#listen I have adhd and a hyperfixation so the answer is obviously yes

[autistic-danieljackson]

Does anyone have suggestions for how to make tiny ZPMs? I’ve had a sudden need for ZPM earrings

[i-may-be-an-emu]

hiiyyyy!!!

also, trans HCs??

TELLL ME MORE!! :DDDD

HELLOO!

Gladly. (This will be a very long post btw)

(I know I said this at some point but idk when so sorry if im not answering this properly)

My ftm headcannons:

Peter Parker (Marvel Universe)

He knew ever since he was little

The spider bite gave him free testosterone

He also has adhd (hc) and before getting top surgery would hyperfixate and forgert he was binding

Because of this Aunt May would have to check on him and set timers ect

the scene where Tom's spiderman is like "I'm not a girl I'm a BOY- I mean I'm-I'm a MAN" is pure trans-ness

he's also bi (hc) and really terrified of getting a boyfriend and then having him not see him as a man and is actually a straight dudes

So he only dates girls

(mj/the girl Andrew's one was in love with is mtf [but she doesn't really care about her gender but knows its feminin and calls herself mtf] and always reminds him he's a real man and when he goes "but what if-" MJ hits him with a "well then aren't you saying I'm a man then?" or something)

Luke Patterson (from Julie and the phantoms)

Part of the reason his mom and him fought so much

his parents said that the band made him trans and hanging out with boys was turing him into one

But after he died they saw that he was a guy and dedicated the rest of their lives to helping (especially young) trans folk

He wasn't diagnosed as autistic or with adhd (hc) because he was seen as a girl which gave him problems in having to get his parents to listen to him about both his brain and gender

Hates sleeves = trans

The beanie. No I will not elaborate. He wore a beanie. He is trans.

The way his hair is styled is like it was grown long and cut short instead of grown short and cut to stay that way, meaning that he is very likely to have had long hair and probably cut it short himself

When he became a ghost his soul was a guy so his ghost form became a guy, meaning he had a cis guy's appearance and "biological" situation or whatever

My Name Is Luke. He wrote a song called my name is Luke.

Jake peralta (Brooklyn 99)

Gina helped him come out to his mom

Did you SEE how he looked in highschool? The long hair and earring? Litterally in denial. Plus he was best friends with a girl (not saying straight guys can't have female friends but c'mon)

He wears about 3 layers

He met Rosa in the academy and i like to think that it was transohobic and put him in a dorm with her

she didn't care but was really mad about the academy being transphobic

prison was difficult, but Caleb was also trans and it made it easier (they look down in the shower and jake says samsies, I refuse to belive it's about circumcision and think it's trans instead.)

When Jake came out to Holt they had a kinda father-son type moment and Holt said that he understood and if Jake ever needed anything to come to him

He was still wearing a binder in the first few seasons (screw the scenes where he's shirtless) and the pain is unbearable because he's irresponsible (cue Gina and Rosa basically grounding him and everyone finding out he's trans)

Hiccup Haddock The 3rd (How to train Your Dragon)

He's 15 in the first movie. 15. My boy looks like he's 12

He's not as buff as the other guys his age and in one of the episodes where he's 15 bucket does a painting of him and Stowick and makes him extra buff, Stowick likes it more and Hiccup feels like crap (because he's trans)

Everyone sees him as a screw up and won't even let him ououtside

We never see him shirtless

"But he grows a beard eventually!" Yes but how long did that take him? My guy invented a flaming sword i think he'd be able to get testosterone from sosomewhere.

Kids? Sperm doner! (yes i know they're vikings but they could always just like... yk)

He doesn't have a bulge in his pants

He felt like an outsider and seeing toothless be the only nightfury made him just feel really connected to him

He didn't change his name

When he meets his mom she's obviously suprised but understands what's going on

My mtf headcanons:

Carrie (Julie and the phantoms)

Trevor understood fully because of Luke and asked her if she wanted a new name and what pronouns to use

He sometimes messed up with her pronouns at first but he tries really hard to get them right

When she came out he game her his credit card to buy new clothes with and quickly learned that was a very bad idea

She figured out her gender but was still figuring out her sexuality

She started dating nick as a power move to try and gain popularity (it worked)

She went on puberty blockers at 13 and it meant she was able to get a high voice but still does voice training as well (i dont know much about mtf voice stuff im sorry 😭)

After season one the boys were able to become visible to lifers when they want to be and she and Luke become trans bff's

loves pink

(I'm sorry I cant think of anymore mtf ones mainly because im ftm and those hc come from projecting onto charichters)

Nonbinary:

Oh my gosh I forgot their name 🤦 (from jatp)

(The member of dirty candy who Reggie likes)

Idk. But they are. She goes by they/she pronouns too, and I cant really say much else because they're a side character.

And also MJ from the Tom Holland spidermans is a genderfluid girl

Im sorry im too tired to elaborate any further I will think of more tho C:

[Edited]

[qualquercoisa945]

I posted 4,182 times in 2022

That's 1,505 more posts than 2021!

11 posts created (0%)

4,171 posts reblogged (100%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@lastoneout

@argentavis

@the-jennnster

@perennii

I tagged 211 of my posts in 2022

#kho don't look - 13 posts

#ask memes - 5 posts

#themb - 4 posts

#icarus answers - 3 posts

#please - 3 posts

#a h - 3 posts

#okay but like - 2 posts

#oh yes - 2 posts

#my god bless whoever made this - 2 posts

#i will die on this hill - 2 posts

Longest Tag: 112 characters

#yes he's a tragic motherfucker and the fact that i stole his name probably says something about my mental health

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

∞

song: downtown blues by ben below feat. rachel l hughes

lyric: one winter you're an over achiever, next spring you're just another deceiver

2 notes - Posted August 8, 2022

#4

uh oh besties. i might come back. with pokemon fanfic.

3 notes - Posted November 30, 2022

#3

"i like your president!"

thanks i stole it from the shoelaces

-my friend

4 notes - Posted May 5, 2022

#2

i feel like an important context to me as a person is that like.

so i used to watch a lot of steven universe comic compilations back when i was like... 11, i would say

and like obviously there were comic DUB compilations but what i mean is comic compilations, which were just the comics passing through the screen with music in the background

and i remember the main channel that i watched would change the music up like, once every like 10 to 15 episodes right, of the comic compilations series

and one of the songs they picked, for, again, 10 to 15 episodes of a steven universe comic compilation series, was a mountain goats song

and keep in mind i was like 11, at most 12 right? like i had never heard of the mountain goats before this, i BARELY spoke english, and i wouldn't Truly Care about the mountain goats until i was 16, so at least 4 years later

and um, the way i PROPERLY got into the mountain goats was like, a friend of mine recommended me this year and i spent an afternoon listening to it and cleaning my bedside desk on january 2nd, 2021

but like, me and that friend would sometimes get on voice chat and listen to tmg albums like he'd show them to me and my now partner

and anyways imagine the whiplash when i realized that someone out there set 10 to 15 episodes of a steven universe comic compilation series to no children by the mountain goats

anyways if you've ever wondered why i can't take no children seriously, that is why

4 notes - Posted March 2, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

--☆ Basics ☆--

hi!! my name's icarus, amongst other names, which you can find here!!

i'm 17, and i use the following pronouns:

he/him/his/his/himself

they/them/their/theirs/themselves

it/it/its/its/itself

fae/faer/faers/faers/faerself

voi/void/voids/voids/voidself

end/end/ends/ends/endself

prince/prince/princes/princes/princeself

and any other neos!! those are just my favourites

i like tons of things, but my main special interest that i will actually post about is pokémon. i have autism and adhd, so hyperfixations come and go as they please, so i can't promise any consistency in what i post, but i can promise i'll try to be at least mildly entertaining while on my bullshit

--☆ Disclaimers ☆--

while i forget to tag things very often, i am always open to being told i have to tag them!! please tell me if you need anything tagged, i can't promise it'll be consistent but i'll do my best

while i don't have the patience nor do i pay enough attention to enforce a dni, i want it to be very clear that i am pro black lives matter, pro queer people (including trans people, neopronoun users and xenogender users) and most things that people find "weird" or "cringy", and anti ableism, anti terfs, anti transabled, anti transage, anti transrace, and generally anti things that actually hurt people. proceed at your own discretion, and be aware that i might block you at any point if i find you interacting with me makes me uncomfortable in any way, shape, or form

--☆ Useful Tags/Links ☆--

Carrd

Writing Masterpost

PFP Credit

Banner Credit

Ask Memes (tag i use so people (including me) can find the latest ask meme i reblogged)

Icarus Answers (tag i use so people can see all my asks)

Icarus Rambles (tag i use so people can see all my original posts that aren't writing)

--☆Userboxes☆--

(under a cut, so the post isn't any longer than it already is)

See the full post

6 notes - Posted August 15, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[unpickled-olive]

(I realize at the end of this monologue that it's not actually 100% relevant, but that fits the theme I think)

Two things that have helped me accept and recontextualize my ADD:

reject society

return to the trees

reject society

I mean, I can't really, but I can throw the blame right back at it when I feel like my differently functioning blame is at fault for me forgetting something. there's simply too much shit going on. appointments, passwords, groceries, medicine, getting gas, texting people back, excel formulas, sending emails, reading emails, answering emails, updating information, doing taxes. we didn't have to do nearly as much fucking shit that has not immediate impact on our immediate lives.

so whenever i forget something, instead of getting mad at myself, i try to just think "there's too much fucking shit on me." it weirdly helps.

return to the trees (sometimes)

Since the pandemic (where my pandemic hyperfixation was hunter-gatherers), I've started to frame almost everything in terms of evolutionary psychology. For example, why are there night owls and early birds? Because if we have diversity in how we sleep, there is always someone awake in the group to keep watch for enemies and predators.

Today though, being a night owl is seen as a character flaw. Society is built for the early birds. If you can't wake up at 7AM and funciton probably, you're made to feel lazy, have no work ethic, can't manage your personal life. Even though your biology is predisposed to staying up till 2AM and waking at 10AM.

In that same vein, ADHD and sensory sensitivity aren't issues--they're differences (as neurodiversity obviously emphasizes). Maybe even differences that were evolved because they were a very important assets that helped the group survive.

I've tried to maintain this and not feel like a failure when I can't stay focused or get too overwhelmed by stimnuli. But my brain and body react to every sound and sight when I wish they wouldn't. Can't focus at work because a sound happened.

Try as I might, I still feel like they're deficits.

However, when I go out in nature, it starts to make sense. Suddenly, my atunement to every single sight, sound, movement, smell is useful, not burdensome.

I notice when the wind is blowing through the trees and the weather is dropping before others might.

I went camping and noticed that there were cattle tracks where we put our tents, and had us move the tents not 20 minutes before the herd of cattle came back through.

I noticed that there was a stray dog out in the distance acting strange and made sure the kids were all close by before it came towards us and started acting dangerous.

Can I sit down and listen to a lecture that I don't care about? No, and I'll cry about it. Can I notice a snake waiting in the road? Yes, and it makes me feel super useful.

this is your gentle reminder to stop fighting against your adhd and instead structure your life around it

buy a pack of chapsticks and put one in the pocket of all of your coats and jackets because you always forget to bring one and chapped lips is sensory hell

leave important things where you can see them. if they go in a box or a drawer you will forget they exist

put any appointments or deadlines in your phone calendar As Soon As you get them. set a reminder for a week before, a day before, an hour before, as many as you need as often as you need them.

when that little voice in your head says "i dont need to write that down, ill remember it" that is the devil talking!!! write it down anyway!!

plan for down time. have a few hours at the end of every day to just do fun stuff like engage in your hyperfixations. even if you didnt get all of your work done that day, have the rest anyway. you probably spent the whole day beating yourself up for not doing what you Should be doing, so you still need the break.

if you never eat vegetables because its too much effort to chop and cook them, get the frozen or canned shit. it doesnt go off for ages and you just have to microwave it. theres no point buying fresh vegetables if they just keep going off and being left to rot in the bottom of your fridge

if you struggle to decide what to have for dinner every day, take the decision out of it. choose a set of meals and eat those on rotation until you get sick of them, then choose some new ones and do it again.

its not stupid if it works! our brains literally have a chemical deficiency. you are allowed to accommodate yourself. go forth and stop making your life more difficult than it has to be because "this shouldn't be this hard". it is hard, so make it easier.

[blue-ravens]

"#is it the autism? #is it the adhd? #yes" Obviously I’m a huge Autistic Charles Truther but I'd never before considered he might have ADHD! Are there any specific traits/moments of his that make you HC him that way? (I'm autistic myself but I've never looked into ADHD, though I know the comorbidity rate is super high, so I'm extra curious! ^_^)

ok ok full disclosure, it's mostly projection™ because i myself am far too adhd to function sometimes and i like to take it out on my faves sometimes to cope, honestly. but like. there is plenty of overlap between autism and adhd and while i absolutely headcanon the former i'm willing to go into the latter too because, well, why not. the intense hyperfixation on tasks to the point of forgetting other important tasks (getting told to get a move on in OR because he's aiming for 'perfection' instead of 'done', etc). being slightly off-kilter in social situations. having to have noise, constantly. substance abuse! literally the whole amphetamine plot line is worth exploring (and god i want a deep dive on that plot so much), and the unrelenting anxiety that stems from having to be perfect always and nothing less will do. and not because i'm listening to 'hand in my pocket' right now, but. hands in his pockets. he fidgets (and stims). so much. always just a little too tense. TIGHTLY WOUND. a quick temper! absolutely very impatient with people! the emotional dysregulation of it all! wanting to do things for the impulsive challenge of it and the painful hatred of being bored and idle!

of course he doesn't have the full breakfast buffet of adhd symptoms yet some are THERE and that's enough for me. also like, this is in no way a definitive answer, because while i know i have an essay in me about it it's just not gonna happen right now :)

[words-writ-in-starlight]

hi, it's the adhd anon again. according to the dsm-v, i think i have it, which is weird bc i've never seen myself as having more trouble than others. (my grades are better than almost anyone else in my grade.) (although that might just be bc i'm interested in what's being taught - when something's not interesting or too hard, i have a pretty hard time doing it.) anyway, if it's not too much trouble, what does feel like to stim/hyperfixtate for you? (i'm so sorry to bother you in advance)

Hey, dude, welcome back!  So, okay, first things first: the stereotype of someone with ADHD automatically doing terribly in school is based heavily on the original diagnostic criteria, which categorized ADHD strictly in terms of “young hyperactive white boy who has violent outbursts and/or disciplinary problems and Just Doesn’t Do Well in academics.”  And there are people who manifest ADHD like that, it’s a stereotype with roots in reality--a lot of people with ADHD either consistently struggle with academics or eventually reach a point where their previous focusing techniques fail them.

However.

I left high school for college two years early, and if I hadn’t, I would probably been valedictorian of the graduating class, because I had a GPA well above 4.0 due to my general habit of doing extra credit whenever it was offered.  In college, I had a reputation for turning in beautifully complete lab reports and essays five pages over the minimum requirement.  I got high honors on my thesis, graduated magna cum laude, and finished a pre-medical major in half the recommended time period.  When I was a kid, the phrase “savant syndrome” got thrown around a lot, to give you some context.

On the other hand, I manifest a lot of those stereotypical ADHD symptoms: I’m loud, I interrupt people a lot, I have erratic and overwhelming mood swings that I struggle to control, I fidget incessantly and can’t stand silence, I have a tendency to get destructive when I’m angry, I have managed to seriously injure myself because I couldn’t resist a stupid impulse more than once, and if we’re all being honest, I would never have graduated high school at all, because I was on the brink of expulsion for getting into fights during class periods.  

It’s easy to feel like “I never really struggled academically” is somehow a counterargument to any and all symptoms of ADHD that you might manifest, but it’s really not.  (Heck, sometimes ADHD is even helpful--I finished my thesis a full week before anyone else and had time to fix my citations, mostly because my ADHD responds well to pressure and that crunch time hyperfocus Had My Back.)  It might take time for you to come to terms with this idea, and that’s okay!  But try to at least consider it.

All that being said, I am actually gonna answer your question, I just got distracted because the amount of time I spent making the statement “I’m faking having ADHD because I did well in school” is mindblowing and I have a Thing about it.  Forgive my ramble.

Stimming: I’m going to answer this first because the answer is going to be the most useless.  The ways I stim tend to be vocal/auditory stuff (I talk a lot when I’m alone, I sing and play music when I’m doing menial tasks, if I’m really anxious I’ll hum a single note until I calm down) or tactile stuff (sometimes destructive things like scratching my arms, sometimes neutral stuff like tapping my fingers in specific patterns or rubbing my palms over my jeans or the leather of a jacket or something).  It’s mostly things that ‘pass’ for neurotypical with very few exceptions, because I trained myself out of a lot of my ‘non-passing’ stims (rocking back and forth, knocking into walls, hand-flapping, that sort of thing) really young.  As for what it feels like to stim, it’s just...good.  It’s sort of like the brain equivalent of running your hand the right way along velvet, and discovering that you’ve been rubbing it backwards all along.  Or like the equivalent of stepping into a cool shower on a really hot day--it’s not that it’s miserable outside the shower, it’s just that the shower is extremely good.  I have a playlist of music that, for whatever reason, hits the right combination of voice and rhythm and notes and words to make my brain suddenly get calm, and it’s not necessarily my favorite music or a cohesive collection of tunes or anything (featuring Six Shooter by Coyote Kisses and also Human by Rag’n’Bone Man, which have nothing in common), but it’s Good.

Hyperfocus: You didn’t actually mention this, but I think it’s worth mentioning because it’s one of the hallmarks of ADHD.  It bears more than a passing resemblance to the concept of “flow”, but turned up to 11.  Hyperfocus is the state of being so overwhelmingly tuned in to the thing you’re currently doing that everything else falls away--which is fine, unless you’re one of us folks who can hyperfocus ourselves right through meal times.  It’s inexorable, it’s all-consuming, and it can feel pretty fucking great, which is why it’s important to be careful and find a way to hydrate yourself.  The primary difference between hyperfocus and flow is that hyperfocus is generally involuntary and does not necessarily tune you into something you planned or wanted to pay attention to.  If you ever see me publish a fic that includes a note about “I didn’t mean to write this but it’s 2 AM so here”, that’s code for “please validate me, I’ve been hyperfocused on this for two or three hours and I failed to do a lot of important things as a result.”  The other thing about hyperfocus is that afterwards, the drop coming off it is a real bitch.  It leaves me feeling hollowed out, exhausted, and kind of pettily disinterested in anything that would usually hold my attention.  Being hyperfocused is like being a machine designed to do one thing and one thing only and doing that thing feels incredible; coming off hyperfocus is like being an overtired toddler.

Hyperfixation: Hyperfixations are the ADHD equivalent of a special interest, aka: that thing you’ve been struggling not to pester every single person you know about, every single second of every single day of the past two and a half weeks.  Were you around, dear anon, when this blog was Only Animorphs, All The Time, and if you didn’t give a shit about morphin’ teens you just had to sit down, shut up, and learn some stuff, or else unfollow me?  That’s what hyperfixating looks like.  Sometimes it’s useful stuff--do you know how unbelievably useful having a hyperfixation on triage techniques is to me?  I crushed my triage training, I owned that shit, I wrote a whole chapter of my thesis on it.  Other times, it’s...well, Animorphs.  Or the American Revolution.  Or X-Men.  Or dinosaurs.  Some random shit like that.  Learning about hyperfixations, talking about them, is generally pure unadulterated joy.  On the other hand--oh, God, listen, I know how annoying I am, but I cannot stop myself.  I know I haven’t talked about anything but Animorphs in three weeks, I know I’ve made forty-five TAZ posts today, whatever you’re about to complain about, I already know, okay, I am aware, and there is nothing more painful than to have a fucking out-of-body experience watching yourself rattle on about a hyperfixation while the other person obviously gets bored in front of you.  And then you try to keep your mouth shut and it physically hurts not to talk about the thing.  It’s hard to describe what it ‘feels’ like except that ADHD brains are magpies at their core and hyperfixations are the shiny, shiny objects your brain wants to take home.

Anyway, I’m not sure how useful ANY of this has been, but like.  After a certain point, you kind of have to trust yourself enough to decide, once and for all, whether you really, truly believe you’re faking a neurological disorder for the attention.  If the answer is no, then great!  You have sussed out your symptoms and can start managing them accordingly, whether that’s some helpful apps on your phone or medication or something in between.  If the answer is yes, then you probably need some therapy, and your therapist will be able to help you get to a point where you feel able to trust yourself.

Go with the neurodivergent gods, my dude.

[psychologicharacters]

Psychology of Edward Nygma

Alright, alright. So this one’s a bit of a long and complicated discussion, but for the purposes of this post I’m going to be talking about the version of the Riddler displayed in the TV show Gotham. There are two main things I want to talk about to start off, and I’ll probably make separate posts later going into his MBTI or aspects of his villainy, but for now the two topics I want to discuss are 1) Ed’s apparent autism, and 2) Ed’s background of abuse and trauma and how it shaped his canonical behavior.

To start off, although I don’t have autism or spend a lot of time around people who do, I’m very interested in the topic and have researched autism and similar topics extensively. That being said, this is, of course, nothing like a formal diagnosis or anything; I’m just stating my thoughts and opinions on his behavior based on what I know.

Edward has a lot of trouble with social cues, recognizing tone and facial expressions, and inferring emotional information from indirect or vague statements. Some examples of this are:
 - when he’s pursuing Kristen Kringle in S1: he can’t see the cues in her tone and expressions that would alert him to the fact that she doesn’t want to be around him - when talking to harvey or jim in S1: he doesn’t see their distaste for his riddles and video game discussion, trying again and again to lead conversations with these topics until harvey directly tells him he isn’t interested - the very first time he meets oswald: he follows him around the station and tries to engage in conversation multiple times despite clear cues from penguin that he doesn’t want to talk - when he tries to rearrange kristen’s office in S1: he has good intentions, thinking he’ll help her by arranging it in a way that makes sense to him, but the cues that she doesn’t want him to touch her things go over his head right up until she has a breakdown after he takes it all apart - when he can’t sense that kristen’s boyfriend is making fun of him

There are more examples, but we’ll stick with these for now. This pattern of failing to recognize and understand social cues is typical to many types of autism, but especially Asperger’s.

Ed is also highly intelligent with special interests in puzzles, riddles, and human anatomy. Although not necessarily characteristic to Asperger’s, high intelligence is common among those with Asperger’s, which is sometimes referred to as being an autistic savant. Special interests, similar to hyperfixations in the ADHD community, are a part of autism. Ed is almost compulsively drawn to puzzles and riddles in every aspect of his life, and his interest in and intelligence for human anatomy (autopsies, in this case) leads him to get into trouble in S1 when he performs several unordered ones despite being in forensic analysis instead of autopsy.

Although not canonically explored, I believe that Ed most likely has some sensory issues common in autistic and ADHD people, including a compulsion to stim. In S1 especially, his wardrobe consists of very similar sweaters and pants, which could be an indication that those materials are the most comfortable to him in a sensory way. He’s also seen chewing on pens and sometimes his finger or fingernail, especially when he’s thinking, which is a mild form of stimming.

Now, onto the topic of Ed’s childhood. In the comics and other adaptations of Batman, he was physically and emotionally abused/neglected by his father from early childhood on. Most adaptations say that it was because his father was heavily narcissistic and insecure and was jealous of Ed’s intelligence. I’m pretty sure he was also an alcoholic. Either way, the main points of Ed’s father’s abuse are that: 1) he physically beat Ed and told him he was a liar when he showed intelligence; 2) he punished Ed for lying; and 3) he isolated and alienated Ed from his family and from having a father figure.

Abuse trauma is a very difficult and complicated thing that is experienced differently for everyone. Some people can even psychologically repress the experiences if they were young enough at the time. As sad as it is, I believe that Ed’s trauma became a center point of his personality in many ways.

I believe that, as a result of his autism and childhood abuse, Ed grew up isolated from and bullied by his peers and his family, unable to clearly learn right from wrong by example, misunderstood and looked over by adults, and terrified of upsetting authority figures. This lead to a few things: a compulsive need to tell the truth, a compulsive need to show his intelligence (or narcissism), and an inability to healthily release anger and sadness. Ed’s need to tell the truth stems from his trauma - his learned behavior was that lying, or perceived lying, = pain. This is, in my opinion, what produced his compulsion for riddles. When asked by the police if he knows where Jim Gordon is in S2 or 3 (I can’t remember), Ed answers first with yes, then no, then a riddle to which the answer is “home”. He is deeply shaken when Lucius Fox figures out his riddle and goes to search his apartment, suggesting that he either didn’t think they could guess the answer or that they would ignore his riddles like most people do. This phenomenon of supplying a riddle in place of an answer happens frequently throughout the show. I believe that it’s Ed’s subconscious finding a loophole in his learned behavior logic: if he answers questions with another question, he can technically never lie.

Ed’s narcissism is another key point to his personality. In my theory, the narcissism developed as a defense mechanism in response to the overwhelming isolation and torment he experienced as a child and even still. If someone insults him, his brain simply refuses to accept it, instead twisting it so that Ed can safely revel in the fact that he’s smarter than everyone and everyone who says those things about him is obviously so below him in intelligence that their words aren’t even worth listening to. In this same vein, his compulsion to prove his intelligence, most likely born from a deep and primal need to finally impress his father and get him to love his son, is often the very thing that gets him caught. When forging Kristen’s boyfriend’s goodbye note in S1, Ed literally can’t resist leaving a mark of his genius on his work, resulting in the first letters of every line in the letter spelling “NYGMA”. This ultimately leads to his incrimination in the man’s murder. This compulsion is, in my opinion, also where the famous green question mark comes from. Leaving a sign of his intelligence is irresistible as a serial criminal, but it’s also a driving force leftover from his childhood abuse.

Lastly, Ed’s inability to express his anger and sadness appropriately leads to the creation of a second personality who taunts, berates, and threatens him before and throughout S1. Terrified of his own violence and anger because of his home environment, he repressed the negative feelings so hard that they manifested themselves in the form of another Ed. Throughout S1, Ed is seen arguing with his other self and seemingly trying his best to separate the violent, confident, dangerous Ed from his docile and awkward main personality. The fusion of the two personalities in the end of S1 is what “creates” The Riddler, resulting in the scarily composed, incredibly manipulative, dangerously unpredictable Edward Nygma we know and (mostly) love.

I think I covered everything I wanted to say for this post. Let me know if anyone has any questions or comments about anything said here. Thanks!