The thing that cemented Derek as autistic for me is the fridge of Soylent thing. Because, I can see like 3 different reasons for why he has that:
1) Sensory issues. He likes having a food with a consistent and predictable texture.
2) He gets so fixated on the stuff he's into (tinkering, coding, etc.) that he forgets to eat. I imagine the room with his laptop/pc is also his work room and he spends basically his entire day there. He has the fridge of soylent to ensure he always has easy access to some kind of food, so he doesn't starve to death.
3) He has a food fixation on soylent. idk if this is an autism thing, but sometimes I get super fixated on one particular kind of snack, and I'll always crave that snack at roughly the same time period every single day for like weeks. This has led to me stocking up on that snack a lot because I know for a fact that I'll be eating it for a while. So, when I heard that man had a fridge full of soylent, I was like "yup, that's just me."
