u/wsx_ethan

I'd say neurodivergencity in general, but especially autism. Autism genuinelly seems to be a recurrent subtext theme in Poppy Playtime, and i don't see the fandom pointing it out despite the implict correlations and spectrums.

Theodore, Harley Sawyer, Quinn and Kevin all share similar traits between while still having distinct characteristics — but characteristics that you'd find in the autism spectrum. They're all outcasted kids, that constantly made people uncomfortable by their natural differences with other kids and people. Sadly, we do not know much about Theodore and Quinn, but the way they're described in the mediums of Poppy Playtime alone made me realize they fit in one the autistic character tropes that is the outcasted child. It's a great stereotype, tho.

We can assume more about Harley and Kevin, mostly due to the fact that we know more about these two. Kevin's character is more based on subtexts, but basing on his dialogues alone, he likely had abusive parents and trusted the scientists or at least was moe bounded to them in comparison with how he'd bound with other adults and kids. Other than his past, his autism is much more explicit than the other three cases. Uis audition issues, combined with his emotional outbursts and introverted behaviour, and just straight being called out for having "neurological abnormalities" by Newman which is just how doctors would describe the unnamed autism back then, makes it obvious that Theodore and Quinn fitting too much on the autistic outcasted child trope was absolutely intended.

And Harley is a curious case, because the fandom often interprets him with either sociopathy (aspd) or narcisism (npd), but giving the fact that he's constatly paralled with the other kids (especially with the ones i've mentioned), arg 4 and 5 implying that he firmly belived he was giving them "purpose" in a world full of "mediocre people", how he was hated by his comrades not cuz he was "evil" or egoistical, but rather because he viewed as a weirdo with a science manic by them, and again, the fact that Harley is not the only character of Poppy Playtime fitting in the autistic spectrum makes me believe that MobEnt wants to you to see him as a autistic or at least neurodivergent man instead. We don't really have much mediums depicting traumatized autistic individuals as manipulative shitty people, although it is very recurrent in real life (especially before 2000s), so every time a villain like character that is also explicit depicted as a weirdo lacking social skills, people are much faster to assume that they have aspd, bdp or ndp for example. At lot of you would be shocked to hear how much autistic and sociopathy individuals share in common. Anyways, the recurrency of it and how painfully obvious it is on Kevin just leads me to believe that Harley is actually neurodivergent.

I'd wish people could take a bigger dive in this topic, because it is a strong subtext on how Harley pick his subjects and how of a smart social commentary in autistic people it is. Share your ideas too.