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Introduction
Delacy is the character played by Luke Westaway in the Oxventure team's playthrough of the TTRPG Deadlands. He is a twelve/thirteen-year-old boy who, like the rest of the party, follows an advertisement promising a reward for dispatching a group of criminals who wronged their client, Victoria. Prone to violence and incredibly skilled with a gun, Delacy is an incredibly skilled member of the team. But, of course, he’s still young, so he tends to act very impulsively. And he’s my favourite character!
It is almost certainly unintentional, but Delacy comes across as a very autistic-coded character. And I am very enthusiastic about this headcanon, so I decided to write this meta piece explaining why I think he is autistic.
A couple of moments from canon that stood out to me:
- When Nate mentions a job paying him peanuts, Delacy takes his words literally and assumes that some jobs do pay with literal peanuts. (Episode 1: Running Them Down)
- Billie uses a metaphor in front of Delacy - "an eye for an eye" and then realizes that Delacy might take that literally and scrabbles to tell the kid not to actually shoot the man in the eye. Even a character who barely knows him understands that Delacy is very literal-minded. (Episode 9: More Wonders Than There Are in the Heavens, Part 2)
My headcanons about his autism
Favourite Ways to Stim: Cleaning and assembling/disassembling Rooster. Doing gun tricks/spinning his revolver. Smelling the cloth that he uses to clean his revolver. Petting and braiding Humble Ned’s mane. When overwhelmed, he sooths himself by rocking back and forth or bouncing his leg. When having a meltdown, Delacy is prone to pulling his hair.
Hyper- or hyposensitive? His vision is hypersensitive and light hurts his eyes, so he wears a hat with a huge brim to keep the sun out of his eyes. His sense of touch is hypersensitive and he hates being touched without permission. His hearing is hyposensitive so loud noises don’t bother him; he finds the loud bang of gunfire soothing.
Meltdowns or shutdowns? Both. When he gets very overwhelmed or his emotions are too much for him, he has a shutdown, curling up and refusing to interact with people. But if someone continues to overwhelm him when he shuts down, he will have a meltdown instead, shouting and crying and probably becoming violent toward whatever upset him.
Special Interest(s): ‘Bison Bill’ Billie Joe Thicket’s Wild West Show, and revolvers. Specifically, Rooster, which is a custom gun that he cares for deeply and always keeps with him.
Social Issues: He really struggles to make eye contact, his eyes darting around when looking at people; the massive brim of his hat helps him hide his eyes from people. He is also very literal minded, struggling with metaphors and figures of speech, to the point that people he knows try to speak literally around him to prevent misunderstandings.
Communication: Delacy is verbal almost all the time. When he gets overwhelmed, he tends to go semi-verbal, stammering and struggling to get his words out.