ok its a bit of a weird question but im kind of curious about this since i love your analysis on characters and your headcanons surrounding them. does your ego death jekyll and or bruce have any neurodivergence. what rattles on in their brains
GREAT FANTASTIC LOVELY QUESTION. WHICH I AM ANSWERING IN A TIMELY MANNER (LIE). i keep proper diagnoses for characters sorta vague (esp Jekyll cuz that's kinda The Vibe RLS had going on), but when I am writing I do work with a few things in mind to steer characterization. Bruce Wayne my dearly beloved is an unfun concoction of PTSD and depression with a lovely dash of 'tism. Bruce's problem is that he varies so wildly from different comic runs so it's always a bit difficult pinning him down and keeping him from squirming away into sociopathy or a paranoid personality disorder or OCD. A LOT of comics also sorta veer into narcissim. BUTTTT my personal take (for Ego Death, at least) is autism + PTSD + depression + OCPD. Talk about comorbidity. I lean into OCPD heavily for his pretty rigid moral code, plus also the PTSD + depression because of the whole.... literally everything that's happened to him. This is me super dumbing everything down but you get it there's about 100k words about this shit on ao3. BUT ALSO Ego Death is about an older Bruce who has had time to sit with himself but ALSO has constructed a system (read: stole children) that somewhat actively promotes a concious approach to his mental health. In other words, he's encouraged by the presence of loved ones in his life to do SOME introspection. I can't remember if I've vaguely alluded to it at all in Ego Death so far, but he's a Bruce that's received a weeeee bit of professional health but is also ultimately a man that is untherapizable (TO A DEGREE) because he knows all the tricks.
This serves as an UNfun parallel to Henry Jekyll: man who has never seeked help ever. He's BPD + autism to me. Maybe slightly audhd? I've been considering CPTSD in terms of backstory but also at the same time I'm too damn scared to give THE Doctor Jekyll a backstory. but he's at least got that Classic Rich Victorian Child trauma of being raised by nannies as opposed to his actual parents. are we counting Victorian supression as a disorder because I think we could, it drives just about as much of his character as any neurodivergence. ok but also that's just what masking does. whatever. but but but also there's the contrast in Edward Hyde vs. Batman as personas. Edward Hyde was founded in a want for change/anonymity/excitement/an escape from monotony. Batman may have slightly been encouraged through something similar if you wanna dig deep enough into Bruce's selfish psyche, but it was mostly a persona founded in a want for justice. grrrr I've very quickly fallen away from talking about neurodivergence and am now instead talking about their parallels RAAAHHH. dont worry there's literally a chapter (i think its somewhere around chapter 19 if my planning goes to... plan) where i draw big fat parallels between them and delineate shit.
