The Nick Nelson Autism Master Post
Nick Nelson is autistic and here is why, love from me, who relates harder to him than any other fictional character ever and is very likely autistic myself:
(Note: I’m using evidence from the series, the comics and the novellas here, because there’s some stuff in Nick and Charlie that just screams autism to me.)
Special interests:
- Rugby! This seems pretty obvious. He excels at it, it’s his thing, he keeps playing even when he doesn’t like his teammates, and this:
You cannot tell me that’s not an infodump.
- Marvel and Formula One - these are only mentioned in passing, but I feel like they fit. Nick is 100% a Stucky shipper.
- The Pirates of the Caribbean phase. Sidenote: for about three months after Heartstopper came out I had to watch it every few days or I just felt Wrong.
Sensory stuff:
- The deep pressure hugs, especially when he’s stressed or very emotional.
That is sensory seeking behaviour if I’ve ever seen it.
- In the series, he never wears his school jumper and rarely wears his blazer. Maybe he just runs hot, but he’s literally sitting in Form in February surrounded by people wearing coats and he’s just wearing a shirt. I think to Nick, the itchy/heavy uniform is a worse fate than being slightly cold.
- “He likes the sound felt tips make on paper, rain and minimalism.” Hello???
- There is something about his wardrobe. The sheer amount of sportswear and joggers. That’s a sensory thing. There has to be more to it than just that he’s a jock. There’s some bonus material in the back of Volume 2 where Alice has written: “Nick likes comfortable and sporty clothes more than anything. He’d wear joggers every day if he could!” I think maybe the texture/feel of his clothes matters a lot more to him than how they look.
- Further to this, in the same bonus section: “Nick finds skinny jeans uncomfy to wear, so dressing up smart usually involves a pair of chinos or looser jeans.” Same vibes.
- I also noticed he sticks to the same few brands of clothes, and to me the attachment to his Vans is a combination of autistic brand loyalty (also Carhartt and Adidas) and every other kind of shoe feeling wrong.
- When he’s with Nellie, and especially when he’s stressed, he has her putting some of her weight on him. Pressure!!!
- In the series he seems to be pretty particular about his hair and the pushing-it-off-his-forehead could be a stim.
- He seeks darker/quieter spaces at Harry’s party - obviously this is partly because he just wants to be with Charlie but combine his room always being dimly lit (and don’t get me started on the fairy lights) and the “do you want to go somewhere quieter again?” in your head for me and tell me what conclusion you reach. He’s also visibly way more comfortable in said quieter places at the party.
- Crossing his arms tightly like this. That's self-soothing and I will not be convinced otherwise because that's what I do.
- In S01E08 when he went in the water with his shoes on I felt it in my bones and it made me want to cry but I think he prefers the horror of wet socks to the horror of Beach Textures.
General social things:
- He talks about feeling like he doesn't fit in which is definitely a common trait of autism.
- Also, when he’s talking to Imogen at the end of S01E05 it really seems like he planned that speech out in his head and practised it in his head in the shower multiple times. He was workshopping that monologue in his head while he walked to the park I’m telling you.
Masking:
- When Sarah goes: “You seem much more yourself around him.” He feels safe & accepted enough to unmask in front of Charlie (and also Charlie is heavily autistic coded too).
- Some of his humour, especially around his Year 11 friends - for example the way he says “Your mum” to Imogen when she asks who he’s texting seems like he’s imitating his friends to fit in.
- He has a hard time lying. In S01E03 when he’s talking to Harry after the kiss and says “guess I was just in a mood” he is doing the screwed up face I do when I’m trying to lie to be polite.
Social cues/tone:
- He doesn’t seem to make much eye contact with any characters except Charlie, who he makes pretty intense eye contact with.
- There are a handful of moments in the series where he misinterprets the tone of people around him:
- S01E01: The “small and weak” moment - he doesn’t pick up that it’s a joke and reacts self-consciously when Charlie points that out. That’s so me of him.
- S01E07: His reaction to Charlie’s “he’s not even my type” comment. Not only did Nick’s face here make me want to cry slightly, it basically confirmed my Nick Nelson Autism Trutherism because he definitely misread what Charlie intended to be an inside joke as well as a deflection.
- I’m sure there’s more that I’ll remember later
- Both of the “her dog died” moments in S01E05 like are you kidding me.
- Sitting on Charlie’s bed while soaking wet in S01E04. It’s not obvious to either of them that he probably shouldn’t do that.
- That bit in S01E08 where he asks if Charlie wants to get lunch together. There is something so autistic about that moment and I can’t quite articulate it but it’s there.
- There are moments when he comes off kind of blunt or abrupt when he obviously doesn't mean to, even towards Charlie, especially in S01E04 - on the rugby pitch and in the antiseptic wipes scene, for example, where he leaves super quickly after Isaac finds them. That scene always kind of upset me until I realised maybe why he's like that.
- In Nick and Charlie when he just doesn’t pick up at all that Charlie’s upset about him going on about Leeds.
- He struggles to identify and articulate how he feels and this is a theme in the first couple of volumes of the comics and Season 1.
In the bonus content at the end of Volume 2, there's also a bit about him having a massive t-shirt collection and not being able to get rid of them even when they don't fit him. Something about having empathy for inanimate objects and Collecting Things.
A collection of screencaps that also scream autism to me:
So basically if you've reached this point in the post and you're not convinced, I haven't done my job properly. You could probably give me any scene from the series and I could tell you how it contributes to my Nick is Autistic thesis.
Another note: I also think he has ADHD or at the very least struggles with executive function - doing his homework last-minute in the hallway, that bit in Nick and Charlie where he says he's shit at replying to text messages.
In summary, I love him and he's me, therefore he is autistic.
In honour of me not being able to stop thinking about this, here are a few more things I want to add.
Also, go check out this post because it’s wonderful and well articulated and raises some points I hadn’t thought of!!
- A lot of the instances I’m using here are related to/could quite easily be put down to Nick being confused about his sexuality/unaware of his feelings for Charlie/expressing his feelings for Charlie once he is aware of them, but I think it’s important to remember that Heartstopper — and especially the part of the story covered by Volumes 1 & 2 — is also about both Nick and Charlie figuring out who they are outside of the boxes they’ve been placed into by society. This is especially true of Nick; the kind of growth and self-discovery that happens for him in Season 1 is not just to do with his sexuality. First of all, that would be unrealistic and the kind of misunderstanding of what it’s like to be a teenager that Heartstopper avoids so well (when I was 15/16 I was coming to terms with being a lesbian but I was also learning a lot about where I fit in the world generally), and secondly, to reduce Nick’s character to just his sexuality is exactly the kind of thing Heartstopper is telling us not to do. So basically, what I’m doing here is interpreting Nick’s character and actions with the idea in mind that he has more than one dimension; a lot of his actions point to both coming to terms with his sexuality and being autistic. Okay, rant over.
- Nick is very literal a lot of the time — this has a lot to do with the misinterpretations of tone I mentioned earlier. My favourite example of this is in S01E06 when Nick brings up the idea of the double date with Tara and Darcy. Charlie’s tone of voice/general vibe when he says “I’ve never been on a date before” implies yes, I would love to do that, but Nick doesn’t pick up on this, so he asks, “wanna go on one?” He just has to check.
- Also, in the first kiss scene, his responses to Charlie asking if he’d go out with someone who wasn’t a girl etc: “I don’t know, maybe,” then, when Charlie asks if he’d kiss him, “yes.” He’s so literal. And remember this frame?
“Maybe/don’t know” — he says those exact words. And they’re obviously common phrases but it feels to me like at this stage this is the only framework he’s got for understanding his feelings, so he’s repeating it exactly. Also, the lyrics of the song in the background kind of say it all.
- He’s also very, very earnest and has a strong sense of justice, which is definitely a major factor in the golden retriever vibe. When he says stuff like “If he ever comes near you again I’ll kick his ass,” and “You shouldn’t have to put up with anything like that,” he really means it. He empathises so deeply with Charlie outside the cinema that he goes back in to confront Harry, guns blazing, and ends up decking him.
- @riverofrainbows (OP of the post I linked above, hoping it's okay to tag!) described this attitude as Arthurian, which I think is a completely wonderful way to put it.
- He has a pretty clear masked personality around his Year 11 friends; he’s agreeable and lad-ishly jokey in a way that comes across to me as kind of rehearsed. When he’s on his own, or thinks he’s not being watched, or with Charlie/his mum/Tara and Darcy/even Imogen to some extent, he seems to find it a lot easier to express himself, even just with his facial expressions. Here’s my favourite example:
(This is another frame that I read as AUTISM!!!! because his serious faces simply do not show up when he’s interacting with these friends like they do when he’s alone or with people he’s comfortable being himself around, except when he’s very distressed and angry like when Harry is being foul at the cinema.)
- When it comes to his general identity journey, i.e. feeling like he’s lived a large amount of his life as Not Him, that’s where my point about multiple dimensions comes in. Yes, it’s about his bisexuality and feeling pressure to be stereotypically masculine and straight to fit in, but it’s also about being scared shitless of revealing other aspects of his true identity (that Charlie has helped him discover, partly because Charlie is also autistic but that’s a post for another day) to his peers who quite specifically reject people who display traits of autism (like Charlie and Tao — again, I’ll elaborate some other time, lol). This is pretty much exactly my experience and to this day I’m basically unable to unmask around anyone who isn’t neurodivergent/very close family (quite significant overlap there).
- When he’s talking to Tao at the picnic table in S01E08, it’s made clear to us that he’s slightly misinterpreted why Charlie wanted to break up. “I think Charlie might be nervous about telling you because he really cares about your opinion” — partly true, but Charlie has spent most of the last several episodes wanting to be able to tell Tao. Nick doesn’t realise that the main reason Tao doesn’t know is because Charlie doesn’t want to out him, even though that was made reasonably clear — especially by neurotypical standards — in the argument that Nick overheard at the bowling alley.
- The “I need you to believe me” scene — this is another speech that seems like he’s workshopped it in his head and once he gets going it takes a while and Charlie’s hands on his face to get him to stop because he’s talking about a subject he’s extremely passionate about (Charlie). The parallels between this and Charlie’s speech when Nick shows up at his house in S01E04 serve only to confirm my aut4aut hypothesis.
A few ADHD notes (especially easy to find in the comics but I have some extra ones from the series that I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere!!):
- He’s, like, quite impulsive. The smiley face on Charlie’s hand, running to his house in the rain without checking the weather first, ditching a rugby game halfway through to go get his boyfriend back with very little regard for the consequences. Someone mentioned the “I love you” scene which, absolutely.
- Also, punching Harry — yes, a teenage boy response, but also very impulsive.
- Along the same lines as the last-minute homework, he often loses focus while doing homework in the comics. Of course this is partly because he’s distracted by Charlie, but I also think Charlie and MarioKart are far more interesting to him than homework.
- He can be forgetful.
- In S01E08 when he’s surprised that Charlie feels the need to confirm that they’re boyfriends (very autistic of Charlie, by the way, as well as a reasonable thing to need reassurance about given how Ben treated him), this feels like more of an ADHD thing to me than an autism thing; his brain makes that connection so quickly that he doesn’t realise Charlie’s thought process might not be keeping the same pace.
Please feel free to add stuff!
- That bit in S01E08 where he asks if Charlie wants to get lunch together. There is something so autistic about that moment and I can’t quite articulate it but it’s there.
It’s been 5 months, but I want to articulate the part you couldn’t quite articulate (this is obv my perspective not yours but I’d like to add)
I think it’s because he’s missing/misinterpreting several social cues here. Charlie is visibly upset when he says hi, but Nick’s still smiling and steps closer while he asks if he wants to get lunch. He doesn’t seem to notice that Charlie’s making himself even smaller than usual. I also think most NTs would have known/decided to give him space whether that was what either of them wanted or needed at the time.
Then when Charlie runs off, he just looks so confused? He’s sad too, but he has no idea why Charlie’s so upset. You’d think after the breakup talk and Charlie blaming himself that he could put two and two together, but he’s struggling with that. It isn’t until his conversation with Tao that he really gets it, and even then he starts out by projecting his own fears onto Charlie (possibly because he has trouble understanding other people’s povs?). This is very much an Autism Moment (TM) for him.
