Particularly autistic/neurodivergent coded Janitor moments and headcanons 🎪
When he was partially verbal at the all night cafe
Him avoiding small talk with Jacques by telling him the refrigerator repair man story
Same with Coco!! No small talk, only stories
And when he runs out of story he runs out of words
Him imitating and repeating phrases from people in the circus
One of his obvious special interests is definitly The Orbiting Human Circus, but more broadly I think it would extend to radio, performance, and storytelling as a whole
He has problems memory wise for obvious reasons, but when it comes to the stories that he cherishes he can remember them verbatim and can tell them at the drop of a hat
He definitly falls on the flight side of the “fight or flight” spectrum, when something makes him upset/causes him discomfort his immediate response is to get as far away from it as possible
This can lead to him becoming distressed when him running to safety is stopped (with his Great Grandfather after the fireflies escaped, and with Coco in the Tower commissary) and can cause him to have shutdown/meltdown type reactions
This also translates to him wandering out of instinct, just finding himself mindlessly wandering the halls and girders of the Eiffel Tower lost in thought
He shows a very high empathy for things, especially animals and objects, and of course the few people he is close to
“If you look deep into their eyes, they can smell what you’re thinking”, “How else are you going to find out if a mouse can tap dance?”
Is very sensitive to sound, and this certainly comes in handy for sneaking around the Eiffel Tower eavesdropping
Has to have tasks explained in a certain way or he doesn’t quite fully grasp them, but once he’s got the hang of it he can do it like the back of his hand (lighting the stove, cleaning the observation decks)
Definitly has maladaptive daydreaming
I imagine he really likes deep pressure stimming and he piles as many blankets and clothes as he can get a hold of to curl up under
I also imagine he is horribly touch starved
Like he desperately wants to be crushed in a hug by a loved one but he has no idea how to ask for something like that and no one to ask it of and he hasn’t touched another living person in so long how is he supposed to react?? What if he does it wrong???? Lots of anxiety around platonic intimacy
He also stims with sound, his humming, singing, listening to the different radio frequencies on the girders, the saws in his closet, lots of good sounds!!
Julian the Janitor is definitly on the spectrum thank you for coming to my TED talk
I will admit this is mostly me projecting, but there are just so many instances where I saw myself in the things the Janitor does I just had to compile a list, so here it is!! Might add more later, we’ll see.
