#fun fact ADHD also lets you go into hyperfocus

[secret-subject]

Why are we so convinced ADHD (and other neurodivergent people) can't be hypnotized?

This is something I've thought about a lot lately. So a little context of why:

So I've been doing hypnosis for about 12 years now. Back when I was 18 I joined the irc chat on WMM and started being hypnotized pretty much daily. I did files and I had dominants to play with and that continued for a long time. By the time I was in my mid 20's I was extremely easy, in fact too easy. The culture back then also wasn't the greatest for me and my subject agency was pretty mid (gotta love hindsight) but again, I was known for having a very good and very squishy brain. In 2022, my Mum was diagnosed with ASD but also got a surprise ADHD diagnosis. Now, we are very similar so she insisted I get tested and low and behold I have ADHD, inattentive subtype.

This blew my mind because for the longest time I had the clear signs of undiagnosed ADHD but a lot of these things were assumed came from my history of doing a buttload of conditioning files, my health conditions and just being "like that". By this stage I had stopped being hypnotized myself and focused on my role as a dominant and content creator because that for me was something I just had to focus on. My switching stopped and I didn't go under for about three years.

So now, I took a hiatus to go and try something else and when I came back I was stressed and got back into testing out files again. (Also super lucky in this time some friends of mine became hypnosis creators so that was a great way to dabble with people I can trust). My first few experiences were like getting on a bike after years of not riding. It was a little wobbly but soon with practice I was right back where I left off and now even better than that. I think right now I'm getting some of the literal deepest trance experiences ever. It's hard to describe but all I'll say is "oooof".

So why is this backstory important?

Because this is one very clear narrative of a person who had undiagnosed ADHD and found hypnosis very achievable with time, practice and a buttload of conditioning with the right people. Because my ADHD was not a factor until now, I never got told, "you can't be hypnotized" this self fulfilling proficy that makes people feel like this isn't for them which for me seeing this narrative in online spaces breaks my heart for the people who see this and feel that is their label and that is what sticks.

I think it's not our place to say who can or cannot be hypnotized as a general rule because there are not general rules in hypnosis. You can't look at someone and assess them based on factors you don't know or understand. In this world there are very few people who straight up cannot be hypnotized at all to some degree (far less then even the research people keep quoting says at this point) and this is why I feel so strongly that we need to instead of trying to label entire groups as "not good for play" to instead change the narrative to "let's see what works for more people" because brains are different and hypnosis can not be a one size fits all approach. It's too subjective for that.

This is also the biggest reason I made the ADHD hypnosis kink audio recently. I used my knowledge of hypnosis and some research on presentations of ADHD in combination to make something I felt was quite special. Maybe in the future this is something I can work on again because I want all the ADHDers with a hypnosis kink to be able to harness that hyperfocus and those skills we have to make kinky fun times extra fun.

So like, is it time we gave up generalizations on people like this? I know I'm ready to not hear my brain judged before you've even seen what it can do.

[self-indulgent-paw-patrol]

Do you think any of the PAW Patrol members are on the spectrum? Because I HC Ryder and Rocky as both being Autistic (it's why Rocky hates water and Ryder hates brussel sprouts, bad sensory experience)

Particularly I think the brussel sprouts thing might be more of a combo of sensory and taste, if it was only sensory, Ryder would hate a bunch of vegetables altogether. What would tell me Ryder is autistic is mostly how his knowledge on engineering for his age is just-- Miles Tails Prower level of spawning new buildings and vehicles overnight. It's canon he's the one projecting, building and maintaining all their vehicles, we see him doing maintenance on his ATV pretty regularly and he taught the pups to inspect their own vehicles and do basic maintenance as well. Not to mention he projected, programmed (and regrogrammed several times) and built the Robo-dog from scratch. That implies he not only knows engineering but also has plenty knowledge in the field of Artificial Intelligence! And he's TEN.

But for Rocky I agree! It could very well be an autistic trait. He's also extra passionate about his stuff and both his creativity and ability to learn things of his interest are off the charts. I also picture him into the ADHD part of the thing, mostly on the HD part of it. He's one of the pups we get to see doing things on their own sometimes, outside of missions. Tbh Rocky only stops moving when he sleeps, and maybe not even then XD

Personally, I headcanon Ryder, Chase, Rocky and Zuma as autistic to some degree each in different ways. As for Marshall, my headcanon on him has nothing to do with any spectrum but with genetic health. Skye, Rubble, Everest, Tracker, Rex and Liberty (the other pups I know so far), I don't have anything on them.

With Ryder and Rocky explained already, let's go to Chase and Zuma, under the cut, post's getting long again, omg.

Chase would be this one "kind" of autistic person I've met at least a couple autistic kids like him before: They get one subject to hyperfocus on and it LASTS LONG, they just don't change interests. They might go and also focus on something that's very alike to the main subject too, but they won't switch their focus target. They're also extremely perfectionists, very hard on themselves, failure when working on something is NOT an option.

Chase is pretty much like that. We know he's intensely passionate about his job as their Police and Spy pup, he follows the rules, he enforces the rules, he does all he can to make sure the task will be complete and always gets extremely upset and/or worried with the possibility of failing or disappointing Ryder (or anyone else for that matter, but it's to a personal level when it's with Ryder), to the point it makes him lose his ground, driving him into anxiety and panic attacks on the most extreme cases.

As for Zuma, I think he's one of those cases in which the person also has this hyperfocus on something and sticks with it, but to him it's less intense than Chase, I mean, to be a cop you gotta study and learn a lot of stuff. Zuma's case is that one that looks more like a very intense hobby. Getting his natural passion for water as a Labrador Retriever and adding it to a greater level of interest on water related stuff, Zuma just put together the fun and the usefulness in his life. So, not only Zuma does the aquatic rescues for the Patrol out of convenience on being the pup whose breed actually doesn't mind getting wet, he also has fun and enjoys it all.

"But that's expected from a Labrador, isn't it?" you ask me. Well, I raise you the fact that Labradors are also usually extremely hyperactive dogs, but then we have Zuma who's... Totally chill. He's there in his spot, content, just enjoying himself. He's not constantly running or jumping around unless prompted to do so, he's playful but only when the others go out to play as well. Otherwise, he's just there, just vibing. Zuma is literally that pup who's there in his corner, vibing, minding his business, until someone else interacts with him or invites him to go do something.

He's literally the chill dude who will go out to surf on his own because he enjoys it and doesn't feel the need to interact with others unless necessary - doesn't mean he's rude, it only means he's vibing his own vibes and will gladly interact if prompted to do so, but doesn't usually takes the initiative because he's already happy in his world.

JUST A REMINDER, IT'S ALL MY PERSONAL TAKE on watching these characters and thinking way too much about their behaviors outside of missions and the vibes I get from them. Mind you, I might be autistic myself but I'm not diagnosed and most I know about it comes from research I've done years ago up to nowadays, the first time being when I wanted to create an autistic OC and didn't know much about it and didn't want to get it wrong to not be attacked over it.

[redrubysword]

I’ve been on a strong Mewtwo hyperfocus lately, but last night I watched Lilo and Stitch.

And let me tell you just how absolutely unhinged Mewtwo’s story would be if this guy right here was involved in his creation.

To start with, this absolute madlad (he prefers to be called Evil Genius) gets cartoon physichs’d whenever he gets blown up. So if a certain psychic Pokemon woke up grumpy enough to do murder...

...Jumba can survive getting blown up.

So not only would he still be around (and probably sending collections after Giovanni who managed to get a hold of Mewtwo even though Jumba likely never would have intended to give Mewtwo to him. Why do that when you can turn your creation loose on society and laugh about it?), Jumba is perfectly content to hang out in human society. So he’d make himself plot relevant while getting up to some Team Rocket shit with his husband Pleakley.

Now why is this concept especially funny to me?

Because you know near the end of Mewtwo’s character arc, he’s going to stumble across more of his own kind in the wild because Jumba would have made more than 600 others and neglected to tell anyone.

Also, if Mewtwo ever offends Jumba in some petty argument

Jumba will create a more powerful one out of spite.

So there you go. My ADHD addled mind can’t let go of the fact that having Jumba in the story would have been far funnier than Dr. Fuji, and I’m having fun imagining how Mewtwo’s character arc would have been if he had been created by a chaotic Russian alien that only created him because can’t stop being gay and doing crime.

[singingvio]

Some Four Swords Headcanons

- Shadow was created as an enemy much earlier than we see in the manga.

There isn’t a lot of evidence, exactly, but if you look at the other games and manga you often see Dark Link created in front of you, and they always are just a mirror image, with little to no personality developed and seemingly no free will. This might be the result of a rush job, creating another being on the spot. Now, let’s take a look at Ravio and Shadow.

Ravio was obviously a child and had a life before we meet him in-game, but is still a version of Dark Link, being the opposite of the hero. He also shows genuine emotion and is not just copying whatever Link does, but has his own desires, beliefs, and dreams, along with fears and dislikes.

And Shadow is much more like Ravio, who definitely had a life before the story starts, than Dark Links created on the spot. He has an actual personality, emotions, and fears, and as proven by the ending scene in the manga, he definitely has free will.

I think that Shadow is from a Dark World like Ravio’s that is an inverse of Hyrule, but in a different way than Lorule. He was simply summoned from the Dark World, triggered by the Four Sword. Not created on the spot. It makes more sense than him being created on the spot, especially since he seems to have developed his own plan of what happens seemingly without orders, very unlike other Dark Links.

- Green is jealous of Blue.

As we already know, Green and Blue fight. A lot. Most of these fights are actually unprompted. Even when they’re training, it’s more actual arguing than just constructive criticism.

The reasons that led me to believe Green is jealous of Blue? Most of their fights come from Blue claiming he’s the real Link, and Green arguing against him. This might lead you guys to believe that Blue’s the one who’s jealous, but I think it’s actually Green.

Green is considered the ‘real Link,’ and it’s because he doesn’t seem different from Link at all unless you look closely. The other Links, on the other hand, all have distinct personalities that are very different from the Link we know at the beginning of the manga. But Blue’s a bit different.

Link is brash, makes decisions on the spot, doesn’t like working together with others because he’s overconfident, gets frustrated easily, but still cares for his friends.

Green is determined and thinks quickly, making decisions on the spot as well, and despite saying he needs to work with the others, he still doesn’t like it. He also gets frustrated often when he can’t easily find a way out, though this is usually shown through him getting close to giving up.

Blue is brash, makes decisions on the spot, doesn’t seem to like working together, gets angered and frustrated easily, and still shows that he cares for the other Links.

Which one sounds more like Link? Blue. But Green is considered to be no different than Link. Blue, however, is treated just like the others, different than Link and obviously different in personality, strengths, and weaknesses. I think that Green is jealous that while Blue and he are the most like Link in almost the same ways, Blue is treated as another individual while Green is not. Sure, Green argues back that he’s the real Link, but I think he means it more in a way saying, ‘I’m the leader, please listen to me,’ than Blue saying, ‘I’m the only real one here, you all don’t deserve to be the real one.’

- Vio gets distracted easily and possibly has ADHD.

Honestly, I’m surprised I haven’t seen a lot of people pick up on this yet. Lots of people (including me until I thought about this) portray Vio as being extremely focused (NOT hyperfocused, that’s a very different thing) on whatever he wants to do, not getting distracted easily. But really, he never really shows that in the manga.

When reading the book on Force Gems, he doesn’t seem to really be paying attention to the book, instead choosing to argue with Blue about patience. (patience, not focus. They’re extremely different things). In fact, when he’s reading, he actually looks bored, like he’s done reading and wants something else to do.

I love reading myself, but since I have ADHD, I get distracted after five minutes or so, and then force myself to continue reading while barely paying attention myself. This is one of the reasons I felt extremely connected to Vio as a character.

You might argue Vio’s just getting a bit bored because he’s been reading for a long time, but there really isn’t any proof of that. Green and Blue have obviously been training for a while, sure, and Vio’s reading during that time, but take a look at Red. He was able to cook up an entire meal, for all four of them to eat. Since they don’t appear to be near any particular villages to buy ingredients, he must have caught the fish and gotten spices some other way, right? And he probably couldn’t have done it all by himself and also managed to actually make the meal. 

I think Vio helped him for most of the time, then thought to read up on Force Gems so he got a book he probably bought beforehand and started reading it after helping Red prepare some of the meal. Then he got bored quickly and started arguing with Blue to pass the time.

There are also other instances where Vio gets lost in thought, and his train of thought is a lot like mine. It seems straightforward, but also, he kind of jumps to conclusions. At one part in the beginning, when Arcy starts talking he immediately zeroes in on one phrase that, honestly, doesn’t mean anything, and then just stops talking. He’s extremely perceptive, that I can’t argue against, but also doesn’t focus on one thing for long and sometimes focuses on the wrong thing out of pure curiosity and also disinterest in whatever else is going on.

- Blue would rather rely on others than work himself, despite what he says.

Honestly, Blue’s treatment of the other Links seems too harsh even for him. To me, it seems like he’s trying to keep the others away from him, but why? My guess is it’s because the other Links claim they don’t want to work as a team, and so Blue follows their claims so he’s not the ‘odd Link out.’ I think he’s actually scared of being left out, and he’s more of a people-pleaser than even Red sometimes, no matter how subtle it is.

A lot of situations Blue gets in has him rely on other people instead of himself. In the ice cave, he has to wait for Red to unfreeze him. In the temple of darkness, he needs Red’s help to free him from the Poe. In the other battles, he always acts after the others say or do something that prompts him. (Stone Arrghus he hits on the head only after Vio is able to incapacitate him. He waits for action until after Vio already does something.)

Honestly, I think Blue puts up a facade to hide how much he actually relies on the others, and when he’s alone, he’s almost always defeated, probably because he wants someone to back him up so he’s not feeling helpless. And, when Vio supposedly turns to the side of darkness? Blue gets really upset, and even believes Vio’s an illusion because he doesn’t want his teammate betraying him and the others, it might break him.

And when Green ‘dies,’ Blue is the first to rush to his side, Red following after him, because he can’t lose another teammate. And instead of sitting there like Red, he actually tries to shake Green awake, something I’m pretty sure the Blue that doesn’t like the others that much wouldn’t do.

- Red can somehow sense magical creatures.

I honestly don’t have to say much for this one. Miss Fairy just somehow finding him? Really? I don’t believe that, it seems too random. And how did he get out of the situation with the town trying to probably burn him alive?

He ran into the woods, and as many Zelda gamers know, the woods are absolutely full of fairies, but they’re often hard to find without some sort of trick. These tricks usually require a weapon, and Red only has the Fire Rod, which I don’t think would do any good in a forest.

I think, somehow, Red is able to sense magical creatures, like fairies, an ability unique to him. He probably ran into the woods, scared, and sensed a fairy sanctuary or something to hide in. There, he found Miss Fairy. “When I was in trouble, it showed me the way,” he tells Blue. Miss Fairy agreed to help him and teleported him out of the village, straight to the pyramid to help him find the others.

[thegingeralien]

Thought I might share my “doing homework with adhd” tips in case the might help even just one person (because that would make me feel happy).

Who am I to be giving you advice? Good point! I am still terrible at studying and I’m 26 and at University for the millionth time. But I have studied A LOT in my 22 years of schooling with varying degrees of success.

I see a lot of people, especially teenagers or first year university/college students, with ADHD asking for tips on how to study. But if you do a google search most of the websites and advice that comes up can be extremely ableist. So I hope I can help someone!

TIPS TO HELP YOU STUDY WHEN YOU HAVE AN ADHD GREMLIN BRAIN!:

1. Chewing gum!

- This might come across as a weird one, but it has actually really helped me. I use it as a form of stimming to help keep me focused and concentrating. Other forms of stimming can potentially end up being more of a distraction when you actually need to be reading or writing - but they can help if you just need to be listening. Try not to get a bubble gum or fun flavoured one though - as they can end up making your mouth feel dry, lose flavour quickly, and just give your brain way too many sensory things to become distracted with.

2. Buying colour coded stationary!

- New stationary can make me really excited to start studying, but that excitement never lasts long and the act of buying stationary can sometimes become it’s own hobby. That’s not what we are going for here. I really recommend, especially if you are a visual learner like me, to buy colour coded stationary. This means removable page markers, different coloured post it notes, highlighters, sometimes even pens. This way if your mind jumps from one topic to the other, it doesn’t matter. Go with the flow. Forcing your ADHD gremlin brain to focus can be extremely counter intuitive. So pick a colour for each topic, and stick to that system to find organisation among your own chaos!

3. Buy a really cheap, boring year diary with hardly any writing inside.

- Not sure if your school/university has their own diary but they can be perfect for what I am on about. Generally you can find them for really cheap, soft cover, no writing or designs within the dates. Just dates, days, weeks and lines where you can write your homework. This helped me a lot in High School. I wish I had kept doing it in University, but I am good with giving advice, and not so much with taking it. I used to decorate the outside of it however I wanted. Some years I would redecorate the same diary every semester. In the public holidays or holiday days I would colour those lines in with different highlighters to make it look like a rainbow. But every assignment due date, homework, draft, rewrite, form I had to bring back, library book due date, school activity days, ANYTHING to do with school I would write in there with reminds and check lists. Important due dates would be highlighted, general homework and daily to do lists t(o help me not leave my assignments to the last minute) would have a tick box beside them (because ticking tick boxes is free dopamine). Try to not put birthdays or fun things in it. This is a small way to stay on track so it helps you actually stay on track with the big things when you’re home.

4. Big whiteboards stuck on the wall where you can’t avoid it.

- This is not something I had in school, but I so wish I did. I have been using this recently to keep on top of house work (as maintaining your own house is tiring) and my small business or other things I really can’t avoid. If I physically write it down (not just in my phone) it psychologically does help you commit it to memory. Again, physically putting a line through a task you just completed is a hecking great rush of dopamine. But the biggest reason I love my white board, I can’t ignore it. It is stuck to the wall and is never out of sight, out of mind. I can’t put my phone or diary down and then refuse to look at it until I’m past the due date. Again, I’m not a perfect person, there are days where I don’t do anything I have written on the white board. But the great thing is, I don’t have to continuously feel like I failure, as I can wipe it all off the next morning or week and start fresh. I also put important things I have to remember that I’m doing during the week so I don’t forget them.

5. Icky Medication.

- I know not everyone wants to be on medication, and I understand. I am not forcing you to. No matter what your opinions are, you lovely gremlin who is still reading this post, regarding medication, you are valid and I respect you. My personal experience with medication has not been the best. I have been misdiagnosed for a severe chunk of my academic life which has seen me trying to focus and maintain school work under some even worse states then I am unmedicated! However, since receiving my diagnosis and finding the right ADHD medication for me, I have the ability to get so much work done without having to unnecessarily struggle. It’s unfortunately not magic, it will not turn me into a robot that makes me do work and turn out incredible, noble peace prize winning assignments (as much as I wish that were possible). I still have the ability to be a lump, doom scrolling through tumblr, forgetting to eat, and ignoring responsibilities. But it really helps me when I sit down and start that thing that isn’t fun. Yesterday it helped me hyperfocus on cleaning my office which was a terrifying room to be in. So it’s pretty close to magic in my opinion!

6. Accessing Disability Support at your place of learning.

- Not all of you taking the time to read this will have either a) an offical diagnosis or b) a good disability support available to you wherever you are completing your studies. And that is okay. This dot point just won’t be for you right now. But keep it in mind for a time when it might apply to you, as it’s something I never thought I would need, but will never take for granted ever again.

- If you have an offical diagnosis and Disability Support, make an appointment with the disability support adviser. DO IT NOW! Get your psychiatrist to write a diagnosis letter outlining that you have <enter superpower that makes you hilarious here> and that you are receiving <enter x,y,z treatment here> and that you would benefit from receiving <enter what you have always wished you had on the days you can’t make your ADHD gremlin brain do the thing here>. Now these benefits can be, but not limit to: automatic extensions on ALL assignments, extra time on exams, extra breaks to walk around while taking exams, special consideration when marking assignments, my university allows me to take exams in a separate room with only the other students in my subject who also have disability support (occasionally I have taken an exam alone with only a tutor present) so I don’t get distracted, permission to take fidget items into class or exam (I have the option to wear headphones, as long as I can display that they are not connected to anything). Maybe you can come up with some great ones for you with your disability advisor or your psychiatrist.

- The disability advisor will often go through your course outline with you at the start of each semester or year. This is annoying and a great time for disassociating, but can be useful in hindsight because you are made aware of everything that will come up during your class so you are not surprised. Because lets be honest, it is unlikely you are going to look at the course calendar too often.

- Side Note: I make an appointment every semester with my disability support officer for my area of study to make sure I have my special considerations for the year. Now I may go through the whole year without ever using my considerations. However, the fact that I know they are there takes an insane amount of pressure off of myself. If I’m having an insanely screwy loony tune mental health moment, I can email my coordinator my disability plan and say I need an extension due to personal reasons, and WHOOP, there it izzzzz.

7. Dedicated one thing or a few things that have nothing to do with food/alcohol/other substances to reward yourself with for doing the thing!

- This may not work for everyone. It doesn’t always work for me. I used to reward myself with food, but that only reinforced my stimming with overeating and my already bad relationship with food. And I feel as though that would be the same with any other substance that can be linked with addiction. (Addiction is a tough word, cause what aren’t I addicted to, I have ADHD, but hopefully you get what I mean!).

-Now, boring try and not choose this aside, lets think of somethings that work really well as rewards!

- My partner likes to come give me a kiss and a hug when ever they have written and reread a paragraph, you might buy a book when you get a really good mark, you might want to go make a cup of tea and watch an episode of your hyperfixation after studying for <enter a good period of time here>, you might allow yourself to partake in an activity you usually do while procrastinating (but at least this time you know you aren’t putting something off), talk to someone who you know will tell you they are proud of you as they understand the mental struggle you go through to concentrate (if you can’t think of anyone, it is 110% okay if that person are the amazing people on tumblr or the adhd tumblr chats. We will freaking pop a bottle of champagne for you cause we get it!).

- Try and make what ever you choose be something in a different room or away from your working space. Getting out can really calm you down.

8. Don’t be afraid to ask for assistance.

- This is true for anything, but I don’t mean just asking your teacher to give you extra help understanding the task and marking rubric. Many people online, tutors, librarians at your school, past or present students offer assistance rereading and making small edits (they won’t make it magical unfortunately) to your assignments. If you are like me and once you have written or completed the dreaded thing, you can not imagine or force your gremlin brain reread or edit the thing. So it can help to just delegate this to someone else, who hasn’t read it before, so they won’t disassociate or skim read it. They will often notice things you never would have even if you were neurotypical as that is just what happens when you have been working on something for so long.

9. Repetitive music.

- It generally helps if this has no lyrics. Lo-fi is amazing. Classical is alright too if it works for you, but both my partner and I agree that it can really assist you to keep up pace and focus when the beat is a high and repetitive (almost meditative) tempo.

10. Limit your screen space.

- This is a tip completely from my partner @dr-adhd who also has ADHD, is an avid PC gamer and is consistently in a battle with their gremlin brain to focus on completing their PhD. They have discovered that it really helps them to limit their screen space - simply put, work on one screen only. They have done more work more easily when they have their one screen on their laptop to focus on. Whereas their office has multiple screens so they could be playing runescape, watching YouTube, listening to lo-fi and doing work - which never worked (shocking right hahaha).

11. At the risk of sounding like a Mum... Put your phone and other electronics other than the assignment necessary one, away.

- I am a Mum, but to a fluffy puppy dog, so I hate to sound like my Mum when I was in high school, but she was right. Mobiles are the single easiest and biggest distraction in ADHD history. I often, even at coffee shops, have to turn my phone over so that I am not consistently looking at it every time the screen lights up to say the pizza place has sent me a coupon, or a carpet place that has been having a sale since I was born is... still having a sale, or a friend from school wants you to watch this TikTok. Even though you might not want to ignore your friends, because people pleasing, difficulting making/keeping friends and RSD are hecking real things, but they can all wait. Trust me, none of them are urgent. That TikTok will still be funny in an hour or two. And I’m probably completely right when I say that whomever just messaged you, never replies as quickly as you want them too. So I doubt they are going to think twice if you are MIA to finish your thing.

My partner or I might add to this later, but at the moment I already know that I probably wouldn’t read this wall of words if I was the one reading it, so if you are still with me, THANK YOU and I really hope I might have helped you. Sorry for the mound of words, but maybe you can reblog, screen shot, or save this and read a dot point at a time or refer to it when you need. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, I promise what ever it is, I’ve asked the same thing once in my life or something MUCH stupider.

[apparentlyaswarmofbees]

could you do a hc of how the brother's behaviour would be if the mc has adhd, like they daydream a lot, losing things all the time, getting distracted very easily, can hardly focus and other symptoms of the inattentive type. because i have it and i'd like to see how they would act, i love your headcannons so i thought i could request this💓💘💝💓💞

Let's see if the medicated ADHD person who is siblings with another medicated ADHD person who are both children of a very ADHD woman and her ADHD husband can write about their own disorder-

I changed this a bit and made a scenario like instead of a headcanon seeing when I tried to write in headcanon format I didn't really like it much.

.

ADHD in Hell

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It was trully hell.

In a school full of demons you can't expect many of them to be respectfull and quiet in class, so you will basically not be able to do anything but get overwhelmed as the students keep whispering to each other while, passing notes and using the phone while the teacher is speaking.

So of course your grades just say 'I guess I'll die' and of course you will have to sit down and have Lucifer giving you a 3 hour lecture which is another level of torture seeing your brain will most likely strangle itself 5 minutes into it.

Chores? When there is basically no way of telling what time is it by looking outside seeing there is no sun? Might as well spend the entire day not being able to do anything.

Assignments? Again, when there is no way to have a concrete idea of time? Sounds like something to do on the last minute right before the class starts, if not right when the teacher is collecting it, to me.

It would definetelly take a while to manage things. There would be a serious need to speak with Lucifer about it, in which once once you do it, he would do what he could to help, he needed the exchange student to do well afterall.

It can be kind of sweet how he changes a bit how he asks you to things and organizes the list of chores differently with more specific details.

Mammon would be the most understanding, he would be a huge help when you need something to give you the final push to do things. Though more often than not having you two together will just lead to a lot more chaos than solutions.

Leviathan would also be understanding but he would have some mixed feelings seeing whenever you guys either play games or watch anime together, there was a high chance of you just straight up going on a tangent away from the original point of the game or not fully paying attention to the anime.

He doesn't take it personally, in fact, in many of those times, your unfocused self made the whole experience a lot more fun and ridiculous, so he takes it as somewhat of a challenge to find a game and an anime that can fully manage to catch your attention.

Satan is another one with mixed feelings but he would mostly be extremelly intrigued, specially by your hability to hyperfocus, and the fact that any conversations he has with you has a big chance of ending in a completely different and unexpected subject from the one you guys started with.

Oh, and Asmodeus would be so salty. Like, pay attention to him!

After so many times of having you completelly fly off to another dimention inside your head while he was going on and on about his day, he would most likely start to change the way he delivers things in hopes to catch your attention. He may even start to indulge in your mental trips!

Also, somehow Beelzebub and Belphegor always have either the same thing that you lost or a spare one for any time you need?? They are much more attentive than anyone gives them credit, so once they get used to your pattern of misplacing your stuff, they start to actually know exactly where everything that belongs to you is.

Though Belphie still wants to kick you for fidgeding around so much, he may even swat you with his tail at some point.

And Beel is right there with some well needed sweet snacks whenever you need to give your brain some fuel and always ready to move around when you just can't stay still any longer.

It is trully hell, and you will have a difficult time and you will make that everyone else's problem. But you know what? They can deal with it, it's not you that needs to learn to addapt to the focused world around you when you aren't even capable of doing it in the first place. And guess what? They will all still love you all the same. Even on the days they are just done with you lol.

.

(Sometimes my entire family is just done with each other too, but I know we all still love each other all the same, even when my mom can't sit still to watch some shows, when my brother completely crashes the entire game, when my dad forgets something and when I get overwhelmed by all the sounds. By the end of the day, none of us can sit right and all do the most abnoxious things when left alone in a table together at a party, so we're in this together.)

[zosonils-art]

👀 may we know more about rhythm man?

we sure may!!!!! rhythm dump under the cut as always

rhythm man was made to do a variety of tasks relating to sound! mostly he either does sound checks for important devices like hydrophones, sonar, seti listening devices, stuff like that, or he analyses the audio that they pick up in greater detail than any human or almost any computer can. someone [probably dr light, who created him] showed him a rhythm game pretty early in his life, and he instantly fell in love with the game genre and, more significantly, the concept of music itself. he's still doing the job he was designed for, but his real passion and arguably what he's better known for in-universe is creating music, which he uses his intricate understanding of audio to excel at

he makes a point of being a cool guy to be around! he's nice, fun-loving, and always has a joke ready. he's very encouraging of others, and thinks everyone should get to chase their dreams and do what makes them happy. when there's no bright side for him to look on, though, he doesn't really know how to act, and as such he feels uncomfortable confronting serious emotional situations and has a bad habit of repressing any negative feelings he doesn't know how to deal with and just letting them get worse. he might be developing some resentment towards his work for how much of his time it takes up that he'd rather be spending pursuing his interests, but oops that's not a fun feeling! better bottle it up and not think about it

all robots are neurodivergent but rhythm in particular has SO much undiagnosed adhd. he [probably] doesn't mind his job, but he can't pretend to be nearly as enthusiastic about it as he is his music, and tends to come off as distracted and spacey when he's at work. he's also capable of entering a hyperfocus-like state that temporarily re-allocates computing power usually dedicated to spatial awareness and sensory processing to focus on something else, which was designed to let him analyse audio with even more precision. rhythm occasionally uses this feature as intended, but more often finds himself turning it on while he's making music or playing a game to get into the groove more

he'll gladly enjoy any genre of music, but anything under the electronic umbrella is his favourite to listen to and create, especially bass music and all its subgenres! outside of genre preferences he likes songs with a lot of tiny bits and pieces and intricate details to notice - i think he'd really enjoy bill wurtz's music, for instance, due to just how much is going on in almost every song. he posts the music he makes online, and has a pretty sizeable following for both the novelty of a robot that makes music and the fact that everything he makes genuinely slaps super hard. being a robot, his criteria for 'good' music is all very simple and objective stuff like whether it's in key or has a time signature that makes sense or follows a pattern rather than just being random sounds, so he's able to appreciate almost any music for what it is and can name the number of songs he actively dislikes on one hand, although despite his best efforts to be forgiving he's a bit of an audio quality snob

the only sound he genuinely doesn't like is white noise, because the total lack of a discernable pattern or anything notable freaks him out. it's hard-coded into him to try and find meaningful noise in very fuzzy sound, and even if he analyses it back and forth on every level and concludes that it's just random aural static he's still left with a feeling of unease about it. his headphones have a sort of noise-cancelling mode that completely blocks out most background noise so he can maintain a conversation without constantly pausing to overanalyse everything he hears - without the noise cancelling he's got the world's worst case of auditory processing disorder. he's weak to psychic cry because it's just a really violent blast of white noise, and is one of the only bosses susceptible to its stunning effect because the sound freaks him out so badly he has to stop for a moment to force himself to ignore it

almost everything about rhythm came from the idea i had for his stage! i imagine it functioning as a sort of rhythm platformer where almost every moving part is timed to the beat of the stage music. it's the obligatory yoku block-spamming stage of the game, but in theory if you follow the music and jump across in time with the beat you'll make it through without much trouble [and maybe even have fun! in a stage with *yoku blocks!!*]. other stuff like constantly-spawning enemies and the attack patterns of rhythm himself would also be on that same beat cycle! as for theming, his stage is a mostly-vertical climb up a radio tower - wily's reprogramming takes his repressed frustration over not always getting to focus on his passion and upgrades it to outright spite, and he decides that actually you WILL listen to his mixtape whether you want to or not and proceeds to hijack the biggest radio tower in mosteropolis and override every single station with lofi beats to take over the world to

rhythm is the first robot master idea i ever had that wasn't a reference to something else, although for a pretty long time he was only a stage idea and a name. maybe that's why his design changed more throughout his development than any of the other guys [even between the sketch and the final lineart for this art i refined his look like 3 times]. initially he had a more 'tough'/punk-ish look, with spikes on his helmet and around his wrists and ankles, but i ended up phasing most of those elements out in favour of the led lights and generally less intimidating look. i briefly considered having his design reference rhythm heaven somehow, since it's my favourite rhythm game and the only one i'm any good at lmao, but nothing came of that - perhaps his stage enemies could have some rh references in their ranks instead, chuck some screwbots up there or something. he also had massive anime sunglasses at some point but it's better for that design to never see the light of day

he also likes dancing! hence his funky moves in the art. his body shape isn't compatible with every dance style what with the clunky robot limbs and having a stereo for a chest, and he definitely wasn't built for physical agility, but with a little practice he can pick up most dance moves no problem. he's definitely a dance battler, and i think he would love rhythm games that trick you into exercising like dance dance revolution or just dance. rhythm man does a frame perfect ddr tas in real-time on an actual cabinet

that about wraps it up for the rhythm infodump, thank you for asking about him!! as always here's the unfiltered and transparent versions of his artwork

[theworldbrewery]

what does it mean to play with a high (or low) stat?

fun fact: “commoners” (i.e., your average unskilled random) have a 10 in every ability score.

they are the average of the average. the most middle-of-the-road we can achieve. and they will never reflect your Player Character’s reality.

but they are a great baseline for determining where your characters are outstanding, and where they will struggle.

An average person can lift 50 lbs comfortably, has enough hand-eye coordination to play a decent game of ping-pong against an equally-matched opponent, can fight off most communicable diseases, knows how to read, can tell when they need more information to be able to act, and is able to handle basic social contact when there is no reason for conflict.

***note--I’m using these “averages” to talk about what a non-disabled and neurotypical person will be generally capable of without training or honing a particular skill. Being within 2-3 ability score points of the average doesn’t necessarily require justification, but it might still be fun to explore***

so your barbarian with an 18 in strength isn’t just an outlier, it’s a major difference from what Jane Ordinary can manage on a typical day, and the sweet-talking powers of your 20-charisma sorcerer are going to feel supernatural compared with what the traveling horse salesman is used to. When you’re creating a character, whether that’s an NPC with class levels or a player character, consider why a character’s stats are the way they are.

If they were naturally gifted, is that why they felt called to the class they chose? Did they work hard to be where they are today, and let other abilities fall by the wayside? Did a higher power imbue them with strength, charisma, or wisdom to make a perfect vessel for their plans? Reimagining the reasons behind your statistics can help develop your backstory and even factor into your character arc down the line.

***Another note: be especially self-aware if you’re going to play a neuroatypical, mentally ill, or disabled character and you aren’t yourself a member of the group you’re representing. I love representation but don’t be insensitive---and if anything I mention here comes off as insensitive, let me know and I’ll adjust accordingly!***

STRENGTH: 

At first level, a higher-than-average STR score is going to reflect a lot of training, whether intentional or not. The character may have grown up chopping wood and hauling logs around a woodland village, spent their young adulthood in a mine, or studied with bodybuilders in a remote bodybuilder monastery.

In contrast, a lower-than-average STR score might correspond to a pampered lifestyle, one where the character never needed physical labor to get by; or perhaps they have a disability, such as a bad back, or a chronic illness that leaves their muscles weaker than usual.

DEXTERITY:

A character with a high DEX is flexible and fast. They might have been an acrobat in a circus, flipping around on the trapeze. An urchin whose two options are move fast or get arrested is also likely to be dextrous, as much as a noble who, as a child, often crept around and hid in their family estate to avoid lessons or spy on the adults. They might be from a tree-dwelling community where leaping across platforms is commonplace, or use their dexterity on the rigging of the ship they made their home. A very dextrous person might even have EDS or another condition that makes them hyper-flexible.

A low DEX might, like low STR, match with a disability like arthritis or an old leg injury that never healed properly, or it could align with pressure to behave properly in polite company--never running, climbing, or skulking around. Low DEX could also translate to clumsiness, a fear of taking physical risks, or a tremor that makes Sleight of Hand difficult.

CONSTITUTION:

High CON is a matter of resistance to illness, poison/drugs/alcohol, and general hardiness or stamina. A high CON character might take vitamins and supplements to keep their peak physical condition, do exercises to increase lung capacity or practice running to build endurance. They may take small doses of poison to build up immunity, or maybe they’ve been a low-grade alcoholic for so long their liver is adept at filtering out toxins. They might have done charity marathons to raise money for good causes back home.

Low CON might therefore translate to an arrhythmia or other chronic illnesses such as asthma, POTS, or even severe allergies. The low CON character could have been trapped in a sheltered upbringing that never exposed them to disease or required them to stand and move for hours. Maybe they have never been exposed to drink or drugs and are an incurable lightweight.

INTELLIGENCE:

A high-INT character may have spent years under the tutelage of scholars, worked hard to get into an educational institution, or learned history and magic from the elders of their community with the intent to carry the knowledge into the next generation. They may have autism that helps with information recall, ADHD that leads to hyperfocus on a few specific topics, or another form of neurodiversity.

A low-INT character may have never had the chance to learn from their uneducated family, or be so without a community that no one bothered to teach them. They might have a learning disability, memory problems, or chronic fatigue that causes brain fog.

WISDOM:

A high-WIS character is generally observant, able to assess the intentions of others, clear-headed, and pragmatic--or at least practical. High Wisdom may come from being taught from a young age to pay attention to one’s surroundings, be a part of a community’s religious or ethical worldview, or be a necessary skill developed for survival in a world full of hazards or underhanded strangers. High WIS scores can also derive from anxiety or trauma that make characters more sensitive to information and more likely to observe patterns that otherwise go unnoticed.

Low WIS characters might have very little life experience, or be naive because of the way they’ve been taught to view the world. They might have issues with visual or auditory processing that affect their perception, have low empathy that makes insight a struggle, or experience depression, psychosis, or paranoia that leads to difficulty assessing what is real.

CHARISMA:

High CHA characters may spend months or years mastering the performing arts, honing their ability to lie or stretch the truth, or practicing their most intimidating posture. Or their Charisma may stem from being completely genuine and trustworthy, without any apparent artifice. Characters with sociopathy may know how to turn any social encounter to their advantage, and those with high empathy may be simply likeable. A high-CHA character could be funny, attractive, talented, or have a magnetic personality for any number of reasons, including trying to impress a particular social group or person, a career goal as a comedian or performer, or being raised with rustic hospitality.

A low-CHA character may have trouble with eye contact or even be compulsively unable to lie (or a compulsive liar that’s simply unconvincing); they might have sensory issues that make them sensitive to music or certain vocal timbres, or they might be brusque and businesslike. Low Charisma can stem from a roughshod upbringing, a cultural emphasis on stark honesty even when unsolicited, or a lack of awareness for someone else’s perspective. Even a speech impediment or a trauma that leads to skittishness can read as low-Charisma if you want to play it that way (though it doesn’t have to be).

Sometimes, a character is in the middle-of-the-road but you still want to include one of the options mentioned above. In that case, they could have multiple “conflicting” influences in their background. A character with ADHD might be very good with a specific subject but the ADHD also manifests as memory issues, reflecting a 12 Intelligence score and its ambiguity (and proficiency in specific skills will reflect the specificity of hyperfocus, for instance). 

None of these are hard-and-fast rules. If you want to play a character with chronic pain that doesn’t have a matching low score, that’s also amazing! But if you’re starting from the stats and want to figure out the “in-game justification” for why someone’s abilities are where they are, I hope this little outline helps.

If you like our posts, consider donating to our Ko-Fi @ theworldbrewery. We are saving up for Volo’s Guide to Monsters (and I’m kinda looking forward to trashing Volo’s opinions)

[heretherebedork]

Hiya there! I love ML standing up for Anon and not getting pissed at it. There’s so many times when characters get pissed at another for being scared to open up, or at least more times than there should be. Some (rare) times it could be reasonable, but damn give them some space.

Premise: Cafe setting with a barista ML who accidentally makes mistake with a customer’s order. The customer ends up really enjoying the drink and soon becomes a frequent customer for this mysterious concoction that brings them

I am very tired of characters getting pissed for things like keeping a secret that could affect them hugely and other reasonable things. So I try to avoid that, most of the time. But sometimes it does make sense character wise or plot wise, I must admit.

ML is actually known by all the regulars in the coffee shop for making mistakes. He's... not the best at following directions. In fact, the only reason he's still working is because his mistakes often turn out better than the original did. It's kinda his gimmick. (Note: If a customers mentions allergies, ML is required to let someone else make the drink.)

This is because ML has ADHD and severe executive dysfunction issues alongside a host of other symptoms, obviously. He's just also, luckily, very good at mixing flavors regardless.

But Coffee knows none of this when he walks in and orders a fairly complicated drink. And receives something... different. Different but better. And when he asks about it, he recieves the explanation of how ML never gets an order right but always seems to make it better.

Coffee starts coming more regularly. He gets his not right but better drinks and he watches ML. And he chats when he can. ML is enthusiastic, bouncy, friendly but distracted.

Coffee is the exact opposite. He's always been the studious and serious type. He wears thick glasses and tends to take everything a bit too seriously. ML is fascinating in his light persona, always flitting from topic to topic.

But Coffee notices other things. He notices how everyone calls ML stupid behind his back. That many of the regulars love his drinks but mock his personality when he isn't looking. That even the other employees join in the mocking whenever ML is busy or not working. Everyone says he's stupid, a drop-out, useless outside of the coffee shop.

And Coffee has a chance to see this when he runs into ML in the grocery store one day. He sees ML standing in an aisle, struggling with a shopping list because he'd gone out of order and forgotten to check things off. So he's standing in the middle of an aisle trying to figure out what he's gotten and what he still needs. It's obviously a struggle for him to coordinate the list, the groceries and the people constantly trying to pass him by and jostling him.

So Coffee stops and offers to help. ML goes slack-jawed at the offer. But Coffee efficiently pulls the cart to the side, checks the items on the list and hands it back to ML with everything checked off and a few suggestions on how to organize the list better.

ML thanks him and laughs and is obviously both grateful and touched and amazed. Coffee is in love. He's gone. That's all it took to push him from a vague liking to absolutely gone in love boy. ML's gratitude and positivity is contagious.

And then Coffee offers to give ML a ride home after ML mentions a long walk. ML takes that right up and Coffee is given a chance to see his absolute disaster of a condo. It's... it's beyond messy. There's piles everywhere of everything imaginable and ML sheepishly admits how hard cleaning is for him.

Suddenly, Coffee finds himself helping ML with everything he can. He realizes that ML is brilliant at art and flavors and can get sucked into baking or cooking or creating for hours on end without noticing. But that ML is lost when it comes to a lot of the basics of life, like cleaning and neatening and keeping track of time.

Coffee is a horrible cook and baker and better at math than art. But he's very neat. So he starts coming over every day. He cleans and he neatens and he drags ML away from his hyperfocus and sits with him when nothing at all helps the overwhelming sense of boredom or when he just can't start anything at all.

And he's just falling deeper and deeper in love the entire time.

Then he hears a regular and a coworker at the shop making fun of ML one day.

Coffee stands up and defends ML. Vigorously. Loudly. Talking about how ML is doing everything he can and the best part of the store and that if he wasn't there none of them would be and he's ranting at these two rather shocked people when ML walks out.

And ML is shocked in the best way. Especially when Coffee wraps an arm around him and keeps on defending him. This is the moment when ML falls.

So now we're onto mutual pining. They're both in love but they're both also sure that there's no way the other person could love them the same way. ML because he thinks he's too flighty and distracted and messy and 'stupid' and Coffee because he thinks he's too stiff and nerdy and neat.

It's adorable, okay? And they're getting closer and closer to each other, coming together so close and so deeply in love but so unwilling to risk their friendship.

Coffee is at ML's house every day, constantly, hanging around him, cleaning up and taking care him. He's really only going home to sleep, honestly, and leaving for work. Otherwise they're together. And they both love it.

And then, one night, it's pouring. And ML asks Coffee if he just wants to stay. Yes, he drove, but the storm is horrendous and the condo is comfortable and Coffee absolutely cannot say not to anything from ML. So he agrees.

They stay up late, talking and laughing and ML bakes them treats and, eventually, they find themselves tangled on the couch. Coffee is stroking ML's hair and ML is snuggled against his chest. They're comfortable and happy and...

Coffee can't help himself. He presses a kiss to the top of ML's head. And then to his forehead. ML's eyes are closed and he's almost holding his breath. There's another kiss, between his eyes. And then on his nose. And then, finally, the softest touch and lips.

They don't need to talk. They meet eyes and they know.

And it's happily ever after. There's an epilogue/special episode about ML opening his own bakery with Coffee's support where they specifically hire employees with varying disabilities who struggle to find work and respect otherwise. All the recipes are clear but there's always the surprise drink option, where you tell ML your top three flavors and he makes you the perfect, personal drink.

[luque-moreau]

y'know i think its about time ive refurbished my psychonauts headcanons/theories

what??? me??? rewriting my psychonauts headcanons in a more comprehensible and informed way???

ye

alright, i think everyone knows what im talking about, by headcanons i mean headcanon as in singular, and as singular, i mean my "raz is somewhere on the spectrum of adhd".

so lets just get into it:

what is adhd actually?

adhd by definition stands for attention deficit hyperactive/hyperfocus disorder (yes, let me get into the details in just a sec). it is a nerodevelopmental disorder that is almost completely reliant on genetic factors, however conditions during pregnancy can sometimes contribute to certain aspects of how adhd manifests itself.

long story short, people with adhd have a smaller frontal lobe, and therefore less dopamine in general (even though yes, it is more complicated than that).

theres also a little bit of "chicken or the egg first" goin on here, certain behaviors or personality tendencies can also affect how adhd is presented in one individual to the next, however its still not clear if that is because it is an accommodating for a certain thought process or if someones experiences and personality shape their symptoms of adhd entirely. its a very blurry line, and the answer is different for everybody.

hyperactive type

hyperactive type is probably the closest to most stereotypical depictions of adhd, think the 5 year old whos parents brush off their child’s hyperactivity as something that will “go with age”. however, this isn’t only present in children, adults with adhd have to deal with a constant need for stimuli to make up for the lack of dopamine their current activity is providing them. this results in someone fidgeting frequently in repetitive or predictable motions, unable to hold attention to a specific task for long periods of time, or many other of the symptoms associated with adhd.(i sadly cannot provide more information in this area, i am not knowledgeable enough to...)

hyperfocus type

hyperfocus type is a tricky one, it can look like the complete opposite of adhd in theory. hyperfocus can look similar to special interests or hyperfixation, a great deal of time and knowledge dedicated to a very particular thing (although it is important to note that even though hyperfixations and special interests are incredibly similar, special interests is a term more typically used within autistic-circles, and isnt really the best word to use if you happen to be neurotypical). Think of maybe that kid who knows all the cool animal facts and won’t shut up about them. Its because certain trains of thought or activities might release more dopamine then others, so to get more of that dopamine, someone of hyperfocus type will be mentally unable to stop thinking or doing a very specific task or topic. this results in someone seemingly always spacing out, unable to change subjects or changing subjects too fast or with little to no correlation, or being completely unable to have enough motivation to do simple things.

personally i tend to fall under the category of hyperfocus myself rather than hyperactive, however the two are not mutually exclusive, its more common to find people with both types rather than just one. even myself, i might exhibit more tendencies to place me under the label of hyperfocus, but that doesn’t mean i don’t have any symptoms of the hyperactive type. its my personality that affects my mannerisms, which then makes certain aspects of my symptoms more or less apparent. Thats because im an INTP-T, i just tend to be more to myself and constantly in a state of thinking abstractly. I have trouble communicating and even sometimes recognizing my needs, and get to a point where im unable to do the simplest of things without feeling emotionally drained. Thats just my experience though, everybodys different. 

so what the fuck does this have to do with raz then?

well lets think about it, rather than have it just be me projecting myself onto a comfort character:

raz finds issue with connecting to kids his age

lets be honest. none of the campers really like raz that much. or at least some do the bare minimum to be try and be polite. it doesn’t seem like any of the other campers besides dogen, whos also socially outcasted, are really fond of raz. lili might like him, but that can definitely be interpreted as curiosity in someone new and different from the norm. It might not be that the kids despise him, but nobodys opinionated enough to care whether he is around or not.

social isolation is one of the most damning things i had to experience from an early age and still feel even today. there is a sense of feeling that you are different among your peers, whether that is a good thing or bad thing. it feels difficult to interact with other people you are not familiar with, and can really stunt you emotionally and socially. from a really early age, theres somethin in you that knows something is very different between the experiences of your peers compared to your own, and it can feel incredibly isolating.

raz and his borderline stupidity

time to get real again. raz is a fucking idiot. at least in the sense that sometimes his decisions seem incredibly spontaneous and not really thought through. he runs from home to attend a summer camp, not really thinking about the logistics of how he will get there, how the staff will react, how long its gonna take for his parent to find him, and so on. it doesn’t seem like he over or underestimates his abilities, he just goes for it without considering. that doesnt seem like the smartest thing to do, even though we know hes incredibly intelligent when it comes to larger, abstract situations. its the little details that he misses, small minuet things that seem unimportant that he overlooks, which can sometimes make things harder for him in the end.

i think its obvious that impulsivity is one symptom of adhd. however i cannot stress how difficult it is to think at supersonic speed and still feel incredibly stupid. i mean, thinking faster doesn’t inherently mean you will have better ideas, you can always be stupider faster, but being able to realize stupid mistakes or inconsistencies in your own thought process is annoying as hell. it feels like every time you try to recognize the issue, fix it, and move forward, you only end up not paying attention to another issue that gets bigger and more annoying than the first. Its always two steps forward, one step back, constantly making the same mistakes even though you try everything in your power to avoid them or grow as a person. The simplest of facts, ideas, or just things to remember end up being forgotten, and once youre reminded of them you remember them and feel like an idiot. however, arbitrary things and complex issues are much easier to digest and remember for me, things like history and the whole blame game charade of it all, biology and how every minuet thing has a greater impact on others and intertwines with every single factor of its environment, philosophy and theorizing why we think the way we do and what can be changed. but oh shit, im a dumbass i forgot to do my laundry. shit. god fuckin dammit.

empathy over sympathy

one of the basic themes of psychonauts is empathy. simple as that. raz goes around into other peoples brains, and tries to help them as much as he can, even if his efforts are not always successful in the way he intended. he never demonizes anyone to the point of unredeemability, and can empathize and understand other peoples perspectives. hes open to new ideas and

although some studies out there theorize that empathy is impaired due to adhd, from my perspective i feel like that is simply not true. if anything, i would say the sensitivity that comes with adhd (hypersensitivity) only enhances that empathy. i could definitely see social disconnection being one of the reasons it might appear that someone with adhd is less empathetic, however i would doubt that adhd would impair a persons empathy. adhd tends to also entail heightened emotions, this doesn’t necessarily mean a more outwardly emotional person, however it definitely shifts a persons perspective of their own emotions as well as others. the concept of hypersensitivity also completely contradicts the idea of people with adhd be less empathetic.

miscommunication and disconnect

sigh, the dad thing. yup. raz has that very iffy relationship with his dad at the beginning of the game which is eventually resolved. very abruptly, might i add. but thats not what this is about, thats a topic for another day. miscommunication seemed to be the root of the issue, however we only get razs side of the story. not to mention the severity of his claims and willingness to seemingly drop everything afterwards. kinda sus, ngl.

alright this ones a doosey. this, i feel, cements my theory pretty well. like i mentioned before, social disconnect and hypersensitivity are side effects of the symptoms of adhd.  this means people with adhd are highly more likely to either misinterpret someones words or actions if those in question are not completely transparent, its because they tend to overthink and interpenetrate responses with too much thinkin n such. the social disconnect makes a whole lot of it worse, it can just pile on top of already established feelings of inadequacy and isolation. and oversharing as a poor coping mechanism isnt an exclusively adhd related thing, it tends to be shared within similar neruodevelopmental disorders such as autism or even ptsd. i find it incredibly easy to disconnect myself from my own emotions at times and think critically at what i feel and how it affects me. which is a bad thing. if i dont acknowledge my emotions like they are my own for too long, everything falls apart. its not fun. but, that disconnect can make talking about certain more traumatic experiences or instances that had deep personal effects on my life and development as a person much easier to just share. and not always in an appropriate manner, comedic opportunity can be   v  e  r  y   enticing. this also explains why raz might have been able to drop everything about his dad after he apologized. he didn’t really, he probably still suffers just as much afterwards as he did before. but he probably wont realize that for awhile, since logically, the issue has been resolved. long story short, he has not had the time to cope, and to put that off he detaches himself from those feelings. w a c k

of course i have other reasons why i feel like raz could potentially have adhd, or at least be accurately represented in headcanon with adhd, some minor mentions being:

he uses his camp map as a journal to track his in-game progress, list of goals, and notes/snip-its of information. writing down information on some form of notepad or book is a common tool used by kids and even adults with adhd to help them keep track of minuet, individual tasks. its just using a planner, but with a bit more information. 

just from my personal perspective, the lengths raz goes to pursue his dream of being a psychonaut feel more like a special interest/hyper fixation sort of thing. he can jump between having genuine conversations with his fellow campers and just exploring the campground, to investing himself entirely in obtaining his goal, even when it seems almost impossible. thats some serious dedication to one very specific thing, y’know?

this one isnt as solid as the other but: m̶̖̰̯̫̍͝o̵̦͖̟͈̹̤̥̝͐̿̄̀̀̎̓ņ̶̛̭̠̐̊̆̍͝ķ̸̝͈̺̙̰̊e̶͉͚̼̅̔͗̂͐̍̕͝͝y̶̦̖̼͖̪͎̝̖̠̐̑͋̾̔̑́͐͘ ̵̢̲̘͎͉̔̀͒̄͌͊̀͌̀m̴̲̫̮̪̖̍̐͆̕͜͝ͅả̶͙͚͗n̶̗̳̩̙̘̼̦̦͇͝ ̷̡̨̡͔̗͕̘͍̥̑͒̎̐̃g̴͔̔̈̅̐̏́̌̔̈́́o̶̥̱̽̆̂͌̀͗ ̶̝̩͙͕͛́s̴̛͓̥̲̜͓͚̣̠̆̓̌͌p̶̜̹̯̦̫̯̣̎͐̽̉̾ḙ̴͇̬͑̈́̐̈́͘͠ͅȅ̶̡̗̞̩͔̫̪͈͑̓͗d̵̠͇͎̜͔͇͒̈́́̀̅̈́̒͘y̸̡̦̠̻̖̥̿ͅ. yeah, its the most generalizing reason but look, hes moving nonstop the entire game, climbing and running around the entire goddamn place wrecking havoc. a bit of imp can be found in most people with adhd if you look hard enough.

so thanks for reading this far i guess? im oversharing even right now with this, like an i d i o t but yknow what i dont want to read the great gatsby rn, so ive got nothin better to do. who knows, maybe the second game will give us more info to either support/discredit this theory? gotta wait for pn2 i guess

:^)

[therandomavenger]

Anger and Acceptance

I've been listening to the Halliwell book Delivered from Distraction which was a follow up to his Driven to Distraction which was my introduction to adhd. And let me tell you, fam, it is bringing up some memories. It's a guide to what we knew back in 2005 about adhd, as well as inspirational stories about people who have persevered.

Now, I wasn't diagnosed with adhd until I was 32. The fact that I functioned at all before that time was a miracle, because I could look back on my childhood and young adulthood and see the signs in myself.

I was constantly losing things. In third grade they started handing out lunch tickets, which had to be purchased ahead of time. No ticket, no lunch. My parents were always good about buying them for me but then came the crucial next step: I had to keep track of them. No ticket, no lunch. At least twice a week I would be holding up the class, making us late for lunch, because my lunch ticket would have vanished into the black hole that was my desk. Everybody would be standing there, impatient, thinking 'what an idiot' because I, a non neurotypical eight-year old had not been able to keep track of a piece of paper that was about the size of a playing card. I seemed to be the only one who had a problem with this. It even came up at a parent-teacher conference. Did anyone attempt to help me come up with a strategy for helping me keep track of my lunch tickets? Maybe intervene with some easy organizational strategies or reminded of where I should put it? Of course not, it was just constantly pointed out as a problem that I shouldn't be having and I of course internalized that, thinking I was just a bad person.

Things didn't go better as I got older. In fifth grade we were supposed to have memorized our multiplication tables. Now, I had trouble with math, but I'd learned my multiplication tables. I knew them. I couldn't do them fast, but I could do them. So, of course my fifth grade teacher, a grumpy old man named Mr. Southwood, started doing timed tests. We had five minutes to do 100 multiplication problems. Now, this was a nightmare for me. I knew my multiplication tables, but could not perform at that speed on demand. Plus, at the end of every test we had to call out our score verbally, which would then be recorded. This, of course, followed intense stress with humiliation. Sometimes I did ok on them, rising up to the 70s or 80s, often I was down in the 20s and 30s.

But there was hope. If you achieved a perfect score twice, you were exempted from taking them in the future. We did these like three times a week. Now, through some miracle of variable performance, one day I managed to achieve a perfect score. Everyone was shocked when I reported my score, but nobody checked it, which gave me an idea. The next test I got like a 70 or something but when we were reporting our scores I said I got 100, hoping I would be spared more of this torture.

Well five minutes later Mr. Southwood gave a real barnraiser of a speech, how there was nothing he could think of worse than a liar And how for no reason he could think of someone had lied about their score on the timed test. I have no idea how he knew I'd been lying, but it was obvious that I was the one he was talking about. So my name went on the board with the words "for lying" next to it and I had to stay after school.

Another time, also in fifth grade, we were given packets we were supposed to work our way through when we had downtime. I put mine in my desk and promptly forgot about it, of course. Did he remind us of them over the course of the next week? Of course not. I had no idea this time bomb was about to go off until it was time to turn them in, at which point I remembered the fucking packet and realized I had done none of it. Was he understanding? Of course not, he just made fun of me and said I was spending too much time reading.

When I became a teacher I remembered all of these things and how they'd made me feel. I was always on the lookout for the adhd kids, and I got along well with them when a lot of other teachers didn't. But I don't care who you are or what your problem is, there's never a reason to humiliate a student.

But it was the 80s and I'm my small town none had ever heard of adhd. I was diagnosed with the unhelpful label of " learning disabilities" and in fourth grade I was in a pull-out program where they helped me slow down my lightning fast brain so that I could at least write coherently. They tested my iq, and found it was high enough I should be performing better. But no one said adhd, though it was a diagnosis at the time.

It was probably because I was not as hyperactive as some. Though I was hyperactive. I could not sit still and was constantly moving to the degree that it annoyed my classmates. There's video footage of me racing around my aunt's backyard doing cartwheels a hundred times a second. So really, the educational professionals in my life should have realized something more specific than "learning disability" was up.

But I fell in love with reading, which helped. I could hyperfocus on books for hours at a time. And I discovered a love for writing stories, which gave me worlds of my own making to escape into when the heat of daily life grew too intense.

My own kids both had adhd, but my ex wife and I were always on top of it, or we tried to be. And the teachers in their lives mostly understood. There were some that gave us trouble, but I can only think of one teacher who actually tried to humiliate my son.

So remembering these things has made me so angry on behalf of the little boy who once inhabited this skin. These are far from the only instances too. I just want somebody to find him and say, 'you're not stupid your brain just

works differently.'

When I was 32 my daughter was diagnosed at the age of 5. The pediatrician told us to read Driven to Distraction, which we did. And let me tell you, fam, it was a revelation. I put the book down after some description of people who could not keep their cabinet doors closed to save their lives and looked at my then-wife and said, 'this explains my entire life' and she was like, 'you think?' So I immediately called the psychologist we'd been referred to and asked to be evaluated. He gave me many different types of tests and even had me assessed for allergies and diagnosed me, saying 'i wasn't sure about you until you took the TOVA (a computerized test measuring attention). Most people are between -2 and +1 with larger numbers meaning more intense attention problems. I was a +6.

So I've had to accept this about myself. I've come up with ways to achieve my goals, while letting go of some things. I can write, but only for about an hour. But I can write 1000 words in that hour which is a good enough pace. So I've accepted myself and learned to work with the brain I have. I could accomplish nothing without adderal, and don't get me started on people who claim you shouldn't take medication. If you have eye problems you wear glasses and nobody makes you feel bad about it. For me, adderal is just glasses for my brain.

So I am still angry on behalf of the kid I was and on behalf of all non neurotypical kids who are made to feel worthless by people who are supposed to be helping them. We know better these days, and we can do better.

[mcrmadness]

I’m just wondering about ADHD again and how the doctors here say that there’s no need for testing me for ADHD because I had “no signs of ADHD in my childhood”. Well, I was born in 1991. The whole terminology and the knowledge over ADHD was different back then.

I was talking about this with my mom a couple of days ago and she said that I had troubles with homework - not that I would have not understood them, I just had such a hard time focusing on them. She said that she constantly had to remind me that I need to focus on the homework and not draw doodles or do other stuff. She sais she asked even from the school how deal with a child who cannot focus on their homework and from school they just said “Make sure the table is completely empty so there is no distractions.” but my mom told them “Do you really think that helps? All they need is a piece or paper and a pencil.” and those were the tools I had - my school books and pencil. I didn’t need distractions on the table in order to get distracted from homework.

She then also said that back then no one even talked about ADHD. It was still known as MBD aka Minimal Brain Dysfunction Syndrome and since I was not “stupid” and definitely did not show signs of learning/developmental disabilities - in fact I was learning faster than other kids - there was no need to worry about this syndrome. (Nowadays it’s apparently removed from the Finnish list but can still be used as an umbrella term for things like ADHD etc.)

I was trying to google this term now, to understand when was the term replaced by “ADHD”. I only found that this was done in the US already in the late 80s but I could not find anything about Finland, but I know for sure that what comes to things like mental disorders and neurodiversity, Finland has always been running late when compared to e.g. the US... I could only find some sort of Finnish ontology and thesaurus website and it says that the article about MBD was created in 1986, but the article about ADHD only in 2000. That would mean I was 9 years old (and my social anxiety and selective mutism were starting to really grow), and ADHD was still considered very much the “disorder of hyperactive boys”. This website does not even know the term ADD so I have no clue when did they start using it for the first time (in Finland). I just know that my sister got the diagnose along with an Asperger’s Syndrome somewhere in the mid 2000s. Now I’m starting to feel like I want to go find some old books about psychiatry just to see when did they start talking about ADHD and ADD in Finland and how did they describe it as BEFORE they discovered it exists also in girls (and since I’m afab, I most likely have the inattentive version), because this is just driving me so crazy.

I just... I don’t know. I just feel stupid because why is it me who needs to read about the history of psychiatry? Shouldn’t it be the psychiatrists doing so? But I do wonder what would he say if I went to him and really said that “no wonder they never suspected AD(H)D in me as a child when the term literally did not exists in Finland yet”. I just feel like I need to start writing down something like a book about my experiences. Collect EVERYTHING I can find that I have written over the past 15 years in the internet and copypaste them into a file and print this out to him. My brain just empties itself when I’m supposed to talk to a doctor but then I just face these things in everydaylife 24/7. And he just wants to give me antidepressants for anxiety. Okay, he did offer me occupational therapy too but I am afraid that it will just... kill my creativity again. I mean, look at my “timetable” for one week if we think I’d have a random person visit me once a week, let’s say e.g. on Tuesdays:

Monday: Nothing - the resting day after weekend aka no way I’m gonna get anything done. Know that there will be occupational therapy next day - don’t get anything done because mentally trying to prepare yourself for that. Tuesday: Hypothetical occupational therapy. Not possible to get anything done beforehand. Afterwards you’re so tired and the day is done so just sit around the flat and feel like going crazy from bored but be unable to do anything because TIRED. Wednesday: Nothing - the resting day after the therapy. The next day is a grocery store day. Start mentally preparing for that. Can’t do shit because of that. Thursday: Grocery store day. Can’t do shit before or after. Before because can’t start anything in case unable to stop in time - and when having to force a hyperfocus to stop when it’s not stopped on its own, it makes me so irritable and absent minded because can’t think of anything else but that one thing I was hyperfocusing on. Friday: Nothing - rest day after grocery store day. Mentally prepare for the weekend on which I usually always visit my parents on both days. They live in the same city, just less than 2km away but I still can’t start anything before that really, and I come back home so late I won’t be able to do much. Weekend: Visit parents on both days.

And then repeat. So when am I gonna draw? Edit videos? Write? I always do the creative things at night because PEACE and because my brain just works better at nighttime - ALWAYS has. I even found a diary entry I had written when I was 13 or 14 and I had been fighting with my parents because I always did my homework so late and my dad didn’t understand that, and I was then screaming in my diary that they just don’t understand that I am not ABLE to do my homework earlier than in the evening/at night, it’s just not possible to do them right after school.

Already now as I have about 3-4 free days in a week, sometimes even 5, I feel like I need more free time from my free time. I’m constantly thinking about how I want to do this and that, like I want to draw, write, edit videos, write... they are on the top of my mind 24/7 but still it takes weeks or months to get anything started. I just wrote about this yesterday that I feel like I have two moods: either too little time AND energy or too much time but a plenty of energy. There’s no in between. Now I am lucky to have too much time for myself but it also means I have all the time in my hands so I can always procrastinate and do everything the next day because I have time. Which means I won’t do shit, because I have no deadlines, and I start doing those things only when everything lines up perfectly. It’s never a decision to take my sketchbook and start drawing. It’s more of an impulse - I just feel like now it’s the day for drawing and suddenly find myself holding the papers and pencils in my hand.

Same happens with chores, chores just never make me feel good unlike doing one of these fun things. Oh and chores are also something that will make it hard to do the fun things because I kinda... don’t let myself start doing the fun things if I have the not-so-fun things undone. Which means again procrastinating and postponing something like dishes for days. I am not sure where have I got this mentality. Because like... wouldn’t it be a lot smarter to let myself to draw instead when I KNOW I can’t start doing the dishes, instead of punishing myself with “no washing dishes, so no drawing either”? Because as a punishment it does nothing. It does not motivate me with the dishes. They will be there for days or weeks anyway and they will be done only when I get that impulse to finally do them. Or, usually it’s not an impulse even. It’s just me needing food and in order to get food, I need to cook and in order to cook, I need clean pots and pans and in order to get those, well, I need to do the dishes.

I think this mentality partially comes from my school time. I aways knew how to prioritise my homework so that I get them done the most efficiently I could. Which meant that I always made the less-interesting homework first and the homework from subjects I liked, the last. I did this because when I started with the stuff I had harder time focusing on, it made it easier to focus on the interesting stuff. If I had started with the interesting stuff, I’d have had a lot less concentration and energy left for the less interesting homework and the chances of understanding a word of what I read would have been very minimal.

I still pretty much use this with everything I do - work first, fun later. I guess for neurotypicals this is not a big deal and probably something they all do, but my brain really wants to do the fun first and the work never. (By work for myself I mean things like chores etc. When I was actually working, it actually went: work first, fun never - because I was so tired after work I could not do anything that involved brains.) If I start with the fun, I literally will never do the work part. So I have to have the work first, even when it means I will procrastinate with EVERYTHING else too. But that is the only way to get it done at least at some point. It’s just that I feel like my life is nothing but work. I always have to shower, do the dishes, clean the kitchen table or start cooking. (Let alone the rest of the stuff like cleaning the HOME.) It’s a neverending worksite. I barely have time for fun because I don’t let myself to do that because the work is not done yet. But it just... never ends.

I think the reason why I hate chores is because no matter how many times I do them, I still always have to do them again soon. I shower, but I need to shower again in a few days. So it feels like it’s a waste of energy and time! Why to shower now when I have to do that after a couple of days anyway??? I do the dishes but there they will be again in a few days as I keep eating from them! Washing a plate after every use is also not an option - then “it’s just one plate” so it’s easy to put it in the sink because it’s not a big deal to wash it with other plates after a couple of days. Until it’s been 2 weeks and there’s again the rest of my plates in there and I hate my life again because I never remember how much washing the dishes also makes my back hurt but I need clean utensils because food.

But when I create something or play a video game, there is always a finish line and once you get past that, you don’t need to start over UNLESS you want to! When I draw something and it’s finished, it will stay like that! It’s not going anywhere, it won’t fade, I don’t need to draw it ever again if I don’t want to! So it’s not waste of my time, it’s something that will last almost forever. And I love the dopamine rush I get when I look at a finished product, but I don’t have the dopamine rush when I look at my cabinet with clean plates because I know they won’t stay like that forever. They won’t stay like that even for a few days. And that literally kills my motivation with every chore I need to do.

[halibellecter]

So this is a continuation of a comment on this post:

It's a post about assistive tech in my headcanon for SWTOR! I really loved getting to work all this out and I'm so excited to gush about it.

As background, my character Liri is neurodivergent. She was genetically engineered, like Shara was, to be a more ideal Agent, but a lot of her tweaks came at a price. (I made a self insert. That's the long and short of it. I'm ND and, well, I wanted to play an Agent like me.)

So, for example, when her hyperfocus kicks in, the Empire has the perfect operative: she can go for hours or days without things like food or sleep, maintaining exactly the same high level of work the entire time. But after the mission, when she leaves that headspace, all the needs and sensations come crashing back all at once and suddenly she's miserable. It also doesn't turn off or down: a mission is one thing, and it makes perfect sense for her to go days on the bare minimum. But it becomes a problem when she hits the floor in the medbay to work on a patient requiring top secret clearance... only to give report sixteen hours later and realize she forgot to eat. Or drink. Or sit down for a break. .......Again.

If she were in this world, we'd say she doesn't register internal cues. Her diagnosis in character is called MIED: Modification Induced Executive Dysfunction, and it has symptoms consistent with what we'd call ADHD and autism. Which is how she wound up with a hyperfocus that plays off of her weak internal cues and causes havoc. They're working with her on not seeing this as a bad thing, but it led to her being tortured at the Academy in the name of making her "better" (similar techniques to ABA). So it's a long road to getting her to be okay with her own neurobiology.

Okay, background out of the way, let's talk about the tech itself! Liri was outfitted with a biomonitor chip for ID and security purposes in Intelligence, but it also reads things like vital signs and blood sugar and other basic lab values. This makes it super convenient to treat a chipped patient, but in her case, it forms the foundation of letting her take care of herself.

Liri carries around a little droid, about the size of a glucometer, the design of which was a team effort with my friend and fellow roleplayer @redwingedwhump . Her character glued some googly eyes onto it on day one, but it was already cute to begin with, painted and shaped like a little round porgish creature. She named it Chiri.

Chiri reads information off of her biomonitor chip, and alerts for things like high pulse and blood pressure, rising serum sodium, falling blood sugar, etc.

But the problem is that if you tell Liri that she's dehydrated or hypoglycemic or whatever, and she's working on a patient, she's not going to take a break. She's going to look at the alert on her holocomm, go "yeah okay, once I finish placing this central line", and go right back to work... and forget allllllllllll about feeding herself or drinking water or doing something about the fact that her pulse hasn't dropped below 120 all day. She's an Agent and a medic and there are lots of things more important than taking care of herself. But if it's framed as taking care of a poor innocent creature that can't care for itself, she'll remember, scrub out and go get a glass of water or take a break. So, Chiri doesn't display lab values or standard alerts. Instead, it's like having a tamagotchi, with alerts like "I'm hungry!" "I'm stressed!" "I've been working too long!"

In order to address the alerts, Liri has to change what the chip is reading from her own body. If Chiri is thirsty, and she wants to fix it, she has to drink to clear the alert. Once she gets enough fluids in, her serum sodium goes down, and the alert goes away.

Can she function without Chiri? Yeah, absolutely, but she winds up running herself into the ground. She'll survive a mission without assistive tech and she'll be fine in the end, but short term and especially right after the mission is over, she's gonna be sick and miserable from not taking care of herself in the moment. So having the accommodation really helps her out with staying on top of things.

Tagging @kartaylirsden and @vespertine-legacy for asking the question / wanting to know more about the character~ y'all rock! I'm having so much fun with these!

[singingvio]

So on the headcanon list I just posted I talked about Vio possibly having ADHD and being distracted easily, and because I’m ADHD myself and relate to Vio’s character a lot, I want to talk about that more.

First, a lecture on what exactly ADHD is and how it works because some people just interpret it as ‘LOL I have an attention span of a millisecond who wants ice cream’ and that’s actually incorrect and it kind of pisses me off, then, after that, more headcanon stuff! :D

(I am not knowledgeable about this in a medical sense by any means, but I DO have a pretty bad case of ADHD so I still know exactly what I’m talking about)

First of all, in case you didn’t know, ADHD stands for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. In non-fancy words, this means Okay Let’s Take Notes Oh My Gosh It’s A Butterfly Let’s Catch It, or A Bit Too Hyper And I Probably Shouldn’t Have A Lot Of Sugar, but there’s more than just that.

There are three major types of ADHD:

ADHD, combined type - This one is the most common type. I have this version of ADHD, and I know the most about it. This means you have trouble paying attention and get easily distracted, and you’re probably hyper or impulsive. This hyperactivity can sometimes last for a very long time, or a very short time. For me, I can be really tired and suddenly want to run a marathon, and then just go to sleep. Or, I can wake up really excited for absolutely nothing and stay that way for almost the whole day. The attention thing you actually can’t fix easily without medication, unlike people with a short attention span who don’t have ADHD. I’ve tried paying attention, and unless I hyperfocus on something (like right now, actually), I CANNOT pay attention for longer than a few minutes. I take medication every morning so my attention span is longer, but that’s really all I can do.

ADHD, impulsive/hyperactive type - This form of ADHD is only hyperactivity. It’s the least common and people with this type of ADHD are energized and can be impulsive or extremely hyper, but this has no affect on their attention span or distractibility. This type still can get distracted, but it’s much harder and they also can’t get into hyperfocus as much as the other two types.

ADHD, inattentive and distractible type - This type is kind of in the middle of how common it is, and it makes it harder to pay attention and you’re easily distractable, and it’s easier to go into hyperfocus (though honestly, I do not reccommend it, you forget to eat and everything). This doesn’t come with being hyper, easily energized, or impulsive, though again, you can still be so without being an ADHD combined type.

We still don’t know how ADHD is caused, but it’s probably genetic. It’s a brain-based biological disorder. Here’s where I get sciency because I had to look this up from multiple sources, so buckle your seatbelts.

People with ADHD have low dopamine levels. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, a type of brain chemical, and can be found using positron emission tomography, or brain-scans. Brain metabolism in people, especially children, with ADHD is shown to be lower in parts of the brain controlling attention, social judgment (we’ll talk about that later), and movement.

Only 4 to 12 percent of children are actually diagnosed with ADHD, and interesting fact, boys are 2-3 times more likely to have hyperactive/combined ADHD than girls. This isn’t important, just a fun fact I guess.

Let’s move on to symptoms of ADHD!

For inattention:

1 - short attention span for age group

2 - difficulty listening to others

3 - hard time remembering details

4 - easily distractable

5 - forgetful often

6 - poor organization

7 - poor study skills

(I’ve got symptoms 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, AND 7.)

For impulsivity/hyperactivity:

1 - Often interrupts others

2 - Not a lot of patience

3 - Tends to blurt out answers

4 - Takes risks and doesn’t think before acting

5 - Has a hard time staying still

6 - Can’t be in one place for long

7 - Fidgets excessively

8 - talks a lot

9 - has hard time engaging in quiet activities

10 - Forgetfulness

11 - Has a hard time staying on tasks and often leaves works uncompleted.

(I’ve got symptoms 1, 2, 4 (the second part), 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, and 11.)

Also, as an added bonus, if you take medication for treatment, you also might experience symptoms of:

1 - insomnia

2 - decreased appetite

3 - stomachaches

4 - headaches

5 - jitteriness

6 - increased hyperactive behavior after the medication wears off.

Also just so you know a lot of people I know with ADHD get in trouble a lot for not paying attention so there’s that! (You don’t know HOW many times I’ve gotten detention for completely forgetting about homework, projects, or just not paying attention)

People with ADHD can also often be diagnosed with anxiety or depression, since dealing with it can be really stressful or make it feel too hard to deal with. (I’ve got anxiety, so I know exactly what this feels like, it’s difficult).

NOW, on to what I think Vio has!

I think Vio has ADHD, combined type, though the attention defecity shows more than the hyperactivity. The hyperactivity just doesn’t seem to match up with his character, as he doesn’t seem to get worked up that much at all. Sometimes when he’s stressed or under pressure, but even then not often. Still, he probably has combined type.

Also, the symptoms I’ve found he shows in the manga are as follows:

Inattention symptoms 1, 2, and 4. However, my personal headcanons also show him having symptoms 3, 6, and 7. I think he’d have a pretty good memory, but not a very sharp one, having a hard time remembering details like the order things happened or the time, but still having a good enough memory that he can rely on it when he needs to without much trouble. I also headcanon that time runs away from him often like me. Time flies with little to no prompting, as the saying goes. ^^

He also has impuslivity/hyperactivity symptoms 1, 3, and 8, though I also headcanon him to have symptoms 5, 6, and 7 as well. He’d probably have a hard time keeping himself from blurting out information, and as a coping mechanism he’s probably try to keep all his thoughts to himself, which explains why he doesn’t talk much to others in the manga. This isn’t a very good coping mechanism, by the way, keeping it all bottled up is just begging for disaster, and I should know.

As for treatment? He probably doesn’t know he has ADHD and just thinks everyone has the same problems he does and is just better at concealing them. When he finds out, either by research or being diagnosed by someone else, he’d probably be shocked.

“Wait, are you saying not everyone has trouble paying attention, staying focused, or sitting still, and even if they do it’s not even that bad? What?”

He’d also probably talk down to himself at some points after that because Vio I feel aims for perfection often, and having a mental disorder would be hard on him since it’s a sign he’s not perfect, which of course he isn’t duh.

After he finds out, he might take medication but mostly rely on therapy. Not an actual therapist, but talking to others about his problems would probably help him more than the medication and dealing with it on his own.

So, yeah! AND NOW, THE THING YOU’VE ALL PROBABLY BEEN TELLING ME TO LIST, HEADCANONS!

- Vio talks to Shadow and Blue the most about having ADHD, since they both might also have it and also they’re easy to talk to once you get to know them.

- He’s one of the types who goes into hyperfocus a noticeable amount. Not so often it’s a big problem, but you might see him at 2 AM furiously writing something down, and then at noon he’ll pass out from exhaustion because it turns out he wasn’t able to fall asleep because he suddenly Had To Do The Thing Right That Second And Couldn’t Stop.

- He’s also the type to get lost in space a lot thinking and you might mistake for sleeping if you can’t see his face. It’s not the same as hyperfocus, but it’s just as hard to get out of when I do it myself.

- He derails the conversation topic unintentionally and as a result tries not to start up conversations. By derailing the topic, I mean you’re talking about your favorite sweets and he’ll suddenly say something about the history of chocolate which will connect to the history of some other food he likes that suddenly turns into Did You Know Water Can Be A Torture Device and then suddenly you’re talking about different torture techniques that are really weird. Candy-->Torture that’s just how it goes sometimes.

- That One Kid Who People Don’t Know How To Talk To Because Their Interests Are Really Uncommon.

- He’s an... okay... notetaker, but try to read the notes and you’re ready to lose that game. His handwriting is terrible because he tries to write everything down before he forgets, which results in sloppiness.

- The medication side-effects he has are effects 1, 2, and 4, but mainly 1 because honestly it’s practically canon in this fandom that Vio has the hardest time sleeping out of the Links.

Most of these headcanons, actually, this entire post, might be me self-projecting but nevertheless I think Vio having ADHD really fits his character and I want to see more ADHD Vio stuff in this fandom because I really like the headcanon.

[jewpacabruhs]

hi guys! so this post is gonna be a rambly mess but fuck it, here ya go. if u dont wanna read all of it, u dont have to; skip down to underneath the tl;dr in bold text for the important bits :)

(there’s a brief & non-graphic mention of a triggering topic in the next paragraph. please be sure to skip this next paragraph if the thought of suicide is going to upset you.)

alright. so i didn't share this originally, but i spent some time in a psychiatric unit this month. suicidality related. 1000% unrelated from anything online, i've just struggled with depression for a very long time & shit happens. i didn't intend to share that at all & i certainly don't want pity; i'm telling u guys bc my time in the unit was extremely eye-opening, and i have some insight to share. since i've gotten out, with the help of my newest anti-depressant (fourth time’s a charm lol), i'm seeing the world in a better light & i finally have the energy to and the interest in exploring what it has to offer, which frankly i've never had before.

with that has come the realization that i’ve come to do something very unhealthy, and i want to break out of it. and that’s how much i’ve come to rely on my fandom life. i don’t want to get too candid publicly, but mental illness took a lot from me, and i lost most of my life, my future, and my options in the last few years. next year will involve a lot of working on rebuilding things. but in the time that i let things fall to pieces around me & i absolutely couldn’t get out of bed, i had a phone and i had a laptop. so when i couldn’t get up and physically face the world, i built up a new world online.

and i don’t think that’s a completely uncommon experience. most people are able to better manage things, and evenly juggle real life with an internet life (like i did back in middle school), because most people can’t abandon their real lives entirely like i managed to; but i do think a lot of people nowadays rely on their fandom life and their fandom friends when their irl situation isn’t ideal. and that’s an excellent coping mechanism in theory, but i think it’s debilitating in the long run.

forgive me for sounding like an old person, but i’m a heavy nostalgist and a bit of an anarcho-primitivist in that i resent modern technology's influence on society - but that hasn't stopped me from letting it be a big part of my life out of accessibility. the internet kept me occupied during my low points, and i became dependent, but i've realized i don't wanna live like that anymore. i’m vaguely grateful that it usually kept me busy enough that i wasn’t thinking the bad thoughts as frequently, but more than anything, i’m resentful that my grasp on reality got lost somewhere along the way, and i let time get away from me, too. because, again, an internet life should be a fun hobby, but when it’s a lifestyle and it becomes an excuse to avoid dealing with our real lives, bc our real lives aren’t as rewarding or as exciting, then it’s unhealthy.

everything’s at our fingertips these days, but i deeply believe human interaction, fun, and fulfillment shouldn't be spoon-fed to us through a screen. it's easy access, sure, but at the end of the day, is it any way to live? compared with how much world there is to see, i’m no longer satisfied with the thought of sitting behind a screen for another five years. i used to be, when i had no hope and no drive, but not anymore. i’m not gonna let myself settle for staying busy with the thing that takes the least amount of work & movement. not only because i’m a whole ass adult who needs to start sorting my shit out for the long run, but also because i deserve better.

and it’s fucking hard! especially for those of us who are neurodivergent. i dropped out of school three fucking times due to crippling social anxiety and utter lack of ambition and energy. i lost all my friends through that (making friends post-school is hard af); the thought of having to go out and remake friends makes me wanna fucking cry. i have a hard enough time making friends online, i’ve even come to struggle with correspondence thru text & email. phone calls? outta the question. but that’s therapy shit, and i know i’ll get there. i just have to stop putting life off by staying in a comfort zone.

and it’s interesting; depression and anxiety really took everything from me, and while i was dwelling in my own misery, my adhd worsened and decided to make my entire brain revolve around my fixations, so i didn’t have to deal with my own life. can’t think about how much you wanna die and how much you can’t function in society if you’re busy thinking about a ship you like or a character you find interesting. so i latched onto the safety of that. aggressively. problem with that is that once you let your “happiness” (as much of it as you can feel in the midst of your depressive episode, anyway) revolve around an interest, that’s all you have. so you become dependent and reliant, and that’s never good, especially if you’re someone like me who feels pathetic & ridiculous when you realize it’s all you can bring yourself to care about. 

and i think that’s what i realized in the psych ward (where there’s legitimately nothing to do; i did soooo much more thinking than usual, and i already think too much haha); mental illness will try to fuck up your lifestyle, so you have to eradicate the things that’ll let that happen in the first place. for example, like i said, my adhd tries to counteract my depression by making me hyperfixate and/or hyperfocus on something else to protect me from bad personal thoughts, and that’s good in theory (doing something you enjoy when you feel bad, to distract urself, is the number one most basic coping skill you learn), but i can’t do it in moderation, i let it run my life, and that’s made me worse in the long run. so i have to force myself out of that completely and not let myself fixate on things that make me happy in the short term, but don’t ultimately further me as a person. having fixations helped me through some awful times, but now i need to force myself to grow up, you know?

and while tumblr and other social media is an excellent way to indulge those fixations, it’s an aggressive enabler, in more ways than one. what i mean by that... okay, so while i’m the type of person who self-destructs while unhealthy, i do occasionally lash out. and i know some people completely explode rather than implode when they’re not doing well. and that’s how you get discourse, i think. because when mental illness makes us care much more about our interests than we ought to, and someone has a differing opinion about that interest, the instinct is of course to attack, if you’re that kind of person. i don’t think i am, but depression and boredom go hand in hand, and i might be inclined to care more about discourse than i would if i were healthy, purely because it’s entertaining and something to do. 

that’s a long winded way of saying, while i stand wholeheartedly by my past positions, i do regret starting shit in the first place. i’m not the kind of person who genuinely cares about much and i have little to no sense of morality (im a chaotic neutral bastard), so the fact i was bored enough to start shit really goes against my character and says a lot about how bad i’ve been. so i apologize for all that. but, again, i think that's just what happens when something is truly your everything. and i think the chronic negativity of modern fandom is a result of how damn seriously we all take it, because we care so much and we’re so dependent. fandom’s supposed to be fun, but it’s just too damn stressful this way.

idk my point in sharing all this, but i do think it'd be cool if this kinda got yall thinking. even if you don't engage in discourse, if fandom is just one of your only consistent sources of happiness, that's not healthy either. we all gotta break out & exist more & louder & more positively. and unfortunately i think tumblr fandom (and maybe all modern fandom) is no longer a place that encourages positivity and health.

but for all my criticism, i do just wanna say how eternally grateful i am that i was fortunate enough to meet the people i call my best friends through tumblr. they're my family, truly, and all the bullshit in this fandom has been worth it simply because it brought them to me. i love them to death and i always will, even if interests change, even if we grow apart, even if we quit speaking entirely in the next few years, i love them with my whole heart in a way that transcends a simple fandom friendship and i'm so glad we bonded over sp in the first place. that’ll never change.

i will also always love south park itself. now that the cat's outta the bag about my hospital visit, i can brag about my most pathetic and obsessive accomplishment; the fact that i've never let circumstance stop me from watching a new south park as it airs, and i've now watched sp on 1) an airplane, and 2) in a psych ward. i win for most dedicated fan tbfh. dsjkf & i'll keep that tradition, and i'll still watch this stupid show til it ends! it'll always hold a special place in my heart, & kyman's still my most meaningful & long-term ship. i'll never stop loving it. 

tl;dr

so, to recap; for 2020 i'm making myself step back from fandom (not just sp fandom, but fandom in general) and quit letting my world revolve around my fixations so i can enjoy the outside world a little more, mental illness be damned, and the first step is gonna be quitting tumblr. this blog won't be deleted and i may occasionally post (maybe when next season airs) but you're absolutely free to unfollow bc this'll be a mostly inactive blog. i’m also unfollowing everyone, so mutuals, please don’t take that personally. 

i will, however, try to write more prolifically, bc fic writing is something i'm able to do in moderation & enjoy, and i hope to get back into it. so if you'd like, you can keep an eye out for any upcoming fanfic i may post - my ao3 is leere. i also have snapchat, instagram, & twitter my mutuals can ask for asap (bc ill be logging out for good by the afternoon of the 31st, which is tomorrow) - though i'm not very active on any of them. still, if you wanna have access to me, i’ll be there.

i want some connection to the fandom still, albeit without letting my life revolve around it, so i'll be starting a new open-to-the-public kyman discord server! the post with the invite for that will go up soon. nvm im too anxious  

thank you for reading, thank you for the good times (thnks fr th mmrs), and i hope everyone has a good 2020! 

[starless-night-fright]

I need to vent here for a moment. I can’t find my journal I normally would be venting into, and dear lord I just need to put everything I’m feeling down because I’m not okay, right now.

She’s a long post, about everything I’ve been struggling with since the beginning of the year. It’s heavy, I don’t hold back.

I went into 2020 thinking, yes, this is it, I’m finally gonna have a good year. The last time I was constantly happy, and having a good time, I was 17. But, I started this year student teaching, I was going to walk in May and be the first in my family to get my diploma, I had everything planned.

What a fucking joke that was. 

Student teaching was a mixed bag. It got cut short, and I ended up losing on valuable experience that I need. I struggle with enforcing consist discipline. Students don’t take me seriously. That was the biggest goal I was working on, right before everything shut down. We never went online, and I won’t see my students that I had again.

I’m not gonna lie, I had days that were really, really bad. Days where “It wouldn’t matter if you just drove your car into a semi and ended it” were thoughts that came up on my 30 minute drive home. I’d go and have days where it felt like I wouldn’t succeed in the field, and then come home and felt...I don’t know. I think I felt like people close to me didn’t care? That if I really did choose to just...crash my car spontaneously, that it wouldn’t matter in the long run to them? That they had someone they could replace me with, if that makes sense. Because if I reached out in my very indirect way of saying “I need help, and I need attention” I’d get brushed off, with an explanation of some kind. It’s okay, I’d think, everyone has priorities more important than me. And then I’d go to bed, get up, start the cycle again. Until I didn’t. 

I got my Bachelor’s Degree, though I slept most of the day I would have walked. I got my teaching license, but somehow, I feel under qualified for it. Like, I don’t deserve this. Even my degree. I skated by in college, writing every paper the night before, and reading bits and pieces of every book - even content I was interested in. I never proofread a single paper, never edited one. Not even my capstone paper. I passed, though I don’t know what I got for my grade. It feels fake to me.

So, I graduated. I got a degree in a field that arguably has a demand for people, so why can’t I get a job? Why is it that I haven’t been able to land a single fucking interview? It isn’t because I just graduated, and it isn’t because I only had my actual legit license in my hands for only about a month at this point - I know plenty of people with the same training and the same everything I had getting jobs in late May and early June, so what is so wrong with my applications that I can’t get past the screening phase? 

Maybe they know that I’m under qualified. Oh, she doesn’t have any of her host teachers? Her mentor teacher from student teaching? She has no other experience in education aside from 4 semesters in a classroom, and she has no experience with kids either. 

I’ve been jobless since March, and have had no income since May. It’s my fault, I suppose, because I kept putting off finding a new job. My best friend’s mom would say that I’m making excuses, but it’s hard to find a job when I’m sitting there like “Oh, yeah, by the way, I have no idea if I’m going back to student teaching in person, or teaching online, and if I have to do that - and it’ll be very sudden - I won’t be able to work between 7am-3:20pm if we go online, and 6am-4:30pm if we go in person, and I won’t be able to work past 10, because my health is important.” I don’t know. I’m getting sick of explaining why I don’t do things and people saying “You’re making excuses.” I really, really fucking hate it when people say that. 

I applied for unemployment, after getting people bugging me for a while about it, but it didn’t make a difference. They basically looked at what I submitted, and said “There’s no income here” and I sent in something saying, no, I had income, here’s my W-2, and that was a month ago, and still nothing back. When people were first pushing me to apply, I was going back and forth from saying that “I don’t know how to report my income because my hours were very inconsistent” to “I don’t currently need these benefits, because I still have money from income taxes and the stimulus check”. Which was true.

So I went back to donating plasma. My last donation was Friday, and something went wrong with it. The needle wasn’t in correctly, so they decided to give my blood back after one pull (if you haven’t done it before, it’ll go through about 4-5 cycles if you’re in the highest weight category, which I am). They slowly returned my blood back to me, but it started to sting when the saline started to go in. I don’t know if it was the blood or the saline, but something went into the tissue, not the vein. So, I’ve had a nice bruise on the inside of my arm that prevents me from going and getting more money. I haven’t touched my donation money, since it’ll be rent in a worst case scenario where I don’t have a job by September 1st. I want a teaching job, or a subbing position in the district I’m in, but if the subbing position also gets overlooked, I don’t know what I’m going to do, emotionally. 

It’s been almost a week since my last donation, and maybe I’ll be able to go in a day or two? The bruise is fading, but I don’t know. 

I’m lonely, I’m stressed, I’m anxious. I want to hang out with people, but I look at the list of people I know and I’m like...who even cares, right now? I’m getting frustrated with people getting annoyed at the fact that nothing is going okay right now, and me expressing those feelings is annoying, and I’m getting frustrated with people just saying “oof” when I express that something isn’t okay. It isn’t even down to who cares, either, it’s also looking at who has the energy to deal with me? 

The last week has been pretty shitty, in all honesty. At first, it was the stress of everything leading up to plasma donation going wrong. Then it turned into “People only care about people that they deem as useful, and it seems like my usefulness has run out.” Because it has. I’m just burdensome to people at this point. 

So, then I sit there. I want to talk to people, I want to just sit and watch stuff and drink with friends. But I don’t want people saying all the things i enjoy are stupid, and I don’t want to be brushed off. I don’t even want advice for everything because what advice can people even offer me right now? I want human company. But people have lives that don’t involve me - which is okay - and those lives and relationships take precedence over me. Which is okay. To most people - if not every person I’m associated with - I’m a second thought, at best. Everyone has someone else that they care about more, or some other issue that they have more thought processes to deal with. I’m not mad, or upset by it. I don’t expect people to put their lives and their problems on hold to help me get stabilized. Because, in all honesty? Right now, when nothing is okay right now? I don’t think I could emotionally sustain anyone either.

So, I don’t want to be burdensome. So, I sit alone, and try to drown out everything by watching dumb videos on YouTube or starting to hyperfocus on something. It sometimes works. Other times, I just sit there and feel the need to just break something, to let out the tension, and I have a relapse. I’ve had two, this week. It doesn’t matter what it is, in all honesty. I’ve done dishes, while in this state, and I broke a glass. It just...it felt like the glass was the heaviest thing I could hold, and I just didn’t have the energy to keep holding it anymore, and I dropped it. I still haven’t found all the pieces to the cup. Though, it doesn’t matter, does it?

I did start therapy, recently. My first appointment was a week ago, and I won’t have another one for two weeks. In this appointment, I discussed with the therapist about how I thought I had undiagnosed ADHD, anxiety, and depression. I had filled out a questionnaire a few weeks prior, and he had my answers from then about those three things, among a few other things. I explained that at times when I feel like I’m dealing with anxiety attacks I struggle to breath - I have to pause, take a deep breath with my diaphragm and fully expand my lungs, cause it feels like my breath is too shallow in varying circumstances, but it’s been worse recently.  

He asked about study habits. How is reading? I have a hard time sitting down, and focusing to read, but when I find something I’m engaged it, I don’t put it down. Is that webcomic 90-144 chapters? I. Won’t. Stop. I can’t. So, he asks about deadlines. How close to a deadline do i complete tasks? Literally, the last minute. Does that pressure help you work? If I don’t have a deadline, I don’t finish anything. Fun fact! I’m moving in a week, and I made a list of everything my roommate and I need to do. I did this a month ago, and this was supposed to be done before we went on a roadtrip in the beginning of July. Nothing has been checked off. He asked how I do progression. If I work on a paper, I’ll clean my workspace, then I’ll go get snacks to munch on for the 5-10 hours I’ll be at my computer. Sometimes, cleaning my workspace causes my to clean my room. After all this he said “I think there is some ADHD at play here.” And he explained that, typically in women, ADHD is undiagnosed, because it’s the high energy that people look at, not necessarily the inattentiveness. Young boys are diagnosed more often because they have that high energy people look for - and they get misdiagnosed, sometimes. So, that tells me that, for 23 years of my life, and for 17 years of education, I had ADHD. Which makes a difference.

Because, then, I start thinking about the past - this has been a thing for the last few days, in particular. And I start to get...frustrated? Angry? Because, I’m sitting there thinking that the signs were there. When I was in the 5th grade, I just stopped doing my homework. Or rather, I never did it to begin with. It was a whole thing that I don’t want to get into right now, but my teacher did get my parents involved. And then, again, in high school. I had the same English teacher for 3 years, and she allowed me to go into the AP Lit and Lang courses. This was the point that I really struggled with reading. I loved reading up until that point. It was my escape. And she had me the year before, she knew I was an avid reader at that point. But when I started slipping and when it was obvious I wasn’t reading, she never really said anything. I don’t think she contacted my parents, and it never came up in parent teacher conferences - I went to all of them because I liked being praised by my teachers, and they always did. I don’t really blame a lot of my other teachers, though. I’m weird in the sense that lectures and direct instruction is a really good method for me to learn. I sit there, copy the notes, and hoard said notebooks until I need the information. I haven’t take Algebra since I was 17, but dammit, I still have my notes from College Algebra that I took in high school.

It’s that stigma that only boys have ADHD. I know it is, and it’s not like I was in a district that was socially advanced, if that makes sense. We didn’t even have sex ed. I’m not in the south, either, I’m in Colorado. But, like, I’m kinda bitter? I’m pretty average, as a student, even with the ADHD. I was ranked dead middle in my high school graduating class with a 3.4 GPA. I might have gotten it up to a 3.5, but I don’t remember. And then College happened. All the support fell away, I was independent. I ended my first semester with a 1.1 GPA. It fucking hurt. I came home for Christmas and everyone was telling me to change my major - because obviously if I ended my first semester that badly, it meant I wasn’t interested in it. It didn’t matter that I only had two classes in my major, and one really dealing with what I wanted to study. I got my shit together, and bumped my GPA back up to a 2.1 the next semester. 

But, then, it just kinda...I don’t know. Like I dipped low, I skyrocketed, and then I steadily went down again, until I flatlined. Like I said, I skated by in college. I feel like I didn’t put in more effort. Maybe I feel robbed? Like, if I knew I had ADHD, and if I had medication to help me focus a bit, that maybe things would have gone differently? I would have been more at the top of my class in high school, and maybe I would have been able to graduate college with at least a 3.0 gpa and I would have gotten honors and maybe I would be able to get a fucking job right now in the field that I got a degree in? How is it that I’m so bad at this, that I can’t even get a job in a field that is always struggling with getting people? 

I don’t know. I’m bitter. I’m angry. I’ve been writing this for an hour. I’m still upset, I suppose, but now I’m just tired, and my hand is cramping up.

That’s another thing that I’ve noticed, over the last few months. I want to create things. I draw, I write and I’ve been designing a video game. I want to release it, but I just...I feel like people don’t care about it. The things I create. I’m not good, I’m not bad. I’m pretty damn average. So it doesn’t stand out. And I feel like - mostly with writing and the game design - that if people aren’t going to enjoy it, then what’s the point in putting in the time and energy to actually develop these things. Like you can say that it’s creating it for me, but I can think about it in my head. I can daydream these things. Giving it corporeal form so I can enjoy these things is pointless. And it’s not like I haven’t tried. I’ll show people are that I’m proud of and get lukewarm responses, or even “It’s creepy” (dear fucking Jesus am i sick of people saying what I create is creepy). Or, I’ll send people a link to the download of the demo of my game and I have gotten no responses. Like, several people have said “Yeah, I’ll play it” and then never do. It’s like, 30 minutes, at most. I’ve timed it, even with killing every single spawn I can. It only takes about 30 minutes. 

Dear God, this doesn’t even get into the problems of the world oh my Fucking God. 

I feel better after ranting like this. I’m less upset. I’m tired. Though, in the end, nobody really cares, do they?