I see your Jonathan is autistic and raise you, everyone in the stoncy poly is autistic.
Ohhh... Nice.
Okay, so...
Jonathan: He’s never been diagnosed, because his family can’t afford the trip to the nearest specialist (the only reason they could for Will is because it was covered by Hawkins Lab) so he struggles silently, not quite understanding why he is like he is. He’s socially awkward and doesn’t quite understand social cues. Small talk kills him, and not because he’s ‘deep and brooding’ but because he literally doesn’t get it??? It doesn’t compute? Yes, the weather is nice, everyone can see that. Yes, he did see that movie you’re talking about, but the question isn’t whether he saw it, but why are you asking him about it? He’s not good with boundaries, either, so he didn’t get why it was wrong to take that photo of Nancy and only realizes he’s done a Bad Thing when Steve breaks his camera for it. And losing his camera was one of the most frustrating things for him, he doesn’t really melt down so much as he shuts down, and he shut down, completely, after losing it, because photography is one of his special interests, has been since he got his first camera at age 6, a cheap disposable camera that only took ten photos, but he still has those photos, even though half of them have fingers in them. His other special interest is music, and he’ll talk about it for hours. If you ever want Jonathan to open up to you, talk music with him. He knows of almost every artist in the genre’s he likes best, but his favorites are Bowie, The Clash, and The Smiths, and he can recite their albums from memory. He knows he’s different, and he knows people don’t understand him, but that’s okay, because his mom does, and so does Will, and family is The Most Important Thing to Jonathan, because those are his people, and he has deep bonds with them. Losing Will sent him into a spiral that he was only able to pull himself out of because his mom needed him to be the strong one.
Nancy: She doesn’t have an official diagnosis (bc it’s the 80s and she’s a girl and even now it’s hard for afab people to be diagnosed), but once she figured out she was different, she researched everything she could get her hands on to learn why. Books are her thing, especially psychology, which she fell in love with after searching through so many books about it. She can tell you anything you want to know about the human brain. She spent hours in the library during school, even skipping class sometimes because it was easier to just learn what she needed to know from a book than listen to a lecture that was hard to focus on because the teacher kept interrupting himself with personal anecdotes that she didn’t care about. She’s not good with empathy, not even close, but he can fake it, because she has to be able to. No one likes a cold girl and she got in trouble a lot in elementary school until she learned how to fake it. Now she sometimes goes overboard, but people just assume it’s because she’s so sensitive, but she really isn’t. She has trouble with romance, with Steve being her first boyfriend ever, and then Jonathan, and it was hard to let herself love them, but once she let them in, it came rushing on her like a tidal wave and now she can barely bear to let them out of her sight. She doesn’t get attached easily, but when she does, she doesn’t let go. That’s why losing Barb was so hard. Barb was her only friend, the only person who let her be cold and unempathetic because she, herself, found it draining to constantly care about everyone. Losing her toppled Nancy’s world and she couldn’t focus on anything but that until she finally had closure.
Steve: Steve has a diagnosis, but he blames that for why his parents are so cold to him, because he’s not the Perfect Son they wanted. He functions well enough, because he’s not antisocial or unempathetic, in fact, he’s the opposite. He’s too empathetic. He feels things so strongly that it can give him panic attacks, but he hide those, as well. He used to hide in the locker room of the pool when he had them, because nobody thought to look for him there. He loves to swim, he loves the feeling of it, being submerged and the coolness of the water, even the smell of chlorine helps him relax. Often when he’s home alone he’ll spend hours in the pool, losing track of time. Once he did it in the middle of winter and had to be rushed to the emergency room for hypothermia, but he still doesn’t regret it. His special interests are varied, but the biggest one for him was sports, mainly basketball, which is why being beaten at it by Billy was so painful for him. Billy took something he loved and made it feel unsafe. He’s good with people because he can put himself in their shoes, but that doesn’t mean he makes friends easily, which is why he hung out with Tommy and Carol, because they didn’t ask him too many personal questions and they were hard to feel anything for, so he didn’t scare them away with how much he cared. His sensory issues are terrible, though, which is why he wears his jacket, literally all the time, because accidentally brushing up against anything is sensory hell for him. He doesn’t mind people touching him, though, which is why he was such a playboy of sorts, because he liked the feeling and intimacy of the act. He’s very sensitive to textures of foods, as well, and there’s a whole list of things he can’t eat that he had his doctor write a note saying he was allergic to, oatmeal and cereal are among the worst ones.
I could probably write about them for several more paragraphs, but I’m going to stop now, lol. I love autistic headcanons. Thanks for sending that!
