Autistic Aaron Hotchner - Tumblr Posts
Hotch not understanding that Strauss wanted him to do a grief assessment for himself too because she didn’t explicitly say so is so autistic of him. Needing explicit instructions and literal thinking are very autistic.
Hotch and Garcia’s friendship is so special to me. She makes him smile more than pretty much anyone else. And they’re like opposite flavors of autistic
My criminal minds neurodivergency headcanons:
Y’all send me fic requests! Angst, fluff, smut! Anything! I want to write but don’t have any ideas!
Like Garcia is so explicitly autistic coded (though probably unintentionally) in some ways even more so than Reid (though he is definitely autistic). People just never consider autism in women. And Gideon and Hotch are both extremely high masking individuals (bc of when they grew up and also probably don’t realize they’re autistic) and no one thinks about you autistic traits still come through to an extent even with masking. And how by masking some traits become more pronounced unintentionally.
I like to think that for Hotch, he struggles with facial expressions and tone. Which is why his face is always so neutral and his voice can seem monotone if you’re not used to it. And in my mind part of that is because that’s what’s natural to him and part of it is because he’s masking less socially acceptable expressions and tones of voice (though I definitely don’t think he’d be very expressive if he wasn’t masking).
And Gideon with his birds. That is a special interest right there. He’s like those old men who have a room dedicated to a collection or something and everything thinks it’s just a quirk of theirs when it’s just undiagnosed autism.
People never really consider autism and how it can manifest outside of the stereotypical boy/man who is either a lower support needs savant/genius of some sort (like reid) or higher support needs and intellectually disabled (****having high support needs does not mean someone has an intellectually disability people just believe that it does which is why I phrased it like that****)
This is coming from someone who is low support needs, non-masking, raised/socialized as female, and was diagnosed as an adult due to my own instigation.
(Don’t forget to listen to people with higher support needs when it comes to autism and the perception of autism (they experience the effects of autism’s perception more than I do))
It kind of annoys me that Garcia, Gideon, and Hotch could all be argued to have autistic traits but most people laser focused on Reid being The Autistic One.