#Another headcanon I have is that Crosshair is a lightweight

[here-comes-the-moose]

One of my headcanons is that Echo can drink pretty much anyone under the table. The Bad Batch saw this for the first time they went out and were calling Rex like “should we bring him to the hospital???”

[neurodiverse-clones]

Ok so I know I already requested and I don't want to come across as rude or anything

But

I absolutely love your headcanons and was kinda curious if you could do some badbatch headcanons where they try to help Echo with his autism?

Thanks

HI hello yes! Sorry it took me way longer to respond to this than your first ask, it’s the ADHD 😅 But for sure! And don’t worry, asking me to share headcanons doesn’t come across as rude. The enthusiasm makes me happy!

One thing I think about the Bad Batch is that they’re all a little autism coded—Hunter’s sensory stuff, Tech’s special interests, Crosshair’s tendency toward a flat affect, Wrecker sometimes missing social cues—so I feel like they all help in different ways! (I also feel like Tech and Wrecker are a bit ADHD coded, which will come back later.)

Hunter would be the one to help Echo deal with sensory overload and to help him learn to prevent it, because he has the most experience with it. He probably has things that help, like noise-canceling earmuffs or headphones, weighted eye masks to help with visual overstimulation (personally I don’t like having lightweight masks over my eyes but heavy ones feel nice, hence headcanoning weighted masks for him too), maybe… not candles probably, but some sort of pleasantly-scented oil or something to help with bad tastes and smells. And I think he’d share these with Echo until Echo got his own collection.

Tech is a great buddy to have infodump sessions with and to learn that special interests are cool and good, and maybe to expand Echo’s list of special interests. Like, Tech obviously loves technology but he also CLEARLY loves linguistics—I think he would help Echo find things he enjoys outside of the regs to develop special interests in! And then he would listen to Echo infodump about his new interest, knowing that in a few minutes it’s his turn to talk about the 800 languages and dialects of this one planet they’ve never actually been to and Echo will listen to him right back.

Wrecker seems like he sometimes misses social cues. Whether that’s out of distraction (ADHD) or not understanding them (autism) is probably up to interpretation, I feel like there’s a little of both—but I bet that he would help when Echo felt embarrassed about missing or misunderstanding a social cue by taking the attention off of Echo. I say this because he seems willing to make himself look a little silly sometimes—I imagine he probably understands the embarrassment and uses his own personality to his advantage to help Echo out without having difficult or uncomfortable conversations about it.

Crosshair… I’m not sure how he would help really! Like, I know for the other BB members I kind of used the way they I felt they were autism coded as part of how they would help or at least understand Echo, and to an extent that’s true here too? Early on in Echo’s timeline (I’m thinking s1e5 Rookies) he seems to have a bit of a flat affect, and so Crosshair would understand that because he also has that. But I’ve personally never known another autist who was particularly disturbed by their flat affect? In fact, I know/follow several other autists who have a flat affect and personally I barely notice the difference between that and a “normal” affect. People mention it because it’s something some of us experience while others of us tend to be… the opposite but I don’t know what the phrase for that is. But some autists tend to use more inflection than the average allistic person does. Anyway, all this to say it’s something people in general are aware of and that we know affects autistic people, but unless it’s a little exaggerated (like in a voice acting situation) I personally don’t really notice and so I don’t know how it affects other people/causes distress.

THAT all said, I think he still supports Echo and helps him deal with other stuff. I don’t think any of them “stays in their lane,” as it were. They all help and support him in the ways that are most comfortable for them and sometimes those overlap! Even if it’s just “sitting in the same room while Echo has a meltdown/shutdown” I feel like Crosshair would support him because even though he’s a bit flatter and less physically affectionate than the rest of the Bad Batch, he definitely still loves his brothers. It’s just less obvious to us as viewers.

And Wrecker and Tech have lots of stim and fidget toys and advice! Stimming is a shared identifying trait between autism and ADHD but personally I associate some stims with my autism and some with my ADHD and most of the ones which require toys or tools are ADHD stims, which is why I personally feel like Tech and Wrecker’s ADHD coding lends itself to fidget toys rather than the autism coding. But that’s just me!