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Basil is nothing if not * b i z a r r e *

Aww I’m glad!  They have such a fun and interesting dynamic, and in my humble opinion I believe they might just be my most shippable couple yet.  Thankfully, they are going too end up working it out, but not without some sustained effort on both sides (ok lets be real, mostly on Kit’s side because he’s the one making it so difficult to begin with)

One of the things I find really interesting about this dynamic is I’m pretty sure that a lot of the difficulties are being caused by a breakdown in communication between neurotypes – Kit is neurotypical, Valencia is autistic.  Of course, this issue occurs a lot in real life as well (I’ve experienced it too many times to count).  So many people think that it happens because autistic people are socially awkward and bad at communicating, but this isn’t entirely true, since many autistic people communicate really well with other autistic people.  The issue is that autistic and neurotypical people are bad at communicating with each other – basically a cultural barrier.  It’s not something I intended to include, but it’s certainly very interesting to write!

I’m not actually convinced that Valencia isn’t attracted to Kit!  That’s what I thought for a while, but I think she’s both really good at hiding it and also completely unaware that he’s interested (I’m not even sure she realizes she has feelings for him tbh.)  Kit doesn’t realize that a lot of the things he does are either confusing or flat out obnoxious from Valencia’s POV – his rings cause sensory issues if they’re constantly clinking on hard surfaces, visiting Kit’s favorite places tends to be overstimulating, and his flirtatious banter/social games either completely fly over her head or are interpreted as flat out disrespectful (before they knew each other well, she actually thought he was trying to intimidate her and that left a lasting bad impression).  So, Kit’s going to be forced to learn to communicate on her level if he actually wants to make any progress, and I really do believe that is going to take a shockingly long time for him to figure out XD