It’s time to cover Demetrius, who was my inspiration for this series! This was an interesting video to make. I think Demetrius is a unique individual with a weird combination of nuance and in-your-face representations of some attributes of autism/neurodivergence. I think this would be a very challenging family to grow up in..
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24 Comments
I have highfunctiong Autism but I use both ways of self Identification, I personally just believe Demetrius is an egotistical dumbass.
I actually feel for Sebastian because I didn't really connect with my sister at all until we were both adults and out of the house.
We really need a dlc that allows us to call out Demetrius for being a bad step father, for Fem PC to call out Alex's mysogny, and tell Lewis and Marnie to JUST BE OPEN ABOUT IT NO ONE CARES IF YALL ARE TOGETHER… also set up AA meetings for Shane
Took this from the wiki
-Demetrius never mentions Sebastian in his dialogue.
just wow.
i never realized how crappy he was, now i hit him with 60 rocks
I have not been diagnosed to be on the spectrum, but I do have anxiety. Anxiety makes it hard to read people, it makes one feel comfort in routines (though everyone in Stardew has strict routines), and honestly, it might explain his Maru 2-Heart dialogue a little. If he's got anxieties about Maru's future being ruined by the player, then I'd say it's within an anxious person's character to lash out on behalf of someone they care for. A person with anxiety might not fight and stand up for themselves, but there's a real fire that's lit when someone "threatens" a loved one.
And anxiety can easily make everything (or everyone) look like a threat.
I also think that's why he stays away from Sebastian a bit. I know I stay away from family that I don't know how to communicate with (granted, my family is also toxic af, so that's a safety thing). But even my cousins who I grew up with I don't really go out of my way to speak to.
It's not an excuse for him to ignore Sebastian. It's just a different neuro-divergent theory. I can't say if he's on the spectrum or not, but I can recognize anxiety behaviors.
I guess my perspective of Demetrius and the whole relationship of that family is just distance. I get the feeling that Demetrius tried to be a good stepdad, failed, and then gave up to raise the child that was more responsive. That line that Seb says “Who does Demetrius thinks he is, telling me what to do? He’s not even my real dad” only is bad on Demetrius’s end if he was trying to control Seb. If the thing Demetrius was trying to get Seb to do was like bathe, or eat with the family or something mundane, suddenly Seb is the unreasonable one. While I do think it is true that he is overprotective of Maru and shows blatant favoritism, many of the scenes lack the context to actually show who’s in the right. People just assume it’s Sebastian most times.
And let’s not forget that while Demetrius doesn’t talk about Sebastian, that’s better than Sebastian talking so negatively about him back and talking negatively about Maru. I really think this is a mutual family issue like Demetrius wasn’t the most attentive AND Sebastian was distant and cold AND Robin didn’t intervene much. Not just one. So while I agree that he isn’t the best dad, I think most are way too harsh on him when Seb has showed no interest to mend their relationship, and a willingness to blame the favoritism on Maru and make negative comments about her when all she wanted was a positive relationship with him. Sebastian isn’t really a nice person to his family either.
i suppose this is a big reason as to why i was drawn to sebastian when i first started playing this game. (aside from the fact that emo boys are my type lol) he reminds me a lot of myself. his role is his family was basically mine. the forgotten scapegoat.
s'why demetrius made me so angry, too. maybe its just my bias from my festering anger towards my family, but i have zero tolerance for shitty parents. and while i understand no parent is perfect, regardless of intentions, you can very easily cause your child lifelong psychological damage and you have to take responsibility for that. after all, YOU chose to bring them into this world. YOU chose to be a part of a family. and even if thats not the case, still, they didnt get to choose anything. it infuriates me how careless so many people are with children.
Demetrius has literally 0 lines about Sebastian
"Sleep receptacle" nah this guy is a fucking alien. Nobody, no matter how autistic, would call a bed a "sleep receptacle" unless they were trying to be funny
I… never realized how little Demetrius talks to Sebastian. They don't talk to each other, they barely speak to each other, and the same can be said for Maru and Sebastian. Robin at least tries to talk to Sebastian, but she's pretty much the only one.
I disagree with the demitrius is autistic theory since he doesn't really display any disorders that wouldn't be better explained by the fact he's egotistical and self centered. IMO his main reason for favoring maru isn't that she's his biological child (although that certainly could play a large part) but rather it makes HIM look good whereas sebastian just comes across as an embarrasment to him, hence the hiding in the basement like dirty laundry. I've always gotten the vibe that he felt he was better than everyone else in the valley because he was educated but that's just my take.
I dont think hes autistic, I think hes an asshole.
We aren't emotionally stupid, many of us are highly empathetic but can struggle to communicate these feelings effectively. Or we say it/show it in ways thats not conventional.
I think he chooses to be inconsiderate, and uses weaponized incompetence. I say this because he's always so supportive of Maru, he never invalidates her, never insults her. If he is autistic, he deliberately disregards trying to consider other people's emotions and his actions.
As someone with a step-dad and a half-brother which I love dearly, Demetrius' character development disapointed me. He never talks about nor mentions Seb, and had it not been for Maru's voicelines I'd never had know Seb he lived in the same house, also the fact that he gets all agressive and protective when you make friends with Maru even if you're married to someone else doesn't make sense to me. I just wish there was more to his character other than blatant favoritism
As someone who's autistic I agree and believe Demetrius is on the autistic spectrum somewhere.
But that is in no way an excuse for his mistreatment of Sebastian.
He basically neglects his other child and from dialogue I've personally seen in the game the only interactions they have tend to be negative.
As an autistic person myself it can be hard developing relationships and talking with other people but like he doesn't even try to have a relationship with his son.
Also he's a little bit too overprotective and obsessive with Maru.
He's Low-key threatening you and in a 8 heart cutscene when you're dating Maru he barges in on both of you being together because he believed you were doing something inappropriate right off the bat.
If he's autistic coded he thinks differently than the rest of his family and there's some things he's not good at but there is no excuse for his mistreatment of Sebastian and Robin at times.
I'm autistic myself, so I thought I'd add my two cents. Before I start, do keep in mind that 1) I am AFAB. Autism presents differently in people raised as women vs people raised as men. 2) I have low support needs. People notice that there's something different about me but people won't usually clock me as autistic and some even argue against it when I tell them. 3) Every autistic person is different because autism is, you said it, a Spectrum.
That being said, I sometimes can't imagine that all of the way Demetrius acts can be chalked up to autism. His problems with boundaries and social situations? Yeah, sure. Bringing tomatos when his wife asks for fruit? I don't think so. Granted, this is only based on my experience. But. It's not like we don't know at all how allistic people act and think. We spend our whole lives around them. Often, we spend our whole lives trying to Be them. Maybe Demetrius was never masked, never tried to fit in with allistics, ect. But I feel like the average autistic person absolutely knows that tomatos are not what your allistic wife wants when she asks for fruit. Social situations are different because there's a lot of nuance, emotions are involved, everyone reacts differently, etc. But I don't think a single person in his life has called tomatos fruit outside of a science text book. That's why that situation is weird to me. But again, this does not mean that there's no way an autistic person might misunderstand Robin the same way. All I'm saying is that I haven't met them and can't say I myself would.
(Not to mention that all vegetables are, botanically, something else, like fruit or nuts or seeds or roots or whatever. Vegetable is a category used in cooking, which is what Robin was likely talking about, so the tomato in this case does belong in the vegetable category even though it is, simultaneously, a fruit. As a scientist, if he wants to be all sciency about it, Demetrius should know that vegetable isn't a botanical term and his justification of "but it is a fruit" is fundamentally off topic because they're not talking about plant classification but cooking. But that's just my personal pet peeve about this situation.)
This got needlessly long, didn't it? TL;DR Demetrius could totally be autistic but that doesn't explain and/or excuse all of his actions.
“subscribe or I will put tomatoes in your fruit salad”
I don’t even have salads
As someone on the spectrum, I actually teared up a little when you said that you actually researched about Autism before making this video. Often when people talk about it, they only use what they know instead of looking into other people's opinions. Personally, I prefer to say that I'm Autistic because Autism isn't a piece of clothing I can take on and off.
Thank you so much for caring enough to mention that even that you researched, you still don't know what it's like. Even some psychologists just assume that because they've researched a condition, they know how someone feels.
Thank you again!
Also if I could I would donate or become a member but I can't for reasons I refuse to explain for the entire internet to see.
demetrius’s treatment of sebastian and the threatening of the farmer is so uncalled for in all manners i just never want to even interact with him in stardew because he is just unjust.
also, the introduction to this video was actually one of the like best ones i’ve seen for covering like the concept of neurodivergency and how to talk about it as someone from the outside.
As an autistic person, I really don't like the Demetrius autistic headcanon. Or rather, how it is treated as an excuse. It doesn't excuse his poor treatment of Sebastian. I think that Maru might be autistic as well, though. She is much more relatable to me
Siblings…
pam literally exists it takes skill to be as bad as demitrius is
As an autistic girl: First off, I really appreciate you doing your best to educate yourself on how to discuss this subject in a respectful manner! Second: Even if Demetrius is autistic, it doesn’t excuse his behavior. It’d be nice if there was a scene where Demetrius and least attempts to connect with Sebastian, but it just seems like he doesn’t care.
I kinda held myself back on Pam's video comments cuz didn't want to butcher English, I know my grammar has a lot of flaws and even my spelling ain't all that good, but I'm gonna blow up if I keep quiet this. Oh, and is kinda funny how I speak English better than my own language, but when it comes to writing is the whole way atound… I swear this observation has a point, I'm not getting side tracked or whatever
Okay, so I've BPD, right? But in Portuguese people, specially doctors, won't say "He has Borderline Personality Disorder" but instead "He is Borderline", like we only were our disorder and that's it. Ykwim?! And even tho Autism is a whole other thing, both are still neurodivergences I can fully understand who'd rather say "I have Autism" instead of "I'm autistic".
Somewhere these last four or five years, here in Brazil kinda became wrong to call "autistic" a person with Autism cuz it's the same as dehumanizing them
Imo tho, I guess its up to each individual like they wanna be called, but maybe thats just me. Even tho "autistic" was being used as a slur for a few years, not all people with said disorder was offended by it 🤷🏻