It's Autism Acceptance Month so here's another headcanon I have, this one is an AuDHD headcanon! It's not from Pokémon this time either, instead it's...
My silly lightning boi Jay from Lego Ninjago! In my personal opinion he is ADHD incarnate (he reminds me of my ADHD brothers a lot) but he also has a lot of autistic traits too, which is why I headcanon him as AuDHD. Jay has always been my favorite Ninjago character even before I knew what headcanons even were, because he's funny and I relate to him a lot as an autistic person myself. Anyway, let's get into why I headcanon him as AUDHD.
In the earlier seasons of the show, Jay was the inventor of the group. He was the one who made the Destiny's Bounty fly and Wu first found him when he was testing out some wings he had built...this test failed miserably however and he crashed through a billboard. This can be attributed to the fact that he was raised in a junkyard surrounded by all kinds of stuff to use to build things with, but I like to see it as a hyperfixation. His true special interest though is video games. This guy is OBSESSED with video games (honestly, so am I, I'm always playing SOMETHING) and holds the high score in Galamorph X Post, his all-time favorite game. He can also hyper-focus so hard on a video game that everything around him is completely tuned out and the only things that exist to him are himself and the game on the screen (same here actually).
He has trouble "reading the room" and picking up on social cues sometimes, especially in the earlier seasons. I'll leave you this GIF as just an example: he's laughing hysterically at Zane and his 'funny switch' while Cole and Kai look shocked and confused (this was when they found out Zane is a robot).
3. He infodumps. My favorite instance of Jay infodumping was in Crystallized when he infodumped about the train car they came across in the subway tunnels. He was honestly so adorable fanboying over that train car. Trains are also a common interest for autistic people (I personally was not immune to the train interest either), so seeing Jay all excited over something train-related made me think "This is familiar...VERY familiar..." Also the way he denied playing with TOY trains and instead only building MODEL trains is just so ND coded in my opinion.
4. As seen in season 7, Hands of Time, he has sensitive ears, the alarms that were going off in this scene gave him a headache, he said so himself, and he also says in the same scene that he's "always had sensitive ears". He also will fidget or pace when nervous or anxious, like in his monologue about finding somewhere safe to hide everyone from the Great Devourer back in season 1, Rise of the Snakes.
(He's clearly distressed here.)
(Someone please get him some noise-cancelling headphones...)
5. He takes some things literally, like idioms or double meaning words, for instance in season 4, Tournament of Elements, when Garmadon says "I swore to never return to this place", Jay replies with "You know, you should never swear, it's a sign of weak verbal skills." He thought Garmadon meant cursing, not the "internal promise" meaning of swear. (This is also why I headcanon Jay as a character who NEVER curses no matter what, because he believes it's weak verbal skills.)
6. He often points out the obvious in any given situation, whether normally, or in the form of a fast-talking anxiety-ruled freak-out. "Oh, great, let me make a note of that. Giant snake, has wee itty bitty weak spot that'll be TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO GET AT BECAUSE THE THING IS TOO RIDICULOUSLY HUGE TO DO ANYTHING TO STOP IT!!!" instantly comes to my mind when I think about this trait of his.
7. Speaking of anxiety, he is very high-strung and is the first to start panicking in many situations. Seriously, there are entire compilation videos on YouTube of JUST him screaming and freaking out. So I headcanon him to have Generalized Anxiety Disorder as well, as someone who has GAD myself, I relate to Jay so much.
8. He is a very fast talker and will monologue about things for a long time. As Kai said in season 1, "The cherry doesn't fall far from its blossom" as Jay was ranting and raving about how his parents were visiting and how the others shouldn't get them going because they won't stop yapping if they do (even though he's adopted he's a lot like Ed and Edna).
9. He gets distracted easily and is not the most organized (like when Harumi found a pair of his underwear just lying around).
10. He is very energetic and hyperactive (though this could be because of his lightning powers), and he literally gets the zoomies in one of the Tales from the Monastery of Spinjitzu shorts.
11. He uses humor and jokes to MASK his insecurities and fears. (The word "mask" is in all caps there for a reason.)
12. His emotions are more extreme than most of the others', like when Nya sacrificed herself and merged with the ocean, Jay completely BROKE, isolated himself in the lighthouse, and started talking to glasses of water thinking they were Nya. His reaction was even more extreme than Kai's, and Nya is Kai's YOUNGER SISTER.
13. He has a tendency to act more immature and childlike than the others (he also still sleeps with a stuffed animal, Mr. Cuddlywomp, which I see as a comfort item for him, as he was distraught when it was destroyed by accident).
There's probably more ND traits I'm missing but my brain is fried at the moment and can't think back to everything in Ninjago right now...it's a LOT of episodes. 😅
If I'm missing anything please feel free to add it in the replies below! 👇
Also again, this is just a HEADCANON, I want to make that extremely clear that it's only canon in MY head, it doesn't have to be in your head, but I just ask that you respect my headcanon since good ND representation is so hard to find in media so we ND people have to create our own instead.
