#as copied from discorg

[vernalloy]

I think the thing where the authors of these delusion! AUs are hitting my spine are that. They’re pulling from media portrayals rather than. Actually reasoning through or even researching what it’d be like.

So tips fur writing delusions! I’m going to make a lot of generalizations here, some people can’t double bookkeep, or don’t have positive ways of interacting with the delusion, or have short delusions, or respond positively to reality checks. I’m primarily pulling from my own experience here.

1. At least on the schizo-spectrum, the longer they last, the slower they come. Brief psychosis has a really short onset, schizophreniform has a shorter prodrome than schizophrenia/schizoaffective. Generally, delusions grow. They come together on nothing, but they take time to take root on equal or greater footing than reality.

2. Double bookkeeping! Exists! Even past this there’s just. If you knew something about the world that no one else did. That you knew they’d treat you violently for if you revealed it. You’d keep it under wraps. Keep your rituals subtle. Don’t talk about it.

3. They generally don’t vanish upon reason. They wax and wane and change, and rarely respond to logic past perhaps changing to accommodate or override new facts.

4. If you have a secret reality you have something to deal with it. A monster under the bed? Shove boxes under there. Feel everyone’s out to get you? Carry a bread knife (it sucks at stabbing) or keep your back only to walls. Feel you’re not human? Let it wash over you instead of insisting truth one way or the other.

Again, these masks often degrade as the illness runs its course. Delusions operate on dream logic, they’re flexible and like to spread.

Also pleasseeeeee acknowledge other symptoms than delusions + hallucinations when you write a psychotic character. Reading John Darnielle novels makes me jump for joy because his psychotic characters get thought blocking and fucked up cognition on top of hallucinations. In many cases they’re more significant than the positive symptoms! Alex’s affect is remarked upon more than his hallucinations.

Shrek voice they don’t even have repetitive self soothing movements in their psychotic characters

Keysmash. I don’t know how to articulate this last part but there are a lot of times where. It feels like psychotic characters can present in exactly three ways: the obvious psycho killer, and then in more sympathetic contexts: no illogic or heck even symptoms past hallucinations, or an unstable baby with no autonomy. And it feels. Like these arise from a gap the author sees between them and psychotics. And when writing anything other than a violent stereotype, they have a tendency to overshoot and leave out any unsympathetic symptoms. Like they try to write a neurotypical who hallucinates.

Which is frustrating because a lot of these authors have adhd/autism and the two share plenty in outward presentation with psychosis. We all have executive dysfunction and inappropriate affect and shit memory and poor audio regulation and hey you know what? Psychotic disorders are comorbid with autism & adhd! Because psychosis is understood to arise primarily from a combination of genetics and stress! And you know what causes stress? Being neurodivergent!!!

Idk id just like that when I open up AO3 I’m not hit with a wall of people who did next to no research when they wanted to write their angst fics about my sicko mind.

[vernalloy]

Ok so I originally envisioned Donnie as a snake but he’s becoming increasingly more associated with worms & leeches. Likely because worms are common in (LOCATION) suburbia where snakes aren’t… like you don’t have just a random snake at your school

Also he’s just the Horror’s plaything right now bc he’s easy prey and I think worms are at least seen as more brainless than a snake

[vernalloy]

"ghat": One of the rare monsters who does not require fear! Can actually live just fine separate from humanity. It's funny to me... they're the most manmade horror. They are entirely comprehensible and this allows them to walk among humans!! They just exude an aura of "too grand for your understanding but small enough to inspire fear instead of passing out of your sense of scale")

"an eldritch monster is to a human as humans are to ants" yknow people study ants and feed ants and cultivate ant farms and help ants not die sometimes

we can love small things!!

[vernalloy]

DID I NEVER MENTION ALASKA'S SISTER'S NAME?

no i just misremembered it. it was emily

emiwyyyyyyy

the blanche sisters make me so upset.

pictured: emily & alaska

its worse because ALASKA MOVES AWAY

BECAUSE SHE'S OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL

"college isn't right for me, i've a brain that cannot handle that level of consistent work especially without a concrete goal in life. i'm content to assisted living with little higher aspiration as that's what's going to keep me happy and moreover alive" AND THIS INVOLVES LEAVING HER FAMILY AND HOMETOWN AND IT MAKES ME SO AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

and then emily is like breaking under the strain of proving she's just as if not more capable than her chosen sister so when alaska like actually says "okay fine, i'll take some time in psychward to get my feet under me"

she comes back

and emily's so fucking EMOTIONAL about it because GOD I WAS APPRECIATED WITHOUT YOU AND I KNOW IT'S SELFISH BUT I DON'T WANT YOU BACK

BUT YOU'RE MY SISTER AND I LOVE YOU AND LOVE THAT YOU'RE BACK

[vernalloy]

Creating a new genre known as elevated sci-fi that consists of the twilight zone & blade runner and nothing else. No other sci-fi media has ever commented on society. The genre in general is trashy bait for people who only want to see spaceships blow up. There is no societal commentary that can be made in sci-fi outside of blade runner & the twilight zone.

[vernalloy]

orpheus hadestown so psychotic and no one knows except ME

i believe in him. hed follow someone out of the bar and then to something else and not realize he was starving and when he did hed still b like "well im on a quest" "where to" "idk but its important"

he wouldnt even get a tossup on disorders bc autism was under childhood schizophrenia at the time iirc so the nuance of handshakes would be gone. that fellow cannot tell cold from hot, hungry from full, etc etc

the kinda guy who when fucked up more than usual ends up stopping a thought completely and pick up elsewhere. or to repeat repeat repeat. or have the meaning fall out and the only throughline be poetics, in rhyming and alliteration.

orpheus hadestown the type a guy who gets real fuckin paranoid and backs himself up against a wall in a small room to play fnaf irl. orpheus hadestown the type a guy who walks down the street constantly looking over his shoulder just in case someone's following him

the. the psytism. it twists and turns into each other and there is clear deliniation at times and then there is not