Now, this might be projection, but I do believe that Jazz is autistic-coded under the veneer of cliche know-it-all and pushy older sister (and also aroace-coded, but I’m saving that for Pride Month next week), and there are several instances throughout the show that she is as such:
Jack chasing after Maddie
In Prisoners Of Love, Jazz is shown to be confident that Jack will not apologise to Maddie for forgetting their anniversary, her exact words being “And if I’m right, Dad will cluelessly do nothing to apologise to her.” She’s confident because not only has she picked that up as a habit of her dad’s, but one that her dad has consistently never changed and accepted it as part of routine, that if dad screws up and mom is mad, then of course dad won’t apologise…
… which is why it was such a shock when Jack did go after Maddie to apologise to her and Jazz was left in a state of shock, not only because she was wrong, but because this is a change in a familiar routine! A change she never predicted or expected! And with us autistics, we handle change we never predict pretty badly, as we see seconds later of Jazz obsessing over what she’s observed of Jack’s behavioural patterns and looking visibly stressed out—that this isn’t just a case of her psychoanalysis of her father being wrong, but a case where she’s struggling to handle such a massive change in a routine she’s observed and grown comfortable with, that her line about what else she could be wrong about could very well mean what other changes she never expected will come (and a pretty big change DID come literally an episode later…)
Her worldview being challenged
This is also tied into what I meant with Jazz and change. For the longest time, Jazz clung to her worldview that ghosts weren’t real and her parents were insane for believing in ghosts, it was something she believed in wholeheartedly because of ghosts aren’t real, something she probably thought was a fact since there was little proof for otherwise… and then ghosts were real. Now, the reason I believe Jazz handled this better than the prior example is because yes, it’s hard to deal with a change to our routines/worldviews… but it was softened for Jazz since her parents always claimed ghosts were real. And that’s not saying it wasn’t—when she first saw Bertrand, she WAS questioning if that was a ghost before Danny arrived and started fighting him, and after that she was excited to tell Danny. But that doesn’t mean her entire worldview was upended again, that she compartmentalised it for later and then struggled with such a change to what was such an established fact that the world proved her right, before it was absolutely upended.
And it’s clear she still struggled with it! In Maternal Instincts, literally almost ten episodes AFTER learning ghosts were real and her brother was half-ghost, Jazz said to Jack that the ghost hunting was a social experiment of her disdain for it, which can be easily read as her still struggling with such a massive change to her worldview that is consistently being challenged by all the ghost attacks and Danny’s status as half-ghost. By the time the episode ends, it’s clear she has accepted ghosts are real, but not without it being a huge challenge to her to deal with.
From the first episode, Jazz has declared she is “psychologically an adult” when she’s just sixteen, hinting at feelings of parentification where Jazz felt like she needed to be more emotionally mature than her emotionally immature parents for both herself and Danny. But this can also be a sign of masking and a need to be more “mature” for both herself and as perceived by the other adults in her life that many autistic people, especially autistic girls, deal with. She had to constantly mask throughout the entirety of the first and a little bit into the second season as someone who’s emotionally mature, smart and polite to adults and can be seen as overbearing and pushy to Danny (especially since he’s among the few who knows how Jazz acts without masking and especially what masking looks like—autistic and ADHD siblings for the win), that she even had to mask her emotional attachment to her stuffed teddy bear so she can be seen as mature and not a kid, that this mask was so prevalent that Ember’s song that mind controlled the adults affected Jazz, too. But during My Brother’s Keeper, Maternal Instincts, the end of Fenton Menace and throughout the rest of the show, especially Secret Weapons? We get a glimpse into what Jazz’s real personality looks like without her mask, and it’s someone who’s still smart and polite, but is also sweet, dorky, a bit of a klutz when it comes to ghost hunting but who unquestionably loves her family, especially her little brother (and a little bit manipulative with Vlad, but I digress) Though Jazz’s self-proclaimed emotional maturity was what was meant to show her as the sane man in her family (and she absolutely is), it is unquestionably still a mask she has to wear to prove that she is, especially after we see what her real personality is like.
We can also see her mask as a way for her to fit in, not only because of who her parents are but because she wants to blend in. She’ll mask and conform to what society expects of her, making herself fit in the mould and try to distance herself from her parents’ influence in the process, to hide both the traits she inherited from them, and her own autistic traits that could be seen as weird or not normal. But as discussed, when the mask slips and we see her real personality, it’s nowhere close to what she presents as in the beginning of the show, and that further on she starts to lose her mask and grow more comfortable in showing who she really is without it.
Talking about her top colleges/psychology
THIS was what made me relate to Jazz, when she talked about her top colleges in Ultimate Enemy and the girls walked away. Jazz was clearly info-dumping about something that she is really excited to talk about as the colleges are a part of her special interest in psychology, and the look on her face says that this isn’t the first time she’s info-dumped and people walked away or not bothered to listen to her. This can also see as her trying to bond with her peers by asking them what their top colleges are since that’s what she is interested in, but to no avail. And when Jazz talks about things that relate back to psychology, that’s her tying it back to her main special interest to get her point across better to others. She’s trying really hard to connect to people, to even her own family, with her special interest and no one can be bothered to listen and meet her halfway (she also uses it to try and help Danny, but that’s a totally different point)
Not reading Dash was flirting with her
Okay, this can also suit the aroace Jazz post, but thought I add it here anyway.
When Dash flirted with Jazz, Jazz didn’t notice at first, only getting annoyed that he wasn’t focusing on her tutoring him and disproving her thesis. That she clearly misread that particular social cue of Dash’s, a pretty common trait for autism. Of course, she picked it up still, but it was clear she had misread that. The moment in the office where she awkwardly waved to Bertrand in My Brother’s Keeper and the hallway scene in TUE are all clear signs of Jazz misreading the social cues given to her, that while she’s adept at masking she still struggles with picking up social cues.
Along with social cues, Jazz can struggle with reading certain social situations—like being INCREDIBLY blunt about Vlad’s decorative tastes as a framing of a question—and misreading facial expressions—like Amorpho with her scrapbook. Sometimes she does pick up on cues and situations where she doesn’t want to get involved with people (Dash’s party, the reunion), and she is pretty good at reading people, but she still struggles with them and tries to get better, especially with her masking in season one and early season two.
This was very autistic to me, the whole scene with Jazz at the clown painting. Sure, it could be a link to her psychology, but Jazz saw a deeper meaning in the painting, that it was symbolic of the clown’s sadness despite his smile that the artist disproved by saying that he was smiling on the inside. Jazz frowns shortly after, because her brain picked up something else that made sense and completely missed or ignored what was supposed to be obvious to her, of course the clown is smiling on the inside, why wouldn’t he be smiling?
Jazz is a bad liar. Sure, she can think on her feet and she kept Danny’s secret without him finding out, but she is really bad at lying at several points of the show, especially before she knew Danny’s secret and how she acted around Vlad. For me personally, I always struggle with lying, and I can see that as a struggle for Jazz, that for someone who is open about her emotions has difficulty with lies. It’s only a miracle that Danny is just as bad a liar as her and never once thought she’d know and that Vlad was too wrapped up in Jazz “renouncing” her father to suspect she was lying until Skulker popped into the lab with Danny
This may be a trait she shares with her dad… but it’s a common trait for autistic people to have development delays. For Jazz, this is shown in her hand-eye coordination and clumsiness, that she has a lot of difficulty with that and while she does get better by the third season, it’s obvious that there were clear delays and she struggled to get the hang of it much slower than Danny or even her dad did.
Jazz Fenton is autistic-coded. While she never stimmed or visibly showed discomfort over certain foods and sensations or had a meltdown, all of the above is enough that makes it clear she was unintentionally coded that way and is unintentionally an autistic icon, especially for autistic girls. And if DP gets revived, I truly hope that she will be canonically confirmed as autistic, and still be good rep. Autistic Jazz Fenton, you will always be real to me.
