#i was writing characters that would fit an autism diagnosis years before I even considered it irl

[fanthirtheen]

I love Stolas and Blitzo’s struggling relationship so much because I relate to Blitzo (and Stolas) in ways I've latched onto. I guess I can see why some people don't like Stolas and his attitude and selfishness and his struggles give them an ick, because ultimately, fiction reflects life. Our favorite characters tend to be people we can project onto or people we wish we had in our lives.

Blitzo doesn't think he can be loved. He makes himself useful so he has some control over the terms in which he is in other people's lives. He doesn't want to be alone, and he doesn't want to be vulnerable enough to chance someone seeing him for what he is and deciding they didn't like it, they didn't like him, and leaving. So he makes himself into something they need, rather than finding someone who wants what he is.

And Stolas wants what he is. Stolas wants him. Stolas's love for Blitzo is an incredibly selfish love, and I understand why so many people don't like that. I can see a lot of people don't like that selfish love, they see real world people they have had bad experiences with in Stolas, and you know, that's what fiction is about.

But I love Stolas and I love Stolitz because I am incredibly satisfied and fulfilled seeing them together. Blitzo needs that selfish love. He needs someone to be selfish about him, to want him unrelated to all the bullshit he hides behind, to want him enough and in such a selfish way they can want him past the bullshit he pulls to push people away.

I've explored that dynamic in other fandoms some, but I cobbled it together from scratch. Not headcannons or anything lime that, just, from writing stories so much I corner myself in a dynamic that feels so right to me and so satisfying. One character doesn't know how to be wanted so they make themselves needed instead. The other character is so tired of being selfless or giving up things they want or not being allowed to have something of their own that when they get attached to the character that commodifies themselves, they decide with their whole heart that THIS is what they want. This person. This will be their first thing they want to keep and they want it selfishly.

And maybe it isn't picture-perfect healthy but it's good for them. The struggle isn't admitting they're in love with each other, the struggle is believing someone sees you for what you are not what you pretend to be to make yourself useful, and they want you so selfishly they will keep you even when you're not breaking yourself to be useful. And in getting what you want for the first time in your entire life and it being better than you ever dreamed.

So I kind of get it when people don't like Stolas. He is a bit selfish. But Blitzo needs him to be selfish, because Stolas’s "selfish" doesn't necessarily mean Blitzo giving anything up except his facade.

When the selfish character wants to keep the other character, not in a "you have to change your life to accommodate me" kind of way but in a "I love your life the way it is don't change I just want to be there with you" sort of way.

#holy shit that got away from me #the point i wanted to make was “we project onto fiction” #and i ended up on a rant about codependency #it took me years to realize i projected onto all my favorite characters #no no you like exploring these character traits because you have them not because theyre neat #i was writing characters that would fit an autism diagnosis years before I even considered it irl #so if anyone ever hates a chatacter i just assume that character reminds them of someone irl #and try not to take it personally if that character they hate is similar to me #especially if the parts they hate are the parts i relate to #context is important

[rebelscum-2187]

So after nearly 22 years of life on this planet, I’ve come to the conclusion that I am high functioning autistic. I believe I fell through the cracks of an early diagnosis for the following reasons:

1.) I am Female (I learned how to mask myself very early on)

2.) I have a gifted IQ (above 130) and was classified as such in 4th grade so no one considered that I could be both ASD and intellectually gifted.

I am in the beginning stages of unmasking and am currently seeking an official diagnosis. Right now, I’m trying to write down everything I know about my neurodivergent experience so here’s a list of things I’ve experienced and believe to be relevant. If you can relate or you understand please comment and share! I’m new to this community and it feels so good to finally meet people who understand and can relate. Ok, Here we go.

“So the general population doesn’t memorize scripts to movies or watch the same one every day for a year?”

“People think it’s weird that I prefer to have subtitles on when I watch stuff, even though I don’t have damaged hearing”

“I watch movies with subtitles because I won’t understand what’s said if I don’t read it. I have no hearing issues.”

“I cannot hear/understand someone if I have one ear bud in and one out. Too much sensory input at once.”

“I thought I had a hearing deficit because I literally could not understand people at church or parties or other places with a lot of background noise, and I was so confused when they told me my hearing was normal.”

“I love star wars. Not just love but I could tell you what planet each character is from and what kind of ship they use, what model droid that one is and I will gladly talk about it all day if you let me. Everyone now gets me Star Wars stuff for my birthday and holidays”

“Eye contact is so uncomfortable for me that sometimes it ‘burns’ to maintain it, but then I overcompensate and stare too intensely. Over the years, being female, I’ve forced myself to make eye contact for a certain number of seconds and then look away a certain number of seconds but I’m concentrating so hard on that, that I don’t remember anything that was said to me.”

“Giving me verbal directions is a special kind of hell. I need it written down.”

“I can memorize pictures of things and exactly where every kid sat in my 10th grade US history class as well as my 9th grade geometry class.”

“I never fit in anywhere, in my childhood, most of my adolescence, except the swim team and my new church.”

“Team sports are the worst. I can’t communicate fast enough, I’m bad with hand eye coordination and keeping track of a ball. I excelled in individual sports and fell in love with swimming.”

“I often found it much easier to make friends with older kids because I could have intelligent conversations with them and their good social skills could make up for my lack of social skills.”

“But, I had a few friends that were considerably younger who I could still play imaginatively with dolls when I was 13 and one particular friend was 9. I had a lot of trouble getting a long with her sister who was the same age as me.”

“It physically pains me to hear someone mispronounce a word, spell something wrong, or make a grammatical mistake. I corrected my cousin A LOT when we were kids, she frequently got mad and I couldn’t understand why. My grandma would tell me to stop because correcting people is rude.”

“One of my special interests as a kid was dolphins. I was 5-6 years old and I remember being so excited when my mom let me check out like 10 books from the library and I read them quickly and multiple times.”

“I corrected a teacher one time about dolphins. She said dolphins weren’t whales and I knew FOR A FACT that ‘dolphins were a type of small whale’ because I read it in one of my books. She laughed at me and so did the rest of the class and I felt stupid even though I was right. This led to me suppressing my knowledge and real self and ultimately more masking.”

“As per that last one, my memory is impeccable.”

“I had another special interest in dogs when I got a bit older. My mom bought me a book with every kind of breed of dog, where they came from, their temperament, their size, everything. I can still, to this day, tell you the breed of dog just by looking at it.”

“I always wanted a best friend but never had one. I had groups of friends but never someone who would call me their best friend. When I got a boyfriend in high school, I was so excited because he called me his best friend and he was mine and I finally had that feeling reciprocated. He also had a gifted IQ and dyslexia, ADHD and a few other things so we understood each other quite well.”

“I can’t tell if someone is flirting with me because I can’t read between the lines. I also don’t know how to flirt because if I like a guy too much I get soooo nervous and I stumble over my words and it’s a disaster.”

“When I liked this guy (last year, 2019) I would freeze up so bad when I talked to him that I rehearsed every conversation I wanted to have with him so I wouldn’t mess it up. I would write topics in the notes section of my phone before hanging out with him so I’d remember what to ask him. It made for very awkward and forced conversations and probably drove him away.”

“Sarcasm and jokes almost always go over my head. The boyfriend I had in high school was very funny and outgoing but used a lot of sarcasm and it always caused disagreements because I took him seriously when he was being sarcastic.”

“I talk slowly and very monotone.”

“I have no difficulty reading in my head and can read/comprehend it well, but reading aloud is difficult and I often stumble over words and mess up.”

“I need directions repeated multiple times before I understand.”

“I went to the beach to hang out with some church friends yesterday. They all play spike ball and are so confused as to why I sit there and don’t play. I’ve tried playing spike ball but it involves way too much hand eye coordination and I’m so bad at it that it’s embarrassing. So I don’t play.”

“That same night, a group of them said ‘let’s play uno!’ And I was so happy to play something familiar that didn’t involve a lot of coordination. Then they said ‘we’re playing SPICY uno, right?’ And immediately my heart sank because I knew they were playing a different way that I wasn’t familiar with. Again, receiving verbal directions was hell and I didn’t understand it. I was so bad at it and wasn’t getting it, and in the middle of the game I had the urge to cry. I wanted to cry because I couldn’t even get this right. I suppressed the urge, of course, so they wouldn’t think I was even more weird than the already suspected. Another group of people that I wouldn’t fit in with.”

“Making friends has always been so difficult. Once I make a good friend I hang on to them for as long as possible even if they’re not very nice because I’m scared I’ll have to make a new one if I lose them. And we all know how hard making new friends is for me.”

“I’m a perfectionist. Especially with my art projects. When I took a painting class I realized I do it the wrong way. You’re supposed to paint layer by layer over the entire canvas and focus on small details at the very end. I work on one small area at a time and do small details too soon. I often spend way too much time on small details before I realize that the larger shape of the object isn’t proportionate and then it’s too late.”

“I won’t even attempt tasks if I know I can’t do them perfectly.”

“I have perfect pitch. I don’t know if that has anything to do with autism or that I just started music lessons when I was young. I can tune instruments perfectly without a tuner or reference note and I never understood why my orchestra teacher had me play the A key on the piano over and over again while she walked around and tuned everyone’s instruments when I could do it without any reference. I can hear it in my head.”

“When my parents got me a keyboard at age 7-8, they were impressed because I could sit down, without listening to any song and find the notes of a song I liked by ear. I still do that today but my piano is very out of tune and it bothers me.”

“Autistic boys tend to isolate and not care about concealing their stims or weird behavior but girls don’t. I am a ‘loner’ and always have been but I want so badly to belong and have friends and socialize, but I’ve always been so bad at it that I strike out every time. I often drink at social gatherings because it helps me loosen up and talk more freely. I guess it helps me lose the mask for a while.”

“I HATE people touching me. I’ve always hated it and still hate it to this day unless it’s someone I’m super comfortable with. I’ve been told I have the ‘dead fish hand shake’ and I’m an awkward hugger. My friend picked me up from behind and carried me for a few seconds because we were all goofing off and having fun but afterwards I was so mad at him I got really quiet and didn’t talk for a while. I told him later on the ride home that if he did that again I would slap him. “

“Everyone thinks it’s weird that I don’t like touching people, and some of my friends who also don’t like touching people were abused and I always thought, ‘there had to be a reason, maybe I was abused as a kid and repressed it.’ It’s been so long and I’ve finally realized that maybe it’s just because I have Aspergers or ASD. “

“When I make sarcastic remarks or jokes I often have to clarify because I say them in such a monotone way that people think I’m serious.”

“I’ve always joked that I’m just really clumsy and uncoordinated, and chalked it up to being tall and lanky. That’s why swimming was the perfect sport for me. Little to no risk of injury and not much hand eye coordination needed to be good at it. Just hours of practice, technique and endurance.”

“I also injure myself quite a lot because I’m ‘a klutz.’”

“Stims: I scratch my head and then smell my fingers and I will do this for hours if I am able (I know that one is weird so I only do it at home) popping my knuckles a ridiculous amount of times when I feel uncomfortable and don’t know what to do with my hands. I twirl my hair constantly (that one is pretty socially acceptable so I do it in class nonstop). I tap my foot or bounce my leg, I make weird facial expressions and forget to hide those. People notice but they often think it’s funny because I’ll make a face if someone says something dumb and make an expression that people seem to relate to. I scrunch my nose if I’m uncomfortable or just whenever.”

Special interests: Star Wars, Disney (I know every word to every Disney song and I watch animated Disney movies over and over again, like literally every night) dolphins, the ocean, dogs, theology/the Bible.

“With my art work, and other things, I will get so focused on a painting that I will work non stop for 8-9 hours (all day basically) and not eat because I’m so focused that I forget to eat.”

“I think I slur my words a lot and sometimes my friends will laugh and be like ‘did you just say ____.?!?!’And I’ll clarify and they will continue laughing and say ‘oh it sounded like you said this.’ I hate when that happens.”

“Loud noises really bother me. I jump if I hear an unexpected loud noise and I hate people yelling, even if it’s not directed at me, it makes me want to cry. “

“I loved the color blue so much as a kid (I still do) but my entire wardrobe was basically different shades of blue t-shirts. I also only ever wore baggy t-shirts and baggy cargo shorts (I kinda dressed like a boy) because it was comfortable and I didn’t like getting comments if I looked “cute today”. I hated the attention. I also never ever wore my hair down to school. It always had to be up in a tight pony tail. I still don’t like my hair being in my face to this day and wear it up almost every day.”

“The other day, I was hanging out with a friend and she was trying to tell a story but I kept getting distracted and interrupting her. She said, ‘Emily, you kind of interrupt people a lot.’ At first I was hurt, but then I realized it’s not entirely my fault and it’s an autistic thing.”

“I mask so much that I have rehearsed responses to social interactions and will often get so nervous or start speaking from the script before I realize I’ve said the wrong response. Of course I’ll think about it all day after that and think of ‘well great, so and so thinks I’m weird now.’”

#autistic community #autistic life #aspergers #autistic problems #autistic girl

[gaiatheorist]

“50% Feminine.”

I’m going mad again, I’m listing probable reasons, but going mad isn’t reasonable, it’s something that just happens to me from time to time. This is one of the slow, creepy-uppy episodes, not one of the sudden, explosive ones, possibly less dangerous, but incredibly draining. It’ll pass, it always does, it had better do, it’s bloody horrible.

Standard disclaimer, I am at increased risk of harm, but I have no intent or ideation of deliberately harming myself, apart from drinking too much cheap-and-nasty wine, which is my standard maladaptive coping mechanism.

I woke up at 1.30am, and, after a brief discussion with my wonky brain, acknowledged that I was Awake-awake, and there was no chance of going back to sleep. This will have a knock-on effect for a few days, there’s a fair chance I’ll fall asleep in my dinner, but it’s mostly containable. (The madness, as well as the dinner.) Scrolling through Twitter, to see if I’d ‘missed anything’, I found a link to ‘My Gender Coordinates’, and decided to take the quiz, no better or worse use of my time than a Fakebook quiz to tell me what sort of sandwich, or shoe I am.

There are 35 questions, I can’t remember exactly how they’re worded, but it’s along the lines of “I am...” or “I consider myself...” about various character traits, or behaviours, you ‘answer’ on a sliding scale from double-thumbs-up to double-thumbs-down. There’s a ‘middle’ option, which, when I’m going mad, is always a bit tempting, I’m indifferent, I don’t care much about much when I’m in this state.(Until I do, and get all emotionally peaky, HATING an empty shampoo bottle on the bathroom floor, but refusing to move it, because it’s not mine, or finding myself close to tears because I think I’ve offended someone, and not quite knowing how to check.) 

The ‘results’ come out on a quadrant-graph thingy, Masculine/Androgynous/Undifferentiated/Feminine, I deliberately didn’t look at that first, because I would have skewed my answers, aiming for ‘undifferentiated’, I’m awkward like that. My results were that I ‘fall between quadrants’, no big surprise there, my dot was bang on the line between ‘masculine’ and ‘androgynous’, all in the top half of the square, ‘68.3% Masculine, 50% Feminine’, I don’t know how that works, it’s numbers, and maths and stuff, and my brain doesn’t work like that. (Haha, because I’m a girl, and girls are better at biology than physics. Bullshit.) 

What does it mean? In all likelihood, nothing, it does look kind-of scientific, which is why I answered all of the questions, instead of giving up at the first hint of a cartoon dinosaur, or a ‘pick which colour-scheme appeals to you’. (Cartoon dinosaurs are my new pet hate, I’ve recently had to wade back through the clip-art infested worksheets from the last mental health course, and I’m fairly certain I’ve imagined a cartoon dinosaur, but that’s a tangent I’ll try to avoid.) I have strong opinions on the concept of gender, for however-many years I’ve been writing on here, I’ve identified as ‘meat no-one eats’, my biological sex is female, and my uterus is certainly reminding me of that fact this week. My gender? Human. Probably. 

“Identified as”, how very modern, it’s not ‘really’ a new thing, to me, or the world, what I’m trying to do here is type out a safe-release, to vent, I suppose it all boils down to my resentment of being ‘told’. There are vague childhood memories of being told “Ladies do/don’t do...”, and I have a ridiculous rage-bubble of “Yes, and sloths poo once a week, what’s your point?”, too late one thinks of what one might have said. I’m no more a lady than I am a sloth, I’m probably leaning more towards sloth at the moment, I’m overdue a bath.

Working through the statement-ratings, I noticed I was pulling a face at some of them. All of them, to be honest, which surprised me, because, with a diagnosis of autism, there’s the preconception that my response would be binary-linear, black-or-white, always/never. It wasn’t, my response was invariably “That’s a stupid question.”, and they weren’t questions, for every single statement, I decided “Unable to answer without context.”, and had to imagine a scenario to contextualise “I am generous” or “I am decisive”, or whatever. ( I *am* decisive, given sufficient context.) I need to watch that I don’t fall into a psychopath/sociopath rabbit-hole here, my sometimes-linear approach could be viewed as psychopathic, and my bending/masking could fit a sociopathic profile. Too many personality quizzes in my teen-girl magazines, and an on-going desire to name and categorize things.

I was pulling a face at the statements that are usually associated with the concept of femininity, there really isn’t a male-brain/female-brain. (All brains smell horrible, I have smelled my own brain, wasn’t pleasant.) There are some biological differences, most notably the reproductive bits, but not really a great deal else, the ex used to say that humans were evolving to be more androgynous, but I see now that he was trying to justify the societally-imposed feelings of inadequacy that I was as tall as him, with more body-hair. He ascribed to the concept of androgyny when it suited him, lauding Bowie in public, and insisting I was ‘better’ at housework in private. A product of his upbringing, but deeply coercive-toxic. He enjoyed my androgynous-atypical nature up to a point, I was a trophy in more ways than just my long legs and pretty mouth, I confused the hell out of his ‘traditional’ family, though. 

The statements that made me screw up my face could have been coloured pink, they were the ones that ‘ladies do’, some, I consciously, deliberately-don’t, and some are just a natural hard-no, nature vs nurture in evidence. I have learned behaviours, and innate, natural tendencies, there was a bit of a domestic issue the other day when I noted my son being manipulative, and destroyed-devastated myself wondering if he’d learned-observed that from me.  I don’t think so, my avoidance-behaviours are quite different. I was pulling faces at the stereotypical ‘female’ traits, initially an “Ew, no, I don’t do that!” response, but, as I realised I was doing it, I wondered WHY I was repulsed. There’s nothing ‘wrong’ with being kind/sensitive/compassionate, they’re human responses, not ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’, but even the quiz itself refers to them as  “Traits commonly found in people of the ... gender.” (Androgynous is referred to as high in male- and female-typical traits, undifferentiated as low in both.) Commonly, not exclusively.

Part of the issue is that I associate femininity with vulnerability and weakness. I choose not to ‘present as’ female most of the time, my sex usually isn’t obvious until people get close, and I don’t let many people get that close. (Even before the virus-distancing.) There are ‘historical and complicating factors’ behind some of that, but there’s also the gender-conditioning I grew up with, girls-should, and boys-should, I didn’t have particularly positive experiences or role-models, but, even aside from that, the general concensus was that male was stronger, better, more important, female was secondary and subservient. To do something ‘like a girl’ was an insult, but, by the same token, I was often criticised for not being ‘girly’, ever the outlier. I’m wondering how much of the non-femininity is reactive-protective, how much could be part of the autism, and how much is just ‘how I am’? 

Girly-females irritate me, vacuous conversations, hair-and-make-up, dependence on others, incessant diets and fads, I don’t ‘get’ any of it, and I don’t buy into it, I don’t see why I should, just because my genitals are in the more difficult-to-kick arrangement. (True to form, my son has more make-up and hair-stuff than I do, I can’t remember how he referred to my presentation a few weeks ago, but it might have involved goblins, and a bin.) Occasionally, people tell me I could be attractive if I made an effort, my go-to response is “What for?”, I do generally look as if I live in a tree, it doesn’t bother me. That’s not wholly a girl-thing or a boy-thing, I do know some very well-presented people of both flavours, but I’ve genuinely never overheard a group of men discussing razor-blades or underpants the way I’ve heard gaggles of women banging on about make-up and such. 

Women who talk in baby-voices, women who giggle and simper around men, women who don’t even try to pick things up themselves, I think what I’m saying is that I don’t like women who ‘act as’ women, and it is an act, my mother’s phone-laugh used to make me want to scream. 

Before I became annoyed at myself for placing more value on the traits more commonly associated with masculinity than femininity, I’d had a mini-argument with myself that it was impossible to rate any of the statements objectively. Am I kind? It depends on the situation, last week I helped a little old lady sort out a mis-delivered parcel, but the week before that, I’d sped up my walking pace, so I could get into the corner shop before the person behind me, it might have been the same little old lady, I wasn’t paying attention. I’d viewed the thumbs-rating as a never-always continuum, so, technically, all of the responses ‘should’ have been middle-option, for ‘sometimes’. (There might have been an explanation in the site somewhere, it was daft o’clock in the morning.) For each behaviour, I was thinking of a situation, which was wrong, I think I should have been rating least-likely to most-likely. The situation has an influence on the behaviour, if I had friends, I’d behave differently with them to the way I’d behave with a doctor, or a manager, or my son, and even that behaviour would depend on multiple external factors, it wouldn’t be static-consistent, it would be dynamic. We all do it, we’re socially conditioned to behave according to audience and environment.

I didn’t go to finishing school, I didn’t even go to university, there were no elocution or deportment classes at my rough-as-arseholes comprehensive school, and most of my childhood meals at home were eaten from a plate on my knee, on the sofa, in front of the TV. There were still expectations, though. Standing up if a teacher came into the classroom, not interrupting an adult speaking, letting elderly or otherwise infirm people on the bus first. I don’t remember my brother being given as many instructions as I was, though, and I think that was more to do with me being a girl than being two and a half years older, he did pretty much as he pleased, and was a ‘rascal’, or a ‘scamp’, whereas I was told to sit down (nicely), be quiet, smile, be helpful etc long before the wear a bra, brush your hair, show a bit of leg nonsense started. 

I’m fairly certain that the gender-specific conditioning is part of the reason my autism wasn’t diagnosed until I was 42. I’d had expectations drummed, and sometimes beaten into me all my life, everything was already an act, a performance, so I just assumed everyone else was ‘faking it’ all the time, over-riding gut-instinct on everything, and acting according to these confusing social scripts. The “What for?” streak in me is problematic for other people, I’m viewed as difficult, challenging, sometimes plain rude, and overly bold ‘for a woman’. I don’t speak much, but, when I do, I make it count, I’m tenacious and determined, and, most of the time, completely exhausted trying to remember and correctly apply rules and boundaries, scripts I don’t understand the reasoning behind, and constantly-consistently assess environments and audiences, to avoid ‘getting it wrong’. 

I am blunt at times. I can be articulate and eloquent, but sometimes a situation demands just-enough information to convey the salient point. I don’t tend to ‘waste words’, and am frustrated when people fanny about with “Does that make sense?” and “This might sound silly, but...” Anecdotally, I hear that from women more than men, we’re discouraged from being too much to-the-point, to go the long way around things, instead of straight at them, and to check for reassurance. I speak ‘like a man’, it’s more efficient. (”Does everyone understand what they are to do?” was my preferred meeting-closing-statement, I’m brutal.) 

I sometimes see the reverse-of-me in my son, he isn’t the least bit blunt or brutal most of the time. (He did shout “Stop it!” at me quite forcefully one day last week when I was having a meltdown after getting bin-juice on my face. He saves his command-voice for emergencies.) He ties himself in knots about communicating with people, and avoids most conversation, although he’ll babble incessantly to himself to process thoughts and ideas. (I have sores inside my ears that won’t heal, because I keep putting my earphones in to drown out his waffling about D&D plots and such.) He’s nervous-anxious where I’m bold, he’s scared of a million things that I’m not in the least bit concerned by, but then, I am an idiot. Biological sex is not gender, but neither of us are really binary-gendered. (I’m not going to suggest he does the quiz, he’s so incredibly indecisive it would melt his brain.) I never conditioned him ‘male’, he’s always just been another human to me, but he has had conflicting messages from his Dad’s side of the family, boys-don’t-cry, come-and-kick-this-ball, look-at-the-tits-on-that, and the girly-girl aunts and cousins. Confusing times, but he has referred to himself as a pan-sexual trans-humanist, and I don’t really know what that is. (He hasn’t asked me to use different pronouns, or a different name, so he’s still ‘him’.) 

I’m rambling. I’ve been pecking away at this for hours, but I do feel a little more settled for doing it. I didn’t go off on as many ranty tangents as I thought I might, which is reassuring, this episode of going mad has been mostly-irritable, and I don’t like it. Catch-22, there, as a female, I’m ‘supposed to’ be all pink and fluffy, and nice, but the lazy stereotype of a woman can also be a nagging old harridan, I’m straddling that line as well as the line between quadrants on the quiz. I bet you 10p that if I did the quiz again, I’d be able to skew the answers to place the dot dead-centre in the grid, but I might blow up the internet if I did that, and imagine the mess that would make.          

[marinsawakening]

@dooplissss about your reply (if its not too much trouble, could you write some suggestions for creators on how to address/write characters with psychosis/schizophrenia? I now know what to avoid, just not what to aim for) on this post; I purposefully didn’t give specific advice on how to write schizo-spec/psychotic characters because I don’t really feel qualified to do so. I’m not schizophrenic, I do not have a schizo-spec/psychotic disorder diagnosis, and I haven’t had hallucinations/delusions for about eight years now (one or two notable times exempt), and as a result I’m not actively involved in the psychotic/schizo-spec community (idk how welcome I am, if welcome at all, and I don’t really have the spoons to research it much), so I absolutely do not claim to be an expert on the matter of writing schizo-spec/psychotic characters. It’s very possible (and in fact likely) that my information on this matter is not entirely accurate and that I still have internalized ableism on this front.

I’m gonna list some things that I would have personally loved to see in a character when I was experiencing psychosis, but if you’re planning on writing a psychotic/schizo-spec character, I strongly encourage you to hit up blogs more involved in the schizo-spec/psychotic community with your questions and to do more research on the topic in general. The following list is more of a list of things that would’ve really helped me to read while I was a kid experiencing psychosis, than a list of Objective Writing Advice™ that I’d be able to offer you if you asked the same question about autism. It’s entirely personal and subjective.

With that disclaimer out of the way, here’s some thing I would/would’ve liked to see in a character with psychosis:

A character who experiences psychosis living a happy life. This one sounds so basic, and yet I’m literally getting tears in my eyes just thinking about it. Psychotic/schizo-spec characters are always portrayed as eternally suffering (if they’re not outright dangerous, obviously), and while psychosis can absolutely suck and portraying this isn’t wrong per se, knowing that there is a future for people like me would’ve helped me a LOT as a kid. Just like. Give psychotic people a cute pet, or a hobby that they get immense joy out of, or a job they love, or friends/family who love and support them, or all of the above! I cannot stress enough how much I want to see this.

Hallucinations that aren’t there because of some Thematically Appropriate Reason, but just because hallucinations exist. Literally just hallucinations that don’t have any Deeper Meaning and don’t necessarily relate back to the character’s mental health state or something. Just basic hallucinations.

Note: it’s definitely possible for hallucinations to be connected to someone’s state of mind, and that has happened to me a couple times, but it’s such a massive trope in media that I’m sick and tired of it, especially since it’s always treated like a gimmick more than anything else.

Related: hallucinations that aren’t necessarily scary, just wildly annoying. Honestly the majority of my hallucinations probably weren’t that scary? There were definitely some that were terrifying, don’t get me wrong, but for the most part, they were just kinda there, annoying me. Like the voices in my head who constantly argued over petty shit. Was that scary? Not beyond the realization that there are voices in my head, no. Was it annoying? Oh god yes. 

Reality checking. Please show your character reality checking. Reality checking wasn’t just a lifesaver for me, it was an absolute necessity to get through daily life. I never had any kind of formal training in reality checking, so idk if my methods would’ve been therapist approved, but I used a lot of grounding methods such as stimming with a comfort object, touching things in general, and talking to other people (sometimes trying to get them to confirm that the Thing wasn’t there, if I was feeling brave enough). 

Also (and you should definitely check this with other people before going ahead and writing it), my reality checking methods were tailored to fit my needs. My hallucinations were pretty much always based on the supernatural and/or religion, meaning that they were generally easy to distinguish from reality (unless I was in a delusion that was connected to/reinforced them), so to reality check I would often use logic like ‘does x exist in real life?’ and if the answer was ‘no’, then it was a hallucination. This method does not work if I’m in a delusion, obviously, and it wouldn’t work for hallucinations that could be real. I also touched things a lot to remind myself of what reality is when I was experiencing hallucinations, because my hallucinations were never tactile (despite tactile hallucinations being among the most common). So like. What I’m getting at is maybe consider how your character’s hallucinations manifest, and what type of reality checking would work best for them.

Anti-psychotic meds that actually work, or at least are not actively harmful. While meds can definitely be harmful, useless, have terrible side effects, or all of the above, meds meant to improve your mental health tend to be very demonized in media, with a lot of media portraying them as things that will make you change your entire personality and/or go into a catatonic state. And this is absolutely possible (I know people this has happened to), but this portrayal has become oversaturated in the market, imo, and it was one of the primary reasons I postponed asking for meds for literal years (I eventually requested them, but the hallucinations I had asked them for stopped before they got prescribed (although the psychiatrist had granted my request and was looking into possibilities, the hallucinations I’d asked them for stopped before they made any decisions, and that was my last real psychotic episode, so I never did end up getting them). So I’d just like to see a portrayal of anti-psychotic meds where, even though they’re not a miracle cure and may suck on some levels, they do actually help as well. 

A character who experiences psychosis in a story that’s not about their psychosis. Give me a high fantasy story with a schizophrenic protag, or a romcom with a schizoaffective protag, or a magical girl show with a girl who experiences psychosis as the protag, or literally anything among those lines. Don’t always make it About The Psychosis.

You’ll also notice that all of my character wishes in the above point are protagonists. This is because I want schizo-spec protagonists. Not a one off side character in a Very Special Episode, not little siblings or children who function as character motivations for the protag rather than characters in their own right, not creepy villains, not comic relief sidekicks whose psychosis is ~hilarious~, protagonists who are heroes. 

Show the character with loved ones who know about the psychosis and who are aware of how to deal with it when the character starts experiencing delusions/un-ignorable hallucinations. Not that I’d know what the correct way to act in those situations would be (lord knows nobody ever told me or helped me through any of that lmao), but showing loved ones aware of psychosis can a) help people recognize appropriate ways to act in these situations and b) shows people who experience psyshosis that there’ll still be people who love them. 

Honestly? Write a character who can see supernatural things. Now take away the presence of those supernatural things, and keep the way everybody treats them, the way they feel isolated and scared, and the arc where they find friends and people who understand them, and you’ve got a 99% chance of having at least a semi-decent psychotic character imo.

Example: the anime Natsume Yuujinchou is about Natsume Takashi, a teenager who has seen youkai for as long as he remembers. As a result, he’s been consistently bullied because he’s weird for screaming at nothing, and passed around from relative to relative because nobody wants to deal with him and the ‘fits’ that he supposedly throws to get ‘attention’. One of the main themes of the show is him finding friends and family who love him, even though they might not understand him and his strange behaviour remains. The way the show presents Natsume’s childhood is honestly painfully relatable, and the way it presents him finding new friends not just in those who see/believe in youkai, but also those who don’t know what’s up with him and just take the fact that he sometimes yells at nothing or sees things that aren’t there for granted.

It’s obviously not a perfect 1:1 narrative or anything, but it’s genuinely miles above anything else I’ve ever read with deliberate psychotic characters, and it’s really funny to me that people can understand that being treated like a crazy person who deliberately causes people harm for their own gain/entertainment is shitty when it happens to ‘normal’ people, but can’t parse it when it happens to psychotic people. And by funny I mean ‘fucking infuriating’.

What I’m getting at in these points is this: be sympathetic towards your psychotic characters. Don’t give people a pass for treating them like shit just because they’re psychotic. If they’re isolated/bullied/abused, don’t make it seem like it’s their fault because they’re ‘difficult to deal with’. Don’t treat people who are their friends/family like saints for ‘putting up with them’. Literally just write psychotic characters like people worthy of compassion I don’t get why this is so hard. 

that’s all I can come up with on the fly, and they center around delusions/hallucinations heavily because those were the primary symptoms for me, but remember that delusions/hallucinations are not the only things that can pop up with schizo-spec/psychotic disorders, and in fact, the diagnostic criteria for many schizo-spec/psychotic disorders show that delusions/hallucinations aren’t even necessary for a diagnosis, as long as other symptoms like disorganized speech, negative symptoms, and/or ‘grossly disorganized or catatonic behaviour’ are present. 

also, it could very well be that I’m reading too deep into this, but the wording in your reply (”I now know what to avoid”) kind of lead me to believe that my post might’ve been the first time you’ve encountered the subject of proper representation of psychosis in media, in which case, you are DEFINITELY going to want to do more research on what to avoid. my post didn’t even scratch the surface of the negative stereotypes around psychosis in media.

also sorry for doing the reply like this, it’s... Long and I didn’t want to do this in the comments of the original post.

#my posts #that one technically not schizo-spec diagnosis i have tag #writing wise