#link rambles

Social Communication and Interaction

Criteria A: “Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction”. Now for Dipper, I sorted all my thoughts by the individual criteria sectors. However, for my lovely Mabel Pines I struggled to really categorize it into neat little boxes. But I did it, so here we go.

Deficits in social-emotional reciprocity: Autism in general presents differently in boys and girls, partly due to societal expectations of the two. So what does this have to do with Mabel Pines and autism? Well a less obvious example is how Mabel scripts her expectations of things, like high school. She is also very VERY outgoing, which isn’t entirely odd for autistic girls; and with this I’d like to mention her naive tendencies- she is not dumb, which is something a lot of people immediately think of when I say this, but naivety is actually common with autistic girls!

Deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction: When I was rewatching the show to put together these analyses, something that kept catching my attention was how Mabel tends to have an extreme level of eye contact making- even grabbing people’s faces to look them in the eyes. Part of this is her naivety as well, I’d argue that her optimism is a result of her being autistic but. That’s namely a Link thought.

Deficits in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships: This is also part of her naivety (at least to me) but her “Crush of the Week” bit? I think this is mostly a subconscious thing she got from studying her peers and basically just “picking” a guy to have a crush on and have the typical summer romance. A common autistic girl thing to do is study her peers and adapt her behavior to “blend in”. Again, a real life societal reason for doing this is definitely out of date patriarchal standards but if I were to dive into that on a Gravity Falls post we’d be here all day. Another example of this is how quickly she forms bonds with people. You mean to tell me you’re inviting two girls you just met to a sleepover (Season 1, Episode 7 “Double Dipper”)? Her extraversion allows her to form these quick bonds, but once you’re in for the long term she struggles like in Season 2, Episode 17 “Dipper and Mabel vs The Future” when Candy and Grenda couldn’t make her birthday party on the day she planned it for. It would be relatively easy to either move the party date or have them celebrate separately, but this in combination with her expectations of high school getting crushed caused a spiral and ultimately allowed Bill to manipulate her to handing over the rift. Don’t think I will ever make a Mabel post defending her from being blamed entirely for Weirdmaggedon.

Behavioral Evidence

This is where we dive into what we see especially for Mabel- Criteria B: Restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities.

Stereotyped or repetitive motor movements: Stimming, and boy does my girl do a lot of it. In Season 1, Episode 1 “Tourist Trapped” we see her do the “flappy arms” with her sweater, and this can be seen as a form of stimming. Otherwise, you can see throughout various episodes and scenes that if she’s being “idle” she might be kicking her feet or bouncing or otherwise doing some kind of movement, which I read as her stimming.

Insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, or ritualized patterns of verbal or nonverbal behavior: Buckle up we’re going to be going through a lot of examples here

Difficulty with transitions: something that pops up very minimally but is the driving force behind her conflict in her little subplot of “Dipper and Mabel vs The Future”. The whole driving force to her ultimate conflict was the fact that summer was over, they were leaving this place behind, and later she learns that the one thing she could count on to be consistent (Dipper) wasn’t planning on coming home with her.

Rigid thinking patterns: A little vague but I think of Season 2, Episode 15 “The Last Mabelcorn” where she had these very specific lines of logic of what makes a person “good” vs what makes a person “bad”. A person can be seen as good to someone but seen as bad to someone else, usually determined by how they act around those people. For Mabel, she had this line of thinking of “I haven’t done enough good, so doing more will make everyone see I’m a good person!” which in reality was a trick by the unicorn. When this line of thinking was challenged/proven wrong (or so she thinks), she shuts down.

Insistence on sameness: While the sweaters may change we very rarely see her without a sweater on- even less than the amount of times we see Dipper without a hat if my math is correct. I would also see her sweaters as a sensory comfort thing because of “Sweatertown” (Season 1, Episode 4 “The Hand The Rocks the Mabel”) and I [as well as many others] read that as an emotional meltdown/shutdown… something I and many other autistic people have dealt with in tandems.

Highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus: When she first found Waddles at that fair she got so lasered in on winning that damn pig (as she should’ve of course). I saw this post by @sapphire-studios [name might’ve changed hence why it’s also linked I found it from a reblog, and honestly a good portion of this analysis had inspiration from their own analyses!] that called Waddles a comfort animal, and frankly I see it. Someone else called the concept of “love” her special interest and with just how much she talks about and really gets into it, I’d have to agree.

Hyporeactivity to sensory input: This one is really a personal interpretation, but we all saw how much Smile Dip she ate in Season 1, Episode 5 “The Inconveniencing". Frankly, I think if she’s able to eat that much candy that’s essentially pure sugar just based on its real life equivalent (Fun Dip), she must have some neuroreceptor that just… doesn’t register that stuff man I truly don’t get it. And let’s not forget the ‘Mabel Juice’ we see in Season 2, Episode 4 “Sock Opera”. I just- how does that not set off even a neurotypical sensory experience this is my most unserious section of evidence. what.

ADHD?

Now, when talking about the neurodivergent Mystery Twins, I’ve seen many a person equate it to “Dipper - autism, Mabel - ADHD” and to this I don’t necessarily disagree! If Mabel were to have ADHD I would probably place her as having the Inattentive type more so than Hyperactive that many people seem to associate her with. And that’s not to say that’s wrong! However, I am cautious with this as I worry about how many ADHD people I’ve met in real life who are immediately seen as ‘dumb’. The media doesn’t exactly help, with many ADHD coded characters being the comedic reliefs and autism-coded characters being geniuses.

If I were to analyze Mabel characteristics as ADHD, I’d probably analyze it like this:

Inattentive Type:

Often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks: 108 “Irrational Treasure”- it’s how they actually find the president, Mabel found the clues by stimming essentially.

Often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly: A reach admittedly, but like I said in the section about autism she holds abnormal eye contact, and personally can seem off in her own world in conversations.

Often does not follow through on instructions and fails to finish tasks: This is not necessarily in a bad way, but she did get majorly sidetracked and hyperfocused on the ‘wrong’ thing, but I and others also see it as she knew she wouldn’t be able to lock in and help Dipper until the puppet show was complete.

Often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities: The DSM mentions poor time management, sometimes I would agree however I see it as a “do everything all at once” type of thing like in “Sock Opera” or Season 1, Episode 13 “Boss Mabel”.

Often avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort: This is a looser interpretation, when she gets into hyperfocus she struggles to switch in and out “Sock Opera”.

Is often easily distracted by extraneous stimuli: “Sock Opera” and Season 1, Episode 9 “The Time Traveler’s Pig” are two of the biggest examples I noticed. Once something caught her attention that’s where her focus went to and she struggled to switch in and out of that focus.

Aspects of the Hyperactive/Impulsive Type:

Often fidgets with or taps hands and feet: I already covered that in the autistic behavior section.

Often unable to play or engage in leisure activities quietly: I see this as project-based hyperfocus, like when she took on the Wax Stan project, the puppet show, playing Cupid, etc.

Often talks excessively: I think of the end of Mabel and Stan’s plot of Season 1, Episode 6 “Dipper vs Manliness”. The girl was excited and just kept talking (I love her sm).

Mabel Pines vs The Research

Now, something that is really important to me when I make characters is trying to give as many walks of life a voice as possible. Alex Hirsch did not create any of the Pines to canonically have autism or ADHD- he’s stated this many times on Twitter and at conventions. However, what he created were characters that many could see themselves in So why would it be so important for Mabel Pines to be AuDHD representation?

Let’s start with autism. Autism is diagnosed at a 4:1 male:female ratio. It’s very common for autistic girls to be diagnosed later in life, if they get diagnosed at all. As for ADHD, that is also more commonly diagnosed in males than females, at a 2:1 ratio for children. With Mabel Pines, she has her quirks and she remains proudly herself. This gives positive representation to young AuDHD girls and may even allow these young girls to feel seen, maybe even leading them on a road to get diagnosed themselves if they do further research into it.

Conclusion

I am still very aware that Mabel is not canonically autistic or AuDHD. This doesn’t mean that many of her mannerisms can’t be read as symptoms for these conditions, and may allow a young girl somewhere to feel seen. 

Sources:

American Psychiatric Association. American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. Arlington, VA, American Psychiatric Association, 2013, pp. 50, 59–60.

CDC. “Diagnosing ADHD.” Attention-Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2024, www.cdc.gov/adhd/diagnosis/index.html.

Cruz, Sara et al. “Is There a Bias Towards Males in the Diagnosis of Autism? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Neuropsychology review vol. 35,1 (2025): 153-176. doi:10.1007/s11065-023-09630-2