a hardware store in wicked's rest. PARTIES: @magda-abrams & @vengeancedemon. SUMMARY: emilio and magda are both looking for worm repellent. they find a worm instead. CONTENT WARNINGS: none!

It was spring, and everything was waking up for the year. Including the worms, which is where Magda assumed Worm Row got it’s name. She’d never bothered to look up the history of the neighborhood, but she knew one thing: it was full of the things. Her apartment was no exception.

Apparently, she wasn’t the only one. From the look of it, the hardware store was fresh out of materials to deal with the problem. She stood at the back of the store, in front of a rack of shelves. There was a post-it note stuck between the prices for spider spray and sluggo. “Out of worm repellent. Restock expected this summer.”

Magda sighed, not looking forward to a repeat of her spring of 2023. “Any chance you know somewhere else in town they sell that Miracle brand worm stuff?” she said, to a person standing nearby, gesturing at the post-it note.

—

It was hard to give a shit about the state of his apartment. It was hard to give a shit about the state of anything, really; Emilio had been teetering between rage and numbness since his post-death awakening, finding it difficult to find anything in between being angry at the world and wanting nothing to do with it at all. His apartment, which hadn’t been lived in in over a year now since his move to Teddy’s, was in a sorry state, but who gave a shit?

Except… he had his dog back. And Perro was stupid enough to eat whatever he found on the floor, which meant Emilio needed to make sure there was nothing on the floor that would hurt him. That meant taking care of the fucking worms crawling around the floor, because he was pretty sure those were bad for dogs. And, anyway, worm repellent wasn’t a bad thing to have around when Regan goddamn Kavanagh had a habit of sending him bags of fucking worms, anyway, was it?

Unfortunately, it seemed as though everybody in the goddamn universe had a fucking worm problem. Emilio stared blankly at the empty shelf, taking a moment to read the hastily scrawled post-it stuck beneath it. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been standing there before someone else had the same question, addressing it to him. He turned to face her, shaking his head. “Fuck if I know. Might just use a knife.” Worms were vulnerable to knives, after all.

—

It took Magda a moment to know how to reply to the man, who had managed to come up with one of the worst ideas for dealing with worms she’d ever heard, after trying to light them on fire and burning down your house in the process. She might not be an expert, but she knew a stupid idea when she heard one. “I don’t know your worms, but mine keep coming back after you kill one.

“Maybe – ” she started not entirely sure where the sentence was going to end up, but cut herself off at an odd sound.

There was a rumbling in the distance, almost like distant thunder. Only the skies had been clear when she walked in. She tilted her head, listening, and shot a look at the man beside her. That pit in her stomach was opening up, the one that came everytime she started wondering if this was a new almost-werewolf thing.

“Do you hear that?” she asked. Please say you heard it. Just as the ground started to tremble beneath them.

—

“Yeah,” he admitted forlornly, “mine, too.” Of course, most of the worms he was dealing with were intentionally sent his way by Regan, and he wasn’t sure how to prevent that. She’d offered to stop for a price, but there was no way in hell Emilio was giving her any money. It was the principle of the thing, more than anything else.

Maybe this woman had a solution, though. He wasn’t one to take advice from strangers, but this stranger had a worm problem and Emilio could relate. There was a chance, he figured, that she might say something worth hearing.

Or… maybe his string of shitty luck would continue.

He didn’t hear it at first. His ears weren’t what they used to be, the left one damaged from a banshee’s scream before his death. But it became pretty impossible to miss pretty quickly, especially when the ground started to tremble. “Yeah,” he said, sounding frustrated. “I hear that. What the fuck is —”

The shelves began to move as the floor in the next aisle was disturbed. Emilio let out a long string of curses in Spanish, grabbing on to the woman to keep himself upright.

—

Magda instinctually grabbed the man’s arm to brace him, but as the ground shook, she was thrown off balance too, sending her crashing into the shelf behind them. A cascade of insect repellent cans rained down around them. She winced as she pulled herself back up by the shelves. Those were going to leave some nasty bruises in the morning.

Over the sound of inventory crashing to the ground, there came a scream from the front. Magda looked over just in time to see something giant tear itself out of the ground, narrowly missing the cashier who was already dashing for the door.

“Jesus Christ, what is that thing?” Magda said, heart thudding in her chest, as the rumbling started up anew. “We’ve gotta get out of here,” she said, hand still clutching the shaking shelf behind her, as she scanned the room for the exit. But the only door she saw, was the entrance, right where the monster had last appeared.

—

Cans came flying off the shelf, clanging against the ground as the whole store seemed to shake. Whatever was coming, it was something big. Emilio was half worried about the demon that was no longer beneath the town, half-wondered if something else might have taken its place. Those fears were unfounded, of course. In this town, it was always going to be something just a touch more annoying.

He could barely see it, it was moving so fast. It came out of the ground, barely missed the cashier who made an understandable break for it. It was between Emilio, the stranger, and the door now, blocking their path and giving him a half-decent look at it. He groaned the moment it registered, wondering if, somehow, this was Regan Kavanagh’s fault.

“It’s a fucking worm,” he spat, picking up one of the cans of bug spray rolling around on the shelf and throwing it as hard as he could at the creature in protest. If he’d still had his hunter strength, it might have slammed through the creature’s hide. With his current strength, greater than it had been before he’d fed at all but still not quite on par with the slayer standard, it just bounced off its head. “Oh, you think? I was thinking maybe we hang around, ask it to dinner.” Now probably wasn’t a good time for sarcasm, but Emilio didn’t have a whole lot in his arsenal. Except for…

He pulled out a knife, twirling it in his hand. Worms were vulnerable to knives!

—

Segmentented and glossy-skinned, once the man pointed out what the creature was, it was unmistakable. It was a worm, just supersized, and from what Magda got a glimpse of, it had a nasty set of teeth. It writhed around above ground in that signature worm-like fashion, knocking over a set of free-standing shelves with a clang, spilling nails and screws across the floor below it.

The man chucked a can with impressive aim, hitting the thing square in the head, although it didn’t seem to phase the monster. But if they uncapped another one… maybe the spray itself could do some damage. Worms were insects after all, she thought to herself, wholly unaware that this was not, in fact, true.

“Oh great,” Magda said, as he sniped at her, over a comment about leaving of all things. “I always wanted to die next to some asshole.” But you couldn’t expect to choose these things in life, could you? At least he wasn’t an unprepared asshole. In short order he’d pulled out a knife with a dramatic flourish. It might be more of a comfort if the creature didn’t look at least four times the size of either one of them. It seemed a little like trying to fight a human with a toothpick, albeit a very sharp one.

“Think that’ll work on it?” she said, as she glanced at the sea of bug repellent now at their feet. She knelt down and tried to shuffle through the cans quickly, ignoring the fact that death felt imminent and she was reading labels. “If you can buy us time, there might be something useful here,” she said.

—

Of all the ways he’d thought this trip to the store would go, he hadn’t anticipated a giant worm interrupting his shopping. Maybe he should have. In a town like Wicked’s Rest, wasn’t this kind of thing to be expected? Of course he couldn’t go buy worm repellent without a giant worm bursting through the floorboards of the shitty corner store to try to kill him and the stranger he was standing next to. Of course he was throwing cans of bug spray at it and brandishing a too-small knife. Of course. He’d been stupid to expect anything else.

“You’re not exactly who I wanted to die next to, either,” he snapped at the stranger, and he wondered if dying next to someone he didn’t know was better or worse than dying alone. It was unlikely that the worm would kill him, anyway — short of taking his head off, there wasn’t much that could accomplish that these days — but the question remained, anyway. Was this kinder? To be ripped apart by a beast with a stranger at his side instead of bleeding out in an alley with no one there to witness it? His grip tightened on the knife. He figured it wasn’t the most important question to ask.

The stranger’s question seemed far more useful, so he chose to focus on it instead. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Might distract it well enough.” Which was all they really needed until they could come up with something better, right? He was durable enough to hold off the worm while the stranger thought of something better. He glanced back, noting the way she read the labels on the cans. An idea struck him.

“I have a lighter,” he announced, digging in his pocket and tossing it to her. “You think that stuff catches fire?” If they could fashion the bug spray into a makeshift flamethrower, they’d have a decent shot here.

—

“Here’s to not dying then,” Magda said, distractedly, only looking up as a lighter came flying towards her. As she caught it, she nodded, picking up on what he was saying. “One way to find out right?”

She glanced at the worm, warily, but was still by the entrance, whipping it’s mouth end back and forth as if it was looking for something. Maybe it couldn’t see as well above ground, but she didn’t waste much more time contemplating this brief bit of luck.

Magda gave one of the cans an experimental spray as she put the lighter to it. A small whoosh of flame came out, singing her fingers and causing her to drop it, turning off the spray, and killing the brief flame.

Magda grinned. Despite the imminent possibility of being a giant worm’s dinner, she could appreciate a flamethrower when she saw one. “I might burn my fingers off but....” As she said it, her eyes landed on another can, one with a flip tab to hold down the spray. Probably one of those automatically foggers. Just what she needed. “Jackpot,” she said to herself, grabbed it, along with a second of the same make and brand. “Ready as I’ll ever be to fight a giant worm,” she said, as she stood back up, armed with two confirmed flammable cans of bug spray and the lighter.

—

A little late for that. He bit back the comment with a scowl, nodding his head instead. “To not dying,” he agreed, even though it felt like a lie. It would be better, really, to just focus on the worm. The thought irritated him, just a little.

It was an ugly worm, though Emilio considered most worms to be ugly. This one certainly had a different look than the ones Regan had a habit of sending to him, even if it had been shrunk down to the same size. He’d known, on some level, that there were different kinds of worms out there, but he’d never seen such a stark example. Maybe, if they survived this and the worm wasn’t in a state that left it entirely unrecognizable, he’d drop it on Regan’s doorstep. Eve would appreciate him getting it out of the public eye, at least.

But the surviving had to come first. He glanced to his companion, watched her test his theory with the lighter and the bugspray. The whoosh of flame brought a genuine, sharp grin to his face, glad that they had something resembling a plan. “Fingers are overrated,” he replied, twirling the knife in his hand again.

She seemed to find another can she liked more; Emilio wasn’t sure what the difference between the two was but, then, Emilio had never bought bugspray before today. If she was satisfied, though, he wouldn’t stop her. “I’ll keep it distracted,” he said, “you come up behind it and light it up. Then we run.” It was all the warning he gave before taking off towards the worm, as fast as he could manage with his limp. He let out a cry to get its attention, though he had no idea how effective it would be. He didn’t know if worms had ears; the knife was probably a better way to do this.

—

Magda didn’t even have time to answer the other man, until he was sprinting toward the worm, his pace off kilter. Taken by surprise, she swore under her breath, and ran after him, ignoring the voice in her head saying she was headed in the wrong direction – towards the worm that looked like it could swallow her whole.

The knife man let out a loud yell, and the worm turned toward it suddenly. The worm’s hearing was better than it seemed. It made for a decent distraction for Magda to get in position, albeit a dangerous one, as the worm twiched suddenly, leaping at him.

Magda moved off to the side, trying to find a decent opening to target the worm, without risking barbequing the man along with it. Luckily, the one upside of its Jurassic size was there was a lot of worm to target.

She pushed down the button on the spray can, locking it open, sending the contents hissing out in a narrow spray. An acrid smell filled the air, coating her mouth and lungs with a chemical taste. Coughing a few times against it, she flicked open the lighter, and once again, the flames whooshed up the once again spray. Even as she hastily switched to holding it from the bottom, she could feel the heat from it. Fingers were overrated, as the man had said. She liked hers a fair bit, but she liked her life more.

—

Hopefully, the woman would take advantage of the distraction. She didn’t strike Emilio as someone who would be frozen with uncertainty at the sight of a giant worm, which did make him wonder what sort of person that made her. Living in a town like this one, there was probably a good shot she’d seen something like this before. He wondered how often she’d been the one to deal with it.

He met the worm in the narrow aisle, its tail (back?) knocking down shelves to widen the makeshift arena. He had no idea how difficult it would be to slice through its hide, but he figured he was about to find out. Launching himself towards it, he let his blade sink into its skin.

It was… moist. His hand touched its skin as his knife disappeared up to the hilt, and the sensation of the slime that covered it wasn’t a great one. It did remind him a bit of the worms Regan kept sending to his door, which made stabbing it again all the more tempting. He yanked on his knife, but his fingers slipped from the handle and the weapon was left embedded in the worm’s midsection. Fumbling, Emilio yanked another blade out of his pocket. It was lucky that he tended to carry extra; this worm was going to eat up quite a few.

He tried not to let his attention wander to what the woman was doing, as if worried that the worm might catch on to the distraction. It didn’t seem intelligent enough for that sort of thing to be a concern, but it was best not to risk it. Emilio shoved his second knife into the worm, this time gripping it well enough to pull it back despite the slime. Any minute now, he thought towards the woman. Come on. Light it up.

—

Magda caught movement out of the corner of her eyes. She heard the squelch of what she could only guess was a blade cutting into worm flesh. She hoped he knew what he was doing, but they would both be better served if she worried less about if the worm eating the other man and more about the task at hand. Setting fire to the worm. Then they wouldn’t have to worry about the worm eating anyone, if all went according to plan.

As flames licked out of the can and towards the worm, the creature let out a screech, loud enough that it seemed to vibrate the very air around her and claw into her ears. Loud enough to almost cover up the other sound, coming from the hot metal under her hand. A high pitched whistle, like her mother’s tea kettle. Or, as it climbed another octave, like a ballon moments away from popping. But this was no ballon.

Her hand moved with out thinking, as some subconscious part of her registered danger. Before she’d had time to think it through, she was tossing the improvised flamethrower in the direction of the worm. And not a moment too soon. With a bang and pings of metal shards meeting objects, the can exploded into a cloud of flames. Her hands instinctively flew up to cover her face, as something white hot cut past her arms.

A second more and then there was another whoosh, another bang, as the flames found something else flammable, in a store she was only now realizing was packed full of flammable chemicals. She heard another screech from the worm. Then, the crackle of flames on wood, or paper, or cardboard, or whatever it had found. The smell of burning flesh. Noxious black smoke filled the air. Magda stumbled back further, trying to move away from the blistering heat, blindly searching for any way out.

When her hands hit the rough wood of beams, she knew she’d hit the far side of the store, somehow having found her way through smoke and toppled aisles. She crouched low, in some half-remembered school assembly about fire drills, and felt her way toward what she only hoped was the exit, going on little more than blind hope and sputtering adrenaline.

Then, a spike of pain as her hand sliced against a cool shard of glass. The glass of the door. It must have gotten broken by a worm at some point after getting set on fire. This deathtrap didn’t have any other glass windows.

Magda fumbled her way out, gasping out into the clean air. She looked back, eyes still watering from the smoke, toward the broken hardware store entrance. The tail of the colossal worm lay motionless among the broken glass shards, as smoke billowed out of exit. There was no sign of the other man, and Magda wondered if she was the only person luck had smiled on today.

—

The worm wasn’t thrilled about the knives Emilio was stabbing into it, which was fair enough. Emilio had been stabbed often enough to attest that it wasn’t a fun experience, though he couldn’t exactly feel bad for the creature no matter what kind of anguished sounds it made each time his blade found a home in its flesh. The way Emilio saw it, if the worm didn’t want to be stabbed, it should have stayed wherever it came from.

Not that stabbing it was particularly effective, anyway. It certainly didn’t like the sensation, but it didn’t seem to be doing much damage. Emilio doubted he’d kill it this way, no matter how long he kept at it. Luckily, of course, this wasn’t the real plan. The knives were a distraction and, out of the corner of his eye, he saw his ally readying the real plot. Just a few more seconds. He just needed to keep this up for a few more seconds, and then…

Fire. The creature screamed, the sound jarring and disorienting as Emilio stumbled away from it. If the knives had upset it, the fire had infuriated it, but there wasn’t much it could do to fight back. Flames licked up its slimy body, and it thrashed and moved against them uselessly. Emilio was just about ready to claim victory, but… the woman threw her makeshift flamethrower, and his eyes widened just a little as the sound beneath the worm screaming got close enough for him to register it.

He reacted in a split second, ducking away from the worm and the flying can of flaming bug spray just a moment before it exploded. Flaming debris flew in every direction, which ignited more cans, which caused more explosions. The hardware store had turned into a fireworks show, but with less pretty lights and more dangerous booms. Emilio glanced around for the woman to find her already headed for the door, ducked down low beneath the smoke.

Grunting, he made his way towards the same direction, thankful for once that he didn’t need to breathe. This would have been a lot harder if he were swallowing the smoke and chemicals from the explosion on top of trying to maneuver around on his bad leg. It wasn’t exactly pleased at the obstacles he kept having to dodge, or the shoddy job he was doing at dodging them. Something sharp sliced by his thigh, ripping his pant leg. Something hot licked at his ear, scorching the skin. The smoke was filling up the room, and he hoped the woman had made it out; there was no hope for anyone with breath in their lungs to get away from the flames now.

But there was hope for Emilio, who stumbled towards the broken glass door. He spotted a flash of red on the shards — was that the woman’s blood, or the worm’s? Or the store employee who had fled long before the place went up in smoke? There was little time to question it. Emilio could survive smoke and flying debris, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to take his chances with fire. It tended to be one of the few things that destroyed thoroughly enough to take out the undead.

Finally, he made it out, ducking through the door and into the sunlight outside. The store seemed like a lost cause; already, he could see the roof collapsing and the building crumbling. There was no sign of the worm, and no more of its screams from inside. It had probably died pretty quickly, at least. Emilio scanned the area, feeling a rush of relief when he found the woman standing nearby and looking his way. He limped over to her, shaking his head. “The can exploded,” he said needlessly. Sirens sounded in the distance. “Huh. I really didn’t think the can would explode.”

—

Magda was watching the building helplessly as the fire crept higher, smoke billowing blacker, when the man she’d been in there stumbled out. Her sigh of relief quickly turned into another coughing fit, and she almost missed what he said.

“Me either,” she said finally, once she caught enough of a breath to speak. This hadn’t been how she’d seen the plan going either. Although, minutes earlier, she’d been pretty sure they would end the day as a worm’s dinner, so she wasn’t sure that she could complain.

Somewhere in the neighborhood sirens were wailing. Not unusual in Worm Row, but with the clouds of smoke filling the otherwise clear sky like a beacon, she had a feeling those sirens were headed straight for them.

How sophisticated was the fire department equipment, she wondered. Arson was a crime, sure, but that was before you factored in the giant worm. What the fire department might think, if they said the words ‘giant worm’, though, was hard to say. The evidence to back up their story was quickly going up in flames.

“Do you think we should, uh, still be here when they show up?”

It didn’t seem like she needed urgent medical attention, at least. Her lungs felt like she inhaled a whole campfire, and there was a shallow gash down one side of her arm, but all in all, it seemed like nothing she couldn’t sleep off. Or so she hoped. Maybe that was the adrenaline talking.

—

For a moment, Emilio watched the flames burn hot in front of them, the reflection of the fire flickering in his eyes. It was pretty in the way destruction usually was, dangerous and deadly but bright all the same. Certainly the brightest thing in Worm Row, which was usually little more than dull streetlamps and dim neon signs welcoming patrons into businesses that could barely keep their doors open.

It took a beat for the sirens to reach his ears, the perpetual dullness of the hearing in his left adding a brief delay. Once he realized what they were, though, it didn’t take a detective to know where they were headed. He grimaced, still watching the flames.

They could stay and try to explain things, he knew. The firefighters would probably find whatever was left of the giant worm in there, and they’d probably have some questions about that. Eve might like it if Emilio tried to downplay things, and fuck knew he owed her one, but he wasn’t exactly good at this, either. Odds were, him staying here and trying to explain away the giant worm would only make her job harder. It was probably better for her if he disappeared before those sirens got close enough to know he was there at all.

So, turning to the woman at his side, he shook his head. “Fuck, no,” he replied flatly. “I’m going to get a drink. You should come. I don’t think there’s anything left for us to do here.”

And with that, he was off, trusting the woman to follow. After what they’d just been through, he figured, they could both use a drink.

#magda abrams #magda: worm be gone #wickedswriting #s1 writing #ty to paige for letting me edit and post this <3 it was a v fun thread

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