I’ve been reading lots of stuff about autistic Hotch. How do you think Hotch stims? Are there any gifs/examples from episodes?
OKAY so this is going to be a long list because I just went back through the episodes I've seen up to specifically looking for examples! But thank you for asking. I've been meaning to collect examples somewhere.
(I'll preface this with saying that everyone stims and just because I mention something here doesn't mean anyone is automatically autistic because they do that too.)
The main thing I can think of is what I very descriptively call "the hand thing" he does.
This is probably the clearest example of it in a gif I could find. What I mean is the way he rubs his thumb over the ends of his fingers. I see it as a fairly subtle way to stim and it tends to come up mostly when he's either thinking or stressed. That's the main thing I've picked up on because he does it quite a lot; I haven't gone over the earlier episodes specifically yet - only skimmed certain parts based on the incidences of it I found going through screencaps from @masterwords - it seems most prevalent in the earlier seasons.
A few more examples - they don't all have the actual motion in them but you can see his fingers curled up like that. He also brings his hand up near his face somewhat often, again usually when he's thinking.
He also does it a ton while walking and standing in general. Some more screenshots (thanks again @masterwords)
Two occasions stick out to me, both when he was distressed or highly worried at least. First is in Omnivore (4x18). It isn't strictly the thumb-over-the-fingers but it is similar, with his hand balled up and almost hiding his face at first.
And the second I really like because we get the hand stim very clearly but also rocking! It's in 2x08, when Derek refuses to step away from the lady with a bomb under her car. Please ignore the choppy editing and audio lol I just needed to show this:
Here we also see the same thing he does in the above gif of 4x18 - the teeth grinding. I think that's only when he's under a fair bit of distress though.
I've been keeping track of it from now on partly because one day I'm going to compile everything into one absurdly long meta. So I've undoubtedly missed many times and my timings might be a little off but here's some if you want to see examples:
LDSK - 11:23
3x15 - 3:00
1x08 - bomb + rocking
2x15 -
5x03 - start + middle
7x07 - tapping
3x12 - 6min
3x11 - 22min
2x23 - 6min + 30min
2x19 - 39min
2x08 - 31min + earlier
2x05 - 29min
2x02 - 37min
1x21 - 30min
1x16 - 17min
4x18 - after bus
9x06 - 24min with pen
9x08 - 8min 10s
9x09 -5min 30s, 7:57, 22:40
9x11 - 29:46
9x13 - 6:55
9x14 - 4:40, 29:50
As you can see, it's the most noticeable for me in the early seasons. 9x06 was around when I started keeping track as I watch, not retrospectively, for context.
Not all of these are the hand thing! Some are things like when he picks up a pen he tends to keep it in hand even when he's not actually writing anything, just slightly fiddling with it constantly. And again that's nowhere near JUST an autistic thing but I notice it in addition to the main hand thing.
Another thing is, mostly when he's anxious and holding something like a phone, he'll tap his fingers lightly against it. I have a clip of him somewhere on my blog doing it in 7x07.
There's also what he does with his hands when he isn't stimming that's interesting to me.
Hotch spends a lot of time with his arms either crossed or his hands in his pockets. Often the hand thing and the crossed arms happen at the same, where he'll have his right arm across his chest and with his left running his thumb over his fingers.
I find it really interesting because I read that as trying not to stim. Because if his hands are in his pocket, he can't. If he's got his arms folded, he can't. I'd imagine it fits well with him and his backstory. He's quite reserved in general so it makes sense he wouldn't want to stim very openly even if it's a subtle thing, and then you add in the implications from 1x08 and it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine he was discouraged, whether consciously or not, not to.
Then again, it could also simply be a comfort thing to do something with his hands rather than not stimming. Could be counted as stimming itself - something like pressure.
But in order of most to least frequent, the canon stimming I see from him is
The hand thing
Fidgeting with pens, etc.
Teeth grinding
Rocking