#bonus headcanon : Cavendish has a mug collection

[heloflor]

Me : “I don’t think I should write characters that are explicitly neurodivergent because I don’t know that much about neurodiversity and I never take the time to know more. If I were to make a character who happens to have neurodivergent traits and call them neurodivergent, I might get it wrong and I don’t want to give a fic with bad or stereotypical representation in it, it’s unfair for those who can and wish to identify with the character. So if I write about a character that the fandom sees as neurodivergent, I will simply try to write them close to their canon personality; and if they happen to have traits that people can identify, I’ll just let other people do their own headacanons around it without touching on the topic myself.”

Also me :  “So :

- Vinnie Dakota absolutely adores animals. In the future, all animals are extinct, so in order to see animals, you either get a robot pet or you pay to have some time in a “place simulation” room and order it to simulate a field with holographic animals. Dakota learned about animals through books and often went to the simulation place or bough some stickers and other stuff from the rare places that still sold animal merch. He never got a robotic pet or never kept it for long because it’s too dull compared to a real animal, or should I say his thoughts of real animals.

- During his first mission, Dakota was ecstatic to see animals for the first time and, after the mission, spent a few hours looking at and petting the ones he could. In his house in the future, he has a room in which he displays animal-related stuff he got from his missions through time, like art or figurines or ornaments or even plushies etc. He might also sometimes take pictures of animals and put them with the souvenir he got from the same mission. He takes extra care of the stuff he has in this room and organizes it a certain way. He has the money to have a place with several rooms : as we see in “Picture Day”, once they got fired, Cavendish and Dakota had the money to go to Hawaii for an entire week and without knowing when and how they will get a new job, since Bob Block met them as they were about to leave for their vacation. Also Cavendish mentioned studying for 20 cycles, so this job doesn’t seem like a given. So being a time traveler seems to pay well.

- When he and Cavendish started dating (I headcanon them as starting to date 2 years after meeting a marrying 3 years later, so 5 years after meeting), everytime they went through a century they never or barely visited, Dakota would get a random souvenir, not always animal-related, along with a picture of either him, Cavendish or both of them. He puts these souvenirs and pictures in a different part of the room. The picture we see in their car in “Fungus Among Us” is from a mission in a place they visited before, but Dakota found the situation too funny to not take a picture.

- Every celebration (holidays, birthdays, dates important to them), Cavendish and Dakota would give each other gifts. Dakota always tries to find something related to Professor Time while Cavendish forces himself to break a few rules and go back in time without being ordered to so he can find something animal-related to Dakota. Dakota is always genuinely happy about these gifts, though he learned not to tease Cavendish about the whole “breaking the rules” situation. Those gifts are either stuff like fossils or skulls/bones or they’re stuff related to the culture of the time-period like watching tournaments in ancient Rome.

- When the two get married and buy a place together, Dakota makes sure it has a room large enough to put his growing collection. As time went by, it started to be less about animals and more about what they find during their missions, though the animal part is still very much there. Dakota refers to the room as “The memory room” while Cavendish calls it “Vinnie’s room”. Cavendish doesn’t spend that much time in it, though he absolutely loves the feeling of reminiscence the collection gives him. If he has guests at home, he tries to keep them away from the room. He knows how important it is for Dakota and doesn’t want it to be disrupted. Cavendish tried to get into Dakota’s passion but, while he found some stuff to be interesting, he’s not really into it compared to Dakota.

- After the events of the episode “We’re Going to the Zoo”, Dakota brought back tickets for his collection, along with a picture of him holding squirrels in his arms while another one has its head coming out of Dakota’s pants, near his feet. Dakota went back to the zoo several times and ended up learning what every animal was and in which section of the zoo they were.

- When the two are fired and banned, they only get like an hour to pack all their stuff. So Dakota uses some future deus ex machina technology, making their house surrounded by a barrier that only the two of them can open. That way, nobody can touch the house and, if they were to be able to go back to the future, which seems to be the case if season 2 was already thought of when “A Christmas Peril” was made, Dakota could find his collection intact, along with the rest of the house.

- Once stuck in the past, Dakota kind of gave up on doing a collection. They don’t have enough space and the realization that Cavendish could now die anytime put a lot on stress on him and most of his thoughts were on Cavendish. This stress started to dim out after the events of the second half of the season, when Dakota realized that maybe the world was done trying to get rid of Cavendish, given how the man was able to survive alone for about a month. During the first celebration they had since getting banned, Cavendish bought something animal-related as usual and it led Dakota to wish to start a collection again. Given the space and their current situation, this collection would mostly be pictures that he can keep in an album in a drawer. Cavendish would probably be the one to buy the album after realizing that Dakota started taking random pictures again.

- At some point, Cavendish learns that there’s a petting zoo in Danville and decides to use it as a birthday gift/surprise. Dakota has never been more in love with him than during the moment when he stepped out of the car and saw the place’s sign (with the exception of their wedding and honeymoon).

 …aaaannnd I just made Dakota have an hyperfixation, didn’t I ?

Though, to be honest, I really do want to write characters that are diverse, not only in terms of sexuality like I already do but also in upbringing and neurodiversity. Thing is, to write a neurodivergent character, I need to have the answer to these questions : How often do they stim ? What are the most common stims and what is and isn’t considered as such, aka what does the character does in the show that seems to be a stim ? How does the character acts/should act with others ? Which social cues do they understand ? Which ones do they not understand ? How to write a character that you can tell is neurodivergent without having to make them scream ‘I’m not neurotypical’; with instead having the only ‘confirmation’ of it being in the tags ? How to make them very excited about something without falling into the ‘autistic people are children’ stereotype ?

As long as I can’t answer these questions, I refuse to be an idiot and try to write about something I know I will mess up. And while I do have the curiosity and will to learn more, if not simply because I’m curious about neurodiversity, don’t expect me to write about it anytime soon. Right now my priority is to ‘digitalize’ all the dozen fics I wrote on paper (two of them had been in my writing pile for two years, and several for a year) while making the eventual post that comes to mind like this one.”

Edit : So a few weeks after making that post, I started to learn more about neurodiversity because being autistic makes you curious to know what kinds of behaviors are due to you not being neurotypical. And, as it had been pointed out, I’m not using the correct term here. I didn’t give Dakota a hyperfixation but a special interest. From what I understand, the difference is that hyperfixations stick to you constantly for a while (a few weeks or months), leading you to easily hyperfocus on the topic, before you suddenly start to get less invested in that interest. On the other hand, special interests can stick for months or sometimes years. And even if you’re not constantly thinking about your interest, it’s still there in a corner of your mind and you never get tired of it and keep the knowledge you accumulated to talk about it anytime.

So yeah, I gave Dakota a special interest. The reason why I thought it was a hyperfixation is because I see this term be very often associated with ADHD and a lot of people see Dakota as having ADHD. But still, my bad for mixing up the two. And the reason I didn’t edit the post sooner is because it kind of slipped out of my mind until I made a new post today that mentions this one. Sorry for that too.