Percy Jackson is written as having ADHD, because the writer's son had it. I liked it, but maybe the "it's actually a super power" thing might rub some people the wrong way.
this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
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A superpower most of us have little control over.
To me the most interesting superpowers are those that come with big disadvantages and are hard for the hero to control. It makes good stories. In my life, I prefer simple happy stories though.
I agree, hence the disclaimer. Although there's one ADHD lesson from that book that I liked: ADHD people struggle with the way the modern world work and school are structured, but if put in the right environment we thrive.
We can't fight mithology monsters like Percy does, but I think if we find the right environment to live and work in our ADHD will me more an advantage than an hindrance. Easier said than done, of course, I'm lucky enough to find a work that I love.
My life might generally be a train wreck, but god damn am I good at emergencies, especially the “we’ve turned a truck over in a silly place” “The digger’s half sink in the lake” kind. The wheels constantly come off things like keeping my house from being a war zone, but when the actual wheels come off, I’m actually fitting on all cylinders for once. It’s a kind of crap trade off, but I’m not sure how much I’d want to change it!
If you have ADHD, emergencies are common because the dopamine to motivate doing stuff isnt there so the extra norepinephrine from procrastination's consequences finally brings your norepinephrine levels "high enough" to be "normal" (its usually below normal for us) while an average person is going to be swimming in it enough to be paralysed. So the same reason that we tend to procrastinate is also why we tend to be chill when everyone else is freaking out. Not only are we used to those scenarios, our brains are ironically, the only ones that are going to be "normal" during those emergencies.
Well I never knew that! Nice explanation, thanks
So like being an X-Man without Professor Xavier's School for the Gifted? 🤔
Having laser focus but at unpredictable times still seems more of a super power than Rogue's ability to kill anything she touches.
Cyclops and rogue came to mind first yeah. Or imagine xavier having no control over his powers, just turns people into cabbages on accident. Magneto accidentally crushing cars as he walks past them or pulling the pacemakers out of people etc.
Juggernaut has to remain perfectly still or else he just never stops.
Sleep walks: well there goes the neighborhood... and another and another...
A lot of Neal Stephenson, but especially Cryptonomicon, The Baroque series, and Anathem... though with the last it's not so much the narrator as a lot of other main characters.
The Baroque series gets extra points for prominently featuring quite a few probably neurodivergent historical figures.
Seconding Cryptonomicon. Not only does it jump around in different time periods and cover different characters who are neurodivergent/quirky in a variety of ways, but it also goes down nerdy rabbitholes about various topics, from WWII codebreaking technologies, to music theory, to the necessary technique to get the perfect bite of Captain Crunch.
"Time to Orbit: Unknown" by Derin Eldala is great. Its definetly written in an ADHD style
https://derinstories.com/2022/06/04/001-the-problem-with-the-javelin-program/
Its an ongoing web serial. Be careful, apparently it made a surgeon miss surgery twice
While I don't think that a main character has ADHD specifically, The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson deals with various mental health problems. I will say that Stormlight is on a whole different scale though. Looks like the first book is about the length of the whole murderbot series and there are 4 books out currently with another coming in December
2nded, great series
This might not exactly be the sort of thing you're looking for, but I recently read and loved Blindsight
Not ADHD, but definitely neurospicy. The main character has half a functioning brain, with many technological augments, and is pretty far from NT as a result.
Anyway, I highly recommend it. Super interesting book. It's about alien first contact, although not in the way you might expect...
A Closed And Common Orbit - the main character, Lovelace, is not explicitly neurodivergent (she's an AI), but there are so many parallels with the experiences of neurodivergent people it's worth a mention. Probably more relevant to autism than ADHD. And, unrelated, lots of parallels to trans experiences if that's interesting to you.
I really got that impression reading it, you’re right on the money
Not a book, but one of the Daniels has said that Everything, Everywhere, All At Once is based on his experience of having all 80 of the HDs.
Also, having written that like that reminded me that there’s a character in the Dogman kids graphic novel called 80hd
[off topic?] "X X" by Rian Hughes features an autistic hero. Because of the creative way the author uses graphics, it's a book that loses a lot if you get the audio version
I can't be convinced that the main character of Lucky Wander Boy isn't autistic, considering the obsessions he has and the ritual he performs at one point.
Great, but very weird book about a writer who likes retro video games trying to find an arcade machine of his youth that may even have mystical powers.