Fair Warning, This Is Gonna Be A Ramble!

Fair warning, this is gonna be a ramble!

So I was just thinking about Vanya, and how sort of sweet and polite she was in the first season, and that got me thinking.

I fully believe Vanya is autistic, and from my own experiences, I was thinking about growing up. When I was a child I didn’t really know how to interact with the world. I grew up watching a lot of TV shows and movies (mostly ones that my sister would put on) but before I mirrored TV shows characters, I mirrored her. But Vanya didn’t watch TV growing up, so she didn’t have Disney Princesses or Thomas the Tank Engine or Arthur like I did. (For anyone who doesn’t know, mirroring is one of the ways that autistic kids may learn to interact with the world, through watching how NTs interact and then mimicking it to fit in or at the very least to be able to communicate with someone.)

The only people Vanya had to mirror were her family, and given their general attitude towards her it seems unlikely that she did. When I was a child I recognised which behaviours I never wanted to mimic: my parents screaming at each other or us, my sister telling me if I didn’t do what she wanted she’d never love me again/she’d hate me for the rest of our lives. I knew those things made me feel bad, so I knew they weren’t things I wanted to do to others.

In the same way, I think Vanya knew she didn’t want to mimic the negative behaviours of her siblings. So I think the person she mirrored most was Grace (and maybe Pogo a little). Grace was their mum, she was loving and nurturing and exactly the kind of person I would have wanted to mirror as a child. Except Vanya has added insecurities. It made me realise that growing up, Vanya was often softly-spoken and polite, because that’s how Grace was. But we never see Grace get angry... So Vanya never learned a healthy way of dealing with her anger, especially given that she was drugged up a lot of her childhood.

If anyone can word this more coherently than I did, or come up with a better analysis, please do, because I’m not sure my argument made much sense (or even had a point to it...?)

TL;DR - Autistic!Vanya mirrors Grace, and that’s why her personality is somewhat reminiscent of Grace’s.