hi. i'm deepsix (22, he/him), and this is my pinned post. i draw/write about whatever, mostly creepypasta, marble hornets, superhero and medieval fantasy stuff. i also help run a friend's creepypasta roleplay server. feel free to join, we'd love to have you
deepsix-archive is my only other blog, i just reblog stuff there
feel free to ask me stuff. i have many thoughts regarding creepypastas and marble hornets and my ocs (especially tommie)
and that 👇 is the tag i use for my creepypasta oc. that is all thanks bye
Lepidoptera Lunatic Asylum will be opening its gates soon to the general public. When traversing the institution’s grounds, it is imperative you remain levelheaded. That is, of course, unless you wanted to stay.
… 🦋💉💌🐜 …
Well, everyone! The demo for Chapter I: Framework is complete!
Last night I had finished everything up, and my heart hasn’t stopped pounding excitedly since! I have lovely lovely test subjects in the Pupa Project discord who were kind enough to volunteer to play test the demo! And as we all play through it together over and over to find inconsistencies or bugs to catch, we get closer to it being released to the rest of the world! I am very grateful for the friends and members of Pupacord who are giving me feedback for stuff to tweak and their reactions to things! It’s very very heartwarming and exhilarating!!
The demo will hopefully be released this week! And I am so excited for you all to finally meet Blythe (and co) properly! 🦋
Thank you all for your continued support and your encouragement! It truly means the world! I feel like I say that a lot… but it’s true!!
sense of agency is a skill truly........ it takes work convincing yourself that you have to make moves if you dont want life to spontaneously happen to you instead of having some saying in what happens in it and if you have self destructive tendencies on top of that, it takes trust in yourself to almost blindly believe that it actually matters that you have power over your own life
It has been one year since I started this project and set out to (hopefully) make this world a better place, a more understanding place! I was never prepared for the life this project and these characters would take, the spark and subsequent fire this project would burn within me. I don’t think I can properly articulate with words the love, devotion, and gratefulness I have for my project. Through working on Pupa Project throughout the year, I have realized I found my purpose, my drive, what I want to continue doing for the rest of my life.
When I was first diagnosed with schizophrenia, I left high school. I was 16, and this wasn’t the only thing that lead to my departure, a deviation from what we are supposed to do. I was heavily bullied, and I had been surviving different arrays of abuse up until that point. Despite my fuzzy, blurry memories of those adolescent years, I remember signing the papers like it was yesterday. I signed the papers to unenroll and I left with my mom, and from then on I think that’s when I started to tear apart the machine that was never made for me, even if I didn’t realize it yet.
Buckle up! Because this post is gonna be a long one! 🦗💓
From 16-18 I was in therapy. I did have to be hospitalized a couple months after my diagnosis because I was suicidal and in a psychotic episode. I remember hallucinating in the hospital room, colors swirling and warping. When a spot was finally found for me in the local inpatient psychiatric hospital, I found myself far more distressed upon arrival. I had started coming out of my episode and then had to grapple with the fact that I was stuck in the hospital. Some people have very pleasant experiences in psychiatric units, some do not. Sadly, I was someone who did not. On the first day, I was given my medicine at the wrong time and subsequently got sick. I had gotten a mild fever. When they were supposed to inform my mom that I had gotten sick, they did not. Immediately when I told her myself, she realized this would not be a very favorable experience for anyone.
I was the only kid in there with schizophrenia, and thus, I was the subject of innocent curiosity. “Do you see things?” “Do you hear things?” “One of my old roommates was schizophrenic!” To this day, I hold onto these memories fondly. It was an odd change of pace, going from being tormented by my peers to being loved by them. They would tell me:
“You’re so positive! You are here to make us happy! They must’ve hired you to make us feel better!”
All of them were so sweet and I found them leaning on me when they were distressed (and trust me, it happened a lot) Out of all of them, I was the only one who had had extensive therapy outside of the hospital. I knew my coping skills, and so I knew how to help them when they needed it. Some of them had been there for months, no one to fight for them to get them out even if their symptoms were improving. I don’t think people realize that it’s not getting better that gets you out. You only get out when your insurance runs out. As long as your insurance is paying, they will keep you, and keep you, and keep you, at least from my experience. And the inverse applies as well. Even if you still need the help, if your insurance stops paying, out you go. Thanks to my mom fighting to get me out, I had only stayed a week.
Despite my stay being on the shorter side, once I was home I frequently had nightmares about being back, that being home was just an elaborate hallucination and I was really still stuck in the stark, white rooms of the hospital. This was the first spark I felt, a need to make the world better for people like me.
As the years went on, I recovered more and more. It was around 20-21 where I started being able to properly remember my days again, as before then everything was blurry and distant. If you asked me about anything I did when I was 18-20, I could genuinely not tell you. I do not remember. And now, at 23, I can confidently say I have recovered completely.
Recovering from schizophrenia does not mean it goes away, and now at this point in my life, I’d never ever ever want to be cured. Recovery, for me, means that I am not scared anymore when I hallucinate or find myself in a more spacey state of mind. I know my coping skills well, and when my symptoms act up, there is no panic anymore. As of writing this, I had just experienced the most vivid hallucination I’ve had in a long time a couple days ago. Instead of being scared, I was able to recognize I was hallucinating and, in turn, became fascinated by what I was experiencing. A key component of schizophrenia recovery is flipping the scary voices into pleasant ones, at least that’s what my mind did. I’m not sure how scientifically backed this experience is, but as I recovered more and more, as I settled into a safer, gentler life, the scary, violent voices started to shift. Now, most of the voices I hear are neutral or even kind! Some of them are regulars in my mind, guiding me when I find myself getting worked up or stressed. And these figures in my head were the initial inspirations for Mr. Gryllidae.
Despite being recovered, this society we are in still tells me I am inadequate. My memory is bad, I don’t have the expected reactions to things in social settings, I get easily confused, easily lost, I am uncoordinated, I have a hard time thinking clearly, speaking clearly, the list could go on. Because of these factors, I cannot keep up in things like work or school. And since I cannot follow these rigid structures, I am of no use. Over and over and over again I have felt that I am behind all my peers, that I will never amount to anything great or beneficial to this world, even if I desperately want to help it. This machine has made it clear I am a too-faulty cog, and thus, I will never be able to contribute anything. With all these feelings, I decided to do the one thing I’ve always felt immense confidence in doing.
I started to create.
Reading what people say about schizophrenic people online, hearing what they say in person, watching them use words like “delulu” or “schizo” while in the same breath looking down on those of us that actually experience psychotic symptoms, I began getting fed up. I had once been open about being schizophrenic online a couple years ago, and when I discussed it then, I was met with death threats and people trying to trigger my psychosis. I had been very quiet about it from then on until very recently. I decided enough was enough. I’ve learned that many ableist actions towards psychotic people mostly come from genuine ignorance. We are such a minority that no one really even thinks to ask our opinions about things, or take into consideration how we might feel. I am someone who has had schizophrenia his whole life, I was diagnosed young, and I have recovered to a great point where I have learned to articulate my experiences as best I can to others. If people are ignorant, I don’t mind being the one to teach them. In fact, I love talking about it! My hope is to have a domino effect. If one person can learn from Pupa Project, I hope they’d be able to step in when their friend makes an unsavory joke, or defend someone who may not be in a position to defend themself. Ignorance leads to fear, humans fear what they do not understand. Hopefully, through understanding, we can start tearing down how heavily stigmatized psychotic disorders are.
And on January 13th, 2025, I drew Blythe Waldrop.
This. This was the little reference sheet that started it all. Blythe Waldrop had been an OC of mine before this reference, at least, in her doll form. But this was the first ever thing I drew for Pupa Project. I knew I wanted to create something. Something to share my experiences and thoughts and feelings as someone who had grown up schizophrenic and will live with the condition for the rest of my days. While drawing this reference sheet, the realization hit me like horse-drawn carriage!
What if I made a visual novel?
This idea started bringing the fire in my heart to life. I have always loved visual novels, they are such unique things to me. A story you can interact with, a novel where you can see the characters and put yourself in their shoes (or striped stockings!) And I suddenly became aware I have so much I want to say, so much I wish people understood. So, I started to build.
The rest of the patients came very easy. While Schizophrenia and psychotic symptoms are at the forefront of this project, it is important to know that my proper diagnosis is Schizoaffective Disorder (schizophrenia + mood disorder), and this isn’t the only condition I have. I also have OCD, PTSD, and Tourette’s Syndrome. (It’s also suspected I have autism, I just haven’t been formally evaluated yet :0c)
While Blythe encompasses all my thoughts, feelings, opinions, and experiences, these topics are also expanded upon within different characters.
Thomas Phillipps (his last name used to be Watson but I changed it because apparently Thomas Watson was a very real person BAHAH) is one of my outlets for OCD and experiences being a trans man. He is gentle, soft-spoken, but constantly anxious, constantly worried and terrorized by the intrusive thoughts in his head. It is because of these “sick” thoughts he feels he should never get close to anyone. After losing someone very dear to him while in Lepidoptera Lunatic Asylum, he became convinced he is bad luck, that he can only bring harm to those he cares about. So, between doing things in even numbers, triple checking every little thing he does, and avoiding situations all together, Thomas is almost always in a constant state of anxiety. That is, of course, until Blythe Waldrop enters his life.
Amaryllis Cook became a very important character to me upon her creation. I have Schizoaffective Bipolar Type. This means that while I experience schizophrenic symptoms, I also experience bipolar symptoms. And for me, up until very recently, I was still struggling heavily with hitting deep, depressive lows. Amaryllis became my outlet for these feelings. Suicidal ideation, feeling worthless, feeling like I’m “too much” for anyone to handle, dealing with teetering on the edge of relapsing, Amaryllis became my life line in these states. She reminds me to be patient with myself, she reminds me that I’m still strong, that I’m not losing all my progress when I’m having one bad night. Through making her character and giving her a reason to live, I have also found my reason for living. And pretty recently, I spoke to my psychiatrist about what I’ve been experiencing and now I’m on the best mood stabilizers in the world!! So take that, depression! >:)
Henrietta Vivian Davis is the direct opposite of Amaryllis. Henrietta encompasses my mania, the extreme highs and instability that can cause. She’s excitable, she talks too quickly for people to keep up with and sometimes her words sound like straight up nonsense. However, she’s very hot headed, impulsive, and holds a deep anger within her. Henrietta also conveys my feelings being someone who was sexually abused. It’s hard for me to talk about even to this day, so I don’t think I’ll get into much here, but Henrietta helps me channel all the weight those experiences have put on me into a healthy release, and hopefully she can be a character others who have experienced this type of abuse can lean on, can feel seen by, can feel comforted by.
After creating the four patients, I realized we need to see the other side of this coin. So, let’s flip it over!
One thing I want to make abundantly clear in Pupa Project is that the distinction between “sane” and “insane” is heavily blurred and skewed. What one might deem odd or crazy, another might find it perfectly acceptable and benign. The only difference between doctor and patient is that one has a white coat/apron, and the other does not. One group can mask or present their symptoms in a socially acceptable way, and the other group cannot. All of them are stuck in the asylum at the end of the day.
Dr. Laurence Caldwell is humane. He is all the positive experiences I’ve had with doctors. He listens, he cooperates with his patients, he adapts to their needs, he encourages them and cheers them on when they make progress. Dr. Caldwell also encompasses a lot of my generally neurodivergent symptoms. He avoids eye-contact, he has a flat voice, he sticks to his routine and gets very upset when it’s disturbed. He doesn’t understand typical social cues, and this is why he can connect to his patients so easily. There’s no pressure for him to adhere to societal rules with those who have already been outcasted. He knows how to help them because deep down he knows he is like them. If he wasn’t so careful, if he didn’t mask as well as he does, he knows he could very well end up in their position. And if he was in their position, he wouldn’t be able to help anyone. So it is imperative he keeps his coat on, for their sakes.
Dr. Samuel Montague means much more to me than I think people might expect. While he is inherently antagonistic, making up most of my negative experiences within medical treatment, none of the characters in this story are painted purely black or white. Dr. Montague, like Dr. Caldwell, recognizes that he very well could be in the patients’ position. Dr. Montague is an outlet for dealing with my PTSD. Dr. Montague does what he does out of self-preservation. And he needs to be alive, because he is the only one who could stop his father if things got out of hand. At least, he hopes he would be able to find the courage to stop him. Dr. Montague has been degraded and threatened and harmed his whole life, so any ounce of authority he gets gives him a power trip. He is used to show that abuse is cyclical. He needs help, he needs to stop the cycle, but he cannot admit that, he cannot face what he’s been through or what he’s done. He is too scared.
Nurse Cassandra Beechworth is the closest any of them are to falling into the patient category. Due to her upbringing being alienated for being different by peers, and the flat out neglect from her father, Nurse Cassandra was always left to grapple with her symptoms on her own. She is another character that has OCD. She is obsessed with being loved, being needed, being valued. So, compulsively she constantly asks for reassurance, she constantly seeks it out in any way she can, even if it is harmful. Nurse Cassandra desperately wants to be loved, but her fears of being unlovable make her lash out. She makes the patients hate her for the things she says and does, so they can’t hate her for who she truly is: a hypocrite. Nurse Cassandra encompasses a lot of my fears of being unlovable and the spirals those thoughts can cause. She is a hopeless romantic who fears she is too broken and too difficult to ever be pursued.
And then we have Mr. Gryllidae
Eugene-Albert Gryilldae is an anomaly. Out of all the characters, I have come to realize that Mr. Gryllidae is the most like me now. He is the man I needed when I was a child, and I believe he is like the man I have become now. Mr. Gryllidae has my exact diagnosis, Schizoaffective Disorder, and he’s also the only character in the cast with Tourette’s Syndrome. He expands upon my experiences and opinions about this world now that I’ve grown and have learned more about living with my conditions. Mr. Gryllidae is brilliant, a crazed genius. Society has told him he is too ill to contribute, even if his inventions are marvelous and life-changing. No one wants to listen to a madman. No one wants to admit that he might be right. Because if he is, that means this machine we all work within is obsolete.
Mr. Gryllidae is dead set on making the world better for those like him. He is taking apart the machine piece by piece and using those parts to make a place for those like him to go, to find home and safety in. Mr. Gryllidae has seen immense violence, has been harmed severely just for the crime of living as his true self. But he will never give in, he will never give up the belief that the humans around him are inherently good, just misguided. Mr. Gryllidae is the embodiment of what it means to cut the rope and be free, to live outside of the bounds of our stark reality.
🦋⚙️ And this became our beloved cast of abnormalities ⚙️🦋
This post is quite lengthy! So, if you read all of this, I’m so so so thankful and grateful and overjoyed! Because I have so much I want to share today, these anniversary posts will be split up into different parts! But I just want to give a huge thank you to everyone who’s been supporting me and this project! All of you guys here, everyone on Bluesky, I’ve encountered nothing but love and I’m so beyond grateful for that. When I first started making this project, I was prepared for the world to be very cruel. And trust me, I’m always prepared for that. But you all have proven that there is an audience out there who wants to hear stories like these, who wants to love characters like these, who might even feel seen by this project, at least I would hope! This project started as a purely selfish idea, but now, every single day I realize that I’m not the only one who needs it to exist. And because of that, I will continue pouring all my love into it, so that hopefully my love and warmth will be able to reach all those who encounter this project.
I also want to give specific thank yous to @deepsix-art and @crushedsweets for being by my side ever since the creation of this project. The past two years being your friend have been the best two years I’ve ever had in my life. And your support and belief in me and my creations has carried me through this process so much. I love you both!!! And thank you for always listening to my long winded ramblings about Pupa Project!!!
This topic has been researched/thought out to the best of my ability because it's important to me that no condition should be portrayed in media as a stereotyped/stigmatized version of itself even if it is fictitious because it can still have real world consequences. Lord knows it's a mistake I've made before which is why I want to do better 💀 Below is some information about how gigantism has affected my character Tommie specifically. Also contains mention of heavy themes typical of any creepypasta character's backstory, ye be warned
Gigantism is caused by a non-cancerous tumor developing on the pituitary gland which causes the body to make an excess of growth hormone; for Tommie, it happened before puberty, at age 9. His father was a stubborn type, however, and as Tommie started to grow to be far taller than the other boys in his class, he refused to acknowledge that anything strange was happening to his son. For some, brain surgery to remove the tumor can prevent the body from producing so much growth hormone. For Tommie, he didn't get any farther than his yearly checkup at the doctor.
His father wanted him to take more interest in his high school football team, but pushing himself so hard physically put too much strain on his heart. Tommie was big, but his body wasn't balanced- his bones weren't denser than anyone else's- they weren't made to support his rapidly-growing size. His internal organs were enlarged, especially his heart, which made it harder to keep up with the physical demands of both school and his father. Even after walking from class to class, he'd need to sit down and take a break. His feet and joints would ache after the day was said and done.
His father lived in active denial about his son's condition. It was a miracle Tommie never went into cardiac arrest- but Tommie's father developed a fine skill for pushing his son as close to the line as he could get. His father got him to work long hours on their land after school. His father refused to buy him properly-sized shoes when his older pairs fit him 'only a week ago'. His father forbade Tommie from eating more than he did, refusing to believe his son really felt painfully hungry every few hours. His father made him feel more like a freak than anyone in his high school. Tommie learned to stoop to appear smaller, but it only made the ligaments in his spine grow wrong. He kept getting bigger. The one accommodation his father allowed him, after repeated begging from his mother, was a CPAP machine for his sleep apnea.
Realistically, Tommie would not be able to survive for very long with a brain injury on top of his preexisting heart issues. It's Slenderman's hold on him that keeps him alive- essentially putting his body in a form of stasis where his constant growth stops and his heart isn't put under as much strain. However, this also means the mind-scrambling effects of his TBI don't go away. Slender's hold grants him the supernatural ability to stay alive and keep moving without feeling pain, but he can't think for himself or remember much, either. Slendersickness also exacerbates his extreme hunger; when Tommie isn't driving or under the complete control of Slenderman, he's eating whatever he can get his hands on- but it's never enough. Slender's hold keeps him alive, but only that. It takes everything else for itself, stealing from under the nose of a man who doesn't even realize he's sick.
This may be edited or added onto as I research more. I would totally recommend looking into documentaries or doing research about gigantism or any other conditions (especially ones characters you like have) if it's interesting to you! I won't force a gun to anyone's head about it, but it's really good for both learning about the world and developing a character. Very enriching 10/10
note to self never draw a whole ass background for something that's going to get mostly covered up ever again 💀 anyway here is tommie :] extended info below the cut. just a warning, it deals with dark themes typical of the average creepypasta oc
Tommie grew up in a small town in rural Alabama with his mother and father. His father tried to instill his values on the young Thomas in various unkind ways, but as much as the boy would have liked to retaliate against his father back then, he didn't.
As a young man, Tommie ran away from home as soon as he could legally get his own place to live. He worked tirelessly at the first job he could get in order to make a stable life for himself. He wanted nothing more than to put his troubled past behind him... but his troubled past had other plans.
It was a quiet, creeping rage that started to grow in him that turned out to be his real undoing. He couldn't let go of how his father had treated him; the man wouldn't leave his mind. Seven years after he had left, Tommie went back to that farmhouse to kill his dad with the same woodcutting axe that had become, in his mind, a symbol of his father's abuse. When his mother walked in to find the grisly scene, he fled.
Tommie drove as far as he could to evade the police but crashed his car in a stretch of woods. He sustains a head injury, and when he comes back to, he doesn't recognize where he is. Luckily, there was a tall, faceless man nearby to help guide him to safety...
Nowadays, Tommie has finally settled, after working various odd jobs, on being a trucker. He drives all over the right half of North America, none the wiser to how many stops he ends up taking along the way- or how many missing persons cases have arisen because of it.
...
About Tommie's gigantism: proportionately, Tommie's limbs are longer, his hands and feet are bigger, and he's pretty big in general, but the condition is exactly that- a condition. It also comes with a lot of health issues. Representing it accurately is both fun and important to me, so I'll be making an extended post to talk about how it effects Tommie specifically for those interested. I'd also encourage anyone to look into it for themselves. It's really fascinating.
More images and info is here on his toyhouse, feel free to poke around
Georgie, missing since age 14, almost exactly a year to date. Argumentative and rude, Georgie doesn't like to make life easy for people— Maybe because life hasn't been kind to her. She's alone. She doesn’t need a family, she doesn't need friends, and she likes it that way. (Or so she says. And everyone believes her. Right?) She's independent, a fierce little girl who's determined to prove to everyone she's more than capable of handling herself.
Current whereabouts: Unknown. You're supposed to find her, aren't you?
