this is half complaining and half a perspective for people writing southern characters (especially engineer) but
something to understand about the trademark “southern politeness” is its not out of the goodness of their hearts or just to be nice. it’s apart of the social contract of southern society. whenever two southerners(there’s usually heavy laxness placed on northerners because they don’t come from this contract based culture) interact with each other, they are expecting bare minimum extreme politeness/major asskissing. you use sir/mahm, you say please and thank you to any and all requests, you make small talk before any demands, you say hello and goodbye, etc.
but if someone breaks this social contract by being (perceived) as rude, you have suddenly been deemed as a threat and have lost all privileges that come with being a person really. any demands/requests you had even if it was asking for a cup of water will be denied, it will become extremely obvious even to those who struggle with telling cues that you are no longer welcome/you are to leave, and you may even get cursed at a bit. there have been actual studies done(can link one if anyones interested) that show that a southerner being dealt with a rude person actually leads to their anger levels being raised to a visible degree both in their hormones and just outwardly, even if it’s as minor as someone just shoving them while walking and not apologizing.
this leads to autistic southerners being in the worst pickle ever where you’re pretty much always perceived as rude due to inability to tell social cues, lack of care to the social hierarchy, not making eye contact, or even just not having a jolly voice or god forbid a flat effect, and are pretty much dehumanized by everyone. but then if you were to ever go outside of the south, there is a very good chance you’ll actually be deemed OVERLY polite and will be asked to “chill out”. so yeah
