Different anon but uhhhh what do you think is the most neurodivergent thing gojo ever did in canon? And how did that come across or impact your writing of OTT!Gojo, if at all?
Sorry if this is a bad question it's hard to come up with a good one lol. I just like audhd Gojo
Breathed.
It's been three months and that's all I can come up with, anon. I just find it really hard to talk about this topic in a concise manner and I'm also indecisive, so I'm struggling to choose one thing without being deeply unserious. Same as I can't identify one thing about myself probably (it's the fog horns). It's a collection of traits and behaviours that combine to make up the individual, isn't it?
It's really just *waves hand* the way that he is, but I don't want to give you a cop out answer, so let me list several things across four categories, beginning with the least serious! To avoid this getting really long, however, I'm thinking of answering your question about Over the Threshold Gojo in a separate post. The short answer is "it's woven into the very fabric of the story", but I have a lot I could talk about! Would any of you like to read that post?
For now, what do I think is the most neurodivergent thing Gojo ever did in canon? Well, before we get into it, a quick note about something that I've never seen anyone mention in their discussions or depictions of autistic/ADHD/AuDHD Gojo, at least on the English speaking side of the fandom.
I think it's really important to judge Gojo's character within the context of his own culture (and, indeed, the culture of the person who created him). This research article (which is well worth a read!) published in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology posits that we should adopt a sociocultural model of disability on the basis that "the neurotypical world in which an autistic person is situated varies considerably depending on the cultural customs and values unique to the pocket of the world from which they originate", i.e. people experience autism differently depending on the cultures they grow up and live in.
Gojo is a Japanese person, born and raised in Japan. He is also a man. I always keep these factors in mind when analysing or writing his character, but it seems especially important when looking for neurodivergent traits. Okay, let's begin!
Fun things to support AuDHD Gojo
He's always late. Man can teleport, there's literally no good reason for him to be late except for ADHD time blindness.
According to Gege, he eats sweets to stimulate his brain. It makes me wonder how Gojo would fare on stimulant medication with the Six Eyes, but it's both illegal and highly stigmatised in Japan. Of course, that doesn't mean he couldn't have tried it...
He's impulsive, especially when it comes to teaching opportunities for his students. However, his impulsive decisions always seem rooted in logic so it balances out. He's a logical guy on the whole, honestly, which is another point for autistic Gojo.
He supposedly has a "bad personality". People find him annoying and he often clashes with authority figures because his behaviour is deemed disrespectful. This is a big ADHD mood, but it also works through an autistic lens, especially in Japan. Let's dig into this in the next section!
Less fun things to support AuDHD Gojo
According to the article I linked earlier, the structured nature of the language and clear "rules" for communication based on social hierarchy and context in Japan could make it easier for autistic people to follow scripts, which are used more readily in everyday Japanese communication with the goal of minimising uncertainty. However, you have to know the scripts in order to be able to use them!
In a country with a system of honorific speech (keigo), deviation from social norms is noticeable and even alarming in some cases, which is why we often see deliberate deviations used in untranslatable ways in manga, sometimes emphasised with katakana or bouten to draw attention to how out of place they are. This is why Geto tells Gojo he should change the pronoun he uses, much to Gojo's surprise and chagrin. The deviation from social norms and expectations communicates something all by itself, even if the meaning is the same, and Geto recognises that where Gojo doesn't.
We don't have a keigo equivalent in English, so we do a lot more with tone of voice instead. However, we are also capable of adjusting our language to convey different intentions. An example is something like "Move over!" vs "Excuse me, please could I just squeeze behind you? Thank you! Sorry!" (a very Bri'ish example). Both can be either appropriate or rude depending on the circumstances and the person you're interacting with.
You only learn how to navigate these types of social situations "appropriately" as you get older, but until it's pointed out to them directly (usually after a "blunder"), autistic people often aren't aware of unspoken "rules", especially those which seem inefficient and/or illogical. For similar reasons, autistic people are sometimes seen as "childlike", simply because they don't know a certain behaviour is perceived as childish until someone tells them, and that's how I always saw this moment during the Hidden Inventory arc.
Geto is essentially saying, "You shouldn't talk like that anymore, you're too old to get away with that kind of overfamiliarity now". Gojo is socially unaware — unaware how he comes across, how he sounds, maybe even that he's "grown up" (I like this reading in the context of JJK and protecting youth). My autistic king.
Of course, this exchange takes on extra meaning later, but at that point in the story, I think it's just Geto quietly making him aware of something that will impact how he's received by others for his own sake as much as theirs. The fact that he says "I've been meaning to say this for a while" suggests that Geto has been watching Gojo's interactions for some time, second guessing whether to say something before finally deciding he needs to intervene when he sees that he isn't picking up on those unspoken social cues.
As an aside, I love that Geto's ability to make himself seem unthreatening by following social norms is completely at odds with how threatening he actually is, while the opposite is true for Gojo (unless you're a curse or curse user). Gege cooked with that. To me, it really feels like a criticism of the emphasis on conformity and politeness in Japanese society, especially in light of chapter 236 which brings us nicely onto the next section.
Much less fun things to support AuDHD Gojo
To me, chapter 236 of JJK is Gojo’s “unmasking”. I wrote an analysis of Gojo’s character in 236 and though I didn't mention autism explicitly, it was implicit on my end. Aside from the fact that I think Gojo and Geto sitting back to back with Nanami and Haibara is a lovely visual representation of the double empathy problem (which I touched on in this post about empathy), I've said everything there so I won't repeat myself.
This post (and especially its tags) from right after the chapter came out says it in a much more concise way, but Gojo’s upset pout when Nanami says "You never cared about protecting people!" breaks my heart, especially in light of everything he had just said to Geto about how he was never truly able to connect with anyone after he left. For me, the panel below just summarises the experience of being autistic in this world.
Not fun at all things to support AuDHD Gojo
Well, the way that Gojo is infantilised by a huge part of the fandom, despite being a highly competent, intelligent, and responsible adult. It's rife in depictions of Gojo across his ships (with a correlation to his t/b configuration) and it bothers me enormously. I can't think of a more AuDHD experience than being infantilised even when you're the most accomplished person in the room, so I'm taking that as evidence all by itself.
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And that's all! For the longest time, I've been thinking about writing a series where Gojo is explicitly autistic. I'd like to bring a different perspective to the table and address some of the less "palatable" aspects of being autistic head on without compromising on his canon characterisation (to the best of my ability) and without putting him in a box. However, I'm reluctant for so many reasons. We'll see!
Hope this answer was enjoyable, anon! Sorry it took this long. This topic is close to me and it's easy to overthink it. I wanted to do it justice, but I only managed to answer half your question and even then, barely! Argh!