#I'm nervous that people might kill me for thinking this headcanon is overused

[purplemninja]

how do you feel about the autistic six headcannon?

Yay! My first ask! Thank you for sending me a question!

As for your question:

I'm not too sure how to feel about the headcanon of Six being autistic, and I don't believe that she's autistic, but a part of me feels like the autistic Six headcanon is a tad bit overused.

Everyone is entitled to their own headcanons, I just find this one being used a bit too often. I remember seeing a post about how Six may have some aversion to sound (which ties into her being autistic) and they used the scene from the 2017 comics when the Ferryman and Guests point at Six and she clutches her pain and grits her teeth. They say that there's a lot of sound going on in that scene, which is why Six curls down in distress, but I disagree because there aren't any visual clues that there's a lot of noise, like comics would draw lines to visually show loud sound, but there isn't any.

And speaking of that scene, from my old post called "Six suffers from 2 types of trauma, not just 1" (where most of what I said in it honestly still holds up 2 years later) I personally believe that one of Six's biggest fears is being kidnapped. I counted that throughout the entire LN series, Six got kidnapped a total of at least 5 times (6 if the 2017 comics are canon. I even made a meme about it some time ago).

First being when she got taken to the Nest (given that she hides in places where the inhabitants of the house wouldn't be able to find her or get, and she wanted to escape, I'm pretty sure she wasn't there at will).

Second time was by the Hunter, third was by the Bullies, fourth time by Thin Man, fifth time by the Ferryman (if the 2017 comics are canon) and sixth time by Roger (if the 2017 comics are not canon, then it's the fifth time instead. I initially didn't count that instance as a kidnapping, but when @haemosexuality counted it as Six being kidnapped, I counted it too).

I'm sure you've heard of the belief that Six suffers from Survivor's Guilt and PTSD, I firmly believe it too, especially when Six shows practically all of the textbook symptoms. I'm not sure if Six does have amnesia or not, but given that she was kidnapped 4 times by the time she encounters the Ferryman, I believe that she clutches her head, grits her teeth and curls down because she can already see that she's about to be kidnapped again, something that she's already heavily traumatised from.

I don't think that that scene has anything to do with sound. In LN1, when you have to push a cart over a pipe that has steam leaking out if it, if you get Six close enough to the steam (but not close enough for it to kill her), she'll cover her ears, same with when Mono walks on the keys of the piano after he and Six stomp it through the floor. But I don't think this is specifically because of autism, I'm pretty sure it's simply because of loud or awful sounds. Like if someone plays an instrument and they play it terribly, you'd want to stop listening to it, and I don't think anyone really likes listening to loud noise like steam leaking out of a pipe.

I had an aversion to loud sounds when I was a kid, such as fireworks, dogs barking and balloons popping. I got used to fireworks when I was around 9 years old (bit ironic since Six is 9), I don't know when I got over the loudness of dog barks, but it was somewhere in my teens (and our dog, who was a greyhound, definitely helped (greyhounds very rarely bark)), I can handle balloons popping better now, but I still prefer to avoid balloons. I'm not autistic, and not liking loud or certain sounds isn't an autism-exclusive trait.

I don't understand fully how autism works, I just know about getting upset over certain sounds, patterns or norms being changed suddenly, and difficulties with certain social interactions, but I don't think you need to be autistic to have some these traits. And I don't think Six really has any of these traits either.

TL;DR: I don't think Six has autism but people are free to headcanon her as being autistic, I just think it, and the headcanon of her being neurodivergent (not sure if it's the same thing or not), are a bit overused :/ (please don't kill me).