#literally copied and pasted this from my notes app so if it formats weird thats why

[autismnation]

ok so since the whiplash fandom has about 2 people active i have decided to share my andrew neiman headcanons that i have cherished in my notes app for a few months now. most of these are autism headcanons. anyway enjoy !

1. he’s autistic & was diagnosed around the age of twelve, however only he and his dad know, he hasn’t told anyone and neither has his dad

2. he also has generalised anxiety

3. he masks a lot in public but is happily unmasked in private & around his dad (his dad is super supportive and listens to andrew whenever he asks for help/tells him something about autism)

4. andrew’s resting face is really blank, like full on no thoughts behind those eyes

5. andrew’s fave colour is brown because it’s a mix of all colours and he likes how it reflects how unique everything in the world is, but he tells people his fave colour is light blue so they don’t think he’s boring

6. andrew has super bad sensitive issues and andrew wears lots of neutral coloured, baggy clothes due to this

7. andrew is bisexual, nonbinary, they/he pronouns and gets lots of gender euphoria when people call him ‘pretty’ or ‘cute’

8. he’s very sensitive to light so he’s almost always squinting & he wears sunglasses indoors when nobody can see him (but not with people bc he doesn’t want to be judged)

9. they’re quite insecure and self conscious & he is almost always policing his body language to make sure he isn’t ‘weird’ (the effects of ableist bullying)

10. he barely gets any sleep because he spends most of his time at night overthinking

11. they also feel like the world is going too fast for them so he spends time at night processing the day’s events

12. his fave way to stim is to blink a lot really fast in a short amount of time. he loves to do it in time to his fave songs too (if anyone asks him what he’s doing he just says some bs about how there’s something in his eyes)

13. their most common stim is tapping any surface (usually his hands, legs or a table) to the beat of a song. it can be a song playing or a song stuck in their head

14. he really, really hates change and it makes him get anxiety attacks whenever there’s sudden change

15. that’s why he hated school sm,, as soon as he got used to his new timetable, new teachers, new seating plans etc. it became a new year and it changed again

16. andrew rlly wants to get his ears pierced but hates the idea of some random stranger touching him (haha surprise he’s touch adverse) so instead he wears clip on piercings. but again, only at home bc he’s too insecure to wear them in public in case he gets made fun of

17. adding onto the touch adverse thing, they can’t handle being touched in more than one place at the same time & u have to ask before you touch them or it freaks him out a little.

18. he sleeps with a weighted blanket bc he loves the pressure, it helps with his anxiety

19. andrew’s a very plain and picky eater (sensory issues),, but sometimes he eats spicy food whenever he’s sensory seeking

20. he has a bunch of teddies from when he was a kid but he hides them under his bed. whenever he feels particularly sad or he can’t sleep after trying for hours, he gets his fave plushie and cuddles it

21. his fave plushie is a caterpillar with the drums (no, it’s not playing the drums, it’s just drums connected to the caterpillar LMAO)

22. andrew gets their dad to cut their hair bc again, he hates strangers touching him & he can’t cut his own hair

23. he’s almost always listening to music bc 1) it’s his special interest and 2) he’d rather have one stimuli he can control instead of a bunch of others he can’t bc yep, you guessed it!! he has sensory issues!

24. he has a rlly bad time understanding tone. for example, he can’t understand sarcasm (like, he can be sarcastic himself but he can’t understand if someone else is being sarcastic)

25. also, he used to be bullied a lot as a kid & people would pretend to be his friend (y’know those type of popular people 😒) and he would believe them, even though it was clear to everyone else they were making fun of him. and bc of that, he now assumes the worst of new people :(

26. their comfort item is their drumsticks. they brings them everywhere with them, even if he isn’t planning to play the drums, and he can calm himself down just by holding them

27. he bites his nails and the skin on the tips of his fingers (due to both stimming & an anxious habit)

28. he’s almost always has plasters covering some parts of his hand, usually his fingers, and he doodles smiley faces and stars on them

29. they barely have any friends & so they talk to themself a lot and sometimes when he feels particularly lonely he pretends he’s talking to an imaginary friend he made up or his favourite musicians

30. he’s so blunt and brutally honest all the time (technically this is canon but idc) & cannot control his tone at all

31. he usually drums late into the night until hes too exhausted to move so he falls straight asleep without overthinking

32. they have very bad impulse control and they lash out a lot (snapping at people and punching things usually) but after the whole fletcher thing, they got help for it so its a little better but he still has scarred knuckles and such

33. he hates all festivities bc its practically hell for his sensory issues but if he had to pick his favourite it would be xmas bc he likes seeing people smile when they open their gifts (he’d also love to dress up as santa and give kids gifts but he hasn’t found a costume that’s sensory safe for him yet)

34. he has to sleep with a blanket on his face e.g on his cheek or covering his mouth otherwise he literally can’t sleep

35. he has really bad emotional regulation and he has the worst case of alexthymia ever bro he doesn’t know what he’s feeling 95% of the time his go to phrase is literally “i’m ok i think how are you?” & he has no sense of identity

36. andrew literally has NO sense of self care like this dude over works himself so hard and has frequent shutdowns & meltdowns like their dad literally has to intervene its so bad their dad forced him to see someone because of it

37. speaking of, shutdowns happen more often than meltdowns for him and he goes nonverbal often

38. the only touch he likes is when people play with his hair but hes kinda picky about it he likes people running their fingers through his hair but if u try plait it or put it into a bobble or do anything to their scalp andrew immediately will recoil